B-T-S Shopping Adventures

Friday, the kids and I took advantage of the tax holiday to do some of the much-needed back-to-school shopping. We spent the whole day roaming around the stores and people-watching. We played a fun game of spot the ladies with the zebra purses. Have you seen these things? They're black and white zebra-patterned leather (possibly pleather..haven't gotten up-close to tell) with straps and trim in green, pink, and blue. The three of us find spotting them as much fun in the stores as playing punch-bug is while driving down the road. If I remember correctly, we saw five of them on Friday alone.
Anyway, some stores had good sales - we got great deals on Owen's soccer gear for this season. Other stores were craftier in their marketing. For example, the week before we had been shopping and there was a good sale on jeans for both the kids at one of our usual shops so I bought them both a couple of pair. On Friday, this store promoted a BOGO sale, but when I calculated the purchase, I had gotten a much better deal the week before. The lesson here is an item may have a BOGO sign and still not be a good deal.
The most hilarious part of the day was a stop at our favorite big box store. We were shopping away when the power went out! There we were completely in the dark. All the shoppers in the store got silent. It was dark for maybe a minute and the power came back on - business as usual, except for the PA announcement that it takes 5 minutes for the registers to reboot. We shopped for awhile longer until the lines at the register diminished and then we decided to checkout. I had the pen in mid-air ready to finalize my debit card purchase when ... the power went out AGAIN!!!! This time it was out for about two minutes. My purchase hadn't been finalized so we had to unbag all the items and start all over. Thankfully, everyone seemed to keep their patience. I didn't see anyone making a scene. I still haven't heard what happened. There wasn't a storm and the traffic light at the entrance was still working so it must have been isolated to that store. Anyway, it made for a memorable day. I'm sure we'll all be saying "remember the time..." whenever we shop there in the future.