I just looked at the ten day forecast because this is the time of year that I become even more obsessed with the weather than I usually am, specifically the Christmas forecast. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news for my fellow Texans, but it looks like no snow this year.
Which basically means it will be the same as every Christmas of my entire forty-two years of life, but I continually hold out hope that this might be the year.
To add insult to injury, it appears the high temperature on Christmas day might be in the mid-70’s and that’s just depressing no matter how you look at it. Maybe I’ll wear my festive Christmas shorts and flip-flops. Except I don’t own those things.
So I mentioned last week that this past weekend was the annual shopping weekend for Gulley and me. And it did not disappoint. In fact, I don’t want to brag (except I totally do) but we feel that we were more efficient this year than ever before. I believe this might be directly related to the fact we don’t have to make the arduous, time-sucking trip up and down the aisles of Toys R’ Us anymore.
That was one of our realizations this weekend. I mean, yes, we still bought a few toy-type items that I won’t list here in case Caroline decides to read this, but nothing we couldn’t find at Target or order on Amazon. We decided that future shopping weekends may just consist of us sitting on my couch, drinking wine and putting things in our Amazon cart to be shipped directly to our doorstep. Mainly because we’ll just want to see those drones in action come 2015.
But this year we were still old-school. We started at Starbucks on Friday morning around 9:00 and then made our way to Dick’s Sporting Goods for the first stop of the day. After that, we drove over to Bass Pro Shops.
I need a minute.
It’s not like I’ve never been in Bass Pro Shops because I have. But I think it’s been a few years because I was totally overwhelmed with the amount of merchandise. They have a carousel in the store. I don’t mean a clothing carousel, I mean a merry go round. It’s a lot to process. And while we were in there, someone commented on our accents and asked where we were from. You have to believe it’s a low point to be asked about your accent in Bass Pro Shops.
We left there for more familiar territory and made our way through Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Banana Republic and Anthropologie, picking up things here and there. Then we ate lunch at Nordstrom because those fries with the olive aioli are as close to perfect as any food item you’ll ever have.
After lunch we made several more stops and then finally headed to Academy with the intent that it would be our last store of the day. We found a few more things and were waiting in line to check out when Gulley dropped her phone. We didn’t think much of it until we got in the car and she looked down to realize this is all she could see.
I’m not a smart man, Jenny, but I know what phone trouble is.
We tried all the solutions we know to try to resolve this issue. Which basically means we pushed the power and home button at the same time several times like that might help. But ultimately we realized there was no hope. Our friend Debbi said she had a friend at the AT&T store that could help and so we drove over there to get help and/or get Gulley a new phone for Christmas.
Gulley also realized she was going to have to become an authorized user on their AT&T account because it’s in her husband’s name. I would go into more detail about what this process entailed but then my head might explode all over again like it did on Friday night as I listened to her deal with it all. Here’s a letter I’d like to send to AT&T:
Dear AT&T,
Here’s a customer service tip. When a customer calls you, they are looking for customer service. Please do not use this opportunity to attempt to up-sell them to AT&T U-verse or internet. Especially when you haven’t even helped them with the reason they initially called. It’s bad business. Thank you for your consideration.
(I was especially sensitive to this because the exact same thing happened to me the weekend before Thanksgiving. If I want U-Verse, I’ll ask for it. But in the meantime, you can build consumer confidence by just fixing my problem. And I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to small talk with you either. We’re not going to become friends and I don’t believe you’re genuinely interested in the weather in San Antonio.)
Anyway, Gulley ended up with a new phone because hers was beyond help. Saturday was basically a repeat of Friday but at different stores. We finally made it back to my house at 9:00 p.m. that night with food, presents, wrapping paper,ribbon and the sad realization that Trader Joe’s already sold completely out of Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joes for the season.
We turned on a Friends marathon, began wrapping all our presents, solved a lot of problems, analyzed Olivia Pope, and at 2 a.m. we literally wrapped it all up.
And now my tree has gifts to keep it company.
So the weekend was a win all the way around. P went hunting, Caroline spent it with Mimi and Bops, and Gulley and I had a great girls’ weekend that has the added benefit of actually being productive. And we’ve already got next year’s shopping weekend on the calendar because we don’t mess with tradition.