One of the many strange things about American culture is those of us in the "have" side of the equation can hold our noses and judge the "have-nots" for their gauche consumerism.

You should take the boys for a spa and get away from computers for awhile.

My Black Friday experience so far is that I kneaded dough for bread for turkey sandwiches tomorrow and then I headed to work, where I am alone in the office for a couple of hours.

See how productive I'm being?

cool story, 'mo.

Mine's a lot like @3's, 'cept sadly lacking in fresh bread.

I expected the train to be lousy with game-faced bargain hunters, bit it feels a lot like any Saturday down here. I'm sure the nearest Best-Buy parking lot tells a different story.

Watched last F1 race of the season.
Ate left overs for breakfast.
Drove from the Husband's house to mine, and am now doing laundry and sorting out the Xmas card list.
Later I may bathe.

@6, one more F1 fan in Seattle. That robably makes 2 of us. Next year it should be more interesting with all new rules.

@7: Agreed! The rain made it a fun race, and I loved it when Webber took off his helmet. I'm going to miss him.

Football and leftovers. Best day of the year.

woke up in agony from gout, fairly rare in vegans but often found in alcoholic men like me. Barely able to do anything at all and haven't even taken a shower yet. Worse, the gay men's book group is meeting here tomorrow and I'm not ready at all. Took some medication to dissolve the crystals that cause gout but unable to walk at all and I don't even have a wheel chair. Ugh!

@10
Hope you're feeling better soon.

Sleep in. Bake fresh Denver biscuits out of dough left over from yesterday. Eat for brunch with smoked ham steak and strawberry preserves. Search internet for places in Chicago to but a growler to add to my collection. Later we'll go sample beer to fill said growler.
So basically concentrating on my favorite things which definitely DO NOT INCLUDE getting up early and shopping.

*buy a growler

@6,7 Me and Mrs Dr Awesome are F1 fans too!

Slept late, went in for a physical, vaccines and bloodwork. Now having my coffee and heading home to relatives. The good relatives :)

Tea is delicious.

Hubby and I went shopping, but we avoided the big box stores and the malls and went to the small, locally owned, Mom-and-Pop stores.

@1:Disdain for consumerism also ignores how much the economy is dependent on it. If people didn't buoy up retailers by buying tons of useless crap during the holidays, I imagine a lot of companies would start laying people off, assuming they could even stay in business.

@18 oh heaven forbid! When your entire country rest on the shoulders of poor sods who have to work the holidays and handle stampedes of other poor sods who like us all feel the need to buy something, anything, that will make us feel ok "like everyone else is" - then just accept its not working.

If THAT is the argument why a life of misery and unfulfillment is the lot of the vast majority (oh or the lovely "no I am sincerely happy wasting away at this shit job I secretely hate and then die" bullshit speech) and a life of a recluse for the minority is ok - then that is just another set of proof that the archaic 19th century hogwash we call "the way it has to be" isn't all that.

roasted sweet potatoes and leftover gravy with bacon for "breakfast". going back into a (happy) coma now.

p.s. 'leftover gravy'. have you ever heard such sweet words in your life?

Oh joy..black Friday bitching. Well, we all know what that will lead to next year and then next year and the next year, more bitching about black Friday and nothing else.

A19: What alternative are you offering to the status quo?

Got up at 4 AM to help get the shelves ready for holiday shopping. Spent 5 hours filling clearance areas with pumpkin-related products to make room for holiday stuff on the main displays. Clocked out, drank bottle of pumpkin soda (not as good as I'd hoped, but more than worth the 13¢ I paid), played vidya until dinnertime.

@18, 19, 22: It's important to buy stuff, sure. But I'd rather buy stuff because I think it's cool and/or useful, not because it's been aggressively advertised to me.

(Little surprised venomlash works retail, and not in a lab).

@10, my sympathies.

@24

(Maybe he does both.)

True that.

@23: Time to replace the turkey shit with the reindeer shit was how one roommate used to describe it.

@Dan: Re Krugman making you feel better about Obamacare: that was Krugman being a Democratic Party loyalist, not Krugman being an economist or a progressive. He and Robert Reich do that a lot. (Hell, even single-payer firebrand Alan Grayson finally defended Obamacare against Republican attacks in a fundraising email this morning. I'm guessing it's probably an enemy-of-my-enemy tactic he was persuaded to adopt by his money men. Or maybe the DNC threatened to fuck him in the next election if he didn't play ball and shill along with the rest of the Dems. It's not like the DNC hasn't fucked progressive Democrats in the recent past.)

The slowdown in healthcare spending? It's the result of the ongoing recession and the ongoing decline in real wages. People don't have enough money for their out-of-pockets so they don't seek care as often as they should. Swedish Hospital had to start laying people off a while back because of it.

Obamacare has zero productive cost controls -- no reduction in administrative overhead, no hard cost-effectiveness guidelines, and no monopsonistically negotiated uniform price schedules. I used to say "zero cost controls" without the "productive" qualifier but I now realize that small, narrow provider networks that don't include a full range of specialists, sub-specialists, and treatment facilities, or even an adequate number of primary care providers, actually do act as cost controls. If you can't get a timely appointment with an in-network physician or at an in-network facility, that's a cost control. It's just not what most people would consider a productive or humane cost control. And I suppose bronze policies with $5000 deductibles and 40% coinsurance are "cost controls" of a sort, as well -- but again, not what most of us would consider productive or humane ones.

Sleep in after ignoring all dinner cleanup the night before (a first! People stayed late due to good conversation and copious bottles of wine). Continue to ignore clean up, stay in bed. Leave bed only to warm up leftover latkes and chill bottles of bubbles, then bring it all to bed. Slowly drag ourselves out to Black Friday holiday movie and chili-feed at some friends' house. Get home, party more with friends. Go to bed.