Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It's Shopping We Go

Thank God most of the places we went did not have excessive traffic. The ramp to Gwinnett Mall wasn't even backed up, which was surprising. We didn't go to the mall {ugh}—we had to go to Fry's. I wanted one more set of dual DVD cases and another of triples to finish the video-to-DVD project. The videotapes need to be gone by the time we move.

James ended up getting a new motherboard and processor because his new computer has gone from locking up repeatedly only when it was cold (you had to leave it on or it locked up and had to be rebooted a dozen or more times before it warmed up) to locking up all the time. I replaced my "taped off Mystery" copy of Oliver's Travels with the UK-release version DVD (Mystery edited 15 minutes out of the first two parts) and also found a blast from the past at a discount price: a collection of Wild Kingdom shows that include programs with Marlin Perkins. Wild Kingdom was a Sunday night ritual at our house in the 1960s; Mom and Dad were thrilled that I loved watching educational programs and not just cartoons.

We also went to Media Play to see if there was anything worth buying and spending our last replay coupons. We bought mostly bargain books, but I found a Christmas book I'd never heard of before, European Christmas by Rick Steves and I did get a used copy of Sirens and also Bullwhip Griffin.

Our last stop was Borders at "the Avenue at East Cobb" (ohhhh...lah-dee-dah). The place is full of clothing stores like the Gap and Talbots and was packed, but we finally found a spot. Some friends (thanks Ron and Lin!) gave us some Borders gift cards for Christmas and that finally "pushed us over the edge." We took the two cards and the sixteen $5 Borders credit card rewards coupons I had been hoarding since after Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out and bought The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, which Borders had finally marked down from 20 percent off to 30 percent off a few weeks ago. (I got a big kick out of reading my comics this morning and noting the subject of today's "Fox Trot." LOL! It's true!)