Shopping

Sat morning Spouse & I drove to Dover to go shopping. A dept store with very reasonable prices sent us a coupon for 20% off our entire purchase so we decided to get a head start on Christmas shopping. We bought 3 gifts plus some other stuff, like a shower curtain and towels for one of the guest bathrooms, really nice slippers and 2 shirts for Spouse, and flavored coffee. We spent a little over $100. The coupon saved us $27.

We don't typically start Christmas shopping in early Nov. Often we are scrambling around the last week before Christmas to find appropriate gifts for our family, and most of them are wrapped on Christmas day before we gather together. Spouse even admitted to enjoying the 'energy' in the air the last few days before Christmas. But this year will be different since we will need to have everything purchased and wrapped ahead of time because we'll be traveling for Christmas. I think I will enjoy having the gifts wrapped ahead of time and sitting underneath our tree.

When we returned home Spouse surfed the internet for a while, then watched TV while I put up the new shower curtain, cleaned one of the guest bathrooms, and vacuumed the 1st and 2nd floors of the house.

At 5:30 we got a call from Steve & Rob, a couple we met at a cook out at our friends Greg & Gerry's house in VA the summer of 2006. We ran into Steve & Rob at DE Pride in Sept and exchanged email address and phone numbers. Steve & Rob were in Rehoboth visiting friends and doing a "vendor party" at the club house where their friends live. They said they weren't expecting many to show up for the vendor party (ie: they are reps for Pampered Chef, Party Lites, and Simply Tasteful) and figured if we weren't busy we could stop by and visit, so we did. It was fun to see them and catch up. We didn't buy any of their stuff because its super expensive, but I did purchase a cool pendant from one of their friends. She makes glass jewelry (pendants, pins, earrings, etc) and I saw a really neat green glass pendant on a black cord that was very reasonably priced, so I bought it. I never wear jewelry (except my gold wedding band), but I could easily see myself wearing this little pendant the same way all the cool, hip guys wear necklaces/pendants these days. So I got it.

Then we went to Rick & Nick's house to watch a movie and soak in the hot tub. We watched "Far From Heaven", which we'd all seen before but decided to watch it again because we all like the way the movie is so stylized to imitate the way films were made in the 1950s. The cars, clothes, and furniture are fabulous! Afterward we sat in the hot tub for a while. It was a great night for it; the temperature was probably only in the mid 40s. You could see your breath. The tub felt great and Spouse and I added a hot tub to the list of things we'll get if we win the lottery or inherit a wad of dough from a wealthy relative. The list already includes the small and very overpriced piece of land next door to us on which we'd build a 3 stall garage with an apartment above it, a late 50s or early 60s restored classic car (my preference is a Cadillac convertible), a gigantic flat screen HD LCD TV, surround sound for said TV, tickets for a cruise around the Greek islands, and a month's vacation in Europe.

Sun we picked up Rick & Nick and drove to Dover again to go shopping, this time to Sam's Club. In order not to blow our budget we really had to keep each other in check! There were lots of items that were less expensive at Sam's, so we really had to weigh whether or not we wanted to spend the money and get the items in bulk. It was just like when we had a membership to CostCo in VA. We didn't find any Christmas gifts, but otherwise we did rather well, spending just over $100.

We stopped for dinner on the way home, and then I watched one of the Netflix DVDs upstairs while Spouse watched crappy TV downstairs. I watched "Stranger Than Fiction" and liked it a lot. Will Ferrell is a boring IRS agent who suddenly finds himself living the life of a character in a novel being written by Emma Thompson. Hearing her narrate his life is annoying, but he really gets upset when he learns he's going to die at the end of the story.

Drag Queen name of the day: Joy Tudaworld