For the first time in many a year, I ventured out on Black Friday morning. Not at 5:00am, mind you, because there’s nothing out there worth my dealing with strangers at that ungodly hour of the morning. But Best Buy has a mini-DVD camcorder bundle (w/ case and DVDs) for a decent price and—since the 8mm cassette one we have requires a rocket scientist to remember how to actually make it play through our nightmarish entertainment system—I was given cash and sent after it.

(The husband? Oh, he’s four-wheeling today. Lucky bastard.)

Anyway, the Black Friday Talk was given to children. It went something along the lines of “Hold on to my coat, do NOT for the love of God let go for anything, and if Mom beats the crap out of somebody and goes to jail, Dad’s #2 on my cellphone’s speeddial”. After finding a parking space which led to my knowing I walk a 45-minute mile, we took deep breaths and entered, prepared to suffer the worst experience of our shopping lives.

It went like this—I pointed to ad, associate placed box in my hands and pointed me to cordoned-off check-out line. Another associate held out a plastic bucket filled with candy from which we each took a piece of chocolate, then—in less time than it took us to walk from our car—we were directed to an open register. Done. Despite there being what seemed like hundreds of people in there, we were out in five minutes. I was impressed.

Okay, so maybe I’m a little biased because they gave me chocolate, but thumbs up to the Concord NH Best Buy.

Oh, and they had a good deal on those little digital camera card things, too, so—if I drop the quality settings a bit—I can now take almost 8000 pictures before downloading. Sweet!