How I Spent My Easter Vacation
Visiting, ohhh, 1 + 3 + 3 + 1 + 3 = 11 jewelry stores.* Finally wound up going back to NW Plaza** and getting plain bands + a new shiny for ladykatyjane, all on the cheap. Actually they didn't have one in my size, but that should come along shortly. Total cost will probably be around $70.
One of the possibilities that came along late was a really pretty gold-and-silver-colored set*** over at Kay in Jamestown Mall****. That came to around $400 total, I think. I told KJ that I felt that, if price were no object, that would have been the set we would have ended up getting. As it is, we saved on the order of $300, which is apparently around half a month's rent in a decent apartment in a respectable area of the greater St. Louis metropolitan region.
Tuesday or so we spent filing the papers I'd been sorting downstairs and had allowed to sink out of my consciousness, for real, for probably the better part of a year. This is notable psychologically, not least because it gave me a happy feeling of accomplishment.
Uncle C. is staying overnight. We went to Bandana's***** and brother warned him going in not to embarrass him with the waitress like last time (last year). Uncle promptly started in on the door girl and continued with our actual waitress, a tall skinny blonde who he soon had laughing at his decreasingly roundabout "attempts" to "find out" whether she would be good marrying material for my brother. (How long had she worked at the restaurant . . . was she in college . . . what was she studying for . . .)
It kinda backfired, though, when it came time for my brother to order and she mentioned she'd been in the high school marching band with him and that he was "nice". Towards the end Uncle C. flat-out asked her "Are you single?" and she wasn't. There just isn't much teasing you can do with such poor stuff to work with. ;~)
P.S.: The waitress said she was in physical therapy, but was starting to lean towards the field of dental assistancy assistantship. Or whatever. As best I remember, she said this was because, in effect, the field of physical therapy was leaning toward requiring a doctorate of its practitioners, and she didn't feel like staying in school that long.
Oh snap. Just now:
Mom: [leading Uncle downstairs] "I left the laundry in the dryer, so . . ."
Uncle: [who has probably NEVER, in the history of his overnight stays, done any laundry here] "Well, I'm not going to climb into the dryer to sleep."
* Generally in malls. Not Jared's or whatever. They came along and immediately pretended they'd been there all along. No, no you haven't. We locals I'm not that much of a total idiot not to notice, thank you very much. You will NEVER be my "hometown jeweler" or whatever you were trying to pass yourselves off as. Even if you were to move corporate HQ to St. Louis. . . . Welll, maybe if you stuck around for twenty-plus years and stopped being so lame.
** suggested Official Motto: "You think St. Louis City has it bad? We have to challenge the federal census's findings twice, just to get our population up to positive numbers."
*** Probably "yellow" and "white" gold, actually. Whatever. And there were diamonds on in the diagonal sort of style that I kept finding more appealing than, say, the "onion ring" style that seemed to be the main other way of doing multiple stones.
**** suggested Official Motto: "The Area's Northwest Plaza For Teenagers."****** Good grief, I had no idea they weren't doing well, let alone so badly. This was very saddening on entirely different levels.
***** Bandana's, for those who don't live in MO or IL, is a restaurant with a bandanna/ranch theme. It caters to those who draw their Food Pyramids with Meat on the bottom and Barbecue Sauce immediately above. Now I'm not fond, on general principles, of the "make it kinda bland and just assume the customer will use condiments" school of food, but this restaurant provides squirt bottles of five different, um, barbecue sauces, most of which are good. So I'll let it slide.
****** While we're talking about mottos, Lambert Int'l has some new "St. Lou[is] ___" banners going, with the i-s split off at the bottom of an Arch to form its own word. Very nicely flexible, although it tells you outsiders something that someone felt the need to finish the thought on at least one banner with the word "alive". Anyway, looks like there's a tourism push going on there. There was also a placard or something announcing a change in the baggage handling process, which should please Dad.*******
******* This post has been an experiment in the usage of footnotes instead of my usual overlong parenthetical asides, which I sometimes worry are confusing and headache-inducing for the average reader. Unfortunately, a block of six or seven asterisks just looks ridiculous. (The entry does look quite readable, though!) Hmm . . . I guess I could use superscript numbers or something, but those can be hard to pick out, in my experience.
One of the possibilities that came along late was a really pretty gold-and-silver-colored set*** over at Kay in Jamestown Mall****. That came to around $400 total, I think. I told KJ that I felt that, if price were no object, that would have been the set we would have ended up getting. As it is, we saved on the order of $300, which is apparently around half a month's rent in a decent apartment in a respectable area of the greater St. Louis metropolitan region.
Tuesday or so we spent filing the papers I'd been sorting downstairs and had allowed to sink out of my consciousness, for real, for probably the better part of a year. This is notable psychologically, not least because it gave me a happy feeling of accomplishment.
Uncle C. is staying overnight. We went to Bandana's***** and brother warned him going in not to embarrass him with the waitress like last time (last year). Uncle promptly started in on the door girl and continued with our actual waitress, a tall skinny blonde who he soon had laughing at his decreasingly roundabout "attempts" to "find out" whether she would be good marrying material for my brother. (How long had she worked at the restaurant . . . was she in college . . . what was she studying for . . .)
It kinda backfired, though, when it came time for my brother to order and she mentioned she'd been in the high school marching band with him and that he was "nice". Towards the end Uncle C. flat-out asked her "Are you single?" and she wasn't. There just isn't much teasing you can do with such poor stuff to work with. ;~)
P.S.: The waitress said she was in physical therapy, but was starting to lean towards the field of dental assistancy assistantship. Or whatever. As best I remember, she said this was because, in effect, the field of physical therapy was leaning toward requiring a doctorate of its practitioners, and she didn't feel like staying in school that long.
Oh snap. Just now:
Mom: [leading Uncle downstairs] "I left the laundry in the dryer, so . . ."
Uncle: [who has probably NEVER, in the history of his overnight stays, done any laundry here] "Well, I'm not going to climb into the dryer to sleep."
* Generally in malls. Not Jared's or whatever. They came along and immediately pretended they'd been there all along. No, no you haven't. We locals I'm not that much of a total idiot not to notice, thank you very much. You will NEVER be my "hometown jeweler" or whatever you were trying to pass yourselves off as. Even if you were to move corporate HQ to St. Louis. . . . Welll, maybe if you stuck around for twenty-plus years and stopped being so lame.
** suggested Official Motto: "You think St. Louis City has it bad? We have to challenge the federal census's findings twice, just to get our population up to positive numbers."
*** Probably "yellow" and "white" gold, actually. Whatever. And there were diamonds on in the diagonal sort of style that I kept finding more appealing than, say, the "onion ring" style that seemed to be the main other way of doing multiple stones.
**** suggested Official Motto: "The Area's Northwest Plaza For Teenagers."****** Good grief, I had no idea they weren't doing well, let alone so badly. This was very saddening on entirely different levels.
***** Bandana's, for those who don't live in MO or IL, is a restaurant with a bandanna/ranch theme. It caters to those who draw their Food Pyramids with Meat on the bottom and Barbecue Sauce immediately above. Now I'm not fond, on general principles, of the "make it kinda bland and just assume the customer will use condiments" school of food, but this restaurant provides squirt bottles of five different, um, barbecue sauces, most of which are good. So I'll let it slide.
****** While we're talking about mottos, Lambert Int'l has some new "St. Lou[is] ___" banners going, with the i-s split off at the bottom of an Arch to form its own word. Very nicely flexible, although it tells you outsiders something that someone felt the need to finish the thought on at least one banner with the word "alive". Anyway, looks like there's a tourism push going on there. There was also a placard or something announcing a change in the baggage handling process, which should please Dad.*******
******* This post has been an experiment in the usage of footnotes instead of my usual overlong parenthetical asides, which I sometimes worry are confusing and headache-inducing for the average reader. Unfortunately, a block of six or seven asterisks just looks ridiculous. (The entry does look quite readable, though!) Hmm . . . I guess I could use superscript numbers or something, but those can be hard to pick out, in my experience.