Hitting the sales

We’re not stupid enough to attempt the Boxing Day sales—not at the malls, anyway. Apparently retailers rang up about as much in sales as they did on Boxing Day last year—but there are two more days in this holiday weekend to go.

This afternoon, when the sales had been going on for many hours already, Nigel and I headed out. As it turns out, we didn’t find what we were looking for (more searching is required). So we thought we may as well go to Wairau Park to look at a wireless weather station (so we can tell the temperature inside the house and out). We also decided to pop in Harvey Norman.

All retailers had something on special at a ridiculous price to get people in the door. For Harvey Norman, it was a laptop for $288. They were sold out by the time we got there, though we weren’t looking for one: We just thought we’d see what else was on special. I found the Samsung U10 flashcam on special for almost half off. I also got a memory card for it at 25% off.

Normally I wouldn’t mention all that here, but in this case it’s relevant because the camera fits in my pocket better than the still camera did, meaning there may be more casual snaps I can post. More importantly, though, it means I’ll again make videos now that I have a better camera that’s easier to bring along. Watch for them here, too.

And we did get a weather station—at about 30% off the regular price. Once we had it all set up, we found out that the temperature in the house was actually nearly as high as outside (just over 26 degrees inside—about 78 F). That’s way too high, and suggests the air conditioning isn’t working properly, so we'll ring next week too get it serviced.

The photos with this post were taken on Croftfield Lane in the Wairau Park area of North Shore City. The top one is looking in a southerly direction; you can see the cars going around the roundabout, but most of the cars visible are parked on the grass because the carparks were full. The photo below was taken at the same spot, looking the other way. Lots of cars parked on the grass, lots of people crossing the street all over the place.

Still, crazy as it was, traffic did move, and it wasn’t as mad as at other places. But we still basically kept far away from the malls. That was a smart move.