My unscientific shopping report.

Try as I might - I couldn't inject any money into the economy. And, I was trying really hard.

If you listen to the news, the message is all gloom. People are returning purchased Christmas items, and going home to put the money into their mattresses. What I found was quite the contrary.

Electronics obviously is the bright spot. We went to Fry's electronics last night. It wasn't the busiest I've ever seen it. In the top 10 busiest days though. But, surprisingly the return isle was almost empty. I'd say there were maybe 5 people in it. The isle to check out was completely full. Those isles in SValley are about 100 feet long. We stayed in the store maybe a half an hour. It was full pretty much the whole time, and a steady stream of people. We had money to burn - but we didn't find anything worth standing in that line for. There weren't that many big ticket items being sold, but lots and lots of small items.

Home Depot. I figured we needed a radial pull saw, and maybe they would have discounts. The place was dead. And, there were no discounts.

2 Cell phone stores. Verizon and At&T. Both completely dead. From all that I'd seen, the cell phone market had collapsed. So you can imagine my surprise when we went to Best Buy today and it was completely packed. Most notably the cell phone department. Crazy packed. Even the desk where you sign up for cell phone services.

Mr S. had an interesting observation. Best Buy sells pretty much all the cell phone types. Which I'm betting makes people very happy. You don't have to go around to all the different cell phones stores where the sales guys are freaking annoying. One stop shopping.

The one exception? The Google phone. The one we wanted to look at, of course. Their website said they carried it. But, Best buy said they don't stock any T-moble devices. I'm starting to wonder if the Google phone is the next Helio vaporware device. Backstory here, here and here.

Target also said they carried it. But, when we asked the guy in the electronics department - he said they didn't carry it, and the Target website is really just redirected to the Amazon website. Eeek. I'm not sure why he said that. Sales people are so wacky. But, I was able to win some money from Mr S. I bet there was no way Target carried the Gphone. And they didn't. Yeah - I'm poking him.

Target was also pretty packed, and people were buying stuff. The return isle was minimal.