| A day of adventure |
[18th.Aug.2008|06:37 pm] |
Well, we went to Best Buy this morning to see what they had in the way of laptops. (Mine mysteriously went blank again on me earlier, though at least this time it was just to sleep; still, I do not approve of it randomly putting itself to sleep without my approval.) We poked around a bunch and I kept coming back to a Compaq 17" that was only $579. One thing I really miss on my current laptop is the number keypad, and this has one. It also has a built-in camera, 200 GB hard drive, and 3 GB RAM. (Oh, and Vista, boo, but that's pretty much unavoidable.) I avoided larger-screened laptops when I bought my current one because they all seemed so bulky, but this one didn't feel like it weighed any more than mine, and didn't feel huge. My laptop bag will fit a 17", no problem, so I don't even have to get a new bag. I also checked out the resolution, and it's higher than my current monitor, so that means it's not just a bigger picture, but more room on the screen, which I really like.
So when I'd finally decided this was what I wanted, we found out they didn't have any more in stock. They looked it up and the closest stores that had some were Burbank and Glendale. Ugh. But by then I really wanted it, so I decided what the hell, we'll go to the valley and buy the damn laptop. There is a Fry's in Burbank that Bruce had been wanting to check out, so we went home, got the addresses to both stores, and headed out there. Traffic actually wasn't too bad.
We went to Fry's first, and omg, it's so cool! The Fry's we usually go to is dinky. It's so small they don't even sell appliances, just electronics. It's also kind of shabby looking and has a rather boring tiki theme. The Burbank Fry's has like an old movies theme or something. In one section there's a giant ant like from Them hanging from the ceiling (must have been twenty feet long or more), and the front of the store has a giant half a UFO sticking out of it. We really wished we'd brought our camera. It was a huge store, too. Distance-wise, it's probably not that much further than the Manhattan Beach one, so we might come out here more often (especially if we go on a weekend morning and avoid traffic). I bought Big Beach Sports for the Wii. I'd wanted it for the volleyball and it was on sale for $20.
When we headed back to Best Buy, we decided to stop at Outback for lunch, as it was in the same (gigantic) shopping centre. I had their steakhouse salad, om nom nom.
And thankfully after all that, this Best Buy did have the computer I wanted, so it is now mine! :) I have yet to set it up, though, as I know it's going to take even more work than a new computer usually does, because getting Vista in working order is a huge chore on its own. So I'll probably do that later tonight.
Traffic home wasn't bad either, despite starting to edge into the beginnings of rush hour. We had more adventure when we accidentally got on the freeway going the wrong way. What happened is that we were talking and not really paying attention when suddenly there was an exit that said it was for the 10, so I was like oops, almost missed it! and got on, but it turned out to be the 10 east. But we were still talking and didn't notice it was totally not the right way until like Monterey Park. Doh.
Anyway, it was very coincidental that my happy thing for today was going places at the spur of the moment with Bruce, and then we decided to have a nice day out today. :D While we were out, we were talking about places to go. We want to try and do more interesting things, rather than just go to Book Off yet again. We drove past the zoo on the way to Burbank and so we're thinking of maybe going to the zoo sometime in the next couple weeks. Just go, walk around, take some pictures. We went once when he first moved out here, but that's been over ten years. The LA zoo is very mountainous, so it's extra good exercise.
In other "doing stuff that's not on the computer" news, we're going to try having a garden again. This time we are going to do it properly, actually digging out a big space and putting down some sort of tarp to separate the bad ground from the new good dirt we'll be putting in (the soil is really, really bad; full of weeds and rock and clay no matter how far you dig down), then putting some wooden railroad ties around it to make a border. Hopefully stuff will grow better that way, and it will keep it from getting overtaken by weeds. |
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