It was a little windy and rainy when Betty and Steve came and picked us up on Monday, we were gonna go to the Japanese restaurant in Carbondale, one with a hibachi table where they slap up the food right before you, but alas it opened at dinner time and as it was lunch and especially as Matthew had forbade me breakfast, tummies were a rumbling!
Lunch was then taken at the Golden Corral, where I had the best darn Cajun fried Cat Fish I've ever tasted, of course I went back for seconds along with a second helping of tasty sauteed mushrooms, which danced on the tastebuds for a mere matter of seconds, but will no doubt lay on the hips and the belly for months! I am, it has to be said putting on a great deal of weight over here in the land of super-sized everything, but really, I only gave up smoking a short while ago, so therefore it's understandable that I've piled on a few excess pounds! Look that's my excuse, I'm sticking to it like glue and that's that!
After I'd cleared two plates, and a bowl of ice-cream we jumped in Betty's smart black BMW SUV and headed up to Best Buy for some techno browsing. Best Buy, for those not American is a rather large electronics, electrical and gadget store - think Dixon's & Curry's combined, add in PC World slap a taste of CarPhone Warehouse and a smidgen of Jessops and a tiny bit of Apple and your pretty much there, only the prices are dead cheap, service may be a little slow at times, but they seem to know what they are talking about. It's a fab place to look around and do a mental wish list, so much on offer, like Matt's new fav technological item the Palm Pre, which is a phone, sort of, it's got pretty much all the functions of a BlackBerry and a snazzy little keypad that slides down from the bottom, although I fear my fat stubby fingers would be no use on such a thing, if I wanted to type Matthew on it, I'm sure it would come out as mn,ayttryeewqe! Still it looks sleek, smart and good, mind you it bloody well should do at $300!
I was almost tempted by a Wii fit, which is only $79, well I did say I've piled on the pounds and that would be good to get 'em off, but I'm England bound in three weeks and I'm not gonna shift much weight in three weeks. Besides, Matt's always playing something else, so getting near the lovely sharp 32inch HD TV is difficult personified!
I considered buying a new purple iPod nano, which looks so smart, so cute and lovely, but really, can I justify splashing $143 which is about 87 of our English Pound Notes, I've got a Nano, not as purple, not as new, but it's a nano nonetheless with the same 8GB. (A 16GB nano is $199 so that's a little more pricey at roughly 121 quid. Oh I don't know, but I'd like a new toy! I did look at a black iPod classic 120GB for only $237, which is about £144 and 120GB is enough for about 30,000 songs - which is more than most radio stations! Matt wants a iPod touch, so do I for that matter, a sleak and sexy thingy with a touch screen and 32GB for a price tag as little as $399!! Are these good deals or not? I'm not sure, I only know my wish list is getting bigger and bigger (just like my waistline) by the day!
After that we dashed around the parking lot at Carbondale's mall place and headed into a wondrously huge Barnes & Noble book store. Gosh this place is big, Matt's parents and I had a coffee and a natter and then looked at all the wonderful stuff, all the exciting and not so exciting books. It was amusing to see books about England in the Foreign Travel section and a Local History section that vast tomes about Indian's. The native Americans sure did have some strange and funny beliefs and customs, but then again. I suppose we all do, when you look at them with fresh eyes, I mean for example, it's a strange law that we English folk can't eat mince pies on Christmas day!
Matt has suddenly found a new desire in life, no he's not having it away with the fella down the road in the other apartments, he's got the idea he wants a tropical fish aquarium, so we spent an absolute age looking at them. Yes they are pretty, yes they are good for getting rid of stress, yes it's peaceful, but they are jolly expensive and you can't take 'em for a walk!
Today has been a slow day, woken at 4.30 with a massive thunderstorm, the shook the building, rattled the windows and scared the dickens out of me. After an hour it died down, to UK standards so I eased back in to sleep mode. It was 11am when I next peeped out from the inside of my eye-lids and yet another thunderstorm was all around us. Checking the TV weather showed a huge band of it trailing pretty much all the way down the state. It was all red on the map and outside it was wet as anything and the flashes coming pretty much every other second. Indeed when Matt was on the phone to his father, he said it was pretty much like a strobe light going off, which indeed it was. Plus the thunder, it just seems to be rolling on, all the time of a storm, hardly ever stopping.
After the storm had passed, we had a drive about, looking at some local stuff, going to the post office to pick up a box, off there and here, just going where the road takes us. Well, OK, Matt knew where we were going, as adventurous behind the wheel he is not, but I had no clue, which is what I like and the wonder of it all was that it was only on the interstate for half the trip!
One of the many interesting things to see driving around America is the amount of drive thru's they have. Burger King, MacDonalds, Sonic, Dairy Queen, Little Caesers, Taco Bell, to name just a few. But what, I as a little English boy hadn't expected was the drive thru bank, but it's what they have. Yep, banks that you can not only drive up to, but thru, well sort of, but it's not just a drive thru ATM, but full banking service, either with a window and person or a speaker, microphone and a clear tubey thing that shoots up and over and inside the building. I kinda wanted Matt to open up an account, just so we could use the bank's drive thru, but he declined my wish, still as we slurped down a Dairy Queen, is was not to watch it in action! Wonder if it would catch on in England? And, what happens if it's the passenger that wants to do the banking?
Drive Thu banking, for those on the go!
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