September 28, 2013

This morning I went to the frame shop to figure out the frame for my sister's cross stitch. I felt way more confident there than I do with the people at Hobby Lobby. The lady was helping another couple when I came in but she gave me a stack of purple mats to look through while I waited. I originally thought I wanted a double mat but I found a velvety one that went really well with the color of thread I used and nothing else really went with it. So I decided to just go with the one mat. When I was helped by another lady we briefly thought about a little silver mat and it actually looked pretty good with the purple thread and the purple mat but then moved on from that idea which saved me some money and I think it was a good choice.

Then I needed to pick out a frame and, being a frame shop, they had a ridiculous selection. They had four or five giant rotating rectangles that were covered in frame samples. The rectangle things were covered in carpet and the frame samples had velcro on the back so they could stick to the rectangle things. I was thinking either black or a dark wood and we looked at those along with silver and gold and everything else. I lost count. I eventually decided I wanted to go for a more classic look and ended up going with a dark frame that had curly flourishes on it that were a little lighter and matches the flourishes on the letters in the cross stitch. I think it is going to look really good when it is all put together. And it better for $275. Good grief. But I see it as something that is going to be around for many many years so that expense will be spread out and really not be a thing after awhile. And it is going to look incredible. Hopefully. The only downside is that it won't be ready for two-weeks, so I really missed my sister's birthday, but I think she will forgive the belatedness of the gift when she sees it.

When I got home from that I had lunch and watched some YouTube videos before taking a nap. And sometime after that it was time for my sister's birthday dinner. She decided on a Chinese buffet but a different one from the one we usually go to for birthdays. The other one is usually almost completely empty and the same can be said for the items on their buffet. The one we went to tonight is bigger and actually populated by patrons. And I'd say it is family run like the other one because I think the girl running the register was probably in middle school. On the buffet I got the rice noodles because that is one of my favorite Chinese foods, and I also got vegetable lo mein, a little macaroni and cheese because I wanted to live on the edge, green beans, and a donut. I would have gotten some rice but I couldn't find it. Which is kind of strange. I'm assuming it was somewhere obvious and I just completely missed it.

After dinner we came back to the house and my mom gave my sister her presents and I gave her my card with stickers and told her that she'd have to wait two weeks for her present but it might be worth the wait. Then we headed over to my grandma's for cake and ice cream. And before we got into that I hung up her fall wreath for her. I didn't have the ice cream but the cake was good. When we were done eating and talking we went into the living room so she could show us a short DVD about the St. Croix River because her sister (so my great aunt?) had recently gone on a kayak trip on the river and gave my grandma the DVD about the history of it. Some of the editing on the DVD looked like a bad PowerPoint presentation but it reminded me of the informational DVDs we used to watch in school or that the History Channel would show when they actually showed history stuff. And I like that kind of stuff. It made me want to go canoeing again, which is something I haven't done since high school. The St. Croix River looked a lot more scenic than the murky Kansas River. After the DVD we sat around and talked for awhile longer before finally calling it a night around 9:30PM

Somehow it is already pretty close to 11:30PM and I think I am going to call it a night. Tonight kind of felt like it should have been Sunday, and it wasn't, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow. Probably nothing. I broke out Euro Truck Simulator 2 for the first time in awhile today, taking my big pink truck on a drive across Europe, only nearly tipping it twice. I was a little out of practice. So maybe I'll try that again tomorrow. Or another video game. Or maybe I'll do something actually productive. Yeah.