So THAT'S why they call it 'Boxing Day'!

Well, Georgia made it through her first night, not without some excitement. Around 2:30 she started yipping away to beat the band, and yours truly hauled ass out of bed and brought her (and big brother Tux) outside. Both dogs are black (though Georgia's got some brindling) and the yard was utterly black, so I'm not sure anything of an excretory nature was accomplished on our wee girl's part. But she was considerably quieter upon being returned to her little crate, and the rest of the night passed by in peace...in the outside world, that is.

Sometime in the interval I commenced to spin a web of dreamery. I dreamed that an evil organization was after me, for reasons unknown to my waking self but perfectly obvious in the dream. I was out walking with my cousin Terri and stopped off at a store to buy a paper. While fishing for money to pay for the paper, I lost my passport (and don't ask why I was carrying it around...again, made sense while sleeping...) Of course, I didn't discover this for many dream-hours, and when I did, I decided that the Evil Organization had doubtless procured my passport by now, and was on its way to detain me. I figured it would go easier on me if I showed up at Evil Organization HQ voluntarily, and so this is what I did.
I was greeted at the door by a Boris Karloff soundalike, who wondered aloud where I should be put. Many walls slid magically out of my way and I found myself in a hospital operating room. Oddly, patients were being wheeled in asleep and wheeled out awake and freely bleeding. Even more unsettling, all the doctors and nurses were coming in with soft, bemused smiles on their faces, and leaving chortling with glee and covered in blood and viscera.
Yike.
I was escorted through the O.R. and the back wall dissolved. Now I was in a slightly dingy bedroom, unfurnished save for a futon hugging the floor in the center. I was told to lay down in a voice that brooked no dissent.
I complied, and my would-be torturer left the room.
A vent then hissed open and admitted several gallons of pure sewer-water, which proceeded to slosh around, dousing me thoroughly.
About this time, I understood I was dreaming. It takes my sleeping brain a while to process things.
"Drink that," came a voice from everywhere, "and you can leave."
Bugger off, I thought, and I can wake up.
And that's just what I did. Screams and moans of terror from other rooms morphed into Georgia yowling down to the left. I found, alas, that I couldn't summon the strength to get out of bed.
Thank heavens for Eva, who volunteered to go out this time.

Hours later, feeling less like I had gone ten rounds with Dr. Evil, I got up and we went out to brave the madness that is Boxing Day. We had received Canadian Tire gift certificates from Eva's parents: now was as good a time as any to use them.

How to describe Canadian Tire for any American readers? Well, it started as a tire store (duh), and, like Topsy, it sort of growed over the years. Now it sells damn near everything. If you don't eat it, there's a good chance they stock it. Man heaven, this place: it's an electronics store, a home improvement store, and a sporting goods store...and that's maybe a third of it.

Are we the only people who use gift certificates this way? Rather than buy one or two expensive things (and God knows I could drop a few thousand dollars in that store without batting an eye), we loaded up on cheap little things, necessary but unglamorous. Cleaning supplies. An untippable water dish for Georgia, who likes to, um, frolic. Several other things required for our two-pup household, including a new entrance rug and some heavy-duty rug tape. And so on. As we approached the till, our cart loaded down, I wondered aloud if we'd gone over the gift card total. As it turned out, we had...by seventy cents.
Then: Future Shop.
Future Shop is much easier to describe to any lurking Yanks. Think "Best Buy", except change the colours from black and yellow to red and white. Best Buy actually owns Future Shop, now, which is kind of like McDonald's owning Burger King.
Holy mother of Christ, was this place packed. I mean, suck your gut in to turn around. Little wonder, the deals had to be seen to be believed.
The day after Christmas is also a holiday in Canada...unless you work in retail. For retailers, it's something akin to Black Friday in the States, although the intent up here is to clear out any inventory left over from Christmas. Boxing Day 2005 was the single biggest day in the history of Canadian commerce. Individual stores can and do bring in over a million dollars on any given Boxing Day. Of course, the Boxing Day sales go into January and in some cases February, but today's Day One and everybody knows it.
We got ourselves a hundred blank CDs at half price or better, a memory card for Eva's camera (picture capacity just went from 8 pics to 1,668; should keep her snapping for a bit); also a few games for her Nintendo DS (which stands, at least right now, for Don't Smoke). The lineup was positively insane: it snaked halfway around the store, and it's a big store. We were queued up for half an hour at least, and that was just to get through the checkouts; there was actually something of a lineup to get out of the store. I've never seen anything like that before...part of me hopes I never do again. We got some great deals, but yeesh. Boxing Day, indeed: I felt kayoed.

Then off to my Price Chopper to check in on things. A grocery ghost town. Too many people out buying electronics to even think about buying groceries.

And then home to relieve a very anxious puppy, who has since slept most of the afternoon away. Which is what I wish I had done...

Back to work tomorrow. For three whole days, and then a three day weekend. God, I love this time of year.