Decisions, decisions....

Wednesday 26 September

No pictures to-day, just a boring account of our day. :-)

We were so lucky with the weather the way it was yesterday, because this morning we were greeted by a grey and overcast sky.  Such weather doesn't seem to deter the golfers though, because they were out and about early with the headlights of their buggies shining in the early morning darkness.  Ah well, that's their choice, I preferred to sleep in a bit...

That meant out of bed at half past 8 (late for me, for those who know me) and waking up with a cuppa, lazing about for a while, breakfast, playing wordfeud and doing more stuff that wasn't really urgent.  I took time to catch up with Tori's travel blog, and it was great to read that they are having a great time in the Whitsundays and visiting their friends in Townsville.  (For those who don't know, Tori is our daughter-in-law.) Towards lunch time I remembered that there was still a bed to be made upstairs (shame on me) and a few postcards to be written.

After lunch the weather still hadn't improved so we thought it about time to check out the shops and so we went for a drive to McKinley Mall.  We were impressed.  It's quite a sizeable shopping centre for a town like Hamburg and we had no problems keeping ourselves occupied and out of the rain which had started to come down in the meantime.

Shops of note were Bon-Ton, Macy's, Best Buys and Barnes & Nobles bookstores.  There's also a Sears, but we never made it to that end of the mall...  At Bon-Ton they had a marvellous sale on for clothing, so I realised I really Needed Some Stuff!  I ended up buying black jeans, a nice green top and matching cardigan.  All mostly winter stuff since we are going to France next and that'll be in winter time.  It's all quite timeless stuff, so if I don't get to wear it a lot at home it's no big deal, because it'll keep.  The sales are great. Most clothing was already marked down, but at the moment one could take off a further 25%.  Not bad.  And just to show how friendly the folks are over here: there was this lady who asked me if I had use for some coupons.  She explained that she'd handed in some stuff and had been given more coupons than she would ever need.  That was great, because it added considerably to my savings.  It seems that one can bring used clothing to the store and in return one receives coupons that can be used on most clothing items, but in some cases also on cosmetics and such.  I got two coupons, so on two items of clothing the price was reduced by another 25%.  Not a bad day for clothing shopping! :-)

We checked out some more shops and bought a few down-to-earth items that we needed, but after that we were dying for a cup of coffee and a place to sit down for a moment or two.  We could find a food court but there was no coffee shop in sight.  Strange, because Americans love their coffee too we thought.  In the end Frank remembered having seen a sign with Starbuck's Coffee on it, so we went back to the book store to check that out.  And low and behold, in the book store was a coffee shop.  We sat down with these huge cups again.  We're still amazed by the size of them!  Frank had a coffee, I settled for a chai latte, which I hadn't had for a long time and which I had been craving for.  It was delicious.  We had to go over the choice of books of course and also the section with games.  And guess what, we discovered  the game Sequence!  It'll give us something to do on TV-less nights and will be a nice change from tri-ominos.

Last on the list was Best Buys, because I am still undecided about what I want.  My computer at home has broken down and I don't think I will replace it.  No need really, because my laptop does exactly the same and I can carry it everywhere I want.  So handy with wi-fi nowadays.  But.........  I want something for reading so that I don't have to lug around a lot of books and particularly for France, because I am not going to read a lot of French books (yet).  So, do I settle for a Kindle or do I want an iPad?  I still don't know.  An iPad I would also use for wordfeud, I could use it to take pictures, I can send email messages from it........  However, it is so BIG.  My mobile is so much smaller and thus more convenient and does most of the other things, although I can't see myself read books on it.  Like I said before: decisions, decisions....  Anyway, I'll be here a while longer, so will think about it a bit more.

Well, all the shopping, including the groceries store, took us to 6pm.  Of course we take our time and chat with the friendly staff everywhere.  They're all so helpful, i.e. at the delicatessen I didn't quite know how to order the sliced meat.  Would I ask for say $5 worth of ham?  Or would I go for weight?  Hang on, we're using ounces here, so how much is that again?  In the end I asked the girl and she said: "Well, you could go for half a pound, or less..."  Aha, that was fine.  I knew that a pound is 450 grams, so I thought with a 1/4 lb I can't go wrong!  It worked fine and in the end we went home with a choice of meats of 1/4 lb each. And..... a nice long chat with the girl that served us!

At home we settled for a plate of spag bol from the freezer with apple pie for dessert, sat down in front of the TV afterwards and put our feet up.

Please don't ask me what our plans are for tomorrow.  I have no idea.....