My sister asked me yesterday afternoon if I could use a Best Buy friend to get ahold of a $400 laptop for her during the early morning sales. I told her the lack of time probably ruled that possibility out, but feeling bad for still being in possession of a PC of hers I said I’d fix four months ago (although despite the numerous minor tragedies that befell it, it’s now ready to go!), I said I’d check it out for her.
So I drove up there around 2AM, with the store opening at 5AM. The only thing I planned for was staying reasonably warm. I put on my thickest pair of boxer briefs, a sweater, a hoody, and a winter coat with warmth in mind. I also put on what I’m pretty sure are called Heat Armour socks by Under Armour. More on the socks later.
I started thinking more while driving and realized that I had planned for the trip horribly. I should’ve procured a friend to help pass the time much like James got me to drive him around 2 years ago to get a laptop that he ended up getting with the aid of said Best Buy friend after a six hour affair. Failing that, I should’ve brought my DS or some headphones for my mp3 player. I wouldn’t even have minded reading a book under a low-power portable light. For some reason stores keep most of the lights off outdoors despite the throngs of people gathering in the wee hours of the morning. As it turned out, the one thing I did plan for failed me in the end. Looking up the socks online, they’re called HeatGear and I misinterpreted that as meaning that they keep heat in, rather than they’re for use in times of heat. Perhaps I should have been alerted by their low-cut ankle design, but nevertheless my feet were cold. Wish I had stayed at Niketown long enough to load up on clearance Therma-fit goods.
Anyways I came across both Best Buys in my area and there were probably 150-200 people at the Niles store and maybe 150 tops at the Evanston one. If I had any entrepreneurial spirit and/or a city vending license, I’m sure I could make a decent amount of money selling hot chocolate to the people waiting. With literal and figurative cold feet, I decided against waiting in line for at least three hours for what most likely would end up being a Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveShow DVD purchase.
Of course whenever I go out, I need to validate the action by coming home with something. So I started racking my brain thinking what food places would be open as 2AM is not an unusual time for me to be eating. McDonald’s and Burger King were closed by Niles and IHOP was closed by my house. I was thinking that I had seen a sign on that IHOP saying ‘open 24 Hours 365 Days’ or something to that degree, but I was wrong. In the end, my Black Friday haul consisted of this:
White Castle is almost always there for me, and it would always always be there if only I could make a left turn into it heading westbound on Ridge or northbound on Clark.
Always have to have a least a sack whenever White Castle is involved, but they also had a couple of new products I picked up as well:
Golden buns on chicken and fish sandwiches (standard white bun on the left)
Sweet potato fries (regular fries on right)
I don’t like fancy buns. Just some plain white bread is all I really care for in a sandwich, although I don’t mind the touch of sweetness offered by a golden bun. Having said that, the difference caused by the bun was overpowered by the chicken rings.
As for the sweet potato fries, they were supposed to come with some sort of cinnamon dipping sauce that I didn’t receive, so that skews my opinion of them even further than my biases already do. I don’t really like the taste of sweet potatoes. It’s not enough for me to dislike the taste though. I hate that it’s also false advertising, since I should by proxy like anything ’sweet’ yet I don’t like sweet potatoes. And of course, my personal preferences aren’t at fault, but rather the object in question’s nomenclature is. I do like saying ‘yam’ though. After first hearing Conan O’Brien refer to himself as ‘The Yam’ many years ago in grade school, I registered my first e-mail account as the_yam@hotmail.com, although I’m not entirely sure that that came before thugglife. I think I may have even briefly requested others to refer to me as ’The Yam’ to counteract what Nar was doing with ‘Romel.’ I wasn’t initially aware that yams were sweet potatoes, and the discovery crushed me. But still, continuing on my enjoyment of the sound of ’yam’ I do enjoy eating YamYams, and now I’ll stop with this ___ degrees of Kevin Bacon-like exercise. More recently though, I wasn’t happy with my choice of choosing a sweet potato pie from Popeye’s as opposed to a hot cinnamon apple pie (which probably is the greatest fast food pastry ever) at Kei/Mordecai’s recent Trapped in the Closet/new television event. Although it’s not that I’m displeased at having chosen it per se, as I probably would have tried it regardless and was inexorably forced to after rational Matt’s approval of it. It’s more that I was displeased at not having a hot cinnamon apple pie and chose to direct my anger at its ugly duckling sibling. In reality I only have myself to blame since I ok’d the even quantities of pies when the food was picked up. Still, you could probably see that without even taking a bite I could have said with reasonable certainty that I wouldn’t like the sweet potato fries.
Back to the matter at hand, the fries do kind of look like Popeye’s/Checkers fries, just without the specks of cajun goodness. They taste kind of bland by themselves, but as a complement to the burgers I didn’t even notice the sweet potato taste. And the presence of cinnamon dipping sauce can only help it’s case. If they were just marketed as ‘cinnafries’ or something to that extent I probably wouldn’t have a problem with them. As it is, I hate them for associating with sweet potatoes, my mortal enemy.
[...] last year’s debacle, I decided not to do anything for Black Friday (still a stupid name) this year. But through my [...]