Black Friday, Cold Friday

Black Friday.  The name is almost an oxymoron this year.  For me, it started a few weeks ago, checking out the leaked Black Friday ads on the Internet.  What caught my eye was the Target ad.  40" Hi-Def  LCD TV (1080p - 60Hz) for $298.  My God, that's half price.  And it's a Westinghouse, not one of those off-brand things like Apex or Vizio.  Heard bad things about those - dying shortly after you get them home.  I thought about it for a week or so and decided it might be cool to go from the 300lb 32" antique monster in the living room to a flat panel.  Don't really need one, but it sure would be nice to have one.  The prices are out of our range so I never considered it until now.  So I went window shopping on Tuesday after work, hitting Target and Frys Electronics.  Don't want a plasma, can't afford a LED, so I looked and compared the 42" and smaller LCD's.  I checked out 1080p and 720p, 60 Hz, 120 Hz and 240 Hz.  I decided that, yea, the Target Black Friday deal is a great bargain.  Since it was under $300, a 3 year extended Target Warranty would be $29, also a bargain.  Now, if I'm gonna update the living room TV to the 21st Century, I want it to be Internet capable - you know, be able to stream movies from our Netflix instant queue.  This particular sale item was not, but it had a ton of inputs including antique video and audio, the newer 3-component video, a bunch of HDMI inputs and....a PC input.  Cool, way cool.  But no Internet connection.  Aha!  A Blu-Ray player on sale does and it's half off at just under a $100.  I vigorously "Googled" and checked out the TV and the Blu-Ray player.  The TV look like a good one, great features, nothing bad reported by anyone.  The Blu-Ray player is Wi-Fi - if you buy the optional USB Wi-Fi thing-ey.  Nah!  I want it all built-in, hard wired.  So I go online to my favorite 'everything' store, Amazon.com and search their 'Weeklong Black Friday Ads".  Bingo!  Found an LG Blu-Ray for $93 including shipping that has everything I need.  Time to present my findings to the Boss.  She's been doing back-to-back 12 hour RN shifts Monday and Tuesday so I have to wait until Wednesday night.  By that time, she has become "De-Zombie-ized" enough to become coherent.  I show her the ad, tell her all my research.  She blinks a few times, thinks a minute or two, asks me a few questions and gives the go-ahead.  On Thanksgiving Day, I let her know that I'm going to Target and stand in line at about 10pm or midnight as the store opens 4am Black Friday.  She thinks it's a little early to go and maybe I should go at, like, 2am.  As the Thanksgiving day meal prep work progresses, I realize that they probably only have maybe 5-10 of these TV's at the store and start backing up my planned arrival time.  Around 2pm, I announce that I want to be in line 12 hours before the store opens.  She thinks I'm totally crazy (which I usually am, but it's under control).  As she is getting T-Day dinner ready for me, I'm packing stuff:  Chaise lounge, sleeping bag, gloves, reading material, flashlight and extra batteries, a couple of ham sandwiches and some Oreo cookies.  I'll take a thermos of excellent Keurig coffee and a big waterproof bottle to pee in - I'm set.  The truck is loaded and ready to go.  At 3:15pm, I serve myself a wonderful T-day dinner but just one serving of everything.  This is probably the first Thanksgiving that I wasn't bloated from eating.  I was on a mission and had time constraints.  Hugged and kissed her Good-bye and left for the Target store a mile away.  When I got there, it was 3:50 pm and I was 3rd in line. 

Yea, boy!  If they had 3 TV's or more, I was one of the recipients.  The couple in front of me had a cousin who worked at Target and assured me that there were 70 of the TV's for sale.  Cool!  Luckily, clear blue sky - no rain.  The bad news is that it will be in the upper 30's before the store opens and windy.  I had put on two sweatshirts, a jacket, two pair of thick socks so I was prepared.  Besides, I had a sleeping bag, too.  As soon as I got there, I realized I was blind, leaving my glasses at home in my rush to get here.  I called Charlene and ask her to bring them at her convenience later.  I settled in for a 12 hour shift of my own.  Hurry up and wait, just like being in the military.

 It was  an hour or so before anyone else showed up, a pair of twins.  They were Hispanic guys with a great sense of humor and a cooler full of beer (Bud Light).  They soon offered me a Bud, which I gracefully took and we had a great time.  Then I realized that beer makes you pee so that was my only one (damn Black Friday Wait Station duty).  Charlene showed up with my glasses so I could read and expressed her concern for my well-being due to the cold.  It was in the upper 40's so I was OK.  About an hour later, I realized I had to pee and my truck was parked under a street lamp - no privacy.  By this time, about 10 people were in line and those of us that had been there for a few hours knew our place in line was secure so we could get up and walk around without fear of losing it.  The twins had made a couple of 'runs' to their truck to 'relieve' themselves in air tight bottles, I had gotten up and walked around the parking lot a few times so I decided to look for a place I could literally 'go'.  Found a nice hide away out of sight and did my "Seinfeld" thing without notice.  By 8:30 pm, I was getting cold and called Charlene and ask her to bring another sleeping bag.  She came by about 10 pm, bringing another one and 'spelled ' me so I could drive home, do the bathroom thing, get some fresh coffee and warm up.  As it was windy and the temps were in the low 40's, it felt wonderful to be warm again.  Damn old people disease of low metabolism which causes us 'old dudes' to get cold easily.  Then, back to the 'Wait Station'.  Throughout the past 6 hours, more people joined the line.  Probably a hundred.  Those that came unprepared for the cold called friends and relatives to bring chairs and blankets.  Time slowed down and I thought 4 am would never come.  The worst was midnight to two in the morning.  Not only did the clock stop, I thought it was running backwards.  I told the guys behind me that if I snored, just bump me and I'd wake up.  Sometime in the mysterious time void near one in the morning, I fell asleep for about 5 seconds and started to snore.  A big, loud snore.  The kind that is so loud that it wakes yourself up.  I woke up a fraction of a second before I got bumped by the guy next to me.  Everyone close by was laughing and I joined in, somewhat embarrassed.  At 2 am, I told my group to watch my stuff and drove home, entering quietly.  Got warm, did the bathroom thing, got fresh coffee and headed back to wait for 4 am. 

Everyone was covered in blankets, sleeping.  From time to time, someone would leave and go to Jack in the Box for food and drink.  Probably the only place open that late.  Around 3 am, store employees started appearing, readying for the 4 am apocalypse.  Now, the crowd which numbered close to 1000 - yes, a thousand, started to wake up.  My group of 25 slowly woke and started packing up their blankets, coolers, bags of stuff and chairs, taking them to their vehicles.  I joined them, bitching under my breath as we still had about 45 minutes and it was outright cold - 38 degrees with windchill factor.  Haven't used that phrase since I left Ohio.  But my place in line put me right next to the door, hidden from the wind by a pillar so I guess it was good.  Plus, my almost frozen feet started to thaw out as I moved about and stamped them on the sidewalk.  A photographer from the Star showed up and started snapping pictures and doing interviews - none of which appeared in today's paper or their online version.  A minute or so before 4 am, we at the front agreed there was no need to rush the doors or in the store as we could see pallets and pallets of the TV boxes 200 feet up the isle.  The doors opened, we swiftly walk in and then all of us just broke into a run, pushing our carts.  The guy in front of me, at a run and pushing his cart, executed a perfect grab of a HDMI cable from a display without skipping a step.  We arrived and all of us started grabbing a TV. 

It is finished I thought as I struggled to get the huge box in a cart.  It took me several minutes to get to a side isle as gobs of runners, pushing their baskets toward the TV's clogged the isle and almost annihilated me.  Safely on a side isle, I worked my way to the other end of the store and got an extended warranty.  Headed for the checkout and was out the door 10 minutes after the mad dash began.  I loaded it in the back of 'Blue' (that's what I call my white truck) and headed home.  I quietly brought it in, laid it down on the floor and went to bed.  Start to finish, 12 hours and 40 minutes.  I'm too old for this......... Nah!  Apparently not as I did score a super sale on a super TV.