it was a good day

I really did need to do some shopping here, but it didn't take a lot of arm twisting to make me come down to tervis.  And when I saw what the sign said I may have audibly gasped.

Of course the shopping I needed to do wasn't going to come close to $75 worth so I figured I should just enjoy the tervis experience and let the paula deen cookbook go.

So I entered the plastic cathedral, and oh was it glorious:

Now the problem with the tervis store is that while they do have an incredible selection of patterns, shapes, and sizes, their supply is limited.  Say for example they have a set of songbirds, they may only have 3 16oz of each; cardinal, blue jay, wren, and i've run out of song birds that i can think of off the top of my head and am too lazy to google it so come up with your own fourth songbird.

The point is that while some people like to buy within a set, others like to mix and match.  While fine for the mix and matcher, it creates problems for the people trying to complete a set because the most popular will often be missing.  This is why shopping at tervis quickly goes from a casual afternoon of fun to a strategic mind game played between you and the other shoppers.  You start to realize that just like you are noticing where everybody else is looking, they are noticing you.  When you are glancing in somebody else's shopping basket, they are glancing in yours.  It's twisted, it's sick, I don't like it, but I can't get enough.

 Because the store is fairly small you can only really carry around a shopping basket, which means you choose your items carefully.  Sometimes you pick things up not because you necessarily want them, but just because you see that it's the last of a set and you don't want somebody else to snatch it.

As you can imagine I was starting to get freaked out, I didn't think I could do it alone, which is why I was so relieved that Dan, sensing I was at tervis, answered his phone in the middle of the day on a wednesday to help me through some tough tervis decisions.  Of course while phoning a friend had its advantages it had the big disadvantage of totally giving away my hand.  I swear there was one guy who's eyes lit up when he heard me say that something was the last of the set that I could find, and then he went desperately looking for it to see if it was worth him picking up.  I ended up walking around the store whispering in to my phone with my hand covering it, shooting angry looks at anybody who crossed me.

Oh and of course I easily spent $75:

 
To be fair, Dan asked me to pick up some things for him since I was at the store anyways, so that helped me reach my secret goal.

And I love that it's signed, I had actually forgotten that part:

So of course after all of the hustle and bustle of an afternoon at tervis there was only one thing I could think that I wanted to do.

Make and enjoy some delicious iced tea.