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I would rather walk 30 meters on a cobblestone road to my local shop, surrounded by thousand year-old architecture, then spend 30 seconds in a car suffocated in concrete and traffic.

It's not an option to select. Not here, at least. Many US roads are not designed for walking. You can be killed by a car, or arrested for jaywalking. There are no sidewalks on many roads. The road that I live on does not have sidewalks for at least 5 miles. It's just a property of the locale. You can, of course, find a place to live that is more designed for walking... it's called ghetto. You will find plenty of people walking there. Just don't come close to them. IMO, 50 miles would be a good, safe distance.

The food too is not even comparable for the crap that passes in the U.S. In Europe, you can be relatively poor and live like a king.

Well, the only way to eat reasonably healthy food here is either to cook it for yourself, or to pay big bucks for dinner at a good restaurant. (Note: Olive Garden and Red Lobster do not qualify. At Denny's you can be assaulted. I do not even know where a good, not franchised, restaurant might be nearby.)

Almost everything you purchase is locally grown, locally made, and locally sold. It's a completely different way of living that Americans don't understand.

In the USA you will find megastores, megaparking, and megaconsumption. Those tiny stores would have a hard time surviving. They wouldn't have access to anything local because in most places there is nothing local. Territories specialize in something, and that's it. When I buy apples, they likely were grown a thousand miles away, if not more. I have lemons in my backyard, and plums, and peaches, and some apples (in season.) Those are local. Everything else is coming from all over the world.

Who in their right mind would spend 30 minutes in a store? You don't have to do that Europe. Most of your shopping consists of little artisan shops that provide local produce, cheese, wine, meats, and takes you only a minute to order.

Our stores can easily be 100 x 100 meters long. It will take you a while to get to the right shelf even if you know where it is. However every store has its own layout, even stores of the same company.

If you live your life going from point A to point B, you will find it severely lacking. You miss out on the good stuff. You will consequently have fewer friends, less sex, and fewer thoughts.

It is often said that work, work and more work is a national obsession of americans. Europeans are laughed at for taking long vacations and working sparingly. I, personally, prefer to work; not necessarily for the man - I have plenty of hobbies. But none of them involve socialization. I deal with machines - they can be trusted. Humans... maybe in some parallel Universe.

Case in point: When I lived in Europe, I got a little something extra from the baker's cute daughter. :)

I hope that it was easily treatable. Modern medicine is pretty good :-)

Oh, but he'd be fine with the Gandalf's Gobble Melt or Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet?

...but I'm not sure I would want to eat a breakfast that came out of a "Hobbit Hole..."

Oh, but he'd be fine with the Gandalf's Gobble Melt or Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet?

The business model is very simple: Give the product away and make it up in volume!

Joking aside, there has never been a better time for free products. As the strength of McDonalds and Walmart demonstrates, consumers are looking for the cheapest prices to help reduce their costs. Even consumers who are financially okay at the moment are reducing costs to prepare for any eventuality.

If you look at the market, you see a lot of giveaways that used to be unthinkable. McDonalds is doing "free latte mondays" to draw business away from Starbucks while Denny's is giving away a free Grand Slam breakfast to each visitor tomorrow in an attempt to push coupon books out to customers. (Thus encouraging them to think about the large and inexpensive breakfast they can get there.)

The key is that these businesses have solid revenue models that their giveaways promote. Web-based businesses are in a slightly tighter pickel. With advertising budgets getting slashed across the board, ad-supported websites are feeling the same pinch as print and broadcast media. Now is the time to find alternative revenue streams such as premium content to back their free services. Things like selling larger downloadable versions of free web games or state tax filings to go with free Federal filings.

These are potentially sustainable models in the Internet age. They preserve the free service concept and allow consumers to evaluate the product(s). Customers then have a difficult time not paying for Premium features or content with real value. The "real value" is the key, of course. Which is something the internet has been missing with its premium features. (Video Game DLC is particularly bad in this area.)

So including information for someone else's benefit, that would have to be researched anyway in order to understand a subject, is unimportant now, just because I'm a busy man?

It's actually a Denny's product.

Well, let's see..

Where I work part/full time, Steak N Shake, we were closed for Thanksgiving and Christmas (normally 24/7).

The Denny's closest to us was closed, but I heard one out a bit further was open (also normally 24/7).

Walgreens around here has some stores open 24/7 (which I think are still all open), and some stores that are only open regular hours (in which case I think they all ran on their Sunday schedule).

As always, 7-11 is open.

On my way home from the family dinner, I cruised by QuikTrip (the local 24/7 gas station) as my tank was low, and it was open.

This morning I saw an ambulance flying down the street, so I know they're working as well.

Honestly, I can't remember a Thanksgiving or Christmas where I have worked (although I've worked plenty of day-befores and day-afters). I guess I'm kinda lucky.