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Planning your time is a good thing to do as it ends up saving you time in the long run, so with that in mind, last night Ken and I discussed what we needed to do today and how we were going to get it all done.

He’s been working nearly every weekend for the past 3 years except for weekends we went to dog shows. That hasn’t lent itself to much together time, so now that the economy has taken it’s little detour, his work has cut back on hours and we find ourselves at last with time we can spend together.

Since we’ve gone so long with not much, we are in a honeymoon phase right now and want ot spend as many minutes as we can cram into the weekend with each other. That’s meant that despite having things that need to be done, we each have to adjust a bit to manage everything and still spend quality time with each other.

So, with our list of “chores” in hand, we set about planning how we were going to manage today. He needed to go to Easley to pick up his truck which had been in the shop and I needed to go to Sam’s Club to buy dog food for the next two weeks. He needed to get some light bulbs for the outdoor lights and I needed to get the oil changed in the Crossover.

Logistically, that’s a nightmare as it sends us in 6 different directions, but after careful consideration, we planned to go pick up his truck, leave it at the hardware store parking lot while we went to Sam’s Club across town, shop there, then return to the hardware store for his bulbs and then go home. I should have had time to take the Crossover down to Greenwood to get the oil changed before they closed up shop for the day. But what is it they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? They oft go astray…and boy did ours!

The first monkey wrench came with us spotting the new Costco as we left Sam’s Club. We made the impulse decision to stop there and look around. We wanted to compare products and prices to Sam’s Club as both are membership type wholesale warehouses and there’s not much sense in having memberships at both of them if there’s no difference in stuff. As we walked through the store, I happened to see a Verizon kiosk.

My phone’s screen is starting to go, so I’ve been considering buying a new cell phone. I actually qualified for an upgrade quite some time ago, but really loved my pink Razar and didn’t see much reason for changing it. Anyway, I thought I would stop and see what was on offer, but the lone sales guy was busy with a family and then he got a phone call and it just seemed like he wasn’t going to get around to me any time soon, so Ken suggested that we just pop over to the main Verizon store that was just a few miles away. As we turned onto the road the store is on, a gentleman honked at us and pulled up beside us and told Ken that our left rear tire was almost flat. Ken found a place to pull over and we change the tire then went on to Verizon.

Changing a tire is not something done in a flash even when you’ve been doing it day in and day out for years (when Ken first started at BMW, he did some tire assemblies although now he just drives the cars on the track). So, although it could have taken longer (like if I had been by myself and had to do it), it still took 20 minutes or so.

We motored on to Verizon and I feared the worst when I saw their parking lot, but was actually waited on pretty quickly. I settled on a phone only to find that we would have to change plans in order to get that one, so went back for my second choice. It’s a sleek black LG enV² that has one ring tone that I SWEAR is the whistling commercial for Cialis (you know — the fake Viagra stuff — Bob of the never ending smile???). My first choice was the LG Dare, but we would have had to change our plan to a more expensive one and we don’t use the minutes we have now, but use more than the next plan down. Ken didn’t really want to change plans and I don’t blame him — we pay a fortune for phone service between the cell phones and the land line as it is and even though it was “only” $10 more dollars, $10 is $10.

The salesman got everything rung up and said “I’ll just get your number ported over and your contacts and we’ll be right back with your phone.”

45 right backs later, he did indeed show up with my new phone and we were off to the tire store to get the tire fixed. The tire store just happens to be at the bottom of the parking lot where the hardware store is, so that was fortuitous. Since the tire had a rather large nail in it (actually, it approached the size of a railroad spike, but who’s measuring? ), they wanted to patch the tire rather than just plug it, which of course takes longer. How long? 40 minutes….

We walked across the parking lot to a Jack-In-The-Box to grab a bite of soy burgers for lunch (bleah!). I have to say, the french fries were great, but that burger was NASTY. And the bread it was on was hard as a rock! Ciabatta bread it was called — is it normally hard?

When we finished eating we walked over to the hardware store, bought the light bulbs Ken needed, and thankfully the truck wasn’t parked very far away because by then my knees were KILLING me. We drove over to the tire store, paid for the tire, then I got in the van, Ken got in the truck and we drove home.

At 4:30 pm, it’s way too late to go get the oil changed, so that chore didn’t get accomplished and we’re going to Greensboro next weekend for a dog show, so I won’t have time to get it done then either. It looks like it’s going to be two weeks before I can get the oil changed in the Crossover, but that should be OK.

There is still a long list of things that I had intended to get done today, but between a flat tire and Verizon acting like a used car lot and keeping us there forever, it’s just not to be. I have a great book I’m reading that I want to get back to, and after 8 ibuprofen since 4:00 pm (it’s now 8:00pm), that memory foam bed looks very VERY inviting.

Maybe tomorrow will go smoother….

Meanwhile, good night all.

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