No Place Like Home for the Holidays

On Thanksgiving I wrote about last minute grocery shopping I was able to do that morning; here it is Christmas Eve and by 6 PM, everything in Buffalo was shut up tighter than ten drummers' drums. In fact, we went to a 3:55 movie at the mall, and when we came out, the place was deserted and all the shops were shuttered and locked. Our car was on the other side of the complex, though, and so our footsteps echoed as eerily as a Dickens' shade as we crossed the vast emptiness. The bare parking lot proclaimed louder than anything else could that it was past time for all shoppers to rush home with their treasures, which is just what we did.