By BEN GRABOW, Scripps Howard News Service

I came for the kitchen showroom, but I left with a lesson.This week I had the opportunity to visit a home and garden convention -- a sort of haunted house for 20-somethings -- while watching my mother in her element. Such conventions, I've learned, are essentially an opportunity to walk from booth to booth registering for as many drawings as possible.

The Public Broadcasting Service is supported by viewers unlike me.As a subscriber to the most basic cable package available, I am a regular PBS viewer. I never miss an "American Experience." Ken Burns is my homeboy. I have seen every antique that has ever been road-shown. And it all beats the dreck on network TV.

Buying a car can be a daunting experience. Keeping a car can be worse.Between the screaming television advertisements and the lure of the Web, fighting the urge to buy a new car takes superhuman strength. However, in these questionable financial times, it's a battle that must be fought.

Nobody bowls anymore.I say this as a recovering child bowler and the last of a dying breed. I'm the only 20-something I know with a monogrammed ball. I haven't picked up a spare in 15 years. I could only assume that bowling is on the outs.

They come in the early, pre-dawn darkness, while the suburbs quietly slumber. Unmarked cars and station-wagons, slowly idling, creep from house to house. Though few are awake to hear it, the noise that follows them is unmistakable.Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.There's no sound quite like a half-pound of glossy advertisements striking the pavement.

Shovel the walk, save your change, and say goodbye to those weight loss resolutions.The Girl Scouts are coming.Just in time for our New Years' resolve to wane, America's favorite mass-produced and colorfully-packaged cookie with a cause is back on the streets and ready to satisfy those thin-mint cravings. And this year, they're more digital than ever.

I hate this grocery store.I hate the produce section. "Fresh" vegetables are brown and sopping in sprinkler water. Fruit is impossibly unripe or mealy and spoiled. Nothing arrives in season except iceberg lettuce, which, apparently, is always in season.

Just so you know -- there are other states, too.

With the holidays just behind us, the odds are good that you've received a gift card. The odds are good that you gave a few, too.

At some point, even the most loving Grandma is no longer impressed by macaroni and glue.