In my last post, I mentioned that I had to drive my mom, grandma, and sister to Tyson’s Corner yesterday, a very large mall in the NoVA/DC area (in case you’re not familiar with it). It’s about a two-hour drive, and we went there because my sister wanted to go on a shopping spree with money she earned from her new job. I don’t really have the money for shopping, nor do I particularly enjoy these sorts of trips with family (shopping with friends is fun, though). So, I fully expected the trip to be a suck-tastic waste of time.

The drive was uneventful, until we came within a few miles of the Beltway, at which point I was reminded of what a horrible urban-driving passenger my mom is. She tends to freak out if anyone in visual range makes any sort of non-textbook maneuver, and traffic was pretty heavy in that area (as it always is), so she started panicking at every quick lane change she saw. Needless to say, it was very distracting, and while I’m comfortable driving in those conditions in small doses, I need to concentrate to do it safely. So, by the time we reached the mall, I was much more worn-down than if I had made the trip solo.

We entered the mall through Bloomingdales, and I had the joy of trying to maintain a relatively butch facade while they looked at obscenely expensive purses. Lunch followed, and then I went off on my own. I didn’t really have any money, and I was somewhat limited as to what I could buy and bring back in the car, so I pretty much just walked around, attempting to call friends to ease my boredom. However, I stumbled across a Lego store on the lower floor, the first one I’ve ever seen, and I just couldn’t resist getting something. I bought a couple sets of roads for my city (lack of roads has really held back the Lego city layout on my bedroom floor), and an ambulance

After walking the entire circuit of the mall, I caught back up with the family in front of some overpriced clothing store, and mom kinda pulled me aside. I guess her mom-sense was tingling, because she said “I know you weren’t thrilled about coming here, and you’ve been working really hard lately, so I want to get you a little something.” Mom rocks! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Ritz Camera store, and if I had a tail, it would’ve been wagging. So, we went over there to look at tripods; mine’s been needing a replacement since before I even had my camera. I spotted the cheapest one on the floor; my mom spotted the most durable-looking one, and she was paying, so I now have a brand-new tripod that’s even stronger than my old one, and it has no floppy joints! Woot! I also asked if she minded getting me a new camera bag, and she said sure, so I have a bigger one now. Not that my old one is too small for camera stuff, but it has no room for anything else, and for camping & cons, I have to get pretty creative to have enough “cargo capacity” for everything I typically haul around. Thanks mom!

I took a nap in the car until dinnertime, at which point we came home, thoroughly exhausted. Overall, an ok day

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 14:34:00 and is filed under Family, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.