Sitting Out Black Friday

Today is supposedly the busiest shopping day of the year, when almost every store has a huge sale and everyone kicks off their holiday shopping at the same time. Personally, I have come to think of this day in the same vein as New Year's Eve: tons of hype for not that much fun. I was never one to partake in Black Friday, because it just seemed like a bigger hassle than it is worth. There is just something about how I am wired, but the two things that drive me the craziest are sitting in traffic and standing in long lines and those are two things you will find in abundance around any store today. Thanks, but if it's all the same to you I'll go later, pay a little more and not get elbowed in the face by some mom over the last Dora the Explorer doll.

There was a story on the news yesterday about a family that had gotten in line at 5 AM on Thursday, a full 24 hours before the Best Buy was to open. Honestly, how much do you need a new laptop that you would forgo Thanksgiving dinner with your family and sleep outside in Massachusetts in November (I love camping and yet I find this to be extremely dumb) just to save some money? If you can't afford it the rest of the time, then maybe you just don't need it (see, being broke changes your perspective on holiday shopping). The best Christmas shopping I ever did was to go to the South Shore Plaza the day before Thanksgiving with my dad. The mall was dead, but every store had some kind of pre-Black Friday sale already going on. Was it the 60% off we would have found on Friday? No, but for lack of lines and traffic, it was worth things only being 40% off. Some things are just worth paying a little extra for, and not having to stand in line for 45 minutes is definitely one of those things.

-After watching two NFC East teams on Thanksgiving yesterday, can we come together across America and just agree that maybe the division isn't that good? I keep hearing about how it's one of the best divisions in football, but I don't see it. Sure, the Cowboys can beat up on bad teams, but even middle of the road AFC teams seem to handle the rest of the division. It's this weird dynamic where the Redskins can't beat the Cowboys, who can't beat the Giants, who can't beat the Eagles. Like the Pac-10, it's simply a round-robin of suck.