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How did you spend Black Friday ?
Old 11-26-2011, 05:49 AM   #1
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How did you spend Black Friday ?

Never did understand the traditional Christmas shopping day being the day after Thanksgiving and avoid malls and big stores like the plague.

Spent my black Friday, cleaning gutters, mowing, getting the garage cleaned and organized for the winter. In addition to catching the LSU-Arkansas game.

How did the rest of you tightwads spend the tradition shopping day ?
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Old 11-26-2011, 05:56 AM   #2
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Stayed home, watched football and enjoyed the peace and quiet after hosting 20 people for Thanksgiving. No shopping whatsoever.
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Old 11-26-2011, 06:36 AM   #3
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Had 1.5 inch of rain Thursday/Friday high of 62. I lit a fire anticipating brunch in the Arizona room. Poured some sparkling for Ms, G, it looked so good I had one too. About noon we decided that no one wanted to cook, so we had leftovers that our TD host packed for us. Spent the afternoon talking about our upcoming trip. Watched a couple of Joni Mitchell 70's video's. Never made dinner, off to La La Land.
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Old 11-26-2011, 06:56 AM   #4
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I've never understood the Black Friday shopping either. Nor does DW (thankfully!)

The Spenderina SIL went for a 9-hour marathon with her daughter. More and more it's turning into a contact sport. The behavior is admittedly beyond my comprehension.
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Old 11-26-2011, 06:58 AM   #5
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Not shopping!

I finished up my turkey carcass soup storage, emptied the dishasher, refilled/ran it with the larger casseroles and pots/pans, went to lunch with a friend, and did volunteer table bussing at night.
Business was very slow at the club, only 70 people for dinner. That was more than anyone expected to show up. I was hoping to w*rk off some of the extra food I ate on Turkey Day.
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:00 AM   #6
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Rescuing puppies and kittens from burning buildings, adopting starving orphans and gut-shooting annuity salesmen.
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:11 AM   #7
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We put in a "through the wall" fan to move heat generated by the wood stove in the living room to the adjacent bedroom. We had to make a quick run to Ace Hardware to get a few things for the installation so I guess that counts as shopping on Black Friday. Leftovers for lunch, a nice long nap, and warmed up leftover pizza for dinner.
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:21 AM   #8
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Yesterday we went to my brother's house in the afternoon. The route takes us by a factory outlet shopping center. There was a 2.5 mile backup on the highway due to a 2 mile long line of cars getting off at that exit (and two accidents).

The good news is they did wait for us before eating
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:26 AM   #9
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We spent most of it traveling back from visiting our daughter and SIL. We've never even considered going shopping on Black Friday.
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:58 AM   #10
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We spent it travelling back home after visting Savannah . I am not a black friday shopper unless it's online .
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Old 11-26-2011, 07:59 AM   #11
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Rescuing puppies and kittens from burning buildings, adopting starving orphans and gut-shooting annuity salesmen.
You da Man!
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Old 11-26-2011, 08:54 AM   #12
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After hosting Thanksgiving for 28 people, or was it 29 - and I was cooking too, along side DW - I spent quite a bit of time shopping on Friday. Yep, I deserved what I wanted to get.

I needed a certain thing, and went to all the usual places looking for it, such as Best Buy, Staples, Walmart, Costco, etc... Best Buy had something that would work for me, but I was late and it was sold out. Costco had the next runner up and at a very decent price, but it was not exactly what I had in mind, so I did not buy. I may have to do more shopping today.








Heh, hold your horses! I am talking about shopping online here.

About a week ago, my trustworthy laptop suddenly went "kaput". It was so sad. I paid $700 three years ago for this 4.5-lbs 13.3" laptop with a dual-core CPU. I had been happy with it, and was expecting to use it forever, and not having to replace it so soon. I strongly suspect that either the CPU or more likely the motherboard has gone bad. I have opened up and repaired a couple of laptops before, but am reluctant to fix this one. As I have no way of isolating the failure to either the CPU or motherboard, buying replacements for both would be nearly as expensive as getting a new laptop.

My requirements are simple. It must have a dual-core i3 CPU, 3 or 4GB of memory, a screen of 13.3" or 14", a built-in DVD, and a weight in the 4-lbs range or less. Oh, and it has to be $500 or less. If it weren't for price, one of the wonderful Sony Vaio's would make me very happy with the weight down in the 2-3 lbs. Toshiba also got some like that.

Found a suitable one on-line, and been seriously considering hitting the "buy" button. But I wonder if I can get a better deal by waiting a bit longer.
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Old 11-26-2011, 09:16 AM   #13
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First time in a long time that I did not leave home in the wee hours of the morning to get that "limited to supply on hand" black Friday item. I must say it was rather liberating! I spent the day relaxing and feeling good about my LBYM day.
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Old 11-26-2011, 09:25 AM   #14
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Found a suitable one on-line, and been seriously considering hitting the "buy" button. But I wonder if I can get a better deal by waiting a bit longer.
google the camelizer - fantastic tool for stuff you can wait a while for the best price. I heard about it from someone on this forum, IIRC.

I bought a B&W laser for a family member last year ~ $100. Went to buy the same one this year for another family member and it was $180! The camel found it for $98 a few weeks later - I jumped on it and got it!

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Old 11-26-2011, 09:34 AM   #15
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I did a 4 wheel brake job on DW's car saving hundreds of $$. However she was inside purchasing Christmas gifts online. I believe I'm overall in the hole $$$.
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Old 11-26-2011, 09:47 AM   #16
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We didn't leave the house. Played "Rock Band" on the Wii, exercised, made some panini sandwiches for lunch with some leftover ham from Thanksgiving, assembled an emergency kit for DW's car, finished watching season 4 of "Breaking Bad", ate some more ham for supper, and finally spent a few hours browsing the internet (but no online shopping).

We are done with X-mas shopping anyways.
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Old 11-26-2011, 09:50 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by NW-Bound View Post
About a week ago, my trustworthy laptop suddenly went "kaput". It was so sad. I paid $700 three years ago for this 4.5-lbs 13.3" laptop with a dual-core CPU. I had been happy with it, and was expecting to use it forever, and not having to replace it so soon. I strongly suspect that either the CPU or more likely the motherboard has gone bad. I have opened up and repaired a couple of laptops before, but am reluctant to fix this one. As I have no way of isolating the failure to either the CPU or motherboard, buying replacements for both would be nearly as expensive as getting a new laptop.

My requirements are simple. It must have a dual-core i3 CPU, 3 or 4GB of memory, a screen of 13.3" or 14", a built-in DVD, and a weight in the 4-lbs range or less. Oh, and it has to be $500 or less. If it weren't for price, one of the wonderful Sony Vaio's would make me very happy with the weight down in the 2-3 lbs. Toshiba also got some like that.

Found a suitable one on-line, and been seriously considering hitting the "buy" button. But I wonder if I can get a better deal by waiting a bit longer.
My 4 year old laptop died about 3 weeks ago; I found a nice Toshiba at Best Buy for $449. It's an AMD quad core processor, 17 inch screen, 4G RAM, and 500G HDD. I don't know the exact weight but it's not bad.
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Old 11-26-2011, 10:08 AM   #18
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Rescuing puppies and kittens from burning buildings, adopting starving orphans and gut-shooting annuity salesmen.
What a coincidence! Me too.

Actually, after taking F.'s Murano to the dealer for some expensive transmission repairs, we went to the gym, then lunch, then a pleasure drive, then the grocery store, and so on.

We stayed away from Black Friday sales and from the area's largest shopping mall, which is only a few blocks from his home. It didn't look that busy, though.
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Old 11-26-2011, 10:19 AM   #19
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I went to buy additional vitamins, OTC pain meds and Monistat + Vagisil to take with me to Central America next week when we run the free clinic for a week.
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How did the rest of you tightwads spend the tradition shopping day ?
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Old 11-26-2011, 10:20 AM   #20
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So, the unanswered question: was this black friday "blacK', or "black enough".

Just to remind those still recovering from turkey hangover, black friday is so named because it is traditionally the day when the retail industry makes it's first profit for the year. If black friday sales aren't good enough, the retail industry will have poor financial results for the year, and the ripple effects can be significant - as retail is the largest source of new job creation in the US economy.
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