Greetings!
I’m on my way home again from another great weekend. This time I was in Chicago at the Equestrian Lifestyle Expo at Arlington Race Course. It was a great weekend with lots of vendors in the trade show (I managed to do a little shopping), a good crowd and many interesting seminars. The only thing missing were the horses—this was a no-live-horse expo, hence the name “lifestyle” expo. Nonetheless, it was a great event and it was different for me not to ride and work with horses through the weekend. The upside was that I didn’t have to wear boots and riding clothes all weekend.
It’s hard to believe that it’s Thanksgiving week already—next thing you know, Christmas will be here. I am pretty much a procrastinator when it comes to Christmas shopping, preferring to wait until the last possible moment. If it were not for the fact that I have to mail most of my gifts, I’d gladly wait until Christmas eve—that’s when you can really get in the spirit! But oddly enough, for the first time ever this year, I actually bought some Christmas presents ahead of time and have stashed them away. I’ve always admired those people that shop throughout the year. If I did that, I’d forget about the gifts I bought and where I stashed them and find them a couple years later when I clean out the closet.
Thankfully, not everyone waits until the last minute—as I saw this weekend—lots of gift buying going on during the expo. Most of the vendors that I’ve visited with the past few expos have reported that their sales are about 10% off from last year and everyone is pretty happy about that. It’s a sure sign of the times when you are happy with a decrease in business! What about you? What are your gift-giving plans for this year? Cutting back? Forging ahead? Being conservative?
I hope to get some good rides in on my horse this week before taking off again on Friday for Las Vegas. My siblings and I are meeting my dad there to celebrate his birthday. It will be a quick trip—only there for two nights; but we’ll see two shows and are sure to have lots of fun. I am not a gambler—don’t even spend as much as a quarter on the slots—but I’ll enjoy hanging with my dad and watching him play blackjack—a game at which he excels and usually beats the bank. Should be a fun weekend.
We’ll be spending Thanksgiving with dear friends and this year, it looks like Rich will be home for the holiday, instead of having to work. Although I am happy that we will be able to spend the holiday together, it is a bummer that the ski area will not be open as scheduled, because there is not quite enough snow. This happened last year too and although it is highly unusual for Monarch to not have snow for Thanksgiving, last year we went from no snow on T-Day to over 6 feet by Monday the next week—and it never quit. It snowed every single day for about two months and turned out to be a record-breaking year for snow fall. So we know it will come—it’s just a matter of when. But in the meantime, it looks like there will be more riding in my schedule than skiing.
I hope your holiday is a pleasant one. I love to cook so even though I am not the one putting the turkey in the oven, I’ll look forward to making the sweet potatoes, rolls and cranberry sauce (the real kind). The downside of going somewhere else for Thanksgiving is that you don’t come home with leftovers. To me, the best part is the leftover turkey sandwiches. What’s your favorite, must-have part of the meal? For Rich, it’s canned cranberry sauce, for me it has to be the real thing. So we always have both.
Enjoy the ride!
Julie
Dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes! I detest turkey.
ReplyDeleteI sell tack and horse books on eBay and after months of dead-in-the-water, sales have picked up slightly.
Love your work, your site, your blog, and your helmet stance.
We're vegetarians with a mostly vegetarian family so typically we have a nut loaf with cashew gravy. Yum. This year somebody brought (we did Thanksgiving early)a lentil loaf with mushroom gravy instead. I dislike it when people call it "turkey day". That changes the purpose of the day from thankfulness to food. Plus it's a lousy day for the turkeys. About the economy, I went to the local tack store yesterday. We live in a small town and the tack store is in a slightly larger small town. She said people are driving to the city now because the bigger stores are cheaper. It may not be cheaper when you consider gas, lunch, etc but that's what they are doing. She is worried. I hope she makes it. Several restaurants have cut back on their hours recently. I am asking Santa for one of Julie's exercise balls this year.
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