The Emerald Rose

 Things to do on Sunday night.

              Happened to be reviewing my e-mails the other day at the Pub, over a pint of course, which I am prone to do the end of each day, and well, a TV commercial caught my eye, on a new TV series (ok, and now a days they are  not very exciting as a rule, you know, “Desolation; three years on an ice flow with a penguin family, and only a box of froot loops”, or “Belly button lint and it’s value on E-bay”), but this one was about a history series, I love history, basically my major since as George Santyanna put it, “If we forget  history we are damned to repeat it.”.

         The name of this series was simple enough to remember, “America: The story of US.” The trailers looked well done, and the story interesting enough, and not the usual rehash rhetoric, so I made a mental note,….”Self! (I always call myself that, it’s short and easy to spell!), make a note to check it out on Sunday night.

          As life would have it the next day I was at the gym (Gold’s ; wonder who Gold was, but he’s got ’em everywhere), diligently working off the 300 plus calories of fermented malt beverage of the previous day so as to be able to re-hydrate with more fermented malt beverage today, (Hey, you have to have goals or exercise is just plain boring,…so whatever floats your boat. BTW,  I strive for the loss of 2,750 calories a week, which when divided by the 92 calories in a Mich Ultra equals 29.891304 12 ounce beers for the same time period, ….well as you can tell exercise can be fun!)

        But I drift. So anyway here I am working out, watching “The Untouchables” on an old movie channel, and the same commercial comes on! So I recheck my note and put a star by it.( Try doing that after you have committed it to memory, but a thin pencil in the left ear canal will do it.) So yesterday afternoon I’m again going over my e-mails, (took the wife shopping earlier, sort of a married “quality time” thing, you know?) at the pub and another commercial for the series comes on! By now I’m thinking whether you want to put stock in it or not, Karma is a reality,…so I put another star on it. (Damn that ear is beginning to hurt.)   Well at the appointed hour as I was beginning to “Surf” the channels to see what was on, my wife reminds me tonight is the night, for the History special of course.

         It was magnificent!! I can’t say enough good things about it. In fact the second part will be on next Sunday evening so I would bet the ranch the first part will be repeated at least five times this week as well before the second. But watch it. The only dull boring part was a 60 second message from our Presidente, King Obama. (Sorry Democrats, but remember, you were NOT the guys who founded the country. It was God fearing fiscal conservatives and other s of the same mindset who believed in life , liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not loaf, layback, and someone else should make you happy!)

        Even the commercials were great, for example I never knew if you followed the banking of this country some of the original banks can be traced back through the Bank of America,…that’s impressive! (Ok, Ok, …little things amuse little minds!) 

       Bottom line yes by all means I urge everyone to catch it. If the rest of the series is as good as this first episode it will be one of the best I’ve ever seen. (Oh and as an aside, The History Channel is providing EVERY school in this country with a copy of the series for FREE, I most certainly hope it is viewed often.

 Back to the “rant” thing for a minute

           Went shopping with the wife, which I already mentioned, at a new department store in the next city, (which shall go nameless), and I actually enjoyed the experience, (don’t push it girls,…that’s once in 65 years, be thankful!).

          Anyway it was clean, neat, well organized, clearly marked, AND to the last one, every person I saw working there was pleasantly, helpful,…and most definitely enthusiastic and not your typical “pushy retail” droid. You know the kind, “Fill out a credit card application and I get a credit of four “Big Old Lady Dress store points toward my review”, or the never to be forgotten, standard reply of the vast majority of “retail associates,….”I dunno.”, to every question ever asked, even for their name.

       (I gotta stop this “digressing” crap!). Anyway we started picking up a couple of things, muscle shirt for working out, “capri’s” for the wife (what ever they are, I call ’em “shorts” and she gets pissed!”) and I found a pair of shoes, brown loafer type, on sale for $31.99, AND a really cool pair of sunglasses (why do they call them a “pair” they are only a “set” of lenses , but one “sunglass”) Anyway as we are walking along some old guy comes over and hands my wife a folded up paper, and says ,…”Here, maybe you could use it, I can’t.” and walks away. My cynical mind starts thinking, “damn, can’t they keep these proselytizing folks the hell out of here, I went to church this morning, leave me alone!” ) Anyway it was a 15% discount coupon off of ANYTHING, and it said, “Yes that’s right, ANYTHING you buy in the store today”.

         Then as we get to the cash register there is a pad of forms that say , ..”Give us your e-mail address and get an extra 5% off your purchases today.” So I figured what the hell , I fill it in with the Wife’s e-mail address, think better of that and crumple it up and put in my own e-mail address ( a new shopping control tactic from my upcoming book, “Avoiding an argument, and keeping shopping costs down”, OR ” If they don’t know there is a sale they won’t go there!”)

        So we check out and I hand the girl, who like everyone else was very pleasant, told us EXACTLY how much we saved on each item we bought, and eagerly, and with a SMILE, took the 15% off paper and the 5% off form and applied them against the entire total,….no exceptions, if’s and’s or but’s.

        So that brings your total down from $234 to $92, that’s an overall savings of  $142 on your purchases. (She even pulls out a red pen and circles the amount we saved!) Congratulations! Come back and visit us again, …oh, and here is your 15% off coupon back, it’s still good until next Saturday.”

        So we leave smiling, content with our purchases, our discounts, the staff, the cleanliness and orderliness of the store, in fact the entire shopping experience. Well done retail store management and corporate management, what ever program you have in place your entire staff is buying into it,….and that’s the name of the BIG game. If your folks believe they will execute.

       So now it’s 18 hours later, my muscle shirts are cool, (wearing one to the gym this afternoon as a matter of fact), the shoes look great, and fit properly, my sunglass is “really cool”, meets all my criteria for a sunglass, and the wife loves her purchases, BUT,…..

        My cynical brain segment got a good nights sleep and is now hard at work “popping” little hand gernade thoughts in my head, like,…”59.7% SAVINGS on your purchases,…be real they still made at least 100% profit on you and all they did was double the original cost DUMMY!”, or “You got shoes, you got a couple muscle shirts, now you got even more that you don’t absolutely need and THEY got a Hundred Bucks of your money,….DUH?”

        BUT, what Mr. Cynical doesn’t realize it was worth the $100 bucks. On the way home the wife says , “So what are you going to do when we get home?” The brain synapses leap into overdrive and my mouth opens and ,……”Got to update a software program on my computer and then off to the Pub for a couple beers, what time did you want to have supper, I figured you’s want a little time to just sit and read a bit since we been on the go since 7am this morning.”

         “Oh,…is 5:30 ok for dinner?”

          😉

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