Give the Gift of Music this Valentine's

Ruben and I spent the day shopping for Valentine gifts for Natalie. Nothing too extreme, she deserves a box of chocolates as we love her and Valentine's Day is supposed to be all about celebrating love. We started with a grand plan of going to the mall to hit up Godiva (my fave) then heading to Home Depot to get fertilizer for the lawn. Well we made it to the mall ok, did a little shopping, walking around. Ruben bought Natalie a small heart shaped cookie cake - I got my box of chocolates, we looked at the puppies at the pet store, checked out the Disney store, then ultimately broke down and entered the Apple store.....Ruben needed a plug to charge his iTouch, plus he was fondling and drooling over the notebooks. His HP died a few weeks ago and we're waiting for the extended warranty repairs to be done on it - in the meantime he's been using this ancient Dell that requires a WiFi card. I've mentioned before how electronic stores are hazardous for us as we have a major addiction, and right now we are truly having a love/hate relationship with electronics from Ruben's notebook dying, his phone breaking, our Blu-ray player not working, issues with our new Onkyo receiver - and now my notebook as just minutes ago my computer just turned off. It seems to be an issue with where the power cord plugs in...great, now I have to send in MY HP as well. Lovely. In any case, lately an old alarm clock that I've been using has been picking up some strange noises. I tell Ruben it's the aliens trying to make contact - it happens near nightly. He says it's interference with my iPhone, but I don't buy it since this problem just began and I've had my phone for about 6 months now. Somehow or another a iHome alarm clock caught my attention - it works with my phone, and it would solve the strange noise problem. The catch is that the Apple store is highly overpriced. I say this because we had bought Natalie the same model for her birthday and it was $50 less at Toys R Us, so we decided to go to the other mall where Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond is at. Sure enough we found it for just $100 - $50 less than Apple. I'm not sure what happened after that because I can tell you that we have 2 iHome products and we love them both, but somehow or another I ended up with a Jensen that offered all the same features for the same price but is actually an HD receiver. We figured why not, and so far I really like the product itself - though it is a little large for an alarm clock, but I can't say I'm too impressed with HD radio. I think I only found about half a dozen channels, but as far as I know it resolved our problem though I'm sure swapping out that old alarm clock for a different one we have in the house would have sufficed. Oh well - we can use this when we walk on the treadmill. It just goes to show that if you have an addiction you will find any excuse to get your fix!

Oh, and while at Target we did get Natalie two little gifts for Valentine's - a Nerf dartboard and this thing that maps out all the constellations and stuff, cause she loves all things science, biology & weather. So the day wasn't a total loss....it coulda been worse, I coulda walked away with that cute little Bichon Springer puppy I was holding at the pet store :)

A Lovely Surprise

The doorbell rang just a bit ago, I thought it was likely the FedEx man cause Ruben said he was expecting a package to come. Well I open the door to discover it's actually a floral delivery. I'm thinking the whole package delivery was just a line he used to make sure I would be home to accept the delivery. He even remembered and sent me one of my favorite flowers.......I say one cause I love roses, but they cost too much for something that dies so quickly, I love carnations in all their cheap glory, and I absolutely love tulips though they require patience to see their true beauty. Most retailers deliver tulips already in bloom, so they die within days - but a few good places get them straight from the Holland, and they come to you as buds that bloom over the next few days......so with them showing up early it means that they should be open come Saturday. Knowing Ruben I'm sure he has a few other tricks up his sleeve. He knows how I love Godiva, so I wouldn't doubt if he brings home a small box of chocolates or a few strawberries. Other than that we don't really have any plans for V Day. Ruben originally wanted to go out of town for the weekend cause he needs a break from the stress, bile and drama that is our neighbors....I'll elaborate more later, but since it is Valentine's weekend, you can only imagine how hard it was to try to find a room, so we gave up. Maybe some other weekend we'll be able to make plans. Though here in town there are some parades going on this weekend, so maybe we'll hit up one of them if the weather permits. What could be better than Carnival and Valentine's?