Upon returning home from tonight’s Thanksgiving festivities, my email was inundated with information about Black Friday shopping. 
As a red-blooded woman, I like shopping…a lot! But not enough to subject myself to Black Friday. I just don’t get it. I’d rather pay full price than put up with the lines, the mess, the crowds, and the crazed lunatics who are shopping in the middle of the night. As soon as police, pepper spray, or taser guns are needed to control things, shopping kind of loses its appeal to me.
My Christmas shopping is about halfway done, so I'll wait a couple of weeks when EVERYTHING goes on sale and finish up the rest. If you plan to partake in Black Friday, good luck! If not, enjoy your Friday off, sleeping in. I know I will!
It was Dec 8th here and then the Jan Sales. But retailers have discovered that they can take a hit on a day like today on price and they have a 'Day' one that might be called a Shopping Day. And since the volume trades they do will more than cover it any nominal loss.
ReplyDeleteDo 'I' like shopping. Well I like getting a deal. I'm uncertain if that qualifies me as being red blooded for the shopping. But what I am is more considered. And if I cannot figure out the my win because they have made things so complicated I leave it. I'm more a considered shopper than one needs to be for a charge down alleys using shopping trollies much as in Ben Hur. But I'm enough of a red blooded man to rather enjoy that aspect provided I wasn't expected to fill it.
Have a good sleep.
P.S. 3 hours to get home from LAX. Was that from when you re-hit the ground or when you got out of the building. I know, sometimes, getting out of LHR CDG or Dublin can cause people to cry.
Ya know what, I lied. I don't really like shopping at all. I like buying things, but I have little patience for shopping. Like you, if it gets to be a hassle, I lose interest. I have friends who find great prices at some of the discount stores where they go through racks and racks looking for something they like in their size. I can do that for maybe about five minutes before I don't want to anymore. The funny thing about the Black Friday sales is that a lot of the deals are offered online (Amazon even price matches a lot of it) with free shipping. I'd prefer that to dealing with crazies.
DeleteAs for the airport time, the 3 hours was from landing to getting home...about an hour get off plane since there is NEVER an available gate when you land at LAX so end up sitting on the runway for 15-20 minutes and get luggage. About an hour to just get out of the airport and then a little over an hour to get down the 405. My flight landed at 12:55 and I didn't get home until 4:15. That's not really the norm, but during the holidays it's so much worse.
I like shopping, too. I just don't like shopping with everyone else.
ReplyDeleteHa! Very true. That mob mentality during these shopping days is no fun at all.
DeleteOn that top card, the contrast one. People in the US aren't thankful for what they have on Thanksgiving. I'd say that's a miss-statement Isn't it more a wistful idealization of an era saying that's the goal. The 1950 seem to be the focus nowadays. Ergo the steam whistle screech with people trying to replenish to recover that time of plenty.
ReplyDeletePeople are either thankful for what they have or are not - Thanksgiving isn't going to change that. But you're right. The last part of the card should say "exactly one day after celebrating a day we are supposed to be thankful for what we already have". However, on some level, don't you think wanting more or better is simply human nature? I don't necessarily think it's limited to the US, but all those Black Friday shenanigans may prove otherwise.
DeleteIn the US the American Dream sorta inserts it into a constitution with a small 'c'. So in that, yes, the US is different.
DeleteBut what I was trying to say is slightly different. It's not the what they have so much as what they think is missing. The iconic age, the golden age, the age when things were correct. aka the 1950s. The decade that first saw TV on a wide scale that could sell into the mind of the viewer a picture of life, an aspirational life. And one that somehow conned its way into the minds of Americans and is the picture the rest of the world has of the US. That it held reality for about 5% of the pop mattered not at all. How many people lived like the Brady Bunch or Lucille Ball. I know they are later and things had softened somewhat by then, design-wise. I suspect the picture is of a woman in a linen twinset in a bra shaped on the nosecone of a B-17, pair of towheaded kids and a bird of plenty the size of an Emu sitting in a roasting pan is the folk memory people have in the mind.
Ya, a lot of people do refer to that period of time as the ideal. And that picture you paint is a good one. Amongst all the things that are very different now, I'm glad we don't have to wear bras like that anymore. ;)
Deletei don't get it either... black friday is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI didn't watch any news last night to see how the day went. I do have a friend who is a police officer and part of their job was to sit out in front of the Walmart to make sure things stayed calm. What a waste of an officer's time.
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