Case lot sale, here we come.

Oh the joy of a case lot sale at a military commissary. Just in case you've never heard of such a thing, it's where the DECA (who owns and runs the commissaries) turns into Sam's or Costco for a weekend (minus the gas pumps and anything non food store related) and passes even MORE savings onto YOU...the approved military commissary shopper. ::Snorts of derision::

In South Dakota, the deal tended be cases of 12 ounce cans of soda. If I remember correctly, we got 24 cans of Cherry Coke for $5.00. In Germany, I don't remember anything standing out, but I know we almost always bought paper products like tp and paper towels. And diapers. Always the diapers. And Ziploc bags. Oh, and the first case lot sale there offered a case of Cheerios for something like $6. Cheap. We ate Cheerios for months. Good thing we like Cheerios.

Here? Hmm. I'm not sure what the best deals are, but that's because the case lot sale here scares me a little. People line up around the corner and down the street way before the commissary opens. We are talking flat bed carts to fill up the backs of mini vans and pickup trucks and I believe I have even seen a U-Haul trailer or two. That's some serious shopping. You are also shuffled through a tent with one way traffic that has no patience for those of us who are just looking to see what's there. These are some organized case lot shoppers, let me just tell you. They have calculators and coupons and a plan. Do NOT mess with these people. They will take your a$$ out.

After the last sale, I had pretty much made up my mind to avoid the commissary this weekend. And then we ran out of toothpaste for the kids and were running really low on tissues, and we needed bread, and so on. Since we had thunderstorms and heavy rains all night last night and into this morning, I figured it would be safe to try the commissary today. T wanted to go with me, so we bravely suited up and headed out.

And - yay! The parking lot had parking spaces, which is rare on non case lot sale weekends. We parked and sauntered up to the tent, which was....gasp...mostly empty. This case lot sale was pretty much cleaned out. Awesome. So T and I headed into the store where we were able to find what we needed without any right of way battles and get through the checkout process without hardly any wait at all. This is a case lot sale I can deal with. No screaming kids (meaning mine), no dirty looks, no nasty sounds coming from the people behind me....it was almost like a dream. I liked this dream. I liked it a lot.