For the first time in my life, I actually went to the stores this morning (Black Friday) like all the other people whom I’d made fun of in the past. My wife and her sisters usually go, and had this been a normal year, I would have been inclined to stay home and sleep. After all, I do have to work today.

But you see, my wife is seven months pregnant with our first child (a girl) and there is no way in hell I’d let her go out there by herself. I knew she had some larger items she needed to carry, and her primary target (Kohls) does not have really user-friendly baskets. So I dragged my ass out of bed on four hours rest (this coming after a sleepless night the day before) to assist.

Because I may have a family member read this at some point in the next few weeks, I will not disclose everything we purchased. However, I will state that the experience was VERY interesting. It’s pretty amusing to see 300 people lined up outside Kohls 30 minutes before the store opens. It’s even funnier when you consider that many of them would not have gotten up to go to work early, yet they would stay up all night or roll out of bed at ungodly hours to save $20 on  a pair of shoes or buy some jewelry. A quick kudos to my wife, she recommended we bring our flea market shopping cart and it came in handy. Everyone was jockin’.

A couple highlights:

**While my wife and I were standing near the END of the line at Kohl’s, some asshole drives by and says “get a life!” This made a few people chuckle because everyone wanted to know why he was up harassing people at 3:45 a.m. This became even funnier when the dumbass pulled into the parking lot at the next entrance.

** While at Kohl’s, I spotted a manager settling a dispute between two women at 4:20 a.m. The argument took place near a price scanner where one woman (Woman A) claimed to have left her would be purchases as she went to round up more stuff. Woman B apparently found this stack of items, and thought they were strays, so she claimed them for herself. This resulted in Woman A and Woman B bitching about these things as about a dozen people looked on. I’m not sure how it was settled, but it does bring about an interesting question: To whom do these items belong?

**After Kohl’s, we rolled to Toys R Us / Baby’s R Us to pickup a few items. On the way there I noted the extremely long lines at Best Buy and Circuit City and smiled, thanking god that my wife had not wanted to hit those stores. When we got to Toys/Baby R Us, I hit the diapers (see image above) while my wife ventured into the scary electronics department. We got what we wanted and got the hell out. Of course I wanted to check out the card section, but there were like 50 people — all with shopping carts — still trying to make their way to the nearby action figures and other items stocked nearby. I gave up.

It is now 7:15 a.m. (Pacific) and I’m going to take a 30-minute power nap before heading into work. But before I do, I wanted to note that you know you’re getting old when the highlights of your personal purchases are as follows:

- Four boxes of diapers ($10 each / normally $25),

- A box of baby wipes ($5/ normally about $15)

- A pair of dress shoes ($20 / normally $80).

For those curious, the savings here was about $130. I guess this may justify the purchase of another blaster today … Hmmm.  Anyone know if K-Mart still had that Buy One Get One blaster free?