Crystal Dog Persuasion

Figures. I was called in this morning just a half-hour after awakening by Donna the head front-end manager. Could I come in at 12PM? No, it was 10:30 and I was still in bed! I made it in by 12:30. For once, the customers were all right. We just didn't have enough people to handle them. Three people called out after I arrived (one from the bakery) and they hadn't assigned enough people to work in the first place. That's how I ended up going in. Another manager actually asked me to stay until 8:30, but I said "No, I have errands to run!" Thankfully, they did get one of the boys to come in for me.

I decided to take advantage of being able to get off at 5PM and do what I'd planned on doing tomorrow when I went to get my paycheck. I first stopped at FYE to pick up The Muppet Show: Season Three, which just came out this past Tuesday. One of the boys working there pointed out the new WebKinz Gecko, which he'd just put on the display. I wasn't interested in the Gecko, but I asked him if there were any other new WebKinz there. He pulled out a bag of snakes and a bag of rhinos before he mentioned another bag of "fluffy polar bears." I knew what he meant - the fluffy white Samoyed Dog! That's one of the two May WebKinz I'd been dying to find. The Samoyed Dogs are gorgeous. (And the kid was right - with their white fur and black noses, they DO kind of look like fuzzy polar bears.) I bought the dog, the Muppets, and a used copy of the out-of-print 1995 CD of the Monkees' rarely-heard 1987 album Pool It!. The 20% off all children's DVDs if you buy WebKinz sale was still on, and coupled with my FYE Membership card and another sale, I picked up the Muppets for about $27. That's $12 less than the $39.99 original price. Sweet.

I had less luck with clothes shopping. I wanted to find new lightweight work pants (both of mine are nearly falling off of me) and a weatherproof spring jacket with a hood. My two hooded sweaters aren't weatherproof (as I've discovered the hard way this week), and my lighter winter jacket doesn't have a hood. Fashion Bug was having a big sale on capris, and that seemed to be all they had. We aren't allowed to wear capris to work. Avenue had the right pants, but the only ones they had in my size were much too long. No one had any jackets, or even light sweaters with hoods.

I had a BBQ Grilled Chicken Sandwich at Tu Se Bella's after I gave up on the clothes shopping. I'll just go into Philly next week or talk Rose into a Deptford Mall trip now that she's done with classes.

It was windy and still cool but sunny when I rode home. I'd heard at work that it had rained on and off all day, but I didn't believe them until I was on my way home and it started to rain...while it was still sunny out! It did it again an hour later, when I was at home and watching Muppet Show episodes. Thankfully, according to several of my customers and Yahoo!Weather, Mother Nature's supposed to make up her mind by tomorrow and let us have a sunny, warm Memorial Day weekend.

Oh, and meet Crystal, my beautiful Samoyed Dog! I moved her into the Candy Bed and Breakfast to help take care of Maisie the Gray and White Kitten. Cassie the Himalayan Cat was moved into the new "Cat Palace" room, which I built when I heard the Cat or the Dog themes may be retired. I didn't want to take chances, so I bought some cat furniture and made a small cat room and added more dog furniture to Nelson the Yellow Lab's "Lab House."