Sunday, November 20, 2022

Day 4714

It was below freezing when we woke up this morning. I think this was our first hard freeze of the year. Luckily I remembered to set the outdoor faucets on drip before I went to bed last night. Temperatures in the twenties are probably nothing to Northerners, but it seemed pretty cold to me this morning. Dawn doesn't seem to mind the cold at all. She seemed happy on our sunrise walk. I was just happy to get back inside where the furnace is still working fine.

After another big weekend breakfast I went mall walking again. It was much nicer to be walking indoors on a day like this. The Christmas season is in full swing at Northpark. The pumpkins are gone and have been replaced by Christmas trees. There are small trees, large trees, and everything in between. There is a house where you can visit with Santa and a large display depicting the twelve days of Christmas. Most of the store windows have Christmas displays now. It's pretty clear that this mall is doing everything they can to get people to buy lots and lots of stuff.

Mall walking is more popular than I initially thought. There are lots of people circling around the large mall before the stores open. When new products drop at certain stores like Nike and Swatch, lines begin to form hours before the stores open. There was evidently a new sneaker that a lot of people wanted at the Nike store today. There was a long line of young men standing outside the store a full hour before it opened. This seemed very strange to me until I read something about how sneakers are considered an investment by some and that there is a very active resale market. Rare sneakers can dramatically increase in value and collectors always seem to know when a desirable model is going to drop. I guess the same thing goes for certain Swatch watches. This is one more aspect of modern life that makes no sense to me whatsoever. These are not high quality shoes. It's all about fashion and status to a small subset of the population.

When I returned from the mall, Janet and Dawn were ready for our Sunday outing. Luckily the temperature had gotten quite a bit warmer between sunrise and noon. We had another nice one mile walk and then we went for ice cream cones. Dawn got lucky today and received a free pup cone in addition to our regular order. After taking three different walks today, I was ready for a nap after we returned to the house.

This afternoon Janet and I went over to my storage warehouse to look for the backdrop we were planning to use for this years Santa Paws pictures. It's discouraging for me to go to the storage unit now. It's filled with stuff I will never use again but I still can't bring myself to get rid of. Basically the storage warehouse is just a convenient place to postpone making decisions. Eventually we found the backdrop, along with a bunch of stuff that Janet either wanted to give away or throw away. She has her own storage warehouse, but mine is much larger. I need to get a grip on this stuff, but it's kind of overwhelming. It's easier to just pay the rent and deal with it later.

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is this Thursday. I've just about given up on getting a reservation at our favorite restaurant, but our second choice isn't all that bad. I guess we'll just go with that. We never eat Thanksgiving dinner at home anymore. There's no point in cooking a big meal for just two people. 

I hope our current cold spell is temporary. It's much less enjoyable to walk in the park when it's below freezing.