I did my usual Boxing day trip downtown today. I had scanned through all the deals/flyers already and basically knew what I was (and wasn’t) going to buy. I think there was a general agreement online that there weren’t a lot of deals anyways. Regardless I set my alarm and woke up by 7AM — with enough time to get downtown by 8AM.

Of course then I thought about it some more, and realized that there wasn’t really a point to go THAT early. The past few years I’ve done my boxing day “shopping” by 2PM anyways. So I slowly got ready and made it downtown by 8:45 or so. I had checked online and apparently Old Navy was giving out a free t-shirt to the first 200 people. They opened at 8 so I guess I wasn’t early enough.

I went to GAP first, no reason in particular aside from the fact that they were there. I (surprisingly) bought a fleece-ish zip-up for $14. Pretty I good deal I thought, but the funny thing was that no one was paying attention to the display until I lazily tried out “my size” right beside it. That apparently drew a crowd and that rack was ransacked. This was the only real deal I scored for going early.

I headed to HMV next, nothing I really wanted here either. They advertised door crashers were JLake and The Beatles “Love” for $6 each. The TV ad made it seem like there would only be 25 per store; but when I got to the HMV inside Eaton’s Centre, there were probably still 30-40 on the shelves. I ended up buying The Beatles disc because I had heard it was pretty interesting, being mashups and better produced than the original recordings. Although, I did download it and was not entirely impressed. But hey, I didn’t want to regret in the future that I didn’t buy it for $6 right?

I went over to the Best Buy flagship store next. I had an intended purchase in mind, World of Warcraft for $10. It’s regularly sold for $25 and includes a free month of play (worth $17) so I guess it’s a good deal. I also saw they had 14-day trial editions there for $1.99, which is the same deal you can get free online. I also picked up Ocean’s 11 for $4; it was a entertaining movie.

For the most part, I didn’t have to wait long for the lines; not more than 10 minutes. This was good because I was done all my “busy” stores. I proceeded to walk around Eaton’s Centre a bit and there was some craziness (mind you this was at 9:30AM). Roots had a 50% off everything sale and was packed, I went in to see what the commotion was about, and was blocked; not by people browsing but by people paying. I think their cashiers had problems since 75% of the people in the store were just lining up to pay. Abercrombie and its little brother Hollister also had retarded lines. And I mean retarded in that they had to prevent too many people from going in because their stores are retardedly dark and they didn’t want people falling over each other and suing the store.

I headed off to Henry’s next. I ended up buying a used Tamron 70-210mm AF lens for $50 with no tax! It’s slow as ass though, f/4-5.6. I was also tempted to get some filters for $10 each, but I didn’t really remember what filters I needed and whether they could achieve effects that I couldn’t do in Photoshop. So I didn’t get any. The funny thing was that if you go to the actual Henry’s store (as opposed to the outlet which I was in), you’d have to pay $40+tax for the same filters!

With that, I headed up Yonge to hit the CD stores. I picked up Sophie Milman’s self-titled debut for $7 and half off. This was actually kind of funny because she is a Russian-born Canadian jazz artist, and I found her in the Electronic section. I suspect that someone hid her CD there to take advantage of the upcoming boxing day deal later; the funny thing is that I wouldn’t have looked in the jazz section, and thus wouldn’t have bought it. I also saw the new U2 singles album for $8 + half off, which would be a great deal; but I’m ambivalent about U2.

After a couple of more stores, I ended up at Sonic Boom. These guys, for at least the second year in a row, did not have any Boxing day sales. I did end up getting the Guillemots’ From the Cliffs though. It’s an EP, and I was looking for their unreleased (in Canada) full-length album. It’s too bad, because I would probably rate the latter as the best album of this year.

And that’s it, I was back home by 1PM and didn’t even spend $100.

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