Black Friday

When ever you think of Black Friday you imagine great bargains on millions of items throughout stores nationwide. The day after Thanksgiving is probably when people do the most shopping in one day. We are all out there to hunt down the great Christmas gifts to give to family and friends. Many stores open as early as 5:00 a.m. and they remain open all day. Tomorrow will be my first experience to be on the opposite side of things because I have to work that day. We are having the biggest sale our little hardware store has ever seen. I heard that most of the things on sale will sell out within the first few hours. I guess I will find out tomorrow.

I actually have never gone shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. But I always look in the advertisement section of the news paper anyway and wish that I had so many of those items. My mother and sister will probably go out to shop though. Like many families out there, they do most of our family Christmas shopping for us. So, hopefully you can find some good deals out there on some Christmas gifts for your loved ones.

The Economy

Have all of you noticed that some gas prices have finally made it below $2 a gallon? It seems crazy that just a few short months ago, they were in the mid $4 range. Personally I like this new change as well as many of you do. But it hurts the economy. Ideally, all prices are supposed to gradually go up. It is bad if prices are jumping up and down off the charts. During the 1990s and early 2000s, prices grew at a very steady pace making for a great economy. Now the stock market contains about half of the money it did about six months ago. Also, the unemployment rate has grown a lot. About a year ago, it was hovering around the 5% range and now the last I heard, it is at about 8.3%. And I heard there are over 1 million people in California who are unemployed. People are not buying trucks as much either. A lot of the big dealers, Ford, Chrysler, and GM are handing out great deals on their trucks right now. I still really like the big truck image. The classic V8 in your truck or car just seems so much more fun to drive and own. If you have ever ridden or drove a lifted truck, you know it is a blast and I think the gas is worth it. They come in so handy also. They are great for making the occasional trip to home depot or to tow a large trailer or to haul a heavy load.

Southern California Culture

There are a lot of people in southern California who own quads or dirtbikes and go riding on the weekends. This is the time of the year where you start to see more trailers and motorhomes heading out to their destinations on the freeways. Our family also does this and last weekend we started preparing our motorhome to go to Dumont Dunes. I always get excited when fall comes. We cannot go to the desert in the summer because it gets way too hot. So we usually never get to ride for about six months out of the year.

We also did a little bit of maintenance work to our quads like changing the oil and those sort of things. Every year there are more and more people who go to Dumont. Sometimes it gets too crowded and it might not even be a holiday weekend. On the really big holiday weekends like presidents day or thanksgiving, motorhomes and trailers seem to be parked bumper to bumper and there are thousands of people there. That's why I don't like going on those weekends. For a lot of people including us, this is a family outing and my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents also go camping with us. This is rapidly becoming part of southern California's culture.