Today (Saturday), there was a sale at the Oakley headquarters here in Orange County. The sale is called the "Friends and Family Sale" and happens once a year. They estimated that over 7,000 people would go to the sale today. How do they handle the crowd you ask? Well, Oakley has their employees give out a limited number of invitations to their friends/family. Then all invite holders must bring their invitation to the sale, at which point they will receive a numbered wristband. Then, throughout the day, Oakley will allow new blocks of numbers access into the sale. Oh yea, I forgot... Wristbands get passed out at 4 AM, sale opens at 7 AM.

So... the earlier you get there, the lower number you get, and thus the earlier you get to enter the sale. My buddy who works there told us that the line starts forming around 3 AM. I know I have this problem that if I go to sleep, it's super hard for me to wake myself up early. So last night (Friday) I stayed up all night (holding my sleeping son while watching re-runs of sitcoms) until it was time for me to go wait in line for my wristband. I left me house around 1:40 AM. While driving I had visions playing in my head about being the first person in line and getting free merchandise for that. Well, I arrived to the O building about 2:10 AM and I see a line that goes around the block.

So I park the car as fast as I can, and grab what I can, and I get in the fast forming line. Once in the line, thoughts started forming in my head. "I have no jacket", was one of these thoughts. 50°F was what the cold measured at. It got to the point I was no longer cold; just numb. A bit over an hour of standing in line alone, surrounded by non-english speaking folks, my buddie Mikey Mike joined me.

Around 4:45 AM the line started actually moving forward. It wasn't till about 6:30 AM when we finally got our wristbands. And the magic time of our allowed entry into the sale... "10:30 AM".

So here's my problem. I have plans to play my regular weekly game of football at 10:00 AM. Now, I can miss this sure, especially for something I just stood in the cold for over 4 hours for. *But...* Today was a semi-unique day because I had invited two new people to football for the first time (co-worker & brother-in-law), both of which would know no-one if I wasn't there. Even with this in mind, I would of considered bailing on them to make the sale as earlier as possible. *But...* the real problem was that my wife hands-down needed the car at 9:30 AM to be somewhere. So I decided to go home, play football, and return to the sale immediately afterwards and face the fact that the merchandise selection may be a little thin.

The drive home. I'm dead beat tired at this point, and I dozed off and was awoken by the bumps on the freeway. This wasn't making me feel real safe. So I turned up the A/C, and cranked up the CD player and started trying to sing along with the music. It must not of helped because a 2nd time I was woken up by the speed bumps. And then a 3rd, this time close to a car. I calmed myself down and realized that I was getting close to home and I could over power my urge to sleep. Well... I did good the rest of the way on the freeway... but once off I got extremely close to rear-ending someone.

Safe and sound at home. I immediately climbed into bed with my wife, told her that when she left the house at 9:30 AM she *had* to make sure I got up to play football. Well, my son made sure I was up. I think I ended up getting 1 1/2 or 2 hours of sleep before heading to the park.

Football. Fun. We actually had a 3rd person come for the first time, but he knew some of the others already. We all had a good time, but also had prolly our worst injury to date. BJay threw his knee out and even still can't walk on it. Hope it gets better man.

So after almost 3 hours of football, I showered up and rendezvoused with Mike back at the Oakley sale. And while Mike complained about the glasses selection, he ended up buying 4 pairs (some for gifts). I thought it was all utter garbage and only bought two shirts for my wife ($6 a piece, you can't go wrong). Mike got some great deals on their snowboarding apparel.

The sale's check out process. So as you enter the sale, yer given a huge clear plastic bag to put all your items in. You could prolly fill this up with, um, $50k worth of merch maybe (retail price, not sale price). So you take your selections to the first tent, which was labeled something like "Purchase Write-Up". At this point you go to a team of two people that review the contents of your bag and quickly fill out a special order form. They have about 15 teams doing this so it is a speedy procedure. Then you go to the next tent which is labeled "Check-Out". This step is where you pay for your goodies. The next and final tent, labeled "De-Boxing", is where they have people removing all packaging from all your items and marking all your clothing with a marker on the tag. Well, that is at least the goal of the workers. Cos wuddentchaknoit the *white shirt* I got for my wife got a fat red marker streak across the collar. And when I complained about it to the workers, they told me it would wash right off. I said this wouldn't do and I wanted a new shirt, and they sent me to a manager who had me turn around and point out the workers who jacked up the shirt. He then called over another manager, and his response was, "Again?!" So they got me a new shirt. No red marker.

Mike pointed out an interesting thing about the workers trying to convince me it would wash out. The whole purpose of the marker on the tag is so the clothes can not be returned to one of the Oakley Stores. Now, if the markers would just wash right now, I could wash the marker off and return the shirt. But the fact that Oakley trusts these marks to save them $100ks of dollars from people just returning the merchandise for full price, totally proves that the marker would not just wash out.

Oh man, my head hurts... I think it's from the lack of sleep.