Sunday

Before I get started on Sunday, I have to go back and add even more to Saturday’s madness. When we first got on the highway, after renting the car, we were behind this EconoStar van, or whatever. I don’t know what model it was, but you know, the generic Ford one. Regardless, it was only a few seconds before we realized that this fucker was swerving all over the road. He went off the road onto the unpaved shoulder twice, and he was leaning into the right lane a lot too. It took about 15 minutes for me to get the balls up to go right and pass hard. Luckily when I decided to pass this drunk bastard, he made another visit to the unpaved shoulder on the left. I hope he didn’t hurt anyone. What a wacko.

On to Sunday! We woke up pretty late, 11ish or noon I think, since the alarm and cops kept us up the night before. Geoff pointed out that since we were at an extended stay motel, there easily could have been prostitutes next door who just take over a room for a week. I laughed, and then I cried. Then I made Geoff go to Target. Our Target run was pretty fun, highlighted by purchasing endless food in fucking Target, and then Geoff getting baseball cards and me trying to steal ketchup packets from the Target restaurant, which sadly did not have any ketchup packets. Bitches. Seriously though, the Target was pretty close to a grocer, with the wide variety and all. I even got me some Golden Grahams!

Then we got back home. Then the phone rang.

Let’s back up. Late Saturday night, Geoff called AirTran and they announced they had his bag and would be making a run out there the next day. So, earlier on this day, Sunday, like around 7 or 8, Geoff woke up, as he was being called by AirTran. They announced that they would bring his bag in the early afternoon. This was sufficiently vague for Geoff at this early hour, so he went back to bed.

We came back, and I stated that we had done enough “settling” and it was time to “continue in an orderly fashion”, or something to that extent. Naturally, we ordered a pizza and sat around watching basketball and waiting for the bag. The pizza came, and a few minutes later phone rang again. For some reason, whenever our phone rang, it rang once real short and stopped, as if someone called and hung up as soon as they heard the phone ring on their end. After two more of these short rings, when it was about 1:30 or 2, I told Geoff that his bag could be down in the main office, just because the guy could have just thrown it there and the front office could be trying to call us and failing, somehow. Did you follow all that? Go back and read it again. Geoff said it wasn’t confusing, but he was there.

So Geoff went down there, but the line was really long so he came back up. A very short while later he went back down, and returned with his bag! So, I guess our theories drawn out above may have been true. Or they just didn’t call and someone else was stalking us. Whichever.

Geoff finally showered, and we then decided that instead of waiting around and watching the beginning of UAB-Kentucky, we would go to a mall we accidentally discovered when we tried to go to Target. Yes, you read that right. This is what happened. I went right out of our motel. I drove past the weird left turn for Target. I went right at the next light so I could turn around and go to Target. It looked like a normal road, but it was really a driveway to a mall. There was NO WAY to see the mall from the main road, because of all the trees and random stores closer to the main road. And really, there weren’t any signs for the mall or any of the stores in the mall. It was really, really strange.

So we decided to go to this mall, just because it was so random to find it, and really we wouldn’t have found it except for luck, so we might as well visit it. Little did we know that this mall would also be INSANE. Well, in retrospect we should have seen it coming.

We came in through some crappy department store, possibly Dillard’s. This is where we found the bong-like glass things, which are featured in the photo gallery. We went through, and Geoff and I both noticed that this mall looked a lot like Richmond Mall back home; it just needed more people. This mall had 4 shoe stores. And we visited all of them!

First one was Champs. This was the best visit for us, because we found a couple cool t-shirts, and I also got a couple headbands, including the return of the blue-on-white T-Mac headband. This, of course, is the headband that was last seen last spring break at Northwestern. Circular, no? I also was asked if my t-shirt was from Urban Outfitters by the girl in the store. The shirt was from Urban Outfitters, as it was the “Don’t mess with Texas” shirt that Flori gave me. The way the girl said “Urban Outfitters” was bizarre, as if UO was some sort of high-class place. I was a little off-guard, but I handled it ok.

As we were walking through the mall, I saw Florida’s Store. No, really. Burdine’s is Florida’s Store, if their byline is to be believed. It was really weird that a store would be called Florida’s Store. Geoff pointed out that they didn’t have much room for expansion into other states. I told Geoff that some other department store probably bought them instead of moving into the Florida market on their own. He agreed. We then looked further into Burdine’s, and found that it was Macy’s. So, everyone remember – Macy’s and Burdine’s are the SAME PLACE.

We went to Foot Locker, Finish Line, and whatever the fourth shoe store was. Finish Line was the only other interesting stop in the mall. Geoff found another fun t-shirt, and when he went to buy it, the girl at the counter started flirting with him, to try and get him to sign up for some free Sports Illustrated shit. (it started out with me trying to buy a kids medium shirt and the two of us having a good laugh about how it would look on me) While this was happening, the other girl who was working asked me if my shirt was from Urban Outfitters, using the same tone of voice as the girl from Champs. I handled it better this time, because I was already battle-tested. However, these girls were not interested in me. Both of them were flirting pretty heavily with Geoff, especially when he told them that he had graduated early and was going to work for a bank in Chicago. They seemed very impressed by this. One of the girls said “I have 3 months left”. Geoff asked where she went to school. She responded, “Lakeland High School”.

We didn’t see this coming. We thought they were in college, for sure. We stumbled out of the store and found our way to the food court, where I secured a cherry and Coke Icee. We visited a few other stores quickly, and we drove by a building that used to house a Wal-Mart (this brought Geoff a lot of happiness, because he hates Wal-Mart), and then we went home still reeling from the “Lakeland High School” response. Of course, we came home to see UAB and Kentucky embroiled in a classic battle, one which you all know the outcome (UAB won. Hehe.)

Not much else happened that night, as we just watched lots of crappy Fox TV and read. We watched some Arrested Development, as there was a marathon on FX and then a new episode on FOX. I enjoyed it thoroughly. We were still reeling about “Lakeland High School” as we went to bed. I checked if Money Train was coming on. It wasn’t. We went to bed early anyways, because Monday we were driving clear across the state to Vero Beach, Dodgertown, and a Dodgers-Red Sox game, our first baseball game of spring break.