High drama

Life has really been passing at light-speed lately! Smithville has been perculating with events, particularly since last weekend.

The first Saturday in December marked the annual Festival of Lights which, this year, featured the dedication of the cookie sheet we used to create the World's Largest Gingerbread Man (as certified by the folks at Guinness...see page 124 of the 2009 Guinness Book) into a monument under which all future generations can take campy photos. Don't get me wrong, I love the big lug, but it reminds me of National Lampoon's Vacation where Clark implores his family to see the second largest ball of twine in the world. Physically, he reminds me of the StayPuft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters with his eternally jolly expression. Let's just hope some apocolyptic event doesn't occur in which he comes to life and summarily levels our historic downtown buildings.

The high point of the day for me was the finale of High School Musical as performed by the budding thespians of Smithville High School. My daughter was credited as 'Wildcat cheer leader'...not a huge stretch for her seeing as how she's been a cheer leader for a team with a feline mascot for three years now. Challenge or not, she was divine as was the rest of the cast. We laughed...we cried (well, we didn't cry but we cringed a couple of times as the inevitable goofs popped up but rejoiced in the flawless recovery from said goofs)....we felt a range of emotions. (They did a fantastic job!) One of the emotions I felt was disappointment in the fact that we were not allowed to take still photos or videotape the performance without the express written consent of Major League Baseball...I mean Disney. I don't care what they say about their love of families and all things good, when it comes to their precious pocketbooks, you might as well forget all that. As if we're going to take the videotape and dupe it a million times onto blank DVDs and sell them on the street corner of the area that's considered Chinatown in the closest major city....

Other than these events, it's been Christmas prep 24-7. Decorating, shopping, office partying (which is typically the most interesting kind of partying).

Neal and I had a very productive day of shopping yesterday in Austin. One of my stops was Ulta, where Neal refused to accompany me inside. I think he thought he would have to check his manhood at the door. Plus, someone in there could have taken a picture of him with their cellphone and posted it all over Facebook. He could never live that down. Instead, he chose to play with the kitties at the pet adoption day at PetSmart next door, a much more manly undertaking. (To be fair, he split time between the dogs and the cats but I did catch him making goo-goo eyes at a kitty when I came out of Ulta).

But...back to Ulta. I arrived totally stocked with numerous coupons and "buy-this-get-that-free" offers. I was so prepared you would have thought I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the night before. I was no-nonsense in my mission, visiting only the displays that I absolutely had to visit to fulfill my list. I was intimately familiar with the exclusions and rules of usage for all my coupons and was prepared to split my items into multiple transactions in order to get maximum impact savings. I approached the register and started organizing my items into piles when the cashier stopped me mid-sentence and said "That's OK...we'll combine it all into one purchase." I thought "Wow....I think I may have stumbled upon a seasonal employee who doesn't care about the bottom-line and just wants to get through her shift with as little static as possible....YES!" She then scanned each item, scanned the three coupons I intended to use, then flipped over the catalog I brought and said "Did you want to use this coupon too? It's a mascara buy-one-get-one..." I think I fled the register to retrieve another mascara before she even finished the sentence. I arrived back to discover that she had entertained herself by flipping through and finding yet another coupon for an additional $5 off the entire purchase. I knew of the existence of this coupon but would never have had the intestinal fortitude to ask if I could use it in conjunction with the others. That would just be pushing the limits under normal circumstances -- but not with a seasonal employee.

I realized the extent of my good fortune when I overheard the customer at the register next to me try to utilize her coupons in the same manner only to be rebuffed by a stern-looking woman who appeared to be a manager of some type. She broke the news to the unlucky patron "Ma'am, I'm sorry but you can't use this coupon for this item...and this discount only applies to this type of make-up." I knew right away I needed to make a clean getaway before that customer divulged my good fortunes to the mean cashier lady. As I waited for what seemed like an eternity for my credit card to process, I locked eyes with my cashier. We communicated in an unspoken language that said "You better get out of here, fast." I scribbled a completely illegible signature onto the screen, threw down the stylus, and grabbed my bag as if I were robbing the place. "Have a good holiday!", screamed my cashier toward my back as I was halfway out the door. "You too!" I yelled over my shoulder.

You just never know where you'll run into good fortune. Sometimes the little things really make a difference and you are in the right place at the right time with the right answers. It reminds me of an incident in Sunday School this morning. Trent's class was taking a quiz and the instructor posed the question "What was Jesus' first miracle?" Trent knew right away and answered proudly that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine. I think maybe the other kids in his class were taken aback briefly since it was Trent's first day in that class and especially since he is the youngest student in there. Then, Trent added "That's from an Iron Maiden song."

Oh well, just goes to show....