Acadian Ancestral Home

Dear Cousins,

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Ours was most enjoyable and it is always a treat when family gets together. We did miss the company of our oldest daughter and son-in-law. They were in the Philadelphia area where Rebecca made a recording yesterday. She has been performing Gilbert & Sullivan for a good number of years n ow even having performed lead roles at the G & S Festival in Buxton, England. Her mother-in-law gave her the gift of recording all of the G & S songs she has ever performed. So if you are a G & S fan and are interesting in such a CD please write to me privately.

Now-a-days, the day after Thanksgiving has become known as "Black Friday". Well this "Black Friday" I saw some great ads in the newspapers on a couple of items I've been wanting to get so I was up at 3a.m. and headed to Staples arriving at 4:20a.m. silly enough to believe that I would be the first person in line. Lo and behold there were already about 25 people ahead of me. One lady had been there since 3a.m. Grief ;o)

About 5a.m. the manager of the store came out to ask people who were there for the laptops to raise their hands as he only had 12 of them. About 20 people raised their hands for this great deal. Laptops sold for $399 yesterday morning from their $899 regular price. So about five people left after that so I became approximately number 20 in line.

The nice thing about being out there that early in the morning all waiting for the same reasons: a great deal we won't see the rest of the year - is that everyone is really nice and chatting together helps the time to pass. This really nice young man was behind me with his father. I had doubts about purchasing a particular item I wanted to get my son-in-law for Christmas. So many young people are real techies these days. Anyhow he allayed my concerns and said he was getting one of those himself. (I can't tell you what it is yet should my son-in-law read this blog.) In fact he said the model being sold at such a great price was the latest model out and not the one advertised. How he knew this I didn't ask but his use of the older model did convince me that I should get this item. When the doors opened at 6a.m. Staples had planned an orderly access to all of the items that were at these spectacular prices by placing them in on a center aisle of the store. My plan was to "grab" a 60 Gig Maxtor Portable Hard Drive, a 1 Gig Scandisk key drive and that other item. Well I couldn't move beyond the first item as I was crowded in. Suddenly an arm came down with the item I wanted for my son-in-law and it was the young man who took four of them from the table, handed me one as well as the other person who arrived right after me for the same item - one was for himself and the other was his father's. I was so grateful. A second later I heard someone say "they are all sold". How disappointed would I have been.

After Christmas I will tell you what the item is. I wanted something special for my son-in-law because he is very special to us ;o)

Anyhow - by the time I left Staples at 6:30 (of course I had to look around a bit too.) I had my portable hard drive ($39.98 - regular price: $120), the 1 gig key/flash drive ($7.98 - regular price: $69.98), USB Hub - $9.98 (regular price $19.98), Battery Backup Surge Suppressor ($19.98 - regular price $59.98 and finally the item for my son-in-law - ($149.00 - regular price $399.99)

So with all of those dollars saved, wasn't it worth standing in line outside of Staples from 4:20a.m. to 6a.m.? Sure it was. (Would like to put an exclamation mark there but blogger doesn't allow them.) I was psyched that I left the store with everything I had hoped to get, partly thanks to that young man too.

I encourage anyone who wants a great deal on Black Friday to bite the bullet and get out there. If you live in cold weather areas of the country, just dress for the weather. I wore a pair of tights under my jeans, two pairs of sock, a flannel shirt and my winter jacket. I never felt the cold until 5:58..just before the store opened.

I wish I knew the names of the five men who were in the little group I was standing with. They were all real gentlemen and conversation helped the time to pass quickly.

What I have noticed is that sometimes if you are standing only with women on that morning, the women don't want conversation.. all they usually say is that they are tired from cooking, etc. Well I'm always up for a good conversation. Ha ha..

Now I should tell you that when I got home, I had breakfast as it was only 8:30a.m., took a nap and then set up my portable hard drive. It works really great and in no time I had backed up all of the files on my computer. Having done that I have begun to delete some files from my PC. That was the reason for purchasing the portable drive as well as the fact that I can take it with me when I travel with my laptop.

So if you are interested in a good portable external drive to back up your files in the event of a crash [it can happen...] I highly recommend the one button Maxtor III Portable Drive. It comes in a variety of hard drive sizes and lots of people go for the 300 or 500GB but let's face it, 60 Gig of hard drive is a lot of hard drive, at least more than enough for me. This hard drive has great reviews and is rated 7.8 out of 10.0. The highest rated external drive is LaCie at 8.0 out of 10 but the LaCie drives are very expensive even on sale.

Well anyhow that's behind me so today I will put up our outdoor Christmas decorations. The Good Lord has been smiling on us a lot and the mild weather is back. It will be 58 here today, 60 tomorrow and 62 on Monday. I cannot let this opportunity pass as it could be the last stretch of mild weather here in eastern Massachusetts.

Have a great day - I hope this blog was of some interest to you, after all there is more to life than just genealogy and research [who would have guessed it???] but then on the other side all the computer equipment I buy will help with all of the research I save as well as graphics for the Acadian & French-Canadian Ancestral Home web site.

Till the next time,

Your Cousin Lucie