holiday stuff

i got my special order form back from king soopers a few weeks ago. first thought: my boiled custard hath been delivered to the store!!

the front of the card that i filled out in store...

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

well, damn. andy was almost as disappointed as i was, then proceeded to buy egg nog. yak. i asked my mom to buy me some boiled custard from the kroger in georgia and save it for me when i'm there on january 5th. i don't know when the stores stop carrying it, but i think she's gonna be awesome and ask the dairy manager when the last batch comes in. hallelujah. and mom, if you're reading this: i will need ginger cookies to go with the boiled custard.

and another holiday-related disappointment/rant:

my apartment complex participated in an adopt-a-family type gift giving thingy a few weeks ago. they posted a few flyers around the complex telling people to stop by the leasing office or the business center to get a list of items to purchase. i got the list and purchased item X, and planned to buy items Y and Z. i notified the people in the office that andy & i would take care of items X, Y, and Z so that they could cross those items off the list. the very next day we got a note in our door (as did every resident) reminding us of the holiday party and the adopt-a-family wish list. and of course, the items we purchased had not been removed from the list. the next day i had to retrieve a fedex package from the office, so since i was already down there i expressed my concern to the assistant manager that the family was going to get duplicate gifts, rather than have everything on their wish list covered (which is the entire purpose of having a list, right?) see? you like what i did there? rather than accuse him of having crappy logistics i played the demure, worried, humanitarian who wanted the family to get everything on the list (which, i do want that). his response was something like this:  "oh, well, i mean, the way we look at it, if the kid gets three pairs of shoes, then that's great, because that's more than they ever had before." what?! no way. 

so, a few days later when we got around to buying the remaining two items, i sent another email to the leasing staff confirming that we had purchased items X, Y, Z, and would wrap them and drop them off at the party. we showed up at the party with the gifts, and one of the staff members asked us to write down our names and what we had purchased. seriously? i sent two emails with this exact information. anyway, at the end of the night i checked the list and - yep - richard would be getting three black coats, and lisa would get two pairs of slipper boots. good thing we included the gift receipts with ours.

so yes, the family got things that they wanted, but my point is that the people who manage this place are a bunch of ass clowns (and i'm a control freak). had this been better organized, the family would have gotten more of what they wanted. it's really quite simple. just assign items to participants depending on how much they choose to spend. the way my church used to do this is they had a small christmas tree adorned with notecards. each notecard had two items written on it. this is nice because you can see all the items and pick which two fit your budget or shopping habits, then take the card from the tree so no one else will buy the same stuff. genius!

some denver stuff, and an anecdote about why i hate going to the movies

the day of my first blog post in denver, 7.11, i actually did get around to taking the train into downtown & locating a chickfila.  took me about 15 minutes to walk to the rail station, and the train takes 30 minutes to get to downtown. a round trip ticket is a little more expensive than i would like - $8.00, since i have to travel in 3 zones. anyway, i got off at the 16th & california stop, right in the middle of the outdoor mall area.  it was about 1pm so the place was still bustling from all the business peeps lunching in the area.  i found the chickfila in the bottom of a food court area, but it was a chickfila express where everything's hanging out under the heat lamps. i mean come on, even some of the crappiest malls have full service chickfilas...the fare was good as expected, but i was a little forlorn since i was alone. it was weird so i ate really fast. then after lunch i walked a few blocks, turned around, went in a few stores then took the train home. it was an uneventful outing, but figured i'd report on it anyway.

so the big event everyone's waiting for around here is the grand opening of the IKEA in centennial. it's about 5 miles from our apartment and of course there are people camping out to get free stuff, and the news reports on it every night.  people talk about it, totally jazzed, and i'm like "been there, done that." but honestly, we kinda need some stuff so we'll probably go anyway.

here's an observation about denver in general: people here drive at or under the speed limit. it's a little weird. every now and then you'll see a few people in a hurry, but they are few and far between (or it's us going 4 or 5 mph over). coming from a land where 55 mph means 75 mph, i've really never seen anything like it. in addition, drivers seem to be a much more courteous bunch out here. they obey the markings on the road, they let you merge, and they actually yield to pedestrians.

as to what i've been up to these days: job hunting. job researching. interviewing. trying not to spend money or eat too much. not playing hockey (but sent in our free-agent forms!), but doing a fair amount of jogging since it's a free activity. haven't seen the new harry potter movie yet, mainly because i hate going to the theater. if it's not the kid pushing on my seat back with his feet it's somebody texting during the movie, or some whiny toddler who shouldn't be there anyway. andy and i went to see some movie one sunday morning (pretty much the only time i'll go) and the place was empty; we sat in the exact center of the room. two people came in after us, just after the lights dimmed, and i shit you not, they entered the row we were sitting on, walked in front of us, kindly left one empty seat, and sat down. really?! i get that you want to sit in the middle, but seriously, why?  who does that? and then of course i looked like the crazy bitch for gathering up all out stuff and moving down. sheesh.  so yeah, i usually go once a year (for the harry potter / twilight movies), and even if the movie is ok the experience has me exclaiming afterward, "see, THAT is why i never go to the movies!!"  but if theatergoers here are half as courteous as the drivers, i might just be able to tolerate it.

free money

a few weekends ago i found a bunch of foreign coins in a drawer that i was either collecting for no reason or saving just in case i was to travel abroad again.  beats me.  i figured it was about $10 US so i took the coins home with me. today i went to exchange them for US dollars.  i went to the big wells fargo bank across from my office. teller #1 said sorry we don't do that, try the airport.  and i'm like, uh, you're a bank.  in a major city.  and you can't exchange my coins?  supervisor overheard our conversation and said, yes, we can exchange foreign currency, so teller #2 (my favorite teller, jessica watson jackson!) started counting it all out.  among the british coins and euro coins and a few mexican peso coins i had one coin for the new hampshire tollway system. awesome. as jessica was bagging it all up, the same supervisor came over and said, oh, we don't exchange coins, we only exchange paper money.  i'm like what the hell kind of bank is this? confused, i said "well, is there any place nearby that might exchange them for me?" and she said go to the airport.  huh.  last time i checked the airport was 22 miles from me.  not exactly "nearby."

meh.