Black Friday

Almost all of my friends avoid shopping in any capacity on the day after Thanksgiving, and for good reason -- it's a mad house trying to shop anywhere on that fabled Friday of each year. And then there are the people like myself that make each year's black Friday something to look forward to. Just like the last 6 or 7 years, I was up bright and early in line outside of Best Buy waiting to get some of that doorbusting goodness.

Most years there is one big item that someone in my family needs to get for some reason or another on black Friday, with this year being no different. My little brother, Ryan, needed to get a laptop for college so. He may have needed something, but I really didn't. That sure didn't stop me from getting up at 2:15 am and driving to the Rochester Best Buy with my other brother Randy, my mom, and my cousin.

When we arrived at Best Buy around 3:10 am (it's a 45 minute drive from my parents' house to Rochester) there was already hundreds of people standing in line. The night before, luckily, my other brother Ryan (who needed the laptop) came with one of his friends to came out at around 9:00 pm. Even being there 8 hours before the store opened, he was about 75th in line. People were lining up around 1:00 pm on Thursday. Crazy!

So I waited two hours to get in, spending part of the time talking with my brother Ryan and his friend at the front of the line about the people who were driving by the night before to heckle them, claiming they had no life. Think about it, though. The people driving around at 2:00 am heckling people in line to shop must equally need lives if they have nothing else to do. The rest of the time was spend listening to my trusty MP3 player and being thankful that it was above freezing this year, as opposed to last year when it was ridonkulously freezing out.

Since I was there so early, I needed to justify to myself the lack of sleep, the time spent in line, and the drive into Rochester. So... I bought a TV. Right now my place only has one communal television so we sometimes end up wanting to use it at the same time and someone has to go to their room to do whatever they wanted to do. Not any more! I purchased a 32" LCD widescreen HDTV doorbuster special. Oh yeah! Check out its hotness:

It's really pretty. I think it'll make a great TV. I've already spent time watching football on it while one of my roommates played Xbox 360 on the other television. I'm still amazed at how clear the new LCDs are, even when displaying a standard analog cable signal.

Oh, and I also picked up Table Tennis for 360. So far, it's worth every penny of the $18.99 I spent on it. Go grab yourself a copy and come play me on Xbox Live. I'm not that good... yet!

All in all, it was a very successful black Friday shopping experience yet again. If you've never done it, you should try it out next year. Or not. You might not be as deranged as I am. But hey, shoppings fun, isn't it?