Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

We made the tactical error of going out to eat for lunch today. Ginger's feeling a bit better and Quinn seems to be over whatever it was he had, couple that with the fact that we've been couped up for days now and it's easy to see why everyone was eager to get out for a bit. We went to Red Robin (not really shocking news for anyone that reads regularly). This was in the afternoon, around 2. And based on the limited amount of parking, I was sure the place was completely packed. Not so. Turns out everyone was apparently parking in the Red Robin parking lot and walking over to Best Buy. Let me just say this was an awesome trip to Red Robin today. Our waiter hooked Catherine up with extra melon for free, I got free fries with my soup order, then later the guy brought me out a bowl of the soup to go just because they had some extra in the back (free again!). Me likey! I made sure to give our waiter a fairly generous tip.

While Ginger and the kids were waiting on food to get prepared, I headed over to Best Buy to fight the crowds and get some stuff. The place was a madhouse. Completely packed. Lines stretching about 1/4 of the way around the store. But even so they had a ton of people manning the registers, so it probably only took me four minutes to get to a register.

Leaving after lunch was probably the hardest part of the trip. Traffic was backed up all along the various exit points, so it took a good while for us to be able to get out onto a road to go back home.




It was another warm day (temperature was in the mid 60s). So once we got home I let the kids play outside for a bit while Ginger went inside to rest. They even got out their bikes and rode them around the cul-de-sac (that is after we pumped up their tires since none of the wheels had any air pressure at all). Everything was going good until Catherine got off her bike and tripped while running along and ended up skinning up her hand and knee. That incident pretty much put the kibosh on playing outside. And I feel obligated to mention that Quinn was very helpful and brought in all the toys both kids were playing with (without fussing) so I could attend to Catherine. Evidently he can be a pretty good kid sometimes.

Once the kids were down for the night, I headed out to do some Christmas shopping. Since Ginger would be able to check on them if there was an issue, that freed me up. I didn't actually leave the house until about nine-thirty, but let me just say that late night shopping is where it's at. Crowds are practically non-existent. I managed to get to three stores, and then stopped by work for a bit to see how bad it was going to be after missing four days (it's not too bad, only about 250 emails).

Today's ornament is a two for one. A couple of my favorite cartoon characters, Pinky and the Brain.