Thanksgiving!!

Well, last week was crazy, just like everyone's week I'm sure. We went to San Antonio to visit friends like we always do. And it was great, as usual!

My Mom and her friend Kathy actually did the stake out thing for Black Friday. For those of you who are not familiar with this day of consumption; Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving Thursday and is typically the biggest shopping day of the year. By this I mean that more people go shopping on this one day than any other day of the year. Because of this, stores often have one day sales on items with crazy low prices. The trick is that they only carry a limited number of these items, so if the Wii is on sale for $149.00, they might only have 50 of them, so you gotta get there early. Well...Mom and Kathy did just that.

The Target: Nintendo Wii for $149.00
The Store: HEB Plus
The Plan: Get there early and be aggressive
The Players: Susan's Mom and best friend Kathy
Rooting on the sidelines: Susan, at home in bed wishing them the best

The store opens at 5am, so the girls arrive at the HEB Plus at 4:30am with 30 minutes to spare. When they arrive they estimate that there are actually about 300 people ahead of them and others are pouring into the lot to stand in line.

They have grocery baskets tied together to form one long aisle that snakes back and forth to keep the people in line. Once in line they hear announcements asking everyone to "please remember to remain calm", "remain in a single file line" and "there will be only one entrance open to the public and there will be no running once these doors open." I picture them having lavender incense to calm the nerves and playing Enya over the loudspeakers, but that could be a slight exaggeration.

After listening to a woman state to Kathy "I should have just come over here after the game last night" and being absolutely serious about this, 5am finally arrived. The doors opened and people walked in an orderly fashion to the entrance. Once inside the doors the speed walkers come out in force all heading to the electronics section. A slight frenzy of wide eyed fully awake men and women search for the special items they have come for. Mom and Kathy see the Wii display! They rush up to it, sick arms through holes and pull out one Wii each! Success I say!!

I'm sure it was a bit anti-climactic to stand there with Wii in hand, no blood having been drawn, no threatening words having to have been thrown around. Maybe the sounds drowned out in their ears and they heard silence...or...they started looking around and finding toasters for $5, cameras for $50 and other great things!! They did however report a wounded comrade. A woman was heard crying and talking to security because a man took her Wii out of her basket! The security guards then offered to have her identify the man and said they would get her Wii back for her. No news on if this happened, I wish her luck though.

So that and 2 extra pounds on my hips was Thanksgiving. Again, I didn't actually go on this adventure, but I almost feel like I was there. :-)