Monday again

Thanksgiving can't be over so soon! How did this happen? It was, of course, a week early this year. Still it does seem to have gone by too quickly.

I am still reinventing my desktop computer. It came back to me with no anti-virus or free firewall or free anti-spyware software. Hard to believe! Probably they just got tired of it. Still it makes for more work for me... Reinventing the dsl is also turning out to be a pain, but hopefully perseverance will pay off. I am learning more than I ever wanted to know about how the computer works! Not the first time. If only I had known to set a restore point before fooling with the software a few Saturdays ago, I would not be missing the controller for the cd-dvd drive on the laptop. Life would be so much easier! Why can't I make it easier?

I do seem to have a propensity for making things more difficult for myself. It would be good, now that I am officially old, to overcome this. Serious work ahead!

As I watched the news this weekend, I was struck by the incredible waste of energy poured into "Black Friday". Is it really necessary to have everything open, running full steam, lights blazing in the middle of the night in order to have good economic forecasts? We are a nation concerned about global warning. Or are we? The energy blitz of the this shopping frenzy certainly didn't show it. Gasoline is more expensive than ever, so there were people with their headlines on (of course, it was the middle of the night after all) circling the parking lots looking for a space, while helicopters flew overhead documenting it all for the news programs.

The same news programs showed the gridlock on Wednesday of people fleeing the Bay Area to drive somewhere else for Thanksgiving. (These were the people who weren't, presumably, going to shop on Friday. Maybe they shopped elsewhere and brought their bargains back with them, weighing down their vehicles and getting even poorer mileage.) More people than ever flew somewhere for Thanksgiving. Wouldn't it have been more sensible to give thanks in place? Wouldn't the Turkey and the trimmings taste just as good without all the travel?

We are almost six years into a war that most of us do not support, but that is costing us every day. At some point we do have to pay for it. Some effort to truly conserve energy would help a great deal, I think. If everyone would drive less it might show up in the demand at the pump and prices, if they didn't fall, would at least hold steady for a bit. We are paying more for everything that has to be transported, probably even the presents so eagerly purchased last week. We need a national time of reflection on more of this, but instead we are going to have a national spending frenzy to try to bolster a weak economy and stave off recession. In addition, we will have election primaries held too early, so that none of the real reflection and debate will occur--just the cosmetic, surface stuff of the elections as usual.

Well, that is enough rant for one day! Time for another cup of coffee!