Shopped till we dropped, then shopped some more

What a fantastic holiday this was. Last year, I was here for Thanksgiving, but I found the whole idea of getting up at an ungodly hour in the morning and running for deals a bit foolish. I remember we went to Kohls at 1pm and by that time the Black Friday deals were over.

I don't know what brought about the transition, but I was quite excited to do major shopping this year. For all those who don't know, Thanksgiving is the biggest and craziest holiday in the US. We get 4 days holiday! The limelight of this holiday is the Black Friday Sales. Major shops all over US offer items at cheap, discounted prices. Most of the shops open at 6am Friday morning. However, people who want to buy costly items such as laptops, stand in the line from Thursday night. Crazy na? But I think it's understandable. I mean, if I am getting a 800$ laptop for 500$ bucks, even I would stand in the line. The details of these deals are released on certain websites such as this and this. Your local newspaper sold on the previous day also contains details about all the deals.


We purchased the newspaper Thursday eve weighing around 3kgs. I even took a snap of the width of the paper. We sorted out all needed deals and jotted down what we wanted to buy from where. While browsing on the bestbuy website, I came across a cool deal for a Sony camcorder. We immediately bought it. At 12am, we went out for a drive to Circuit City and Best Buy to see the line outside these shops. People had actually put up tents outside these shops! We came home by 1am and had no desire to sleep. However, we wanted to conserve our energy for the next day so slept from 2-4am. Got up at 4 and was out of the house by 5. Walmart had a good deal for portable DVD players. Unfortunately, we reached there at 5.10 and all the players were gone by then:(. So much so for getting up early. We were thoroughly disappointed by this first fiasco. Luckily, the next stop at Radio Shack got us a good PDVD at a good price.


Next on the list was Circuit City. We picked up a MP3 player, couple of flash drives, camera memory card, and a camcorder bag. After standing in the Circuit City checkout line for close to half hour, we went and picked up our camcorder from Best Buy. Next we reached Oxmoor centre containing a dozen different shops including Macy's, Sears, Disney, Bath and Body works. I found a cute teddy in Disney and stood in the line for 45 minutes to buy him. I picked up some good creams from Bath and Body works, they had a great sale going on and I had a 10$ off coupon. I bought some nice jewelry from Macy's. In Kohls, P bought some T-shirts and miscellaneous items. I was eagerly eyeing the Fabberware 14pc non-stick cookware set sold for 50$, when P reminded that we possibly couldn't carry all the items to India whenever we went. I was really sad to let such a fabulous deal slip out.


It was very, very cold that day and it was impossible to find parking. We visited 7 shops in all and shopped for 7 hours. If this was not enough, the next day we went to Edinburgh Premium Outlet and shopped more clothes, perfumes, and shoes. I also bought beautiful beads from Bead Palace. We both were very happy with all the shopping and most importantly we didn't buy unnecessary stuff. Over all a great shopping experience that I will never forget. It's a different matter that my legs ached for 2 days after the shopping:)