Thankful - Black Friday

Agenda for the day:

• Shop - it's Black Friday
• Run at least 1 mile at some point, walking 10 billion miles at the mall does not count.
• Eat the Italian Food that I missed yesterday for dinner
• Movie night

Mean Aunt Bobbie *ahem* Mean Aunt Joanie woke me up very early this morning for Black Friday shopping and informed me shortly thereafter that I would also be the driver for the outing.  Excellent.  I took Dad's car.  The mall was not very busy.  Mom and Aunt Joanie had some luck at Macy's buying presents for other people.  Macy's did the best with lines; they had these roving people with "carts" that could check you out as long as you were paying with something other than cash.  Then we met up with the rest of our (obviously super excited to be there) group and hit all the other stores in the mall.  JCPenny's was a zoo.  The lines were a mile long in a really bad way.  Starbucks was similarly long-lined but the Starbucks inside Barns N Noble was fine.  Typical.

Eventually we abandoned the mall in favor of Kohl's.  Oh my goodness.  Holy lines batman.  The lines were of a different quality at Kohls.  Although they wrapped around the perimeter of the entire store (serious) they drained into about 8 registers and they moved, so they had the feeling of hope. I got a really good deal on a gel mat for my kitchen and bought a shirt.  Aunt Joanie and Kristin tried to win the shopper of the day award with Christmas presents for about 18 people.

After Kohls we declared ourselves done.  I came home and had lasagna for lunch because I missed it the first go around.  I'm the only one who likes edges or corners of the lasagna (what is that about?), so I had a great lunch.  (Aunt Joanie cooks the regular thanksgiving food and Italian Thanksgiving of Lasagna and Eggplant Parmesan; I always do Italian on the second day.)  Shortly after lunch, I collapsed.   Around the same time, the temperatures dropped notably and the wind kicked up to around 20mph with wind gusts of I don't know what.  Awesome.  I have to run when I wake up from this nap.

Finally, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and opted not to run outside.  Even though I'm from Minnesota and I'll be running in shit colder than this for several months. I hit the basement and used the treadmill.  Every tenth of a mile, I increased the speed by a tenth of a mile per hour, which I could sustain because I knew I was only running for a short distance.  It was actually a fun workout.  (Especially when my shoe came untied; WTF is it with these shoes?)

Our evening movie was called The Survivors.  I do not recommend it.  I really couldn't get into it.  I liked Walter Mathau but didn't connect with the Robin Williams character being so totally out of control.  We watched at a place that has a super cool movie watching situation.  After the movie, I had to reconnect the Blu Ray DVD player to the home theater system.  Mad problem solving skills.

We also found out that Aunt Bobbie won the shopper award hands down with her purchase of a freaking car.  I said the only thing that would top that is if someone buys a house today.  It hasn't happened that we've heard, but I do have one cousin who was in the market for a plot of land so stay tuned.