Long Day?

Sure, you can say that. At 11 pm last night, Dic, Stef and I went off to the Charleston outlets. As we were exiting the freeway, we saw TRAFFIC. Red lights were everywhere, which translated to so many people out tonight to do some shopping. Yup. Black Friday was starting a few minutes early!

We finally got a parking space (or rather, we MADE a space for us in this dirt lot right next to the outlets) and moseyed on over to the well-lit, CROWDED outlets. Yes, it was barely midnight and already people were milling around, forming lines for certain shops. Sheesh!

I shopped for some undies (no line there, so I just breezed through) before finding the Nike store. It was very crowded inside but I figured I'd look around to see if there was anything I could get the kids. Sure enough, after searching through the crowds, I came across some cool shoes for the girls where they could change the swoosh colors! Cute! I couldn't find 2 pairs of the same size, so I grabbed a 7.5 and an 8 and I just hope they'll fit! :)

Good thing I did go into the Nike store and veered off into the men's section. I found what Japa wanted (I think), and after a phone call to him to verify that it was, I grabbed a couple of the training shirts he liked wearing. Grabbed a couple of caps that *I* wanted and stood in line.

Close to am hour later, I was STILL in the freakin' line!!! Aaaaargh! Turns out some %^&* lady bought 70 plus pairs of shoes!!! She was obviously going to resell them, but I sure as heck wished that she had done her pre-arranged Black Friday buy in a separate cashier, preferably somewhere in the back of the store instead of joining us mere mortals who counted every precious minute we were in line!!!

I rushed to the Disney store to stew in a line for a short bit; bouncers were posted in the front of the more popular stores to control the number of shoppers. Dic and I met up here and sifted through the mountains of Disney shirts that were only $4 after the early bird special discount. Worth it, sure it was! :)

At 3 am, we all left the outlets to go to Walmart, ready to do a stake out if necessary when it opened its doors at 5 am. As it turned out, Walmart was open for 24 hours and we excited went in, ready to grab the stuff that we wanted. Ummmm....wasn't going to happen, since Walmart employees were stationed at the early bird specials to make sure that no one was going to get to the goodies earlier than 5 am! Man-oh-man!

Anyhoo, we went around, doing some regular shopping. I was able to get the towels that were on sale when I wandered into the towel aisles. Specials were placed on the middle aisle for easier access for customers. With my towel "contraband", I pushed my full cart into some obscure corner where no one was going to get it (area rugs and other houseware)......and went to the place where the portable DVD players were on sale. I *WANTED* one of those as a back up plan for when Ranger's was going to go on the blink (which I'm presuming is going to be soon, judging from the looks of things).

I squeezed through the bodies and found myself standing somewhere in the front of the line, hehehe. The poor guy guarding the DVD players was nervously looking at the huge crowd eyeing the merchandise that was going to be GRABBED from behind him in a few minutes. Hehehe. Too funny. And in the front of the crowd were large women. I mean, I wasn't even considered large when compared to some of these women! hahahaha! Think chunky, muscularly built, tall, large, DETERMINED-TO-GET-THEIR-HANDS-ON-A-PORTABLE-DVD-PLAYER type of women. Bwahahahahaha!

Most of the women were pretty nice, and we struck up some shallow conversation about staying up all night and Black Friday horror stories. We tried to make the whole distribution of the DVD players have some sort of semblance of order; I have NO idea why Walmart didn't have us form a line or something. Anyhoo, I just wanted to grab my first 3 units before passing on what I could to my newfound "friends" behind me.

As we were counting down the minutes, I remarked to another woman how I felt like everyone behind us were slowly inching towards the front of the line until I pretty much could feel the breathing of the person behind me! Anyway, the clock struck 5 am and the surge began, bwahahahaha!

Good thing I was in front; I rushed forward and put my arms around 6 units, hehehe. I clutched 4 to my chest and handed another 4 or so to the lady behind me, who passed it on to others. Then I got out of there, squeezing through the bodies of people still surging forward. I took a deep breathe when I broke from the crowd, sighing in relief to see that I still clutched 4 units. Whew! :)

Then it was time to break through even more crowds as I wandered through the aisle in search of more deals. I grabbed some $8 jackets for the kids for when they arrived here in a couple of weeks. I figured for that amount, no big deal if they weren't ever going to use them again.

Stef also had her own baptism by fire, waiting for the toys she wanted. Being the smart cookie that she was, she went on the INSIDE of the perimeter of specials to grab 3 BOXFULS of Hot Wheels cars among other toys. When I saw her, her cart was stuffed full of toys and she had on this flushed excited expression on her face, hehehehe. Looks like she had fun and was running on pure adrenaline!

Rondic was waiting for us by the TVs. I guess the mostly-men crowd waiting for the TVs were a lot less boisterous and less demanding than us crazy women all over the store! We assessed our carts and redistributed the goodies we had gotten for each other. This is how Black Friday shopping should be done: divide and conquer! :) Made it less strenuous and less hassle for sure!

And we were done. Rondic "lost" that prized portable DVD that I had clawed for (hahahaha!) but thank goodness Stef decided to take that extra unit I had grabbed, so she offered to give it Dic instead.

On the drive home, we were quiet: exhausted, sleepy, hungry. We got home, we stuffed ourselves with leftover rice and salpicao, I took a shower and I went to the hospital.

Told you it was a long day! It was close to 10 when we got to the hospital. i ordered the largest sized coffee ever, just so I could stay up. And I did, for the most part, although I did tons of catnaps the whole day, sleeping when Dad was sleeping :)