Money Woes?

There seems to be a preponderance of evidence accumulating that points to a recession here in the USA. Although our Commander in Chief calls it a "slow down", our economist call it a recession.
In my myopic vision, I am not witnessing people scaling back in the spending category.
Yesterday a new Swedish store, IKEA, opened about 4 miles from my house and people lined up 3 days early to be able to grab the prized $100 chair that the first 100 door-busters would receive. I had four carloads of people ask if they could park in my driveway and have me shuttle them to the store. I informed them that there were fields of parking a mere 2 miles away from the store with a free drop off service at the door. Apparently over 12,000 people were in the doors of the store before noon, following a 9 a.m. opening.

Later that day, I went to a local restaurant to pick up a carry-out order of a home-made turkey dinner (ok, store-made but it TASTES almost home-made!)
I noticed that on this Thursday night, my dining establishment, along with it's neighboring FIVE others each had jammed packed parking lots and there was a waiting line outside each building! I thought that maybe I had been transported to a twilight-zone time period and it was really some Holiday I had missed.
As I drove away I glanced over at the movie theater parking lot and they, too, had no room to spare.
Did you know that movie tickets after 6 p.m. are $9.25? Apparently these patrons were all using their movie passes given to them as a Christmas present since no one can actually afford these prices when we are in a recession! What slays me are the people who order their tickets on line and go over to a machine to print them out and they will pay MORE money, $1.00, which is more than a 10% surcharge, for the convenience on avoiding waiting 3 minutes in line.

Well, I found out the house next door that was in foreclosure was sold at a sheriff's auction for about $40,000 less than it is worth. The people who purchased it live 1 block away in a house that is worth about twice what they paid for this place. Now it DOES have a pool. The only problem is that the people who bought the discounted house, don't know if they can sell their current home.
I guess too many people spend money at restaurants and movies.