dianaschnuth

Last weekend, Aaron and I had an agenda. We were going to peruse the monthly flea market at the Wood County Fairgrounds in Bowling Green, hit the BG Goodwill while we were in town, and drive through downtown to see what’s left of our old familiar haunts. After that, I thought maybe we’d hit Levis Commons (one of those outdoor malls) in Perrysburg on the way home.

We decided to eat lunch in BG, which went well; we tried the Old Town Buffet, a newer Chinese buffet on N. Main Street. They had different food than we were used to getting at a Chinese buffet, which was good — kept things interesting. Plus, they had good (if tame) sushi, and were reasonably priced. And I was good and only ate one plate of food, plus a little dessert. Score one for our BG trip.

The flea market was at least something to do, and someplace to walk around. There wasn’t anything we were interested in actually buying, but some of the stuff was fun to look at. That, plus it’s always interesting to people-watch at the flea market. Our trip around the booths was short and sweet, and we were fairly ambivalent about it. Didn’t suck, but wasn’t great.

Same with Goodwill. Looked around everything except the clothes (which take up most of the newly renovated and expanded store). Noticed some overpriced video games and systems that we didn’t want. Left after our brief spin through the aisles.

After Goodwill, I let Aaron take me to that bastion of evildoing in retail, Wal-Mart, so he could see if they had any HD-DVDs on clearance. (Aaron, being the consumer of many dead media formats already, waited until HD-DVD was officially dead to purchase the HD add-on for his Xbox 360, thereby getting both the player and the movies at blowout prices.)

Of course, they didn’t have any.

Our BG trip was getting more and more dismal. No Madhatter to visit, no interest in book-shopping or coffee-drinking at Grounds, no interest in just walking around campus. On our way out of town, we drove past campus and ogled at the not-really-new wider streets and the quasi-new street signs and all the corporateness that has sprung up around campus (Starbucks, Chipotle, and the like). Then we hit the highway and headed toward home, by way of Perrysburg.

It was still a little chilly to be walking around outside, but we made the best of it. Sort of. We went into Lane Bryant first, and left without buying one item. All of their “spring fashions” looked like the 70s and the 80s had a fat baby — the blouses all flaunted the worst patterns possible, and I couldn’t find much of anything I would wear. Then we walked to Maggie Moo’s, the ice cream place, since we’d never been there — and, for once, we realized that ice cream really wasn’t calling to us. Then we stopped into J. Jill, just because I’d never been there before. At first, I thought I’d finally come home, because all the clothes looked like something I would wear; then I looked at the price tag on a particularly stylish skirt, and I promptly headed for the door after reading the $100 price tag. Somehow, we even managed to not really enjoy the bookstore: neither of us really had an agenda, and none of the magazines or manga or anything really caught our eye. So we just went home.

Well, that sucked.

Surprisingly enough, Sunday was a completely different story.

Aaron had heard that the Value City Department Store in Maumee was having a closing sale, and that the whole store was some ridiculous percentage off. He heard right, and we had a great time just browing the aisles for cheap awesomeness. We left Value City with a non-stick pan (from the collection of Rachael Ray), a decorative basket, a new purse for me, a pair of very thirsty and soft microfiber dishtowels, and three very awesome pairs of shoes for me, of which this is but one:

Our cashier was a character, and she topped off the whole experience by talking about how she’d heard about cooking cabbage and noodles for the first time that weekend, when someone else had bought a non-stick pan and told her that was what they were planning to make in said pan. This woman was an absolute hoot.

But the day kept going! After that, we swung past a gelato place for our first-ever taste of gelato (and, boy, was it yummy), followed by a trip two doors down to Avenue, where I bought myself the clothes I had been hoping to find at Lane Bryant the day before. I now have two more pairs of work/dress pants, a knit sweater, and a hooded spring jacket. Oh, and a nice lady in line behind me gave me a couple of coupons that saved me $17. Score!

So, last weekend was quite the odd dichotomy of suck and awesome. All in all, though, I think the awesome outweighed the suck.