Black Friday
Black Friday is the discount shopping day that follows American Thanksgiving, which is always on a Friday. Retailers promote Black Friday as the day to start shopping for Christmas. Black Friday is often advertised with “Christmas Sales” as well as “Thanksgiving Sales.”
The word “black” in Black Friday refers to the term “in the black” meaning making a profit. Today, Black Friday is not an important source of profit to retailers, but is important in driving traffic in to stores. Lots of retailers mail special Black Friday circulars to consumers, announcing deeply discounted items in the hopes that consumers will visit their store on Black Friday.
However, the Black Friday that comes to my mind is the Steely Dan song:
When Black Friday comes
I’ll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I’ll collect everything I’m owed
And before my friends find out
I’ll be on the road
When Black Friday falls you know it’s got to be
Don’t let it fall on me
and while totally inauspicious compared to the one first mentioned, I’m starting to think that I’m bound for the latter one …
The matter of a pea
There’s this children’s story called The Princess and the Pea, which as far as I understood it, chronicles the woes of a princess going through several ordeals in order to prove that she is a real princess and therefore worthy to be a prince’s bride.
The ultimate test was when she was made to sleep on a stack of mattresses with a pea inserted into the bottom mattress, with the assumption that the princess, if real, would be so sensitive that she would feel the pea on her skin.
I have no idea what Hans Christian Andersen was up to when he wrote what was supposedly a children’s story but I have always frowned upon this particular one. I had never been able to understand the virtue of having such sensitive skin, or the theory that only a princess can marry a prince, but then again back in Andersen’s time they may have fully believed that this was only natural.
I do think that some of these so-called children’s stories should be rewritten.
Things we lost during the flood
All the office furniture downstairs. They were made of wood pulp and were really not built to withstand flooding such as what Typhoon Ondoy brought. All the books downstairs. Some legal papers, but replaceable. A couple of electric fans. A few note books, bits and pieces of paper to which we committed scribblings that were for a time not meant to be forgotten, but were. A few other things that we really didn’t mind losing.
A lot of other people in other areas lost a lot more. I am not complaining, just making an inventory.
Kitchen convenience
Now that we’ve completed the requirements the insurance company needs for the flood repairs that our house needs, it should only be a matter of time before we can start reconstruction work on the house. One of things I’m looking at are industrial handles to replace the puny ones on the cupboards and cabinets in the kitchen. Industrial handles are usually shaped like a U of some kind. The idea is to have a strong, securely attached device that won’t slip out of your hands easily.
I find that especially useful in the kitchen, where I tend to grab on handles with hands wet from the kitchen faucet. Wouldn’t that be nifty to have in the kitchen?
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