Our son Sam has been looking for a laptop computer for the last several months. His is over 5 years old and barely functioning, even the power cord has worn out to the point where he is having to jiggle it to get it to just the right position before the computer will turn on. We have been sans a working coffee-maker for the same period of time, making coffee by pouring boiling water thru the top of the non-functioning maker and then reheating it in the microwave as the morning progresses. Darling daughter wanted a sweatshirt for the football game and had actually extracted a promise from me last year that I would take her shopping on Black Friday some time in the future....ok, I had probably said 'next year' but who knew she'd remember?
All this to say that we got up at 5am on Friday and headed for Visalia before 6. The anti-consumers who have never in their lives (as far as my memory allows anyway) participated in the madness of the biggest shopping day of the year decided to check it out; tho we did at least have reasons beyond buying stuff simply because we would be getting a 'deal'.
Note to self ...no reason is good enuf to do this... EVER.
So, we headed out to the Mall in the dead of night...well, it was dark...and tho the whole episode (check out Steve's blog post on the subject) actually lasted a mere 2 hours, it seemed like an eternity. Annie bought a sweatshirt with her (future) birthday money.....
...Mom and Dad bought a coffee maker not made in China (is India that much better?)...
...and Sam returned home empty-handed....Best Buy ran out of computers in about 10 minutes and he said the store was wall-to-wall people.... he has now taken the 'never again' pledge.
Annie was probably the only one who was in the least bit happy. Sam's trip was a complete bust and Steve and I don't like to shop at the Mall on a good day . Tho we did come home with a coffee-maker; I'm having pangs of guilt about the purchase already. It uses electricity, it was probably made by an 11yr. old East Indian child working in a sweatshop for 19cents an hour, and really, how hard is it to pour hot water thru a filter every morning? .....sigh.
and ps. The most disturbing part of the day came later in the afternoon when we heard on the news about the worker killed by rampaging shoppers at a Long Island Wal-Mart, made even more tragic by the shoppers refusal to leave the store after hearing of the death....."Must have my TV"....Ick
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I know where you're coming from, Maureen. We, too, did not want to participate in the madness, but when Joshua called (he's working at Circuit City now and was there from 4:30 am to 4:30 pm that day) and said they had HP laptops on sale (his at home is exactly as Sam's is, just worn out), I dragged myself out to make what turned out to be a great deal ($649 machine on sale for $399). Then we just had to go to the mall (for whatever). That's where Naoko made the best comment of the day. As we drove into the parking lot and found it to be completely filled, she said, "What is a recession?" Well, maybe it is just one day, but hopefully, the stores will do well. After all, I don’t think the economy is all that horrible. I heard a commentator today say, “What’s so bad about having 95% of mortgages paid on time and 95% of the people working who want to work?” Just kind of says it’s not all that bad.
LOL....LOVE Naokos comment! (I'm having t-shirts made:)
ps. any of those laptops left???
That last picture of the giant yawn is hilarious! Although there wasn't anything I wanted to get, two girlfriends and I got out around 7am on Friday. I joked that I was going with them for sport...people watching!
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