First of all–why is everyone suddenly calling the shopping day on the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday?” Is it because that is when stores supposedly go into the black financially? The truth is that they should call it Red Friday because that’s when a lot of the consuming public go deeper into debt despite the great deals everyone thinks they’re getting.

I love shopping the day after Thanksgiving and I did it again this year. To me, getting up at 4 AM to go shopping the day after Thanksgiving is about tradition, family and having a good time. My wife and I do purchase a significant portion of our Christmas presents on this day and Uncle Josh always gets his end wet as well.

This year, here was my loot:

From Best Buy:

  • 100 DVD-Rs for $4.99Mission Impossible III on DVD for $7.99
  • A 1GB SanDisc memory card for my son’s Fisher Price camera we bought him this year
  • Prison Break Season 1 for $19.99
  • A 2GB Pro Duo memory stick for my Sony digital camera for $39.99 (this is 8x the size of the memory stick I previously had which has now become a backup)

Let me tell you what I loved about Best Buy on Black Friday this year–no rebates! This is huge to me because I find the whole rebate process to be a major pain in my ass and the fact that Best Buy recognized this was a burden on their customer base and took measures to alleviate that burden speaks volumes to me about where their priorities lie in their business model and I have to say that they are in the right place.

Circuit City did not offer the same deal–they had rebates but lucky for me, nothing I got there had any. Here’s my Circuit City loot bag:

  • Halo 2 for the original XBOX for $16.99 (I haven’t played a Halo game yet but everyone has told me that they were the shit for the original XBOX and they are backwards compatible with my 360 and supposedly feature a significant graphics upgrade to High Definition or near it)
  • Red Dragon on DVD for $2.99
  • The Untouchables on DVD for $4
  • Memoirs of a Geisha on DVD for $5.99 (this one was for my wife)

And that was it for my Black Friday purchases. I know I’m getting older because while thumbing through the ads on Thanksgiving this year, I kept saying to myself, Don’t need that–already have that–not interested in that. I used to have a list of shit I wanted thousands of dollars deep (far into the red, my friends–too far into the red!) But that list has dissipated into a been-there-done that.

All in all it was a great shopping trip which ended with a Tall Caramel Latte and an Asiago bagel from Panera Bread and some good stories to tell.

But beyond that, it inspired the idea for another How to Think about possession which I will be writing forthcoming.

I hope all your Thanksgivings were great and we’ll talk to yous soon.

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