The winter storm that is sweeping across the plains this weekend began with rain in the pre-dawn hours on Saturday morning.  My hope to fit in a bike ride before the rain was dashed.  Instead, Anne and I went shopping.  When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  Here was our itinerary:

• Home Depot – Our first stop and probably one of our more successful ones at that.  We purchase two strands of LED Christmas lights and twist ties to mount them with.  It had started to rain when we left the store.
• Borders – Anne purchased two boxes of Christmas cards. I used the time that she spent shopping and waiting in a very long line, to do other shopping.
• REI – I bought Christmas presents.  Maybe for you?  Probably not.
• Borders (again) – Anne is still waiting in line.
• Whole Foods – I shopped for lunch and dinner fixings and barely made it out of there alive.  Whole Foods on a Saturday is not for the faint of heart.  Too many power shoppers are there on a Saturday morning.
• Nordstrum Rack – New store, but they didn’t have what we were looking for.  Someone had parked too close to us on the passenger side, so Anne waited for me to back out the car, before she got in to it.
• Clockmaster – Anne got a new battery for her watch.  I decided to wait in the car and missed the highpoint of their day, when all of the cuckoo clocks and all sorts of clocks struck twelve and began bing, bang and bonging.
• Petsmart – We looked at all of the pets for sale, birds, reptiles and rodents.  Want to buy them all, but instead we bought two bags of birdseed for the bird feeders.  I got to carry the big one back to the car.
• Micro Center – I added this store to our itinerary, since we were in the neighborhood.  We bumped into Steeeve from work and his lovely wife.  I guess he just doesn’t get enough computers in his day job.
• Target – We shopped for a vacuum cleaner.  We looked at Roombas and Dysons, but couldn’t come to any conclusion, so we punted and left the store.  As we were approaching our car I noticed that someone had parked too close to our driver side door and she was right there putting her shopping bags into her car’s trunk.  We must have spooked her, because she slammed her car’s trunk lid down and then emitted the most terrified of gasps.  She then exclaimed to us that she had just locked her car keys into her trunk.  Anne suggested that she check her car doors, but they were also locked.  We asked if there was anyone that she could call and she said that her cell was in the trunk too.  I offered to loan her mine, but she said no, she could not remember her fiancée’s phone number.  I suggested that she walk over to Dobb’s Auto Tire and ask for help.  She liked that and started across the lot.  We drove off feeling bad and wondering if we were at fault?
• Best Buys – A salesman helped us decided to buy a Dyson instead of a Roomba.  The Dyson seemed to really suck and the Roomba didn’t.  Normally not sucking is not a good thing, except in vacuums.  I was afraid that if we got the Roomba, we would come home one day and find it turned turtle and choked to death on one of our dust bunnies buffalos.

After we got home, we had lunch together.  I spent the rest of the afternoon assembling our outdoor Christmas light display.  It is pictured above.  This post is a bit materialistic tone and not all that much in tuned with the Christmas spirit, but it was still our day.  We’ll try to redeem ourselves on Saturday night, by watching Its a Wonderful Life together.