Black Friday

Ah, Black Friday. There's nothing like 5 a.m. store openings and insanely cheap discounts on laptops and video games to get you in the holiday mood, right? And yes, there I was covering the nonsense and craziness of it all for work.

I set two alarms for 3 a.m. and met B, one of our photographers, forty-five minutes later at work. Yes, it was ridiculously early. I mean, the last time I was up at 3:30 I was coming home from a night out. But stores were opening at 5 and trust me, no one was going to give me the time of day while they were shopping. I'm not sure they would give me the time of day while waiting in line, but what else did they have to do? Play cards with their frozen fingers?

Our first stop was a nice 20 oz. coffee from Wawa which helped with the ungodly hour. I had only slept for 4 hours (Grey's was on until 10 and let's be honest: even an early wakeup was not about to stop me from watching). So there I was: bundled up in three layers including my winter jacket with my Red Sox winter hat, a pair of gloves, and, of course, my notepad. You would have thought I was interviewing people in the arctic tundra or something.

We made the rounds to Best Buy, Circuit City and Toys 'R Us - me hearing the stories of why someone would start standing in line at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving for a laptop and B snapping the pictures of people streaming into Circuit City for their plasma TV's and digital cameras. These people were dedicated. The line for Best Buy almost wrapped around the entire building. People had sleeping bags, chairs, blankets, and cups of coffee. Most were surprisingly pleasant and cheerful for such a ridiculous hour. Some people were funny. A select few were slightly hostile. I don't think all of them were playing with a full deck on some level.

I think we were done by 6 or so. By then we grabbed breakfast (and more coffee, of course) at Einstein Bros. Bagels. Though I was tired, it wasn't that bad. I knew it would catch up to me later, though. But I was on a wired/tired high from all the caffeine. Let's just say Black Friday didn't exactly put me in the holiday shopping mood.

But it did definitely put me in the mood for a nice 3-hour nap later on.

Happy shopping. And good luck out there.