Under $80, or how I wonderfully foolishly spent the day.

So I’d like to say that I am not one bit girlie and by extension of that, I hate shopping. Of course, to say that I hated shopping would be telling the lie of the century since shopping is on the top 10 list of things I really get a metaphorical hard on doing. The caveat to that is that I only like shopping alone – which if you were still dwelling on my metaphorical hard on quip might make me seem a bit disturbed.

I only really like shopping alone because I have a predisposed nature of worrying nonstop if a person I am with is having a good time while doing an activity that I suggested. Because of that I can’t really concentrate on the shopping experience and will instead try to rush through a shop not buying anything and suggesting instead that we just go for a beer. This goes double if I’m shopping with Andy. The way I actually shop when alone is to go through a store once to locate where everything is and if anything stands out to me, then double back and do it again paying more attention to items that I may have missed. I then have to do a walk around the store again with the items that I did pick up deciding to myself whether or not I actually want said item(s). You can probably see how irritating it is to shop with me, especially since I can spend a crazy amount of time looking at things in stores that aren’t that great to begin with – like a 7-11.

Today was one of those rare days that I had all to myself. My company decided to extend the New Years holiday to include Monday but Andy’s company did not. I had a few things to take care of today, one of which was to go to Barnes & Noble to pick up some half priced calendars – something that I’ve been religiously doing since the dawn of time even though after New Years the choice of calendars is really limited (unless you like pugs and ferrets dressed up in farm outfits). With much hemming and hawing I finally decided on these two calendars since I didn’t feel like looking at pugs or ferrets dressed in farm outfits for the rest of the year.

"Bad Cat" is a misnomer.   More accurately would be "Cats Normally".

After the calendar purchase – which also included 45 minutes of looking at other half priced items – the whole shopping thing kicked off in my brain. Since it was like, RIGHT THERE, I decided to pop into Old Navy too. I don’t know quite how it happened but I ended up in the baby clothes section. This is really Shopping Mistake 101. I happen to know that I’m not suppose to be buying many clothes for the baby since I’m going to be getting a shitload at my shower(s) and the baby will grow so fast that he’ll be lucky to get one wear out of the clothes that I do buy. But I also have a weakness for both clothes with stripes and clothes with cute animals on them which is all baby clothes are really. Thankfully it was Old Navy and I didn’t exactly break the bank with these. You seriously can’t tell me that the Superman one isn’t awesome because I know that it is.

This picture makes these outfits look huge.  I swear I'm not giving birth to an ogre.

After Old Navy I knew there was no turning back so I got in my car and headed to Matsuwa, the headquarters for all things imported Japanese, to pick up some Koala March. Coincidentally, I never did get Koala March (because they only had the mega Koala March serving size (more like Koala Army) and not the individual packets) but I walked away with plenty more. I managed not to spend a whole lot here either though. Check out the booty. And why yes, those are childrens learn how to use chopsticks Chopsticks. They were only $3! (Andy is going to give me a lecture on the cost of shipping cargo to the UK tonight, isn’t he?)

Sadly, I'm getting hungry again.

Being in Matsuwa made me hungry for Vietnamese pho so after I loaded yet another bag to my truck I headed down Harbor Blvd to get something to eat. I just happened to stumble upon the Pho Company driving along and even though the service was pretty crap, the food was excellent.

Not my actual pho, but damn close.

Because shopping couldn’t let me go quite yet, as I was walking out to my car after eating, I noticed that there was a Russian deli next door. A Russian deli! I didn’t even know we had that sort of thing in this town! I must go in to take a look! And it was great – a bunch of things I couldn’t identify labeled in a language I couldn’t read. My kind of store! I actually tried to be good and just get a couple of chocolates for $2 but I didn’t have any cash with me and there was a $10 credit card minimum so I ended up getting a couple of beers and what looks like a Russian equivalent to Jaffa Cakes in a sad effort to appease Andy when he reads this and realized how much money I spent today.

 The KGB made me do it, I swear!