Christmas shopping

*STOP!! If your name is Glenda and you are my mother, remember that you promised you would not read this blog post until after December 25, 2009. This is an honour system and I'm trusting you to keep your word. If your name is Don and you are my father and somehow accidentally happened upon this url, please stop reading as well. If your name is anything else and you are not one of my parents, please feel free to continue, but realize that I wrote a LOT today. This blog post is not for the faint-of-reading-skills. Proceed with caution!*

I got my hair cut today. It was wonderful to have my hair stylist actually cut my hair again. I had forgotten how relaxing a hair cut can be when you don't have to worry about how it's going to turn out. I told Laura the whole story about my last hair cut and I think she was kind of appalled at how the cut had turned out. She kept examining the strange layers on left side of my head. I told her what I did and did not like about that last hair cut (the did's were quite a bit shorter than the did nots) and then let her get to work. She likes her clients to arrive at an appointment with their hair dried and styled the way they usually do it and then she can see the cut and work from there. She usually does a pre-wash cut and then washes the hair and then does more styling and playing with it to get everything just right after drying it. Anyway, I'm being wordy when I'm not meaning to be. All I meant to say was that Laura did an awesome job to make both sides of my hair equal again and to incorporate that really high layer on the left side of my head with the rest of the hair underneath by giving me more layers in between the two. So the verdict is that I love my hair again. Now the challenge will be to see if I can remember how to style it the right way when I have to do it by myself tomorrow.

On the way home I stopped at a store to get my mum's Christmas present. The item I wanted wasn't there any more so I searched the store and found something that I liked for her just as well. When I brought it up to the till (cash register) to pay, the lady told me that it had a small crack in the front. I hadn't seen that and wondered what I should do since that was the last one of that particular model. The lady called a customer service person who came to the till and looked at the crack. She said if I still wanted to buy it she would let me have 20% off. I thought that sounded reasonable and I also thought the crack would be fixable so I agreed. Now I just have to find something at a craft store to fix the spot. I might consult my dad for that since I'm not the craftiest person around. I'm sure with his help we can disguise the crack pretty well so nobody will know.

After getting home and hiding my presents, Ty came home from his own shopping spree and then we left together to buy presents for our parents. We knew exactly what to get my dad and had already decided that the three of us siblings were going to get him the snowmobiling boots he wanted. They're rather expensive so combining our funds was a necessity. When we walked in the store Ty and I found the boots without any trouble but then couldn't decide the difference between two boots of the same brand. We decided to ask for help and Ty approached the only salesman who wasn't busy. "Hey, we'd like to buy some snowboarding boots, but have a few questions," Ty said to the salesman. "Snowboarding boots?" the guy responded. "No, snowmobiling," I interjected. "Yeah, those," Ty sheepishly corrected himself. With that misunderstanding behind us, he led us to the front counter and found another guy that knew about the snowmobiling gear. That guy told us the only difference between the two pairs of boots was that one was last year's model and the other was this year's. The price was nearly the same, too, so we just asked him which ones he had in the right size. Turns out he only had nines in this year's model so that's what we bought. Next we headed to a strip mall shopping area to find my mum's present. (I'm not sure if Americans are familiar with the term strip mall, but in case you aren't, it's a bunch of stores all connected but you have to get to the various stores from the outside so it's not a mall where you can just walk around inside. That was probably a confusing explanation. Sorry, it's the best I can think up at the moment.) I was just along to help Ty pick something out. We went into one store and Ty looked around for something he thought would be a good idea. I tried out different couches and chairs and found that not many of them were very comfortable. Suddenly I had an inspiration for a present Ty could get my mum. When I told him, he agreed that it would be a great present and sat down on a couch to look up on his blackberry Internet where he could find the item. He didn't have any luck so we went to the store beside the one we were in. That item wasn't there either. Then we walked to Wal-Mart so Ty could buy a gift card for a member of our extended family. (We do a name draw every year with all the members of my mum's side of the family.) While we were there I thought we might as well look for that item. After search a couple aisles (and me getting distracted, not by notebooks this time, but by Vancouver Canucks bed sheets, pillows and blankets) we finally found the item, a raclette grill. For those of you who aren't familiar with raclette, you should become familiar with it. Very familiar. I only first heard of it two years ago when my siblings and I visited Stephen's family during Thanksgiving break. Their family had found out about raclette when they lived in Switzerland for several years working for the church when their kids were young. I would try to explain the awesomeness of this meal to you, but I think I'll leave it up to the experts at Wikipedia to give you a little more background about raclette. Anyway, ever since that first time eating raclette at Stephen's house, us siblings have wanted to get a raclette grill for our family. So finding two sets left at Wal-Mart was pretty awesome. We looked over both boxes and each was in pretty bad shape. So I thought that maybe we could walk over to one more store and check that out. I thought the grill might be cheaper there, too. We walked there and searched, but had no success so then we went back to Wal-Mart and got the nicer looking of the two boxes. While we were waiting in line a man came up behind us and set a few items on the conveyor belt. As Ty was reaching for a divider to put between our item and his, the man said, "Nice grill." Ty said thanks and then the man asked, "Are you Swiss?" We both shook our heads, and Ty said something like, "We just like raclette." Then he asked us where we get our Raclette (which is the kind of cheese that makes raclette the amazing meal that it is) and neither of us had any good response since the only two times we've eaten raclette was at Stephen's house during two consecutive U.S. Thanksgiving breaks, last year and the year before. Ty mumbled, "We don't," just as I pipped up with, "Well, we've only eaten raclette at our friends house, but we've always wanted to buy a grill and make our own." Then the man told us that Costco has the cheapest raclette cheese and then it was our turn to pay so Ty thanked him and we continued on our way. It was a really random conversation, but we were both glad that now we know where to buy the cheese. As we walked back to the truck Ty said that he thought the man was probably Swiss. I was thinking the same thing. How else would he have known about raclette and what the grill was for so fast . . . unless, of course, he had had the same type of raclette experience that we'd had. Then Ty said that the way the man asked us where we got our raclette was like some conversations guys have (For example: "Where do you go to get your tires changed?") That got me started laughing and Ty and I kept going with the analogies until we got in the car and drove home.

Tonight Bryn, Ty and I met some friends at an bowling alley and played two games of 10-pin. I haven't bowled since probably last Christmas when we all got together then, so it was fun. The only bad part was that I haven't cut my fingernails for a little while and, although they aren't really THAT long (by non-string players standards), they felt too long to bowl well with. There were eight of us that came and so we played with four on each lane. In the first game, Ty and I tied with 75 and Bryn and Julie tied with 73. In the other lane Kim got 63, her sister Melissa got 70, Rachel got something over 100 and her husband Chad got 165. Yeah, Rachel and Chad are both super good at bowling. Rachel's parents are both really good too and I think their whole family goes bowling a lot. I think Rachel's grandma is even on a bowling team, too. Then for the second game Bryn, Julie and Rachel (who had all spent the entire day snowboarding) got really tired. Ty and I ended up doing pretty well though. Ty actually did extremely well. He got three strikes in a row and won with 145. Chad wasn't far behind him with 140 and then Rachel got 118, I got 110 (thanks to two strikes and several spares, which, unfortunately weren't in a row like Ty's were), Julie got 73 again and I can't remember the rest of the scores. Halfway through our second game another of our friends, Kristina, showed up. She spent the game talking to us. I snuck away several times during both games to look through the windows into a sports bar at the front of the bowling alley to check the Vancouver Canucks score. The last time I looked, just before we left, the score was 4-0 for the Canucks against the Nashville Predators. I was pretty happy since I hate the Preds (except for BC-boy Shea Weber who used to play for our hometown WHL team when he was in juniors). And now that you've read probably way more than you ever wanted to, I bid you bon soir. Thanks for reading all my tales.