Black. The color of cast-iron skillets. The color of most pens. The color of these words.
Black is the new brown. Black is urban and hip. Black is the color of the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the color of the sky at the wee hour when millions of folks go out to worship at the shrine of the retail gods.
Who would engage in such a ghastly, primitive ritual? Surely not I. Surely.
Guess again.
Always one to "try anything once", I've never actually been out on a Black Friday shopping experience, and I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. This year was a perfect opportunity. The Fam is all out of town, so I'm pretty much free to come and go as I please. Maybe get up early, do a little poking around at a Wal-Mart or a Toys R Us, then crawl back in bed and snooze a while longer.
So I set about to do just that this morning - and I intended to document the experience in full.
We've all heard the Black Friday horror stories about people being trampled to death for a flatscreen TV, or being punched in the face for a Tickle-Me Elmo. I understand some tragedies have occurred as a result of an unruly mob's pursuit of an insane shopping deal. But surely nothing like that goes on in little ol' Knoxville, Tennessee, right?
I mean, out of 250,000 people in this town, only a fraction of those are crazy enough to go out at 4 a.m., right? And even then, that fraction would be spread out over 15-20 various mega-outlets... Wal-Marts, Targets, K-Marts, Sears's, Toys R Us's, and Best Buys, just to name a few. There wouldn't be any lives in danger, but I figured there'd still be large crowds, maybe even some unruly ones.
In fact, secretly, I was hoping to get in on some of the running, shoving, shouting, clamoring, wrestling action just for fun. Maybe find my way to a super-deal by following the herd, and then get in a good workout as I took advantage of the opportunity to commit socially acceptable and harmless violence on my fellow man. Maybe sell whatever I bought on E-Bay for some extra Christmas cash. Maybe just participate in the frenzy and leave empty-handed, but no poorer than I came and with some hilarious anecdotes to blog about. I'll just go ahead and tell you... I was really let down by my Black Friday experience.
Here's how it got started:
3:00 a.m. Woken up by alarm clock. Giving serious thought to going back to sleep, given that I was lying in bed awake until around 1 a.m. and didn't get more than two hours' sleep, max. Remembered the coffee that I'd programmed to brew at 2:45 a.m... well, I at least had to get up and shut the pot off.
3:05 a.m. Research time. I wanted to find out if I was going through with this, where my point of attack would be. Got online and went through the options. Wal-Mart was the type of place I'd had in mind - the kind of store that attracts the plaid-and-camo-wearing, diesel-driving, singing-fish-buying crowd. Problem with Wal-Mart was, it's open 24 hours/day so there wouldn't be a big grand opening. Same with Toys R Us... they opened at 10 p.m. Sears wasn't a big enough toy destination, and there was a pretty good chance I could find myself making a beeline for the latest collectors' fad - Squinkies. I heard they were selling out fast. K-Mart is a little too unattractive to ever go in there. Best Buy - I might accidentally break and/or buy something I can't afford. So I settled on Target. They open at 4 a.m. today. Perfect.
3:15 a.m. Pouring my coffee into a mug. Gonna take a shower (why? because I'm quirky like that. See this earlier post for more info), and I want that cup of coffee down to a perfect sipping temp by the time I'm done. Don't wanna boin my widdow mouffie...
3:20 a.m. Hot, hot shower wakes me up a little bit too.
3:30 a.m. Decked out in sweats, for comfort and full range of motion. Don't know what I'm up against out there, but athletic gear seems most appropriate for the kind of action I'm looking for. Got my nice Adidas Sequence sneakers on, which the good folks at the Tennessee athletics department were gracious enough to give me at the start of the year. Seriously, this is the best pair of sneakers I've ever owned. Got my backpack - I kept the textbooks in there, just to add some weight to my load. Shoved a quart of Gatorade, my video camera, and an umbrella in there, too. Oh yeah, and many of you may have also gone out early on Black Friday, but none of you looked this fierce:
3:40 a.m. With backpack in tow, I head out to Target. It's only a five minute drive.
3:45. a.m. Arriving at the shopping center anchored by Target, I learn I wasn't the only one who had the idea to get up early and shop. Not only is the Target parking lot completely full, but the adjacent parking lot abandoned by Circuit City a couple years ago is pretty packed as well. At this point we go to the live broadcast...
The following are a couple of voice recordings from my cell phone. I decided to leave the video camera in the car to avoid stressing out security. The pic is a view of the entrance to Target at about 4:19 a.m. Notice the use of overturned shopping carts to create a corridor which funnels customers to the front doors and keeps folks from cutting in line. Also, notice Santa Hat Guy a couple of spots ahead in line.
So I didn't get the workout I was hoping for. Not even a footrace with a 55-year-old new grandma. That's too bad.
However I did finally get back in action, on Tuesday. Did another jog down to the high school stadium, hopped the bleachers, jogged around some more, then jogged home. It. Felt. Good. By the way, I wore all black on my jog.
I'm like some kind of slightly overweight, working man's Ninja.
That jog seemed to jog my appetite a little bit (you see the pun there?), and being degenerately fixated on Asian food, I celebrated my newfound will to eat with a trip to the new Japanese place on my block.
Other than that, though, I still haven't felt much compulsion to eat. I guess maybe I should just accept it as a good thing and move on. Maybe my stomach's "shrunk" or it's just not expecting as much as it was before.
OH, and then there was Thanksgiving. That wonderful holiday came and went without much to celebrate, because I worked from about noon until around 10 p.m.. It was pretty miserable.
However, for all intents and purposes, I had my Thanksgiving today. Had the night off, ate some turkey and stuff. Alot, but not too much. But who's counting anyway? Watched alot of football. And blogged.
I'm still coughing pretty hard, off and on, so I think I'm going to see the student health clinic on Monday if this persists. I think the workout on Tuesday made it worse, too. I'm still going to try to ease back into the groove, but with the gym being closed and all the other Thanksgiving stuff, my workout schedule has been pretty much kicked in the groin. I promise I'll get back to it by Monday. I'm ahead of schedule anyway so I'm not too worried.
And... fade to black.
TUESDAY 11/23/10 DIET LOG:
9:00 a.m. Fiber One bar
1:30 p.m. 6 oz serving homemade lasagna cresent roll
5:00 p.m. leftover meal at work - 2 chicken wings, plain, one chocolate chip cookie
WORKOUT TUESDAY 11/23/10:
Equipment: football stadium, track, sneakers
Length: 35 minutes, including cool-down walk
Intensity (1 to 7): 6
Exercise: jogged 1/2 mile from my house to football stadium, 1/2 mile on track, hopped bleachers to top of stadium (24 bleachers), another 1/2 mile on track, 1/2 mile home. Walked about 1/3 mile, off and on.
WEDNESDAY 11/24/10 DIET LOG:
10:00 a.m. Fiber One bar
3:00 p.m. lunch portion Hibachi grilled scallops with grilled carrots, zucchini, onions, and such (about 2 cups), about 2 cups fried rice
7:00 p.m. one Sushi roll with tuna/salmon, as if lunch wasn't enough Asian food for the day
NO WORKOUT WEDNESDAY 11/24/10
THURSDAY 11/25/10 DIET LOG:
12:00 p.m. two breakfast sausage links
1:30 p.m. 4 oz slice of turkey
4:00 p.m. about 2 oz each turkey, dressing, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce
NO WORKOUT THURSDAY 11/25/10
FRIDAY 11/26/10 DIET LOG:
10:00 a.m. one small steak biscuit, leftover from parents' Cracker Barrel supper the night before
1:30 p.m. one whole turkey leg, 1 cup turnip greens, 2 oz each dressing and mixed vegetable casserole, two deviled (half) eggs
3:00 p.m. 1/2 slice chocolate pie
7:00 p.m. one turkey wing
NO WORKOUT FRIDAY 11/26/10
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