We have just gotten through Thanksgiving. Since it is a family focused holiday, I enjoyed it tremendously.
All of our children came for a visit including our granddaughter who is almost four months old.
While the main feast had the same elements as always, we were a little more relaxed in getting it on the table.
Rainy, cool weather gripped Roanoke for most of the holiday. We even saw a little sleet and a few snowflakes.
Everyone made it back home safely which gives us even more for which to be thankful.
Now as I recently said in another post, we are on the downhill slope for Christmas and New Year's Eve.
I find those holidays a little more challenging. Commercialization is the biggest problem along with my discomfort with shopping and crowds.
Three years ago, I wrote a post, A tale of shopping two Virginia cities, about fleeing Northern Virginia for Christmas shopping in Lexington, Virginia.
Lexington is a wonderfully quiet small town that has some unique shops along its main streets. I have enjoyed buying many presents there. Unfortunately I think that shopping is even farther down the list these days for me.
Being semi-retired means there is less money, and approaching sixty signals the need for less stuff. The current economic crisis reminds me of those holiday seasons when we had much less and still managed to have a wonderful holiday.
Aside from the crowd that stormed the Walmart, I think many people are by necessity re-evaluating our consumption driven economy.
I will be interested to see how well Blueray players sell this season. While some of the movies done in Blueray are visually stunning, I can remember enjoying black and white television. I am not sure the next level of visual clarity is going to do much for me considering my eyes are not getting any better.
I might catch one movie every couple of months. I probably buy a couple of DVD movies each year. I bought Ironman this summer and have yet to find the right time to watch it.
During Thanksgiving I was more interested in replacing my scanner which finally died after several years of faithful service. It did not completely die, but the yellow line through the middle of most scans certainly made scanning with it something I tried to avoid.
The new scanner which cost significantly less than a Blueray player immediately went to work and helped me scan over 250 photos for a family whose history and photos I am trying to preserve on the web and DVD. This particular family happens to be close relatives, and the project is the Christmas present for my five first cousins in the family. I figure the DVD will be something they will remember much longer than a bag of muffins. They might even pass it down to their children.
Though it is time consuming work, I really enjoy trying to preserve history of families. I hope down the road a few descendants will be grateful for my efforts.
A few years ago, I took several weeks of time and went through all the video tapes that I had done of our kids while they were growing up. I put together some video clips that covered the decades since I first got a Sony video camera in 1985. We had a great time watching them. I know that they will enjoyed for many years.
Somehow presents like those make the holidays a little more pleasant for me. I end up giving my time which in this century of not enough hours might just be the most valuable gift of all.
If the holidays are wearing you down, I can suggest a short YouTube video of a quiet December day on the Carolina coast. Take the time to watch it in high quality, and you might just relax a little before the holiday pressure cooker catches you.
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