So, some readers are going to suffer through some thrilling holiday-travel hell on their way to Thanksgiving gatherings near and far. Good luck with that.

To warm your souls that some good can come amidst annoyance, I give you two pre-Thanksgiving anecdotes from the Earling clan:

1) Monday am we find a notice on our door informing us the Alderwood Water District will be turning off the water in our neighborhood from 9:00 am - 4:30 pm this Wednesday.

Ok, that's nice.

WAIT A MINUTE! That's the day before Thanksgiving when my lovely bride will be hard at work prepping for Turkey Day. #*&%'ing great, how about killing the electricity too since chez Earling is hosting a gathering this year and our household really has some work to do that day?

I call these nice souls at the Water District to ask the basic questions like "so, is the water really going to be out the entire time?" and "is this just routine maintenance?"

Then I try to be as polite as I can in pointing out that it takes an idiot of the first order to think performing routine maintenance requiring the complete shut down of water is wisely done the day before perhaps the biggest family holiday meal of the year. Cooks across my neighborhood are going to be PISSED!

I guess some of my neighbors weren't so polite in their calls. This morning there was another notice letting us know "due to the holiday" the maintenance was being performed next week instead. Sounds like someone wanted to live to see their next birthday after all.

2) The lovely Mrs. Earling headed out to do some Thanksgiving meal shopping today after viewing the local grocery ads, thus taking her to an unnamed grocery chain outside our normal victual haunts of Trader Joe's and Costco.

Now, the store she chose is a perennial under-performer; it's what they do. We all have them in our lives whether they be airlines, restaurants, or other such establishments. For reasons of convenience or price we get suckered into returning to these businesses only to be left wanting in the end. This makes us simmer with rage and want to punch people. This is bad, and not part of the holiday spirit.

So, Mrs. Earling calls me in said under-performing store with much irritation in her voice. It seems they're out of the sale turkeys highlighted in the store's ad. What's more, the butcher informs my bride they ran out the first day of the sale. A quick check by your intrepid blogger reveals the sale began on the 14th. So, the dolts at said store ran out of their holiday sale turkeys over a week before Thanksgiving. Talk about sweet skills, but hey, they've got a reputation to uphold.

After some quick consultation I recommend to Mrs. Earling that she abort this shopping mission and go elsewhere. She agrees, and charmingly tells the store what she thinks of them by leaving her then full cart - sans turkey of course - sitting in an aisle all by its lonesome. Very nice, honey. Very nice.

A reasonably quick trip to an unnamed competing grocer we sometimes use solved all and things are now dandy. A simple reminder that when one business utterly fails, another will surely pick up the slack.

Oh, and anonymity is boring. The offending store was Albertson's. The redemptive one was Safeway. I don't like Albertson's.

Hope you all survive the pre-Turkey Day fun, wherever it takes you.