Day Trip

Today I took a day trip to St. Louis! It may seem foolish, to drive 2 1/2 hours each way just to spend a few hours there, but it was a much-needed and well-timed escape. My original reason for going was simply to pick up my new CPU from the Microcenter in Brentwood, but after a long and busy week punctuated by more anxiety attacks, I was in need of something spontaneous to clear my head for a while. So I texted a friend who I knew to be in St. Louis and made plans to hang out with them for the day. Then, like any sane person, I woke up at 7am on a Saturday so I could get in my car and drive 2 1/2 hours so I could spend a bunch of money (please note my sarcasm).

Anyway, I was pretty stoked when I got to Microcenter. I tried to apply for a Microcenter credit card, but you know how it goes: "Oh, you're 20-something and don't really have a credit history? Of course you can't have one of our cards." Alas. My friend showed, I paid for my CPU (look at that lovely Intel Core i7-5820k in the picture) and we spent the next hour or so walking around the store, ogling geeky technological things that we can't afford; eventually we decided to leave. Then she took me into this store called "Five Below" which, as its name suggests, has nothing over $5. So I picked up this lovely Storm Trooper t-shirt for, you guessed it, five bucks! I thought I was cleverly getting away with something, but then they got me at the checkout with a box of buttons; I couldn't resist a couple that I hadn't seen before which I immediately decided that, for a dollar each, absolutely needed to be added to my collection. From there I dropped my car off for an oil change at Dobbs, some chain-looking auto service place right next to Microcenter (this may seem irrelevant to the story right now, but wait until later).

On we went to the mall, where we stumbled into Teavana (I'm not really sure how to pronounce the name, but it's a tea shop) and I found this bag of amazing oolong that is actually off-limits for consumption until fall (I'll write more about it when the time comes). I then re-discovered how much I don't actually know how to properly go about eating a Chipotle burrito, but salvaged some dignity by reminding myself how delicious an iced mocha is when it's hot and I'm tired. We also found a Microsoft store, which made me a little happy; it was the first time I'd ever seen one in the wild and it was good to know that there stands a contender to the sucker-baiting Apple stores. Though in all honesty, it only made me want to return to Microcenter to play around with their gadgets. After the mall we trolled around some random shops that were clearly designed for people with moderately inflated budgets, and finally found a place that I could get excited about!

The record shop.

The store is called Euclid Records and if you're ever in the Brentwood, STL area, you should definitely check it out. They have probably the biggest selection of used CDs I've ever seen, and most of them are actually good. To give you an idea, I perused for probably close to 45 minutes and only saw about half the collection. Nevertheless, I was able to walk out with a Switchfoot CD that (oddly enough) is now the first one in my own collection, and another CD by an artist whom I only knew one song from: ImaRobot! The CD turned out to be cool (I definitely listened to it twice on my way back to Moberly), but I still think this is the song that will forever play in my mind whenever I think of the band:



Anyway, after the record shop I got a call from Dobb's to let me know that my car was ready for pickup, and also to let me know something that came as a bit of a bummer: my serpentine belt is cracked. He asked if I wanted to go ahead and have them replace it, but after he stated the price, I figured "well, I don't really know how long it's been cracked, but my guess is it'll still get me back home and let me tool around for a couple weeks until I can buy the belt and get one of my auto-mechanically-inclined friends to help me with it." So, with that thought in mind, I did what any sane person would do and told them to leave it be. My friend drove me back to pick up my car, and we decided to part ways for the day; it was barely 4:00, but I was already getting pretty tired and didn't want to find myself nodding off while driving home.

And here I am now, sitting up late and wondering how I'm still awake as I type away at this post. I suspect I'll be exhausted again tomorrow, and don't expect the upcoming week to provide any relief in that department. If anything, I'm going to be even more tired by the end of it because I have things to get caught up on before the semester starts in a measly 18 days (I can honestly say this is the first time I find myself not particularly looking forward to it). That aside, get ready for some more posts; I am planning to write more regularly, and part two of a series I started previously is nearing completion.

I wonder how many grains of rice are in a Chipotle burrito.