Sunday, November 29, 2009

Long Holiday Weekend


THANKSGIVING DAY;

My wife spent hours planning, buying, and preparing Thanksgiving dinner. We were joined for dinner by my mother in law and brother in law. It was very good and we have been eating the leftover all weekend. After dinner, I spent hours washing dishes and putting the food away and generally cleaning up. That evening we went to Medford's Tinseltown to see the movie "Pirate Radio"**** which was a lot of fun. If your are a baby boomer like me and believe the best Rock n' Roll came out in the mid 1960's this is the movie for you. It also has a moral that British socialism is bad regardless of whether it is government run medical care or government run radio stations. In the mid 1960's the only radio stations in the UK were run by the BBC and they played very little Rock n' Roll and so an entrepreneur had a tramp steamer made into an offshore radio stations and broadcast Rock n' Roll 24 hours a day until the government crushed them. If Obama care becomes reality will we have off shore hospitals on ships where we can get the medical care we want? The movie has a great soundtrack of music. I highly recommend it.

UPDATE: From a post on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB)

The Government minister in charge of closing down the pirate radio stations is depicted as a right-wing reactionary, with a grand home with servants. In fact the responsible minister was Tony Benn, then the Labour government Postmaster General at the time, who is known as one of the most left-wing and socialist senior politicians ever.


Hollywood almost always likes to make Conservatives the bad guy even when the true facts get in the way. Look up Tony Benn on Google and you will find out the above quote is true!

"BLACK FRIDAY":

Friday morning I got up about 4 am to hit the "Black Friday" sale at Target! Big mistake! I got to Target at about 5 pm expecting a crowd of hundreds. Well, it was more like thousands. Medford's three TV stations all had their remote vans there. It took me about 15 to 20 minutes to get into the store and then the "fun" began. My main reason for going was to get the "single disk" Blu Ray DVD version of "Gone With the Wind" for only $12.98. "Gone With the Wind" has just come out in Blu ray on DVD but they are selling it for at least $45.98 on Amazon with lots of special features and booklets with 4 discs. Well, I have all the features on regular DVD and only want the movie in Blu ray. Target had an "exclusive" of the one disk version. Well I got in and fought the crowd, found the movie and then the hard part began. I had to find a line to the check stand. Well, I found the end of the line in the electronics department ( going away from the check stand area!) and the line snaked it's way through out the store. I was in line for 2 hours! I also got a special edition to Alexander" in blue ray for $8.98. and a couple of Christmas presents for a relative. I then went home an helped my wife get out our Christmas decorations in the garage and put up our tree. I put on the lights on the tree and then took a nap while my wife finished decorating the tree and fireplace area. We always put the Bing Crosby's movie "White Christmas" on while we decorate the tree. After my map I helped my wife put away the Christmas boxes and then watched some college football on TV.

SATURDAY:

It was my wife's turn to hit the early sales so I slept in and watched ESPN's Game Day. When she got home we started to put up our outside Christmas decorations. It was cold but sunny. All in all we put up 20 plus strings of lights, A light up Santa face, light up rain deer, light up full Santa, light up Frosty the Snowman, and two large light up candles along with associated wreaths and other decorations. One string of lights would not work and I spent about an hour trying to get them to work. I finally gave up and made a trip to "Fred's" and replaced them in the dark. I finally finished about 7:30 pm and finished the day by watching some college football. The lights look good. If our kids were not coming home for Christmas I probably would not have put them all up but there is a little (a lot) of the dad in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in me.

SUNDAY:

After a late start I went shopping for some items for the joint "Civil War" lunch we are having here in Medford between the Oregon Club of Southern Oregon and the Beaver Club on Tuesday. Now that the weekend is coming to an end I can concentrate on the "Civil War" game on Thursday night on ESPN TV. I will be going to Eugene for the game. Let's go Ducks... win the day... Beat the Beavers!