Because my mom wants to see a picture

I spent the afternoon with a couple of friends yesterday. Over the course of our travels, we ended up at Superstore.

Now, yesterday was the last day of July, which means that in the retail world, it's time to buy Halloween candy. I mean, I understand having school supplies out, but Halloween candy was going a bit too far.

In other words, the retail world considers summer over, which means that summer stuff is on sale. Specifically, they had a patio set on sale for $100.

I've been wanting a patio set, and had planned to buy one before the disaster that was May (when I broke my laptop, the desktop computer died, and the washing machine had to be replaced).

I wasn't driving, though, so I couldn't buy one at the time. We continued going about our day, and after I picked up my car, I went back to Superstore.

Now, this patio set consisted of 4 chairs (in 1 box), 1 table (in another box), and an umbrella (in a third box).

None of them fit nicely into a shopping cart, but I persevered. I got to the checkout, and discovered that I couldn't fit the cart through the opening.

Luckily for me, the cashier came out and copied down the code. Having succeeded in task 1 (load the boxes onto the cart) and task 2 (pay for the merchandise), I proceeded to the door.

Now, let me remind you that this was a grocery store on Saturday afternoon. It was late enough that it wasn't super crowded, but people lose their minds in grocery stores. They are utterly incapable of stopping beside whatever they're looking at - they have to stop two feet away and block the aisle while looking.

I made it to the car. I looked at the car. I looked at the boxes. I opened the trunk.

At that point, a Superstore employee came over and started helping. Maybe that should be "helping".

He had some good ideas, but there were some things he had problems with - like the concept that a round table cannot possibly be taking up every inch of a square box, so if we took it out of the box, it would take up less room.

Eventually, we got everything in the car (even if the chairs were tied in with an extension cord), and I started the slooow drive home.

When I got home, I scammed Wanda into helping me assemble the table and we set everything up on the patio.
(Yes, I know the patio needs weeding.)

So far, I love having it. I spent a couple of hours out there yesterday and another couple today. I'd probably be out there now if I didn't feel like I should be doing things inside.

I'm hoping that this summer's beautiful weather continues a bit longer so that I can get more use of of it this year.