Day after Thanksgiving Shopping---a cautionary tale...

[ScreamingMeemie]

Let me begin by saying, I am an idiot. What came over me to look at sale ads yesterday must have been some turkey induced semi-catatonic state. Heck, I had to get up with MrGrumpy anyway..so why not check out that sale where they are practically giving away cameras. It's 5 AM...no one will be out. Right.

I pulled up to the store, happily comtemplating how I can run in grab two of the practically free cameras, and be home in 15 minutes tops. It took 20 minutes tops to find a parking space. I was a bit early so I figured I would get out and walk up to the doors...only there was a line from the doors stretching all the way around the parking lot to the street entrance. So I turned around and got back in my car and went home. No wait, that's a different story, I actually stayed telling myself,"how many people are actually here for the cameras they are practically giving away?". Turns out a contingent from the state of Montana was there for the cameras. ;)


The doors opened and the orderly line becomes a mobbing teeming mass of people...kind of like after a Michigan/Ohio football game. Still I press onward. These people are freaks, and hey look, I am one of them...

After getting pinned in the toy department by two bicycles and an irate grandmother looking for the stuffed animals I made my way back to the camera department to grab the cameras...only I couldn't because there was a line there too. I entered the line, which was amazingly unhurried and I actually met some friendly people. We inched along, I could finally see the counter. I approach with a beaming,"look at me, I enjoy driving in a freezing rainstorm, to stand with a bunch of crazy people in order to get a practically free camera." She beams back,"Sorry, all sold out, no rainchecks." And my world collapsed. Here I had wasted 1 hour and 10 minutes of precious, quiet, sleeping child morning time, to battle the public in order to come home...empty handed. Okay, well not totally empty handed, I bought one of those really cool throwback video classic arcade joysticks that you plug into your t.v. and play old Atari games like Centipede and Pac Man. I got $5 off!

Moral of the story: My father was right when he told me that if it looked too good to be true, it actually was. That and it was an amazing odyssey of Christmas cheer on a cold, dark morning...no wait, that's another story...

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I'm off to knit some Christmas gifts. ;)