Tony Brewer View

Right around this time every year, Teri and I start to talk about our plans for Christmas shopping.  We have a lot of friends and family that we exchange gifts with, and we have to plan carefully to avoid spending too much money.  So we carefully search for the best prices and deals on the hottest items on the Christmas list.  Black Friday is traditionally the best day of the year to get the best prices, stores are trying to lure in the customers that have the day after Thanksgiving off of work into their stores and separate the consumers from their hard earned dollars as quickly and efficiently as possible!  This year Black Friday is November 28, less than two months away!

I’m planning to use the sales flyers for black friday 2008 to save a lot of money on my Christmas shopping this year.  There is a great website at blackfriday.biz where the website has made available the zip and pdf files of the Black Friday advertisements before they show up in the local newspapers.  This gives you the advantage of being able to plan your shopping before anyone else!  They also offer email alerts to let the consumer know that new ads have been posted.

I was reading on Time.com the story about Pirates seizing a cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks and ammunition as it was headed to Kenya.  The story says that the pirates are demanding a $20 million ransom, and that one of the ship’s crew has died.

The story goes on to talk about how piracy is thriving in that part of the world, and to be quite frank I’m really quite surprised that the pirates manage to get away with it all the time!  With all of the sophisticated equipment “we” have, the satellite technology and all, just imagining that pirates could get away with a deed like that seems infeasible!  And yet, there it is; it happens.

I found Teri looking at maternity clothes on the Internet today from the kikisfashions.com website.  She’s been talking a lot lately about getting married and starting a family; her biological clock is ticking!  Of course, her best friend being pregnant is adding to that pressure to procreate!

She said one of the reasons she was looking at this website was that her girlfriend gave her some promotion codes:  Free shipping over $75 (coupon code: freeship) and 15% Off your entire order (coupon code: fall2008; this code expires 10-15-08.)

She was looking at some really cute clothes.  They have women’s fashions in junior sizes, and plus sizes, not just maternity clothes.  Teri wants to order a few things from their site because they are having a sale right now.  Their prices are pretty reasonable, even on the clothes that are not on sale.

I just heard on the car radio on the way home from work this evening that Paul Newman died yesterday at the age of 83. I was really sorry to hear that, he was one movie star that I really admired. Along with his great talents, he was a man with a true mission to better the world by creating his food label Newman’s Own that donated millions of dollars to charity.

He was one of the good guys. He will be missed.

I was reading a news article from Google news titled “EPA won’t limit toxic pollutant in drinking water” earlier today and I was absolutely outraged that the EPA has decided to take absolutely no action to to rid drinking water of perchlorate. Perchlorate is a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

This toxic chemical has been found in 35 states in at least 395 sites. The chemical has been found at levels high enough to pose developmental health risks for fetuses and babies, and interfere with thyroid function.

The contamination of these water supplies is the result of our very own Defense Department’s defense and aerospace activities.

This chemical has been found in groundwater in California and the Southwest, and in the Colorado River. It has also been found in a variety of foods.

I think that the EPA should take action to make the government clean up this mess!