**flops over.**

Wooow, what a long day. Made even longer by the fact that I only got four-ish hours of sleep. I had plenty of time for a good sleep, but my body refused. Ugh. As soon as the batch of wash I'm doing is done, I hope to sleeeep.

First thing was that Dad wanted to visit an old friend. We got lost finding the street. But finally we did, and as soon as I saw the place, I remembered vividly being there years ago. It was also August back then, August the 5th, but temperatures were cooler and I waited in the car and wrote and observed some kids at the house across the street. It was honestly an outing I remember very fondly. We drove around the area afterwards and I saw a bride running through her front yard to the back yard. Apparently she was having either the wedding, the reception, or both on her property. We stopped for gas around 8 and I observed that the sun was going down. It was a hint of autumn on the way and I was thrilled. I even remember what I was writing: it was the early chapters of my YGO mystery Ballistic in Boston, when the Jackie Chan Adventures character Viper showed up. I'm not even fully sure why the memory of that outing makes me so happy, as I don't recall finding anything awesome while shopping. But it was such a nice, peaceful street and I was happy to sit there and write and watch those kids and I loved the hint of autumn.

Anyway, this trip out, it was way too hot to even think of me staying in the car. It was practically 100! Uggggh. So I went in. Luckily, the visit didn't last much more than thirty minutes, and the man was very nice.

K-Mart was ... oh brother, a mess. Unlike our K-Mart, which tried to keep order despite closing, this one was helter-skelter, especially in the toy department. Everything was everywhere! I had to dig through the toys on all shelves to make sure I didn't miss something awesome. Only by doing that did I find a Miraculous Ladybug figure, one of Marinette in casual clothes. That was awesome, and she was 10% cheaper than she would have been had I bought figures when our K-Mart had some. The dream that shook me up so much regarding that show seemed to be more in the background, so I snapped her up. Cat Noir was unfortunately the subject of the horrible dream and seeing his picture on the back of the card made me chill a bit, so I don't know if I would have got a figure of him had I seen it. Looks like it will still take a while for the dream to fully stop upsetting me. It's not that I'm leery of Cat Noir; it's just that he reminds me of the dream and it was extremely upsetting to me.

I also saw a doll of Chloe that looked amazingly accurate, but I don't like her and won't like her unless she shapes up this season, so I opted not to get that even though it was a temptation from the high level of accuracy. Then there was a figure of Marinette as Ladybug, but it was a fancy figure that could twirl, and even with the discount, I didn't think I should get that right now because I need to help with grocery money. So I just got the other Marinette figure.

Didn't see any 87 Turtles stuff except another of those Leonardo hats that really hurt to wear. There was lots of Nick Turtles stuff, though. And I find myself regretting I didn't get the snow cone maker. I wanted it badly at our K-Mart, but I couldn't get it then. This K-Mart didn't have it quite as cheap yet, so I still didn't get it. Now I'm thinking that for the sake of 10% more, I really should have, because it's unlikely I can get back to our K-Mart before they close and also unlikely that they will still have any of that product. I didn't realize I wanted the snow cone maker so badly. I'll see how I feel after sleep.

The class reunion had wonderful food! Potato salad, and potatoes drenched in butter, and chicken salad, and lettuce and tomato salad, and chicken teriyaki, and buttered rolls, and so many wonderful desserts! Cheesecake! Lemon cake! Eclairs! Some other cream puffy thing! Ice water! And luckily, I remembered to bring sandwich bags so I could smuggle food out if I didn't finish it all. There were also lots of leftovers on the buffet table, so I decided to help by running off with some of them. I'm not sure if the hotel just throws away the leftovers or what. I heard that if the roast wasn't completely finished, what was left of it would be thrown away. So wasteful! Why not let the employees have it? But anyway. I wasn't interested in the roast, but I ran off with the food I did love.

Aside from the food, though, I have to say that I was underwhelmed by the reunion. It didn't last long, and while I was grateful since I wanted to do more shopping, I was sad at the same time because it felt like there really wasn't much to the reunion and there really should have been, when it's the last official one they're going to have. Five years ago, they had an elaborate program with people singing fifties songs and I just adored it. This time, the program was very short. Everything, including the dinner part, was over within a couple of hours. Nobody seemed to want to stay and visit for long after the official festivities were over. I'm glad my focus switched to being excited more for the shopping, as otherwise I would have been tremendously disappointed. Part of the reason I looked forward to it for five years was because of how awesome the last one was.

I also felt a little less connected than I did the last time. That may be because my main interests right now are cartoons rather than 1950s shows, although I still adore them as much as I ever did.

Since things let out earlier, I debated whether I wanted the big F.Y.E. or Toys R Us more. I chose the former, and I don't regret it. I found an 87 Turtles shirt on clearance for $3! I also saw that they had been selling a shirt with the Team Rocket crew on it, but I couldn't seem to find any aside from the display copy, sadly. I'm planning to try to find the shirt online later.

We needed to grab a couple of items at Wal-Mart, so we hurried across the street to it. When we lived at the old house, that Wal-Mart was always my favorite. It always seemed to have more stuff than other Wal-Marts.

It didn't disappoint. After years, I finally got season 4 of The Wild Wild West! Squeeeee! And for cheaper than Amazon was selling it for! This is honestly the first time I've seen season 4's DVD set in person. I exclaimed out loud when I saw it and I immediately snapped it up. I have taped copies of those episodes, but I bet they're cut for commercial time.

I also saw two Baxters in the figure area! I didn't blog about this yet either, but I've finally been getting some more work and I felt I could offer the Baxter I had to my friend as a gift, as originally intended. And I was very happy that he wanted it and was thrilled with it! I'd like to get him another to make into Barney, as he's expressed the desire to have a Barney too and wishes he could find the figures in his area, but I wasn't sure I should get one right then after I'd had a mini-shopping spree and when I need to help with grocery money for at least a while. And I think the stores down here will be having more of him soon. The one two towns over is finally getting ready to sell the Mutagen Canister line! So I didn't get one. Hope I won't regret that too.

So overall, an awesome shopping time! And I am totally exhausted.

Also, I finally figured out how to get the tablet's Bluetooth keyboard to work, so now I can use it like a mini-laptop. Squeee. It will make typing long messages on the tablet very plausible and pleasant! Usually I've avoided typing long messages on the tablet and wait till I get back to the laptop. Now I won't necessarily have to, depending on what I'm doing while using the tablet.

I got the keyboard hooked up in case I wanted to take the tablet and write story scenes using the keyboard, but I'm glad I didn't. I only had a bit of writing time while Dad was visiting with his friend, so I did it the old-fashioned way, in a paper notebook.

Sigh.

I'm still working with that Turtles fic that was giving me trouble, and it still is giving me trouble. I have, thankfully, been able to get more scenes into it, though. But it's moving very slowly and my attention is still wandering. I'm anxious to do the class reunion story after this one. I already had ideas, and maybe yesterday did give me a little more inspiration too.

Now that I'm more awake than when I wrote the long post in the morning, I find I'm feeling more disappointed and sad about the shortness and understatedness of the class reunion. It seemed like so much work for such a little event. The dinner was wonderful, but like I said, it seemed like there wasn't much more than that and it seemed like it should have been a bigger affair when it was the last official reunion. Heck, the first time I went, they even had a bit with door prizes and stuff and we won a nice hardback novel by a popular local author! And then last year's fifties mini-concert.... This year there was a cute song written to celebrate, and one guy gave a nice speech and the class song was sung, and that was pretty much it besides the dinner. It's weird when milestone events aren't as big as previous ones. This was the last official reunion and there wasn't much to it. Same with the Scottish Festival when they did their 25th Anniversary celebration. It was so lackluster compared to the previous year. But eh, maybe when everybody's getting on so much by now, they were happy for a more low-key reunion.

Still kind of wanting that snow cane maker. Maybe I should see if Wal-Mart carries it and how much they charge. I wonder if they might clearance it as part of summer clearancing, if they have it at all. And I'll stay alert for any possible reason to get to the local K-Mart this week, both for the snow cane maker and also just because, well, I'd still like to say another Goodbye. Especially after seeing the disaster that was the other K-Mart. I don't really want that to be my last memory of the store. Mom's longing to get out somewhere, especially since she wasn't able to go on Saturday. Maybe Dad would be willing to take us to that town this coming week. It's not very far at all.

I also discovered that there is some distressing/holes in the Turtles shirt I got, but only on Leonardo. That makes me wonder if it's not supposed to be there and it's a damaged shirt. I tried so hard to find a good one. One had weird stains of something on it, which I immediately put back, and when I found the one I got I thought it was fine. I didn't realize I needed to check to make sure the picture wasn't damaged. I can't find it on F.Y.E.'s website to see what it looks like there and I wouldn't know how to find it anywhere else. There's just so many Turtles shirts out there. I have no idea when we might be able to go to the little F.Y.E. that's closer or if they'd even have the shirt, so maybe I should just say "Screw it" and start wearing it. It's not a lot of distressing, but if it's not supposed to be there then I wonder how durable the whole picture is. I really hate raised-up designs, since they can peel and flake and everything. The best kind is when it's imprinted right into the shirt's threads. The America shirt is like that, and some of my custom-made classic TV shirts.

I hope I won't regret that I didn't walk down the sidewalk from F.Y.E. and see if the Spirit Halloween store was open. Usually Halloween stores close at 8, so I figured it wasn't open, but there were lights and something was flashing in the window that could have been an Open sign. I was worried about taking a lot of time shopping, since I knew Dad wanted to get home and Mom would be worried, but also, I figured I should really check Wal-Mart's costume selection first, since a Halloween store would be more expensive. Wal-Mart should start getting Halloween stuff in within a week.