Oh, God. This again?

 
One of Those Weekends (And Then Some)
Yes, it was. Y’know, when you’re feeling tired and defeated, the Holiday Season™ is whipping around the turns at 80 and trying to find another gear, and you’re stuck knowing that if you want to drink (and live to tell about it) then you have to actually mix something? You kind-of feel like you’re about to start a 100-yard dash while hung over and after someone named Jeff whacks you on the knee with a steel pipe. And you have no more beer to hair-of-the-dog (it’s a verb now . . . don’t you keep up?).

Actually, it wasn’t all that bad. And rather than giving you the blow-by-blow as a proper prose exposition (which is how this began), I’ll revert to the tried-and-true list system:

-- We did a little bit of our Christmas shopping. Michelle’s obsessed with getting her family and friends out of the way so she can say, “I’m done,” while I’m left to panic and flail about. I did, however, make a trip to Target to do some gift shopping . . . mainly because I knew I was going to be going to a Super Wal-Mart later for groceries and more gifts, and I wanted to maintain the discount-megastore balance. (Sidenote: Here in Tallahassee, we have two Super Wal-Marts, a regular Wal-Mart, and a Sam’s Club. But we only have one Target, which we frequent as much as we can because it’s cool. There’s a rumor that they’re gonna make the Target a superstore. *crosses fingers*)

-- I did the taking-mom-grocery-shopping thing on Saturday (because she’s not supposed to be driving, and I’ve had her minivan anyway). I had the requisite / ill-advised Taco Bell for lunch afterwards. Later, I went to Sam’s Club and bought exactly two things (a big ol’ box of diapers and a 24-pack of Diet Coke . . . nothing for me). This brings me to my discussion of grocery shopping. To fulfil our grocery-shopping needs, Michelle and I frequent four stores: Publix (convenient for general grocery-item purchases), the Wal-Mart Superstore (general grocery store items that, for whatever reason, we can’t get at Publix, and at cheaper prices), New Leaf Market (a co-op where we get our Thai Kitchen noodles [ethnic, high-class Ramen], soy jerky [which most people think tastes like dog food, but we love], and overpriced faux-meat frozen dinners . . . actually the whole store is overpriced, which is why we call it “New Thief”), and Sam’s Club (for bulk grocery items and lower wine prices . . . this mostly [lazily] amounts to cat litter, soda, diapers, bottles of Martini & Rossi, and Frosted Mini Wheats [for snacks].) And let’s not even discuss how I drive by two perfectly good grocery stores to get to our favorite Publix, or how the closest Super Wal-Mart is just a couple miles from our house, but we drive to the one on the “good side of town,” which is significantly further. And don’t even get me started on “Club” Publix near campus, where the median age of the shoppers is 20.

-- Deep breath. It’s like that Dennis Miller line . . . “Stop me before I sub-reference again!”

-- We were two weeks behind on getting our Christmas tree, so that was the Prime Objective™ for the weekend. First we went to Lowe’s, and they were mostly out of 7-to-8-foot trees. Home Depot had more of them, but they looked pretty ghetto and/or dried out. It was then that we decided to go artificial. (Gasp!) So, we ambled down the road to the Overpriced Gardening Store™ just to see what they had. To start with, they had real trees for 50% more than the ones we looked at. Wandering through the store, we stumbled on a 7.5-foot artificial tree regularly priced at about $120 and on sale for $70 . . . but the sale had ended a few days earlier. Still, $120 is pretty good for a halfway real-looking fake tree, so we arranged to have it meet us at the register (we didn’t have to offer to by it drinks, either). Long story short, we got it for the sale price. I made sure not to say anything during the entire transaction for fear that they’d be, like, “Oooooo, sorry Mr. Lunchbreak. That tree went off sale three days ago.” Michelle and I exchanged cautious glances instead.

-- We went to dinner to celebrate (with the money we’d “saved”) at the infamous Lucy Ho’s for their Saturday night dinner buffet, which includes sushi. And kids eat free, so Mia got to slop lots of noodles and eat some partly congealed egg-drop soup.

-- Apparently, I was supposed to start working on the tree while Michelle was at band practice but, instead, I watched this movie.

All in all . . . yeah, you're asleep. Wake up, fucker! Geez.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 1:24 PM