Monday, November 26, 2007

Black Friday (With Photos)

Thursday night Auntie D and I packed up our vehicles and head out towards the highway. First we had to stop off at a gas station to fill up. Auntie D almost had a heart attack! $3.45/per gallon! Meanwhile back at our house gas was $3.07.

ManSon, Auntie D, Pup, Bear and I all arrived safely at our house around 11PM. We unpacked the cars and looked through the print outs of the deals I received via email. I signed up for emails from just about ever store out there. We only printed out the pages with the deals we were interested in. Auntie D was most interested in sporting goods and work out clothes for her boyfriend the Chief.

I had only a few items on my Black Friday list …

1. 19 inch, LCD flat screen, HDTV, with DVD player and many high tech options which I know nothing about. All of this for only $197, a real bargain at Kmart. Okay, so I don’t usually shop there for anything but they do seem to have the good deals on TV’s every Black Friday.

2. Nintendo DS Lite at Circuit City for $139. You can choose from the Pink version with the Nintendo Dogs game or the Gold version with Legend of Zelda Phantom of the Hour Glass. Snow White would really like a Pink DS but I think she would rather have the cool Zelda game. She is a big fan of the Zelda games.

There was also the option of an Xbox at Walmart at $279 for ManSon. He has wanted one since they first came out. Why has this game system not come down in price over the last few years? I am big on giving my children great gifts but usually they do not ask for such trendy/fad items.

Since he is 19 years old I decided to let him figure out which gift he would like for his big present. We discussed it on the way home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. He was pretty taken aback when I suggested the TV or Xbox. He had only asked for me to fix up my Lincoln. Yes, I still have my old car even though I bought my new van back in June. What can I say. I am really attached to that luxury car. There is no seat in this world that comes close to the comfort of the driver’s seat in my Lincoln. Aside from the Lincoln he asked for an alarm clock.

Ok so instead of an alarm clock and fixing up the Lincoln (new muffler and motor for the driver’s side window) I am offering a brand new TV or Xbox. After much deliberation he chose the TV. I think Santa will bring him the alarm clock and I will fix up the Lincoln since his car is out of commission.

It was 11PM when we arrived at our house. We had out sales pages laid out and our plan of action was to hit Circuit City first since it opened first. Aunt C told us they were opening at midnight. This was a surprise to me but hey, I was willing to do a little shopping at midnight.

Auntie D and I headed out to Circuit City. We arrived at 12:30 AM and there was a decent sized line formed across the front of the building. The store was not open. The Circuit City Black Friday campers were 99% teenagers. Since we were out and the store was not open I decided to park and ask the only adults in the line (at the end of the line) when the store would open? They told me the store opens at 5AM and they were all in line for the $800 lap top which would be on sale for only $300! I assured them I was not interested in a lap top. My goal was the Nintendo DS. They all looked at me as if I had three heads. They did not know what it was so I explained it was a child’s hand held game. I know many teenagers have them too as Oldest Daughter and her friends have them.

Then we headed over to Best Buy. This store was not on our list but we spotted a tent and a huge line. I could not resist driving by and laughing. There is nothing on sale this Black Friday that would make me sit down on a cold concrete side walk freezing my wee bum off for 5 hours or more.

I did not take photos of the Black Friday Circuit City sale campers since I would be returning in a few hours. Look here at the Best Buy. The first person in line has a TENT set up! This was the first time I had seen someone using a tent for the Black Friday customer line up.



Oh and a few minutes later more people and tents were added to the line. The line not only went across the front of the building but down the side and curved around the back of the building! Since I was snapping pictures here I did not venture out to ask what they were hoping to get for their Black Friday bargain.



One thing I saw really annoyed me. There was a Mother, Grandmother and a little boy around 6 or 7 years old. Why on Earth would someone bring a child to sit out in the cold and wind for 5 hours?! Surely one of them could have staid home with the boy while the other scooped up the bargains!

After seeing the enormous line at Best Buy I could not help but laugh at the measly line of about 4 people camped out at Staples.



I cannot wait to read your Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday posts!

To be continuted....

4 comments:

Pageant Mom said...

We will not have a fancy tv until the last one in our house burns out LOL

I was home fast asleep and warm in my bed.

While everyone else is out trying to get stuff, I'm still trying to purge!!

Did you get your bargains??

Canadian flake said...

So how did you make out?? Did you get everything that you wanted??

MommasWorld said...

Pageant Mom - I cannot understand the need to revamp the TVs. My Tube TV from 2 yrs ago still works great. The picture is clear and the sound is great (knocking on wood). Why do they have to fix something that isn't broken? Why must they charge thousands of dollars for the new TVs? That is just crazy to me.

Canadian Flake - That is coming up later today :-)

Whiskeymarie said...

You are a brave soul to have gone out shopping that early.
Did you get everything you were trying for?