April 16th, my "second" birthday

As many of you know, my birthday is on December 31st. All of you just said a phrase including the words "New Years".
And for some reason, whenever I try to make plans, everyone is allready busy.

I have to compete with some ball in New York.

Not only that, but it's less than a week after Christmas.
Nobody can afford to give a birthday present a week after Christmas.

Because of this (and other reasons), my friend Tym gave me a second birthday of April 16th. He stuck it in the middle of the summer, away from the distracting winter holidays.

Why he picked this exact date remains unknown.

But it just so happens that after he tried to free my birthday from the shadow of Christmas, I went put a wedding on the second. So now my birthday is in the same month as my anniversary.
But that's okay.

Popcorn

So I went to this furniture warehouse the other year, and they gave everyone free popcorn.

So everyone is walking around with these bags of popcorn. Adults and children alike. And they're sticking their greasy fingers all over the furniture, and there's always going to be the occasional spill.

Since when to furniture and popcorn mix?

Anyway, you're probably thinking that it's no big deal.

What if I told you that these weren't "floor models" people were messing up, they were the inventory...

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So a friend of mine used to work at a movie theater, and every night when they closed, they would scoop the popcorn out of those big bins into these big plastic bags.

I appreciate them removing the old popcorn everynight.

But the same popcorn went right back in the bin the next morning...

Kroger *refused* to sell me Hannah Montana cupcakes

Today is opening day for "Hannah Montana the Movie", so it makes since that when I went to Kroger earlier, their bakery had Hannah Montana cupcakes.

Why was I buying cupcakes?

Well, back on December 31st, I had a birthday. I got TWO flat tires. The second one was on the way to an extra run that Desiree the Dispatcher had convinced me to take. She felt bad, so she bought me a birthday cake.

It turns out that today is Desiree's birthday, so to return the favor, I went across the street to Kroger to see what their bakery had.

Entering the store was a challenge.
When I go to Walmart, they have a Greeter welcome me in. No matter when you go, there's a Greeter.

Not only did Kroger not have a Human welcome me, they barricaded the entryway with shopping carts making me fight my way through the check-out lanes just to get into the store. How hospitable.

I figured that cupcakes would be best. Otherwise I'd have to provide forks, plates, and the like.

They had a rather poor selection.

When I had left the pharmacy, there was a large group of drivers waiting around. Bringing back a 4- or 6-pack of cupcakes wouldn't work.

The *only* cupcake tray I saw was the one pictured. A small cake surrounded with cupcakes, decorated Hannah Montana style.

So I took the tray to the checkout. Only the SelfCheck was open (I hate checking myself out).

When I went to scan the tray, there was no beep.
Turns out there was no barcode or price on it.

So I told the cashier. She told me to look on the bottom, which I had allready done.

She said that there was *nothing* that she could do.

I then said, "So I can't buy it?"

And she replied that no, I wasn't able to buy them.

What?

Here I am, holding an item, wanting to pay you for it, and you tell me "No"?

Part of me wanted to just leave the tray on the scanner and walk off, but I'm just not that rude.

So I took it back to the bakery.

And of course, I had to go out through the check-out area to avoid the blockade.
And when the cashier saw me leaving empty handed, she said "There weren't any more?"

And I'm all like, I told you that this was the only one. And she's all, well let me go and see what I can find. Maybe there's one in the back.

Too little, too late.

No, you allready told me that you weren't going to sell it to me.
Waiting for me to walk out the door with my money still in pocket is *not* the time to turn on the customer service charm.
If you had other options, you should have used them while I was holding the merchandise in my hand, when I wanted it. Not after I've given up.

Next time, I'm going back to Walmart.

Hannah Montana Day

So Saturday, March 21, 2009 somehow turned into "Hannah Montana Day".

The day began watching an episode of "Hannah Montana" with Scotland. Then I had a bowl of Hannah Montana cereal while talking to Ireland.

After we were all up and dressed, we headed up to Marsh (a grocery store) where Radio Disney was hanging out, and celebrating Hannah Montana, and the upcoming movie.

Highlights from the Radio Disney event include:

The head Radio Disney crewmember wore a Hannah Montana-esque blonde wig.

While I was entering Ireland's name into a drawing, Dalyn ran into an old friend, Cory, who was their with her daughter.

I entered the parent hula hoop contest. They gave us a few minutes to practice, and I wasn't doing too well. There was one other dad and a mom competing against me. The mom lady was doing as bad as me, but the dad guy was showing off his mad hooping skillz. The mom and I didn't have a chance.
When the contest started, I managed to get a good couple of spins from the hoop, but nothing I could sustan. Amazingly, the dad guy seemed to have gotten a bad start and was fighting to keep his hoop up too.
Somehow, against all odds, I managed to outlast them both!

I WON! Not only did I win a hula hoop contest, I won FOUR tickets to an early screening of "Hannah Montana the Movie" AND a two-sided poster!

I'll be seeing the movie two days before it's official release date. Exciting stuff.

After that, the Radio Disney crew taught us how to do The Hoedown Throwdown (the dance to the song of the same name from the new Hannah Montana movie).

Let's just say that I'm better at the hula hoop.

Things slowly moved on, and we eventually left.

Oh! And Dalyn's friend's daughter won the Wii game for the movie.

It turns out that Dalyn was willing to stay, but I mis-read her signals and thought it was time to go.

Then we went to Barnes & Noble so Dalyn could get the new Fruits Basket manga.

I started to look at Miley Cyrus' new autobiography, "Miles to Go" when I correctly interpreted Dalyn, and put it down.

As we headed back home, Dalyn checked her voicemail, and she had missed a call from her friend who was still at Marsh. Turns out, about 20 minutes after we left, Ireland's name was called in a drawing. She would've won the soundtrack to the new Hannah Montana movie, but we weren't present. How disapointing.

***UPDATE***

We ran into Cory at Walmart and she informed me that Ireland's name was also called to win the book.

*** ***

After we got home, Ireland and I hung up the Hannah Montana poster in her room. This is the first item to adore her walls.
As it was a two-sided poster, we had our choice of looking at Hannah Montana or Miley Stewart. Dalyn voted for "the horses", which was the Miley Stewart side.

Now normally I would work on a Saturday night, but I had taken the night off to get some translating done.
So at 7:00 I turned on Radio Disney to listen to the Planet Premere of the soundtrack to the new Hannah Montana movie that I ('er Ireland) would've won.

Ireland slept through most of it, but when she woke up during the last song (a new version of "The Best of Both Worlds", the theme song from "Hannah Montana"), she requested her Hannah Montana microphone (c.f. http://iksroney.blogspot.com/2009/04/best-of-both-worlds.html). We had tried to find it before going to Marsh, but couldn't.

We searched high and low for the mic. It was gone. The longer this went on, the sadder she became. It was only a few dollars at Target, and we needed a trip to the market anyway, so we rushed out the door to pick up a replacement before they closed.

Dalyn and Scotland stayed in the car while Ireland and I ran inside. (I should take this time to point out that I missed a couple hours of sleep during the day)
Somehow, Ireland and I left Target with $16 worth of Hannah Montana merchandise: 3 different Hannah Montana microphones, a Hannah Montana 3-in-1 pen/stamp/bubble wand, a Hannah Montana notepad, and a Hannah Montana stickerbook. We also got a generic bucket of chalk.

We then had an interesting trip to Kroger, where we did not buy the Hannah Montana Easter Egg decorating kit.

After we got home, and Ireland started playing with Her Hannah Montana 3-in1 pen (she is still unaware of the other 2 functions) and Hannah Montana notepad, I did some laundry. In the middle of the laundry basket, was the origional Hannah Montana microphone.

Go figure.

And of course, I spent the day updating Brightkite and Twitter with all of our Hannah Montana happenings. And no one said a thing about my almost exclusive Hannah Montana updates.

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We will be seeing "Hannah Montana the Movie" this evening, I'll let y'all know how it is :-)