I usually restrain myself and avoid "hunting" on the day after Thanksgiving. I got talked into it by my husband. Please note that he slept in while I did the "hunting". I did wake him up by calling him from the field as I shivered in line at Best Buy. Before the store even opened I was notified that the one item I was sent out to retrieve was no longer in existence. Another luckier hunter had caught the prey and I was left empty handed. So...I called the sleeping General to alert him of our (I wasn't hunting alone...I had my married daughter and my semi-conscious son with me) failure. I was directed to the next hunting field. Fry's Electronics. I went a little mad. I sent my daughter and son on ahead while I sought the ever illusive parking spot, which I was able to finally locate. My troops retrieved the prizes but failed to immediately find any shopping carts. My son finally followed a contented shopper out to their car and after helping them load up their purchases into their vehicle, brought back the one of the rare shopping carts. Meanwhile, I and my daughter fortified ourselves with caffeine. My manly son was rewarded with caffeine upon his return with the illusive cart. We then proceeded to see what else Fry's Electronics had to offer at 6:15 AM on the day after Thanksgiving. It was truly amazing. Rebates proliferated the store. I found myself purchasing items that I never knew I needed...just because they were free after the rebate. I bought a paper shredder! I bought an air-compressor! I bought a bunch of other stuff too. I don't really think I was completely sane at the time. I lost my head. The General was back home and in bed after all. I was acting on my own initiative. My troops had gotten out of hand. My son found out that the entire box set of all the 007 movies was on sale! My daughter found a glass chess set! OOOOHHHH! A PDA and it was actually FREE!!!!! Did you know that they make a cordless iron?

OK! No more room in the cart. Wait a minute. The nightmare begins. We are now chasing after a Santa Claus who is holding balloons. He's the guy who is marking the end of the checkout line. And he keeps moving! Farther and farther away from the front of the store. I've never seen anything like it. The line wound all throughout the entire store. Up and down aisles! Through this department and that department! Thankfully I found a place in line before it wound itself right back out the front door! And it did! I could see the balloons bobbing over there by the front door presumably held by Santa from my vantage point in the aisle with the electric toothbrushes. We wove our way back and forth and to and fro, we even went down the battery aisle. And then there was the candy aisle but I restrained myself. The candy bars were a bit too expensive at .69 each. You can buy them 3/$1 at the grocery store afterall. I was hearing horror stories from others in line about previous years. I guess last year at Walmart a fight broke out and paramedics had to be bought in. Two women got into a real hair-puller and they had to call an ambulance for one of them when the dust settled. No one in line could tell me what the prized item that they fought over was but the inference was that Walmart wasn't a very safe place to shop on the day after Thanksgiving. Good thing I hadn't any plans to go there! Good thing I was safe and sound stuck in a Disneyesque line at Fry's Electronics! We finally arrived at the actual checkout (person who scans in your item and is authorized to take your money) at around 8 AM. Not bad. There was actually a person sitting on the top of a 20 foot platform directing the traffic flow through the checkout line. Our poor checkout person womanfully printed out copy after copy of our receipts for the multitude of mail-in rebates that we needed for our many purchases. And then we left the store...after security checked our receipt and unpacked our shopping cart to make sure that we weren't sneaking out with whatever. They like to check and make sure that you've paid for every little item. We had and were free to repack our cart and leave. I stopped my son from selling the cart to a fellow shopper for $5 after we loaded up our vehicle with our purchases.

And so the weary hunters deserved breakfast and coffee before heading on back home. The General is even now filling out rebate forms and entering them into an Exell spreadsheet.

Today's Little Bit of Trivia

A 150-pound person burns one calorie per minute during bed rest. I'm going to take a nap.