Scenes from the night before Thanksgiving.

1. At the noodle restaurant: New trainee at the cash register. The people ahead of us seem to have an extensive and very complicated order. One factor is that on this, the night before Thanksgiving, there appears to be no spaghetti, just penne. I spot one of my students, who comes over to say hi.  She's such a good student. We are both very pleased to introduce one another to our respective dining partners.

2. In my kitchen: I take the two-tined chocolate dipping fork that I bought that one year when I thought I would become a master chocolatier (nope!) and pierce two pumpkins and two squashes, then put them in the oven to roast. I consult the pumpkin pie recipe I'm considering. Actually, I'm making two pumpkin pies, one my regular with the candied ginger, then the other, still theoretical pie, with garam masala in it. This may be a bad idea. I'm still just thinking about it.

Anyway, I realize that I need a piece of ginger. Ginger itself. Which I don't have in my refrigerator, as it turns out. Gotta go to the store.

3. Outside the grocery store: there are two guys--father and son?--who are perusing the RedBox with serious intent.

4. At the grocery store: there are a lot of people, but there is a ton of ginger, ginger itself. Also, it occurs to me that I may need some non-nonsensical lettuce (I have two kinds of endive and a lot of arugula) for the salad I am taking tomorrow. So: some more organic greens of the non-pungent variety. And cherry turnovers also. Because there they were, looking eminently edible.

There are a zillion people at the store. The lady in front of me in line at the cashiers, like me, discovered a crucial missing ingredient. Turns out she had no corn starch, a necessity for the coconut cream pie she's making for dinner tomorrow.

5. Outside the grocery store: two guys still talking over the RedBox options.

6. At home: the kitchen smells beautifully of roasting squash.

7. Somebody: still needs to make pie crust.

My Top Ten Black Friday Stories.

Just kidding. I only have one. Maybe two. But just one for today:

Black Friday Story Number ONE: "Deluded and Laughing in the Target Parking Lot."

Like so many Black Friday stories, this one begins on Thanksgiving morning, with the giant newspaper of doom. It was, like, fifteen years ago, which means that the giant newspaper of doom was even more giant and more doomier, because it was back before the Death of Print, and also the Death of a Hella Lotta Stores, because of the Economic Downturn of Doom. Anyway. I was reading the Target ad, and it had a giveaway. The first however many people at the store at 6 a.m. on Friday would win a chance to win a new car.

Aside number one: 6 a.m.! The next morning! Isn't that quaint? There will be whole nostalgic Christmas movies built around stuff like that in, like, the next five years, mark my words.

Aside number two: In case you weren't paying attention--win a chance to win a chance. Those are the operative words.

Revenons à nos moutons: Well, it so happened that I had great need of a car, a new car. And so, because it's one of my great strengths to plan for major purchases, I hatched a scheme: I would get up at the crack of dawn--even before the crack of dawn--and I would be one of those first people who would win a chance to win a chance!  And that would get me my new car, probably before Christmas. 

So I got up at the crack of dawn--even before the crack of dawn!--and hightailed it over to the Target on Fort Union. The historian was with me. There were also about a hundred thousand million people with me in the parking lot, waiting in their cars for the doors to open.

I laughed one of the great pure laughs of my own personal history of laughing. So that was good. And then we went to get breakfast.

I used to go out on the Friday after Thanksgiving with various of my kids and nieces and nephews to check stuff out and have breakfast and maybe see a movie. Today, I ate pumpkin pie for breakfast, chatted with both sons, read a couple dozen manuscripts (I'm screening for a competition), took a nap and a shower, and went to the movies with the historian. I highly recommend this as a template for all future Black Fridays. 

Today.

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