One of the most important things I wanted to do in Omaha, as you know, was to go out shopping. I brought a good chunk of cash with me -- more than I would ever need for anything -- with the goal of hitting up places like the other mall I hadn't yet been to and the thrift stores in the area. Daisy supported this idea; she just loves spending time with me, and wanted to take me out to do whatever I wanted to because, and let's be frank here, I don't get out much. Similarly, I wanted the bulk of my time there to not focus on this sort of thing, but to focus more on Daisy and her family/friends, with the shopping something we did that would kill time and would be fun -- no matter how excited I secretly was about it. So, on Monday and Tuesday (and a bit on Wednesday on the way home), we did our around-the-town shopping. In order to spare you every little detail about those trips and to get it out of the way so I can focus on the other events of those days, I'm going to give you the absolutely massive rundown of everything I found and purchased while I was up there, with explanations for some of them when necessary. Here's the list:
- A new cat-scratch pad for the kitties, as they needed one to replace the one downstairs they've positively destroyed over the past year or so ($7, Trader Joe's)
- A 20-inch box fan for the living room window, as I'd been looking for one cheaply for several years ($15.50, Big Lots)
- A 2XL flannel pajama set on clearance ($5, Walmart)
- A new Man of Steel Superman shirt ($7.50, Walmart)
- Five packs/bags of coffee in assorted strengths/flavors ($3 to $4 each, Goodwill and TJ Maxx)
- A 10-pack of 4-blade disposable razors, in case I have to keep shaven for any job I might get ($2, Big Lots)
- Two plastic jars of soup crackers; ranch and sour cream & onion ($1 each, Big Lots)
- Five new pairs of sandals to replace my old ones, which are all falling apart ($7 to $10 each, Big Lots and TJ Maxx)
- Two "room sprays" to deodorize the house; one is "Men's Club" scented, and the other is "Bachelor" scented, which I found hilarious ($4 each, TJ Maxx)
- One large "guyaba" [guava] scented jar candle, which is currently burning in the living room ($6, TJ Maxx)
- A Batman coffee mug ($4, TJ Maxx)
- Fifteen different bags of assorted chips and other snacks, and yes, I counted ($1 to $3 each, Big Lots)
- A can of smoked/salted almonds ($3, Big Lots)
- A jar of dry-roasted peanuts ($2.50, Big Lots)
- A pair of Dockers pants ($3.59, Goodwill)
- A Chaps pullover sweatshirt (99 cents, Goodwill)
- A Faded Glory fleece pullover sweater ($3.59, Goodwill)
- A pair of khaki carpenter shorts (99 cents, Goodwill)
- A "Nebraska Christian College" ringer tee, purchased to wear in an ironic hipster fashion and because the cartoon on the front of it is hilariously bad ($3.59, Goodwill)
- Three pairs of nice corduroy pants, which I've been looking for anywhere I can find them cheaply for several years now (99 cents to $3.59 each, Goodwill)
- A pair of really nice Haggar dress slacks, navy blue ($3.59, Goodwill)
- A new cushion for my desk chair, since my old one is wearing out and becoming flattened ($2, Goodwill)
- Two boxes of Ziploc bags, because I go through them quickly ($1.29 each, Goodwill)
- A backup Brita water pitcher with filter holder ($2, Goodwill)
- Four kiwifruit for my dehyrdator, which I have since already dried (less than $2 total, Trader Joe's)
- DVDs, from both Goodwill and Big Lots, $2 to $5 each: That '70s Show Biggest Hits Vol. 1, Caprica, Pandorum, Dawn of the Dead (remake), Final Destination, Shock Treatment, and The Book of Eli. All of them but The Book of Eli were new and sealed. I have not watched any of them yet.
- Used XBOX games from Goodwill, $2 each: Sonic Heroes, Call of Duty: Finest Hour, and Need for Speed Underground. I have not played any of them yet.
Anyway, so that's the list. Again, I wanted to post it and get it out of the way so that tales of shopping didn't overwhelm the rest of the story of the trip, because the shopping was just a small slice of the overall trip itself -- wedged between a lot of social interaction with many people.
So here's the next part of the story.
On Monday, Daisy needed to sleep before we did anything, of course; I knew this and totally supported it. She went upstairs and went back to bed, and I ate breakfast and had my coffee and cigarettes before joining her in a nap for a few hours. I don't know how long we actually slept; I know I napped with her for about two hours, roughly, something like that, before I got back up and she soon followed. We had plans for Monday afternoon, evening, and night -- three different things to do:
1. A meeting at the house with one of her friends I had not yet met
2. Dinner with two other friends, one being Daisy's best friend whom I knew, and
3. A night of bowling with those two friends as well as several others.
When we got up, we had some time to kill before the parents got home and before her friend was scheduled to arrive at the house, so that's when we made the TJ Maxx trip. When we returned, Mama had come home from work, so we showed her all of the stuff we'd gotten while we were there (Daisy had also purchased some serving dishes for our future house, and had also gotten some for the parents as well as a big piece of beautiful wall art for her mother).
Daisy's friend was supposed to be at the house at 5 or 5:30, something like that -- I don't remember. This was yet another friend who I was friends with on Facebook (though she deactivated her profile some time ago) but had never met. She seemed to be a very sweet girl, though she didn't stay too long for her visit. It was good to meet her, though. She'd come over to visit because she couldn't make it to dinner or to bowling that night. Said friend was also quietly very intelligent; we were talking about our respective educations, and she could probably run circles around me knowledge-wise. Then again, two English degrees aren't incredibly practical compared to most other degrees out there, so eh. She was nice.
It was also during her visit that I saw the first reports of the devastating tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, as they were beginning to roll across my laptop and I was getting breaking news emails about it (I had my laptop open on the kitchen table). Moore is less than three hours south of me -- it's a little less distance than it is from my house to York, Nebraska, where Daisy and I stop on our trips (as mentioned before). York is 209 miles away; Moore is 193. Anywhere else in the nation, that may be a big distance...but out here, where there's nothing but roads and fields? It's not. It's a straight line south of here, an afternoon drive. That hits close to home.
Anyway.
The evening dinner plans were at a place called McFoster's, somewhere Daisy had spoken highly of in the past. There is a good reason for this -- it's fucking amazing. You can click that link if you want and read the menu, but only do so if you want to start drooling uncontrollably. It was there or an Italian place, but Daisy called and found that nothing they had in the restaurant was vegan. Apparently not even the marinara sauce. So, obviously, we chose McFoster's, which specializes in vegetarian and vegan food. And, for the record, I'm incredibly glad we did.
We were having dinner with Daisy's best friend (the one we'd gone to Gusto's with two nights prior) and were meeting another friend there, one who'd wished to meet me but just now had the opportunity to do so. Again, I'm not naming her either, as she also expressed interest in reading this blog, so I gave her the link to it. Whether she's read it or not, I don't know, and right now that has nothing to do with the story, so I'll continue.
The food at McFoster's was divine. They had as the soup of the day a "smoked tomato soup" that was better than any other tomato soup I've ever eaten in my thirty years on this planet. I wanted to drink gallons of it, I wanted to pour it all over my body and bathe in it.
You're welcome for that mental image, by the way.
Anyway. I got a free-range chicken sandwich (because, yes, they do have non-vegan options) and we had appetizers of tempura-battered vegetables that were so good that I wanted to name my children after them.
"This is my son, Tempura Onion, and my daughter, Tempura Sweet Potato."
Ahem. Anyway.
The new friend was very, very sweet and fun to hang out with, and I'm glad she came. We had a great, long meal filled with fascinating conversation and relaxation, and it proved to be a good break from the running around and forcing myself to be, as Daisy would say, "socially intelligent" for a while. I was more able to be myself, to loosen up a bit, even though I was still meeting someone new. At that point it was par for the course -- between Saturday and Monday evenings I had met no less than ten new people, both family and friends, who were all important to Daisy, and all of them had wanted to meet me and had known about me prior to our meeting. This was fine, of course, but by the time of our dinner at McFoster's I had totally become comfortable with the scenario when normally, I would be at least somewhat apprehensive. Another new friend? Awesome! Etc. Daisy doesn't associate with people who aren't awesome, and I learned this firsthand over my trip there this time around (though it's not like I didn't know this before). Daisy's not introduced me to anyone who isn't a genuinely upstanding person -- she's all about positivity, and weeds negative people out of her life as much as possible. The dinner was great.
When it was over, we returned briefly to the house; I was going to shower, because I was sweaty and my hair was greasy, but we really didn't have time to do so before our bowling excursion. Instead, due to the lack of that time, we grabbed socks (which we would need for the bowling shoes, as I was wearing my sandals and those were the only shoes I had with me) and left again a few minutes later for the bowling alley.
Taking a brief aside for a moment, I saw a lot of Omaha while I was there; we went all around the city, from the really ritzy sections to the industrial sections to the seedier sections and back again. Omaha isn't a huge city, but it is a big one. You can't get from point A to point B in Omaha within five minutes like you can most places in, say, Wichita. No no no; there's always a mess of highways and different streets you have to take, many of which go on for miles in and around the city's busier sections until you have to pull off the highway at this precise point and this point only if you want to get to your destination. Daisy says the city of Omaha is laid out like a grid, which makes it easier to get from point A to point B if you know where you're going, but it is pretty big, and compared to most other cities of that size I've been to over the years, it's confusing as hell to me. If I do eventually live there, of course, I'm sure I'll get used to it much as I have anywhere/everywhere else I've lived, but even Daisy still occasionally has to consult her GPS to figure out where we're going, and she's lived there since...high school? Something like that. Close to ten years, probably, if not longer. I'm not sure exactly. I'll eventually remember to ask her.
The bowling trip had been planned weeks in advance; for a while, Daisy even had a Facebook event set up for it, but took it down for some reason in favor of just calling/texting people to tell them we were going to do it. A lot of people were invited to it, though most of them bailed or had prior commitments. By the time the night rolled around, we had but six commitments -- the four of us (me, Daisy, and the two friends) and two more friends of Daisy's, though whether the other ladies knew everyone else involved was beyond me. I didn't ask questions; our plan was to bowl and have fun, and I would be happy to meet anyone who showed up. I left all of that organizational stuff up to Daisy, as I knew little of what she had planned overall, and they were all people she knew.
The other two commitments to the evening each brought a friend as well, so all in all there were eight of us, with seven of us bowling. Monday nights, apparently, brought a special with them -- three games plus shoes for $12, or something like that. I paid for Daisy and I (since she had insisted on buying dinner at McFoster's) and we got down to it.
I learned five things while bowling that night:
1. I am still a shitty bowler (I didn't break 100 on any of the three games).
2. Daisy is even worse.
3. A bottle of domestic beer at a bowling alley is $3.75.
4. You can no longer smoke in bowling alleys anymore -- aside from casinos, this was basically the only other last bastion of hope for one who likes to smoke indoors.
5. Even if you've paid for your games, the people who run the bowling alley still close everything up at midnight, and will give you the stinkeye and be silently pissed at you if you don't finish your games until 12:15.
The bowling experience was really fun, and I liked everyone I met. When we came home, weary and in desperate need of sleep around 1AM, I took a long shower (which I also desperately needed) and, finally, we crashed. The next two days would be long ones, and we would need -- as Daisy might call it -- our beauty rest.
I will be able to (finally) finish this series of posts in the next installment, hopefully. Until then, my friends.
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