Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Here and there and all about

On Monday, still in a sleepless daze, we wandered about Costco where I basically walked all the aisles making notes on all the stuff we ought to get before we return. There was no sense in purchasing everything on Monday, and then hauling it about for the rest of the week. Our Costco invasion will take place on Friday.

While still in a daze we stopped at a small (by Lower 48 standards) mall near the airport, less than a mile from our hotel. The anchor store is Jo-Ann’s, if that tells you anything. Only about half the spaces are leased out, so it looks pretty empty. There is a decent book/toy store and a Radio Shack. There’s also a kitchen store.

We drove around to locate the nearest Les Schwab where our pickup would get some work done on Tuesday. With all that accomplished we went to our hotel,  a couple hours before check-in. Elise asked if a room was ready and it was. We unloaded, got to the room, and the three women took nice long naps. I decided to remain awake so as not to confuse my already confused body any more. Later, we went to the Mexican restaurant on the ground floor for dinner. Later in the evening I picked up a rental car for the next day.

Tuesday morning we awoke refreshed, dropped off the pickup, and then went to the downtown area of Juneau. We stopped in a used book store, where the proprietor sat all of us down and brought out a bunch of books. We ended up leaving with over $100 in nearly all used books. We had lunch at a nearby Japanese/Chinese restaurant. We wandered about a little more afterwards, stopping in a candy shop before returning towards the hotel.

We stopped back at Les Schwab to pay for the service and tires. In all, the total came to over $1100 – 4 new tires at $270/each, oil change, and tax. This whole trip and everything purchased is being paid out of our Dividend funds for this year.

We went to a different mall, about the same size as the other, anchored by Gottschalks and a grocery store. I’ve been looking for miso and of the three grocery stores I’ve searched so far, this one is the only one that has any. I’ll need to return here before we head back.

For supper we got a microwave lasagna from Fred Meyer and cooked it in our hotel room. Earlier we also purchased breakfast items. There’s no sense in eating out for every meal at a minimum of $40 per meal. Even with the costs of pre-packaged convenience foods it still comes to $10-20 per meal.

We had no plans today other than for Shelley to go ice skating. We got a late morning start, had an early lunch of calzone in downtown, then went to the skating rink where Shelley skated for around 1-1/2 hours.

On the way back, again we stopped at the first mall where the women spent all of their time in Jo-Ann’s picking up fabric, patterns, and candy corn. I went to the book/toy store and picked up a few items to be used for the children’s Christmas gifts.

We stopped at Fred Meyer and got some microwaveable mac' ‘n cheese and mashed potatoes. That with some leftovers from the Mexican restaurant constituted our supper.

I’ve been having nothing but recurring troubles with the wireless Internet connection at the hotel. They must have gotten tired of me bugging them to reset the access point every couple of hours, or they found something wrong, because when we returned from our outing today, the clerk told me that they were replacing all the routers/access points today. It must have happened sometime this evening because after an outage, all the old access points disappeared and I’m now connected to a new one.

The rain started falling in earnest this afternoon. Until then we’ve had fairly dry (for SE Alaska) weather. I think the new tires do run better than the nearly bald ones I had. I don’t seem to feel much, if any, slipping now. It better work after spending so much on them.

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