Which end is which?!

I did some ironing yet again last night. I told the Big Guy, I think I'm addicted to ironing. Mind you, it's not my favorite chore to do. I just like doing it for now. For the past couple of nights, I've been ironing a couple of pants and shirts, etc.. and then I call it a night. I guess it's my winding down method. Call me weird. Anyway, last night the Big Guy noticed something weird about my ironing. He said I was ironing on the wrong end of the board. I had it with the long pointy part on my right. He said that when ironing, I should be putting the waist part of my pants on the pointy end and not the wide end of the board. So I tried to turn the board around like he said, but it wasn't comfortable. He started laughing and he said I'm weird. But really, is there a particular direction where the wide end and the pointy end should be? I'm so confused.

It's been too darn hot lately! Saturday was the pits! It was so hot my skin started hurting again. This isn't something OA people - my skin REALLY starts to hurt when it's hot. The Big Guy started laughing because by 3pm, my arms were red and HOT!!!

We went car shopping on Saturday but it wasn't too productive since it was too hot to be outdoors. I think it was the wrong weekend to head up to the inlaws - where it was about 15 degrees hotter than where we live. It would've been a great city day, that's for sure. Sorry Mickee - the weekend was a big blur I didn't even have time to call. I'm such a putz. Sorry. I only wanted to test drive one car: the Volvo! And I did and boy do I love that car!!! The Big Guy at first thought I was smoking crack because we walked around the lot and couldn't find the V50 - turns out it is SO brand new it hasn't rolled out to the market just yet. There was one in the lot that we were able to test drive and it was great. We're not quite at the XC90 level just yet (just like the FIL and Ana O) but my mission was just to find a "Mama Car" that wasn't quite screaming "I'm an MILF!" Ha! The thing is - we need a car soon and the V50 would've been good if it is available now. But if we customize it, the car we want won't be ready until December. Yikes! We could pre-order now, but it would take a while. Can we wait that long? After looking at the Volvo, everything else was so secondary. Looked at the Pilot - nah! Looked at the Element - DEFINITELY not! The Big Guy wants to go check the Nissan Murano. Maybe this weekend won't be too hot that we can resume our car search!

Absolute Highs:
- Scrabble bonding with SIL, MIL and the Big Guy. That was fun although the Big Guy is shady to play with! "I think I'll pull a Nelson...
- Beef Rendang from Es' nanny. Thanks Ai-yi. Indo food dinner last night with the rendang and our fave, Mi Goreng. Mom and Dad over for dinner.
- Family dinner last Friday.
- Jake learning to say "there you are!" when playing hide and seek and he finds you.
- Target shopping (even without discount - you suck Bullseye!)
- Jamba Juice and Starbucks treat from the Big Guy.
- Cha-ams dinner with the IL's. Lovin' the ice cream!
- Dad's "calendar project"
- Helping the Big Guy sort out MIL's pictures for her 60th birthday dvd.
- Crisp white shirts (can't live without them!!!)
- 3day weekend coming up!
- R giving birth to baby Marcelo Orlando Enriquez Alfonso. Mommy and Little One are doing great.

DO YOU THINK SO?!?!....READ ON....

Best and worst places to shop
Surveys: Wal-Mart, Target win customer service bragging rights; Amazon, Barnes & Noble score online.
CNN Money
August 31, 2004

"Shopping is a sensory experience. People are subconsciously recording things like the layout of the store, the lighting, whether the aisles are overflowing, whether the prices are clearly indicated and how easy or difficult it is to find a product every time you visit a store."

Wal-Mart, Target earn bragging rights
According to Consumer Intentions & Actions Survey, discounters Wal-mart and Target took the top two slots in a ranking of top 20 retailers with the most courteous employees. Home improvement leaders Home Depot and Lowe's followed at third and fourth, respectively. Some factors that annoyed people the most, even prompting them to switch to another store, were rude behavior, salespeople who were unfriendly or weren't around to help and staff that wasn't knowledgeable about the store or the products. However, high-end retailer Nordstrom and wholesale clubs Sam's Club and Costco scored in the bottom tier of the ranking.

In a separate survey, BIGresearch polled 9,252 consumers from July 1 to July 9, asking which stores they found to be the best and worst in merchandising their products and how they would describe the overall "look" of the store.
Nordstrom redeemed itself, taking the top slot in this survey, followed by Best Buy and Target. Among the laggards were Dollar General, Kmart , Sam's Club and Costco.
"You can't expect a store to look absolutely perfect, but the one that surprised me was Kmart," said Rist. "Kmart isn't a flee market-type store. It needs to do a much better job in making its store more attractive to customers."

Amazon reigns; Wal-Mart is asleep at the Web
With online shopping nibbling away at the overall $900 billion retail pie, market research recently came out with its first-ever annual ranking of 20 top online merchants, grading them on attributes such as customer experience, visual appeal of the Web site, efficiency of the Web site's search engine and overall ease of use.
The results of the survey, which polled 2,000 consumers from July 9 to July 16, awarded Amazon.com top honors as the best place to shop online.
Barnesandnoble.com, eBay and electronic retailer Circuit City online stores also scored high marks. However, Best Buy, JC Penney, Nordstrom and Costco missed the mark.
Wal-Mart also ranked in the bottom tier (14th on the list). The survey found the retail behemoth had one of the poorest buyer conversion rates. The study said consumers were particularly frustrated with the design and organization of Wal-Mart's Web site, as well as the ability to browse and search for products.