'Tis the season to be jolly....

I don't know you but Christmas Shopping usually tends to stress me. According to André I get all obssesive with trying to find the perfect gift for each and every one of our loved ones and this is usually quite difficult since it means thinking and shopping simultanously during the rush season preceding the holidays.

I guess he's right... I do tend to get all worked up about it... Take this weekend for example. Saturday we left the appartment to get some shopping done and 5 hours later we were back home with no gifts (well, actually we did get one: André's) !!!

I guess it didn't help that somebody forgot to mention to the french that 'tis the season to be jolly because we kept witnessing the fine art of "râler" everywhere we went! A women arguring over 70 cents while buying a coffee at Starbucks, a man yelling his head off at the post office because he wrongly calculated the stamps needed to send a package to Australia... even I got into an argument with a guy at the FNAC! I was looking for a case for my laptop and I had seen a perfect one a couple months ago. I went back to buy it on Sat. and all they had was another model of the same brand so I asked one of the vendors to check if they had the model I wanted in another store. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but when you are a huge electronics store and you have a search program hooked up in real-time to your existing stock throughout your network of stores you should be able to find a specific model simply by punching in "laptop case" + "name of brand" right? Eh non... Without even trying to check first (!!!) the guy insisted I had to give him the exact reference number otherwise 10,000 different products would show up on his screen (since, I've checked the brand's website and only TWO models show up!!!).... he was just being an idiot and so after arguing my point for 10 mins and looking at Andre's exasperated face I thought enough was enough. No, I did not spit in the guy's face if that's what you're thinking (LOL) .... I said loud enough for the people behind me to hear: "ok, I understand, it all comes down to the fact that you simply don't want to help me search for the product I am looking for by using your search program intended for just that purpose. Thanks for nothing pal. Au revoir", turned around and walked away while he was still trying to reply back... what an an (beeeeeeeeeep)!!!

Anyway, by then we'd been in and out of several stores and still not a step closer to getting any headway done in terms of our shopping and plus, by then as you can imagine, tempers where running high, so we decided to call it a day and go home.

Sunday, we decided to give it another go.... this time, before we even started André made us sit down at a little café and write down a list of all the people we were going to be seeing this holiday (quite a list since this year I'm spending the holidays half in the US half in Mexico and André is spending them in France!). Then we brainstormed quite a bit and came up with a list of cool things we wanted to get for each and where we could eventually find such things. Once this was done, we wrote out an itinerary of what stores to hit and in what order. I suppose you're asking why we didn't start by doing that in the first place??.... Quite frankly, I don't know!!! In any case, I'm happy to report that thanks to this methodical and logical system we got most of our shopping done!!!

I guess it helps having an Engineer for a husband. :D

Fned.
P.S. And just in case you're wondering, I survived the entire weekend on Aspirin + Whisky (thanks for the tip Adrien!) + Astringosol (that stuff will kill anything!) although, let me assure you, not all mixed together! LOL .... My tooth is still hurting but I've got an appointment with the Dentist tomorrow so I should be able to make it until then.