Mexican Sushi

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y

NIGHT!

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y

NIGHT!

(now keep singing it to yourself while you read the remainder of this post)

I found out how low someone can fall on account of sleep deprivation this past weekend. One can be so tired that their sense of what is and what isn't a good time can become tortuously entangled and impossible to be relied upon. Take this past weekend, for example. After spending nearly a half hour asking one another what we wanted for dinner, I made the call to drive to Q-Doba, the mexican place in Issaquah. It's a chain, and the food is served fast, but it's not really fast food. It's better.

The problem with Q-Doba is that I always leave the restaurant starving. Their portions suck. Saturday was no exception, especially since I did a lengthy mountain bike ride earlier in the day. But not wanting to go home yet -- or to Krispy Kreme next door -- I suggested we go walk around Fred Meyer. "It will be fun" I added.

It's a grocery store and a Target combined. No, it's not a Wal-Mart because the store is actually kind of nice and doesn't have derelects standing at the door waving to you as you enter. It's just Fred-Meyer.

We headed instantly to the electronics section where Kristin listened to me complain about the $60 price tag on Xbox 360 games, before heading over to the music where I teased her about liking Tim McGraw. Our Saturday night then took us past the books, through the paint aisles to the "Would you look at the size of that fishing net!" sporting goods aisle. After pretending to hit each other with aluminum baseball bats, we found a Nerf football and had a good game of catch in the back of the toy section (but not the "pink aisle" much to Kristin's dismay). All was going well until Kristin thought she was ambidextrous and bounced a pretty hard throw off a half-dozen Matchbox cars and into a rather limited selection of action figures.

Throwing the ball around reminded me that I was still hungry, so it was off to the pre-packaged sushi counter for a nightcap. Along the way Kristin got sidetracked comparing the labels on various poisons in the gardening section. My intent was to leave her behind (this ain't the Marines, you're on your own when you go shopping with me) and proceed directly to the sushi area.

Then I saw it. It was an endcap filled with Christmas ornaments and one stood out. Not the one with Homer Simpson and the bottle of Duff, but the one of the plain beige plastic crate with the word "Fragile" stamped on the side of it. Could it be what I think it is? I opened the crate and there it was, in all it's glory, the lamp! But that's not all. This wasn't any old lamp, but a lamp shaped like a leg. It was the lamp. The one from "A Christmas Story" and best of all, each time you opened the crate, you got to hear another audio clip from the movie. And each time you heard the old man's excitement, you could ever so faintly hear the breaking of his wife's heart in the background. What a great tree ornament! I had to have it!

But not for $22, thank you very much. My bubble was busted. I no longer felt like spell-singing the words to "Saturday Night" and I wasn't even sure I wanted any food. Kristin eventually found me (she always does) and together we found the one remaining bundle of spicy tuna, my favorite. It was awful. It had obviously been prepared early in the morning, if not the previous day. By the time we got home and finished our barely-edible snack it was close to eleven at night. Time to put the party train back in the station. But first a simple note is left on the refrigerator to serve as a reminder for future weekend escapades.

Walking around Fred-Meyer is not as fun as you think it is.