Mourning the American Department Store

:-(

As I was unpacking stuff a few months ago, I found two Belk gift cards that were leftover wedding gifts. A happy bonus!!

This morning it dawned on me that we should use the gift cards to buy bedside lamps for our room because we need some (we had a mismatch, hodgepodge at our apartment). So after work we headed over to Crabtree (I refuse to go Triangle Town Center because it's scary [I thought it was scary before the gang melee!]).

So we walk around Belk for-like-ever to find out that they don't sell lamps anymore!!! I mean, WTF?! It's a department store (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/department%20store)!!!! How can they not sell lamps?! So, Brian and I figure that Belk and the like must really be feeling the pinch from stores like Target and Wal-Mart.

So, as the good Americans we are, we went to Target and bought the lamps that we needed and they look soooo cute! I am quite pleased.

Oh yeah, and we bought two gift card's worth of towels at Belk because we saw some that we liked that were cute.

Correspondingly, we decided that the fact that we were at the mall (which is very rare for us) was a special occasion, so we decided to celebrate at Kanki. Brian had a super yummy filet mignon and I had sushi. Major props to Kanki for the ability to order half sushi rolls. God Bless Japan.

Also, we got our lawnmower (c. 1923) on Saturday. We haven't tried to work it yet, but if it does work, we'll be pleased.

Elmo also gave us a very lovely statue boy that creates a fountain in a cement birdbath. Elmo explained to us that his wife found the birdbath in an antique store in Charleston and that the birdbath is an antique from an English garden. It is very cool-looking, but the problem is that it weighs (no lie) 300 lbs. It took 3 of us to get in the Lowe's truck and then when we got it home, we had to literally just push it out of the bed of the truck onto our front yard and then Brian had to roll it to its place of honor by our front porch.

We also had a Battle Royale with two fans. The current score Chez Nouveau LeBlanc?

Brian/Laura - 3
Fan(s) - 1

The first fan was a major, super pain, but we FINALLY got it up and working. The second fan we got up, but for some reason the wiring won't work. We tried it twice and we definitely know how to match the wire colors, but there appears to be something wrong with either the wires in the fan or the ceiling... So, tomorrow morning, Chris from Centex is going to check our ceiling wires to make sure they have a charge. If they do, then we'll return the fan to Lowe's, but if they don't, then we'll call an electrician because the wires should be under our house warranty.

Oh yeah and we're going to be in New Orleans/Baton Rouge in a week from Friday!!!