Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Our Thanksgiving Holiday

We had a pretty good Thanksgiving holiday this year. One of the things that I am most thankful for (besides simply being alive and having the opportunity to be thankful) is my family. This year we had Sidney and both of her parents over for Thanksgiving dinner, an Sidney's aunt Ashley too.

Our dining room is relatively small. There's not really room for all seven of us at the table so the kids got to eat at the table while Betty and I ate at the coffee table in the living room. This is a slight change from years past where we'd have more of our friends over and the kids would have to eat at a separate “kids' table” while the “older folks” would eat in the dining room…or is it? Even Sidney ate at the main table, comfortably sitting in her booster seat.

After dinner we sent the leftovers home with the kids. We actually cooked two Thanksgiving dinners with this purpose in mind. On Thanksgiving day we ate turkey roasted in the oven, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied sweet potatoes (I had a baked yam, since I can't eat all that sugar), a green bean casserole, and hot buttered rolls. I also smoked two small turkey breasts that we took with us when we (Betty, Lucas, Sidney and I) drove down to Lincoln City the next day to visit Betty's parents.

The day after Thanksgiving is commonly referred to as “Black Friday” because it's one of the biggest shopping days of the year and retailers are “in the black” as a result. My wife and I usually don't succumb to the marketing and hype for black Friday, but this year was a little different. My wife saw an advertisement for a Garmin navigation system for the car at about $100.00 off. She thought this was a deal that was too hard to pass up and so she left the house sometime before 5:00 AM to head off to Wal-Mart.

To say that it was a zoo would be unkind to those institutions where captive animals are put on public display behind bars. Both parking lots were full, even the one that no one ever uses. People were parked on the shoulder of the road on the streets leading to the store. Even the Post Office parking lot next door was full. Needless to say she didn't bother going in. We did have a road trip to make after all. Kohl's parking lot was pretty full too, and the line inside was wrapped around the store. There were people standing in line for the checkout that would be waiting for forty five minutes or more, with babies in strollers! Train them early in consumerism I guess.

That sort of crowd is one of the reasons we don't generally shop on “Black Friday” or any of the other big shopping days. I remember growing up as a child and watching movies and television programs where people would be shopping the big sales and literally fighting over the “last” sale items. I don't know of any such crass displays [Update:  Apparently I typed too soon. This from Fox News is a bit disturbing, as is this from The Desert Sun. My lack of faith in people near these big holiday sales is once again confirmed.], but the crowds my wife experienced tell me that something is going right with the economy these days.

On Saturday Lucas and I got into the van and drove off in search of something I've been wanting for a couple of years. I had done some looking on the Internet over the past few weeks to see if I could find a nice telephoto lens for my camera. Ultimately I settled on the Tamron AF061N-700. An Internet search that morning didn't find one anywhere close to Lincoln City so I settled for the closest Ritz Camera store. That turned out to be in Beaverton, nearly two hours away, but they had the lens I wanted in stock. In fact they had exactly one of them in stock and they promised to hold it for me for the day.

While we were heading off to Beaverton, my wife called us. She and her mom were doing some shopping around Lincoln City. She called to tell me that she had found a Magellan RoadMate that was normally selling for $250.00 for $150.00. It was such a good deal that she bought it. It has a few more features than the Garmin she was hoping to buy for about $50.00 less, so I guess it's a good thing she didn't go into the Wal-Mart at home. Besides, in Oregon we don't have to pay sales tax.

No sales tax. Those are three words I like to hear. I could have bought my lens over the Internet and not paid any sales tax, and gotten free shipping. I even would have had it before the drive down to Oregon. I probably wouldn't have had near as much fun getting it that way though. Lucas and I had a pleasant drive and an interesting conversation about video games and gaming engines. We wandered around Beaverton for a while too, and found a Game Crazy store. While I won't ever rent movies from Hollywood Video, my son is hooked on video games and Game Crazy usually has a good selection of used and new video games for him to choose from. We stopped there and he took advantage of their buy two get one free sale. We ended up leaving that store with four video game packages that he's been wanting. Since two of the packages were multiple-game collections he ended up with sixteen new games altogether (not to mention the extra games that he'll be able to play once he “unlocks” them).

On the way back from Beaverton, we stopped at the Basket Slough National Wildlife Refuge. We arrived about fifteen minutes before sunset. It was the perfect opportunity to try out my new lens. I was really happy with the results, and the colors at sunset really came out too.

One of the reasons I wanted the new lens was to be able to bring things like mountains a little closer when taking pictures. Mt. Rainier is one of my favorite subjects but with my original lens I've always had a tough time getting good shots of it. I had a pleasant surprise on Saturday though. I never knew that you could see Mt. Hood from the basket slough. With my old lens I wouldn't have been able to take a shot like this.

One technique that I use quite a lot when taking pictures of mountains is to crop the shot afterwards to emphasize the subject. I did that here with one of the pictures that Lucas took. The haze in the air ended up giving the whole picture a brownish cast, so I also did a little image processing on the picture. I think the end result is pretty nice. Now I'm looking forward to a clear day when I can take some good shots of Mt. Rainier.