T! At Black Friday 2007

My video camera was on the fritz, so I only have pictures from my cheesetastic cameraphone to report to you.

I crawled out of bed at 4a.m., and left the house by 4:15. I traveled 25 miles to Circuit City in Denton, Texas, to take advantage of the $8 2GB USB drive.

I wasn't expecting to see any die-hard shopper lines in Denton, but when I passed Best Buy on the way to Circuit City, I saw a line full of tents, chairs, and crazy people. The same sight greeted me when I arrived to the City.

I waited in line for about ten minutes before the doors opened at 5. Once opened, everyone started to pour in.



After wriggling my way past the crowd, I finally found the huge cardboard box full of USB drives. I grabbed three of them, and charged to the register.


Once the cashier scanned my items, the total popped up on the screen. $48. What? These are $8 bucks apiece! What I didn't know, and the folks at black-friday.net didn't tell me, was that there was a mail-in rebate, and there was a limit of one per person. I immediately snapped back a demand to have my money back, then I calmly said that I would like to just have one. It wasn't what I expected, but I got what I wanted.

After Circuit City, I traveled to many stores looking for prospective gifts and watching the crowds take this day way too seriously. My first stop was across the boulevard to the Golden Triangle Mall, our local mall since 1979. Even though it's drawing it's dying breaths, and will soon be snuffed out by a mega shopping center on the other side of town, the anchor stores were open extra early to greet shoppers.

I walked through the empty halls, and through the busy aisles of JCPenney and Sears.




This lady is so tired that she apparently can't even carry her pillows without dragging them pathetically on the ground.

After the mall, I stopped by Target, which was by far the most crowded store out of any other that morning. I didn't stay very long, especially after I witnessed this sea of people:



Once I escaped Target, I just want to random stores, picking up a few gifts along the way. I had a good time, but one thing is for sure. I probably won't be doing this again for a loooooong time.