Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Good morning crew,
The wife and I finally bought a Christmas tree this weekend. And it was a close thing, too. We were coming home from a brunch Sunday evening when we happened to drive past a lot that still had a decent selection of trees, so we decided to stop. If we waited any longer it would hardly be worth it.
But, it was just early enough and we were in just adventurous enough of a mood to make a pit stop.
Now, since we bought the house three years ago the wife's approach to pretty much everything has been the bigger (and more expensive) the better. Last year I had to talk her DOWN to a 6 & 1/2 foot White Pine for about 100 dollars.
But last Sunday, oddly, she seemed very reluctant to spend much time shopping. In five minutes she picked out a little 5-foot fir for 40 bucks and started shooing me toward the exit.
I looked at the rather scrawny 'Charlie Brown' tree and asked her, "Are you sure?"
But she just kept saying, "Yes, it's fine. Let's go!"
At the entrance to the lot was a guy standing in a little plywood shack who was collecting money for the trees. After I paid he gave me a conspiratorial wink and asked, "Hey, wanna beer?" Peeking behind him a saw a half-finished cardboard case of beer he had hiding in his little lean-to!
Rarely have I turned down a free beer, so I said 'Sure' and accepted the can he passed to me.
The wife was not happy with that. "My God," she said, "do you have to take anything anybody gives you?"
"What is your problem?" I asked. "Can't you relax for two minutes and share a little holiday spirit with a strange man handing out cans of beer on the street corner?"
She leaned into to whisper in my ear, "I've got to pee!"
Ah-ha, it was the bloody mary and three glasses of wine at brunch that prompted this sudden attack of parsimony! I had mercy on her (I've been in similar situations in the past) and we made it home with no more delays.
But I think I've found the wife's Achilles' heel when it comes to shopping (or at the very least her Achilles' bladder). It's kind of like finding a hidden cheat code in a video game. All I have to do is figure out how to exploit it.
Laugh it up,
Joe
joe@gophercentral.com
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"New York woman is suing her surgeon claiming he was on his cell phone during her operation. In response, the doctor said, 'For your information, I was Googling how to perform surgery.'" -Conan O'Brien
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"A new study found that running for two minutes is just as good for you as working out for 90 minutes. That doesn't sound like a study it sounds like something a chubby guy says after being on the treadmill for two minutes." -Jimmy Fallon
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"There's a holiday gift giving trend that's supposedly on the rise this year called self-gifting, meaning it's OK to buy a gift for yourself. But buying a gift and wrapping it for yourself, that's just pathetic." -Jimmy Kimmel
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A group of junior-level executives were participating in a management training program. The seminar leader pounded home his point about the need to make decisions and take action on these decisions.
"For instance," he said, "if you had five frogs on a log and three of them decided to jump, how many frogs would you have left on the log?"
The answers from the group were unanimous: "Two."
"Wrong," replied the speaker, "there would still be five because there is a difference between deciding to jump and jumping."
*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
My brother Scott brought over a photo album of his camping trip. One picture showed a brown bear helping itself to his food. "What kind of bear is that?" I asked.
"It's called a Kodiak," Scott replied.
"Oh, yeah?" my husband Keith shot back. "And I suppose those white ones in the Arctic are called Polaroids."