14 hours of Black Friday Power Shopping

Holy Moly what a year!

Nobody can complain about the economy that’s all I have to say!

About 5 years ago my wife decided for her birthday (Which falls on Nov 30’th) that we’d take the day after Thanksgiving and knock out the bulk of our Christmas shopping. I let her talk me into it.

It was the easiest thing we ever did. Really. No lines, no traffic No nothing the last 4 years. A LONG day sure, but we’ve had fun and enjoyed the day together taking our time and getting the bulk of our shopping done in one day.

I’m not kidding. What’s billed as the busiest day of the year simply was a piece of cake for us. Most malls and stores were empty. We’d get front row or near front row parking everywhere. Now I worked retail for a number of years and I know what this day is capable of being but for the last few years, it has not been bad at all.

This year was very, very different. Butts and elbows everywhere. We didn’t even attempt to get up early. Didn’t even drop the kiddies off at the in-laws until 10 am to avoid the BIG rush to get the uber bargains. To me that’s just not worth the hassle.

Our first stop was at Kohl’s, and I kid you not at 11:30 am the check out lines wrapped half way around the store. (Sheesh).

More on this day later, in depth but I’ll leave you with a couple tid-bits.

I do a fair amount of Internet shopping. Best Buy, you didn’t get a DIME from me this year. Here’s why.

Every time I went to your website from Thursday night on, this is what I saw:

Not good. I never got a good chance to see what you had on sale. We did stop by and browse the store, but I can’t stand you’re return policy anyway so you lose.

I almost bought this camera online from Circuit City.

After all I was saving almost $10,000 dollars 🙂

Man you’d think as important a day as this was and as far as the internet has progressed companies would have their act together when it comes to this stuff.’

Thanksgiving day

Things to be thankful for, family and friends.

My cousin Angie sent us this picture of Grandma and Grandpa Bruce today, not sure exactly when this was. The last thanksgiving day he was alive at my aunts house. Early 80’s I would guess? I’m sure my mom knows for sure.

We spent the day at home with Claudine’s parents. Excellent company and excellent food! Claudine did a hell of a job cooking this year Turkey and all the fixins, taters, green bean casserole, two types of stuffing, corn with bacon, biscuits, and more. It was most excellent.

Hope your thanksgiving is or was a good one.

Bengals, keeping it interesting…

Based upon who the Bengals have beaten thus far, I really didn’t think they had a chance today. There’s still 4 minutes to go and they are down by 11. Indy just flat out wasted a possession and they are giving us the ball back with 3:49 to go. *That* I don’t understand.

Indy is good, that good. Are the Bengals that good? not yet, but they did impress me a bit today. I had pegged them losing today 31-17. The fact that they put up 34 points at this point impresses me because they’ve been getting it handed to them all day and they didn’t fold. That is HUGE.

Yes, I’m going to say it. The Bengals are for real, they are a top 8 team in a league of 32 teams. Top can 8 get you to the playoffs, and luck might carry you to the SuperBowl but you’ll probably be blown out when you get there. You need to be a 4 team to be a dominating force, to truly be respected on both sides of the ball.

Palmer was just sacked and they just gave up another 5 yards on top of that with a false start penalty. Top 6 teams don’t do that.

Yeah, I’m hard on the Bengals. They’ve sucked for so long. They got us all hyped up for the Pittsburgh game and got their butts kicked. This game wasn’t all that different. It was a game at halftime sort of but they were behind and hadn’t shown any ability to stop Indy all day. The feeling in the gut at halftime wasn’t good.

Their only saving grace was that Baltimore beat Pittsburgh today. But we play Baltimore next week and they aren’t as bad as they have been.

We ran all over Indy, what do you think Pittsburgh will do? Pittsburgh has a better chance to knock off the undefeated I believe, if they have Ben back.

The Bengals gave them a game though, at least offensively. Again, Bengal mistakes led to their loss. They stopped stopped themselves, more than the Colts stopped them, and that’s not a good thing.

All and all though I’m pleased with the way the Bengals played. It’s still a loss, but it’s a respectable loss given the opponent and our lack of any away to stop them what-so-ever.