Oh the joys of "The Shopping of the Christmas"...The country song "I've Been Everywhere Man" does seem to sum today up pretty well though.
And we bought about half a metric ton of stuff.
First up as always was the usual Food Shopping... and just briefly before I go any further... who the hell teaches the teenage supermarket boys how to dress? While I don't mind the whole "low slung dress pants with partial belly peaking out between the buttons" look, you just wanna dress them properly... occasionally after you've undressed them, but sometimes you just wanna leave them better dressed than when you first saw them. Or is that just me? Oh... so it is just me... okay.
Now where was I... oh yeah... we ended up buying more food stuff than usual, partially because Ma bought a ton more stuff than she usually would do... some of it was "Christmas related" though.
Anyway, after all that and a wander around the Red Circle Boutique that resulted in me finally finding a "Christmas Day Tee" (yaaaaay *waves hands around in highly camp manner*)... so that solves that problem... and we'd stopped off here to unpack all the groceries, we headed off on our Grand Shopping Tour.
The down side of the whole shopping day really was the fact that my left ankle/calf is absolutely KILLING me... I'm guessing it's walk related... but whether it's because my walking shoes are dying... or because I don't really warm up before I go out... or what the hell, I don't know... but my ankle/calf is not a happy little camper... which of course makes walking less enjoyable...
Anyway, our first stop was Arndale... an obscene amount of Christmas bags from, of all places, Go-Lo (I know! But they were actually really good bags... and cheap!), then a brief stop at Big W (another DVD... what can I say, it's a sickness... and I know I'm gunna be crying when it comes time to try and find room for them all come December 26) and a couple of other little Chichi-Lala stores for Ma to pick up some stuff... then we were off to the City...
We were actually fairly focused... very "go where we need to, get what we need, move on" kind of shopping... which is good... and part of the reason we got so much done I think...
The City leg consisted of a stop off at the place I got the VW Bug for J... and I told them that "when I'd looked at it, the back of the plastic was all scratched"... ahem... but the nice girl just let me swap the case over for the case off a different car (because sadly there weren't any more Bugs)... so all is right with the world once more. We also stopped off at Lush so Ma could get more soap for people... I don't know that I would actually use any of their soap (I'm more of a body wash kinda guy) but damn some of it smells GOOD! Oh, and we can't go back in there for a while... at least one of the girls remembered us from the last time we were in... and oddly enough NOT the girl who showed us everything. As a brief aside there is a girl in there with the COOLEST tattoo... it's kind a fifties children's book illustration, kinda "See Jane Run" thing... and goes all up one of her arms... all shaded and beautiful colouring... not finished yet though... but GORGEOUS.
Our final stop was supposed to be Kathmandu in Rundle Street... after the problem we had finding that particular store last time (I'm sure there's a post relating to it somewhere, but buggered if I can find it), I double and triple checked the catalogue I'd gotten... and the store was definitely in Rundle Street... except that when we got to it they actually hadn't finished doing the shop fitting on it, and it obviously WASN'T "Now Open" like the catalogue said. There were some vague directions to their existing store on the window, and while both Ma and I looked at said directions (there was a map and everything), neither of us paid ENOUGH attention to them, so when we attempted to go and find the other store all I got for my troubles was more of a sore leg.
So after a minor tantrum (mine, obviously) we gave up and went and had some lunch instead...
Fortunately after that we went back to the car (in the very primo car park we managed to snag... yaaaay) we drove around to where we should have gone in the first place... and oh, look, there's the store! I'll be so glad when they get their act together and actually move into the Rundle Street location. But having said that we did snag a fair few really good things... luggage labels for the trip to Sydney, something else for J's goodie bag, and a much lighter and more portable tripod (the other one will possibly end up being Ma's)... and the grooviest little "tripod" thing that actually attaches to not only any vertical surface (ie a car window amongst other things), but also to the top of a bottle... which has to be the grooviest yet weirdest sight... a digital camera sitting on top of, say, a 2 litre bottle of Pepsi... we'll have to see if that's going to be a handy little object or not... but it was half price, so you can't really complain very much.
Then we were off to Ikea... Ikea normally, borderline scary... Ikea at Christmas, just full on scary... I mean, is it a Swedish thing to have brown, purple, red, green and black as Christmas colours?
We got a few useful things though... a couple more kitchen knives to replace the older crappy ones I have (especially since they don't match the nice one I have up on my magnetic strip)... a candle to add to the nice outdoor candle lantern thing Ma got somebody... the rest was carefully selected Christmas wrapping and ribbon and stuff I think... oh, there were a couple of cute kitchen tin things in there too I think... honestly, I don't remember anymore. We did manage to spend about two hours in there though... and we didn't even go anywhere near the top floor (okay, we had "food" upstairs, but we didn't stick around for long)...
And when we brought all the bits and pieces and bags and stuff inside... good lord, my floor was full... the downside of course being that in EIGHTEEN days it's all over pretty much... *sigh*... such is Christmas...
Current Mood:
No comments:
Post a Comment