Gina’s Thoughts

Show us how you're spending the day after Thanksgiving.

Thankfully, NOT like this:

Black Friday

• The Macy's parade is becoming a guilty pleasure for me, rather than simply a pleasure - the smiling faces, kids' show characters, and annoying singers are finally getting to me.  But as a former Band nerd, the marching bands will always be fun to watch.
  

  Vertigo

• When did a dog show become a Thanksgiving tradition?  I just don't understand the connection.  Why not a turkey show, to celebrate those that survived the holiday?
  

• About an hour after my family finished our Thanksgiving meal together, three of the four of us were asleep.  I wasn't one of them.

• AMC has a Hitchcock marathon on today, so I caught most of Vertigo, which I'd never seen before.  The ending gave me chills.  Take that, modern horror...Alfred still has you beat.  How did he do it?

Thanksgiving will always mean the beginning of the Christmas season for me, but I'm glad that I'm starting to improve my...reaction...to Christmas.  My family has agreed not to do gift-giving this year, and I'm very happy for it.  It complicates and taints the holiday.  It doesn't have to, but it does.  All I want to do this year is bake sweets, watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, decorate a bit, enjoy the atmosphere of the holiday, and spend time with loved ones.

For a full sit-down dinner with several guests, would you rather be the one cooking or do you prefer to just show up and eat?

I'd rather nobody had to do as much cooking as is expected for Thanksgiving.  I'm normally the traditional type, and I usually like to be stubborn and stick to the way things are 'supposed to be,' but the whole idea of some poor person slaving in the kitchen all day (or for several days) to prepare this gigantic feast that's going to be enjoyed for an hour or two, only to be packed up in the fridge for a week of leftovers seems sort of silly to me.  (Run-on?)  It's not that I'm going to be protesting the holiday anytime soon, but that's just my opinion on it.  Hey, I'll probably be preparing my very own turkey for my very own family one of these days, and then I can laugh at myself.