Day 1469

I think the recession is over in Dallas. People are certainly buying things this year. I decided to brave the crowds and do some Christmas shopping this afternoon and was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people at Northpark. My plan to avoid the crowds by shopping while everyone else was at work was a total failure. Evidently, very few people are at work this week. I'm not good with puzzles, but I could have solved Rubiks Cube in less time than it took me to find a parking place inside the giant shopping mall parking garage. They should ban people from taking their gigantic Ford F-250 Super Duty pickups into these parking garages. They don't even fit between the white lines. Every time I thought I'd found a place to park, there was a huge pickup truck in the adjacent space, leaving me no room to park my much smaller giant SUV.

I thought I was going to have a very light week, since tomorrow is Christmas Eve and many of my clients are on vacation anyway. I was just as wrong about this as I was about avoiding the Christmas crowds. When I turned on my computer this morning, there two new articles and a big website revision waiting for me. So much for taking it easy this week. I guess nobody really takes it easy during Christmas week. In my experience, this is always a very hectic time of year.

I feel sorry for that girl who had her life ruined by having a single snarky tweek to her less than 200 followers re-tweeted by Buzzfeed to the world. This is mob justice at its worst. The ironic thing is that she could have said exactly the same thing on her blog and nobody would have noticed. Nobody reads blogs anymore. A quick Google search will reveal that on any given day, there are literally  thousands of much more offensive tweets and Facebook status updates. Buzzfeed just chose to cast a spotlight on this one. This is why I prefer to write about dogs. The world has become a pack of sharks who flock to the smell of blood in the water. I don't like it. If I could borrow Dr. Who's Tardis for a few minutes, I would make a quick retreat to the much kinder world of Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver.

I haven't quite finished my Christmas shopping, but I'm definitely not going back to the mall again. I've had enough of that craziness for one year. I'm no sure what I'll do tomorrow. It's kind of a vacation day, but I've still got work to do. When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was the day. We opened our stockings on Christmas Eve morning, went to church in the evening, and then opened our presents under the tree much later the same evening. Christmas Day was almost an afterthought. I can't remember if I ever believed in Santa Claus.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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