Pre-Vacation Spending Spree

After getting up this morning and doing the standard sitting around and not doing much of anything, I eventually showered and dressed and headed out into the world.
First stop was the bank, where I cashed in over $100 worth of change ($113.61 to be exact), and then I got a haircut.
From there I went on to Best Buy, where it had been my intention to just buy a pair of noise-cancelling headphones for use with my Tablet PC and Nano on the plane.
However, for a while now I’ve been intending to get a new digital camera.
I don’t actually use the one I have that often, but when I do, the lack of an optical zoom has been an irritation.
As it’s been my intention to give my old one to my mom if/when I get a new one, it seemed like now would be the ideal time to pick up a new one, and I’d done some Web research so I knew which one I wanted, and, in fact, Best Buy had that particular model.
Still, I was undecided, and so I wandered around the store trying to make up my mind.
It was at that point that I walked past a big-screen TV featuring Maria…. Sharpova? Shrapnelova? You know, the attractive tennis player who actually wins matches.
Okay, apparently it’s Maria Sharapova.
In any case, there she was on TV shilling for the Canon PowerShot line, which was the camera line I was looking into buying from, and so I took the image of this short-skirted young blonde to be a sign and opted to buy the camera today.
Given that I actually wanted assistance, naturally there was no one around to offer it, but eventually some kid made his way over to the camera counter and I told him which one I wanted.
After taking the camera out, he asked, “Do you want to buy a memory card, too?”
I responded by showing him the 1 GB SD card I’d already grabbed, which seemed to confuse him. Apparently Best Buy customers are not often a step ahead of the employees.
The camera in question, by the way, is the PowerShot A540, for those of you wondering.
Apparently I could have saved about $50 if I’d bought it online. Oh well; that’s the price you pay for semi-spontaneous purchases, I guess.
In addition to the camera, SD card, and headphones, I picked up Volume 3 of Superman: The Animated Series on DVD, which completes the series.
When I got home it was close to noon, so I decided to beep Brian and remind him that he’s bringing me to the airport tomorrow, and to see if he wanted to have lunch.
He was already at Champions with some people, so he invited me to join them, which I did.
Naturally I sat there mostly in silence, as the people he was with were all from the fire company, so even if I were a talky thing there wouldn’t have been much I could add to their conversations about people, places, and random pieces of firefighting equipment that I know absolutely nothing about.
I did tell the (true) story about a woman who fell to her death about 17 years ago when her Yugo was lifted up by the wind and deposited in Lake Michigan as she was driving across the Mackinac Bridge.
After lunch I came home and messed around with the camera a bit. As you can see, it takes decent pictures at the default settings out of the box.
I realize that they’re boring pictures, but what do you expect? It’s not like I have supermodels hanging around the condo just waiting for me to take their pictures so that I can test out my new camera.


A view from my balcony.



More or less the same view, but with the 4x optical zoom.

After a while I decided that I should have picked up a camera bag for it, as I’ll be giving the old one to my mom along with the camera.
I also decided that, since there’s a chance I may spend some time in the water while I’m home, I should pick up some new swim trucks, as my old ones have seen better days, and, perhaps more to the point, I’ve seen thinner days.
So I made a quick trip to Super-Target.
(As an aside, I’m of the opinion that if you’re going to make things in multiple colors there should always be an all black alterative. Sort of like offering a vegetarian lunch. The swim trunks I got are mostly black. They have a white stripe, which is tolerable, but they also have ketchup red and mustard yellow stripes. Still, it was better than the alternatives, but not as good as solid black. I demand equal opportunity for those of us who are generally opposed to color! Give me my solid blacks and grays!)
Accomplishing that, I came home and started doing some laundry.
I put one of those pre-packaged crock pot meals going this morning, and that should be ready shortly.
(Update: It was ready. It was only okay. Don’t think I’ll bother with it again.)

Right Down To My Shoes Department:
As mentioned yesterday, there was some music playing on Everyday Italian that sounded an awful lot like the music from Abattoir Blues by Nick Cave.
I’m sure that it wasn’t actually, and that even if it was, Giada most likely didn’t choose it, but as I considered the (very slim) possibility that she might be a Nick Cave fan, I realized that if she is she would be that much hotter.
And that much scarier.
On today’s episode she actually said, “I’m just crazy,” though she continued on to say, “about pineapple.”
I was annoyed at the start of the show, as in the incidental scenes, which usually consist of Giada out shopping or trying different foods, they featured shots of her with her husband holding hands and picking out frozen desserts (which was the theme for today’s show).
However, my annoyance increased considerably when I noticed that Giada was wearing what appeared to be a maternity top.
It may not have been a piece of knocked-up clothing, but there were some shots in the incidental scenes in which she looked like there might something bulging, though in the cooking scenes the loose-fitting shirt made it hard to tell.
Further, she did take several big drinks from the “adult” milkshake she’d made with Kahlua, so maybe she isn’t knocked up.
If she is, I think it’s a shame. After all, it always makes me sad when someone hot gets pregnant because you know that the odds are her body will never be the same, and Giada’s older than I am, so things are already heading south anyway. A pregnancy can’t help matters any.
Plus there’s just my standard objection to the rampant unchecked breeding going on, since I have no confidence that there will come a point at which our population problems will be solved by fundamentalists being Hoovered up to Heaven in preparation for Jesus to come riding in on his white horse and send everyone else to Hell, or however it’s supposed to work.
So for the sake of the world, and of her hotness, I hope that Giada isn’t pregnant. Of course, I could actually do some digging to find out, but quite frankly I don’t care enough to actually put any effort into it.
(Oh, and the name of this “Department” comes from the song. “I’ve got the Abattoir Blues/Right down to my shoes.”)

In any case, that pretty much covers my uneventful yet expensive day.