Touch my Nook.

It was a Christmas present, my new Nook.  I found out later that the very child I had made fun of for going out shopping on Black Friday had, in fact, waited in line for a very long, long time at a local store to buy a Nook for her mommy, at a very, very good price. 

not exactly a Nook, but you get the idea.

All that and a gift card to fill it!  And didn’t I feel like a horse’s ass for teasing?

I immediately mess it up play with it, in the process downloading what I found out later was a very norty book veiled as a romance novel.  It amounted to poorly written erotica.  I read skimmed it and wished for a red pen the entire time.  Don’t these people even edit?  Or attend church?

I figured out how to find the good books, the really good books, and managed to blow through my gift card in under seven minutes.  I also had several books pop up in my library that I didn’t order.  In chatting with a friend later, I discovered that she too had a couple show up in her Nook, uninvited, right around the time she had gone into (rhymes with Smarms & Coble) where there is wifi, as opposed to her home, which is wifi-lacking.

She went back in to Smarms & Coble to find out why these books were downloaded into her library and wouldn’t you know it, those books were gone.  Missing.  She was unable to find them anywhere in her Nook and hadn’t pushed any buttons to remove them.  Now, my friend is not a stupid person and has not begun seeing things that aren’t there.  Yet.

However, the skeevy bookstore employee obviously decided to have a little fun with her.

  

Friend:  Hi, I was just wondering why books I didn’t buy are being downloaded to my Nook? (Hands over Nook)

Bookstore:  (scrolls through her Nook library.)  You must have downloaded them.  Or someone lent them to you.  But they’re not in here anymore.

Friend:  (grabs Nook back, pages through) What the…They were just there!!! 

Bookstore:  (shrugs) Well, they’re not there now.  Next customer in line?

Friend:  Now, wait just a damn minute.  I can barely download books I want, much less lend stuff I didn’t buy!

Bookstore:  If they were ever even there (smirking) I’m thinking maybe that’s exactly what you did; you lent them to someone.  You can do that, you know, lend your Nook library to someone.  It’s in the directions.  That’s probably what you did.

Friend:  (voice is rising a little bit) I didn’t lend them to anyone!  I just got this thing, and I can’t work it; what makes you think that I am so technologically gifted that suddenly I learned how to share my library with someone?
 

Bookstore:  I’m just saying you probably touched your Nook to someone else’s.  Did you touch Nooks?  

Friend:  (gasps) I’ve never, even seen another person’s Nook, much less touch them together or let someone touch mine!  I’m not that kind of person!

Bookstore:  You had to have touched Nooks with someone.  It’s ok; we all want to see what other people’s Nooks look like.  It’s human nature.  Some people cover their Nooks with special decorations and some people just let them be au natural.  (Giggles) 

Friend:  (quietly, defeated) Mine has a light on it so I can use it in bed.

Bookstore:  Oh, a party girl, huh? 

Because I was laughing so hard as she related that story to me, I hardly heard anything past “touching Nooks together.”

Wait…I think I already downloaded that book.

People can be so nice!



my new stuff almost looks like this.  almost.



So, I ran to Old Navy today, in search of t shirts that didn’t smell like my last twenty workouts and shorts that weren’t coming apart at the seams, like the ones I’ve had and worn for the past four years during the summer. 

Wandering the aisles, I found some colorful, non smelly t shirts and was looking at shorts when this girl snuck up on me and here I was, all ready to do battle with her over the last “Miami Bunny” t shirt in neon lime green, when she just leans over and gives me $20 in Old Navy cash.  She said “I saw that you have quite a few things and I can’t use more than one coupon today, so here’s my other one, today’s the last day of the sale.” 

Then the little fairy godmother scurried away.

Now, I’ve experienced lots of things in various local establishments.  I’ve seen parents yelling at their kids in stores.  I saw a man shoplift not one but two or more bottles of cologne, not ten feet from the cashier, on Christmas Eve.*  I’ve seen certain teenage girls racing around our grocery store playing cart tag and acting more like two ten year olds than 18 and 16…(A & M, I’m talking to you) but this was a new one.

I’ve given people my place in line, and once gave someone a $5 coupon, but this chick topped that by saving me 40% on my new “I’m gonna workout” clothes.  For no reason, other than to be nice. 

So here’s to you, girl with the dark hair who wasn’t actually honing in on the t shirt I wanted.  I’m sure you’re (not) reading this, but I wanted to thank you anyway.  And you’re welcome to that shirt because although I hid it behind my back when you came by so you couldn’t have it, I tried it on and it was too tight in the boobal area.  It’s back on the shelf.

You’re welcome.

*That Christmas Eve thing?  I did tell the manager but since she didn’t see it she couldn’t do anything.  I like to think the gentleman in question got coal in his stocking.

Ten rules for a successful garage sale

As weekends go, it was a pretty fun one, to be sure.  After an excruciatingly LONG four day work week, Joe and I slept in Saturday morning, getting up at a leisurely 8:30 a.m.  (I think.  I had the wrong glasses on.)  Into the living room we went to map out our garage saleing for the morning.  Aside from a few promising prospects, there weren’t as many as normal; although there was one with 8 homes on one street, though, and we were sure to score something there.

We didn’t score anything there and in fact, there was one house where the clothes and various dirty household items were strewn about on rickety tables with no prices.  Ew.

People, if you’re going to hold a garage sale, there are ten rules.

1)      You’re trying to get rid of it, right?  Price it that way.  Otherwise you will be packing it all back up again.  If it means that much to you, don’t sell it.

2)      Group like items together attractively.  Make sure they’re clean and if electric, make sure they work.

3)      Put a price on your items.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  People attending your garage sale tend to walk away from something if it doesn’t have a price. 

4)      Signs.  There can never, ever be enough signs to gently guide me, the garage-saler, to the exact location of your garage sale.  After all, if you’ve gone through all the trouble to have a garage sale, let people know where it is.

5)      And if you advertise a garage sale, then hold a garage sale.  We have searched high and low for a particular sale because of what was promised in the ad, only to find a closed garage door.  It wasn’t pretty.

6)      When said sale is advertised, please don’t just say “too much to mention.”  Give us poor coffee-swilling; diehard garage sale fans some idea of what you are selling.  My idea of miscellaneous is household/clothing/glassware.  Yours might be quilt blocks, pictures of cats, old baskets, and embroidered, raffia'd toilet tissue (For Decorative Use Only).  Neither one of us would be happy, right?  Right.

7)      Having a cooler of water/soda or a lemonade stand on a hot, hot day is a stellar idea.  Just don’t charge more for the drinks than you do for items on the table.  And if you are charging more, they have better have liquor in them.

8)      Have a “free” box and put something in it.

9)      If you have colorful children’s items, line them up and down the driveway.  It catches our jaded garage-saler’s eye and makes us more apt to stop and browse.

10)  It never hurts to have friendly people manning your garage sale.  Throw on the radio.  Turn on a fan for circulation in a hot garage.  It does make a favorable difference in your garage sale ambience. 

Yesterday on our Saturday “hunt” we found:  a cool Schlitz sign, a unique square plate, a bag of pretty  headbands, and a ceramic heart decoration. 



the headband on the left is for when I go hunting.  Not.

Jos. Schlitz.  Too cool for school.

new fruit plate.  new heart thingie.

We also, despite our complete zig- zagging around Rockford, found that we came across the same husband/wife couple at three consecutive garage sales in three different neighborhoods.  When we saw them the last time, I mentioned that we weren’t going to map out garage sales next week; we’d just follow them around.  The wife responded by slyly grabbing up all of the cool dog toys that I didn’t see.  The husband retorted that we’d have to be willing to go to breakfast first and pay the bill in exchange for their knowledge and expertise. 

We laughed.  As the husband passed my husband on the way to the truck, he told Joe that he and his wife were going to do a little tweaking to their current garage sale schedule so that he could, and I quote, “see if he could shake us.”

I'm sure he was just kidding.  He probably just didn’t want us to get all the embroidered toilet tissue.

Game on.  See you next Saturday.

Random acts of Christmas

Last year around this time, my 20 year old daughter got to see the ultimate example of the Christmas spirit in action.  Up until October of this year, she was a "comp peer" for a 13 year old girl I'll call Becky through the Mildred Berry program in Rockford.  It works much like a Big Brothers/Sisters program.

To my daughter, it meant giving up half of her Saturday or Sunday every week or every other week to go do something with this little girl.  They went to a craft show, they went out to movies, visited the library, etc.  Sometimes they came back to the house, where Becky would play on the computer, or with our puppy, or watch DVD’s with my daughter.

For Becky's birthday last December, my daughter took her to IHOP for breakfast.  As my daughter never has met a stranger, she was chatting with the older gentleman sitting close by, who had overheard my daughter and Becky talking.  She was explaining the program to him and the fact that it was Becky’s birthday.   Finished, he got up to leave, told them Merry Christmas and walked to the front of the restaurant to pay his check.

A few minutes later, my daughter asked the waitress to bring their check and was extremely surprised to hear that the mysterious gentleman who had been talking to them had very graciously picked up their check.  Their benefactor came back to their table to tell Becky to have a happy birthday.  

What happened next was truly a Christmas miracle, as he smiled and again opened his wallet to give Becky a crisp $100 bill to spend on her birthday or for Christmas.

It was more money than Becky had ever seen at one time.  She was in tears, my daughter was in tears, and even the waitress who had overheard the entire exchange was in tears.   A complete stranger had just paid for their breakfast and then gave this disadvantaged little girl $100.

Those two girls will never, ever forget what happened that cold December morning, and neither will I.  The Christmas spirit is alive and well, everyone.

ps...They finally did get his name before he left because they wanted to send a thank you note.  Being the internet sleuth that I am, (she said modestly) I did a Google search to find the address and found that there was no one by that name in Rockford or the surrounding areas. 

Somehow I was not surprised.