I just lost my drain of thought

So I woke up around 4:10am, woke up Daryl, and we were off to Frys by 4:30. We got there right before 5, which is when it was opening, and mang was it intense. There was a huge line of cars that pretty much went past where you get off the 60 freeway and I saw people walking towards the store from that area, which is rather far. We could not get into the right turn lane at all, because Black Friday shoppers are vicious beasts, so we had to turn left instead. All the empty parking lots around the area were prepared for this day, because they had security guards posted at every single driveway for like the next gazillion blocks. We turned at the first street in sight and drove around in hopes that it would lead us closer to Frys, only to realize that we had stumbled upon a maze of culs-de-sac (I learned that plural from Gilmore Girls). Finally we just settled and parked and began walking, feeling sad as we were about to trudge all the freaking way around the huge block we had just driven around, even though Frys was in sight and seemed so close. If only we could fly. There was a man we met along the way who had parked kind of close to us. He told us he had been driving around for an hour and a half trying to find a parking spot, approaching Frys from every direction, and this area was the only place he could find parking. He said that he had noticed the river (storm drain channel!) that was running towards Frys and was going to check if the path next to it was open, because it went more directly to Frys than the road we were on. The gate turned out to be wide open, so we walked along the river bank in the super dark and it was rather scary, because every once in a while, I saw an animal run across the path and I couldn’t figure out what they were. I’m just glad they didn’t kill me. We waited until the second opening in the fence and then had to cross some railroad tracks. It was quite the adventure. But nothing could prepare us for what lay ahead.

The guy walking with us had to run ahead to meet someone, but as we approached the crazy line that wrapped around the building and seemed to have no end, we saw him again. We were very lucky because he was near the first corner the line wrapped around and the line was moving really fast and as we waved to him, he told us to cut him. I’m glad there are still nice people that go to these crazy things. I really hope he got what he wanted. Inside the store was so nuts… I had a list prepared of the things I wanted to get that was loosely organized by priority and how fast they’d be gone. Of those things, I pretty much only got what was at the bottom of the list. They were the things I didn’t really need to get there so early for. What was at the very top of my list was an external hard drive, but those were gone way before I got to them. It’s not necessary for me to live or anything, but it’d be nice, because my laptop’s hard drive is only 40 gigs. Shut up. He can hear you snickering. But what’s cool is that I got an 8 gig flash drive to help me out for now. I was kind of mad about that because I swear I heard one of the workers say that after the rebate it would be $3 and Daryl had heard the same. I figured if both of us heard that then it must’ve been right. It turned out the rebate was for $30, but it’s still pretty good for 8 gigs. I also snagged a 2 gig SD memory card, which you have to line up for, but I was sitting somewhere waiting for this guy to get me a vacuum and saw it sitting next to me, alone and abandoned. And yeah, we finally have a vacuum now. Yay!

I barely got anything and probably spent like over four hours in there, most of which was spent lining up to check out, because that line alone zigzagged throughout the whole store. I saw quite a few people from high school there and luckily, again, someone let me cut them in line! We finally got out after 10am and went to Target so Daryl could at least get something that day. haha. After that we tried Circuit City in hopes of an external HD, but that seems to be a very hot item. I then gave up and went home.

I wasted time until around 3 something and then secretly took my sister’s car out to buy groceries to make spaghetti for our annual Freundinnen potluck. It turned out to be not what I hoped, because the sauce was too plain and I bought the wrong sausages, but it was edible. The potluck was fun and we had soooo much food. We had a little family photoshoot afterwards and our namepicking for Secret Santa. Then I had to leave early for work, where my coworker ate my leftover pasta that no one at the potluck seemed to enjoy. haha. It is also where I started becoming delusional because I had so little sleep and I just wanted to go home so badly. And that was my Friday, the longest day ever.