I should start out by saying that I do not enjoy shopping. I can last about one store. This time I did 4 better. Crazy stuff I tell you. My wife on the other hand, shocker alert, enjoys shopping. Problem lies in the fact that she can be indecisive and I tend not to give her much help when it comes to buying gifts. She asks what I think about certain things and I don’t really have any opinion unless it is something I feel strongly against. For example, buying a cell phone for my kids who are in 6th grade or younger. She didn’t ask but I would have said no. But we set out this last weekend to Fargo overnight to do some Christmas shopping while my sister came to my house and gifted us a weekend away. She didn’t pay for the hotel or gifts we purchased unfortunately but there was no charge for the watching our kids so that was very nice. So off we went. I brought along the latest Vince Flynn book, Red War, and figured I would be just fine.
The Mall-
Talk about a zoo. There are so many people at the Fargo mall and it doesn’t even come close to some of the major malls in other big cities. Went to Best Buy first and looked at the 4500 electronic devices that could improve our life. They have wifi connected washing machines for when you are at work and want to put your laundry washing. Then went to the Verizon store. I wanted to look at buying a new phone. I can’t decide between a Samsung Note 9, Google Pixel 3 XL, or going to the dark side and getting an Iphone… I use my phone quite a bit for email, send about 1500 texts a month, read a lot of sports articles, and make quite a few phone calls. I don’t use social media a whole lot except for when I need to for our business or my other work. I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in what a middle aged guy with no real hobbies other than reading and fantasy football has to tweet about. Guess I could post my thoughts about how my fantasy team is doing to the 1 person who cares, but that is myself so kind of stuck there. So I didn’t buy a phone because I can’t decide what to get yet and just people watched for a while. After a while I went and sat in the van and read my book while my wife went store to store.
Sheels-
Now here is a store I could seriously waste a ton of money in. They have everything you could imagine when it comes to sporting and outdoors. All the golf clubs I could ever want and not afford, all the fishing gear I need for my twice a year fishing adventures, all the guns and ammo for when I someday decide to hunt again with my kids. They have kayaks that have more apparatus’s attached to them then I have ever seen before. Fish finders, steering pedals, you name it. All on a kayak. Course it was about $4500 out of my price range. I did end up buying a pair of winter boots. Will see if these things can keep my feet warm as no pair of boots have ever been able to do before.
Costco-
Being a proud Costco member, as we buy a lot of groceries for our business here, this is another store I don’t mind walking around. Find out all the things I can save money buying. I literally could be a walking Costco ad as I wear on a regular basis a pair of their pants, a sweatshirt and jacket I had logo’d with our business logo, and a pair of leather gloves I purchased all from there. There are not many days that go by that I don’t have on something I purchased from Costco. For $14-$18, it is hard to go wrong with sweatshirts and pants and the like. I like the quality and most of all the price.
Plus the groceries are priced well and we go through a lot.
Others-
There were many more that I dropped my wife off at so she could check out deals. Target, Kohls, Famous Footwear, DSW Shoes, Eye Mart to name a few. Now there is a tough gig. Helping my wife look at and helping her decide what glasses to buy. That is a struggle to me. She likes to analyze and I don’t have much of an opinion unless they just don’t work. Whats the saying? You’ll know it when you see it. Tough to explain but when something isn’t right, it doesn’t look right. For the most part I read my book and finished it while she visited these places. Phenomenal book by the way.
This type of shopping works well for me and hopefully for us. Plus with what I have going on with my body, I can’t walk around for to terribly long anyways. More on that when I find out for sure what the doctors discover it is. I should hopefully know more in January when they do a muscle biopsy. If anyone wondered how my 100 mile bike ride went, I was not able to ride it due to something happening inside my body that causes my muscles to severely ache and flare up into painful muscle spasms at times. Started in July and learning how to deal with the new me as life goes on. Once I know what it is I will expunge more about it.
Till next time, 15 days till Christmas. I love this busy busy time of year. Christmas concert tonight at the school.
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