"Members Only"

Last weekend Ben and I joined another members only club. I would say that, at this club, we blend in a little better, but when we signed up we were asked if we were any of the following: small business owners, non-profit agency, teacher, or have any military affiliation. No, no, no, and no. Was this going to be a problem? I mean, we really only wanted to take advantage of sample Saturday's and buy the much needed twenty gallons of detergent or the occasional 60 pound rack of ribs.

No problem, we got signed up and were well on our way to embarrassing ourselves. Our behavior definitely would have been shunned by our elitist club friends. We couldn't help walking down the aisle laughing at the pure absurdity of the sizes of some of the items and seeing how many times we could sample the egg rolls without the sample lady catching on to us. (The answer is four). Like clockwork, we can almost guarantee that every Saturday afternoon we will receive a call from Ben's dad who has found an excellent deal on some yard ornament, shower shaver, or car accessory. Now, that will be us! Welcome to the world of owning a Sam's club membership!

Who doesn't need a 12 pound bag of Baking Soda?

And behind door #2, a lovely 800 horse power snow blower, fully equipped with all terrain wheels.

Update: After I wrote this blog I headed to the gym for a run and walked straight into a table set up with a royal blue tablecloth and the Sam's Club logo. Behind sat an eager Sam's Club representative recruiting new members! We may be running into more of our elitist friends than I thought. Probably need to proceed with a bit more caution when accosting the sample lady.

Hotlanta

I spent part of last week in Atlanta training with a few others and learning the Men's shoe business. If I haven't updated you, I went from three months ago, being concerned about the status of my job, to being given five more departments of responsibility. Now my total includes 11 departments in 70+ locations. I seriously must have idiot written on my forehead because I'm still getting paid the same amount when I had 17 locations and 5 departments. I guess that's a promotion for you! I will say this addition of departments has definitely added a sense of job security, but I won't be completely at ease until they tell us, in May, our contracts have been renewed.

In any event, I was back in Hotlanta traveling around, which was weird in itself. It seemed trees had gotten taller, new condos had been built, roads were widened, I guess a lot happens in a few years. I arranged to meet up with a couple of my girlfriends Wednesday night for dinner. Rachel was the only one able to make it so my boss joined us and we headed to one of my all time favorite spots, Eclipse Di Luna. Lots of memories at this place. Office birthday parties, going away parties and the dinner spot of our first ever Estrofest weekend with Debbie. When we walked in the door, I heard my name and there was my old boss, Laura! It was an entire table of old co-workers! It was great to see her and the others. For only being in town one night I got to catch up with a lot of people. They say that part of being successful and enjoying what you do are the people you are surrounded by. That was the truth for me in Atlanta, I loved my boss and all my coworkers. They are definitely part of my extended family.

I never travel without my camera so I got a picture of us all together again!

Rachel, Laura, Me

Rachel & Me
(for those wondering, no ring yet!)

Your virtual business trip

Debbie's blog full of pictures documenting her day of adventures inspired me. So, here's your virtual business trip with yours truly.

Last week I was in St. Louis visiting stores. While uneventful, there's a remote possibility you'll find it interesting to see the things I'm doing while away from home.

St. Clair Square Macy's - Where architecture resembles a UFO

My sweet ride for the week, I couldn't park this thing for the life of me.
Make note that I'm parked in the 25th row away from the door AND did a pull through.

Lunch, save calories on the sandwich so I can order the AWESOME cookies!
Thanks, Jared.

Men's night at West County. NFL Ram's player & cheerleaders signing autographs.
I was jealous of their shiny (and big) pom pons.

Where important people who drive Grand Marquis stay

The bathroom of an Elite Member

Dropping off the sweet ride before heading home

Nothing too exciting, but now you know what you thought you were missing. This week I head to Atlanta for some training. I'm excited to see a couple of my girlfriends. This is a trip that will surely have some highlights!

Trick-or-Treat

In the suburbs is probably the best place to live if you're a kid on Halloween. When we first moved here, our neighbors warned us that the usual head count on trick-or-treaters is around 200. With this kind of gobblin & fairy population you can't simply turn the front lights on and wait for the door bell to ring, you'll never close your door. Around here, everyone sets up camp in the driveway, with their fire pit blazing, wrapped up in blankets, and nursing a beer/glass of wine. I was only able to capture a few (very blurry) pictures of the hustle and bustle in the neighborhood in between swarms of kids.

Blown away by this number, we still stuck with our treat of choice (soda pop). Yes, we wanted to bribe the kids the first Halloween we arrived to simply say, "We're the cool neighbors, don't egg/toilet paper our house." Each year it's worked and each year we hear things like, "Dude, seriously, you guys are AWESOME!" Or, "See... I told you this was the pop house!" We also get the occasional, "MOM THEY HAVE POP! CAN I HAVE ONE?!?" It still cracks me up, the kids that ask their parents permission to have a can of pop, because I'm not sure which is worse, our one can of soda or their entire pillow case full of candy.

This is our third Halloween and the numbers keep rising. I think this bad economy is forcing people to stay home, reproduce, and thus, more trick-or-treaters. Which, in turn, fuels the economy more by the amount of candy that is needed to sustain the whole two hours of trick-or-treat time. I think we might be treading on thin ice this year though. We bought eight 24 cases of soda (all a variety of extreme sugars: cherry, grape, orange, root beer, mt. dew, etc...) and loaded with 192 cans we still ran out within the first hour. We, sadly, had to close up shop and send them next door to the "pixie stick" house.

Next year I'm thinking we should buy for 250, that should at least last us an hour and a half. Man, to be a kid again. I struggled with whether or not it was appropriate to demand a piece of their candy in exchange for our soda. Ben thought that would be a little tacky, so I restrained myself.

This weekend also brought about the always dreaded daylight savings "fall" back of the clock. While I enjoy the first few days of extra sleep in the morning, I curse it at 5:00pm when the sun has gone down for the night. It makes for some really long evenings.

Turns out I'm not the only one that the time change is rough on. We have Hobbes on an eating schedule and, while many of you think he's fat, (he's just big boned) we try to monitor his diet. Anyway, every morning at 6:00am, Ben feeds him and, at 5:00pm, I feed him. Well, not only did kitty wake Ben up at 5am demanding to be fed, he put on quite a show by his food bowl from about 3:30pm until 5pm. He was cursing us and the world for making him lay there on the cold, wood floor, famished all because the stupid time change.

We are on day three of day light savings and Hobbes is still struggling, but he's getting better. Today I was thinking to myself, he's just a cat and he's not adapting well to the change in his feeding times... imagine if he were a kid. Eeshhh.