seldom on a black friday

I don’t shop on Black Friday. The whole acquisitional frenzy thing just bums me out to the point where I have hated Xmas for years. Then last year I decided I would take Xmas on my terms, including the X, since I don’t think the frenzy is very Christ-sanctioned. I would embrace the things I loved, the trees and lights, the cards, the food, and perhaps oddly given my relationship with the X, the carols.

Not just any carols though. It has to be choir carols. Preferrably the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but definitely not anything sung by “the new” country and western set, and not really the old country and western set either. I might make the occasional exception for Burl Ives.

But about Black Friday, I don’t do it. I don’t celebrate Capitalism Day. Not that I think Capitalism is an inherently bad system. Flawed, yes, but not evil. But! NO BLACK FRIDAY. No pushing and shoving among the huge numbers of greedy cretins who think it’s the day when courtesy and good judgment are suspended.

I don’t do NaNoWriMo, either. I tried it twice, and it left me burnt out on a level I can hardly bear to recall, let alone describe. After each NaNo, it was months before I wrote again. Their rate is, if I recall correctly, 1,667 words per day. A more natural rate for me is 600-1000 words per day, with days off to recharge and feed the muse. (Maybe more on this later, if I remember.)

Yesterday I wrote the first section of Seldom. I would say I wrote the first chapter, but chapters are an unnatural concept to me. I won’t know where they should really break until the next pass at the earliest. But the first section, piece, whatever…rough drafted. 1,399 words. A few of those I’d put down longhand while waiting for Zor to get out of school on a Friday, but regardless. Yay, me.

There are always so many things I ought to be doing…and only time for a few of them.

Yesterday I also, with Zor, watched the film Alien. It was Zor’s first time. I was rather jealous of that, in spite of the fact that my first time, I saw it in the theatre. With my father, who pronounces it thee-ATE-er, and my brother who was probably eleven or so. We plan to watch the Alien Quadrilogy, and the entire Harry Potter series before we go back to school in January.

Oh, and also to figure out how to make good homemade macaroni and cheese.