Tony Brewer

I noticed that the new bowling alley in town has opened, and is advertising for leagues.  Teri and I were considering going there and maybe joining a league.  We really enjoy bowling, and we’d love to support a new local business.  The big drawback is that we heard that they allow smoking throughout the entire alley all of the time.  Well, I’m afraid that is a deal breaker; Teri is badly allergic to cigarette smoke!  It makes it difficult sometimes to go places because so many places allow smoking inside.  I heard there are some states, like Maine, that has made it illegal to smoke in restaurants and all public places.  I sure wish they’d do that here!

I like to buy a lot of presents at Christmas time.  I admit it, I am NOT a scrooge!  At least not yet!  I like to buy lots of gifts for lots of people, and play Santa Claus.  Many times I’ll give a gift to someone and simply write “from Santa” on the tag so that they don’t know who actually gave them the gift.  Of course it’s a nice gift (all right, every now and then it’s a lump of coal!) and it brings me a lot of joy to watch them open the gift and see the delight in their faces. 

In order to buy all of those presents, I have to be paying close attention to the Black Friday shopping bargains.  The news station that I listen to was having a story today about shopping on Black Friday and they mentioned using some  Black Friday websites to help find the best deals.  I like the black-friday.net website; it has most all of the merchants that I like to shop with on their list of merchants.  One of the things I like about I’ll be keeping a close eye out for the Black Friday wal-mart ad to see what kind of great bargains I can get online from the Wal-Mart website.  I’ll also be keeping a close eye on the Sports Authority list to see what kind of skiing or skating equipment and/or clothing they may put on their list of specials.   I’ve signed up for their email list so they can send me a notice when they get new ads uploaded from their vendors.

I come from a long line of deer hunters.  Hunting is a family tradition; on weekends the men would get up early and head out to the local church that would hold a hunter’s breakfast fundraiser, fill up their stomachs with all kinds of protein and coffee and then they would head to the woods for the day.  Fathers would bring their sons along to teach them the fine art of hunting.  I can remember going hunting with my father and uncles many times over the course of my youth.

Well, I don’t hunt much anymore; I never did care for the taste of deer meat, and I don’t have freezer space anyway.  But sometimes I tag along just for the company and the experience of being outdoors with the men for the day.   I like to bring along my camera and document the family hunt; I’m sure at some point one of the women in the family will want to have some photos to put in their scrapbooks about the men in the family going hunting together. 

This year I’m going to buy one of the Nikon Monarch and Trailblazer Binoculars off of the Internet from the nikonhunting.com website.  I like the Trailblazer 8×42 because it is lightweight, so I won’t get tired of lugging it around with me all day long.  They are holding a special right now that involves me getting a $25 gift card towards another purchase from the website, which I’m going to give to one of my uncles as a Christmas gift.  I’m sure he’ll be happy to get that!

The 1-coupons.com website is a great source for finding online coupons, promotions, and discounts.  I was looking at their http://www.1-coupons.com/coupons/home-depot.htm page earlier to see what kind of great deals I could find from homedepot.com.  Home Depot is my kind of store!

I just found a great deal on a personal organizer that I ordered and I arranged for monogramming, can hardly wait to have that delivered!  I saw one just like it a couple of weeks ago when I was traveling; a co-worker that I was travelling with was showing it off, told me it cost him $40 and I got it for a lot less!

I was also looking at a pair of in-line skates that I was thinking about buying.  My old pair is getting pretty worn out and I’ve been thinking about delegating them to be my “outdoor” pair of skates and get a new pair of “indoor” skates for the roller rink.  It’s not a good idea to use the same pair for indoor AND outdoor skating, so I really should have two pairs of skates.

And I found some airport-safe steel free shoes through their site, too!  That would be a great investment for me to make since I use airports so much in my business!  It sure would cut down on the hassle of going through security, knowing that my shoes won’t trigger their metal detectors!