Black Friday

After Thanksgiving dinner, Gina (mother-in-law), Erika (sister-in-law) and I sat down to create our plan of attack for the next day. We were going to tackle the busiest shopping day of the year together, Black Friday. Of course, me being the psycho-organized person that I am needed a well scheduled itinerary. So we decided on what stores we wanted to go to and I set forth to make our game plan. You cannot possibly even think of taking on Black Friday without a plan. All the stores open at different times and all the sales end at different times. Some stores have their big sale until only 10am, others keep it going until 1pm. Based on all of these factors, you have to prioritize the order in which you are going to visit stores. Plus, Gina and Erika have never the participated in the early morning Black Friday festivities and I am a seasoned veteran, so I made us a schedule. We even went to bed fairly early on Thursday night, as we had a 4am wake-up time in our future.

My alarm clock went off at 4am and I hit the snooze button. It went off again at 4:30 and Erika came to see if I was up yet, which I was not. We decided to tweak our plan and get up at 6 instead. So 6:00 rolls arounds and my alarm goes off again; snooze button. Finally at 6:30, I get up and go get Erika up. Gina decided that she was going to hang out at home and not join us on our shopping adventure. I guess I can't blame her, she did get up at 6am the day before to drive 7 hours from the Keys to us. At 7:00, Erika and I were off to the Outlets which are conveniently only one exit South on I-95 of my house.

We spent some time at the Outlets, with no success. We were both very tempted by the good deals in Coach, but we stayed strong. After a pit-stop at McDonalds for a healthy breakfast, we were making our way up to the Town Center mall.

We shopped around at Town Center, which was super packed. The only success I had with my shopping was at Express which turned into a 2 hour adventure. First, we picked out our stuff and had to wait for like 30 minutes for a dressing room. Then, we had to stand in the cash register line which rivaled the average Splash Mountain line at Disney World. The cash registers in this Express are in the middle of the store; this line went from the registers all the way to the front of the store, then wrapped all the way around half of the store back to the dressing rooms in the back of the store. There were probably about 70 people in this line and it took about 45 mintues to get through. So Erika and I entertained ourselves by people watching, especially the ridiculous metro-sexual men that shop in Express. After, Express we continued our shopping a little while longer and then decided to call it quits.

Although I usually never buy anything really exciting on Black Friday, I still go every year. Something about that day just puts me in the holiday spirit, and I actually don't mind having to stand in line or deal with people. Once home from shopping, it was time to pack our things and get on the road. We were Tallahassee bound!