So I celebrated my second Thanksgiving Day of the year in the same year for the first time - once in Canada, then another in the US. As you may have read, this really could have given me problems had I not been able to sign an apartment beforehand since most businesses are closed for Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25) and "Black Friday" (Nov. 26), with many places also closed for the last half of the 24th and the weekend following these dates. I've heard a lot of "Black Friday", but hadn't really seen it first hand. It's a day similar to Boxing Day in Canada (on Dec. 26) where people go crazy over sales at most every store. Some stores open at 4am on Black Friday and the rare few, at midnight. I didn't bother waking up early to line up for door crashers, but did actually take advantage of Black Friday sales online, many of which start the evening, say about 9pm before Black Friday. As well, some items can ONLY be found online and not at the stores, although this means that you may have to wait a week or two for the items to be shipped to you or the store.
Ironically, apart from a couple ergonomic/orthopedic pillows that I physically bought at a Sears for about 60% and 41% of their regular price, respectively, I ended up buying most everything else online. Again, these online sales are just as good as the real deals, and you avoid buying older models of stuff that stores are trying to get rid of anyway. Upon some of the great deals I scored were a 46" Samsung LED HD TV (120Hz) including a wifi-capable blue-ray player for 1K (I think I saved close to $900 on this one), including free shipping. I also got a TV stand for about $100 (regular probably over $300), a sectional sofa and ottoman for another 1K and a desk from Ikea shipped to me for ~$100.
All in all, it was a pretty busy day, though because Lubbock isn't as big as Toronto, it was nowhere near as busy as Yorkdale Mall is on Boxing Day...and parking was still easy to find. The sales seemed to be larger with electronics (30-50+% savings) and less so with clothing, from stores having 30% off the whole store, to 50% off, but only on selected items.
Now I wonder how much stuff I may be able to bring back to the States from Boxing Day in Canada...
