I went out shopping today. We've had a fair amount of snow the last couple of days. I haven't been out since boxing day. Boxing day is that wonderful time of the year(day after Christmas) in Canada where sadistic retailers severly underprice certain goods. This usually leads to people lined up outside stores up to 12 hours in advance to get a $99 home theatre system or a $20 dvd player. About 200 people all attempt to enter the doors of the store the second the manager turns the key. They then proceed to push, punch, claw, gouge and kick their way to the front of the pack to buy whatever they came there to get. I had taken the last couple of years off from this interesting tradition, but I needed a new printer. I stopped into Future Shop first. There wasn't really anything worth buying in there, the store that was my destination didn't open for another hour, so I decided to kill some time and watch people make fools of themselves. The lineups at the tills quickly grew. It would be at least a 30 minute wait if not longer, and there were people waiting in line with items that were actually priced higher than they were before Chrismas. I decided to leave and wait in my car in the compusmart lot until it opened. I kind of wish I had stayed in the FS parking lot because aparently a van caught on fire(I'll get back to that later).

In contrast, my stop at compusmart was pleasant. They were only letting in about 15 people at a time(To avoid 200 people fighting their way in there and doing large amounts to damage to the building and merchandise). I grabbed the printer I wanted and left.

Back to today....

The fire in the van that I mentioned above had some interesting consequences. It takes large amounts of water to put out a van fire. It is just after Christmas in Winnipeg. This turned the entire parking lot into an ice rink. That was the first time my car had ever spun its wheels while I was idling along. While keeping my foot off the gas I managed to pass several sports cars and assorted other vehicles. Their owners decided they could get through the ice covered parking lot by pressing the gas pedal to the floor... I mean... if I'm not moving very fast with just a little gas, I'll be sure to get some traction if I melt the ice and make it even more slippery. I think I witnessed some of the worst driving ever in that lot. Including people getting stuck between speed bumps because they couldn't figure out how to get the traction to get over them. I still don't know how I managed to make it out of the parking lot alive... When I got back to my car I don't think I could have put a piece of paper between the bumper of my car and of the car that was parked infront of it.