Black Friday Report, Annotated

Note: As I wrote this post I had too many mental side tracks, so I put them all in the footnotes. Yes, this post has footnotes. Yes, I know that's pitiful. But at least it keeps a central narrative.

In years passed we have woken up early and hit the stores on the day after Thanksgiving to find some good deals. Three years ago we got a GameCube package. Two years ago we got a bunch of mp3 players for my brothers, a bunch of DVD's, and some TV trays.¹ Last year we got some computer programs, DVD's, and a Game Boy Advance SP.² For each year in the past, there was something we wanted to buy that was a good deal. This year there was practically nothing that we wanted to buy. I certainly would like a nice large flatscreen television, but we're not exactly in the market for one right now.³ So without a major item in mind, we didn't get up early and join in the 5 am madness.

However, that didn't stop us from doing some serious shopping later in the morning. We decided to leave whenever the Babe woke us up, which happened to be a glorious 8 am.⁴ We hit the big box stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy and got several cheap DVD's, some clothing, and some toys for the Babe.⁵ We also went to Old Navy, which isn't my favorite clothing store, but they had some things that were cheap enough that I didn't care if they wore out quickly.

My take on this year's Black Friday is pretty blah, although the news reports say that retailers had pretty good results. Without any hot item like a Tickle Me Elmo or a $400 laptop, it wasn't a very exciting shopping day. I heard that the top selling item was a car GPS unit, which is a pretty boring top seller. But even without a must-have item, we enjoyed our stress-free Black Friday. We did some shopping, the Babe was in a good mood, and we were home in time to have a lunch of leftover turkey sandwiches. That's a good way to spend the day after Thanksgiving.
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¹ I'm not proud of the fact that we own TV trays, and much less proud of the fact that we have used them more than the dining table for months at a time. I don't want to be a TV family. My only consolation is that we don't use them much anymore, and that they were immensely useful when Becca was pregnant, morning sick, and immobile.
² This was a surprise present for me, but it's actually ended up being a better gift for Becca, since she plays it much more frequently.
³ The overall price of flatscreen televisions was much cheaper than last year. As the technology improves, production costs have decreased dramatically. However, even a relatively small 32-inch LCD television was still over $400 this year. A bargain by comparison, but still out of our price range.
⁴ Ever since the change from Daylight Savings Time, the Babe has been waking up around 6 am, but she still goes to bed around 8 pm. She isn't napping any longer, either. I'm not sure how to change her sleep schedule back, but the new schedule makes it very hard for me to go running -- I've only exercised once or twice since the time change because she gets up before I can even leave.
⁵ She's getting a set of Duplo Legos, but don't tell her that. We were actually really pleased with that purchase because when we got to the register we discovered that it was half-off! It wasn't marked as such on the rack or in the advertisement, so it was a pleasant surprise.