brain draining shopping

I think I can most accurately sum up today by saying "oy vey"...

It hasn't been a bad day, but it's definitely been a somewhat trying and mentally taxing day.

It started out, as usual, with Supermarket Safari (after the December ritual of unwrapping the latest toy soldier... this one was a hanging ornament for the pole, and very dark compared with the rest of my collection)...

That all went fine, although I didn't end up with much of anything really... quite a bit of stuff was for the goodie making next Sunday...

After we were done at the supermarket we wandered around Red Circle looking at random stuff, in particular their Christmas decorations... and I saw a plastic faux-crystal/glass angel that had been broken at some point and it's little arms had come off... and I actually really liked it like that... there was just something about it that worked without the arms better than any of the ones that did have arms. So Ma went to ask at the Service Desk to see if they'd knock some of the price off...

Turns out this was a bad idea and we really should have just stuck a price from one of the other ones on it and bought it... because as soon as we showed it to the (frankly) slightly arrogant girl at the counter (after waiting around for ages for any kind of customer service) she was all "no we can't sell you that, it's got sharp edges... it's broken... it would be like selling broken glass"... and I mean seriously, there was one semi possibly slightly sharp bit, which probably wasn't that much sharper than some of the natural corners that the thing already had. But she definitely copped an attitude... which in turn made me want to slap the crap out of her.

The annoying this is that a) they'll probably just throw it away and b) if I bought it, brought it home and then injured myself on it, it's not like I'm going to sue them, how stupid is that...although that's exactly what they would be worried about, which is just dumb... it's like selling knives and then worrying that people might get all stab-happy with them (actually, I'm not even sure that Red Circle sells knives anymore).

Ma did have some other things she was planning to buy, and I did have the half thought of just dumping everything we were carrying on the counter and saying "well if you're going to behave like that, then we won't be needing any of this stuff either" or something to that effect... but the stuff was Ma's, not mine, so I held my tongue.

Seriously though, it was her attitude more than the actual "broken item policy" that I took objection to.

Anyway, once we were done with all of that we came back to my place, did a quick unpack and then headed into town.

The plan of attack was to hit Optus and then run around and do whatever else we wanted to do...

Well, hit Optus we did... and it was still reasonably early as these things go... but there were only two staff members in the store and they were both with customers and there was another chick in the store, plus us... and after standing around for a while we gave up and decided to do the shopping stuff first.

But first we stuck our heads in the Christmas Elves Light Display in the Mall... now, you would think that a "light display" would actually contain some, I don't know... lights? No, not this... basically it's one big open tent filled with brightly (if expertly) painted scenes and then lit by blacklight. Probably fun if you're 5... but other than that, LAME.

Anyway, we went and wandered around Borders for a little bit, and then Dymocks, and a quick pass through David Jones' lame ass Christmas department before heading back to Optus...

I do seem to have the worst luck with salesdudes at the moment... while I might get one who's helpful, I don't seem to be snagging the prettier ones... hehehe...

Anyway, not to keep anyone in suspense (which I'm pretty sure isn't likely given what I've already been saying about this particular purchase)...

Meet Bumblebee (yeah, I know, I named my phone, and after a Transformer at that... it'll last for the first five minutes anyway, and that's mostly about the Capsule Rebel case rather than the phone)...

I'm now a slightly freaked out and very brain-weary iPhone 3Gs S owner (in fact, I wanted to find a zombie shopper image for this post, but couldn't locate one)...

And I just got my very first phonecall on it, which freaked me out somewhat... "How the hell do I answer this now? Oh, right, slide the doo-da"...

It did seem to take forever to do everything, but that was partly because once the nice Retail Boy got done with me he then went through the whole rigmarole again with Ma... although she didn't get an iPhone, she just got a pretty standard Nokia phone... very low on bells and whistles, but then she doesn't really need them (granted I didn't NEED an iPhone, I just needed a new phone... since I got my last one all the way back in May 2006).

Although Ma did seem to suffer from complete mental failure while I was going through all the stuff about my phone, and couldn't make a decision about whether or not she actually wanted a new phone or not... which was weird and then lead to ongoing mental failure for a large portion of the afternoon... but I'll admit, my brain definitely quit working on the higher levels too... very much a case of "Fire bad, tree pretty"...

Even though I've only had the phone for a very short while, I've already become very familiar with what I'm calling "The iPhone Shine", wiping your iPhone screen on whatever available bit of clothing you might have... personally I'm fond of the shoulder-wipe. But it became second nature so quickly that when I saw a guy coming towards us wiping his iPhone screen on his shirt later in the day, I couldn't help but smile.

So after the seemingly hours and hours and hours it took to get the phones all sorted out, our parking ticket was pretty closed to expiring, so we went and grabbed something to drink, sat and looked at our respective phones for a little bit and then headed back to my place to drop stuff off.

After that we headed down to Arndale for a few bits and pieces (which turned into quite a few bits and pieces, although most of it was Ma's rather than mine, all I bought was a cute little desk fan), then we came back here again before heading down the street to grab a burger at Burger It.

Interestingly, I hadn't thought about it until Ma mentioned it, but I don't think we've ever had a bad burger from there... stuff that was okay but I wouldn't necessarily have again, sure... but never anything horrible.

So it would appear that the remainder of my night will probably consist of fiddling around with my new phone... and ditto for tomorrow too. First step of course is being able to upload some more interesting wallpapers...

Wish me luck!

PS: Grrrr... Just tried to download something from the Apps store and either my phone or the network or Apple or somebody hates me... *cries*... maybe I should read my instructions or something first.

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