I am so glad that I stayed home today and cleaned house instead of going out into that insanity that is called “Black Friday.”  I remember last year when I heard on the news that in New York there was a crowd of shoppers so eager to get into their Wal-Mart that they broke down the doors and stampeded over a Wal-Mart employee, who was trampled to death by the crowd!  That is absolutely crazy and stupid, and I think that this is a very good reason to stop holding “Black Friday” sales in the future.  There really is no need of this insanity!  Stores can hold good sales without all of this craziness going on, for crying out loud!  There has got to be a better way!

I’ve been invited out to a friends house for Thanksgiving this year.  I’m very grateful for the invitation; I’ve had a hectic autumn and it looks like a hectic winter is approaching, so not having to clean and cook and entertain at my house this year is a blessing!  The only drawback is that I won’t have as much leftover turkey as I like to have for leftover meals.  So I guess I’ll be buying a turkey breast anyway and cooking it up here at home so we can have leftover turkey no matter what.  I’ll be making a cranberry-orange-apple relish dish to take with me to the dinner to share with the other guests.  It’s a recipe I’ve had for about four years now, and I like it a lot.  I hope the other guests will like it too!

This morning I was walking in a parking lot to my car and I saw a penny on the pavement near my car. It was a shiny penny, with the “tails” side up. As I bent down to pick it up (A penny saved is a penny earned!) I was remembering that a long time ago a friend told me that if you pick up a penny that is “tails up” it brings you bad luck, but if it is “heads up” then it means good luck. I wonder where that superstition originated? As for me, I think that any change found and picked up from the ground is good luck!