I didn't plan on getting up early for Black Friday bargains, but Office Depot had an ad in Thursday's paper for two things I was eventually going to buy anyway. One was an external USB numeric keypad for only $3. These are normally in the $20 range.

The other was an MP3 player. If it was any other MP3 player I probably wouldn't have noticed the ad, but it was the model that I had decided I was going to buy when I finally decided to plunk down the money for one. If have seen it on the Internet for between $100 and $120, but Office Depot had it on sale for $59 today.

The store opened up at 6 AM so I set the alarm for 5 AM. The operative word there is "set". I forgot to actually turn it on. It turned out OK though. I woke up and looked at the clock at 5:15 AM.

Sheri was nice enough to go along with me, and will become an important part of the story in a bit. We brushed our teeth, threw on some clothes and went out the door. We left the car outside overnight the windows needed scraping before we left. It was very very cold, I wasn't dressed warmly enough, and I think just having woken up a few minutes ago my body temperature had not risen to its normal level yet. In a matter of just a few minutes I was shivering uncontrollably and my teeth were chattering.

It was just turning 6 AM and we were passing a Shell station. We were almost on empty and I thought it would probably be better to be a little late for the store opening than to run out of gas or get fuel line freeze up. Sheri got a hot cup of coffee for me while I pumped gas.

We got to the Office Depot parking lot about five minutes after the 6 AM opening but there were still people waiting in line outside. We sat in the car with the heat on until we saw people starting to go in. We got to the end of the line but it wasn't moving anymore. There was an employee with a clipboard inside the store talking to each person before they could move past him. I didn't know what was going on.

After a few more minutes he announced if you were there for one of the computer systems you didn't have to stop and talk to him. It turned out he had a ticket for each of the special sale items. You told him what you wanted and he handed you the ticket for it, and then you went someplace else in the store to pick it up. I guess it was a good idea so they could know exactly when the last of the special sale items had been sold.

As I was waiting there I heard him say to someone over his walkie-talkie not to sell any MP3 players without talking to him or without a ticket or something like that. I didn't pay too close attention to it, it just kind of stuck in my head.

By this time Sheri had stepped fully into the store so she could warm up. I signaled to her to go see if she could find the items on the shelf. Just in case.

When I finally got up to him and told him I wanted the MP3 player he looked to a guy next to him and said "He wants an MP3 player too." He wrote the SKU number down, asked for my name, and walked away. Huh? I was going to follow him around the store until I got my MP3 player, but just then Sheri came walking up with the MP3 player!

They were in an aisle inside of a locked case. She stood there blocking access to the case until an employee with a key showed up. There were only three of the MP3 players in the case, so she said she wasn't going to move until she had one in her hands. She said other shoppers tried to be sneaky and get in front by pretending to browse the selection, but she was having none of that. By the time an employee got there she said there were at least five other shoppers waiting for one, but she got the first one out of the case. Those others more than likely got there before we did too. Yeah Sheri!

We picked up the external numeric keypad (no line for those!) and used it to hide the MP3 player. I was afraid if we tried to check out they would ask for our ticket or something. We stood there for a minute trying to decide what to do. Maybe walk around the store for a while until all of the people that were clamoring for an MP3 player left. Sheri decided that once it is in your hands they can't take it away from you, and if they tried she would put up a huge stink. OK, if she was up for a stink I was up for checking out.

They only had two lines opened up and they each had over 10 or 15 people in them. Sheri spotted a girl working a register at the customer service desk. It was facing the front of the store so people couldn't really see it was a checkout line. There was only one person in front of us too.

We thought a nice hot cup of coffee would be good as a reward for a successful (and first) Black Friday shopping trip. There was a Starbucks just around the corner. By the time we sat down with our cups of coffee and a blueberry muffin to split it was still only a few minutes before 6:30 AM! I somewhat expected to spend maybe an hour or a little more at Office Depot.

So my big thanks to Sheri for a successful trip as well as a very fast trip.

We got back home and Sheri went back to bed for a couple hours. I tried out my numeric keypad and MP3 player. I downloaded a couple technology-related podcasts from NPR and a couple from This Week In Tech.

I laid in bed and listened to about of an hour of them with my eyes closed. It worked great. I wanted the player mostly for these kind of things and for audio books I can download from our library.