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I decided to not talk while walking through OfficeMax.  I’m not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea.  Store attendants received a thumbs up in response to questions but simple left-right head not wasn’t sufficient to allay an inquisitive associate’s “can I help you with anything?”.  Turns out that blackjack hand motions of a hand going left-to-right worked.  I was almost proud of how far I’d gone until checkout and I had no simple response to “debit or credit” when presenting my credit card.  I first tried two fingers to represent the second option, then pointing at the card as the brand offers no debit option.  Eventually,  I dropped by head in shame, thinking I’d have to break my tiny vow of silence when the associate said “Don’t be embarrassed, everyone has to credit for small purchases every once in a while.”

She was very confused by the silent fist-pump that followed.

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I didn’t go to bed Thursday evening so I could get my one Black Friday item: a 10.1″ netbook OfficeMax was selling for $179.99 which is about $130 off.   I arrived at the store at 6 AM, saw they didn’t open until 7 and went home to prepare a sprawling breakfast and returned at quarter of 7.  There were about 20 housewives, retirees, and work-at-homers tooling around outside in an orderly line and with store circulars in hand.  A few minutes before the doors opened a store attendant wearing dark glasses carrying a clip board walked out and recited the following:

May I have your attention please.  The doors will open in four minutes and at that time you will enter the store in an orderly fashion.  Some items are available in limited quantities and these have been marked with a short stack of red tags.  Without shoving, take one tag to the service counter to retrieve your item.  There are store attendants stationed throughout the facility as monitors.  Please be civil.

The doors opened and the anticipated collapse of Western civilization did not occur but roughly 1/2 of us made a bee line to the computers so we could be told that the circular containing the netbook was faked.  One woman asked “how do you fake a circular?” to which a bleary-eye’d attendant responded “It’s just a mystery”.

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I purchased a large format printer and the first print black and white with a single color print I did from it was gorgeous.  I then moved on to other pictures and quickly discovered that color calibration was the bane of amateur printers everywhere.  I went to OfficeMax to grab some testing paper of 8.5″ x 11″ semi-glossy at 25 cents a sheet instead of blowing 2 bucks and a gallon of ink for each botched 13″ x 19″.  The paper appeared to be buy-one-get-one-free deal so clicked my heels as I danced to the counter.

Salesperson: These aren’t covered by the buy-one-get-one-free deal.
Me: Frown.  It was the only one that didn’t have a sign in front of it saying say from the spectrum of construction paper to super glossy so I suppose I don’t have an excuse to get surly.
Salesperson: Oooh, surly good word.  I’ve always liked it. *wink*
*I return with appropriate paper*
Salesperson: Do you know what other work I like besides surly?
Me: No…
Salesperson: *one syllable at a time* Cur-mudg-eon-ly.*Head tilt, eye-brow lower*
*Leave store*
Me: Kyle, did I just get hit on via the word  curmudgeonly from a middle-aged OfficeMax attendant?
Kyle: Maybe, but I’d rather not think about it.
Me: Agreed.