It was a Dark and Scary Night...

The other night, Mrs Nutz and I jumped at a chance to save some money doing some of our mandatory shopping. My Mother-in-law is a bargain shopper, and a pretty darn good one at that. Since this is the first time I've mentioned my in-laws, I would like to say that there are MANY horror stories out there about Mother-in-laws; however my wife and I were both fortunate to marry into great families. Anyway, mine is a bargain shopping whiz, and she likes to make sure that we are made aware of the deals. She informed us that our local Dan's Grocery Store was going to be having a moonlight madness sale. Basically from 8 PM to 11 PM they would have bargains on potatoes, steaks, and a few other things, plus a discount at the register. She invited us to go shopping with her, even though this store was a little out of the way for us. Considering that we just got paid, and it was time to go grocery shopping anyway, we accepted her invitation.

Somewhere back in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew that it wasn't a good idea; but I just shrugged it off. I worked in retail during the holiday season for several years, and I have very vivid memories of how crazy things were, but that was always from an employee's perspective. This was my first real experience at seeing how crazy things were from the shoppers perspective, and shoppers are INSANE!!!

The night started off for us at 7:30, when we arrived at the store and started shopping for the bargains. A rational person would think that the managers of the store would realize that this advertised sale was coming, and would try to have all the items in stock. Not this manager. One of the sale items that we were looking forward to was a 5 lb sack of potatoes for $1, and we were fortunate to get there just as the clerk was bringing them out... all 12 bags of them. I felt sorry for the clerk, it was like bringing a pizza into a weight-watchers convention. We got ours and ran before we could attract attention.

Our next shock came when we got to the Coke 2-liters. They had them stacked in plastic crates, and this one idiot was literally dumping them into his cart. At this point, I am NOT exaggerating. He was picking up an entire crate, holding them over his cart, and then dumping them. His cart was overflowing with bottles and he still kept going. As we were trying to grab a bottle or two before he could get to them, a couple of them fell to the ground and almost hit Mrs. Nutz. She gave him a nasty glare, which seemed to confuse him. I was just anxious to get away from him before one of those bottles exploded all over.

Another sale item was New York steaks for $2 per lb. My Mother-in-Law was waiting with the rest of the crowd to grab some, and the store was limiting them to 3 packages per customer. She was grabbing them off the shelf, and people were literally trying to grab them out of her hands.

By about 8:15, we'd had our fill of the whole experience, so we waited in the check-out lane that stretched all the way back to Hawaii, and told ourselves that we would never EVER again bargain shop like this. It made me shudder to think of what stores are like the day after Thanksgiving. I know that the economy sucks right now, but I'll spend the extra $30 we saved if that means that we can go grocery shopping without wearing safety gear.

Life as I Know it has Changed.

There is no turning back for me now.

When I was growing up, vampires and werewolves were nothing more than evil monsters that appeared in old black and white movies starring Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr. They were mindless monsters who caused a ruckus wherever they went, whether that be in merry-olde England, or chasing Abbot and Costello around with Frankenstein.

Dracula was always my favorite bad guy. He was the epitome of the monsters that you love to hate, and usually I would root for him to win (which still generally happens whenever I play the Castlevania video games.) There was just something awesome about him.

Now though, my entire view of vampires has been changed, and there will be no coming back for Mr. Nutz!

Recently, I decided to borrow copies of the books in the Twilight series, just to see what all the hoopla was about. I'd seen a trailer for the upcoming movie, and I thought that with a fourth novel coming out, I should really see why everyone on the Nutz side of the ol' family tree was going gaga over these books. I figured that they would be fast reads, but I never expected them to be so darn addicting. No sooner could I finish one, then I had to bury myself into the next one.

For the sake of anyone reading this blog who may not have read the books yet (like Mrs. Nutz) I won't go into any detail about the books, but man alive I can't stop thinking about how incredible I thought they really were.

About a week ago, I just finished off the fourth installment, Breaking Dawn, and already I'm going through withdrawls. While I would venture to say that I thought the series ended on a great note (indeed I think that the fourth installment is my favorite of them all) I can't believe that there are no more books about Bella and the Cullen Family. Yesterday morning, as I was getting in the shower to go to work, I even found myself wondering what it would be like to be a vampire like in the stories (sadly, the reality that vampires don't exist wasn't what pulled me out of my daydream; rather it was the realization that being said vampire would make it difficult to ever enjoy being in Disneyland again. I guess my old obsession still trumps my new one...)

On the plus side, Mrs. Nutz is thrilled that I have finished reading the books. She sees it as a plus that now I can concentrate on some more important things, like school work and helping her design product for her side business. I hope that she will soon pick up the books for herself and see why they're so engrossing, but knowing my wife as I do, I know she won't share in my obsessive enthusiasm for them. She tends to be more grounded in reality than I am, and that's why I love her.

Ironically, it was the trailer for the movie that got me interested in reading the books in the first place, and now that I have read them, I can honestly say that I think I will HATE the movie! I guess my sister-in-law is right, you really shouldn't read a book before seeing the movie.