Thankful for Coffee Timers

The coffee maker was set to go off at 4 am. You know, in enough time to get up for Black Friday shopping. We've made our lists, my aunt drafted a time & address matrix so we know where to get when. I'm on the prowl for a cheap but able-to-run-for-hours portable DVD player. It does exist, in the 300 pages of ads we've been through over the last few hours. I picked out 4 and researched them online. Six places in town open at 5 am for me to be able to beat the rushes and buy it. We're ready. Car is full of gas, wallet is full of credit cards and the coffee is set to wake us up at 4.
And the catch here is that I already own a portable DVD. Code H03 keeps popping up -- thank you Panasonic. A $400 version with a 10-hour battery that is just over a year old. But I'm back in the states for a little trip and an 8-hour flight back home screams for a long-acting battery on a machine that will last long enough for me to ignore the chatty college student beside me and the large woman behind me who can't seem to get up without yanking down the back of my tiny chair every half an hour when she has to rush the bathroom.
So our lists are ready and my uncle (and by the way, my aunt and uncle are roughly 8 years older than me and pros at this Thanksgiving shopathon), has been draggooned to drive tomorrow. But that same uncle is an electronics genius and just researched the panasonic website for the Code problem. What do you know? There is actually a customer on the site who has posted the same technical issue.
My grandfather, two drinks in, comes out of his TV daze and tells me to just slap it with my right hand on the left side. He's a little crazy. But I'm not doing anything else. Smack.
The darn thing whizzes and bangs and creaks to life. How 'bout that.
So now I have no reason at all to scan my matrix and plot my wakeup time. Black Friday will start at 9 for us now. It's my first time (I've been out of the country for a bit) so I'm not crushed. I'll probably miss out on the 7-piece luggage set for $40 and the all-inclusive Spanish software for $5. But I will get to sleep.
And the coffee maker is now set for 8. I'm so thankful for coffee timers!