It was a shade after 5 am when we piled into the car and headed for Circuit City on Black Friday, 2006. Our goal was to score a $299 laptop computer, but it sounded like you needed to arrive sometime last night to land that prize. My personal mission was to get Season One of "Rescue Me" for $14.99, which we got but the price rang up incorrectly at the register. (They corrected it). We bought all sorts of "stuff," including some DVDs, video games (for a unit I don't even have yet), a few SD cards, the Beatles "Love" CD/DVD, etc...

Our next stop was Kohls and Ultimate Electronics. Ultimate sold out of its spectacular HD TVs, so that was brief, but we scored a vegetable steamer, some clothes, gifts for the annual Christmas Angel toy drive, strange jewelry items (I don't even ask) and these oddball pillows that double as MP3 speakers (again, I don't ask).

This year, our teenager joined the Black Friday spree. She had a blast. Having her, along with her hilarious commentary, made it that much more fun.

Quick note: the music here is "Early in the Morning" by the Gap Band. I "borrowed" 30 seconds from one of my favorite songs; I encourage you to buy their CDs; they are on sale!