Shawn and I had never done the Black Friday crazy shopping thing, so we decided a new experience would be good.

My feet hurt.

We got to Best Buy at 5am, the line was past Rooms to Go, around the back parking lot, back to the main parking lot, down to in front of Guitar Center. The employees told us people had been camping out since the day before, and that at midnight last night the line was already past Rooms to Go. There were piles of litter everywhere, abandoned camping chairs, even an abandoned recliner! A handicap parking space sign was torn down.

They started letting in 100 people at a time, and we slowly crept towards the store. Chick-Fil-A showed up with breakfast and coffee for sale - and sold out of coffee within a couple minutes, they left and came back with more. We finally got in after 6am, my nose frozen, found our stuff (which they had plenty of, shockingly with the hundreds of people ahead of us in line). They had a maze set up for crowd control and at some point I couldn't find my way out of the aisles and boxes and I started losing it a little. I do not like feeling trapped, and will panic if you trap me somewhere.

Once we got out of the maze, found the last couple things we were having trouble locating, check out took no time at all. By now it was about 7am. It felt really good to be outside and watching the sun peek up.

Then we headed to Circuit City. We walked right in there. We found three of the five things we were looking for, the other two were sold out. And then we stood in line. And stood in line. And stood in line. At one point I went to go get a breath of air from the crowd over in a less crowded section -- I walked around the store a couple times, searched for one of the things we hadn't found initially, sat in front of a TV for a few minutes, then went back - and Shawn hadn't moved. At all. Then, later, there were people buying a computer and cart full of crap and it took them 40 minutes to check out. So we didn't move, at all. For 40 minutes.

There was no crowd control - because of the 40 minute purchase at our line, people who came in the store long after us checked out before us when people should have been guided into registers. The shelves were a wreck. The Sims add-on that was on sale was on a bottom shelf two cases over from the rest of the Sims stuff. Shawn spotted it, and some poor guy was on the cell listing all of the Sims titles he could find, asking whoever was on the other end if that was the one he or she wanted. I grabbed a handful of them and set them with the other Sims games in front of him to help people out.

The DVDs and console games on sale were just thrown into giant boxes that you had to forage through to find what you wanted. Nothing was where it should be. On top of that, the lines ran in such a way as to block off the entire music, game, and DVD section.

So, Circuit City = evil. We didn't get out of there until 9am.

Across the street to Sports Authority ($.89 for a can of tennis balls!) and Staples. I could go nuts in Staples. I love, love office supplies. It's a thing. I don't get it, but it is. I behaved myself and stuck to the list, which mostly involved stuff to make stuff for other people, printer paper (we were out), and a new chair for Shawn.

I think both places altogether took 20 minutes, and that's with testing chairs, hunting down free photo stickers that came with my printer paper, me oogling, and an employee having to get the chair out of the back.

Target wasn't as packed as I feared. I think we probably spent another 20 minutes in there. We found the three things really quickly and the lines weren't too long.

Pretty much everyone was nice today, though. There was one chick at Circuit City who was a complete bitch to an older lady about line placement. I don't get today with the lack of respect - for anyone, but especially for elders. But I think one incident out of hundreds of people isn't too bad.

It was good to have the experience - which was the main goal for me. I mean, yay cheap stuff, but, no way would I normally wait in line that long for anything we bought.

Tomorrow I get to splurge at Jo-Ann's a little. More or less just stuff to make stuff for other people, but I'll take it. I'll probably go without Shawn, and finish off his Xmas shopping. Then the fun of wrapping things creatively so he doesn't know which present is which.

Next year: back to online shopping!