Last weekend we did the American Consumer thing and went on a marathon shopping trip - Paula, Gail and I drove down to the St. Augustine Outlet Center and shopped both sides of the interstate for more than 4 hours and began filling up the back of my Honda CRV with clothes bags and shoe boxes and baby clothes. Our second "search and charge" mission was at the new St. Johns Towne Center which has lots of neat stores including an Apple store. (Paula and I just HAD to make a pilgrimage to our "Mecca".) I bought a new more powerful wireless thingy (mine didn't have enough oomph to reach to my living room) I think I got a strong enough one that I might even see kids sitting out front of my house with their laptops 'borrowing' my bandwidth. (Ask Paula how she 'borrows" her wireless broadband when she's visiting their Georgia mountain cabin).
Side Note -- GRRRR - I still can't get the new fancy dancy new wireless thingy (Airport) to work with my computer -after 4 hours of fiddling last night I still haven't figured out the magic combinations of settings to get onto the internet. I was just too impatient and it was like a bad science experiment in that I kept changing too many variables at a time. I will try to "Chill" and repeat the experiment tonight......
Last credit card denting stop was Babys -R -Us store. Two-time Grandma Gail who is highly trained in the art of shopping for grandchildren introduced "soon to be grandma" Paula to the massive amounts of kiddie merchandize located in store. The three of us just kept saying over and over "how in the world did our kids survive without all this safety equipment -- they were sure lucky. My now 34 yr old son Zac had a play pen in the back of my van for his "car seat" and heaven knows how many times I did the same Brittney Spears "baby in the lap" thing. He did not have warmed baby wipes, or a "boppy" or the really cool strollers. All Zac had was a cold wash cloth, a pillow and a neck-bobbling seat in my backpack baby carrier. Oh, and all the new soft baby toys that crinkly and shake - his favorite crinkly toy was the Sunday comics. I feel so guilty. Maybe that is why our generation (when given the chance) goes into hyper Grandma mode and buys, buys, buys.
Since we had Momma Mia theater tickets for the next day, Sunday's matinee, we checked into a hotel and ate dinner at the fabulous Buca de Peppa. YUM! We shared 3 courses and went back to the hotel and crashed. Next morning we checked out and drove to the Jacksonville Landings where we had another good Italian meal at Vito's. Momma Mia was toe tapping and arm waving good! Long, busy, tiring but fun weekend!
