The weekend went by way too quickly. After finally getting out of work on Friday (my job has gotten to be quite boring), I ran a couple of errands and picked up a bottle of champagne for later that evening. After eating I surprised Susan with the bottle… We put in Lake House (pretty decent romance movie, gotta love Keaneu Reeves acting, or lack thereof), snuggled on the couch and sipped champagne in our flutes that we got from Beth and Matthew. It was a nice relaxing night.

Saturday, we got almost all of our Christmas shopping done and had quite the experience with a couple of sales associates at Wal-mart. We printed off three 4×6″ prints at the Kodak printing machine. Written clearly above (I know because I went back and checked) was 28 cents a print. A logical person would think three prints at 28 cents each, a total of 84 cents plus tax (as you might have guessed, logical is a hard concept for Wal-mart to grasp, or simply put, the wheel’s spinning but the hamster’s dead). We took the two slips (yes… two slips, one slip was for two printouts and the other slip for one printout… this is important…) We finished the rest of our shopping and proceeded to the checkout. As per typical Wal-mart there wasn’t a whole lot of checkout lanes opened (hmmm… Christmas season is upon us, let’s have fewer lanes opened!) and we had well over 16 for the express lane. When we finally got to check out, the sales associate greeted us (yes… some don’t and you can actually provide feedback on the credit card swiper machine, but that’s a different story…) She began to swipe our items after which I handed the two slips for our pictures. As she swiped the first I noticed a sale of ten dollars came across the screen. I thought, whoa that seems pricey and sure enough the second slip also came up to ten dollars. At this point I mentioned to the sales associate, “Ten dollars for a 4×6″ print?!” Her face went blank; she shrugged and said “I don’t know”. So I asked again and she went through the same dumbfounded actions. I thought, okay this is getting me nowhere and figured if I wanted something done I better not deal with her. After paying the ridiculous amount of twenty bucks for three pictures, we went over to the service counter (after I ran back and checked the sign…) We showed this other sales associate (after again waiting in line) our receipt that had two (this is where it gets tricky) items labeled ‘PM 4×6″‘ with a price of ten dollars each. We said we had three pictures but only two slips. This sales associate was like I only see two items not three (yes, but this receipt only shows we had two slips, and one slip had two pictures on it…) Sigh, after about ten minutes of trying to convince her we actually did have three pictures (we did show them to her) with two slips (guess the hamster had a jolt or something) we managed to get our money back. An after thought of this occurrence was, gee I could print a thousand pictures get one slip and it’d only cost ten dollars (better try this quick before they fix the machine 😉 ).

Sunday was a pretty fun filled day as well (I know, it ranks just a bit higher than going to Wal-mart and having the fun I mentioned above… just a wee bit of sarcasm). We went to church and as Susan said after choir practice last Monday (she plays her violin in church) St. Anthony’s/St. Joseph’s Parish have a thing for O Come Emmanuel. Just about every song sung had the same music behind it, just different words (even the Alleluia… this is going to be an exciting advent… well I guess it’s better than no music at all). Afterwards we stopped for a bite to eat and headed to Grandma’s house (over the river and through the woods, well sort of). Me and Susan took part in the annual frosting of the sugar cookies and had a pretty good time visiting, frosting, and eating any cookies that were “accidentally” broken (a rules a rule…) We managed to get back just as the third quarter of the Lions-Patriots game ended. Somehow the Lions were keeping up against the once World Champs. Of course if I were the Patriots and I saw the Lions put the 2nd string quarterback in as a wide receiver I wouldn’t know what to think either… I’m not just saying once or twice, but I guess Josh McCown played quite a bit of wide receiver and he did make a couple of catches as strange as that may be… Well after the Lions got a safety I was thinking, oh boy wouldn’t that be something if they win (at this point they were up 18-13). A turnover and another field goal for the Lions (21-13), and I was getting pretty excited. Somehow the Patriots managed to stomp down the field, go for two and tie the game. The Patriots then come up with another touchdown and pull into the lead. After the kickoff the Lions turned the ball over again (this makes the third one this game for them) and I thought eh it’s over now. But somehow they managed to get the ball back again (Patriots now had three turnovers). I look to Susan and say two plays and Jon Kitna throws an interception. Sure enough just like clockwork, two plays and tada an early Christmas present for the Pats… those stupid, stupid Lions. Feeling a little disappointed, I flipped on Zelda (which made the thought of the Lions losing another game by seven points or less go away) and got to play a few hours. I made dinner (lemon chicken, always a favorite) and watched Law & Order and went to bed in anticipation of another exciting week at Dow (doing not much at all…)