Monthly Archive for November, 2004

It is that time of year again.

I am about to mail out Christmas Cards, and I pray that every one of them reaches their destination. There is nothing worse than getting a Christmas Card sent back. I have made every effort to keep my address book up to date, short of a pre-emptive test mailing.

I only had two of them returned last year, so 98% of them reached their intended recipient.

Here’s hoping for 100% this year!

Today was the first time I have ever joined the day after Thanksgiving shopping craze, and it will also be my last.

I do not know what prompted my wife to get a wake up call from Target at five in the morning. But whatever it was, we made out way out the door a little after six. Our first stop was Target. It was only a little crowded, and most of the sales were not that great, especially since we were not buying that much.

Our next stop was Wal-Mart. This is where the morning started getting interesting. There was a line to get into the store. There was no room to walk down the aisles. After about twenty minutes of waiting to go down one aisle in the toys department, we gave up in the shopping cart and decided to carry the boy, and all of our purchases. The most annoying thing of the morning was the hour I spent in the checkout line after having already spent over an hour in the store.

Now it was off to Best Buy. Again, there was a line to get into the store. We left. There is a line at the checkout of Best Buy on a normal weekday, and I was not about to waste another hour or more of my life, when I could order what I wanted online and have it shipped to me, or the person that was going to receive it as a gift.

Being an electronics junkie, and browsing most of the major electronics stores almost every weekend, and also not being able to pass up a sale, we moved on to CompUSA. I think this was the final straw that strengthened my resolve to never go shopping the day after Thanksgiving ever again. They all a plethora of “2 day only sale” sign around the store that were advertising there regular store price. Everything I had looked at a week earlier to add to my Christmas in hopes of not having to spend my own money on new toys was the same price! I am not saying that there were no sales in the store, I am sure there were many sale items. But they had their regular price advertised as a sale price. How ethical is that?

Then we went home. That was my day, aside from waiting for the cable guy. But my wife did not have enough. She went back to the mall! God bless her and her resolve to buy Christmas gifts as discounted prices. She is far keener on this than I.