Mall!

Hmm...where was I.  Wednesday last week.  Minneopa State Park.  Well, I can sum up Spring Break Thursday in one word MallOfAmericaAmusementPark.  I read my book, drank coffee, and tried to make up stories about the various strangers I saw, and Eryn ran around and enjoyed the rides for 8 hours.  It was slightly more than 8 hours, because we were out of the ticket line before 10 and she was on the rides past 6, but maybe I have to subtract Chipotle time, DQ time, and Teavana tea-restocking time (it was our not-a-big-out-of-state vacation, so a $40 canister of tea seemed acceptable as an alternative to plane tickets and a hotel)?  For my part, I read a few hundred pages out of a book of post-apocalyptic short stories and took a lot of short walks.  The Mall gives me a serious case of the blahs.  I hate consumerism.  And I say that as someone willing to walk around Target and just look at things without buying anything while my daughter is at guitar lessons.  Heck, the other day I bought a green garden gnome, stealthily hid him in the front yard garden where he's almost invisible, and named him Melvin.  I'm willing to enjoy consumerism with a generalized purpose, just not hundreds of specialty shops that make no sense to me. Although other folks probably say the same things when they see me buying a Deadpool graphic novel at the local shop for Eryn, or a board game at FFG. It didn't help that a trip through Games by James revealed they're selling the same game as FFG for a $20 markup, $28 if you had pre-ordered it for a discount using the FFG pre-order program.  I don't find it offensive.  I find it completely nonsensical.  How can anyone with a phone not look up what they're buying at the mall and decide, "I'm not f-ing buying that here."

As a bonus, while we were eating our DQ Blizzards, the stars of The Longest Ride made an appearance.  There were people in line for over four hours in their cowboy boots and hats to see them.  Brit Robertson is cute for someone born after I graduated from high school, but I can't imagine standing in line four hours to meet her (man, that would be sort of creepy, although there were women there my age who obviously were there to meet Scott Eastwood, barely born before I graduated high school) and I'd much rather meet her pimping Tomorrowland than The Longest Ride.

Regardless, we had fun.  Eryn was exhausted but happy, and I was full up on post-apocalypticism (nice! that's a good word, even if it doesn't really exist).