Let the insanity begin!

"It's the most irrational time of the year..."

Ah, the holiday shopping season. The time when the world of consumers just goes completely insane. Earlier this week, people lined up *the night before* outside electronics stores to get the new Xbox. Why? They weren't even on discount or anything, so it boggles my mind that people would line up outside a store to get first dibs, like it was for a once-in-a-lifetime concert or something.

And Friday morning, countless people will get up at the buttcrack of dawn to hit wee-hours sales that many stores are having. I don't understand why stores do this...why open at 5am and have a deep-discount sale only until 7am, and then stay open until 11pm with your stuff still discounted? Why not just have an average discount *all day*, or better yet, *all season* if you're wanting to have a sale? Or is the incentive just to get people in the store, and it'd be after the 7am (or whatever) cutoff time by the time someone gets up to the register, a diabolical bait-and-switch tactic? I just really Do Not Get It. I don't get the craze, I don't get the whole "Black Friday" deal...and for the most part, I don't get shopping in general. If I have to go into a brick-and-mortar store, I generally know exactly what I want, get in, get it, get out. Bookstores and craft stores are the exception - I will happily browse as time permits..provided the store isn't too crowded. I am not much of a crowd person (though admittedly crowds in seats are much preferable to crowds milling about and bumping into me.) For the past 7-8 years or so, I've done the vast majority of my holiday shopping online, and I like it that way.

With luck, I won't have to even leave my house on Black Friday. Traffic is already nuts *today*, I certainly don't want to be out in it on Friday. And any money I might have "saved" would be eaten up by either therapy or bail if I had to be out in the crowds at o-dark-hundred anyway.