The Daily Derenger

6/23/2003

My friend Cyndi and I always make some fun out of an otherwise ordinary situation. Last night was one of those nights. I will try to re-cap how the night unfolded.

*I arrived at her place just after 7 p.m. to pick-up her and her brand new TV. It was broken when she removed it from the box so I volunteered to return it with her. The box was huge and didn't appear that it would fit in the Prizm. However, we packed the TV in the box and hauled it down to may car anyway.

*Once at the Prizm, we tried to shove the box in the front seat, the back seat and even in the trunk. Nothing doing. We then decided to take the TV out of the box so it would fit in the back seat.

"Where will the box go?" I asked Cyndi.

"On the seat next to the TV."

"How? The box won't fit in at all, TV or no TV in it."

We were both puzzled, looking like a physics equation had our number.

I suggested we call the Best Buy where it was bought to see what they had to say. I made the call while Cyndi lit a cigarette. They were closed, did so at 6 p.m. I then hauled the TV back upstairs, this time feeling like I was one of the World's Strongest Men by moving something around for really no reason at all.

The night would only get better.

*We made our way to the Home Depot but I was going the wrong way. We got to the Depot and went in the wrong door. We then got in line to return some tile for Cyndi's new place and debated getting out of line to shop first and then return the tiles. We opted to stay in line and seeing that about 15 people got in line behind us, while we debated, we figured we had made the right decision. For a change.

I grabbed a shopping cart and filled it with three items that we could've put in our pockets. So why the need to shove the cart throughout the store? Still clueless on that one.

Buying a small Weber grill was an impulse buy that I had actually thought about before. However, even though the grill was a great price, the charcoal and lighter fluid weren't. You had to buy 2 huge bags of coal and a enormous vat of fluid that could fuel a train. Why so much of that stuff to put in a tiny grill? I didn't buy any of it and continued on.

We used the self-check-out method. Cyndi scanned her items and instead of placing them in the bag, she set them on top of the bag. I alerted her to the fact that she wasn't following the directions and I placed them in the bag. The machine read that something was wrong and then it began smoking and making loud noises like Cyndi had just stolen a plunger. I guess the machine didn't like the fact that two people were doing a one-person job. We then left, bypassing the hot dog stand on the way out.

*The next stop on "Scott and Cyndi's Excellent Adventure was Target." I parked as far away from the entrance as possible without being in a different time zone. On our way in, we realized that it was 8:50 on a Sunday night and the place would close at 9. We decided to make a mad dash through the store.

"Paper towels, toilet paper, iced tea and a grill," I told Cyndi, who was already off to find them.

The announcement came over the loudspeaker than the store would be closing in 10 minutes. We already had the paper stuff in the cart and couldn't find any tea. We headed for the grill section. The same grill here was at Home Depot for 5 bucks less. I decided to head back to Home Depot only after we hit the grocery store first.

Cub Foods was across the street from Target and since we needed to go there for the tea, we figured the toilet paper and other stuff would be there, too. With that we left the cart in the middle of an aisle and left Target about 3 minutes before 9, nothing in hand. And again we weren't too sure why we stopped there, either.

*The grocery store was quiet late on a Sunday night. Right inside the doors where the carts were sat a huge charcoal display, cheaper than anywhere else that night. Just beyond that display was the toilet paper. Now things were clicking, even though Cub Foods was the second visit to a grocery store for both of us that day. Time management was never a strong suit for either of us.

*We left Cub and began looking for somewhere to eat. Imagine that, the Prizm was loaded with food and we were looking to spend more money on more food. Since it was nearing 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, we knew most places would have no patio service if even an open kitchen at all. We found a place and great parking spot just beside the bar. But you guessed it, closed patio and kitchen.

*Cyndi's bank was just across the street and instead of us walking over there, we drove through. There were no ATM envelopes on the machine. She had to use one of mine from a totally different bank. She added her totals, put her checks in the envelope, sealed it and then forgot to include the deposit slip. She then gave me her pin number. When it came time to punch in the total deposit, we both had forgotten what it was. She guesstimated it, got back the card and we were again off, still quite hungry with frozen food melting in the Prizm's trunk.

*We passed many bars and eventually settled on a place that just looked nice. At that point, we were too hungry to continue the search and would've settled for sautéed antelope skins. The food was actually good at this place with wings and quesadillas winning us over.

*There wasn't an eventful culmination to our night, however. I dropped Cyndi off, helped her upstairs with some stuff and drove away in the Prizm. But man can we make somethin' outta nothin'!