Saturday 29 September 2007

Shop the whole day long

We went out last night (as we do most nights!) and had a delicious meal at Mai Thai, then decided to go for drinks in 100 King as there was a jazz band playing. Well the jazz was hot and the drinks were cold...we stayed probably one drink too many. My head was a little delicate this morning!! Despite that, I struggled on...after a restoring coffee, glazed donut and pint of OJ at the local bakery we came back to the house and rearranged the furniture in the other guest bedroom in preparation for Eve and Mum coming over. We had a huge chest of drawers left over when we'd done, so we went to Corts to see about getting it picked up, and also to see about swapping our brown sofas in the den (which I don't love) for something else. It was really easy (it wasn't dumba$$ Jeff - remember before I left when he couldn't understand 828?!) and they are coming on Friday with the new sofas.

Then we whizzed round to Tyson's to collect Stephen's watch which was back from repair. Whilst we were in the jewellers I had a little look at watches (well it is my birthday coming up!), and saw a really nice Breitling. Which we bought. I now have to do the whole "darling, what can it be? I can't possibly guess" thing on the actual day! But at least Stephen has (for once!) managed to buy me a gift by himself, and ahead of the event!

As if shopping at Tysons wasn't enough, I then went off to Target to get more bedding for the guest room...and bumped into Hils and Paul. Target is obviously the hot Brit shopping location on a Saturday afternoon!! Hils was saying that she had actually just left a message saying, shall we get together tonight, so it saved phoning back! We're off for round two at 100 King tonight...

We dropped in at the car wash on they way back. For $22 a team of guys swarms over your car and wash, dry, vacuum, clean the windows and shine the interior and the tyres. It was really quick - it only took about 15 minutes for the full works! The great joy of having a silver tank is that it doesn't really show the dirt, but its absolutely gleaming now.

One of the differences I noticed between here and NY is that here most people drive SUV's or trucks - practically every second car in the garage at work is one. But in NY people mostly drove saloon cars and when you saw an Escape on the road it looked HUGE in comparison to the other cars. Here it looks tiny! People drive enormous tanks here. I guess we are pretty much real southern country folks round Alexandria!!

Colin is the exception to the huge SUV car thing. He has 3 cars at the moment none of which is an SUV, and he took me out for a spin in his latest addition to the fleet...a Chrysler PT Cruiser convertible. It's one of those retro looking cars - looks a bit like a cross between a hot rod and a hearse!! Anyway, his is convertible and a lot of fun (I miss my rollerskate!) so we dropped the top and went for a whizz along the road to the Iwo Jima memorial (which I hadn't seen before, and was awesome. In photos it looks life size, but it is so much bigger...). By the time we walked back into the office we were looking decidedly windswept! Which we decided is a great way to start a rumour!! (we feel the office lacks juicy gossip!) We moved "Rumpled Hair Affair Wednesday" to Thursday... Have I mentioned our day labelling? We have "Crappy Monday", "Grumpy Tuesday", "Rumpled Hair Affair Wednesday", Thursday is the floating day but is nominally "Is it Friday yet Thursday" and finally "Point me to the Pub Friday".

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