'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season

The annual Kunzepalooza is over. Or at least, everyone's gone home. And we still have trees to decorate. Mom keeps hinting that it would be "fun" if I would come over and finish it. Usually she says this from a ladder halfway up the 12 foot tree which she is festooning with angels and beaded garland. My tree is "A disaster." Maybe if getting the last two strands of bubble lights hadn't taken three hours, we could have finished it. And having the stand break twice and the tree fall over didn't help either (Note for next time: HGTV showed how to cut a piece of metal conduit to convert a live tree stand to one that holds and artificial one. Wish we'd thought of that. We cut dowel rods to make shims. Not as effective.)

Yesterday I spent seven hours as the Designated Driver on a Lower Valley wine tour. We went everywhere. I smelled some good wine, then got bent out of shape that I couldn't have any, so went back to the car and read 150 pages or so of my book. I'm within 100 of the end. I should finish that tonight. That means another $8.65 and a trip to Inklings in my immediate future.

Tonight I have band practice. I finally figured out how to burn Sean's MP3's onto a CD using our brand spanking new eBay computer. It's so fast! Our last one took for flipping ever to download anything, and we didn't know how we would ever get it to upload pictures. One of our regular donors was talking to Paul, our technology guy, and he mentioned our need, and the guy decided instead of giving a check this time, he'd buy us a new one. Oh how nice it is!

Something just flashed out of the corner of my eye. Someone ran blinker lights around our display window. I wonder when that happened. This is what I get for taking off early friday. The whole store gets rearranged.

My New Resolution

My New Resolution

Ok, so it's a little early for official resolutions, but on the wall at Inklings was a newspaper article about local shops going out of business because everyone is going to Walmart. My last favorite bookstore, Sunshine and Wisteria, went out of business a few years ago. I didn't shop there very often. They had a very small selection and were a bit pricey, but I must have had them order five copies of "The Phantom" by Susan Kaye when my friend group went through them so much we kept having to duct tape the cover back on.

So here are my new substitutes:

1.Instead of Safeway, Wrays Thriftway.
2. Instead of Borders, Inklings or Off the Record.
3. Instead of Starbucks, Find another coffee shop. That one is difficult. I have a local drive through that I like, and Inklings has great Spiced Chai, but Starbucks is opened later than anything in town other than bars.

Some things however, I still will buy at regular retail. Some stores include:

1. Walmart. I'm sorry. I hate what it does to the job market in our country, but there are some beauty supplies that the mission stockroom doesn't have and it's the cheapest place to buy them on such a limited budget. (But I did have extra money last week and bought shaving cream at Wrays.)
2. TJ Maxx. It's new, but discounted. It's a chain, but I love it for things like stationary and underwear. I'll wear anything else thrift store, but that I want new.
3. Taco Time. It's a chain, but it's a local chain. So I'll keep on with the crisp meat burritos.