First, a preemptive Happy Thanksgiving to the people who are celebrating it this Thursday! To everyone else, Happy Fourth Thursday of November!

To most American geeks, Thanksgiving means time off from school or work, turkey (you can insert whatever other dish you want) and tons of other food, and time to enjoy their geeky hobbies.

But for a while now, it has come to mean something else.

“Black Friday.”

I don’t honestly remember when it started, but for a long time now, the day after Thanksgiving is a day where my friends (and once, and only once, me) wake up incredibly early (or sometimes not even go to sleep) and stand in line in order to get incredible discounts on everything ranging from toys to computers to games.

At first, it was just something they did. There was no special preparation beforehand. I’d get a call later that day, with the spoils of the day explained to me in detail, and that was the end of it.

Now, some of the people I know go to bed early on Thursday night (admittedly made easier from the Thanksgiving-induced food coma), have made battle plans based on what they’ve learned from staking out the stores and internet research, and prepare snacks, special outfits, and other “necessities”.

I’m not going Black Friday shopping this year, partly due to my own plans and partly because I don’t feel like fighting the insane crowds, but I’m sure that many of the people I know are. And I will admit, I’m kind of looking forward to hearing what they managed to snag.

Are any of you fine folks planning on any Black Friday shopping? If so, where and why? And do you have any special preparations or rituals you do before you go? If you’re not going, what are you going to do?

Me? I’m resting.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 3:26 am and is filed under Holidays, Richard Kim, events. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.