Rick’s Rants and Raves

OK, I was wrong. Blu-ray is not dead, the HD-DVD is.

We recently joined a local YMCA for family fun and fitness. Both the kids are enrolled in a street hockey program and are loving it. I’ve started on their Fitstart program, and am finding that working out at 6AM is actually quite stimulating and maintainable (well, for 10 days so far…).

The worst part about it? I’ve driven to the Y every time except once. Yes, it’s winter. Yes, time has been tight (for workouts and practices), but still… Google maps reports it as 0.2 miles, “about 51 secs” of drive time. The one time I walked (last Saturday) it took no more than 5 minutes. I feel incredibly guilty that I’m driving such a pathetically short distance to exercise. The weather has been crappy, so that is my primary excuse. “No sense in twisting an ankle on the ice while trying to get buff” I tell myself. But some people walk three miles to work. In. The. Snow.

Damn do-gooders. I guess I’ll have to start walking to the YMCA. But it will be such a challenge.

The final insult on my guilt came this week when I drove Emily and Nathan to hockey practice. It was snowing a bit, and was in the teens. Emily exclaimed “Boy, I sure am glad we don’t have to walk here.” You’ve got to be kidding me, I told her with exasperation. She persisted, it was really cold and she wasn’t wearing any gloves! Oh, the horror. I pointed out that if we had been planning on walking, she would have been wearing the appropriate attire. Were driving not an option, we probably wouldn’t push our departure time to “about 51 secs” prior to the start of practice.

I was just going to write a blog about Christmas. In fact, I had written my first sentence (”Why does the Christmas season have to be such a pain in the ass?”) when Bob Rivers’ 12 Pains of Christmas came on the radio. Holy crap! I couldn’t have said it better.

Inspired by my perception of shopping around Thanksgiving this year, I am making two predictions about the years ahead:

• 2008: At least 1 major retail store will open at Midnight Friday morning. In 2007, the standard seemed to be 5AM, and there were at least 2 (JC Penney & Kohls) that opened at 4AM. If retailers really want to get the jump on other retailers, they’ll open their doors as soon as possible after Thanksgiving.
• 2009: Inspired by the performance of the previous year, at least 1 major retail store will open on Thanksgiving day, probably for a few hours in the evening. Again, what better way to get a jump on the other retailers than by opening early. I actually saw a couple of stores (Meijer and Walmart) that were open all day on Thanksgiving, and when we drove past, they seemed to be doing a hopping business. These don’t count because these stores are open 24 hours, and close only on Christmas day. But they are competition for the non-24-hour stores, and these others stores will notice, and will take action. If people want to shop, the stores will open. Unfortunately, the craze for shopping in this country seems to have no bound.

So, those are my predictions for the years ahead. I don’t know when it will happen, but I can envision that in 5 or 10 years, Thanksgiving may turn into a shopping holiday, much the way Labor day and Memorial day have. Rather than cooking a traditional dinner at home, many families will eat dinner out, hopefully together, in the middle of their shopping activities. May the Invisible Hand have mercy on our souls.