Oddball Update

Yesterday was quite a day for both Apple and I. Because it was Super Bowl Sunday, Apple’s restaurant was closed, so she had a rare day off. To celebrate, we decided to go up to the new Coconut Point mall — supposedly one of the region’s biggest — and see what it was all about.

The weather was overcast, but there was a cool wind blowing and the temperatures were very mild. In a way, it reminded me a bit of spring in Michigan. Upon arriving at Coconut Point, we were amazed by how big and sprawling the place was. It’s not an indoor mall, per se — rather, it’s like an interconnected series of villages, with freestanding groups of stores lining the avenues, and big-box joints like Best Buy and TJ Maxx at the far end. It’s like a super-upscale plaza mall, really.

We spent the afternoon browsing around, actually with some very good consequences. I picked up some goodies at Gamestop, Apple found some new clothes, and we both treated ourselves to some new bedsheets and other housewares. I even landed the last copy of the Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 calendar, which includes a pin-up poster of top-heavy Tina. I also found another rather sizeable book to read on the flight to Thailand next week, so I’m all set for reading material (and since our seats also have individual AC power ports, there won’t be any lack of things to do).

After shopping, we met two of my co-workers and their wives for dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. It had been seven years since the last time I went to Ruth’s Chris — which was also my first time, incidentally — so I barely had any recollection of the place, but last night’s meal was certainly excellent. The filet mignon is, of course, the pride of the house. The calamari was good but a little oversweet, and Apple enjoyed a rendition of the traditional Louisiana seafood gumbo. Afterwards we split the check three ways (each of which was expensive enough to feed all of us at any other restaurant, naturally) and went on our separate ways.

By now you’re probably wondering why I called this day a “rollercoaster.” While it was all fun and games up till this point, that was all about to change shortly thereafter.

Apple and I were each needing a new battery for our respective watches, so we decided to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart now has a policy where they don’t change watch batteries unless you bought the watch at Wal-Mart. That’s one of those policies that’s mostly just fucking retarded, really. We were in luck, though — the woman working the jewelry counter was nice enough to let us borrow her tools so that we could change the batteries ourselves. All said and done, we ended up spending about $7 and ten minutes. Afterwards, Apple wanted to shop a bit for some more housewares, so I went back to the car and worked on getting my watch set to the correct time and such.

I mentioned earlier that Sunday was a pretty windy day. Unfortunately, I was reminded of this when the entire car was rocked by an out-of-control Wally World basket careening into the passenger side, having been blown almost completely across the parking lot by the recurring gusts. Fortunately, the car in question was the Mazda, else I might have had a coronary. Still, I was none too pleased at the fresh dent that the rear passenger door was now sporting. As I looked around in disgust, I noticed that the parking lot was absolutely full of discarded baskets, none of which had apparently been brought back into the store in the last several hours. It appeared, in fact, as though Wal-Mart was running on a skeleton crew that night, probably because everyone else called in “sick” so they could watch the Super Bowl. Woo.

Anyway, I decided I’d just take the Mazda to Carsmetics for some paintless dent repair after our trip, and tabled the issue for the night. Apple arrived not long thereafter with a really cool matching comforter for our bed, and we headed home. My mood improved considerably after snarfing some aspirin, and I decided to pull out the big TV and rewire some game consoles, as well as hook up my PS2 again so I could satisfy my craving for some Silent Hill 3. We put our new bedsheets and comforter on the bed, and reveled in the new look (and the incredible softness of the sheets). It looked like the evening was going to end on a high note.

Then, disaster struck. Apple realized that she couldn’t find her green card. Obviously, with our Thailand trip just 10 days away, this presented a major problem — because without the green card, she would not be allowed back into the United States. We both ran-sacked the place for hours, going through every file folder, drawer, nook and cranny, and then moving to more unorthodox (and downright ridiculous) hiding places. Still, the missing green card eluded us. Major panic started to set in.

By 2:00 in the morning, it looked like we weren’t going to find the damn thing. Apple kept searching, while I got online and looked for information on filing for a replacement green card. It was going to cost $260, required a trip to Miami for application, another trip to a local office for new biometrics, and would take 3-10 months for processing. Okaaaaaay! That’s all kinds of pleasant. We’d better find that thing, now.

Finally, at 2:30 a.m., Apple miraculously found the card. It had been accidentally mis-filed in the IRS folder of our records box, rather than the INS folder. Cursed acronyms! With crisis now averted, we promptly went to bed, exhausted.

The posh new bedsheets were very much appreciated.

Categorized as Life