Black Friday, day of the apocalypse

I'm not a doomsday believer; I don't really think the end of the world is right around the corner. I will, however, acknowledge there seem to be more strange occurrences in the world; more earthquakes, crazy weather patterns, and the like. These slightly tie in with what is written in Revelations, but then again it could just be the fact that we have more access to wordly news than ever before.

However, as I was watching a video last night of some Black Friday shoppers ripping through a Walmart display to get some sort of ten-dollar game/movie "while supplies last" (extra literally) I had this thought...

How "appropriate", per se, would it be that some Black Friday in future would be the day Jesus would come back to earth. I mean, how (almost) funny would that be?

We don't really have a huge understanding of God, and mine is certainly nothing to write home about, but I just imagine God observing the Black Friday catastrophes and saying to himself "This isn't what it should be like."

And on a side note, is it just me or did Black Friday get WAY out of hand this year? Stores pushing up their opening-times even more than before, just to get that extra dollar. This year aside, when did Black Friday become what it is today? Either I wasn't paying attention, or my memory is correct, but I don't remember it being this nuts when I was younger. We've all heard the stories of people being trampled to death just to buy a TV for 75% off, and this year alone some of my favorites were: person gets shot outside Walmart in attempted robbery to take his Black Friday purchases (sadly, the shopper was shot, not the robber), people ripping apart the Walmart display, the woman who sprayed pepper spray at fellow shoppers so she could get the deal first, or when gunfire erupted outside of a store in North Carolina. I don't think anyone was hurt there, but someone fired shots in the sky to distract people.

But back to my God assumption. With all kinds of things like that happening across the country, I just don't see God saying "Good job, people. Buy those TVs!" I mean, it's not technically the Christmas season, but for most people this day is the big day of Christmas shopping. Yet, despite all the Christmas-y feelings in the air, Black Friday brings out the worst in people, not the best. Once in a while you will find a diamond in the rough—a person who is not just thinking about themselves, but about their fellow shoppers too. But, like I said: rare. Extremely rare.

This morning our first reading was again the reminder that you do not know the time, nor the place when the Lord will appear, and you should be on watch at all times for that day. Yes, our God is a loving and forgiving God, but to me it would seem so appropriate for him to return the day after Thanksgiving while many are caught up being selfish, being the first to buy their big TV.

Post of thanks

As cliche as they are, I think I'll do a Thanksgiving-inspired post. Reflection is nice, anyways. And just to get them out of the way, yes I am thankful for family and friends, but I'm not going to expound on those much.

I'm thankful for my house. Jarrod and I were able to purchase our first house this year. Yeah, it's kinda small at 1200 square feet, and yeah, it's not the closest thing to where I work, but it's home. But that's why it's called a "starter home." 

I'm also thankful for Jarrod. In a moment of enormous frustration the other morning,  he calmed me down, and was so understanding even though I had just had a meltdown. Stuff like that is why I married him, not to mention his complete acceptance and understanding of what I have.

I'm thankful for my parents, and that I can depend on them and talk with them like I always have. Even if I don't live there anymore.

I'd also like to interject that I'm thankful for this snowman mug of coffee on my desk right now. And that I have the chance to brew a strong cuppa, just the way I like it. And snowmen are cute.

I'm also quite thankful for my job. At this time last year, I was in the wake of being laid off at the end of October, desperately looking for some sort of work. With a stroke of luck, my parents decided to eat at Joe's last Black Friday, and ran into a local business owner, who informed them they were swamped and needed someone to help out around the office. And that she'd love to have me there. I 'interviewed' (let's be honest, she was already planning on hiring me) and got a job. 

Then come February, they had a couple changes and my hours were getting cut. Crazy of all crazies, at that same time the Missourian called me up about a job they really didn't advertise for. In the previous November, I had applied there, and they still had my resume from that and wanted to talk to me about working part-time. I worked both jobs for a period of time, then my other one ended, and I became full-time at the paper. 

So in less than a year (from today, at least) I've gone from unemployed, to full-time, to part-time, to two jobs, to one full-time job, to becoming officially permanent, to also getting a promotion and a new position. Wow, what a roller coaster I guess. It's obvious why I am so thankful for this one. I'm in a great spot career-wise in that I get to do a mesh of things I like. And as we all know, doing what you love is the biggest battle in the working world.

Moving on, I'm thankful for Twitter. Seriously. Never in my life have I been able to consume the kind of design-driven, awesome, creative content that fuels my brain with this much ease. I love checking Twitter daily and what my next awesome find will be.

And I feel like I should be thankful for my health, but honestly that's been kinda hard lately. My health and me have issues. And I just got done with a big ole tune-up, my lungs were so happy, and less than a week after finishing that up, I guess I caught something. My lungs were no longer happy, actually they were quite pissed off, and so was I. I mean, come on God! One week? I got to enjoy ONE WEEK of good health? Anyways, I'm back on some antibiotics to fight this off and it's been difficult. But, like I said, I feel like I should be thankful for what I do have. I'm not on oxygen, so there's that. And I didn't have to go right back to the hospital. And, I can still get around semi-okay and take care of myself, so that's worth being thankful for too, right?

Anyways, it's been a great year, possibly one of the best I'll have in my life I'm going to guess. Certainly eventful. Much to be thankful for. (How did this turn into a New Years-esque reflection? lol)

The movies

Last night, I realize now, was an almost-duplicate of how we spent our Valentine's Day earlier this year. On that Valentine's day, we went to the Olive Garden here in Wentzville, dealt with a huge wait, and also saw Gnomeo and Juliet. Well, last night we ate at Olive Garden, and then decided to stream Gnomeo and Juliet on Netflix. Wow... that's kind of odd. (By the way, that movie is super fun; filled with tons of Elton John music, some good humor, and cute gnomes. For a kids movie, it's pretty good for adults too.)

Anyways, what I'm getting to is today, when I logged onto my Netflix, I noticed the website had changed. I shouldn't be surprised by this, but I was. Anyways, this happened because I switched my plan to an instant-only plan, because last month we had the same DVD here for an entire month. I have done the plan switch many times throughout my Netflix life, and pretty much suspended my entire account for four months while I was planning a wedding. But I've never gone to JUST streaming. Well, lo and behold, my DVD queue is GONE. Completely. I had way too many movies in that thing; over 100, for sure. But hey! Thank god, for some reason a while back, I decided to post it on here! So yay, when my DVD's resume, I have something to reference. I can't tell you how happy that makes me, because trying to rediscover that many movies or kind of remember what was in it would have been overwhelming, to say the least.

With movies, I have also decided that for a 'winter project' Jarrod and I will start watching a bunch of 80s and 90s movies that I have not seen. I won't go into the whole list, though; it's kind of embarrassing, haha. When Marie comes home for Christmas, too, she might be able to help me out in this department. Her and her sisters owned many of these cult classics, so there is another resource besides Netflix. Looks like I'll have to reactivate my DVD plan, and add even more movies to the queue.