Happy Day After Black Friday! For the first time in I don’t remember how long, I went shopping yesterday. Mostly, because my niece begged me and she knows that I’ll do anything she asks of me, so I really didn’t have a choice. However, my idea of Black Friday and the reality were completely different. First, it was quiet.

Why was it quiet? Because people now do their Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving. Because they’re heathens, apparently, and saving $20 on a TV is more important than taking a day off to relax with their families. Can you tell I have an opinion on this?

Anyway, I digress. We left at about 8 a.m. and went to Jackson, TN, which is about an hour’s drive away from where I live. We hit all the usual places: Kirkland’s, Kohl’s, Marshall’s, Best Buy and Target. I intended not to buy a thing, but I found some cute Christmas decorations in the Target $1-$3 bins and the next thing I know, I’m in full-on Christmas shopping mode.

Okay, I didn’t go completely nuts, but I did buy some cheap Christmas decorations because suddenly, I was in the holiday mood. I also found very cheap Harry Potter film DVD’s, and ended up with the full collection for around $15. I’ve been wanting the films since visiting The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, so that was a nice surprise, being able to find all eight films.

The cats also got stockings with their initials on them. I am, obviously, far more amused by these stockings than they are.

My cat with our Christmas stockings

We took a break for lunch at Olive Garden, which included wine. I commented that it was weird that the kid I once babysat was now my drinking buddy. But really, it’s not that weird at all. We always were more like sisters than aunt and niece. We ate a lot of soup, breadsticks and salad and had a glass of Blanco, one of the house wines. It was delicious.

Successfully fueled, we did a more shopping, which culminated with a peppermint mocha from Starbucks. I’d call that a successful trip.

But then we headed home and missed a turn. I fired up Google Maps to get us back to where we needed to be and we ended up on a small road where we saw a sign for “Century Farm Winery.” I said that it must be serendipity because the winery was down the road we had to travel.

Obviously, we stopped and tasted some amazingly wonderful wines. I ended up buying a bottle of a cranberry wine that tasted probably too good (I could drink a whole bottle of that in a sitting), as well as a blush called “Irish Rose.” Also, one of the winery’s owners was Scottish, but had family in Ireland, so we also had a nice conversation during our tasting.

Wine

Talk about the perfect ending to the perfect trip. I enjoyed Black Friday far more than I imagined I would.

But that brings me to today. Today is Small Business Saturday. I’d like to remind you that self-published authors and independent book publishers (such as my own Biting Dog Publications) are small businesses. And books make great gifts, especially e-books, because they’re so accessible. So please consider buying books today. But wait, where can you support small businesses and buy books? Smashwords, of course!

Obviously, that leads me to request that if you haven’t purchased any of my books to please consider doing so. You’ll find links all over this website.

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