kari on ice

This week was busy..my poor car ended up having to be taken to three different shops to take care of all these problems. Other than that, this week's been pretty darned good!

The store is being renovated so it's crazy. It's amazing how impatient people can be! I read a statistic that the average person will refuse to wait for more than one minute in line to check out at a store. If it goes further than that, they are extremely annoyed and usually take it out on the cashier. Make them wait two minutes, and they will usually walk out without making their purchase. Our society is so impatient! I think that every person should be forced to work a retail job at some point in their lives, just so they understand what it's like. Maybe people would be nicer to that lady who rings up their food at the supermarket or the person who can't find the shirt in their size even though a computer says it's in stock.

I went ice skating on friday night..it's been about five years since I've been out on the ice, so it was quite the site to see. I worried myself for about the first 20 minutes or so but once I actually started trying to get it right, I improved immensely. For most of the evening, we had the rink to ourselves so we could do whatever we wanted. We were able to try out professional moves...ok, maybe not, but at least there was nobody else to laugh at us. After that, we went to the Hilton to go to tcby. (Yeah, we went to get ice cream on the coldest night of the year. Go figure.) We saw these kids hanging around, quite suspiciously I might add, and one of them was holding a huge wad of $20 bills in his hand. Apparently, they had found $8000 on the floor of the casino, or so they said. Hope that's true, because casino security is *usually* quite on the ball with these things, and these kids didn't look like they'd hold up well in prison.

ps i got new socks today..good times..shopko had a sale and they had all these festive socks for 99 cents a pair. I got 10. Sock fetish? I think so.

sleeping cities

So there was a convention in California that my store was invited to. Since I've been there for years and am probably one of the top employees as far as product knowledge goes, I was invited to accompany the owners to Anaheim. It just so happened that my best friend, May, works at a store in Santa Barbara that is also connected with the convention. She was also invited to the convention, so this, of course, meant a night on the town with my best friend (after all the work was done, of course.)

It's amazing how quiet Anaheim gets after Disneyland closes. The streets are barren and it hardly seems to be a city in the bustling LA proper. I mean, LA never sleeps. Even in the wee hours of the morning you will find tourists galore crowding the streets and gangs prowling the alleys. This was different though. We drove for hours, talking about the most mundane things, which at the moment, seemed to be the perfect things to discuss. That happens with best friends. We found ourselves in front of the mobile home park my great grandfather once lived in, when I was young enough to sit on his lap while he told me stories of his youth. We bought California Lottery tickets, which, for some reason, has become a tradition whenever we see each other. We saw the "drive thru worship" area of the Crystal Cathedral, a moment I will always remember (and laugh at). We finally ended up at a Denney's when we found we could drive no longer. We ate cake, drank coffee, and took bad pictures of it all. It was a beautiful evening.