Eye:

I'm in the eye of the storm right now. This is Black Friday, folks... a day where the weak of heart should hide their wallets.

This is the first year I've seen any store run a 24 hour long sale for Black Friday. The store, as it turns out, is CompUSA... which in previous years has been a store of few sales and a lots of fine print. So they decided to try opening the store at midnight, Friday morning and put a few great deals in the circular. It's 10 PM and we drive by the CompUSA as we're returning from Thanksgiving dinner at my new-brother-in-law's home in Virginia. Meh, about 25 to 30 hardcore people out there waiting for the next two hours in 24 degree weather. Fastforward to 11 PM when we're back, all geared up in wintery clothes and with the circular in hand. We're only the HUNDREDTH people in line. Oh wait... by 11:45, there are about 300 plus people in the parking lot and still loads more coming. There is still hope, by the way, that I'll be able to snatch my external harddrive. I may not be the sturdiest pusher, but I can slide through a crowd like none other. Anyway, doors open and since this is the first time this store has had to deal with a crowd like this, well, they don't do a very good job. Can you imagine a 300 person line running into the entrance and trying to squeeze through a double sliding glass door? Stampede and trample. 300 people running through the store, knocking down everything. The store was a mess with boxes of you name it strewn on the floor. Think of the Capital One vikings pillaging an electronics store. That's CompUSA an hour later. So 2 hours in the check out line and a few good deals in hand, we finally make it out the door.

I've been in my fair share of human stampedes before, but this one was a quite a bit different. "Oh is this the hard drive I'm looking for? Nope. I'll just throw it on the ground" or maybe "Hey, I'll buy that off of you. C'mon" or better yet "Get out of my #!%#@ way, I need that harddrive... I need that hardriveeeeeee!!" There's just too much pushing, shoving, competition... hate for your fellow shopper.

So Alpha squad returned at 2 AM to rest and pick up Beta squad for round two. Up at a bright and early 3 AM. I choose to forego sleep, even though I probably need it for the real beast- Best Buy. Such an outting gives me the shivers. If I don't make it back alive, you can find my will underneath the suitcase under my bed. The edited version (with projected Black Friday grabs) can be found on flash memory drive on my shelf. I'ma chase me some more hurricane.

Edit/Update: Round 2 was very successful. We obtained all primary and all secondary objectives. We were missing only a single terciary item. We were out of Best Buy by 5:35 AM, scouted Staples for a few minutes and then conquered Target before 6:30. You definitely don't go into a Black Friday morning expecting to get everything you circle on the ads.