You In Danger Girl!

2 Mar

We had a pretty lively weekend, S and I. Saturday began innocuously enough. I awoke to hear S whispering to the pup, “Momma’s going to shower now because we’re going to Auntie P’s house. That’s right, you, momma and Liz. We’re going to have fun today.” (Seriously, how cute is that?)

When I got back from walking the pup, S let me know she wasn’t able to get online. “Can you fix it?” she asked looking lost without her internet fix. I had a look at her settings and figured I’d restart our router and modem in the hopes that that would correct the issue. While the modem and router restarted, we both restarted our laptops.

My four year old Dell running XP booted up pretty quickly, but S’s newer machine running Vista took a dog’s age to boot. “Why is yours so much faster?” she inquired over her tea.

“Probably because I put in 2 gigs of RAM,” I replied.

“Can you do that to my machine?” she asked.

“Probably,” I replied. She immediately grabbed a pen and notepad and began adding RAM to our list of things to buy that day. “Um, don’t add it to our list just yet! We have to find out what your machine can take and what’s in there now,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, defeated that she wouldn’t be getting more RAM that day.

“Just do a search for your model number and see what your machine can take,” I suggested.

“Can you do it?” S asked in her nicest voice while handing me the pad of paper and pen.

“I guess you’re internet searching skills only apply when looking for fan fiction,” I teased.

“Exactly!” she replied, a big goofy grin making its way across her face.

By this point, all I’d managed to do on my own machine was log onto the net and check my e-mail. Knowing S’s low level of patience, I began looking for the specs for her notebook. Finding a site that listed all of the different models of her machine, I asked her if there was a letter on the end of her model. “E!” she announced quite loudly.

“I meant, in addition to that,” I replied.

“Oh,” she began. “No, just the one ‘e.’”

Finally finding a site that would run a test of what was currently installed on her, I sat in front of her machine while S went to get ready. (We were meeting the gals for brunch in the ‘burbs.) The first part of the test told me the notebook could indeed have 2 gigs of RAM installed. When I tried to run the app that would tell me what was installed, I ran into the endless stream of Vista pop-ups asking me if I wanted to continue. After clicking through those, I figured I was on my way. Wrong. I had to be an administrator to run the app.

I found S doing her hair and asked her if she was set-up as an admin. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” she asked applying her make-up. “I don’t know anything about that, I just use the thing.”

“Oh, baby,” I smiled. “I’ll have a look later when we get back.”

With that, I was off to shower. Not long after, we headed out, excited puppy in tow, to the ‘burbs. We were meeting K, P and S’s former colleague Cynthia for brunch. We stopped in at P’s where we left the puppies to play and then made our way to the restaurant.

We arrived first and grabbed a booth while we waited for K and Cynthia to join us. We chit chatted and ordered coffee until the gals arrived. As it turns out, K and Cynthia walked in at pretty much the same time, K bringing some books she was loaning me. I had e-mailed her earlier in the week asking if she’d read anything good of late. She loaned me Love in the Time of Cholera and The Almost Moon. I was grateful for the books as I didn’t have anything lined up once I finished Seeing.

The conversation was as animated as ever as we chatted about what we’ve been up to. P told us about her upcoming trip to Florida for a week – when S and I will be dog-sitting her pup – and about how an old flame will be coming from out west to visit. “You two belong together!” K teased.

“Oh, please,” P argued. “We’re more like brother and sister than anything else.” Everyone rolled their eyes at that one.

“Except brothers and sisters don’t do what you two do,” S chimed in.

K went on to tell us about her date with Mr. 69. Apparently, he brought flowers to their date and then sent her flowers to her work a few days later. To K, it reeked of desperation. To S and I, it sounded like a player following a set formula. S and I are trying to find a man for K, so hopefully we’ll land one for her soon.

Cynthia and P (who live very close to each other) seemed to hit it off. So much so that P gave Cynthia her card in the hopes of taking her up on her over-night dog-sitting offer.

Since our waitress wasn’t trying to escape an emotionally void marriage, our tip wasn’t enormous. After brunch, we parted ways with Cynthia and made our way to the land of all things big – affectionately known as Costco.

To limit the amount of rage S will have, I take over steering the cart while we’re in the store. This ensures that she doesn’t plow it into anyone who annoys her. S and I picked up some blank DVD discs (some dual layer ones for me to try out) and P went about looking at TV’s.

Back in December, she purchased a big honkin’ 47” HD flat screen Sony Bravia that was on sale from Best Buy. Only problem is, it’s not the greatest TV, the picture is blurry, even when on an HD channel. P is the type of person who agonizes over every purchase. Finding out that the TV she waited so long to get wasn’t all that great really had her in the dumps. The lesson there is do plenty of research before buying a big ticket item like that. P figured all HDTV’s were alike, she was wrong.

We left her in the electronics’ section licking her wounds and we picked up the other items we wanted to get. K remembered that she needed some kitty litter so I angled the cart around to make it easier for her to drop the 50 pound box of litter into it. Turning the cart took up some space and it pissed off this woman who was coming to get some litter too. “Watch out for people,” K said seeing the unhappy woman approach us.

“Yeah, miserable people!” S said loudly in the hopes of antagonizing the bitchy woman.

While looking for her brand of face cream, S saw another one and figured she’d give it a try. Not looking at the price, she nearly fell over at the check-out when the cashier rang it through at $150. “Take it back,” I suggested.

“Well, if it costs that much, it’s gotta work!” S replied. S seems to think she needs to use anti-aging cream. She fails to see that she looks much younger than her age and is absolutely beautiful without the help of creams or make-up.

After Costco, we drove to the end of the lot and went to Future Shop where K wanted to look at stereo systems. S and I wandered around, looking at Blu-Ray movies but not seeing anything that caught our eye. Once again, we lost P in the TV section. She spoke to a salesman who told her that her Bravia TV didn’t have enough Giga Hertz to produce the sharp picture of most HDTV’s. K didn’t find any stereo systems that she liked so off we went. All shopped out, we said good-bye to K and went back to P’s place.

We visited for awhile and P continued to bemoan her blurry TV. S suggested she put it on Craigslist and use the money to buy a higher quality TV. I think that’s probably the route P will end up taking. Not long after, S and I collected our pup and made our way back home.

While waiting for dinner to cook, we were each at our respective computers. Out of nowhere, S burst out laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

Through her tears, she told me that the newest phrase to pop up on the forums she visits regularly is, “You in danger, girl.” She’d been reading a thread about what to do when running into a closeted ex and someone had posted, “You in danger, girl.” The randomness of it had S laughing so hard she was crying.

I was almost in tears too, from frustration though. I have some large video files I wanted to burn onto disc. Only the discs we had weren’t big enough, I needed some dual-layer ones. Having bought some at Costco, I was quick to give it a try. Only problem was, the burn failed. I spent over an hour searching online trying to figure out if it was my burning program (Nero) or my burner that was having the issue. I still haven’t figured it out, but I’ll keep looking.

For some reason or another, we got up early yesterday morning. “The grocery store is open 24 hours.” S announced gleefully as I walked in from walking the pup. “Let’s do our groceries this morning!”

“Can I have my coffee first?” I asked.

“Yes, I just meant that we should go after that since the store is open,” she said.

I finished my coffee and made myself presentable. S finished getting ready and off we went to get groceries. “Are you hungry?” I asked S.

“No, why?” she asked back.

“I’d just like to know ahead of time what kind of shopping trip to expect,” I replied, smiling.

On our way into the store, S shared, “I’m going to be eating lots of cheese this afternoon.” We made our way around the store, adding items to our cart. While in the deli section, she gleefully announced, “I’m going to go get a cheese that I don’t have!” She reminded me of when I was younger and the kids in the neighbourhood were always on the look-out for hockey cards we didn’t have in our collection.

We wove our way down all of the aisles. “Is that it?” S asked looking inside the cart.

“I’m pretty sure,” I replied.

“Wow, we should do all of our shopping in between feedings,” she chuckled.

We stopped in at the dry cleaners and picked up the futon cover the cat had peed on. Had we known it was going to cost $44 to clean it, we would have just bought a new one. On our way back to the car, S asked if I wanted to go to Tim Horton’s (there was one nearby.)

“Do you?” I asked.

“Yes!” she replied, with a big grin.

We pulled into the Tim’s lot and I asked if she wanted a breakfast sandwich.

“Yes!”

“And a steeped tea?”

“Yes!”

“And a maple donut?”

“Yes!”

I went inside and purchased ourselves a delicious (but very unhealthy) breakfast. Shortly there after, we were at home enjoying our Tim’s sandwiches and drinks.

After putting away our groceries and placing the cover back on the futon, we vegged out at our laptops. S was surfing and I was editing a story I’d written. Shortly after 1, our dog groomer showed up to trim the kid’s nails. (S and I always bugger it up.) She was able to get the pup’s nails shortened down such that we no longer hear her when she’s walking.

The mini-groom didn’t take too long so we were back at our pc’s in no time. “I’m going t have my cheese, now!” S happily announced. I thought she was just going to have a little bit but she brought out a huge tray stacked with two kinds of cheese, grapes and crackers. I, not a big cheese fan, helped myself to some grapes and crackers. “You should have some crack cheese,” S said, spreading some on a cracker.

“Crack cheese?” I asked, curiously.

“Yeah,” she said, holding up the cracker covered in cheese. “This is like crack, it’s so good.” I think her eyes crossed as she put it in her mouth.

I’m not really sure what brought it on, but for the rest of the afternoon/evening, S kept shouting, “You in danger girl!” Sometimes she said it pointing to the dog (who was not amused). Other times, she said it to the cat (who thought she was being offered treats.) S has a great smile, so seeing it that often while she’s in a silly state is always great to see.

After some channel surfing, we called it a night and made our way to bed.

“Goodnight, baby,” S whispered into the dark.

“Goodnight.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Thanks for putting up with my craziness today.”

“Uh huh,” I managed to mutter as I fell asleep.