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I spent a good deal of both yesterday and today shopping. It's been an interesting experience. I don't usually go out shopping on the days immediately following Christmas, but since my days off happened to fall on the 26th and the 27th this week, and I didn't want to stay in the house all day, I ended up braving the post-holiday crowds after all.

Yesterday, my friend Adam dropped by for lunch; and after we'd stuffed ourselves with the buffet at Nawab (the fantastic Indian restaurant a short drive from my house), we took my mother to her weekly hair appointment and did some shopping while we waited for her to finish. Adam needed some new shoes, so we went over to Rack Room and found they had a "buy one pair, get a second pair for 50% off" deal. He found a style that he liked, and as we exited the store and started back around to Hair Cuttery-- on the opposite side of the shopping center, of course-- I heard a noise that sounded like someone dropping something. That noise was immediately followed by a loud female voice shouting, "YOU'RE A ******** IDIOT!"

We looked to the right and saw the voice belonged to a heavy-set woman with curly blond hair, probably in her early 40's, with three kids. The one she was yelling at was the youngest, I'd say probably no more than eight years old. He'd dropped the DVD they'd just rented from Blockbuster. She continued to berate him as he picked it up and the family started out into the parking lot; neither he nor the other kids seemed fazed in the slightest. I think I was more disturbed by the incident than they were.

Today didn't bring any further observations of public profanity, but it was kind of chaotic. My mother and I went to the mall-- we usually go every Tuesday, but since Adam was here yesterday, the weekly routine got delayed. On the positive side, I found out I'd accumulated something like $130 of holiday savings at Border's, so I got nine CD's, the year-end issue of Billboard, and volume 4 of School Rumble for free. On the downside, every store except Border's was insanely crowded. Navigating EBGames and GameStop was a nightmare; and of course, they're all still out of the Wii. (The Target next door to the mall had one PS3; but I don't want a PS3, at least not until the price drops and they come out with some games I actually want to play.)

The most amusing part of the trip, though, was walking past Bath & Body Works. The line inside seemed to be some weird sort of infinite loop that went from the front to the back and then circled around again; I couldn't really tell where it actually started and where it ended. And I wasn't about to venture in there to investigate further; I might not have made it out alive. xp