I tried to go to bed around 1am this morning and failed miserably until 3am I just couldn't take not being able to get any sleep, so I got my wife up and we were out the door by 4:30am.
We joined the Best Buy line at #126 and #127. It was raining with a temperature of 33F and the line just kept on growing. Umbrellas were bending over backwards from the massive blasts of wind. Employees started passing out vouchers for the products no one really wanted (13" TV/DVD combo) around 5am. Donuts came by soaked from the rain. Candy was tossed from bags, falling on the dripping sidewalk with no one caring (except some lady I saw pick up a piece of gum to chew). Finally at 6am and not a minute sooner, the doors opened and a flood of drenched people systematically entered the store. A few line jumpers that had only arrived 5 minutes before attempted to integrate themselves into the line. It wasn't happening.
To my surprise I scored a Liteon DVD+-RW drive, Buslink CDRW drive, 100 CDR spindle and various media for the family. Isles were tight and people were bitchy. There was just no easy way to move around the store. The isles were boxed off with TVs and other things to encourage order. Bah! The blockades only made traffic worse. Almost 45 minutes waiting on the master checkout line before the line forked.
After that little adventure we hit the mall, grabbed our free snowglobe from JC Penney, picked up some more gifts and swung by OM to get some DVDR discs. The line was worse there, so I conveniently dropped one of the DVD-R packages behind a file thingy in case I returned later when the crowd lessened. We wound up hitting the other OM on the other side of town and were able to get the DVDRs FAR, keyboard FAR (my shift key is broken on the left, so I often don't capitalize well), 100 CDRs FAR and Neato DVD/CD Labeler FAR. We hit other crazy stores in that area and finally visited our newly opened Chick-Fil-A resturant...cashing in our free chicken bisquet grand-opening coupons.
I spent all afternoon filling out rebate forms, scanning all materials and addressing envelopes. I always scan everything in and save jpgs in case I don't get my refund money back. I am such a cheap bastard (don't even print them on paper)
..Went looking for the 50% off DVDRW discs at Compusa at 5pm. long gone baby..
That's my Black Friday Adventure more or less.