Black Friday

There will not be much of an entry today because my sister and I are going bead shopping - w00t! (I think she has drunk the jewelry Kool-Aid. At least she is showing signs of it.)

Like a lot of people, I guess, shopping on Black Friday has a long tradition in our family - since long before anybody started calling it that. When I was a kid we usually spent Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house, as I mentioned yesterday, and this meant that the post-Thanksgiving shopping was generally conducted in Bryan, Texas - hardly a shopping mecca, back in the day, but we managed. I am old enough to remember when shopping malls were a new invention and going there was still very exciting. (Even when it was Manor East Mall in Bryan - anybody who's familiar with Bryan/College Station will probably think that's funny. I haven't been there in years but I gather than Manor East is pretty down-at-the-heels nowadays!) I also remember going to this sort of semi-hippie store that I swear was called Sokowiki or something like that. I'm surprised my grandmother and aunt would set foot in that kind of place, but they did. Like I said, the options were somewhat limited. And before there was a mall, we would go downtown to the big Woolworth store. Man, that seems like a long time ago, and I guess it was!


Note: I wrote this entry and it was supposed to have posted yesterday and for some reason when I looked today (Saturday) it was back to saying "draft" again. It posted with the right date and time when I re-posted it, so I don't know what happened, exactly - but I tried to post yesterday, darnit! So if you're looking at the time on this and wondering why you didn't see it yesterday, that's what happened, just for the record.  :)