rainy saturday shopping ramblings

Given that it's almost the middle of January, it was somewhat ridiculous that I left the house this morning in jeans and a hoodie.

But then it was raining all morning long, and on and off the rest of the day.

So today was decidedly a day of indoor things.

We started with the usual trip to the supermarket, but there wasn't much to report that was different to usual... other than the fact that our usual check out girly was back again after having had the last couple of weeks off.

Then it was back here for the unpacking before we headed out to run a couple of errands at the North Adelaide Village... essentially things I should have done earlier in the week but never got around to.

Ma also wanted to pick up some frames at IKEA so we did a very tactical strike visit... firstly we managed to get a car park not that far away from the exit doors, then instead of doing the whole maze, we went in the exit and wandered backwards until we got to the frame section.

Then, using the frames as makeshift umbrellas (they were the big ones), we jumped back in the car and took a drive down to Marion. And once again, the car parking gods were with us and we got a park with very little effort.

There wasn't any specific reason for the trip, although I wanted to poke around a few different stores for different things... most notably the Assassin's Creed special edition from EB Games.... however, while I'd looked at it a number of times online I failed to realise that it was the XBOne edition, not the PS4... and while they had it, it wouldn't have done me much good anyway.

Other than that we found a big mixing bowl to replace Ma's pudding bowl with the giant crack in it and a few other little bits and pieces.

As we were leaving it came time to repay the carparking gods for their earlier generosity, because we had to stand and wait and watch while a couple of stupid cars made life difficult for a seeming endless stream of other cars and generally took up space in the same row we were parked in. Eventually they sorted themselves out, and just to ensure the carparking gods were still on our side, I made sure I pointed out the fact that we were leaving to a car that was stalking parked cars further down the row.

Then we headed down Goodwood Road to Galaxy Toys.

Ma had gotten it in her head that it might be nice to make a couple of the Lego minifig frames for people she knows who have small boys, so we'd actually been checking out Lego all over the place in Marion, but unlike when I was a kid, they don't seem to actually make packs that just contain a bunch of minifigs any more, which is a shame.

I also pointed out to Ma that if she was looking to have six minifigs in a frame, then she'd be looking at at least $30 in minifigs, plus the frame and the plates, so pretty much pushing $50.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to finally set foot in Galaxy Toys, since I keep wanting to have a look, but I just never get there (usually because it's when we're on the way home from Marion and neither of us can really be bothered). It turned out to be a much bigger shop than I expected, but they also seemingly have more Lego sets than anywhere else we looked all day.

We poked around for a while... particularly the Harry Potter wands in the back room... and oddly enough my favourite ones were Hermione, Luna and Fleur, although both Snape and Sirius's wands were also kinda cool.

But we poked around the old minifig sets for a bit, Ma didn't really seem to get anything in the way of inspiration.

I did, however, see that they had the new series in. Galaxy Toys is one of those places that goes through and identifies all of the minifigs so you can go in and buy just the ones that you want... which I pretty much think of as cheating... half of the fun of the minifigs is the thrill of the chase and standing around feeling up little polybags until you know you have them all.

They also seemed to have them slightly cheaper for the whole set than it would otherwise have cost me, so that's a definite bonus.

And while we were there the guy and girl behind the counter were going through a box of the figs and feeling up all the bags to identify what was what and labelling them. So I told my story about standing up on crutches to go through the seventh series, and also helping various and sundry people in Myer at various times.

I think the guy behind the counter was trying to test me, because he handed me a bag and asked me what I thought it was... granted this is literally the first time I'd laid hands on this series, and initially I thought it was the sheriff based on that I thought was his hat, but I kept feeling around looking for either his gun or the 2x2 tile I knew was in the pack, but couldn't find either. I did find something that was definitely a gun though, just not the Wild West gun and after checking out the box again realised it was the Alien Trooper.

So if he was trying to test me, then I think I pretty much passed.

We definitely have to go back at some stage though... it's a fun little store.

When we got to the Greenhill Road intersection and Ma mentioned the H word... that's right, Haighs... if she hadn't said anything out loud then we may have just headed straight back to my place, but she did, so we ended up doing a detour to the factory shop.

And for what may be the first time EVER, when we got there the little car park out the front was entirely devoid of cars. Again, quite possibly the carparking gods were smiling down on us.

It also meant that we were in and out pretty quickly.

That was pretty much it... although when I got home there was a note under my doormat from one of my neighbours apologising for making noise and promising to keep it under control from now on. Sadly it wasn't any of the neighbours that I have a problem with, and while I was kind of aware there was noise coming from that direction, it's at the opposite end of the block and didn't bother me. But it was nice to see at least one of my neighbours being a person and recognising that noise is bad.

If only some of the others took a leaf out of his book.

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