Cyber Monday
I didn't participate in Black Friday, but apparently (according to a story I read this morning) I'm a part of a new phenomenon called Cyber Monday... people rushing to order things online the Monday after Thanksgiving. Although technically, the article spoke of people doing this from work, while I did it last night here at home. ^_^
Also according to the article, Black Friday is more of a gal thing while Cyber Monday is more of a guy thing. They based this on some statistics about who searched on which term, so I'm not sure how accurate their study is. ^_^
Well anyway, the upshot is that I did about half or more of my shopping last night online. I'd been coming up with ideas of what to get for people, but hadn't bought much of anything yet. Now I'm at the point where I have fewer ideas for the people that are left. Hrmm. (Another problem is that I typically have 2-3 good ideas for one person, and none for another -- which I don't realize until I write things down and get organized.) I still have a few things to work out. My trip to my parent's place for the weekend yielded very little information on what to get for my relatives for Christmas, so I'll have to call my mom later for more ideas.
I set myself a budget this year, which I'm already exceeding in many cases -- but the point is, if I set the budget and try to stay close, I hopefully won't go too crazy. My simple budget is $20 for relatives and $10 for friends... my list contains roughly 10 relatives and 20 friends, which would mean $400 spent. While at MFF I bought kitty-ear hats for my nieces ($25 each) and also a stuffed unicorn for one niece (another $10 I think), and many of the gifts I ordered last night were more like $12-$15 plus S&H, so you can see I'm violating my budget a bit. But if I spend $600 instead of $400, that's probably still doing better than I did last year, and I can probably survive that. (I have no idea how much I spent last year -- and I probably don't want to know ^_^ ).
Driving home yesterday sucked. It took me more than 2 hours to get from Longview to Chehalis, and that's usually an hour or less. After that traffic improved quit a bit -- it was still busy but at least cars were driving the speed limit.
Also according to the article, Black Friday is more of a gal thing while Cyber Monday is more of a guy thing. They based this on some statistics about who searched on which term, so I'm not sure how accurate their study is. ^_^
Well anyway, the upshot is that I did about half or more of my shopping last night online. I'd been coming up with ideas of what to get for people, but hadn't bought much of anything yet. Now I'm at the point where I have fewer ideas for the people that are left. Hrmm. (Another problem is that I typically have 2-3 good ideas for one person, and none for another -- which I don't realize until I write things down and get organized.) I still have a few things to work out. My trip to my parent's place for the weekend yielded very little information on what to get for my relatives for Christmas, so I'll have to call my mom later for more ideas.
I set myself a budget this year, which I'm already exceeding in many cases -- but the point is, if I set the budget and try to stay close, I hopefully won't go too crazy. My simple budget is $20 for relatives and $10 for friends... my list contains roughly 10 relatives and 20 friends, which would mean $400 spent. While at MFF I bought kitty-ear hats for my nieces ($25 each) and also a stuffed unicorn for one niece (another $10 I think), and many of the gifts I ordered last night were more like $12-$15 plus S&H, so you can see I'm violating my budget a bit. But if I spend $600 instead of $400, that's probably still doing better than I did last year, and I can probably survive that. (I have no idea how much I spent last year -- and I probably don't want to know ^_^ ).
Driving home yesterday sucked. It took me more than 2 hours to get from Longview to Chehalis, and that's usually an hour or less. After that traffic improved quit a bit -- it was still busy but at least cars were driving the speed limit.