Weekend Report and an Evil Wal-Mart Conspiracy

So I've got lots to report. It's been awhile since I posted...I've been so busy! This past weekend, Kathy, Wendy, and I left our husbands and kids at home and went to Birmingham for the weekend to eat, shop, and eat some more. It was lots of fun. We stayed at the Wynfrey Hotel, which is attached to the Galleria Mall. It opens into the mall and was FABULOUS! We did a fair amount of shopping, but the main focus was on food. We ate and then we ate some more. Here is summary of the weekend in food. Breakfast: both days we ate at Panera. They have great bagels and flavored cream cheese. Lunch: Friday we ate at IHOP. Kathy's chicken fried steak didn't have any white gravy. We were impressed that she ate it anyway. Don't get me started on the weird waitress that talked to imaginary customers. On Saturday we ate lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. If you've never eaten there, you should try it. The food is great and the restaurant is beautiful. And really...any place that has over 15 flavors of cheesecake is an experience everyone should have. On Sunday we ate at Chipotle. The only way I can explain this is that it's like a Mexican Subway restaurant. The very yummy burrito you end up with is literally the size of a brick. I have dreams about their food, it's so good. Dinner: On Friday, we ate at Sumo Japanese Hibachi Steakhouse. It was really good...I had the steak. On Saturday we ate The Olive Garden. I suggest the lasagna. And how can you go wrong with unlimited salad and bread sticks? After dinner on Saturday we went to see "I Love You, Beth Cooper." Very cute, and no...I didn't eat anything at the theater...I was too stuffed.


Today, Wendy and Kathy came to my classroom to help me work on getting my room set up. It's amazing....it takes me about 2 days to pack up everything and then 3 weeks to take it all down, sort it, and get things put back together. There were so great and we got lots done. I'll continue going into school for several hours a day until I get it all put together. This is usually pretty fun for me. I like to organize things and it's most fun when I'm not under any time constraint.


During the course of the summer, some of my shelves broke because I had piled too many things on it and when that happened, the large Rubbermaid totes fell on the floor and broke. I came in to school then and cleaned everything up and resolved to replace them when I came back to school. Today was that day. I took notes of the totes I would need, but in size and purpose. And then I went to the evil Wal-Mart and got upset.


This time of year, all of the school supplies get put out and I really enjoy looking at them everyday. I'm a recovering crayon sniffer. However, this year it just hasn't been as much fun. My local evil Wal-Mart just spent several months reconfiguring the store. That means that now when you want something, it isn't where you thought it was and you wander all over the store for your stuff. You may find the correct area that the item belongs in, but then you'll discover that the other part of that section is located somewhere else in the store. This is what happened to me today.


I was in the home improvement section of the store looking at the totes. I found some nice pieces that would have worked in my room but could not find the matching lids to save my life. I looked all over the home section and found nothing. After losing hope, I walked around the school supplies again and found that they had some other totes in this section that were in different colors (and yes they had it in purple!) and were cheaper than the other ones. I also got matching trash cans. It took a long time to find these items. And of course in the meantime, I ended up putting tons of other stuff in my cart. I swear it's a conspiracy.



Anyway....I found my totes....now tomorrow I'm off to fill them.