Black Friday

When the alarm went off at 5:20 this morning, I doubted my own sanity.  I was warm and cozy in bed with a warm and soft dog snuggled up next to me.  I turned off my alarm and flopped back down in bed.  I probably would have dozed off but my phone started buzzing.  It was my mom calling.

5:20 would have been sleeping in her for her.  She had already hit a couple of stores and stood in line at JcPenny's for an hour to checkout.  I assured her I was up and was going to head off to Home Depot.  My plan was simple...Home Depot for batteries, Walgreen's for sparkling grape juice, JoAnn's for yarn, and Petsmart for dog food, treats, and toys.

Home Depot went smoothly.  I parked right up front, walked in and grabbed some batteries, paid, and was back in my car within five minutes.  As I pulled out of the lot I was telling myself I could be back in bed my 7:15 at this rate.

I pulled into the parking lot of Walgreens and the store was dark.  They don't do Black Friday hours I learned.  I just assumed they would be open like every other crazy store.  This was a minor wrinkle in my plan.  I headed off to JoAnn's.  The doorbuster sales started at 6 and it was 6:05.  I pulled in the parking lot of yet another dark store!!!  I was mad.  It turned out our local JoAnn's is liquidating before moving locations so they were not doing Black Friday.

I decided to check out Michaels in order to kill some time before Petsmart opened.  As I started looking at stuff, I realized I would need the magical 25% off entire purchase coupon to make anything really worthy of great deal status.  My mom came to the rescue.  She was off at another store but being the boy scout shopper, she was prepared with all of the ads in her car.  She delivered the coupon and got some scrapbooking goodies and some yarn (not as good of a deal as JoAnn's but I needed it for a Christmas craft).

I stopped at Walgreens following Michaels.  They were finally open.  They didn't have any of my sparkling grape juice that I wanted but I did grab a few other things and used the in-store Register Rewards to my benefit.  For $14 I got 2 toothpastes, 2 18pks of black Goodie hair bands, 2 deodorants, a Thermacare pain heat patch, 2 coffee creamers, 3 rolls of paper towels, AND a personal humidifier.  I kicked butt at Walgreen's.

Petsmart was the last stop and it turned out great too.  I got two big bags of Brinkley food, six bags of dog treats, and four cans of dog food for $55... which is less than I would have paid for 2 bags of food any other time of the year.  Brinkley definitely scored big on Black Friday.  We will be set for a while in the dog department.  Maybe I can finally make some headway on preparing homemade food for him...something I haven't given up on!

And now, I'm off to bed.  It was a crazy hectic day at work.  I'm glad I only have to work one more day this week.