Tangled in a World Wide Web

With the approach of the holidays, I find myself in the familiar and unenviable position of being torn between all the blessings I should be thankful for and remembering that this is my first ever Thanksgiving without my mom. This is complicated by the fact that this week also marks the seven month anniversary of her death. Hard to imagine. My mom loved the holidays. The food, the fellowship, the family, the food. So many things remind me of her. So many little things. This will be an event. We are going to go to my sister's as I have most years when I could. Eating in the same place we had Thanksgiving last year with my mom. I don't know how to prepare for this. I don't like being ill prepared. Much less unprepared. I am writing this mostly as a cathartic exercise in hopes it will help. I am not fooled. I am not naive. Maybe a little desperate. I am trying not to imagine Christmas. That is a whole other ball game. And it falls on the eight month anniversary of my mom...

I like to think of myself as a curmudgeon 1 . Most people have different names for me. Most are not particularly flattering and if I had feelings or cared what anyone else thought, I might be upset. Luckily, I sleep soundly, never giving it or them a second thought. I remember I used to love Christmas... as a child, as a teenager, even as a young adult raising two kids. Somewhere along the way, the magic died, the stress, the financial burden, the greed and commercialization all took over and a Grinch was born - or hatched. As the kids got older, and particularly after they left home and I transitioned into a single, forty-ish bachelor living alone, I became less enamored and more jaded. This year has seemed especially hard for many reasons. The weather has been warm. I haven't had much money (big club, I know), I didn't see much chance of my getting back to my hometown and family for the holidays and aside from being a world-class procrastinator, I was working constantly and d...

Where can I get THAT, you ask... Over 700 online merchants are participating in the second annual Free Shipping Day from www.freeshippingday.com . In 2007, Luke Knowles of FreeShipping.org noticed that after about Dec. 10th, Internet shopping all but came to a halt. Many people are afraid that their orders won't make it on time or they'll have to pay exorbitant shipping to get it. An idea was born and in the Summer of 2008, preparations began for the first ever Free Shipping Day. When freeshippingday.com launched, it was expected to have 25 participating merchants. By the time Free Shipping Day came on Dec. 18th 2008, there were over 250. The site drew a quarter of a million hits over a 10 day period including over 100,000 hits on the actual day. It was such a huge success that Knowles started immediately planning and preparing for this year's event. The goal this year was a lofty 500 merchants. That mark was left in the dust about a week ago and as I write this now I just...

According to this page , a good translation of the words "auld lang syne" is " times gone by ." Play the tune. Well, another year is gone and I must say, "Good Riddance!". This has been a year of many disappointments and shortcomings... mostly mine. I suppose I should have known what the year would be like when I went to the doctor 3 times before the middle of February. I had been to the doctor, maybe 3 times in the previous ten years. I should have seen it for the portent that it was. It hasn't been all bad. If you get past the miserable first 5 months that I was sick and the traffic stop that nearly turned into a COPS episode on Easter Sunday; forget the home invasion, the murder of my brand new camera and the vandalism of my car all in May and June and gloss over the joke that my job has become since July; if you can look past all that plus my car being totaled last month , well the rest was just an average year. Above Average I suppose it sounds li...