Why I hate going to the mall early

Wow, there's an auspicious title for a post. Seriously, though.

I got to the mall about noon today. I had a dentist appointment at 10:30 this morning, and when I'm up and about that early I like to go take care of stuff like mall-ratting since I can't do it most evenings.

I was reminded why I normally do it in the evenings anyways.

Well, most of the early bits were alright: browsing in Waldenbooks and Suncoast, buying a late birthday present for my mom (after waiting 10 minutes before somebody at Elder-fucking-Beerman noticed that I was standing at the overpriced-yet-good chocolate counter[1]). But the shit didn't hit the fan until I got to Target. Y'see, it didn't occur to me who actually goes to Target during 'school hours'[2]. Housewives with their 3 and 4-year old children. And by 'children,' I mean 'rude, shrieking mutants who haven't been taught the concept of not-screaming when in public.' I'm not expecting children have five dots of Etiquette (roleplaying reference), but it should not be considered part of the natural state of affairs when behind you in the checkout line is a little girl screaming and crying until she can't breathe that she wants the popcorn that she'll be getting in about 3 minutes. Nor should it be considered part of a normal day when at the same time, no more than 10 feet away, a pair of four-year-olds scream "Shut up!" at each other back and forth at the tops of their then-superhuman lungs. And then, of course, you have the parents who absolutely needed to take their children out right then. Of course, I can understand why they'd do it then, given that there are less people around to notice these little monsters scampering around and breaking things. Even still, people should know when their kids are going to promote feelings of death and mutiliation in those around them, and should be able to work something out with said kids (say, for example, bribery) ahead of time.

Fuck. I've been holding that in for four and a half hours because the pay-as-you-go terminal in the mall itself doesn't have a working keyboard.

Oh well. In other news, some asshole planted an election campaign sign on our lawn and hoped we wouldn't notice. I hope they didn't want it back. At the very least, it's prompted me to write a letter to the newspaper reminding people what basic courtesy is (and I don't mean a nasty letter, just a simple one; I just might post it here once it's typed up).

Also, my grandmother is finally learning. Once I picked up groceries for her and told her I was going to head to class, it only took four gratuitous nervous glances at my watch instead of seven to get her to realize that I have to get going and don't have time to listen to her explain three times about how we're throwing out an old mattress with the trash tonight.

Man, I haven't let loose with a good emotional release like that in a while... feels nice (hence my normal icon as opposed to my ranting one).


[1]-- And at the risk of sounding like the lazy shit I normally am, I should point out that they noticed me when I started to go check to see if I could drag somebody over from another counter to ring up my purchase. And by overpriced-yet-good, I did in fact mean Godiva's.
[2]-- Generally, the hours between 7am-3:30pm when most kids are in school of some kind.

Kinda cruisin'

Back up at the college library. Got out of class, got some dessert at the dining hall (I ate at the mall earlier), and I'm still feeling pretty good from getting that angst out earlier. On top of that, I'm slightly buzzed from a mild ego stroke I got during class.

While I was typing up my previous entry, filled with rage and bile, someone who's in my Literature class sat down next to me and began last minute work on homework (which I'd already completed). I offered a couple of hints on where to find an answer to one of the study questions, and he and I got to talking about the source material. He mentioned the way he interpreted part of the story we were going over[1], and I pointed out an interpretation that he agreed better matched the material and made more sense in the context of the question. I don't know how much it helped him, but I left him be shortly after that.

Well, during class, we were going over a previous discussion on the story, and since some of the students weren't sure what direction to take in the discussion she was mining the discussion questions we turned in on Monday for points to bring up. During a question concerning the motives of one of the characters, she read an answer that I'd provided to the group and said that it was 'very perceptive,' wondering which one of us wrote it. I didn't say anything, not wanting to brag, but the guy I'd helped earlier just glanced at me, smirked and said 'yeah, very perceptive.'

I dunno why, I got a kick out of that.

On top of that, I'm kind of buzzing over the d20 Adventure! preview on the Sword and Sorcery site.


[1]-- An excerpt from 'The History of Sapho,' by Madeleine de Scudery (I'm going by the spelling on the syllabus, so don't shoot me), in case anyone's wondering.