Thanksgiving & Its Perils

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, a holiday filled with food, family, and *ahem* Black Friday shopping.  Due to weather concern I spent my Thanksgiving in Milwaukee instead of with my family in Minnesota but I did make some traditional Thanksgiving fare (sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, toffee cookies, and dinner rolls) so I didn't completely miss out on the food portion of the holiday.

While I love shopping, I chickened out this year for participating in Black Friday.  It was very very cold outside!  The original plan was to hit the outlet mall at 10 PM Thursday night.  After a large temperature drop in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday I decided my plan was rotten and that I should just go shopping on Saturday instead.  Yes I could have gone out Friday still, and yes you can (for the most part) get all the same deals online that are to be had in stores, but I didn't really need anything to warrant the crazy shopping.  All I really need are more clothes to replace the ones that I've destroyed working in the lab.

Thanksgiving sure does have its perks.  It's on a Thursday which pretty much guarantees that one will have Friday off from work and maybe Wednesday as well.  When I was working on my bachelor's and master's degrees these days off meant nothing to me as I would have had final exams the week before and the whole week of Thanksgiving as a "break."  Now that I'm in the working world I just get Thursday and Friday off from work but as a graduate student at a big, semester schedule school I no longer have a break.  I had my microbiology class on Tuesday like normal, but my once-a-week Thursday class was moved to Tuesday to account for the day off.  There went my normal Tuesday afternoon work in the school lab time.

On a trimester schedule the week of Thanksgiving was nice because I didn't have to worry about anything school related.  No exams, no homework, and nothing upcoming!  Not so much now.

The peril of having a four day weekend is that now the likelihood that I'll have a lengthy to do list is high, and the likelihood of my accomplishing anything from that list is low.  Sigh.  Today I have a test in microbiology, my part of a grant proposal due, a meeting with my advisor, and some lab work that I've been putting off.  Today is going to be busy.