Life at the Academy

I noticed the other week at Alberston’s that they had reusable grocery bags for sale for $1 each.  I went ahead and bought 3 of them even though that generally wouldn’t be enough because I wanted to see how well I liked them.  They are really pretty nice bags.  So, I dutifully take them with me to the store the next time I go.  I hate those plastic bags and am glad to do my part to save the world.  I handed them to the cashier before she started ringing me up.  She took them, set them aside, and proceeded to put my groceries in plastic bags.  Huh?  I thought perhaps she just forgot and was doing it out of habit, so I gently remind her that I have the reusable bags.  She continues to put them in plastic.  I started to get irritated at this point and was a little more forward with my request to please put my groceries in the reusable bags.  She still can’t figure it out.  I finally told her to just put the items on the little turntable thing and I bagged them myself.  Amazing that this woman couldn’t figure it out.  I was sure to go to customer service and suggest that they train their checkers and baggers to actually use the reusable bags when a customer brings them in.

After not sleeping well Thursday night, fretting about whether I should spend a large amount of money on something for myself, I got up early Friday morning and went to the AT&T store. Boxman has been wanting to buy me an iphone since before Christmas. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending so much money on a toy for me. When they announced the new iphones were going to be half as much, he decided that I was definitely going to get one. Then he had to be out of town on July 11 and couldn’t go buy one for me. I had to overcome the guilt, get out the credit card, and pay for it myself. I just have such a hard time doing that. When I got my laptop, I actually had to send Boxman to the store without me to buy it because I wouldn’t have been able to spend the money. So, after not sleeping well Thursday night, I got up at about 6:45am almost hoping that I would be too far back in line and wouldn’t get one. Since Boxman and Doodles weren’t home, I had to get Buster up and take him with me. We arrived at the store around 7:30 to find between 20 and 25 people ahead of us in line. I started to get more excited about it waiting in line. What really irritated me was that none of the AT&T employees would tell us how many iphones they had. Everytime they were asked, we were told they didn’t know. Liars. I will say that they were kind enough to bring out bottled water for anybody who wanted one. At 8am, the first group was let into the store – one person per register. It was all very organized and calm – but they still insisted on locking the door after each person entered or left. A bit after this, a man came out asking each person in line if they wanted an 8g or 16g phone. He disappeared for awhile and then came back out to inform us that they only had enough 8g phones to go a couple people ahead of me. Boxman kept telling me to get the 16g, so I wasn’t bothered by the fact that they were running out of the 8g. I was humored that they had so many more 16g than 8g – what a way to up-sell. At about 8:35, it was my turn to go in. The man asked me what color I wanted and grabbed the iphone for me first. Since I was already an AT&T costumer and my contract had expired back in February, there was no problem with doing the upgrade and it barely took 5 minutes before we were out of the store. He did warn me that the calling plan might not be right and he would check on it later and leave me a voicemail. Well, it was definitely messed up but I didn’t know how badly until the next morning. It took forever to get the phone activated because itunes couldn’t handle all of the new iphones being activated at once. I was not able to activate my phone until late in the afternoon. Once it was activated, the voicemail was not functioning and I could only get on the internet using wi-fi. In the meantime, Buster took control of the phone and started downloading every free game he could find which was a surprisingly large number. We headed back to the store on Saturday morning and found that somehow I had ended up with the unlimited minutes plan and no data instead of the 450 minutes with unlimited data and visual voicemail. The woman at the store was very kind and helpful and called tech support to get it all taken care of. She also added about 4000 roll over minutes to my account since my old ones had disappeared. I’ll never use that many anyway. I left the store happy with my fully functioning iphone. Buster and I have had a ton of fun playing with it. Now if only I could figure out how to get my own ringtones on it. I followed some directions I found on line for making my own and it looks okay in itunes, but when I sync it up, they don’t show up on the phone. If anyone has any tips for that, I’d appreciate it. In the meantime, I’ll keep enjoying all that it will do. And I’m feeling a little less guilty, at least until that first bill comes.

Generally women like to shop while their husbands follow behind wishing they could go back home.  I have the opposite problem.  Boxman loves to shop.  Me, well not so much.  If I have something specific to buy, I’ll go shop for it, buy it, and leave.  Not so for Boxman.  We started out going to Home Depot to look for some new blinds for our bedroom.  Doodles had accidentally broken ours a couple of months ago and I was tired of waking up with the bright sunlight shining in my eyes.  Of course we couldn’t buy just one set because they wouldn’t match the sun-yellowed blinds on the other window.  After seeing the cheapest real wood blinds that were the right size were $60, we decided to go look at Lowe’s.  They didn’t have anything that cheap in real wood, so we spent way too long looking at some bamboo blinds before deciding that they weren’t what we wanted.  We left to go back to Home Depot.  Luckily for Buster, it was 2:00 by that time so we stopped for happy hour at Sonic to get some half-price drinks.  We get back to Home Depot and Boxman can’t seem to just go get the blinds and leave.  We have to go look at the ant poison and water sprinklers too.  We ended up buying a few extra things besides the blinds.  By this point I’m tired and ready to go home.  The fact that it was 95 degrees outside and we took the car whose a/c doesn’t cool so well just made it worse.  We had to stop and return some movies to Blockbuster though – no big deal there, I jumped out of the car and dropped them in the slot.  Pulling out, Boxman starts thinking about the Memorial Day sales and decides that we need to go to Dillards.  I tell ya, we never buy anything at regular price there, but when they are having sales, you can get some really good deals.  I cave in and actually tell him we can stop there, but we aren’t going out into the mall.  I can’t even tell you how long we were there.  See, this man is not your typical shopper.  The first place he wanted to go to in the store was the fine china/housewares department.  He thought he hit paydirt when he found some Dansk Torun pattern steak knives for $1.87 each.  We already have at least 12 place settings of Torun, but no steak knives.  We now have 6 steak knives.  I thought this might be enough to satisfy his shopping needs but of course I was wrong.  We had to go look through the luggage, furniture and bedding.  He tried to talk me into some purple luggage.  I declined.  Then we had to try out all of the different mattresses they have.  Ours is heading on 20 years old and isn’t what it used to be.  We would probably buy one with our stimulus check from the government if we didn’t have more exciting plans for it.  After jumping on all of the beds, I had to talk him out of buying a down comforter that we don’t need.  By this time, I really, really want to go home.  Buster is in total agreement with me.  Boxman is still shopping.  He comes across some oversized bath towels and decides that the kids could use some new towels in their bathroom.  Okay, I can agree to that if it means we can go home.  Silly me.  Do you know how long it can take someone to decide on how many of what color towels to buy?  Eventually he decided to buy two different colors so we could decide which ones go in the bathroom better and just return the other ones.  I’m okay with this because I know he will be the one going back to return them.  The only thing I fear is that while returning them, he will see something else to buy.  I might have to go with him to rein him in.  On the way towards the car, we have to walk past the mens and kids clothing.  Somehow he passes the racks with the 75% off and another 50% today sales without having to try anything on.   Then he spots the boys dress shirts that are $3 and has Buster pick out a couple along with forcing him to get a $2 tie that he will probably never wear.  Because we can’t buy something for one child without getting something for the other, I grab a few pair of 50 cent underwear for Doodles.   I’m tired and just want to go home.  Buster and I finally get him to the hot car and we start towards home.   Yeah, we had to stop at the grocery store, which took entirely too long for the few items we bought, but we finally made it home.  Those new blinds look great.  The knives are put in the cupboard probably never to be seen again.  The towels are washed and hung in the bathroom.  And Doodles complained that the underwear are granny pants.  How does she know what kind of underwear her grammy wears?

We weren’t necessarily in a hurry to replace our old faithful tv. But, I had some time to kill on Saturday between running back and forth between dance and tae kwon do, so Buster and I stopped by Sears – just to browse. The problem with browsing is that it’s a very short distance from buying. The salesman was very helpful and after talking with him for awhile, he informed us that he had a 42″ LCD that he could price match with Sam’s club to get it under $1000. I was really not planning on spending that much, so I asked him how much the 32″ version of the same tv would be with price matching – under $600. So tempting. But, we hadn’t looked anywhere else yet, and we are definitely the comparison shop type of people so we ended up leaving empty handed. I took the kids home, Boxman went to Best Buy. He couldn’t find anything comparable there for that price range. So, back to Sears he went. He tried to get them to give us some type of special financing, in which case he would have bought the 42″, but the guy couldn’t do anything for him. This is what he ended up bringing home….. Vizio 32″ LCD HDTV

So far, we love this tv.  Let me just say how cool the HD is!  We don’t have cable or satellite mostly because we are too cheap, so we have lived with channels that sometimes have static and some just don’t come in so well period.  Now, we have crystal clear shows.  It feels like we have cable because the picture is so good.  I am looking forward to watching Prison Break tonight in HD.  It’s going to be incredible as that station is generally pretty fuzzy.

I hate Wal-Mart.  I have nothing else to say about it.

I asked for a new pillow for Christmas.  It was all I really wanted (besides the gifts my dad brought me), so Boxman was compelled to grant my wish.  I had a memory foam pillow that came with our mattress pad, but it wasn’t thick enough for me, being a side sleeper.  It also wasn’t cuddly.  Well they make pillows that have both memory foam and fiberfill!  It was the answer to my dreams.  (he he)  Fortunately it was on sale for 50% off on black Friday because I would have felt a little guilty with and $80 pillow.  Anyway, let me just say that I love, love, love my pillow.  Every night, I tell Boxman how much I love it.  I think it makes him happy to know that he got me such a well appreciated gift.  Too bad he never gets the chance to try it out.  I went searching to find a link to it, and I don’t know if they don’t make it anymore or what, but in case you are wondering, it is a Sleep Innovations 2-in-1 pillow with the memory foam on one side and the fiberfill on the other side.  After trying it, I would pay the $80 for a new one when this one wears out.  I’m getting very sleepy just thinking about it.