Another Weekend Wasted
Mar. 24th, 2003 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2I went shopping on Saturday. Honest-to-God shopping, as opposed to stopping at the grocery store or my comic shop or whatever.
The thing is, when you work a swing shift and stay up late watching movies or playing games on the computer, you tend to not have any time when you're awake and stores are open and you're not heading to work.
It would be easy to say I don't like shopping, and in some ways I don't. But when I worked a normal shift, I often stopped at stores on the way home. I did a lot more shopping, and spent a lot more money.
So in one way, I've been able to avoid spending too much money the last few years. But to give you an example of how little I manage to accomplish... I intended to buy presents for most of my friends for Christmas. Christmas came and went, and outside of the gifts I bought for my relatives, I only had one present purchased for a friend. But I told myself I was still going to buy something for everyone. Now it's three months later, and I had one MORE present purchased... pretty pathetic.
So on Saturday I managed to buy two more presents, doubling what I'd accomplished previously. Woo! Powershopping!
Buying for friends is sometimes difficult. Like, I had some ideas of what to get one person, but I didn't write them down, and now I can't remember what I'd been planning to buy. And some friends, you know the things they really like, but you don't know exactly what they already have. So it's a tricky business trying to get something that you know they'll like, but haven't already bought for themselves...
So... one of the places I went to was Walmart. Man, what a sucky place to be on a Saturday. There were BILLIONS of people there! You couldn't move without bumping into someone.
And one of the things that I wanted to accomplish for myself was to get a really cheap (under $20 if possible) radio/cd boom box. I didn't need or want cassette capability; this was just something to stick in the computer room to play cds and sometimes radio. Also I wanted it to be small and compact, not some giant freakin huge thing.
Well, they had exactly what I wanted, except it was sold out. They had some other models that were in the $25 to $35 range, but most of them were bigger with cassette decks... not really what I wanted.
Then on the way out of the electronics department, I found something that was exactly what I wanted: cd/radio, small & compact, $19. The only problem was that it was aimed at young girls. It has "Mary-KateandAshley" all over it, and "It's what YOU listen to".
Not quite sure what that second part really means, but anyway. I bought it, and it plays just fine. :P
Another thing I did on Saturday was assemble a large bookshelf I'd bought a few weeks earlier and put it in the computer room. So now I have a lot more shelf space.
Sunday I bought some junk I didn't need at Half Price Bookstore, cds and three old movies (two are old Sherlock Holmes movies, one with Basil Rathbone). I bought the corned beef that I'd meant to buy a week ago, and cooked it overnight in the crock pot with potatos and carrots. Time to steam some cabbage!
Also Sunday, Tom and I watched my latest Cardcaptor Sakura dvd (which I've had for more than a week, he'd seen it already). At one point I drug out my collection of Clow Cards that I bought well over a year ago -- I need a matching Sakura Card set now! -- and inside the cover I found two strange things.
One was a $20 gift card to border's books. Tom tried to convince me that he'd got it for me and slipped it in there, but he hadn't even known where my box of Clow Cards was hidden, and I remembered that I'd bought gift cards to borders for everyone that I couldn't think of a gift for for Christmas in 2001. So the card is over a year old, and I either forgot to give it to someone who wasn't at the Christmas party, or bought more than I needed.
Well, they're good for 24 months, so I need to make sure I use it soon. :)
The other thing that was REALLY odd was some kind of reciept of Tom's. We don't know how it got in there, but the very weird thing was that it was dated March 18, 2003. Now, not only did Tom NOT buy anything from this place last week, but he didn't even know where my cards were hidden... and it's probably not even from March 18, 2002 because he was in Hawaii last year at this time, and I clearly hadn't looked inside the box since Christmas 2001... so we don't know why this thing has last week's date on it. Spooooky!
The thing is, when you work a swing shift and stay up late watching movies or playing games on the computer, you tend to not have any time when you're awake and stores are open and you're not heading to work.
It would be easy to say I don't like shopping, and in some ways I don't. But when I worked a normal shift, I often stopped at stores on the way home. I did a lot more shopping, and spent a lot more money.
So in one way, I've been able to avoid spending too much money the last few years. But to give you an example of how little I manage to accomplish... I intended to buy presents for most of my friends for Christmas. Christmas came and went, and outside of the gifts I bought for my relatives, I only had one present purchased for a friend. But I told myself I was still going to buy something for everyone. Now it's three months later, and I had one MORE present purchased... pretty pathetic.
So on Saturday I managed to buy two more presents, doubling what I'd accomplished previously. Woo! Powershopping!
Buying for friends is sometimes difficult. Like, I had some ideas of what to get one person, but I didn't write them down, and now I can't remember what I'd been planning to buy. And some friends, you know the things they really like, but you don't know exactly what they already have. So it's a tricky business trying to get something that you know they'll like, but haven't already bought for themselves...
So... one of the places I went to was Walmart. Man, what a sucky place to be on a Saturday. There were BILLIONS of people there! You couldn't move without bumping into someone.
And one of the things that I wanted to accomplish for myself was to get a really cheap (under $20 if possible) radio/cd boom box. I didn't need or want cassette capability; this was just something to stick in the computer room to play cds and sometimes radio. Also I wanted it to be small and compact, not some giant freakin huge thing.
Well, they had exactly what I wanted, except it was sold out. They had some other models that were in the $25 to $35 range, but most of them were bigger with cassette decks... not really what I wanted.
Then on the way out of the electronics department, I found something that was exactly what I wanted: cd/radio, small & compact, $19. The only problem was that it was aimed at young girls. It has "Mary-KateandAshley" all over it, and "It's what YOU listen to".
Not quite sure what that second part really means, but anyway. I bought it, and it plays just fine. :P
Another thing I did on Saturday was assemble a large bookshelf I'd bought a few weeks earlier and put it in the computer room. So now I have a lot more shelf space.
Sunday I bought some junk I didn't need at Half Price Bookstore, cds and three old movies (two are old Sherlock Holmes movies, one with Basil Rathbone). I bought the corned beef that I'd meant to buy a week ago, and cooked it overnight in the crock pot with potatos and carrots. Time to steam some cabbage!
Also Sunday, Tom and I watched my latest Cardcaptor Sakura dvd (which I've had for more than a week, he'd seen it already). At one point I drug out my collection of Clow Cards that I bought well over a year ago -- I need a matching Sakura Card set now! -- and inside the cover I found two strange things.
One was a $20 gift card to border's books. Tom tried to convince me that he'd got it for me and slipped it in there, but he hadn't even known where my box of Clow Cards was hidden, and I remembered that I'd bought gift cards to borders for everyone that I couldn't think of a gift for for Christmas in 2001. So the card is over a year old, and I either forgot to give it to someone who wasn't at the Christmas party, or bought more than I needed.
Well, they're good for 24 months, so I need to make sure I use it soon. :)
The other thing that was REALLY odd was some kind of reciept of Tom's. We don't know how it got in there, but the very weird thing was that it was dated March 18, 2003. Now, not only did Tom NOT buy anything from this place last week, but he didn't even know where my cards were hidden... and it's probably not even from March 18, 2002 because he was in Hawaii last year at this time, and I clearly hadn't looked inside the box since Christmas 2001... so we don't know why this thing has last week's date on it. Spooooky!
