Yep, and looking forward to it! Which is weird, because I really, really hate shopping.
I’m not going for any of the big-ticket items, so I won’t line up for hours before the store opens. My mom and I will leave the house about 3:30am to get to JCPenny’s by about 3:50 or so (they are opening at 4). We’ll then swing by Macy’s when they open at 5, and probably call it a day after that.
And then we go eat breakfast and go back to sleep! 
I never have, but I will this year. I think this will probably be the last year I live right next to a shopping mall. I am going to get up at 4:30AM, which is the time I get up on a normal workday anyway. I will leave about 4:40 and walk to the store, arriving just before 5AM. I will get what I came for and walk back to my house and go back to bed.
My sister, works at Penneys, has to go in at 5am tomorrow. So she has to get up at 3:30am.
I wouldn’t be caught dead shopping tomorrow.
It’s Friday morning here in Troll Country, and this American will indeed be shopping today - to get the remaining groceries ready for tomorrow’s belated Thanksgiving feast.
But if I was living in the States? You couldn’t pay me to go into a mall or big box store today. My mom used to work retail. I’ve heard the stories :eek:
It’s weird - as a Brit, I had never heard of “Black Friday” until this year, and suddenly I’m hearing about it everywhere. I wonder if it’s one of those things that will be imported from America before long.
I hate shopping and I loathe crowds, so no. I’m staying in and writing a paper, which isn’t much fun either, but at least I’m alone.
My daughter is working the 4:30 am to 2:30 pm shift today, so I’m sure she’ll be exhausted. She is a cashier at Best Buy. Yikes! I’m sure she’ll have some interesting stories to tell.
My husband was willing to go out today and look around with me, but I decided to skip the sales this year. The kids are almost 15 and 20 and we have no need for toys anymore. I used to go out and get the deals on kid stuff when our kids and our nephews and nieces were little; there were a lot of great prices. I don’t have a problem with crowds at all… in fact, crowds invigorate me.
This year I haven’t noticed anything especially thrilling about any of the prices or merchandise. I know if I go out today I’ll buy things that I don’t really need, so what’s the point?
Of course I’m shopping!
Online shopping makes this easy, plus I don’t have to get up early to do it since i’m 8+hrs ahead of all the loonies.
The boyfriend is back at home working a double today though. I feel for him; I sure as hell wouldn’t want to deal with the in-store retail crowd.
Nah, we’ve done it a couple of times in years past, but there’s really nothing worth freezing our asses off and fighting crowds for this year.
Besides, our kids are nearly 17 and 20, so it’s not like we need any toy deals.
My husband was talking about doing it again this year, until he looked at the ads. He finally conceded I was right, and we opted not to go.
Frankly, I hate crowds; they just make me grumpy.
Just this past Wednesday, hubby called me and told me he was stopping by Costco, and asked if I needed anything while he was there. I told him I was low on Splenda, plus he could get me another big bag of those coffee beans he got me last time-they were good.
Well, yesterday I got around to asking him if he’d gotten that stuff. He said “No, the lines in there were too long; I wasn’t gonna stand in those lines for three items!” Then he brightened and said “But you’ll be passing two of them on your way home tomorrow; you could always stop in!” I said “I am not going into a retail store on Black Friday, and no one can make me!” :eek:
I will buy a small box of Splenda and a small bag of whole coffee beans while I’m grocery shopping tomorrow, and add both items to my next Alice.com order!
We went grocery shopping today. Since the entire greater metropolitan area was looking for deals on clothes, electronics and toys, we had the entire supermarket, freshly stocked, to ourselves.
I never did make it out to see my daughter at the mall yesterday (it was pouring out, and I gave her our one umbrella, so…), but she said it actually wasn’t as bad as she’d anticipated.
I DID go to the grocery store at 6:00p on Wednesday though, and that couldn’t possibly have been any less insane than yesterday was at the mall. I felt like I at least deserved a bumper sticker or something.
Despite having said that I wasn’t going to do any Black Friday shopping…I did. I live in a large-ish small town, so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be facing nearly the cluster-fuck I would be if I were in a city.
I left the house at 8 a.m., called one of the two stores I was planning to hit to find out if they still had the advertised BF item I was interested in. They did. The store was moderately crowded, but by no means awful. (The store was in the same shopping center as Walmart, and even Walmart didn’t look that bad, based on the parking lot – not that you could have made me enter the store for love nor money.)
The second store I wanted to hit wasn’t even crowded. They still had plenty of the two advertised things that I wanted, and I was there early enough to use my “20% off your entire purchase” coupon.
By 10 a.m., I was at home, sitting by a cozy fire with a cup of coffee. 
I woke up at 4AM and turned my alarm off and went back to bed actually.
I certainly hadn’t planned on it. But around 2pm, I went to deposit a check in my bank, which is just down the street from Fry’s. So on a whim, I decided to drive by and stop in if it didn’t look too crazy (and besides – I’d just deposited a check! Spend spend spend!). It looked crowded, but not insane, so I stopped. Picked up a Sony Blu-Ray player for $120, and a copy of Left 4 Dead 2 for the 360 for $34. Only took about 5 minutes to check out.
And on a tangent rant, I hate electronics that don’t come with the cables you need to hook it up. No hdmi cable included with the Blu Ray player, which I didn’t realize until I got home. Wasn’t going to go out again, so it sits uselessly in the box for the moment.
I did. I even camped out. It was awesome, and I was done about 3 minutes after the store opened.
Saw a door hanger advertising a $149 Wii Sports. I haven’t had a gaming console since the SNES and the Wii was the only one since that’s appealed to me. Having never done the “get up early to shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving” thing, I decided that this could be, would be, the year.
So I get my eight year-old daughter, load up on pillows/books/blankets/Sock Monkey/games, and head on down to the HEB Plus store that’s selling these things (a minimum of 50). We get there, find that we’re 24th in line, and queue up. Usually, one doesn’t bring a child to these things, but I’m one of those parents who believe that life is something to be experienced - you want to go sit with me on some hard concrete for 7 hours? It’s your choice, kid.
Sophie was awesome. Didn’t fidget, didn’t complain about being bored/cold/tired. She just waited in line like a person three times her age. We napped for a couple of hours (Sophie claims to have never slept, but there’s no way she laid still in the same position for two hours while awake).
The line cops did a good job too, ensuring that (at least for the first 100 people or so) that if somebody entered the line, somebody had to leave - no holding a space for your 20 family members that are going to join you at 4:45am.
Finally! We’re let in. Outside the store people walk calmly towards the entrance, but once inside it was a race to the Wii’s. Store people were yelling “Don’t run”, but that was about as fruitful as yelling “Don’t be wet” at a glass of water.
Well, I didn’t run (he says smugly).
I didn’t need to - as soon as my daughter hit the store, she started flying to the Wii’s. When she heard somebody call out “Don’t run”, she replied “I stayed still and was good for 6 hours - I WANT MY WII!!!”
Sophie gets to the pallets that contains the Wii’s. Already surrounded by adults, she knew exactly what to do - angling her body to its narrowest, she pushed her shoulder (and the rest of her) in between two pairs of legs, wriggling her way in the crowd. She grabs a box, then pulls herself out of the melee holding the thing proudly above her head. “I got one, Daddy!”
So we went to the register, paid for it, and was done with Black Friday no less than 5 minutes after it began.
I haven’t decided yet if it’s worth the crowds. in a few weeks I may decide to do it.
I had to work on Friday, so I ignored Black Friday entirely. But then I was at Best Buy on Saturday morning to look around for nothing in particular. But then I noticed the sale on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs so I bought The Dark Knight on DVD for four dollars and a bunch of titles on Blu-Ray for eight dollars each (Dark City, Silence of the Lambs, V For Vendetta, Star Trek II, Star Trek IV, Star Trek VI, and a few others I can’t remember). I was very happy.
Of course none of these were gifts. All were for me. I’ve always found it easier to shop for myself than for others for some reason.
I went out on Friday because we were - the horror - out of coffee! :eek: While I was at it, I also stopped at a nearby kitchen supply store and got a couple little kitchen items.
On Sunday, I added two DVDs to my Amazon shopping cart, in which I had a number of other items. Yesterday (“Cyber-Monday”) during the day, I checked the cart - the two DVDs had gone up by $2 and $5! Plus Amazon tends to report a lot of their reduced prices on non-book items as being “discounts” but often you can go to the manufacturer’s store or website and find that “discounted” price as being their actual, regular price. Be smart and research prices before you accept a website’s word as meaning you’re getting an actual discount.