Christmas Shopping Should Come with Hazard Pay

Or daiquiris. Lots and lots of daiquiris. That would work, too. Woke up to 45 degrees and raining (I know you all feel really bad for me) and decided that while I love Rick, I might not love him enough to go stand in line in rain at 4am for a half price radar detector. So I did what any self respecting bargain shopper would do--I snuggled back into bed until 5 am and then sat down at my computer and ordered the stinking thing from their website for the sale price and free shipping. Sometimes being lazy has its advantages. That strategy worked well for Target, too. Five minutes, cart full with the 4 sales items I wanted, no free shipping but I figured it was worth the $10 I shelled out for it. Which became even more evident when I saw that the line to get into Target was all the way down the front of the SuperTarget, completely down the side of the store and spilling into receiving parking lot with 20 minutes to go before the store even opened at 6am. At that point I knew that that $10 shipping was worth every penny. But dawn still saw me at Michaels (craft store, where the first person got in line at 2am), Office Max, Walgreens and Northern Tool. The only problems I had was Office Max, where I got the only thing on my list (the last one in the store) and was in and out of the store in 5 minutes, which was good, because I think I escaped just before a brawl over free printers with $99 digital cameras (half the people ended up with the cameras and a voucher for the printer, half with the printer but no camera, and neither one could check out without the other--this is why you never give the go together items to two different workers!). Back home at 8am and my Christmas shopping is done for the year. Which means I can go take a nap.