Since there was no work today, I turned on the television and looked for something to watch. Because I’m kind of a jock, my default destination to begin searching typically starts with the sports block of channels, and immediately, there were two things that caught my eye. On ESPN, was the annual Fourth of July Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest, and one ESPN2, was the World Cup, with a quarterfinal game between France and Germany no less.
With the US National Anthem softly playing in my head, I chose the hot dogs.
I know that we as people like to encapsulate chunks of time into nice round denominations, like years, but I have to say that with each passing year, I feel like time just seems to fly by, and it’s harder to encapsulate everything as easily as it once may have seemed. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not really going to try.
Perhaps the difficulty is in the fact that at least in my case, 2013 was a pretty ordinary year. By no means does that automatically imply that 2013 was a bad year by any stretch of the imagination, it just wasn’t one that particularly stands out in my opinion. Otherwise, I think I’d be in the situation of where I couldn’t wait to reflect on the year as a whole, so it would be a convenient excuse for me to get to relive and revisit thing(s) that were exceptionally good.
It’s a good and a bad thing that I’m such a dedicated and consistent brogger when it comes to being able to look back in time. It’s particularly good when I’m capable of finding anything that was particularly good that happened in a year’s time, because I’m a fairly open person, and I’m definitely sure to write about anything that’s made me happy or put me in a good mood. Contrarily, it works both ways, because I’m just as apt to write about the things that upset me or make me unhappy, to varying degrees of clarity and vagueness.
I said to a friend of mine that one of the grueling challenges that I would have to endure this holiday weekend was trying to get out of it without making one major electronic purchase. Because I am a compulsive consumer, somewhat easily swayed by the pressure and the hype of Black Friday electronic sales and advertising.
Furthermore, my primary television has an entire line of dead pixels on it. Granted, it’s maybe ten pixels from the top of the screen, and it’s just one pixel on a 51” screen, so it’s really not that offensive and hardly affects any viewing, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a permanent blemish, and the first sign that the television is going, and that I should consider a new one, immediately, on Black Friday. Even if it meant dropping anywhere from $500-1,000.
I can’t really say that I’m thankful for a whole lot outside of the typical generic ones, like the people around me, but one thing that I am genuinely thankful for is that my life is, although often times erring on the side of boring, but somewhat stable.
My family drives me nuts from time to time, but that’s what family does. My job might be kind of mundane and boring, but it affords me the ability to pay the bills and sustain my fairly simple life.
The benefit to stability is the fact that when things aren’t going so well for others, I can be at my peak condition of being able to offer help and support, because things aren’t necessarily that complicated in my own life. And it’s cyclical; it goes without saying that stability isn’t achieved without a decent support system in place for me, if and when I ever need it.
I know it’s pretty much the Armageddon of capitalism every year, but I don’t really mind Black Fridays. Sure, they’re stressful, exhausting and I’ve had my massive share of failures in the past, but I’ve also experienced triumphs and successes in acquiring big ticket items for substantial discounts and/or rewards. Whereas there are lots of people who see Black Fridays as miserable commercial holidays of chaos, greed and materialism, I often see them as opportunities to make some smart purchasing.
Especially now that most merchants have actually moved into the twenty-first century and actually do as much peddling online as they do in-stores, it makes things a hundred times more efficient and less stressful, since I don’t have to wake up at 3 AM in order to wait in a line to get something I really want.
I’m the kind of person who believes in the importance of having traditions and annual occurrences. Without them, sometimes there aren’t always things to look forward to, and sometimes it’s just nice to know that there are going to be times when you know you’re going be in good company and have a good time.
Pumpkin carving at Stu and Allison’s is one of those traditions that I look forward to every year, and every year, I like to put a little bit of effort into carving out something unique and not necessarily easy. This year, I decided to parlay my fandom of LoL into my pumpkin and carve out the most important things in the world – wards. And since I’m apparently a try-hard overachiever, I decided to do two wards, so it didn’t seem like I was just doing it to say I placed one.
The green lights are LED lights and not actual flame, because I think burning copper or mercury or whatever it takes to generate green flame would have been somewhat of a hazard, for just pumpkin carving. Maybe another year.
Anyway, I took a few pictures, and here they are for us to all admire the creativity and an enjoyable annual tradition.
As has been a tradition for a few years now, Jen and I opened up our home’s doors to those of our friends that did not go home and/or to see family for the Thanksgiving holiday. So instead of listening to awkward lectures and reasons why I’m living my life like an imbecile, I instead have the company of less judgmental friends, and we dine just like the majority of Americans do on Thanksgiving – with a big fat turkey, and tons of fatty rich sides, and then we play games all night long.
Oh, and I was also taking a lot of pictures of my dog in his awesome shark costume.
