M ore snow. Lots and lots of snow.
Steve brought his Bobcat over to plow the driveway. He was kind enough to take care of the neighbor's driveways as well. The downside to his benevolence is that the 'cat takes up so much room in the garage that there's no room for the trucks. The neighbors love us though.
I think they laugh at us when we use push brooms to get eight inches of snow off our windshields.
I also got an awesome set of spatulas from my mother in law, who knows what I like. These awesome tools have a little feature that allows them to be clipped to the bowl or pan you're working with, eliminating a lot of mess.
Apparently I snagged the hot gift of the year. Every store I visited prior to Christmas had plenty of boxes of Rock Band in stock. On December 23rd, during one of several heavy snowstorms over the weekend, I made Steve throw his truck into four wheel drive and take me shopping. We went to Best Buy and I circled the store for a few minutes, forgetting what I had gone there to purchase. I realized I was looking for Rock Band and asked a young man with a large afro if there were any left. He pointed down the aisle, I looked and shook my head. He said there was one copy left only because of a return. When he walked over to investigate, he looked at me with sympathy and said it was gone. I told him that if I found the person who had it, I'd need his help to take them down. No luck. He told me that none of the area Best Buys had any left, it was their best selling game this year.
I called the Sam's Club next to my office, and amazingly, they reported that there was one system available. I begged and pleaded with them to hold it for me, but they refused. Steve was in the bathroom, so I went and waited by the door for him. As soon as he walked out, I grabbed his sleeve and ordered him to drive me to Apple Valley. A drive that normally would have taken five minutes took twenty, and I flew out of the pickup truck as soon as Steve pulled up to the entrance. The service desk still had the one left, and it was the former floor model MARKED DOWN to $125. WOO HOO!
And here is where things get a little ugly. My ex-husband dropped the kids off at 11:30 on Christmas morning. Alex walked in to the family room, surveyed the booty under the tree, looked at me and said, "Jeez, thanks Mom. All I wanted was Rock Band and you couldn't even get it." I came very close to marching up to my bedroom and hurling that goddamn thing out the window after that comment. I'm always a little testy on Christmas morning because I've put so much effort into the event. I was appalled at the snottiness of that comment from my normally polite oldest son. I explained to him that I had underestimated the demand for the game.
After all the unwrapping was finished, I retrieved the garbage back containing the game from my room and brought it downstairs. I peeled a little of the bag back, and said, "Wait, what's this?" Drew saw first what I had purchased and shouted out, "SWEEEEEET!" Alex looked sheepish, embraced me heartily and apologized for being such a turd.
I was talking to my sister this morning and she had also purchased the game for her kids. I told her I liked it a lot better than Guitar Hero, because the songs were performed by the original artists. Betsy replied, "I've only heard of like two of them."
"Are you sure? They're fairly mainstream songs."
"You forget, I really don't care about music. I never have."
"Oh yeah, I was the audiophile of the family."
"At least now I know the real name of that Ramone's song that I always thought was 'Let's Creep Up'."
"What song by the Ramones did you think had that title?"
"Blitzkrieg Bop. I always thought it was 'Let's Creep Up.'"
"You don't mind if I blog that, do you?"
"No, go ahead."
Many, many headaches later. Look at poor Clark, pleading with me to turn the electricity off.
My unexpected gift this year was a new hard drive from Dell. On Saturday morning I went to check my site meter email, and found that "Ol' Reliable" was completely unresponsive. Curses flew from my mouth as Steve asked when the last time I backed up was. The answer to that is...months. A frantic call to Dell technical support revealed that my hard drive was dying, but a new one would be sent out immediately. I received the replacement today, and left it with my company's IT department, along with a note pleading with them to recover the data on the now defunct hard drive. I can't even think about it for too long without getting angina. I swear to God, I had six new gray hairs at my temples this morning and I honestly believe it's from stress. I won't know until tomorrow at the earliest if anything is salvageable. I believe the company will now be springing for the external hard drive that I really should have purchased last week.
Pray for me.
