Thanksgiving & Black Friday

First let me say, I love Thanksgiving. Its a rare occasion that all of my family is at the same place at the same time. And the food, lots of food. I love food. Turkey is awesome.
This year, after dinner, I decided to spend a few hours doing what I do best, absolutely nothing. I joined my brother in his tradition of waiting in line, 3pm-5am. For all of you mathaletes out there, that's 14 hours. The first two hours dragged, we set up our tent in front of Best Buy and then waited in the car listening to NPR. After a few hours though we started to mingle. I love strangers. The crowd was quite diverese. There were Indians, a few Turkish men(yes, they were from Turkey waiting in line on Thanksgiving, ironic, I think so) 3 Russian tourists, a pregnant lady who sat in her SUV the entire time, a couple of college students, a children's pastor, and a crazy Puerto Rican.

That Puerto Rican guy was quite the character. "Do you want to hear another racist joke?" He would say in his broken Manhattan accent. "No, no, no more." I would say, and then he would tell another. "This ones not that bad," he would chuckle. I truly believe that he was waiting in line because he was just bored and wanted a captive audience. He was a truck driver and had his Mac parked on the side. Whenever he got bored or hungry he would just head back to his vehicle where he had all of the amenities of home.

The guy in front of us had a tent but he was nowhere to be found. That is unless you knocked on the door of his trailer that was parked next to the Puterto Rican's Big rig. In front of him were the Turks and then the pregnant lady. Leading the pack was another set of brothers. They claimed that they have done this for 3 years and were number one and two last year also. Behind us were 4 Indians who would disappear from the line for extended periods of time.

My favorite people however (my brother excluded) were numbers 14, 16, & 17. Number 14 was a young fellow from Michigan. He was in town with his crew delivering Yellobook Yellow pages to the tri-state area. I realized his dedication to the plight of the Yellow book when I saw that instead of a chair he was sitting on a stack of Yellobooks, ingenious I say. He was saving up money from his job so that he could afford to go to Bible college. The Michigan man was a Children's pastor, what are the chances? 16 & 17 were young ladies from UC and Xavier and I really believe that the line was God ordained because between the 5 of us we had some awesome conversations about God and what it means to have a relationship with him. And, we played Scrabble, my brothers idea of course. The picture is from the chanel 5 News site. In the end I bought 7 computers and Phil bought about the same. I had a sleep deprived blast and would do it again. So, if you want to buy a laptop let me know.


(pictured left to right: Crazy Funny Pureto Rican Man, Quite fellow, Me and Phil, College Girls, Russian Tourist... strangers)


(the electronics)