Black Friday

I don't think we've ever really gone out during the shopping madness of Black Friday.  I usually need my beauty sleep, so there's very little that will get me to wake up that early in the morning, especially potentially getting trampled to death at a WalMart.  I'm a little skeptical at how good the deals really are, as I suspect that some places will artificially raise their prices just so they can mark down a higher percent sale.  Plus, no matter how good a deal is, an even better deal is not spending anything at all (but if you must get something, then get it online shipped to your destination from the comfort of your home).

However, we did decide to venture out into the madness this year.  Mostly because we've been thinking about getting some new shelves and to clean up our loft.  So we ended up going to Ikea (sorry, we're still in poor grad student mode so we default to Ikea and not to any "real" furniture store).  It actually turned out to be the best time to go---there was virtually no one else there!  I don't think I've ever seen an Ikea this empty before.  I guess they didn't have any official Black Friday sale so everyone else was probably elsewhere trampling each other (we actually did a drive-by of the outlet mall next door and literally every single space in the parking lot was full with more buses disgorging people.  That's when we decided just to go home.

Sadly, we did have to go out and buy some batteries for our failing smoke detector.  For the last couple of nights, it's decided 3 am was the best time to let us know that it needed a new battery.  So we had to venture into a Best Buy on the way home.  It was crazy---there was police tape outside (presumably to control the lines that morning) and inside was a madhouse of people and piles of inventory randomly blocking various aisles.  Luckily, we managed to get our batteries and get out of there.

(And no, that didn't fix the smoke alarm, it looks like it's expired and we have to buy a new one...)