Black Friday has really lost control.  It used to be that stores opened at
7AM.  Then they went to 6AM.  Then K Mart started a new trend and was
open on Thanksgiving.  That was a shocker.   I could not help but
think of those poor employees missing the holiday with their families just to
get a few more sales.  I thought that experiment would fizzle out.  I
was wrong.  Other retailers started moving back their openings. 
Stores opened at 5AM Friday.  Then it was pushed back to midnight. 
This year was just too much.  Stores opened as early as 4PM on
Thanksgiving!  I really wonder if the stores are really reaping the
benefits of the time change.  Does opening earlier really get them more
sales or are the normal Friday sales figures simply stretched over a two day
period?  It’s reaching the point where we might as well not even have the
holiday.  I always thought of Thanksgiving as a day of rest, spending time
with family and carrying on traditions like watching parades or football. 
Now as the turkey cooks, the Thursday ads are being scanned and items
circled.  People now go shopping in the afternoon, wait in lines forever,
and continue shopping through the night and into Friday.  Now when Friday
comes, however, the parking lots at Wal-Mart and the other big chains are
bare.  They used up their splash the night before.  I understand the
logic.  They post the ads on line a week before hand so people can make
plans.  Then they can clean up when other stores are closed.  That way
customers won’t have to choose which store to visit at opening.  The
opening times are staggered so shoppers can hit all the sales and wait in
countless lines. It makes me sick to see what the holiday has morphed
into.  People have become so crazed by these sales that they will actually
take items out of other people’s carts when they are not looking so that they
can get the early bird sale.  How petty is that?  When will the
madness stop?  Will the store employees ever get to enjoy the holiday
again?  Companies will continue to do these promotions as long as they are
working.  If enough people boycotted Thursday shopping, I believe it would
go away and we could return to just having Black Friday.  Somehow, I think
that is a pipe-dream.  With the ever increasing trend toward earlier
openings, the holiday will end up being turkey sandwiches eaten while in a line
outside a store.  So much for giving thanks.

It is Thanksgiving once again.  This is the time of year to reflect back
and give thanks for our many blessings.  It has been a good year for me
personally and professionally.  My first book, “Quest for the Red Sapphire”
was published and its sequel should be out in the next couple of months. 
It was a rough year on the health front but things seem to be getting back to
normal.  My wife is perfect, as always.  As for my children, the two
still in school are honors students and my oldest is maturing into a fine young
man.  I am a man with no reason to complain and therefore I won’t. 
That’s not the topic of this blog.  You see, Thanksgiving means something
else to my family as well.  We are big on traditions where I come from and
one is the big breakfast Thanksgiving morning designed to hold everyone over
through football until it is turkey time.  My children look forward to this
because we are seldom all together for a meal and it is a lot of fun…unless you
are preparing it and then you want to sleep in.  Four years ago was just
such a morning.  The kids came into my bedroom to wake my wife and me by
jumping on us.  That started a tickle war and a lot of laughing.  Then
the phone rang.  The cordless phone had been knocked off the charger so I
hit the speaker button on the base and answered.  My sister was on the
line.  It was not uncommon to hear from relatives on Thanksgiving and so I
thought nothing of it.  Then she told me to take it off speakerphone. 
I knew right then that something was wrong.  I ran downstairs, retrieved
the other phone and took it off speaker.  She informed me that she was at
our parent’s house and that Mom had just lost her battle with cancer.  I
knew she was in bad shape but the news was still quite a shock.  After
talking and crying for some time I hung up the phone.  Slowly I returned to
my room where the merriment had not ended.  Then my wife saw my face and
ordered all the children to leave.   Once they did I told her what had
happened.  How was I going to tell the children?  My wife left it up
to me to choose the time.  We went downstairs and quietly made
breakfast.  As the children ate, I could not help but ache from the loss of
my sole supporter before I met my wife.  When the meal ended the children
were comparing my frozen orange juice with grandma’s because according to them,
“They must grow better oranges in Canada because her orange juice tastes
better.”   At that moment I felt it was time.  I braced them for
it and then revealed the sad news.  The kids loved to visit her and the
thought of her passing was not taken well.  My mother was buried a few days
later on my oldest daughter’s birthday.  This is not a blog for
mourning.  I have done plenty of that.  It is a blog about
Thanksgiving.  I am thankful for the lessons she taught me.  I am
thankful she encouraged me to write.  I am thankful for the hundreds of
nights she fell asleep listening to one of my stories from one of my
books.  I am thankful she made me promise to publish them.  I am
thankful she told me when I was dating my wife not to let her get away. 
And most of all; I am thankful that I was one of a privileged few who had the
honor of calling her mother.  Thanksgiving is meant to honor the gifts we
have been given; not mourn the ones we lost.  If somehow you can read this,
Mom, thank you for everything.  I love you.

About ten tears ago my oldest daughter was about 7 years old and came to me
asking for money to buy some candy.  I told her to think of a way to earn
some money and then she could buy her own candy.  It was an obvious ploy to
get her to clean up or help in some way around the house.  Nothing seemed
to come of it and so I let the matter go.  Then we were grocery shopping a
few days later and she started putting candy bars in the cart.  I stopped
her and told her she had not asked and we were not getting them.  She
responded, “You don’t have to buy them Dad.  I have my own money.  She
pulled out a hand full of dollar bills from her pocket that were all
crumpled.  In amazement I asked from where she had acquired the
money.  She said, “You told me to find a way to earn it.  So I
did.  I sold rocks up and down our street.”  She had visited my
parents that summer and had accumulated a stockpile of stones from Lake Erie
that she thought were pretty.  Then she took those stones to the neighbors
and sold them for what she thought they were worth.  At first I was
mortified.  The people on our street must think we don’t have food to eat
if we’re sending out daughter around to sell common rocks!  Then I thought
for a moment and was impressed.  She managed to get people to give her
money for common rocks!  Now that’s salesmanship.  A few years later
there was a magazine drive at her school and the top prize was a
camcorder.  We did not have a camcorder and my daughter wanted it.  So
she made her older brother escort her through our small town and knocked on
every door.  She set a record and sold even to parents who had their own
children trying to sell magazines!  One day she just came home with a
camcorder box and handed it to me.  “Tell me when you figure out how to
work it”, she said as she started her homework.  I was astounded. 
When girl scouts came along, she was always the leader of the troop in cookie
sales.  It was good for her but a lot of work for my wife and me. 
Then her little sister was old enough to join Brownies.  The older sister
took her around to help her sell cookies.  By year two, the oldest daughter
would just wait by the road and the younger one would go door to door.  My
younger daughter sold better than her sister!  If there was a house that
never bought cookies, she would convince them to order from her.  She even
had a saying, “I can get a box of Thin Mints out of anyone!”  The funny
part was that it was true!  She would come back from that house with one
box of Thin Mints checked off.  Every parent wants the best for their
children.  We dream of them being doctors or lawyers or engineers but we
never hope for them to be salesmen.   They are still too young to say
what the future holds but I have never seen such natural sales ability in my
life.  Maybe they should just stand on a corner and sell copies of my book.
Lol.  Can you imagine the power they will have over their boyfriends one
day?  That’s not even fair.  Even so, I could not be more proud.

As I write this blog, I have a toy chest next to me in my office.  Inside
are the Gifts of Christmas Past.  There are probably at least 2 dozen
stuffed animals, the Barbie Jeep with marker drawn all over, the toy shopping
cart with the fake food, the toy steering wheel with buttons that make noise,
the roller-skating Mickey  doll, the toy sized wagon and the princess
bed.  That does not even include the toy room in the basement.  There
we have a miniature foosball table, a giant doll house, a toy McDonald’s
restaurant (To help kids aspire to greatness) at least an entire chest of
Barbies, Trolls, Bratz and Vampire High dolls, a mixed up pile of clothes for
said dolls, a rocking horse, a Dora the Explorer bench that folds into a bed and
the list continues.  I can’t believe how much stuff has built up over the
years.  Then I think about what I paid for it all and its condition
now.  That sour milk feeling starts to creep into my stomach.  It
looks like such a waste.  Then I think about my daughters putting all their
dolls in the doll house and needing help to get Barbie’s tight fitting clothes
on her.  Apparently Barbie put on a few pounds while they were off because
they never seem to go back on again.  So we end up with a doll house of
mostly naked dolls with furniture in all the wrong rooms.  There are the
dolls with almost no hair because my daughter saw a commercial about dolls with
hair that grew back and thought they had one.  After much cutting with toy
scissors, no hair grew back.  Oops!  I remember the girls making
pretend meals in the McDonalds and serving invisible food to me.  I loved
it.  My son and I played the foosball game into the late hours of the night
many times.  I wonder where the ball ever went for that game.  Each of
the dolls has a different story behind it.  Some came from birthdays. 
A couple were even standing in the middle of special birthday cakes. 
Others were gifts from relatives but most of them came down the
chimney.   Many of the stuffed animals were simply toys the kids took
hold of in the store and would not relinquish.  Both my child and the toy
ended up in the cart.  There are hundreds…no, thousands of dollars invested
in items now in toy boxes in my home.  I temper that with the memories they
have created and smile.  That money was not wasted.  It brought
happiness to my children.  Now it is bringing happiness to my
grand-daughter.  She has just turned 3 and can’t believe the treasure trove
over at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.   So maybe I’ll hold onto these
gifts a little longer.  They do seem to keep on giving.

Someone asked me the other day why I liked to write in the Fantasy genre. 
The answer came in several parts.  To being with, I love the medieval
period and the technology that surrounds it.  Over the years I have studied
the period at length and find it one of the most fascinating in history. 
Mankind had regressed to the point that one person in a small community could
make a greater difference than a person in a large community. That leads to
greater opportunities for character development.  Then there was the
imagination aspect of Fantasy.  Non-fiction leaves little to the
imagination.  Science Fiction is really cool and a love of mine, but you
have to have some scientific premise to make your story plausible.  Horror
simply never had any interest for me.  That is not a knock against it; I
simply never had an attraction there.  Paranormal writing has been the rage
for years and while it is fascinating at times, it did not speak to me
either.  Now Fantasy, on the other hand was wide open.  When you
create your own world, no one can tell you that something won’t work there
because you have decreed that it will work.  If you want the sun to rise in
the west…it is done.  One of my personal favorite notions is to imagine,
“What if Rome had never fallen in our world?”  More precisely, ”What if the
technology of Rome had not been lost in the Dark Ages?”  If you could
include that in your story then the options as a writer would be
limitless.  You could have aqueducts and massive building projects. 
We could have better armor and stronger weapons as technology would have
continued to evolve.  If you want magic in the story, you can have it there
in a sentence.  Explain it however you wish; or don’t.  It’s YOUR
story and no one can tell you it is wrong because it is all make-believe. 
Fantasy opens your mind to new ideas or ways of looking at things.  Make it
as you choose and don’t look back.

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head?  I’m pretty sure everyone
could say yes to that one.  Sometimes you get songs stuck in there that are
new and just get played into the ground.  For example, Katy Perry’s “Roar”
is on all the time.  It was ok the first few hundred times I heard it but
it is everywhere.  A little while ago, Fun had a huge hit with “We are
Young”.  That one was stuck in my cranium for quite a while.  A couple
years ago my kids were really into a song called “Fireflies”.  That one
became annoying really fast.  Some are good songs but are overplayed. 
Others are just bad songs with a lot of money behind them.  That
combination never ends well. Take for example, ANY SONG BY MILEY CYRUS. 
There's just too much money behind bad songs. Take for example M.C. Hammer’s “U
Can’t Touch This.”   Other songs just happen to be the song that came
on the radio when your alarm went off or the last song on your car radio before
you turn off the car.  I went through a week with “Hey Jude” from the
Beatles because of that.  Another time I was going to work and the last
song I heard was “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffet.  Needless to say, I
didn’t get much done that day.  Songs getting stuck can sometimes
help.  I was in a bad mood one day and heard, “Everything’s Gonna Be
Alright” by Bob Marley.  It is nearly impossible to be in a bad mood when
you hear that song.  I highly suggest it as a remedy. For every good song,
however, there are usually a few bad ones.  In my life there has been one
song that could get stuck in my head and not leave for days or even weeks. 
I do not even need to hear it.  If someone just goes,
“Ding-ding-ding-da-da-ding-ding.  Da-ding-ding-ding-da-da-ding-ding”,
BAM!   Vanilla Ice’s “Ice, Ice Baby” is stuck in there.  I try to
think of other songs or other things but it is no use.  That riff just
keeps playing in my head.  It is evil.  Queen and David Bowie sure
knew what they were doing when they made the piece the Ice Man ripped off. 
As I said at the start of this blog, I think everyone can relate to the
situation.  When it happens I just turn to the Classic Rock station and my
problems eventually go away.  What are some songs that have become
ingrained in your brain?

I love science fiction.  There is something about a good science fiction
story that captivates me.  As with all genres there are staples.  One
of the common themes in Science fiction is time travel.  I thought to
myself today, “What would I do if I could travel back in time?  I could
make Archduke Ferdinand’s driver take a different street through Sarajevo. 
He would not have been assassinated and the First World War would never have
been fought, right?  Maybe not.  Maybe another assassin would have
killed him later in the day.  I would have changed next to nothing. 
What came out of the war?  The United States geared up their industry to
fuel the roaring 20s and earned superpower status for their efforts in the
war.  Without the war, the USA would have been left behind the great powers
of Germany, Britain and France.  Chemical weapons would not have been
banned.  Democracy would not have taken route in the whole of Europe. 
Emperors would have continued to rule.  The Russians would not have
revolted and there would still be Czars.  Communism would either have not
taken root or else done so elsewhere.  What if I went back to 1923 and gave
Hitler a nudge during his Beer Hall Putsch and the bullet that hit him actually
killed him?  No Hitler would mean no Second World War, right?  Maybe
not.  What if someone else in the Nazi party was equally as dominant but
never had the chance to shine in Hitler’s shadow.  Could that person have
done the same things?  I wonder.  Perhaps the war would have come
earlier or later.  That much tension would have boiled over
eventually.  If it didn’t, would the Great Depression would have lasted
longer without the war to bring its end?  Think of all the inventions that
came out of the war.  There were weapons like the atomic bomb and the jet
fighter.  Then there were the first rockets that led to the space race
years later.  Penicillin was produced in large quantities and later made
available to the public.  That was a huge change right there.  Even
fabrics like nylon were invented to make parachutes in place of silk. 
Synthetic rubber was created for tires and even Silly Putty in a failed attempt
to create it.  The smallest changes could have made the most profound
effects.  Then I looked at my world.  If I chose a different college I
never would have met my wife and our children would never have been born. 
If I had taken a different major, perhaps I would have lost my will to write.
(Doubtful)  If I had taken one job instead of another, I might be in a
totally different field.  When all is said and done I have an answer. 
If I could go back in time I would remember to buy my wife flowers on our
anniversary this year.  I did the dinner and the gift but forgot the
flowers.  She’ll never admit it but I disappointed her.  For that I am
sorry.  She is the person always in my corner and I forgot such a simple
thing that hurt so badly.  She deserves every flower I can find.  That
is the thing I would change.