Luck of the Draw

Happy Thanksgiving all!!! (a day late...)

This was my first Thanksgiving celebration in years as I've been abroad for so long. It was nice. My mom cooked the turkey and then we headed over to my aunt's house. We had tons of food as per custom though our meal was very non-traditional. Being Caribbean folk, we add some homecooking. We had the requisite turkey but also oxtails, ribs, and fish. Then we had mac n cheese, veggie lasagna, rice and peas and mashed potatoes - all a bit strange. We are so non-traditional that we didn't even have cranberry sauce or gravy. There was dressing however. We stuffed our faces then sat and chatted, watched some TV.

Then dessert - lemon meringue pie, apple pie plus some Caribbean style fruit cake. Plus ice cream. There's this place in NY called Taste the Tropics and the ice cream is amazing - you have to show ID to get the rum raisin. The rum raisin was perfect alongside my fruit cake. Then a lovely game of scrabble. My aunt and I are scrabble obsessed so that was fun!

So my crazy mother is a shopaholic and at 10pm had packed bedding in the car and was off to the Black Friday sales. Her plan was to park outside Walmart and then sleep until the sales began to get in first. However, due to last year's tragedy, they had everyone go inside immediately and then stand in lines for the ticket for the items they want (so she stood in line from around 10:30 until 5am when they could actually get the sale). Luckily my mother had a sidekick. Her excuse for shopping was that I needed a TV for my room (though I've told her it's unnecessary). She accidentally ended up in a laptop line and so her sidekick had to go in the TV line. So now I have a new 32" LCD TV and I'm hoping to talk her into giving me the laptop as mine is 5 years old and on the fritz.

Today I wanted to partake in the Black Friday mania and Eat Sleep Knit had the following sale (info provided for any knitters reading this before the end of today):

How it works: Starting at 10 AM ET, visit the store and fill up your cart. You’ll go through the checkout process as usual, enter your billing information, and click on “Complete Order.” Your order confirmation page will then display your personal surprise discount and your order total will be adjusted accordingly! All orders will receive a discount of at least 10%, all the way up to 100% (that means your order could be free!). You could win half off, 30% off, 75% off, but no matter what, you will receive at least 10% off, and the odds of getting more are quite good! The sale ends at 5 PM (Eastern US time), and all orders transmitted after that time will be charged at regular prices. Gift certificates and club memberships are excluded from the sale and will not be available for purchase on the website during this time frame.

I only got 10% off, so my luck wasn't strong. However, the other people I chat with on rav got 15% or 25% off so I was just unlucky; not necessarily that it's a hoax sale.

Anyhow, Happy Thanksgiving all!