Good evening, I wrote this late Friday night, after a very long day, but it’s been stuck in the cogs of the RBC machine for a couple of days. Anyhow there was no Global Insights Weekly due to the US Thanksgiving holiday so… enjoy.
I took this long-exposure picture this evening at an area wilderness lakeshore, not long after the snowstorm subsided. Scenes like this usually jump out in front of me when my head is elsewhere — and suddenly I can’t not be right then and there, locked in a full-on trance. My yoga without the pants.
I was wearing pants out there, just not yoga pants. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with stretchy pants, I just wasn’t wearing them then. If I’m honest, I’ve been wearing stretchy pants for better part of the past 8 months. Note here that stretchy pants singular is spelled the exact same way as stretchy pants plural. And absolutely nobody but me and my cats need to know what I mean by that. (Edit this out – people will think you’re weird.)
So anyways, guess what I didn’t do on this shoppiest shoppy day-of-days. Buy pants? (Edit that too).
Before 9:00 PST today, CNBC had already run a business story declaring that, for the first time in never, Black Friday had morphed into Cyber Monday. People avoided crowded shopping spaces where a “spitting mad” crowd might turn in to a zombie movie. The analyst (probably writing from his couch) notes that “Sweaters and other clothing aren’t topping gift lists as many Americans work from home and opt for casual clothing.” (Are you thinking what I’m thinking
Choncho?) If this story hit the paper by 9:00, it was written way, way, way before the day even started, already declaring what happened that day.
In fairness, he could have written it a month ago and safely nailed it. Here’s the data shown graphically:
me, Black Friday was White Cry-day, because a foot of wet snow clung to the driveway the day after my quad went in for repairs. I shoveled and hefted until I had no heft left, and when I took my heft and left, the snow didn’t.
Enjoy your weekend.
Mark