Y10 D218

There's one major thing I dislike about living int he midwest that on some level I was aware of but hadn't quite experienced fully until yesterday. Weekends. Allow me to elaborate. Growing up and living where I did in the Bay Area, I was around people who didn't have typical jobs or job hours. Especially true in the 90s with the explosion of tech companies. By this I mean people didn't go to a factory or even a regular office and work from 8-5. Sure, there were those people who did that, but in CA, people's hours varied. Some folks work 5-1, or 7-3, or 10-6 OR, and this is the important part, many people worked from home, or took comp days in the middle of the week. If you went to the mall on a Tuesday afternoon, there were people there. People of all ages, genders, etc. Take this for example - if you had 700 shoppers going to the mall, regardless of day of week, you could expect there to be 80-125 people there. Things were distributed because people had time to do things during the week. Plus people would go do things at night. 7pm grocery shopping? Sure, let's go. Much less 'traditional' hours being kept. Now, compare that to here. People work more blue collar jobs here. People have much more traditional roles and hours. Therefore those same 700 people from before? Go to a store on a weekend and there's 400 people. Why? Because it's the only time they have. They don't have the luxury of going to the store at 3pm on a Tuesday. Or 8am on a Thursday. Nope, they all go on Saturday and Sunday. Typically they all go on Saturday because they want one day to relax, or they have 15 different things to do for their kids, or around the house, and they have ONE day to get it all done. I experienced this slightly in OR where there were less flex hours and tech jobs, but here it's crazy.

What brings all this up? We went to IKEA yesterday. This was our second trip there. The first one was on a Tuesday at 10am. Dead. Like there were 50 people in the whole store. Yesterday? 5000 people. I am not kidding. We walked up to the register with no line on a Tuesday. Yesterday it was stretched back into the warehouse section. Thank goodness we did order online and pickup in store. We didn't have to wait to get our stuff, but damn if parking, and trying to go to the cafe weren't a nightmare. Plus the children. So many children. Keep it in your pants people. Just kids everywhere. The trip there was also more congested and frustrating. But we got what we needed, had lunch, and got out.

We got two bookcases for the basement. The basement is now finely at a point where I am happy. One went in the main area and all our books fit cleanly. The second went into my office and holds all my knickknacks and the like. No more boxes out. No more shit on the floor. I am very happy with my space.

B made breakfast for dinner last night; pancakes, eggs, bagels. Was pretty good. After dinner we played Mario Party together. I am glad I got that instead of Smash Bros because I like when we play stuff together.

Worked more on the new laptop. Still not quite done getting it configured, but getting there. The resolution is both incredibly awesome and frustrating. It's set at 3180x something and my goodness is it a challenge to see some dialog boxes. Most scale, but some don't and I am struggling to read them. I need an eye exam anyway, but looking at this screen just emphasizes the point.

Went to bed around 1am. Need to finish up the laptop today, otherwise no plans. I am definitely not trying to go to where there are humans. Give me the mall at 10am on Tuesday thank you very much.