August 17, 2005

• Okay, so the other day, I needed to finish up my shopping.  So, I decided to hop in the car and head out to…

  
  

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  What?  Why is everyone lookin’ at me like that?  Geez, can’t a guy disappear for eight months and then come back, picking up right where he left off, providing no explanation whatsoever!?!

  
  

  Fine, if you need an explanation, let’s just say it involves ten pounds of imitation squirrel fur and a leaky tube of Crazy Glue.  Or perhaps a few miles of yellow ribbon, 150,000 oak trees and a Tony Orlando and Dawn Greatest Hits CD.  Or even better, an American Idol audition, a slight case of laryngitis and me punching Simon right square in the nose.

  
  

  There.  Now that I’m sure you’re satisfied with my perfectly logical reason for being away, I shall now saunter back over to my blog.

  
  

  
  

  
  *sauntering*

  
  

  
  

  
  Alrighty then!  Here’s a blog that I was going to post on December 28th, so I need you all to imagine that it’s the middle of winter.  YES I KNOW IT’S THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER!!  Come on, work with me here, people!!  It’s time to exercise that severely under-utilized imagination of yours!

  
  

  Okay, we’re gonna start this blog over again, so close your eyes and if you try reaaally, reaaaally hard, you’ll imagine that you’re in front of your computer with your eyes closed.

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  Oh, and it’s December 28th.

  
  

  
  Tuesday, December 28, 2004
  
  Okay, so the other day, I needed to finish up my shopping, so I decided to hop in the car and head out to the malls to pick up the last few Christmas gifts on my list.  Let me first say how I hate going Christmas shopping at malls. After one year where I waited 40 minutes in line just to buy a gift card, I vowed that I had to either start shopping earlier or figure out a different way of shopping.  Aaaand since I procrastinate until the last possible minute, the former was completely out of the question.

  
  

  Now, to explain my philosophy on Christmas shopping, let me share a little story.  During our group’s Christmas get-together, one of my friends got a Larry Bird DVD that includes a few complete Boston Celtics basketball games on it.  So, someone popped it into the DVD player and we watched Game Seven of the 1988 NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Finals… Celtics vs. Hawks.  For those of you that know the game, you know why we’re watching it.  For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about… well, think of something really awesome, then throw in some basketballs.  Yes… it’s THAT cool.

  
  

  Anyway, one of the wives asked me, “Don’t you guys know who’s gonna win?”  “Sure”, I replied, so she said, “Then why are you watching this!?!”

  
  

  I answered, “Sometimes, it’s not the end result, but the journey that makes something so entertaining” (I think I read that on the back of a cereal box or it was in a Bulwinkle cartoon or something).  This wife is also the same person that watched Bridget Jones’ Diary EVERY SINGLE DAY for months, so let us all take a quiet moment to savor the irony.

  
  
  
  
  

  Ahhhhhh…

  
  

  Okay, so what does Larry Bird, the Atlanta Hawks and Bridget Jones’ Diary have to do with my philosophy on Christmas shopping?  Uhhhh… that’s a good question.  Crap, where exactly WAS I going with this?

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Oh yeah!  This whole “journey more entertaining than final result” thing is not the case when it comes to shopping.  I don’t care HOW I get the item, it’s that I GOT the item.  If I have the choice of walking through ten stores to find the item I want OR sit on my butt at home and order it online in ten minutes, I’m denting my chair until it shows up at my door.

  
  

  And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing the last few years, denting my chair ordering my Christmas gifts online.  It’s saved me hours of driving through traffic jams, weaving through parking lots searching for a space and standing in lines.  Instead of walking from store to store searching for the perfect gift, I can go through multitudes of stores at home and have the gifts delivered to me.

  
  

  Now, online shopping isn’t perfect.  I’ve had to venture out to the malls at least once each year to pick up the last of my gifts due to a delay in shipping or things being out of stock.  But, since I knew what I wanted, it’s usually pretty easy to go out and get those last few gifts.  And of course, this year was no different.  So, like I said, I hopped in my car to finish my shopping and immediately picked up a few gifts. 

  
  

  The last item on my list… the Sunbeam King-size Electric Warming Mattress Pad for my aunt.

  
  

  I found a number of them online, ranging from $69.95 to $99.95.  Okay, that’s not too bad… sure, it might look kinda funny giving her a huge, bulky present while giving my uncle a dinky DVD-sized present, but oh well.  Maybe I’ll throw that DVD into a huge box and have him tunnel through a few gallons of shipping peanuts to search for his gift.  Regardless, electric warming mattress pads are apparently hotter than Cabbage Patch Dolls were in 1983, since every site that I found one, they were sold out.
  

  Target.com and walmart.com both had the mattress pad on their websites, I figured I’d start by driving to those stores.  There’s a Target right by my house and… they don’t have it.  There’s a Target right by my work and… they don’t have it.  Well crap, I should’ve known this wasn’t going to be easy, so I hopped back in the car and drove 20 minutes down to the Target in San Leandro.

  
  

  No mattress pad.  Freaking heck, man.  I drive down a few more miles to WalMart… they don’t have it either.  A couple of miles away is Southland Mall, so even though there’s no Target or WalMart there, I can check a few department stores.  There’s gotta be ONE place there that has one of these mattress pads!

  
  

  I walk through a couple of department stores with no luck.  I step into Mervyn’s, walk into the bedding department and… here it is!  I found it!  The Sunbeam Electric Mattress Pad!  It actually exists!  I’ve never been so happy to see bedding linen in my life!  And they have a lot of them!  AND IT’S EVEN ON SALE!  And it’s the wrong size!

  
  

  They just have twin size.  I turn the corner and there’s a whole display of them!  Yes!  MERVYN’S RULES!  And they don’t have king there either!  You suck, Mervyn’s!

  
  

  Doggone it, they have every single size except for King.  Twin… Full… Queen… even California King.  If they made an electric mattress pad for a doggone Barbie bed, they probably would’ve had that size, too. 

  
  

  I stood there wondering if California King would work.  Are they a different size than King?  Are they the same size but a different thickness?  Do they call King size mattress pads California King cuz I’m in California?  They certainly didn’t cover stuff like this in college.  I call my mom, but got voice mail, so I left a message.  After calling another aunt, I discovered that indeed, a California King wouldn’t fit on a normal king-sized bed.

  
  

  Crap.

  
  

  I leave Mervyn’s, but I am undeterred in my quest, for I now know what my prey looks like.  I’m going to cross this last item off of my Christmas list if it takes forever!  VICTORY WILL BE MINE!

  
  

  Apparently, forever is a distinct possibility, cuz I strike out in the rest of the stores in the mall.  I travel to yet another Target and then drive down to New Park Mall.  Time after time, I either discover that these stores don’t have electric warming mattress pads or they don’t have King size.  For awhile, I contemplated buying my aunt a California King bed just so I can buy the frikkin’ California King-sized electric mattress pad.

  
  

  My mom calls me back while the mall is closing and I explain how I can’t find the mattress pad.  As stores are pulling down security gates all around me, she says to forget about it and get something else on my aunt’s list.  Well, one of the only other things on her list was chocolate covered cherries from See’s.  Yeah, I’m sure chocolate covered cherries will keep my aunt nice and toasty on those cold nights.

  
  

  It’s December 22nd… time is not on my side.

  
  

  The End.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  Oh no wait… I mean, To Be Continued.  Sorry, I’m a little rusty at this whole blogging thing.

  • 8:56 pm
  • 33 Comments