On Vacation! Left Behind (stuff at work)

It's Thanksgiving here--happy day to you all!
I'm sitting at my desk in my bedroom looking out at a chilly morning, and gray--but the snow on the ground brightens it up, and I'm in a happy mood.

I can hear the cranberries popping on the stovetop as they simmer for sauce (I decided not to make Ms Moon's wonderful sounding relish because pecans were $13/pound);
and the sweet potatoes and dried apricots are both tenderizing in boiling hot water for their casserole (NYT recipe--I am cutting the sugar WAY down and substituting cheaper walnuts for pecans).

I'm going over to the Mrs & Mrs binks' house this afternoon for a classic Thanksgiving turkey--their first as a married couple. ☺

Little Miss Marzipan is not coming this year--she is deeply involved with friends at her apartment building, which is like a dorm, or a mini-community. (Not to say, cult. [inside joke])
She is making green beans with garlic and butter.

THIS IS NOT CORRECT.

The correct green bean dish for Thanksgiving is what my dentist told me she always makes:
canned green beans, French cut if you want to be fancy
can of Campbell's mushroom soup
topped with packaged crispy fried onions

Also, "salad" in Minnesota is canned fruit, including crushed pineapple, with Cool Whip and marshmallows.
You can use fruit pie filling for the fruit. Cherry is the best! It's mostly neon-red sugar glop.

Besides waking up again with that holiday feel, I'm also happy to be off work for four whole days: I don't go back to work until MONDAY.
I don't have a care in the world!

Uh, not strictly true (banking chores await me); but I wanted to post these Care Bears because a customer put them in my BOOK's. Isn't that great?
I love when people add fun stuff, which happens every once in a while.

(More frequently, people move books around, leaving them in the wrong section. Sometimes they hide them behind other books. Perhaps they intend to buy them later? But if that's the case, they're like squirrels, who frequently forget where they buried their nuts.)

I plowed through donations yesterday and got a TON of stuff priced and out on the shelves. I didn't research anything, I just stuck on printed price stickers (love them!)--whichever one was closer to hand:
I had a lot of 49-cent stickers, so many more-valuable toys got priced low. (Better than the other say round, right?)

 I left my work area about as cleared-out as it's been since I started doing Toys as well as Books.
Toy donations are usually overflowing those empty bins, lower left, and onto the floor.

That's my bike, upside down, to the right, above.
I got a flat, so I took the wheel home to change the tire. I used to know how to do that––I can learn to do it again. Cheaper, and nicer to be independent.

Book donations are still down, but I couldn't handle any more anyway.
I left the shelves pretty well-stocked.

Toy shelves are crammed full, and shoppers were already buying up the best ones yesterday afternoon.
Or playing with them.
I asked this little kid if I could take a photo of her playing with the Barbie bus on the floor, and she said yes.
(I've blurred her face for anonymity.)

I've totally changed my attitude toward kids messing up the TOYS--and without resorting to smoking pot. Several factors helped me change, most especially hearing a mother be particularly foul to her little girl.
Now I praise the kids:
"I'm glad you're having fun with the toys!"

Go ahead, grab a moment of happiness in a blighted world.

More Thrift Store Stuff

BELOW: Donated photo, kid with snow. Far from snowing here, we're supposed to get up to 50ºF (10ºC) this weekend, so our snow will melt. (It was 18ºF last weekend.)

BELOW: Another of Ass't Man's endcaps. Setting these up is one of his greatest strengths, imo. (Though I get credit (or blame) for the stuffed dinosaur.)

 
BELOW: Lid of vintage plastic box:

BETTER TOYS, by Deluxe Reading Corp.

Someone nabbed this pretty quickly. I'd thought about buying it, but I'm back to not wanting to own stuff. (I've even started returning some stuff to the store.) Having a photo is nicer.

All for now. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!

Or, as a guy announced as he got off the city bus near my work yesterday:

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Be safe.
Be good.
Or be good at it.