This month my store started a thing where the guy who has the smallest number of credit card applications in my department has to wear pink fluffy bunny headphones. This is the first month in years that I would have been the guy who was on the hook to wear them. Sigh.
Though I did help Brittany Griner in the store yesterday, and she commented on them, so there's that, I guess.
The Valet can't sleep without his fluffy bunny stuffed animal.
I never realized I had strong feelings about teddy bear design until I started looking for one for my own kid.
This. Though, in my experience, you end with lots of gift stuffed animals so your preferences take a back seat.
And who knows what they'll end up preferring.
Miss SBG is eight years old and has accumulated, and I'm not kidding, about 300 stuffed animals of various sizes. She loves them all.
I have quite the accumulated collection of stuffed animals myself, an entire closet's worth more or less. And I love them all. I just wish they weren't at my parents' house.
So do your parents...
I have so much stuff at my parents' house. I feel really bad, but I've been so unsettled. I'm looking foward to more permanent lodging here for a long time, and hopefully I can start to clean out my crap at Mom and Dad's.
I just got all of my boxes of stuff from my parents this past weekend, more than 16 years after I left home for college.
I got married in '05, and we moved out to D.C., unsure of how long we'd be out there. Having limited space to move things, and limited apartment space to move into, and facing that uncertainty, most of our wedding gifts remained at my in-laws. Now that we got our house, we finally have brought all of those things out of storage. It was kind of like getting to open wedding presents again, which was pretty cool.
I received a similar delivery from my stepmom last autumn. Most of it is still in boxes down in our bar, waiting for me to tackle it. A few items in there are going to be some fodder for WGOM content when I get around to it.
A few things of my dad's were in there, too, which was bittersweet. She also gave me all the photo albums of him & my mom's time together. Other than the pictures of me as a really little kid that they both kept, I've never seen most of these photos before.
Dust mites allergies help keep only a limited number in rotation.
Bears are cool.
As others have noted, I also strongly recommend against purchasing any stuffed animals.
Also, if you guys plan to find out the gender, we still have lots of clothes for boy or girl.
Thanks, man. We do plan on finding out – looks like in October. Some friends with a 1-year old boy are moving from Chicago to Albany, and they were mighty glad to give us their son's stuff instead of packing it. If we have a girl, I may wind up needing to give you a shout.
I may get one teddy bear, but what I'm really looking forward to is buying this kid books.
For Linds' baby shower, her friend and sister-in-law had everyone bring a book and sign it with some small message. Everyone loves to give kids books that they loved when they were little, so we ended up getting somewhere in the range of 30-35 books with cool little messages from friends and family. A lot of them were ones that we never would have seen or considered. It was a pretty good idea.
It's ridiculous how many books we bought the Valet.
I just hope a good number were from Boynton.
Oh, I get the kids plush birds and uncommonly-found mammals.
CER: Great Horned Owl*, Baltimore Oriole, Raven (Life-sized puppet!), Ruby-throated Hummingbird (finger puppet)
HPR: Turkey Vulture**, Great Gray Owl, Steller's Jay (finger puppet), Red Fox
AJR: Greater Flamingo***, Snowy Owl, Virginia Opossum, White Pelican, Blue Jay
LBR: Black-capped Chickadee****, Barred Owl, Ruby-throated Hummingbird.
*Self-purchased
**This may be my favorite of my kids' toys. I'd love something closer to life-sized, so I could wear the floppy wings as a blanket.
***One of the first things she put on a Christmas wish-list. The FAO Schwartz one... Very nice toy.
****"Chickadee" was one of her first... 200 or so words. Their two-note whistle songs, which they start in mid-winter near her birthday are often said to be "Fee-bee" or "Spring-time", but I've told her that they sing her name.
Maybe I just want a plush aviary of my own, but I have to give them to my kids to preserve respectability.
Each kid has his or her own owl, and that's how we describe them in the field. Barred Owls are "[LBR]'s Owl" when we see them.
EAR has claimed the Saw-whet Owl. I get the rest, so that means Screech Owls, mostly.
EAR has also claimed the Kestrel as "her Falcon". HPR claims the Peregrine as his. I claimed the Merlin. The girls don't seem to want to fight over the Gyrfalcon: maybe I can give them each a color morph.
1. Congratulations. I hate it when stores ask me to sign up for their credit cards. IMO, you're doing good by having the least, that means you're bothering customers less
2. I had to look up who Brittany Griner was.
When I worked at OfficeMax in college, we were supposed to get applications for our Member Rewards card, whatever it was called. I worked in printing where about 70% percent of our customers were repeat business who either a) already had one or b) had already been asked and declined, so I almost never asked anyone. The manager understood, but his little stoolie head cashier didn't. She'd get on the radio and say "I got XX new applications today. Printing, how many did *yooouuu* get?" If I was lucky, I'd get to say "Well, the Playhouse, who have been a loyal, regular member for years, just bought $8,000 worth of programs for the fall season" or something similar.
Ah, OfficeMax. So much hassling of the customer. Did you get the walkie talkies with the earpieces so that the day manager could tell you that that customer looking at furniture hasn't been helped in about ten minutes, and even though he looked fairly annoyed the last time you asked him if he needed any help, why don't you go ahead and do it again?
I hated those earpieces. The only good thing about it was that I was not allowed to leave the printing desk unattended, so I rarely had to go bother floor customers.
Aaah, I missed that you worked in the print center. So many people so envious of you.
Epic* pull, Rhu_Ru. I need to revisit that show. Only 3.5 more seasons of M*A*S*H to go before I can start my next series.
*Autocorrect changed "Epic" to "Spock" for some reason.
came up randomly at FilmWise Invisibles, and I thought to myself, "hey, I bet I can find a use for that one"
Speaking of... Here's this week's.
I managed just two. So far.
And a quick google got me #8.
I knew that... it just arrived on Netflix and I saw it available last night and thought "What is this?"
Anyone know if it's good?
I had 1, 2, 3, and 5 myself, and my wife managed to google up 7 and 8:
I had 1, 2, 3, and
Woohoo, I knew one! Okay I had to ask Google what the title was but I recognized it.
I think 3 (I also most definitely knew #1) is a personal best for me as well.
I think that completes the full set, for the first time that I know of at least, and someone else got each one I "cheated" on without help. So, all in all, 8 for 8. I'm unreasonably excited/pleased with this
Likewise. This is a fun game to play with the citizens. Thanks Rhu for introducing it!
I've been playing it for years; nice to have some help now
Now just need someone to submit it as "WGOM" so we can appear in the list!
Done. Now on Monday, we can bask in our collective glory!
Don't have to wait until then, it should already be in this week's list
Stunning. Teague's actions cost his employers $300,000 in the last 3+ years in settlements.
I'm not saying that I saw this coming, but I might have.
Sigh. There it is: Twins resign i-i for 2 years, $23 million. Get 'er gone, TR.
I must have missed that because I was still stunned by the Pelfrey extension.
The Pelfrey what now? I am really taking my apathy to new levels here this season.Curse you guys.
Well played, CH. Well played.
Yikes.
First TR, now Flip? Apparently running a MN sports organization causes cancer.
Vargas to AAA. Santana to DL with left wrist sprain.
I hope Vargas makes it up to the bigs someday.
Also, Josmil Pinto began a rehab assignment with the GCL Twins, going 2-for-4 with a home run.
Oops. Make that 2-for-5.
Flip Saunders announced that he has been diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma. Apparently treatable, but man.
Right on.
cc to Cheaps/knowledgeable beer folk: Are there any good, recommendable MN-based craft beers that sell their product in kegs?
Fulton has kegs if you need a Lonely Blonde or a Sweet Child of Vine.
I think they're pretty solid.
Should have included the link: http://fultonbeer.com/the-beer
I think Indeed has Kegs too, and they have a lot of solid offerings.
These guys do a pretty good IPA in a keg.
Smooches.
I'm probably too far removed from being in MN and from buying kegs, but I'm pretty sure Lift Bridge sells kegs and imagine most other decent Brewers do as well (I'd be shocked if the "big boys" Schells and Summit didn't).
Hicks leading off with Dozier batting second today.
On the pregame show, Molitor is talking about the other teams being "too comfortable" at the plate. I think the solution to that is not so much backing hitters off the plate as it is making good pitches.
No fear of striking out, swing for the fence.
Well, we now have croup in the house.
the croup is the best thing evah!
perhaps the most memorable weekend of my parental life involved a hotel in south florida, a backed-up sewage system, and croup.