Black Friday

(After writing today's blog I found this photo which one of my friends took while standing in line at Old Navy)


Ahh, the day after Thanksgiving - a day of sleeping late and eating leftovers. A day of vegging out and lolling around the house. One of the few holidays I have from work that, by the nature of being a holiday, doesn't involve cooking and cleaning for company. Today is an official "do nothing" holiday, which is why I cannot understand why anyone would opt to get up in the middle of the night to go Christmas shop on Black Friday. The traffic, the hordes of shoppers, the lack of customer help and all in the name of getting a bargain, of saving a few bucks.

Yesterday my hometown newspaper was enormous; four times the normal size. Bringing it in from its landing place on my driveway I was excited, not just because I didn't have to crawl under a car or in the bushes to retrieve it, I was eager to have a leisure morning to read the news before beginning cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. I was sorely disappointed to discover the paper to have even less news content than normal, over three-fourths was sales advertisements.

I know people (am actually related to people) who probably plotted out their Black Friday shopping excursions. Had I been so incline, my day could have gone something like this:
2:30 a.m. - Awake and dress, make sure to wear soccer elbow and knee pads, borrowed from my niece, under clothes. Lace up running shoes.
3:15 a.m. - drive to mall, search for parking spot, get in line outside of Sears. As soon as the doors open at 4:00 a.m. make a dash to the Electronics Department for the $79 Kodak digital camera. There are only 5 at each store and no rainchecks. I pity anyone who stands in my way! After scoring the camera I make a bee-line to the Tool Department for a $39 drill (24 per store) and then on the the Clothing Department for $9.99 store-brand jeans for the entire family. (I know no one who will wear this brand, but hey - they're $9.99!)
4:38 a.m. - Clock my personal best quarter mile speed while running to J.C. Penney at the opposite end of the Mall. At Penney's I can get a $12.88 coffee maker (programmable), $29.99 women's boots (do we think they are leather?) and for $17.88 a 4-shooter rotating liquor dispenser (doesn't that just scream Christmas present?) plus, a FREE Disney snow globe and a $10 store coupon good only tomorrow. Sweet!
4:59 a.m. - Race across town to Kohl's Department Store which also opened at 4:00 a.m. I can get $10 Kohl's Cash for every $50 I spend. "It's like getting paid to shop," states their ad. Honestly, there isn't much from this store I want/need, but they boast "over 300 Early Bird Specials," so I'm sure I can find something. After all - they are paying me to shop!

After Kohl's, it is on to the slacker stores that waited until 5:00 a.m. to open:
Best Buy has $9.00 DVDs
Academy sports has licensed team hoodies for $12.99. A must for all the sports fans on my X-mas list.
Burlington Coat Factory has "Bubble Jackets" for the entire family for $9.99. So what if they make you look like the Michelin Man!
At Target I'm going for the $59.99 eight bottle wine fridge with a free electric wine bottle opener, a $19 value! I think I'll need it after today's shopping excursion.
At Walmart I can get a $78 Blu-ray Disc Player (and mugged in the parking lot).
At Toys-R-Us I'm after the $99 (Regularly $299 - Save $200) Furreal Friends life-size pony, only to discover Toys-R-Us opened at midnight and they've already sold out. In my excitement I failed to read the ad closely enough - alas, my inexperience is showing.

It is now 7:15 and I still have the stores which opened at 6:00 a.m. to hit and I'm already over an hour off schedule. I guess I'll just park outside of the Verizon Store and hope I snag one of the $29 laptop computers. Hmmm, small print. I search out my reading glasses at the bottom of my purse under all of the morning sales receipts, and read, "$100 mail in rebate debit card. Requires new 2-year activation on a Mobile Broadband Plan. See page 2 for details." Twenty-nine dollars, indeed!

In actuality I slept until 9:00 a.m. and enjoyed Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast. The only sale I'm going to today is the buy one, get one free book sale at my favorite used book store, Awesome Books.