Black Friday Facade

I went [Black Friday] shopping today, like millions of other Americans across the nation. I didn't, however, stay up all night and wait outside doors at midnight. Nor did I get up in the wee hours of the morning to get to the mall for those "early bird special" sales. Instead, I woke up around six (a little earlier than my usual school hour) and got to the mall around seven fifteen or so; too late for the midnight shoppers (midnight! What madness!) but too early for even Nordstrom to open. (Maybe it's because Nordstrom knows its good enough for people to wait for it. I don't think they had any particular Black Friday sale.)

While I did buy a couple of things, I realized that none of my purchases were Black Friday special deals. I mean, I did look to see if there was anything good in the stores that advertised specials, I really did. But none of them caught my fancy; they seemed to be flimsy facades of great deals rather than actual great deals. Sure, fifty percent off everything at Abercrombie and Fitch sounds nice, but the only things that were on clearance in that store to begin with were shirts with 'Abercrombie' emblazoned on the front rather than their wool plaid pleated skirts (I want one of those. SO BADLY. But I think they ran out of stock, because I couldn't find it anywhere in the store other than on the mannequin.) or their cardigans which NEVER SEEM TO GO TO CLEARANCE. (Because full price for Abercrombie just isn't worth it!) And then there was Forever 21 (yeah, I know, such teenager taste. But I live in suburbia and I don't have a job. Don't judge.)--BOGO on sale items! What could be better?

Um. A lot? Considering that the sale items were blatantly polyester, gaudy, and not worth owning, it was kind of a let down. The only Black Friday sale I thought might have been worthwhile was the Godiva Hot Chocolate for $5 (according to the email, anyways), but they ran out before I got there! They only had the big tins left, which cost $35 for 3...I decided it wasn't worth it. (That, and I don't think I had $35 in my wallet.)

I guess Black Friday was just my first excuse to go shopping in a really long time, because the sales that I went to were a little disappointing. But at least I got a gorgeous, Mulberry-esque wool coat, an American Apparel hoodie, and a pair of Joe's jeans today!

In other news, we had a Thanksgiving party for the first time in probably four years yesterday. (I don't have any relatives that live on this side of the Pacific Ocean, so all of the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's/etc. party attendees for these kinds of events for me are other Chinese families in the region who don't have extensive families within a reasonable distance either.) We even had turkey--although it was store bought. And not from an American supermarket: we got ours from Ranch 99, a Taiwanese supermarket chain. The turkey was kind of dry because they didn't put any butter and used soy sauce instead of salt, but at least it came with a giant side of chow mein. Ahh, another typical Asian party.

I also watched The Thing, Horrible Bosses and a couple of episodes of The Office (US version) for the first time yesterday as well. By the time the evening ended, I've almost completely forgotten about that Thing ripping apart humans and morphing into this flesh eating monster. Almost.

What a lovely image to end the post, right? I thought so too.

xoxo, vivian