Personal: Crimbo Shopping

I’m glad Christmas only comes once a year! I’ve just finished off my Christmas shopping today and it was tiring to say the least. I had brought most things from Amazon at the end of last month (involving a total of 5 deliveries!), but I still had a get a couple of little somethings (mainly for my GESF and her flatmate).

Whilst Leicester town centre wasn’t too crowded, I did find some people annoying. My “normal walking speed” seems to be 50 to 100% faster than others, hence when I get stuck behind people and they just don’t move I get slightly annoyed. Oh – in the town centre, there’s a kinda “mini-theme park”: the standard “crane grab” machines, “hook a duck” and what’s termed a “Bungee Ride”. Basically you (and up to one other person) sits in this cage and it fires you up into the air (over 60ft) at over 8G’s. Wow! I didn’t have a go as I needed to do some shopping…

Anyway, after having a turkey lunch in Woolworths (not too bad for £4.99), I then grabbed some more cash and went up to Boots to grab a few prezzies. I just hope my GESF and her flatmate like them – the only thing is that due to how they “work” Christmas (they both go back to their individual parent’s houses), I’ve got to ensure the prezzies get there before Sunday. If I send them recorded post tomorrow morning then they should (fingers crossed) get to them on Friday…

I grabbed a few other things, grabbed a paper and then popped along to Maplins to look at a couple of prices. My printer (HP Deskjet 845C) ran out of blank ink late last week (so much for the “running low” warnings) and I had just used my final CD-R (around 60% from a batch were fault 🙁 ), so I needed to grab those. Maplins price for a black ink cartridge (HP order code 15) was £24.99 and a “cake” of 50 CD-Rs (without cases) was £19.99. Not too bad, but I thought since D.A.Computers was just over the road, I’ll pop into there to compare prices (as I’ve been a customer of theirs for over 10 years, been ‘aware’ of them for around 15 – and, in fact, brought my monitor, current computer and printer from them). Their prices? £22.33 for the ink cartridge and £18.22 for a cake of 50 80-minute CD-Rs.

Well, now I’ve just got to wrap everything up and get it ready for posting…*grr* I hate wrapping as well 🙁 Oh well – “Hi Ho, Hi Ho – it’s off to flibblepenguin we go…”