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Saturday, November 25, 2006

My Friday Shopping Spree

I had to work at the EDJ (Evil Day Job) yesterday. It ended up being an okay day, though. I was the only one there until after 7am and there were only three of us on my floor, so it stayed nice and quiet. The day actually flew by quite quickly and that was good too.

At lunch, I checked email and I had a note from Pay Pal. They had a deal offering free shipping from select stores when you paid with their service, and there was an online shoe store with $10 off in addition to the free shipping. I checked it out. Clicked on casual shoes and discovered Minnetonka moccasins for sale.

I have a pair of moccasins that I just loved, but they were getting old and worn, and then I wore them outside to water the sod after it was put in and that was just too much for the poor things. They ended up soaked with water and one of the shoes started coming apart at the toe. Clearly, it was time to replace them, but I didn't have time to go looking. I had checked online at one of my favorite online shoe stores, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted and the price was a little high too. I wasn't expecting a whole lot when I clicked the brand name at this online store. And sure enough, as I paged through the shoes, the pair I wanted wasn't there--at least not in the color I was looking for.

There were a couple other pairs of cute moccasins, so I clicked on one of them and discovered that you could choose your color in that style from a pull down menu. Hmm, I thought, I wonder if I clicked on the shoe I'm looking for in another color if I could find the one I wanted. I gave it a try, and there was my moccasin! Hurrah!

So without having to battle any crowds, I shopped on my lunch hour and came away with a hell of a deal. $10 off a pair of shoes I'd been looking for since August and free shipping!

On my way in to work yesterday, I had to drive past several small malls--they're right off the freeway. One had Kohl's and Toys R Us and another had Best Buy and Borders. The parking lots for both were jam packed before 6am. I don't know what time Best Buy opened yesterday or if they were just that crammed with people that not everyone could get inside, but I saw a line up of people in front of the store. I'm not quite sure why anyone puts themselves through this. There is no bargain so great that I would battle crowds like this in the pre-dawn hours. And when I left work at 2:30, both parking lots were still jammed. I don't know if you could find an open spot to leave your car. I happily continued on home, content that I wasn't frazzling my nerves to spend money.