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Christmas shopping and malls
So I got woken up around ten in the morning today, with my father telling me he's really not feeling well and could I be a good son and drive my sister to the mall so she could do Christmas shopping. Now ever since yesterday afternoon I've been running a fever but I know if I say no my father's going to do it, and his health is much worse.
So here's why I hate Christmas shopping:
1) Traffic. Christ the traffic is terrible. I'm not an F-1 driver or anything but living where I do it's something of a necessity to know one's way around a tough road, but there are some things that are difficult to account for, like people cutting in front of you without using turn signals, going slowly then speeding up when they see you're trying to pass them (seriously, bastard was doing forty on the highway and when he saw I was trying to pass him he gunned up to 90) and just general people being a dick.
2)Malls don't have Borders anymore. I used to not mind driving my sister to malls because that meant I could chill at Borders for an hour and read those Doctor Who novels and comics that looked vaguely interesting that I wasn't willing to pay for. Usually I would end up buying a book or comic or manga or something anyways because I have poor impulse control. It was also cool because Borders tended to cater to my tastes more than Barnes & Noble does. Without them I have to wander around the mall or dick around in the car with my 3DS for a few hours. Also, I forgot my 3DS.
Come back , Borders! ;_; I'll never shop at B&N again! We don't have what you and I had!
3) Other shoppers. Yeah, I know, but jesus all the people pushing and shoving and the noise noise NOISE! When I put my earphones, blast the music all the way up, and still can't hear what Rob Halford's saying that's an issue.
I expect to be deaf by the time I'm thirty.
4)Sellers. If your brain is located in your skull and not your rectum you would probably ask me why I didn't decide to get some Christmas shopping done. I did. The thing is that all the sellers were so busy pushing these really expensive machines with features my father wouldn't use anyways. They just won't take no for an answer.
5) I fucking hate Bing Crosby.
Comments
Do you live in the Calgary area? ?
Even though Barnes and Noble is closer than the nearest Borders ever was, and I can buy like every book ever on my Kindle.
They're pretty (relatively) cheap these days too, if I remember correctly.
And it just feels awkward, period, to hang around the manga section looking for people to chat with.
That said, I have sometimes just stood there and read stuff, so it's not like I don't have reason to stand there.
Nice thing about our local B&N (the local Borders is now closed, of course ... ) is that the TTRPG shelf faces the manga shelf, so all that stuff is conveniently concentrated together. The board games, though, are in another part of the store.
I like Barnes and Noble. There's one about twenty minutes away from my house. But the Borders was in the mall, so I could just drive over there if I felt like it and hit a bunch of my favorite stores all at once. Now there's less of a reason for me to do that.
Well, I can claim myself to have some, but it feels really unethical when my mom is coupon-clipping all over the place and I'm unemployed.
So I make purchases like once every few months or year, to the tune of maybe $10~$20 total discretionary spending, including online purchases, excluding those requested by my parents.
^ I don't think Waterstones ever expanded to the US. They are basically about the only national chain of book shops left in the UK.
I've bought most of my books there for years.