That Turkey Thing

This Thursday is the most peculiar of American holidays: Thanksgiving. Inescapable, palate-deprived, and perhaps the only American holiday (except for the possibly socialist Labor Day) that doesn't celebrate either war or Jesus... celebrating Thanksgiving is a requirement if you live in the USA.

Rule #1:
You must have dinner with other people at their house -- not in a restaurant! -- and if you're being truly proper, they should be members of your family.

Rule #2:
You must eat turkey and bread stuffing and gravy, and then some other kind of starch, and maybe a vegetable, and then pie for dessert. No other food is acceptable.

Rule #3
There has to be too much food, the air has to be too stifling, and you have to feel heavy and full and basically disgusted afterwards from over-indulging.

Rule #4 (NEW!):
Go shopping the next day. Apparently the day after Thanksgiving, which is also a holiday, is the biggest shopping day of the year, and many stores offer slightly-lower-than-usual prices for those who are OCD enough to wait in the parking lot at 5 a.m. to get inside.

But let's get back to the Thursday event. It struck me a few years ago, when I was sitting in my car in a traffic jam on Thanksgiving, that everyone in all the other cars was also on their way to a Thanksgiving dinner somewhere and that they would be eating the exactly same distasteful food as I was consigned to eat: turkey and starch. How creepy is that?

Don't get me wrong. I love having dinner with my friends, and I do like to reflect on the things I should be thankful for (a practice that has largely disappeared from Thanksgiving), but menu options would be great. How about some cracked crab and champagne? Or rack of lamb? Why not creme brulée for dessert? And listen to some new electronica tracks while we're making dinner?

Really, we should be thankful that we're not like the pilgrims who allegedly launched this tradition. We could dress up like them and do some role play, like tossing a female guest into the nearest river and accusing her of being a witch. That might make the time before dinner a bit more interesting.

But seriously. I will be going to the home of some friends on Thursday to eat the required items ....the only twist to this is that the other participants aren't Americans....and they're probably far more into this tradition than I am!

The seven-year ouch!

Today I was reading an article about OPEC, and I saw a mind-blowing dollar figure for the price of oil in the year 2000....just seven years ago. It said that the price of oil per barrel in the year 2000 was just $10 per barrel. Today it's $100 per barrel.

Holy cow! Really? I knew it was creeping up and up, but I hadn't looked backwards to compare and contrast. It went up 1,000 percent since the year 2000?

Just think about it...seven years ago this month, Al Gore ran against George W. Bush for president of the United States. We all know how that turned out, and I'm sure this slightly elevated oil-price thing is just a wacky coincidence.

So I decided to search the net and look up a few other financial factoids from the year 2000. Looking backwards at November, 2000, exactly seven years ago this month, I found:

Value of the British Pound Sterling versus the US Dollar:
November, 2000: $1.42
November, 2007: $2.05

Value of the Euro against the US Dollar:
November, 2000: 83 cents (note: the Euro was only a valuation at this point)
November, 2007: $1.47

Value of the Canadian dollar against the US Dollar:
November, 2000: 46 cents
November, 2007: $1.02

Median price of a home in San Francisco:
November, 2000: $417,000
November, 2007: $827,000

National debt (in USD billions):
November, 2000: 5,674.2
November, 2007: 9,007.7