Sunday, 23 December 2012
Despite my strong desire not to, we had to pay a visit to the local Target this afternoon.
The first thing I tried to do there was have some prints made of our holiday card. Generally, I think of Target’s photography department as a place where good pictures go to die…but we had stopped at ProEx just minutes earlier, and they were closed. For good.
So I went up to the self-service kiosk and, after waiting about ten minutes for it to become available, I ordered my prints. When I was done, a receipt spit out telling me my total. I then noticed that nowhere at any time was I asked if I wanted glossy or matte. So I muscled my way through the crowd and got the attention of the kid working behind the desk.
ME: Hey, I don’t see on here if I’m getting matte or glossy.
HE: Well we can only do glossy on this machine.
ME: Well I want matte.
HE: Yeah, we can only do glossy on this machine.
ME: Well can you do matte on any other machine?
HE: Yes, if you order from that computer right there.
ME: That’s the computer I was just using. It never asked if I wanted glossy or matte.
HE: You need to select “Prints in Minutes” to get matte.
ME: Oh, well you should make that more obvious. Well, can you just make mine matte for me?
HE: Uh…well we’d have to go back over to that machine and cancel your order and then resubmit it. But you’ll have to wait for the others to be done.
ME: But there’s, like, four other people in line now.
HE: Yeah.
ME (dropping the receipt on the counter): Forget it. I’ll go somewhere else.
Monday, 24 December 2012
Today we spent all day getting ready for the remainder of our Xmas celebrations. Jennifer prepared all sorts of tasty dishes, and I kept up with the dishes for her while she did that. We kept stealing time to finish wrapping presents in our basement. I love it when our house is abuzz with activity, and we were plenty busy all day.
In the evening, we went to Jennifer’s sister’s house for our family Christmas party. My kids swapped gifts with their cousins, and they recieved gifts from their grandparents and great-grandma. I even got a few gifts: a card game and two books!
When we arrived back home tonight, I brought the gifts upstairs and Jennifer arranged them nicely under the tree. She put a few small gifts in our stockings, too. I found time to complete the wood robot, so I stuck a bow on his head and propped him up on a cabinet in our living room. We decided that it would be fun if Owen had to search around the house for his big gift (a Wii), so I wrote out a series of seven cards, and placed them around the house. One, for example, said, “Where do we keep Isla’s bibs?” and then he’ll have to go look in that drawer and there’ll be another card saying, “Where do we take baths?” and then he’ll have to run upstairs and look in the tub. Hopefully he’ll think it’s fun, but you never know with kids.