My November recap
So we all know how the routine goes by now... I'm a month behind in blogging (yet again), so what I'm gonna do is just zoom through a few things I did in the past month that I feel are worth noting.
****
I went with Ariana, Joe, Marisa, Christina and John (it was supposed to be Sheila but she dropped out last minute) to see Carlos Mencia perform at the Beacon Theatre on Sat. Nov. 4th. The show was absolutely hysterical. All 4 of his opening acts were funny, and Mencia himself had the place in tears the whole night. What really made the show great though, was not only did he do his usual stereotype ripping, but he made a few educated and hilarious social commentaries throughout the night. It was was definitely a great show.
Afterwards, Joe & Marisa gave me and Ariana a ride back up to the Bronx and we wound up going to Tosca for a late dinner. I had never been to the place before, but I had heard of it, b/c it's one of the few places in the Bronx that makes brick-oven pizza. It was pretty good, and I'll definitely have to go back sometime soon. It's also good to know of a pretty decent restaurant that's open late in the general area.
****
Bought a few things that week as well. I picked up the Foo Fighters Acoustic show CD- Skin & Bones. It was a live collection of the acoustic tour they had gone on in the summertime. It's an excellent CD. If you like the Foos stuff in acoustic, then you should definitely pick this album up.
I also bought Cars on DVD (b/c I hadn't seen it before), and I also bought the 20th Anniversary Edition of Transformers the movie. It's been a long time since I've seen that movie, so I'm pretty psyched to watch it soon.
****
Had lunch with Joey D on Tues the 14th. We hadn't hung out in awhile so it was cool to catch up. Wishin him the best of luck with the female situation he has going on right now!
****
Patty, Joe & Henry invited us out for some free Swing/Salsa dance lessons on Fri night (the 15th) at Stepping Out Studios down in the city. We hadn't been dancing in awhile and we thought it'd be fun so we decided to go. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea as us, b/c the free lesson was jam packed full of people. So it was pretty hard to both move around and have a good view of the instructor. While her swing lesson was decent, and I was picking up stuff pretty well, her salsa lesson sucked and there were just way too many people. So me and Henry stepped out just to chill and catch up.
We did get some dancing and private lessons from Henry & Patty later, when we went into the Latin room, and danced for about an hour or so. Then the studio had a presentation of a few of their students (of different skill levels), performing different dances. So that was pretty cool, especially since Ariana got me all hooked on stuff like Dancing with the Stars.
****
Went to go see the Living End in concert again on Sunday the 19th. This time it was at the Knitting Factory, which is a venue I had actually never been to before. But it was a pretty cool place, not too hard to get to (a block and a half away from the 1 train on Franklin St), and the place itself was pretty small. Even smaller than the Bowery Ballroom if you can picture it. We wound up meeting up with Anita and Adam at the show and we chilled in the balcony right behind the sound guys, so we had a great view.
As I said in my post about the last time I saw The Living End, they always put on one heck of a live show, and this was no exception. It was a really great setlist with stuff from every album. Speaking of the setlist, I actually was able to get a copy of it from the sound guys after the show, so that was pretty cool. I left it at home, so I don't have it here to scan in, but check back later and I'll put it up.
EDIT: Here's that setlist:
We also checked the merchandise table, and they were actually selling stuff for pretty cheap. Shirts and stuff were only $15 instead of the $30-40 I've grown accostomed to seeing at some of the bigger shows. So I decided to get one, b/c my current TLE shirt is at least 6 years old.
****
Now the big news. Well not really big, but cool.
Greg had e-mailed me, informing me that the Nintendo Store was doing a promotion of "Buy a Wii on your way to work" for Monday, November 20th. Now I had wanted to buy a Wii, but I didn't bother pre-ordering it. I also wasn't about to camp out for 6+ hours just to get one. So on the Sunday it came out, I simply called all the stores in my area after I got out of church and asked if there were any still in stock. Sadly, I was told everywhere sold out.
So I thought about the e-mail Greg had sent me, and responded to him saying that if he were to go, I'd go as well. We basically figured that we'd have a better chance of getting one that day anyways, b/c most of the REALLY crazy people would have camped out and gotten it the day before. Plus, this was happening on a Monday morning, when people actually had to go to work, so maybe people would be less likely to camp out, since they had work and school.
Well our hunch paid off. We arrived at the Nintendo store over in Rockefeller Center at 6am (yes AM, which was hard, considering we didn't get home til nearly 1am from the concert the night before), and the line wasn't very big at all. The people in line were really friendly, so I chatted a bit with the 2 dudes in front of me. One of them was obviously a dad on his way to work who was buying the system for his son. So he was asking me and the guy in front of him about the system and what he should get. Well during our convo, a photographer comes up to us and starts snapping pics of us. She then goes up to the dad and says that she'd like a few specific shots b/c he was their "target audience" for this event. So she proceeded to take a bunch of pics, b/c the guy was in a suit with a briefcase and everything. Thing is I'm chillin right next to him and talking to him as well. so my picture will probably end up in some magazine or website. Sadly, I don't know exactly where. In retrospect, I probably should have asked. Oh well, my bad.
But yeah, as I stated, the mission was a success, and I got myself a Wii, an extra Wii-mote, nunchuk control and the new Zelda: Twilight Princess. Me & Greg then headed back up to my place to test it out. It was funny, b/c at that point it was still so early in the day, that when me and Greg got out of the D train station at Kingsbridge Rd, Ariana was walking right into it on her way to work (oh yeah did I forget to mention I took the week off?).
So we hooked up the system and made our own Mii's (little characters of ourselves that show up in some of the games, including the Wii sports that comes with the system). Mine looks scarily close to how I do in real life, and Greg's came out really good as well. We then proceeded to go nuts trying out the Wii Sports.
As for the controls of the Wii, they are really fluid. Ever since I heard of the new design I was freaking out all like "Oh man, is this gonna suck?" and "Will I be able to get used to it?"
And I must say, that at least for the Wii Sports (I haven't tried it with anything else yet, b/c I'm not gonna start Zelda probably until the Christmas break), that the controls are pretty easy to handle. It is definitely very user friendly, and I can definitely see how even non-gamers can now easily jump into playing games on this system.
The Wii sports game has 5 sports on it, including Baseball, Tennis, Boxing, Bowling and Golf. I enjoy the Baseball, bowling and Boxing the most. You play the baseball game holding the wii-mote just like a bat, and you can do either full swings or just simple flicks of the wrist to play, so that is cool. The bowling is also very close to real life. It picks up any curving your hand makes, just like in real life. But due to the game and constant practice I've noticed how to work around my curve and now I'm dying to go play some real bowling to see if my skills will transfer.
Later that night when my mom and Pat came home from work I showed them how the Wii played and they found it really cool. They even tried it out themselves, which was a shocker, and they enjoyed it. My mom even said I could keep the Wii downstairs hooked to the big screen til my aunt and cousin visit for Christmas (they leave after New Years).
****
And even though I was supposed to spend a good amount of my week working on some school assignments, the only day I wound up really dedicating to work was Tuesday. After that, I was constantly on the go.
On Wed, I went with Greg & Jessii to see the matinee showing of Casino Royale down at 34th St. Then me and Greg went to the Manhattan mall to hit the food court for some lunch. Afterwards, Greg came back uptown with me and we headed to Home Depot (or Hell as I like to refer to it as... why? It's a long story, ask me about it sometime).
But I needed to go to Home Depot, b/c I am very quickly running out of space in my room for all my stuff. So I decided to put up extra shelves on one of my walls. So the night before, me and Pat put the brackets up in my room, so I just needed to go pick up the wood. Greg came along b/c he needed to make copies of keys for his new place.
Speaking of his new place (well sort of new, he's basically between this place and his old place with his mom and grandmother), it's actually pretty close by. It's right near Clinton HS, which is not very far from Ariana's place. So once he makes the complete move to the new place, we'll be able to hang out much more often, b/c it'll be very easy for me to just drop him off.
I actually did drop him off that day, and he invited me in, and the place is pretty nice. They still haven't fully moved everything in, but you can tell the place is decently spacious, and in a MUCH better neighborhood than the one he's currently living in, so that is a good thing.
****
Later that night, after I finished setting up the new shelves in my room and organized my stuff, we went to Coals on Morris Park & Eastchester Rd for a group dinner that Phil had invited us to. A bunch of people went including, Phil, Ketrin, Pete, James, Jeff, Joe V, a buddy of his from med school, and a handful of people more that I can't remember at the moment. The place is known for it's GRILLED pizza. Not brick-oven like I originally understood. The pizza is a thin crust pizza, that is actually grilled. You can see the lines on it and everything, just like a Burger King burger. It's definitely interesting.
****
The next day was Thanksgiving, and before I continue, let me just say thank you to all the people who sent Thanksgiving wishes to me that day. I was not online that whole day, so I didn't get to send out any wishes myself, or respond to anyone who sent me any, so I'm saying it now.
As for how the day went, it was good. My sister, Jenny, and her fiance, Robbie, came to join us from Pittsburgh. They had arrived in the middle of the night. So we hung in for the early part of the day, just chilling and catching up. Later in the day, we headed over to my grandparent's place, including Ariana and her godmother, to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner. The food was awesome as always. My family really aren't turkey lovers for the most part, so we got a spiral ham as the main course instead. Although we did get a small turkey in case anyone wanted to be a bit more traditional.
Then later that night we wrapped things up early, b/c me and Ariana decided we were going to be adventurous and attempt to go early to the stores for the Black Friday "Door-buster" sales. They had a bunch of stuff at Circuit City we wanted to get, and Ariana wanted to check out Macy's as well, so our target was to hit up the Cross County shopping center at around 5 in the morning.
Don't ask me how I was physically able to wake up at 4am (especially after just doing it a few days prior for the Wii), but we did it and got to Circuit City about ten mnutes before 5am. And even getting there so early, there were at LEAST 200 people on line before us (if not closer to 300-400). And Circuit City isn't the biggest store in the world either, but somehow they managed to squeeze everyone inside. It was nuts!
We had a little bit of drama toward the middle of our shopping spree b/c Ariana wanted to get a digital camera and the people told her to get on a line in the back, and then after abobut 30-40 minutes, they opened a second line in the front that was cutting off the original line. So people started to complain, but they didn't want to do anything about it at first, and even went so far as to say that the second line was the original and proper line, and that the one in the back wasn't for the camera's even though, that's what more than half of the people on the line were initially told. This sparked Ariana up, and she went to a manager to complain and the guy was actually very nice and took her off the line and brought us to the front of a customer service line along with the camera and allowed us to pay for all of our stuff pretty much before anyone else did. So even though it was an annoyance, it worked out in the end, b/c if it hadn't been for that, we would have been stuck at the store for at LEAST another 60-90 minutes.
But we walked out with a few cool goodies. I was able to get a 120 gig external harddrive for only $60 after rebates, we each got a 1 Gig SD memory card that came down to only $3 each from $60 ($30 instant savings, plus a $27 rebate), she got the cool 6 megapixel digital camera for only $150, we got some blank DVDs, and finally a VCR/DVD recorder combo for only $119. Now I don't know yet, if I'm keeping the DVD recorder b/c I want a recorder that does specific things (like allowing me to pick where the chapters will be, instead of just being automated at 10-15 min intervals, b/c I wanna record stuff from TV, and thus I want to eliminate commercials). Thing is, it was way too busy to ask anyone any details on the machine, so I figured I'd just buy it and then research it afterwards to find out if it's what I want. If it's not, then I could always return it.
And even though Circuit City was hell enough on it's own, we weren't done for the day yet, b/c Ariana wanted to hit Macy's. Thankfully, Macy's is a much bigger store, so even though it was quite busy, the crowd was spread out a lot more, so it didn't feel as claustrophobic as Circuit City. We also had good fortune at Macy's and Ariana got a lot of stuff that she wanted/needed.
So overall, Black Friday was a success, but it was REALLY insane, and I don't know if I'll want to deal with that again anytime soon. I can't say I'd "never" do it again, but it'll prob be a few years before I attempt it once more.
Oh, but even though we were done with the initial Black Friday sales, our day was far from over, as we had promised Jenny & Robbie we would take them down to Chinatown.
While there, I finally succumbed and bought these really cool Final Fantasy figures that I would see every time I went to Chinatown. One is of Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and the other is of Squall from FFVIII. Both look really cool.
I was also able to find a really cool Gizmo (from the Gremlins movies) plush at some random Chinese toy shop (freaky huh?). I'd always wanted one from when I was a kid, but I never found a really good one. I had ordered one from ebay many years back, but it turned out to be poorly made and nothing like it was advertised. But this one is cool. It's animatronic, so it sings that little song he does and dances. And it comes in a box too! Not exactly like the one from the movie, but a cheap replica.
I'll either have to find a pic online (EDIT: I've just posted it below) or just take one of it myself to post here to show you all. but it's cool.
Then finally, we ended our wanderings of Chinatown by eating at this really good Japanese restaurant. I forget the name off the top of my head but it's on Mott St, and it's very close to the arcade they have there.
And we ended the day with a quick trip to Rockefeller to go to the Nintendo Store once again, this time in attempt to get a Wii for Robbie. But sadly, they had sold out.
So we were about to end our long day of shopping, but before we took the train back, we decided we should hit the restrooms. So we step into one of the buildings in Rockefeller (right where the ice skating rink is) and since the place was pretty big we decided to ask for help. So we came across a guy in a uniform who worked there and asked for the restroom. The guy responds "ahh you mean the room for resting" we thought he was trying (and failing) to be funny, so we were just like "yeah, the restroom." He gives us some directions and we head on our way. But after a good five minutes of walking and getting close to the area he described, we realize that he sent us to a room with a bunch of seats and tables...
..."a room for resting".
I could have killed the man. Especially, since he sent us in the COMPLETE opposite direction of where we eventually needed to be. So we finally found a map of the building and we had to find the bathroom on our own. But man, we were just upset at how that could could screw up that bad. We thought nothing of his "room for resting" comment. We just thought it was an attempt at very dry humor or something. But you would figure that if you say "restroom" to someone, especially in a supposedly upscale place such as Rockefeller center that they'd understand. I mean generally I normally just say "where's the bathroom?' b/c I don't care. But Ariana was the one who asked and she wanted to be a bit more proper. But maybe he was just a bit "dee dee dee," who knows?
But I just found that to be an amusing story so I thought I'd share.
And I will also cut myself off right here, b/c I'm realizing it's after 5pm, so I can go home! I'll update again soon, promise!
****
I went with Ariana, Joe, Marisa, Christina and John (it was supposed to be Sheila but she dropped out last minute) to see Carlos Mencia perform at the Beacon Theatre on Sat. Nov. 4th. The show was absolutely hysterical. All 4 of his opening acts were funny, and Mencia himself had the place in tears the whole night. What really made the show great though, was not only did he do his usual stereotype ripping, but he made a few educated and hilarious social commentaries throughout the night. It was was definitely a great show.
Afterwards, Joe & Marisa gave me and Ariana a ride back up to the Bronx and we wound up going to Tosca for a late dinner. I had never been to the place before, but I had heard of it, b/c it's one of the few places in the Bronx that makes brick-oven pizza. It was pretty good, and I'll definitely have to go back sometime soon. It's also good to know of a pretty decent restaurant that's open late in the general area.
****
Bought a few things that week as well. I picked up the Foo Fighters Acoustic show CD- Skin & Bones. It was a live collection of the acoustic tour they had gone on in the summertime. It's an excellent CD. If you like the Foos stuff in acoustic, then you should definitely pick this album up.
I also bought Cars on DVD (b/c I hadn't seen it before), and I also bought the 20th Anniversary Edition of Transformers the movie. It's been a long time since I've seen that movie, so I'm pretty psyched to watch it soon.
****
Had lunch with Joey D on Tues the 14th. We hadn't hung out in awhile so it was cool to catch up. Wishin him the best of luck with the female situation he has going on right now!
****
Patty, Joe & Henry invited us out for some free Swing/Salsa dance lessons on Fri night (the 15th) at Stepping Out Studios down in the city. We hadn't been dancing in awhile and we thought it'd be fun so we decided to go. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea as us, b/c the free lesson was jam packed full of people. So it was pretty hard to both move around and have a good view of the instructor. While her swing lesson was decent, and I was picking up stuff pretty well, her salsa lesson sucked and there were just way too many people. So me and Henry stepped out just to chill and catch up.
We did get some dancing and private lessons from Henry & Patty later, when we went into the Latin room, and danced for about an hour or so. Then the studio had a presentation of a few of their students (of different skill levels), performing different dances. So that was pretty cool, especially since Ariana got me all hooked on stuff like Dancing with the Stars.
****
Went to go see the Living End in concert again on Sunday the 19th. This time it was at the Knitting Factory, which is a venue I had actually never been to before. But it was a pretty cool place, not too hard to get to (a block and a half away from the 1 train on Franklin St), and the place itself was pretty small. Even smaller than the Bowery Ballroom if you can picture it. We wound up meeting up with Anita and Adam at the show and we chilled in the balcony right behind the sound guys, so we had a great view.
As I said in my post about the last time I saw The Living End, they always put on one heck of a live show, and this was no exception. It was a really great setlist with stuff from every album. Speaking of the setlist, I actually was able to get a copy of it from the sound guys after the show, so that was pretty cool. I left it at home, so I don't have it here to scan in, but check back later and I'll put it up.
EDIT: Here's that setlist:
We also checked the merchandise table, and they were actually selling stuff for pretty cheap. Shirts and stuff were only $15 instead of the $30-40 I've grown accostomed to seeing at some of the bigger shows. So I decided to get one, b/c my current TLE shirt is at least 6 years old.****
Now the big news. Well not really big, but cool.
Greg had e-mailed me, informing me that the Nintendo Store was doing a promotion of "Buy a Wii on your way to work" for Monday, November 20th. Now I had wanted to buy a Wii, but I didn't bother pre-ordering it. I also wasn't about to camp out for 6+ hours just to get one. So on the Sunday it came out, I simply called all the stores in my area after I got out of church and asked if there were any still in stock. Sadly, I was told everywhere sold out.
So I thought about the e-mail Greg had sent me, and responded to him saying that if he were to go, I'd go as well. We basically figured that we'd have a better chance of getting one that day anyways, b/c most of the REALLY crazy people would have camped out and gotten it the day before. Plus, this was happening on a Monday morning, when people actually had to go to work, so maybe people would be less likely to camp out, since they had work and school.
Well our hunch paid off. We arrived at the Nintendo store over in Rockefeller Center at 6am (yes AM, which was hard, considering we didn't get home til nearly 1am from the concert the night before), and the line wasn't very big at all. The people in line were really friendly, so I chatted a bit with the 2 dudes in front of me. One of them was obviously a dad on his way to work who was buying the system for his son. So he was asking me and the guy in front of him about the system and what he should get. Well during our convo, a photographer comes up to us and starts snapping pics of us. She then goes up to the dad and says that she'd like a few specific shots b/c he was their "target audience" for this event. So she proceeded to take a bunch of pics, b/c the guy was in a suit with a briefcase and everything. Thing is I'm chillin right next to him and talking to him as well. so my picture will probably end up in some magazine or website. Sadly, I don't know exactly where. In retrospect, I probably should have asked. Oh well, my bad.
But yeah, as I stated, the mission was a success, and I got myself a Wii, an extra Wii-mote, nunchuk control and the new Zelda: Twilight Princess. Me & Greg then headed back up to my place to test it out. It was funny, b/c at that point it was still so early in the day, that when me and Greg got out of the D train station at Kingsbridge Rd, Ariana was walking right into it on her way to work (oh yeah did I forget to mention I took the week off?).
So we hooked up the system and made our own Mii's (little characters of ourselves that show up in some of the games, including the Wii sports that comes with the system). Mine looks scarily close to how I do in real life, and Greg's came out really good as well. We then proceeded to go nuts trying out the Wii Sports.
As for the controls of the Wii, they are really fluid. Ever since I heard of the new design I was freaking out all like "Oh man, is this gonna suck?" and "Will I be able to get used to it?"
And I must say, that at least for the Wii Sports (I haven't tried it with anything else yet, b/c I'm not gonna start Zelda probably until the Christmas break), that the controls are pretty easy to handle. It is definitely very user friendly, and I can definitely see how even non-gamers can now easily jump into playing games on this system.
The Wii sports game has 5 sports on it, including Baseball, Tennis, Boxing, Bowling and Golf. I enjoy the Baseball, bowling and Boxing the most. You play the baseball game holding the wii-mote just like a bat, and you can do either full swings or just simple flicks of the wrist to play, so that is cool. The bowling is also very close to real life. It picks up any curving your hand makes, just like in real life. But due to the game and constant practice I've noticed how to work around my curve and now I'm dying to go play some real bowling to see if my skills will transfer.
Later that night when my mom and Pat came home from work I showed them how the Wii played and they found it really cool. They even tried it out themselves, which was a shocker, and they enjoyed it. My mom even said I could keep the Wii downstairs hooked to the big screen til my aunt and cousin visit for Christmas (they leave after New Years).
****
And even though I was supposed to spend a good amount of my week working on some school assignments, the only day I wound up really dedicating to work was Tuesday. After that, I was constantly on the go.
On Wed, I went with Greg & Jessii to see the matinee showing of Casino Royale down at 34th St. Then me and Greg went to the Manhattan mall to hit the food court for some lunch. Afterwards, Greg came back uptown with me and we headed to Home Depot (or Hell as I like to refer to it as... why? It's a long story, ask me about it sometime).
But I needed to go to Home Depot, b/c I am very quickly running out of space in my room for all my stuff. So I decided to put up extra shelves on one of my walls. So the night before, me and Pat put the brackets up in my room, so I just needed to go pick up the wood. Greg came along b/c he needed to make copies of keys for his new place.
Speaking of his new place (well sort of new, he's basically between this place and his old place with his mom and grandmother), it's actually pretty close by. It's right near Clinton HS, which is not very far from Ariana's place. So once he makes the complete move to the new place, we'll be able to hang out much more often, b/c it'll be very easy for me to just drop him off.
I actually did drop him off that day, and he invited me in, and the place is pretty nice. They still haven't fully moved everything in, but you can tell the place is decently spacious, and in a MUCH better neighborhood than the one he's currently living in, so that is a good thing.
****
Later that night, after I finished setting up the new shelves in my room and organized my stuff, we went to Coals on Morris Park & Eastchester Rd for a group dinner that Phil had invited us to. A bunch of people went including, Phil, Ketrin, Pete, James, Jeff, Joe V, a buddy of his from med school, and a handful of people more that I can't remember at the moment. The place is known for it's GRILLED pizza. Not brick-oven like I originally understood. The pizza is a thin crust pizza, that is actually grilled. You can see the lines on it and everything, just like a Burger King burger. It's definitely interesting.
****
The next day was Thanksgiving, and before I continue, let me just say thank you to all the people who sent Thanksgiving wishes to me that day. I was not online that whole day, so I didn't get to send out any wishes myself, or respond to anyone who sent me any, so I'm saying it now.
As for how the day went, it was good. My sister, Jenny, and her fiance, Robbie, came to join us from Pittsburgh. They had arrived in the middle of the night. So we hung in for the early part of the day, just chilling and catching up. Later in the day, we headed over to my grandparent's place, including Ariana and her godmother, to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner. The food was awesome as always. My family really aren't turkey lovers for the most part, so we got a spiral ham as the main course instead. Although we did get a small turkey in case anyone wanted to be a bit more traditional.
Then later that night we wrapped things up early, b/c me and Ariana decided we were going to be adventurous and attempt to go early to the stores for the Black Friday "Door-buster" sales. They had a bunch of stuff at Circuit City we wanted to get, and Ariana wanted to check out Macy's as well, so our target was to hit up the Cross County shopping center at around 5 in the morning.
Don't ask me how I was physically able to wake up at 4am (especially after just doing it a few days prior for the Wii), but we did it and got to Circuit City about ten mnutes before 5am. And even getting there so early, there were at LEAST 200 people on line before us (if not closer to 300-400). And Circuit City isn't the biggest store in the world either, but somehow they managed to squeeze everyone inside. It was nuts!
We had a little bit of drama toward the middle of our shopping spree b/c Ariana wanted to get a digital camera and the people told her to get on a line in the back, and then after abobut 30-40 minutes, they opened a second line in the front that was cutting off the original line. So people started to complain, but they didn't want to do anything about it at first, and even went so far as to say that the second line was the original and proper line, and that the one in the back wasn't for the camera's even though, that's what more than half of the people on the line were initially told. This sparked Ariana up, and she went to a manager to complain and the guy was actually very nice and took her off the line and brought us to the front of a customer service line along with the camera and allowed us to pay for all of our stuff pretty much before anyone else did. So even though it was an annoyance, it worked out in the end, b/c if it hadn't been for that, we would have been stuck at the store for at LEAST another 60-90 minutes.
But we walked out with a few cool goodies. I was able to get a 120 gig external harddrive for only $60 after rebates, we each got a 1 Gig SD memory card that came down to only $3 each from $60 ($30 instant savings, plus a $27 rebate), she got the cool 6 megapixel digital camera for only $150, we got some blank DVDs, and finally a VCR/DVD recorder combo for only $119. Now I don't know yet, if I'm keeping the DVD recorder b/c I want a recorder that does specific things (like allowing me to pick where the chapters will be, instead of just being automated at 10-15 min intervals, b/c I wanna record stuff from TV, and thus I want to eliminate commercials). Thing is, it was way too busy to ask anyone any details on the machine, so I figured I'd just buy it and then research it afterwards to find out if it's what I want. If it's not, then I could always return it.
And even though Circuit City was hell enough on it's own, we weren't done for the day yet, b/c Ariana wanted to hit Macy's. Thankfully, Macy's is a much bigger store, so even though it was quite busy, the crowd was spread out a lot more, so it didn't feel as claustrophobic as Circuit City. We also had good fortune at Macy's and Ariana got a lot of stuff that she wanted/needed.
So overall, Black Friday was a success, but it was REALLY insane, and I don't know if I'll want to deal with that again anytime soon. I can't say I'd "never" do it again, but it'll prob be a few years before I attempt it once more.
Oh, but even though we were done with the initial Black Friday sales, our day was far from over, as we had promised Jenny & Robbie we would take them down to Chinatown.
While there, I finally succumbed and bought these really cool Final Fantasy figures that I would see every time I went to Chinatown. One is of Cloud from Final Fantasy VII and the other is of Squall from FFVIII. Both look really cool.
I was also able to find a really cool Gizmo (from the Gremlins movies) plush at some random Chinese toy shop (freaky huh?). I'd always wanted one from when I was a kid, but I never found a really good one. I had ordered one from ebay many years back, but it turned out to be poorly made and nothing like it was advertised. But this one is cool. It's animatronic, so it sings that little song he does and dances. And it comes in a box too! Not exactly like the one from the movie, but a cheap replica.
I'll either have to find a pic online (EDIT: I've just posted it below) or just take one of it myself to post here to show you all. but it's cool.
Then finally, we ended our wanderings of Chinatown by eating at this really good Japanese restaurant. I forget the name off the top of my head but it's on Mott St, and it's very close to the arcade they have there.And we ended the day with a quick trip to Rockefeller to go to the Nintendo Store once again, this time in attempt to get a Wii for Robbie. But sadly, they had sold out.
So we were about to end our long day of shopping, but before we took the train back, we decided we should hit the restrooms. So we step into one of the buildings in Rockefeller (right where the ice skating rink is) and since the place was pretty big we decided to ask for help. So we came across a guy in a uniform who worked there and asked for the restroom. The guy responds "ahh you mean the room for resting" we thought he was trying (and failing) to be funny, so we were just like "yeah, the restroom." He gives us some directions and we head on our way. But after a good five minutes of walking and getting close to the area he described, we realize that he sent us to a room with a bunch of seats and tables...
..."a room for resting".
I could have killed the man. Especially, since he sent us in the COMPLETE opposite direction of where we eventually needed to be. So we finally found a map of the building and we had to find the bathroom on our own. But man, we were just upset at how that could could screw up that bad. We thought nothing of his "room for resting" comment. We just thought it was an attempt at very dry humor or something. But you would figure that if you say "restroom" to someone, especially in a supposedly upscale place such as Rockefeller center that they'd understand. I mean generally I normally just say "where's the bathroom?' b/c I don't care. But Ariana was the one who asked and she wanted to be a bit more proper. But maybe he was just a bit "dee dee dee," who knows?
But I just found that to be an amusing story so I thought I'd share.
And I will also cut myself off right here, b/c I'm realizing it's after 5pm, so I can go home! I'll update again soon, promise!
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