Wow. I am amazed at myself. After spending a not insignificant portion of Thanksgiving Day admonishing the very idea of leaving the house at all on Black Friday, I left the house on Black Friday.
In my defense, a couple of points. First, any and all actual Christmas shopping was done from the same laptop that is bringing you this post. We didn't need anything, but The Wifey wanted to go do some shopping. So, around 1100, we hit the road. We avoided the major roadstops (Best Buy, Wally World, etc.) and hit up a couple other spots here and there. At Target, the crowd was, well... It just wasn't. The crowd apparently had come and gone with Target opening at 0500. The shelves were not picked clean, though we spent almost zero time near anything that really qualifies as a gift these days. We bought a cool jacket and a really warm jacket for The Little Girl (who has to be regularly corrected to stop strutting when wearing the cool jacket). The Wifey increased her collection of socks by 10 pair.
From there, off to Lowe's to look at reading lamps (we're reading a lot in bed these days, as the TV is still kaput), where I spontaneously remembered that we desperately needed a Christmas Tree bag. No crowd to speak of there, either. We left sans lamps, as we also remembered that the lamps we really loved were at Home Depot. We left Lowe's.
By the time we made it to the truck in Lowe's parking lot, we decided that lamps weren't necessary right now. Instead, we headed into San Antonio to hit up Dragon's Lair. Picked up a few new games, including Guillotine and family favorite Zombie Dice. Srsly? Every family should own a set of Zombie Dice. It should be required by law.
Black Friday was braved and conquered without incident. All is well. Yesterday was kind of a bust, since I had a pretty bad stomach ache that took me out all afternoon killing my plans to perform a test-bicycle-ride to my new office and back. Today will be busy. Gotta go get the Christmas decorations from the storage unit, decorate the house, and take that ride on top of the usual Sunday-get-ready-for-the-week stuff.
tweaker
What a fine photo of a broadside!
ReplyDelete25 years later, I still dream of being at sea, and of fire missions. Those were the days my friend.