Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Pitch-dark Friday

This year I decided to venture into the crazy shopping world on Black Friday. My mom had stayed the night at our house and she and I woke up at 4am to let the fun begin. We were out the door in 15 mintues flat (hello ponytail!) and made it to the shopping center by 4:30am. The line around Circuit City, which was my destination of choice, was at least 300 people long and it twisted around the building and ended in the loading area behind the building. People had coolers, sleeping bags, chairs and blankets. There was even a RV or two in the parking lot. These folks are hard core. I decided to settle for Target. I had gone a few days before and scoped out the location of said item (which will remain unnamed because it is Rob's Christmas gift) so I knew exactly where to go. We waited in line for an hour and a half before the store opened. We had a great time, talking and eavesdropping; straining to hear if there were people ahead of me vying for the same thing. We heard all sorts of crazy Black Friday stories of years past. Last year at the same Target store, people had cut in line when all of the doors opened and the police were called to settle the crowd. This year, the management had things much better organized and only opened one door to allow us to enter single file. I was pleasantly surprised at the calmness and kindness of everyone that morning. Despite the fact that my Mom and I were standing behind a group of 5 chain smokers, we had a great time and got great deals. I truly believe that the management at Target helped to calm the crowd by answering questions while we were still waiting in line and by having carts and flyers ready when we went in.

My Mom and I hit a few more stores and ended our morning at Cracker Barrell. I was bone tired but our trip was definitely worth the effort. My Mom, Ms. Ray-of-Sunshine, reminded me that if we got at least one item we were hoping for, it was a success. Also that she and I were making memories. I will remember this one for a long time.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Estimates

We're going to enclose our back porch with a dome enclosure. We've been planning on doing this since we bought our house back in 2003. We actually got some estimates in 2004 but MY GOD was it expensive and we thought we'd wait until Central Florida experienced a record number of home-damaging hurricanes and the price of screen enclosures doubled before we made our move.

We're. Stupid.

Oh yeah. And living on one income.

Sam is a full-fledged walking toddler, so we need some sort device to keep baby away from the lake. I'm sure the fancy people would frown upon us setting up a baby gate around the patio. But then again, we are the neighborhood rednecks. I mean, c'mon. We actually clean our own house and don't have a doggie-poop-picker-uper service. Rob just runs that shit over with the lawnmower.

But since we live in this fancy neighborhood where people don't mow their own lawns (we do!) or drive 8-year old Chevys, (we do!) we have to follow all the rules of the fancy people who for some reason have something against flat-roofed screen rooms. We haave to haave a dommme encloooosure (spoken in my snootiest British accent.)

We've had three companies come to give us estimates today. It is so hard to pick which one is the best. Two of the guys showed up at the same time. I was hoping they'd fight over our business and get into this great bid war while the big guy in the Chicago Bears hoodie held the small guy in the navy blazer in a full nelson. Yeah, well THAT didn't happen. Pfft. Whatever.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

October in Pictures

Where did the month go? Time is still flying by at an alarming rate and I'm waiting for it to slow down. Sam is 13 months old and I still haven't blogged about the remainder of his birthday month! So, lucky you, you get the October summary in pictures! Whoo hoo!

This is our trip to the pumpkin patch with Sam. He was only 3 weeks old when we last visited. My, how he's grown!



Here is Samuel dressed in his first Halloween costume. He was the cutest vampire we'd ever seen. Put away the garlic and crucifix; you'll want to keep this "Sam"pire around!




This was Sam's first "hands-on" experience carving a pumpkin. He tried several times to eat the guts, despite our encouragement not to.



Sam has really taken off with the walking. He opens doors with ease and keeps on going...