I hope everyone survived the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Our family had a wonderful time; the only thing wrong was it was too short.  Hard to believe all that planning and traveling and cooking……..then poof it’s over.  The turkey has been cooked, the relatives stuffed, the football watched, the day after shopping is done, and now, back to work again.  Thanksgiving is just the beginning of the holiday season so my next project is to find the perfect Christmas tree.  Any and all ideas about this important project will be appreciated.

Perfect Christmas Tree

It’s Thanksgiving Day and I have much to be thankful for.  My whole family is together and we have plans for lots of food and fun.  I hope everyone has blessings to count and shares my feeling of thanksgiving. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Run to Feed the Hungry has become an annual holiday tradition for countless area families. Beginning in 1994 with only 800 runners, the event now ranks as Sacramento Valley’s largest annual run & fun run/walk. In 2007, 23,000 participants attended and raised over $600,000 for Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services. As we approach our 15th Anniversary we look forward to another record crowd and donations topping $750,000.

Registration is at 7:30AM to 8:55AM and the race starts at 9:00AM Thanksgiving morning rain or shine.

The certified 5K & 10K courses begin on J Street near the California State University entrance. Both courses wind through one of Sacramento’s most beautiful residential areas. Baby strollers and wheelchairs welcome. No bikes, Roller Blades, scooters, skate boards or pets will be permitted on the course. Please leave your dogs at home!

Registration on race day is $40 for adults and $20 for children.  It costs a few dollars, but all for a good cause, to help feed Sacramento’s hungry.  The proceeds go to Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services.  So get the whole family moving, come out and get a free tee shirt and work up an appetite for all that turkey and stuff you plan to eat later.

Run to Feed the Hungry

In a post on November 6th called “Sacramento Real Estate Market is Looking UP“, I told you about buying a house.  After months of looking we found the ”just right for us” house in Sacramento and signed the deal.  I thought everything would be smooth sailing after we were approved for the mortgage and signed 400 pages of documents promising to pay mortgage payments until we die.  Actually that was only the beginning, and then we were faced with the challenge of transporting all our worldly possessions to our little piece of Sacramento Real Estate.

Since we spent most of our vast fortune purchasing this perfect house in Sacramento, we decided to save money and not go for the Moving Company with a fleet of trucks with their name on the side and drivers with uniforms.  All that stuff must cost money, and why should we pay extra for a name and the promise of security, stability, and on-time delivery?  All we really needed was a couple of strong guys and any kind of truck big enough to hold a couch, a dining room table, and a couple of beds, right?  Wrong!

Here’s where the fun really begins.  We looked on Craig’s List and found two guys and a truck.  They were scheduled to come on Sunday afternoon.  I figured everybody can go to church, eat lunch, or sleep in and then just get things loaded and done in a few hours.  The weekend schedule was so that my husband would be around to help.  Seems like everything’s in place, so what could go wrong.  The two guys and a truck showed up on time and all was well.  All the drawers were emptied, everything was in pieces, and the two strong guys were loading the truck. After about an hour and over half of our stuff was on the truck, the two strong guys started unloading the truck and bringing furniture back inside.  I was almost speechless, but managed to say “wait a minute, aren’t you guys going the wrong way?”  The lead guy just said I got a phone call and I have an emergency, we have to go.  He didn’t say what kind of emergency, so I have no idea what the problem was that couldn’t wait until they unloaded the furniture at our new house.  I might have felt more empathetic if he had told me some tragic story instead of just I have to go.  I said “Will you be back?”  His reply, “I don’t know.”  I asked, “How about tomorrow?”  His reply, “Maybe, I don’t know.”  Then he and his partner jumped in the truck and zoomed away.  My husband and I were standing outside the door looking at each other in disbelief as we watched the truck roll away and looked at our furniture in disarray.  I’m not sure how to describe it except to say it seemed like the way you would feel if you got all dressed up and then your date for the prom didn’t show up. 

It was a weird situation, but my husband saved the day.  He looked on Craig’s List and found two more guys and a truck who agreed to come as soon as they finished the job they were doing.  They came, loaded the furniture, went to the new house, unloaded and put everything in place.  The nightmare had a happy ending, but when the first guys were unloading the furniture without delivering it I kept thinking this is not really happening, it’s just a bad dream.  The trouble with that thought is, when something is really a dream you don’t think it’s a dream.  The moral of this story is, if you are going to go cheap be prepared for emergencies.

Moving Day

What a great way to start his first term as Sacramento’s Mayor, Kevin Johnson is going to donate excess campaign funds to save the Santa Parade!  Adam Mendelsohn, an advisor to Johnson, said that since the swearing-in came in under budget they decided to donate the $20,000 needed to save the parade.

A formal announcement is planned during a news conference at 2:00PM Sunday at the downtown ice rink at 7th and K Streets.  Johnson wanted to save the parade for sentimental and business reason.  “This is too important of a tradition not to continue.”   Laurie Hensley, parade coordinator, said the event won’t occur on the traditional Saturday after Thanksgiving, but it will be held in December.

Sacramento Santa Parade is On Again!

It’s true that Santa won’t be in Sacramento for a holiday parade, but Roseville saves the day.  The Roseville Santa Parade will be the weekend before Thanksgiving (this Saturday) in downtown Roseville at 10:00AM.  If you are sad that Sacramento can’t raise the money to have a parade for Santa, gather up the kids and head over to Roseville to join their festivities on Saturday morning.  If you get there early you can go to the Roseville Theatre, 241 Vernon Street, for breakfast with Santa before the parade.

Santa Parade in Roseville

This may be the year the Grinch really steals Christmas!  For 25 years Santa has been coming to Sacramento for a parade on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, but not this year.  The 26th annual parade was scheduled for November 29, but Laurie Hensley, the parade organizer, announced today the parade has been called off.  Because of the economic downturn, there weren’t enough private businesses that signed up as sponsors and advertisers, she said.  Even Santa can’t dodge the fallout from our economic meltdown.

It’s a sad day in Whovillle (Sacramento) when we can’t raise enough money for a parade for Santa.  The parade was always held during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and drew crowds of up to 25,000.  It helped draw people to downtown Sacramento because people could eat and shop afterwards.

Hensley said the cancellation is intended as a one-year break.  Planning for the 2009 parade has already started.  Anyone interested in helping with the 2009 Santa Parade can call (916) 451-6200.

No Santa Parade for Sacramento

“Black Friday“, that phrase has an ominous sound.  It brings to mind a day of mourning, or maybe some Gothic Holiday.  I’m not sure who gave it this name, but “Black Friday” is typically the day after Thanksgiving, which is the start of the Christmas shopping season.  This is the first time all year that many retail establishments begin to turn a profit, in other words they are in the black instead of losing money.  There are always big sales with stores pushing loss leaders, customers lining up before stores open, and times for opening are pushed into the early morning hours.  It seems that all these things just aren’t enough for some of the big chain stores.  First they start displaying Christmas merchandise before Halloween and almost eclipsing Thanksgiving to push more shopping days on the unwilling consumers.    

It’s really kind of sad to ruin the best shopping adventure of the year.  I don’t know how it happens in other families, but after consuming mounds of turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, the strategy session begins.  The guys all gather around the TV for an afternoon of football and the girls take the large bundle of ads that came in the morning paper and plan an attack on all the stores to pick off the best bargains of the day.  We decide who goes to which store in order of importance, and just how long before day break should we leave and where do we meet for coffee after the first round.  Everybody needs to get to bed early, be sure to set your alarm, don’t forget to wear comfortable shoes, and synchronize your watches.  Ready, set, shop!!

I think we should boycott early sales that infringe on the “Black Friday” ritual.  We Americans are strong people, and can endure lots of stress; the real estate bubble bursting, the banking system collapsing, the auto industry in trouble, but not the blurring of the boundaries of “Black Friday”.  Changing the ritual of “Black Friday” shopping, well, that’s just Un-American!

Black Friday

The votes are in, but the counting isn’t over.  It’s not likely to change the results since Kevin Johnson took 57% of the vote when he won the Sacramento Mayoral race over Heather Fargo on November 4th, but the votes are still being counted.  This means that unless the vote counters really work fast the tally won’t be finished in time for the November 25th swearing-in ceremony scheduled for Kevin Johnson to take over the Mayor’s Office.  According to Sacramento City Clerk Shirley Concolino the Mayor can’t be sworn in until every last vote is counted.  This means that Johnson will probably be sworn in on December 2, at the next council meeting, and officially Heather Fargo is still Mayor until the new Mayor is sworn in. 

That may be the official stand, but the Johnson camp plans to go ahead with the big party planned on November 25th that should have been the swearing-in ceremony; official or not the party is still on.  The gala at Memorial Auditorium is to be emceed by television journalist Lisa Ling and includes performances by a gospel choir, the 34th Street Dancers and the young people’s troupe from the Sacramento Theatre Company.  That’s a positive attitude; we will party first and make it official later.

Kevin Johnson and Heather Fargo

For those of you who are skeptical that Sacramento has enough cultural events to qualify as a destination city you need to check out the Sacramento Opera.  November 21, 23, and 25, 2008 the Sacramento Opera will perform “The Pirates of Penzance“.  Single tickets are on sale through the Sacramento Community Center Theatre Box Office, located at 1301 L Street, Sacramento, CA, phone 916-808-5181, or tickets.com.

Sacramento Opera Performs "The Pirates of Penzance"