Can you call around first?

Never occurred to me! I should do that.

Will other people drink your wine if you bring it?

Maybe. But I'll just bring it home if there's some left.

Heh, I was thinking more don't bring wine you like if other people will be drinking it but not appreciating it. I am in a selfish mood, apparently.

I haven't traveled for Thanksgiving since my parents died. While I miss them, I don't miss the traffic. Tomorrow I'll be going over to a friend's for dinner. If I wasn't carrying a big bowl of wild rice salad I could walk there. I'm lucky enough to have a four day weekend. In my last two jobs we could generally take a vacation day on Friday if we wanted, but I often worked it, clearing the inbox with no one else around.

My friend's mom worked for Walmart, and she had to stop making Thanksgiving dinner for her family because even when they weren't open on Thanksgiving day they needed a lot of people there to prep for black Friday.

Online shopping is my favorite thing ever. I hate crowds, hearing the same four Christmas songs over and over, and the whole Christmas consumer frenzy. I can take the list my sister sends me and get the main shopping done in under an hour, from my sofa. Then I hit local crafts shops and liquor stores for the rest of my shopping and I'm done.

On the other hand, I love setting up the tree and putting lights up around the apartment.

Green bean casserole has been prepped and put in the oven. Next step, cornbread. (Or, really, next step, wash dishes. But cornbread after that.)

The house is more or less prepped for the in-laws. I'm feeling like a little nap right about now.

I am making lists of serving dishes correlated to food items. Next I need to actually pull out all the serving dishes (and silver, and china, and linens) but before that can happen I need the craft on the table to be finished up. But the children are wrestling on my bed.

I've got serving dishes laid out on the kitchen table, with labels in each one telling what goes in it.

Now there's such a volume of shopping that stores are extra staffed up and my perception is that many people do not have a choice.

Nope, they don't. My dad is the person with the lowest seniority and wage at the fish counter he works at (my dad, king of the fish people!), so store management scheduled him for Thursday and Friday. Didn't ask, didn't work with him to give him shifts that would permit him to spend a little time with family, just said "Here's your schedule". Yeah, I'm pissed about it. Especially because that store USED to be good about asking employees who wanted to work the holidays.

Online shopping is my favorite thing ever. I hate crowds, hearing the same four Christmas songs over and over, and the whole Christmas consumer frenzy.

Right there with you. I do as much shopping online as humanly possible, and the things I have to buy from a brick-and-mortar store I try to do at weird hours if at all workable.

My dad collects the ceramic holiday steins Budweiser releases every year. So I go to the GIANT liquor/party store to buy it, on the grounds that, hey, I always can use wine for myself (and often someone else on my list will want wine or fancy beer). But it's still a madhouse, right? So two years ago, I had bought the stein early. Yay me. And when I went to wrap it, I took it -- still in the store bag -- out of the closet, and turned around with too much velocity or something, because the bag whacked against the iron bedpost and the stein broke.

I had to go back to the giant liquor/party store the Saturday before Christmas. It was INSANE. Gah.

Sometimes I really like shopping in crowds. When I know what I need, mostly, and can just go through and do it. I dunno, it makes me feel like a badass?