surviving black friday

this past friday is known as black friday and for americans all over the country, that means shopping. as for my black friday story... well that begins on thursday, otherwise known as thanksgiving.

thanksgiving was typical of any other american thanksgiving, with turkey and all the usual fixings, prepared by my multi-talented girlfriend. and like any normal thanksgiving dinner, i was about ready to go to sleep around halfway through the meal. after dinner was risk, the global domination game, and then some other games until 2am rolled around. 2am was significant for two reasons, one: it was officially black friday and two: allowing for travel time, leaving at around 2am would have us arrive in time to catch the opening of several stores at 4am. unfortunately for me, none of this pre-black friday celebration/preparation included any sort of sleep.

the seventy mile drive to cabazon took just over an hour and was fairly uneventful. for those of you unfamiliar with cabazon, it's a town just off of I-10 in southern california that houses a number of factory outlet stores. as we drove up to the mall, i noticed a long line of cars outside the mall entrance waiting for security to open the gates. i was planning on getting in one of these lines when we noticed that the entryway to the rear parking lot had just opened. after parking in the rear, we started walking around trying to get into the mall. through the glass entryway we could see a girl inside, sitting on a bench. given the fact that we walked around the entire mall and found no ambulatory entrances, i believe that some people had the gusto to actually spend the night in the mall.

at 3:20 or 3:30ish, security had opened up the doors and lines had already formed at several key stores. while lines did exist, they were very amorphous. by simply ignoring the line and waiting near the front doors we were able to get in with the first batch of shoppers. our party split up into two factions: one that went into the coach store, and one that went into armani exchange. one interesting thing was the fact that virtually every early bird shopper was of asian descent. in fact, i heard chinese being spoken more often than not while waiting to get into A|X. i guess us asians really like our deals.

of course, the combination of the early hour and anticipation of shopping had more than a few people on edge. there was some yelling and pushing with regards to line jumping, and even two guys on the verge of getting into a fight after being pushed into A|X by the crowd. the rest of the day was spent waiting in seemingly unmoving lines: lines to get into stores and lines to pay. there was even one line (to get into coach) that went out and around several pillars and kiosks and then wrapped back onto itself, thus creating the rarely seen 'line that feeds into itself and goes nowhere'.

other than the massive amounts of people, the rest of the day was rather un-noteworthy. interestingly enough, by the time we left the mall (9 or 10am) only two stores still had a line to get in: armani exchange and coach--both much longer than at 4am.

a guest blogger

i suspect this is our guest blogger's first attempt at a post. i have no comment.

i dreamt that i was humping my baby in bed
and when i woke up, i realized it was all hard and ready for action, plus my whole body was hot
unfortunately, my gf was snoring like a pig and was digging her nose.. oh gross.. what a turn off
where for art thou is my victoria secret model?

a somewhat wet dream

last night i had a dream... that i had to pee really bad. and i was searching for a toilet, but wasn't able to find one in time and ended up wetting my pants. lucky for me, when i woke up shortly thereafter, my pants were in fact, not wet. but i did have to pee. so, non-dream, physical feelings can influence one's dreams, but luckily, dreams aren't always real.

disclaimer: the text below is completely hypothetical and made up.

as we all know, person 'Y' works on new products at company 'I'. a few weeks ago, an external news source published that company 'I' had decided to cancel product 'W' from upcoming lineup to be replaced with product 'T'. this came as a surprise to person 'Y' and many of his colleages as they were still actively working on product 'W'. for the longest time, people at company 'I' had no idea whether to continue working on product 'W' or to focus on other prodcuts. how is it that the press gets wind of this stuff so far ahead of the people actually doing the work? so now that product 'W' has been shelved, person 'Y' and his cohorts are still waiting... and just now hearing rumors of a possible replacement (rumored to be product 'T').

eat... while you speak!

personally, i'm not too fond of the idea of people eating at meetings. it's not a big deal if the meeting is during lunch hour, or perhaps one hour removed from lunch hour; after all, people are busy and sometimes don't have time to eat during lunch hour. but even so, it doesn't really make sense to be eating while you are standing at the front of the room, presenting something. and the strangest thing to eat while you are presenting? why, sunflower seeds of course. i was once in a meeting with a sunflower eating speaker doing a powerpoint presentation.

if you're really good at eating sunflower seeds, you can throw in a handful into one cheek, open the seeds in the middle of your mouth and then transfer the empty shells to the other cheek. unfortunately for us, our speaker was but a semi-skilled sunflower seed eater. she had thrown in a handful into one cheek, but had trouble opening them in her mouth. and afterwords she had to spit the empty shells into her hand. not exactly the most appetizing sight.

needless to say, i'm revolted by this behavior and not just because of the fact that i was not offered any sunflower seeds.

opening doors

while i was waiting for a meeting in the cafeteria, i saw a guy in a electrically powered wheelchair roll up to a set of double doors. he went to the door on the right (as is the commonly accepted practice in north america) and proceeded to open the door. being in a wheelchair, this was a non-trivial task. he turned the doorknob, and reversed the wheelchair, thus pulling the door open. before he was able to position the wheelchair to roll through the now open door, a woman coming from the opposite side of the doors came along. rather than using the door on the right (which would be the door not yet opened by the guy in the wheelchair), she choose to hasten her pace a bit so she could enter through the door already opened by the guy in the wheelchair. the wheelchair guy had little choice but allow the woman to pass through the door he had worked so hard to open. now, i know that guys are supposed to open doors for girls, but where should we draw the line? when a guy's in a wheelchair?

a guest blogger! me!

this morning, i was asked to contribute to another blog as a guest blog writer. the requirements were fairly open, but there were three:

1. the post must be comprised of a number of words greater than 20.
2. it must be submitted by the end of the day
3. write about something juicy and gossipy. don't write about halloween. halloween is over.

i was a bit pressed for time as i had less than 24 hours, but i managed to get something together. while the post did end up being about halloween, i was about in include something saucy and sweet.

here is my first entry as a guest blogger.

(you can tell the post sucked by how quickly the blog owner buried my post with new entries)