Sunday, November 30, 2008

Holiday Festivities

Thanks for coming back to visit me. I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving. Ours was great. My mother called last week and told me her plans. We were having our gathering on Friday at her house. The sun was shining at that time and I had lots of energy, so I offered my house. This way, she could deal with the cooking, and I could deal with the cleaning.

It was a good plan, except I had to go grocery shopping, and when I came back, the sun had already gone down. The next few days were cloudy and gloomy, so the energy I had when I made my offer was gone. Although I did some cleaning, I had to force myself to do it. Luckily, Wednesday and Thursday were sunnier, so I was able to do the cleaning, and this way, I didn't have to spend all week cleaning. Yes, that means the sewing supplies had to be removed so the living room could be a living room again. I did have to keep all the bedroom doors closed though!

Thursday I went shopping at CVS. I don't generally go there, but they had a whole page of things that were free - you get extra bucks, which is irritating that you are forced to buy something from the store. When I got home, I realized I hadn't gotten extra bucks for one of the items, so I went back for that. I also managed to buy some gifts to use up some of those extra bucks.

Friday morning, we decided to risk Black Friday shopping again. Woke up at 4:15 to go to the store before it opened. This time, we went to a smaller chain (Staples), and at a smaller shopping center. I didn't have any big purchase in mind this year. There were some smaller things I have been wanting the last few years, and they all happened to be at terrific prices and all at one store, so I decided to go ahead and splurge. We were able to sit in the car in the warmth, and then someone drove up and decided he wanted to wait outside. So then we all had to get in line. It was a small line, but there was a minimum of 6 of each item in the store, and if everyone in line wanted the same item, we could lose out. The manager said we could fill out a paper to say what doorbusters we were there to get, and we could get tickets for those items, which were ours once we got a ticket. No pushing, no shoving. It went amazingly smooth. Compared to our trip last year, it was a completely different experience.

Everything was so smooth, I even went back to the store after breakfast to exchange the printer. I had been looking at the printer speed, but when I looked at the ad again, I realized that the printer I didn't buy had a flatbed, which would be wonderful for scanning photos, so I did the exchange on Black Friday.

I picked up a telescope from the drugstore for my niece's birthday, and all the kids really were excited about it. My nephew put it together in a few minutes without reading the instructions. My neighborhood in the city is well lit, so they really couldn't see anything, but my niece will be able the stars from her house really well.

Now I am going to give my credit card a chance to rest.

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