BLACK

Attention shoppers: Black Friday is officially FOUR WEEKS away. My sister and I somehow went from the could not care less about Black Friday types, to the looking at circulars in advance, mapping out deals, camping out, strategic fools. Don't worry. We know better than to hit the malls. That’s how you get trampled.
It started in 2005 when we saw that Motorola RAZR phones were two for $80 or something like that at Comp USA, which opened at midnight on Black Friday. We grabbed some friends who must have been easily entertained (or incredibly bored) and headed up there to get each other a new phone for Christmas. It was a LONG night.
I didn’t have my license, which was required to activate/renew the contract, and T-Mobile or whoever we were with in 2005 was so logjammed from the midnight Black Friday sales that it took hours for the phone to get activated. We decided to leave the phones in the activation queue and come back and get them later. We went home to change into warmer clothes and headed to Best Buy to try to buy my mom a new computer for Christmas.
We were so far back in the line that we did not even get the stinking computer. So we went back to Comp USA and got our snappy little phones and admitted defeat. It was crucial that we stop at Chick Fil A on the way home, where we took a slow moment in the drivethru to pose with our loot. I think we swore up and down one hundred that we would never. do. it. again.
So we didn’t. In 2006 anyway. But in 2007 we were back at it, only for small wares. I had my eye on a Justin Timberlake DVD (shocking) and my sister was after the entire box set of Sex and the City. We rolled out of bed at 4:30 and were back asleep by 6.

We opted out of the madness again in 2008 and 2009. We came close last year but decided it wasn’t worth the bitter DC cold to wake up that early for things we didn't really need. I rode with my sister to take my mom to the airport that morning only slightly less early than Black Friday sales began, so on the way home we did swing by Target for some deals ($5 and $3 movies and a portable DVD player).

This year, however, we are BACK! We both have our eye on big ticket items. She wants to hit the Babies R Us sales to get some furniture for l'petit chéri. Aunt Nin, on the other hand, plans to hit the Best Buy sales to get herself a new iPod!

I can hear your eyes rolling with the anticipation of even more iPod drama. Like clock work every year, I know. But here’s the deal: my iPod works just fine... with one small asterisk. I have run out of usable space on it. When I bought it in 2005, I distinctly remember thinking “I will never use 30 gigs of memory!” Well, five years later, I have used that and some change. In July, I took every single Christmas song off of it so I could make room for the new fun summer jams I was buying. But what am I supposed to do when Christmas rolls around? I have to have my holiday music!

So, thanks to a little elbow grease, I have figured out how to do this cheaply and efficiently. Step one. Rewards. I have rewards accumulated on my credit card and checking account that will get me $100 in Best Buy gift cards. Step two: I am also planning to use the $50 card that my sweet friends gave me for helping out with the class reunion. Step three: I got on BestBuy.com and found out that I can trade my current iPod in (tear, sniff) for a $35 gift card. That’s a total of $185 and I haven’t spent a dime yet! So, I am watching for Best Buy to release their Black Friday deals which will determine if I’m gonna go for the iPod Touch or stick to my current model but with quite a bit more (4x more to be exact) memory. You have more room on the classic and for less money. But the Touch has the Nike Technology that I know I would use when I run. I don’t think I would use all the other features (email, Facebook, etc) since I have my phone, at least not enough to make me lean toward the Touch without further question.

All of that to say: first, who will be up at the crack of dawn (or before) with us, and what will you be after? Second, which kind of iPod would you get?