This morning Mom and I were up at 5:30 ready to hit the major stores. Our first target was Best Buy, which was advertising a $499 Toshiba laptop. Of all the cheapo laptops that were being advertised, this one was deemed the one to get. Unfortunately, everyone else in Phoenix felt the same way. When we arrived at 5:45, the line was already around the block and apparently the first people in line had already got vouchers for the laptop. So we made a b-line for Fry’s which had a runner-up bargain.
In my rush to get to the bargains, I left my cellphone in the car so Mom was unable to communicate with me. As a result, we missed the $69 TV. I did get the laptop and waited about an hour in the checkout line. I almost upgraded to one that was $300 more (also a steal) but I told myself I would only get the cheap one.
Off we went to Home Depot, Office Max, and Linens and Things. Mom got some things she had scoped out. Both of us were pooped by the time we made it back to the house. My one consolation was that I got to set up a new laptop. As I booted the machine up, I noticed that there was 1 pixel on the screen that was messed up. Darn it. I decided to just let it charge the battery and sleep on it.
When I woke up 4 hours later, I decided that I needed to take it back. My intention was just to replace it with another one if they had one. So off I went to Fry’s after dinner. They had to examine the laptop and deemed it re-saleable (after marking it down 20 bucks). They asked me if I wanted to just get another one. I told them that I wanted to look at some others and maybe upgrade to the next one up. When I went to the department (after 20 minutes of paperwork), I noticed all of the same salesmen that were there at 6am were still there!! As I was getting ready to approach one about the laptops, the supervisor came up and told everyone to shut all the computers off and that it was time to go home. This was at 9:10 and the store was supposed to close at 10. So I decided that if they were not interested in helping me then I’d just take my money.
So off I went. I was tempted to get an iPod speaker set for the bathroom, but opted to just leave. So all the hard work and running around this morning was for nil. But I had fun anyway. The best part was after Fry’s I headed over to Jason’s and got to soak in the hot tub for a bit before he needed to go to bed.
A long, exhausting day. Now it is off to bed and then back to work tomorrow.