There is a saying that goes “May you live in interesting times” (which was supposedly a Chinese proverb, but the ole’ Wikipedia says that is probably not the case ). Most people would probably choose a different adjective to describe our current state of affairs – the optimists might call them “challenging”, the pessimists might say “horrible”, an executive at Goldman Sachs might say “awesome“. Personally I think “interesting” is a bit of an understatement – I’d call them “strange”.

Examples of odd stuff:

  • We have high unemployment and glacier like economic growth, but the stock market is rallying back towards its 2007 highs
  • There are not one, but two popular prime-time shows related to dancing – I’ll repeat that – dancing. One of them even involves d-list celebrities doing ballroom
  • If you are a d-list celebrity you can get yourself a reality show by making an “adult” film
  • If you are a nobody you can get yourself a reality show by having a bunch of kids
  • Oprah is ending her show – but that jackass Dr. Phil is allowed to continue his revolting exploitation fest

See, all kinds of oddness and the retail market is no exception to the tidal wave of unusual that’s been happening of late. Our sponsors at Sam’s Club have decided to embrace these strange-days by doing some rather unexpected things in conjunction with the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales. They’ve asked us to fill you in on the details and I’m happy to oblige.

First of all – you were expecting Black Friday, but Sam’s Club is impatient, they don’t want to wait till Friday. Instead, they’re launching a bunch of their best deals online this Wednesday at 10pm, so you early birds can get a head start on your shopping. Check out  a few of the deals below and follow this link for the full catalog.

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Not too shabby, I’m actually in the market for a new printer, and $69.98 for a decent HP sounds pretty good to me.

So launching their sale a few days early is pretty unusual, but they didn’t stop there. There is so much competition in retail right now that just having an awesome sale isn’t enough to draw customers – so Sam’s Club is taking a cue from Vegas. If you go shopping at a Sam’s Club on Friday morning they are going to comp you – with breakfast. I’m not joking- starting at 5am on Friday, they’ll be serving complimentary breakfast in all of the Sam’s Club stores. Now, I’m not saying that the prospect of a free bagel is enough to draw you out of your house to brave the Black-Friday crowds, but if you were going out anyway, it might help to make the lines a bit more tolerable.

We’ll be getting more information from the Sam’s Club folks before Friday so I’ll be sure to post any new deals that are coming. In the meantime you can visit this page in order to sign up for alerts of any new offers.

Giveaways!
We’ll be doing a giveaway today and posting another on Friday. Tonight you can enter for a chance to win a $50 Sam’s Club gift card (in case you’re keeping track, between the Wife and I we’re currently giving away about $500 worth of gift-cards). I kept things really simple with the last contest, so you’ll have to work a little bit harder this time. You’ll have to check out the holiday catalog and add a comment about an item that interests you.

Official Rules:

1. You must already be or become a subscriber to this site in order to participate.
2. To enter, visit this link and check out the Black-Friday deals. Leave a comment on this post and mention any of the items that you’d be interested in buying.
3. One winner will receive $50 worth of Sam’s Club gift cards.
4. The winner will be selected using random.org, based on the number of your comment.
6. This contest will end at 10pm on Tuesday, December 8th 2009.
7. The winner will be notified by email and posted to this site. Winners will have 48 hours from the time of notification to claim their prize. If the prize is not claimed within that time, another winner will be chosen.
8. Each comment represents a single entry. Those entitled to multiple entries for performing “extra credit” must add a comment for each entry.Extra Credit:
1. Support a good cause by viewing this post where you can find information about a contest that my sister and her boyfriend have entered their pets in. You’ll be able to vote for their dogs in this “cutest-pet” contest – the winner gets $1000 to donate to a charity and they would give the money to the MSPCA( MA Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) if Bella wins or MA Vest-a-Dog which provides bullet-proof vests for Police Dogs if Lucy wins -

  • 1 extra entry for each vote that you cast (the post I just linked to will tell you how to vote. When you vote, you’ll see the total number of votes they have received, include in your comment the total number that appears after you cast your vote. You can vote for Bella and Lucy, just leave a separate comment here for each).
  • You can also Tweet about the contest and get 1 extra entry per-day, per tweet(There is a “share” link on the voting page that you can use to share on Twitter, include a link to your tweet in your comment).

2. Follow me using the Google Friend Connect widget – 1 extra entry
3. Follow on Twitter and Tweet about this contest – 1 extra entry per day (include link to Tweet in your comment)
4. Blog about this contest – 3 extra entries (include a link to the post in your comment)
5. Enter any of the giveaways in progress on www.theartofbeingmom.com – 3 extra entries (include name of contest and your comment # )
6. Post a comment on any of the other posts on this site (from the past month) – 1 extra entry per post (leave post name and comment #)
7. Visit the Sam’s Club “Holiday Helper” page and leave a comment on any of the posts. Include a link to this post in your comment. – 2 extra entries for each Holiday Helper post that you comment on (you can do this for any number of the posts on that website but only one comment for each post counts. You can’t just go and add 5 comments to one post and then claim 10 entries, but if you post a comment on five separate posts you can get 10 entries).

(remember, you have to leave a comment for EACH ENTRY when you do extra credit. We pick winners based on a drawing using the comment number. If you put 5 entries into a single comment, you defeat the whole purpose of the extra credit, since you aren’t increasing your chances of winning. No, I am not going to go through each entry and make sure that you’ve entered correctly, that is up to you.)

FTC Disclosures:
This post is part of the Sam’s Club – Sharing the Savings Blogger Program. I have received compensation from Sam’s Club in the form of a complimentary Sam’s Club membership. I have also been provided with membership gift/cards to giveaway to our readers. Regardless of compensation, all views and opinions expressed are my own.