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Ad after ad of madness

Against my better judgment, I awoke at about 4:30am this morning to brave the crowds on Black Friday. It’s called “Black Friday” because it’s one of the busiest (and craziest) shopping day of the year. It’s also the day that retailers can go “in the black” (i.e. score a profit for the year).

Every Thanksgiving Day, the newspaper is as fat as a Sunday paper even though it’s only a Thursday. This year was no exception. The paper was packed with ads from superstores trying to lure me to their place with their “loss leaders” with the hopes that I’ll buy something else while I’m there.

I decided against Fry’s this year. Last year, I was in line at 5am and I didn’t get what I was hoping to get. It was also a madhouse — uber-geeks everywhere trying to score a cheap DVD player or CPU/motherboard deal.

This year, I went to Best Buy in Round Rock. I got in line at about 5am. The end of the line was around the back of the store…it was long. I didn’t get in the store until 5:20am. It wasn’t easy to get everything in the ad as they scattered the ad items around the store. You had to hunt for what you wanted. I was able to get what I came for, so I got in the line to check out at about 5:35am. The line snaked through the store and it was also long. I didn’t get out until 6:30am. OK…it was a lot like the Fry’s experience last year, but at least I got something out of it.

Next was Target. Easy stuff. There were lots and lots of people, but no lines to speak of and I made out with a killer family sized electric griddle. I’ve been looking for one of these.

The last stop was Lowes. This place wasn’t crowded at all. On top of all that, most of the Friday sale items were all in the same place. This is child’s play compared to Best Buy. I was in and out in about 7 minutes.

I decided to come home after that. Susan and Erik met me at the door and I showed them the haul. Afterwards, I broke out the new griddle and made pancakes for me and the kids while Susan ventured out to the mall.

Was it worth it? I think so. I didn’t get anything like a TV for pennies on the dollar, but I did knock out a lot of people on my shopping list in one morning. I’m pretty tired, but satisfied.

And besides…the pancakes were great!