Black Friday Experience

Well today was my first ever participation in Black Friday.  I’ve always heard the news stories, and talk to people that have gone shopping at that insane hour in the morning.  But I’d always just shrugged it off as a sort of niche thing that “normal” people didn’t really have much to do with.  But apparently (once again) I’M the one who’s far from normal.

I had a live broadcast today from Orschlen’s.  It’s a new personal record for earliest remote I’ve ever done (6AM – 9AM).  And as I was driving across town, I first noticed the cars lined up and parked around the block from Sears.  “Wow,” I thought.  Must be some deals there or something.  THEN I drive past Wal-Mart.  HO-LEE-CRAP.  There wasn’t an empty space in the entire parking lot.  Infact people were parking at the stores and fast food joints next to Wal-Mart just to get in that place.  I can’t even imagine what it was like on the inside.  And this is just Great Bend, Kansas!  I mean good greif!

So I pull up to Orschlen’s about 30 minutes before they opened to start setting up equipment.  Sure enough, there were already people lined up outside the store.  I’ll be honest.  I assumed that Orschlen’s would be 2nd or 3rd on people’s priority list.  But that place was jam packed for a good 2 hours and then pretty steady after that.

I mean they had some good deals.  Pretty much everything I didn’t really need.  But they had a really nice mounted work light set that I snatched up for $20.  I figure for $20 that will help working on stuff after dark.  With the shorter days, it’s a shame to let all that time go to waste.

So that’s my Black Friday introduction.  After seeing that Wal-Mart parking lot though I can’t imagine I’ll ever be bold enough to run in THAT crowd.

Happy T-givin’. And a re-detication.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  I hope everyone’s had their fair share of food by now.  Taken a nice long nap, and just generally been able to enjoy the day.  It’s been a nice day around here just for Andrea and I to spend together.  Seems like we don’t do that as much as we should.  Went bowling last night (where I beat her all three games!  hehe).  Then we slept in today, I rolled out of bed around 8:00 and realized a few things we forgot at the store.

Oh how I LOVE the small Dillon’s here in Great Bend.  They don’t have the huge selection and six brands of everything.  But they’ve got everything you need, and as long as you’re not there during the peak hours, it’s not too busy.  Plus it’s super nostalgic to walk through that place.  I grabed some pineapple slices for the ham, and some evaporated milk for the pumpkin pie, and it was off to the short drive back home.

We REALLY need to have home cooked food more often.  Even with the tons of stuff we made, it wasn’t too hard, just had to take the time to let it cook.  Preperation really wasn’t a sweat at all.  And it was just downright delicious.  I’m gonna be eating ham sandwiches, pork and beans, ham and eggs, etc. until Christmas probably!

And geeze, almost Christmas already.  Time really has been flying.  And I mean supersonic jet speed, flying.  I don’t really know what my holiday plans are other than Christmas at my Aunt’s house over the New Year weekend.  I need to make the Cimarron rounds, as well as the Wichita/Winfield rounds.  It’ll be fast and furious I’m sure.

One thing from now until 2010 at least that I want to do is get back into the blog.  It’s fun to go back and read my daily ramblings, and much of them are just little inconsequential things, but fun to read and remember none-the-less.  So until at least the New Year, and hopefully longer, I intend to resurrect my “one post a day” rule.  Unless I’m completely without internet access I’m hoping that forcing myself to write SOMETHING will get me back into the swing of things around here.  It’s been truly pathetic, I admit and apologize.

SO.  I hope you all had a great holiday.  I’m off to bed because I’m up early tomorrow to be at a Orscheln’s remote at 5:30 AM.  See ya then black friday shoppers!

Yup.

WARNING: 23 minutes you’ll never get back.

I have been remarkably un-inspired lately.  What is below is an utterly terrible podcast.  Good music though.

B.G. Willers Podcast

A few random pics.

Well I haven’t been blogging much lately.  I guess it’s just been pretty dull lately.  So for lack of anything better to post, heres a few recent pics I pulled off of the digital camera.

My halloween costume. Whatever that's supposed to be.

Andrea's nieces up to visit. Annie and Lyssa.

Andrea's nephew Nick.

Covered in animals.

Andrea and Sydney

Invisible pilates ball.

Invisible pogo stick.

Enough sun for both of us.

Bored-ing

Source: Spoofshadow

Welp, just hanging out at the station tonight as I have most Fridays so far since football started.  I’m running the board for the Great Bend High School game.  It’s not too stimulating, it makes for some long days, but I suppose the extra money is worth it.

Andrea’s sister and family are heading up for the weekend to go trick or treating.  I asked around at work here and have some good leads on the “sweetest” neighborhoods in town.  Should be fun!

Sorry I’ve been slacking.

Hey der.  Sorry the posting has fallen off lately.  It’s not that am bored with the blog.  I really wish I had some stuff to post.  But either there’s just not much going on, or for some reason I can’t really fit the words together.

Been traveling a lot over the past few weekends or had company over, and we’ll be gone again this weekend as we’re heading to Wichita to visit Duane and Mom.  Duane is in the hospital with pnumonia.   He’s getting better all the time, but he still has a lot of recovery left.

Other than that things just keeping on keeping on.  I’ll try to do better with the updates…. starting next week.  Ever the procrastinator, eh!?

Weirdest dream

Man, I had a dream last night that had it all.  It’s by far the oddest and most random dream I’ve had in years.  I have to write it down while it’s still vivid.

Started off from what I remember, smoking a cigar with Biebs on the front porch.  I’ve never even smoked a cigar, so I guess it’s what I imagine smoking a cigar would be like.  Later I found out the front porch belonged to my Aunt and Uncle and Andrea and I were living there.  Only found that out because Andrea was paying the bills online and said to my uncle, “All these bills have your name on them.”

To which he said, “I know, because it’s my house.”

THEN, I shit you not, Barack Obama shows up with a whole bunch of “feds”.  Or at least some guys in suits.  He says we have to get rid of anything that isn’t “efficient”.  Next thing I know a bunch of guys are loading up all my stuff and taking it out of the house.  TV, computer, even pictures and some of my old favorite shirts.  I remember screaming, “WHY DO YOU NEED MY SHIRTS!?”  And one of the guys said, they’re too old, these MUST be recycled.  They all piled into an old Beaver Express box truck and drove off.

My aunt and uncle thought it was great and I was so fed up that Andrea and I left and went to a hotel.  Only instead of ending up at the hotel we ended up at the State Capitol building and ended up following a school field trip around.  We wanted to go clear to the top, but it was blocked off, so we figured if we formed a big enough group and all went up at the same time, then there was no way they could stop us!  haha!

I don’t remember ever making it to the top…

Next thing I remember it was morning at the hotel and we were at the buffet.  Only it was more like a cafeteria with long galley style tables.  I went to go get some food but the whole buffet was empty, just a few empty buckets of what looked like used to be tapioca pudding.  Right as I was starting to go find Andrea and just skip the meal, the hotel workers brought out three GIANT boxes of cereal and filled the whole buffet line with them.  “That works.”  I thought and grabbed a bowl and scooped some cereal in.

I headed back to one of the long tables and right before I sat down Barack Obama was BACK, and he was walking my mother over to seat her next to me.  He said to me, “I know you have your feelings, but if you ever decide to, you can come sit with us.”  So mom and I sat down where we were and ate our cereal and Obama left.  Then as we were leaving the cafeteria I noticed Obama and those “feds” from earlier sitting a few tables down all eating cereal together.

And that’s about it.  That’s the nuttiest dream I’ve had in a LONG time.

I got new specs, too!

New Specs

I want to go back to rims, but thought I should gradually make my way back into them. So, I got ones with just the rim on the top of the lenses. Not too bad. Matt and my co-workers like them, and that’s more important than me liking them since they see them more! I just look through them.

It’s been a while since I’ve gone into the eye doctor’s, so I’m glad that I got upgraded! The doc says that my eyes are actually getting better. That’s a good thing I guess, since usually they gradually get worse as you get older. I must just be getting younger! Yay me!

Defeating the SNOOZE button.

I don’t know about you, but I for one am NOT a morning person.  It seems like no matter how much sleep I get 4, 6, 8 hours, it doesn’t matter.  Come time to get up I just don’t want to roll out of bed.  Every bone in my body beckons me to just lay back down, close my eyes and return to the peaceful slumber I had been enjoying just moments earlier.

Part of my problem is that I don’t sleep well as it is.  It’s a rare occasion (and a glorious one) when I fall asleep and stay asleep until the morning.  And without a doubt some of the worst sleep of the whole night is the last 30 minutes to an hour in which I’m hitting the Snooze button.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but there’s more mornings than I care to admit that I’m just so tired right when I wake up, that I literally hit Snooze for an hour.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that that last “hour” of sleep wasn’t doing me any good.  And I got to wondering, what the point of the snooze button really is in the first place.  You aren’t going to get any meaningful sleep in the 9 minutes between snoozes.  So starting last night I made the decision to quit cold turkey.  I don’t want to mess with Andrea’s sleep schedule, so used my cell phone as an alarm, and at 6 AM it went off.  I trudged out of bed and over to the nightstand and grabbed the phone to silence it.  I was groggy as usual, but the slight change in routine was enough to stay focused and head out to the kitchen, rather than just flop back into bed.  And just as I suspected once I was up and at it, it didn’t take any longer to “wake up” and get the ol’ cognitive functions going than it did when I was “sleeping” an hour later.

The best part is I get to ease into the day again.  I actually ate breakfast this morning.  Sat down at the computer and enjoyed a cup of coffee while browsing my usual sites.  And even wrote a blog post!  Ahh!  I think I can get used to this morning person thing!  Just gotta stay focused!