Holy groceries, 360^2, Randall rides in

So I hurried home last night so I could feed the dogs and then head out to the Ave Maria Publix.  You see, unlike most Publix that close at 9 or 10, this one closes at an early bird special time of 7pm.

As I pulled into the Ave Maria complex I drove by the now infamous abandoned gas station/convenience store.  This building was started, almost finished and then promptly abandoned.  I assume whomever built it saw the writing on the wall of Ave Maria’s colossal implosion and decided to cut their losses and run.

To catch people up to speed that may not know, Ave Maria was the first new catholic university launched in the last three decades.  It was designed to be a nearly self sustaining town literally in the middle of nowhere.  The university was supposed to be the hub of luxury homes, golf courses, shopping and more.  This was the brain child of the founder of Domino’s Pizza, Tom Monaghan.

Well Ave Maria had awful timing.  They broke ground towards the end of the construction/real estate boom.  By the time they were open for business we were firmly in the grease covered slide to the bottom.  The last time I heard they had sold only 10% of the homes in the area.  All of that proposed retail never happened, except for the Ave Maria Publix.

As I pulled into the 95% empty parking lot I had my choice of several front row parking spaces.  As I entered the store that is in the shadow of the massive Ave Maria church I was greeted by perfectly faced aisles with nobody in them.  I think I could have counted the customers on one hand.

Since the store has a totally different layout it took me longer than normal to find my items.  Luckily the list this week was pretty short.  They had one check out line open with nobody in it.  I was in and out of there in about 20 minutes.  I almost felt like I should have genuflected as I walked out the door.

The rest of my night went smoothly.  I did some prep of the guest room.  Nicki gets very excited when she sees us stripping the bed, she knows it means someone is coming.  She will be excited to see Uncle Randall I’m sure.

My weekend with Randall should work out well.  He is actually using my place as a launching point to head to Siesta Key Saturday to play in a vball tourney with Tabby.  Then he will come back and hang around till sometime on Sunday.  I will be able to get done what I need to around the house while he is at the tournament.

He is bringing his bike so we can put some miles in on Sunday. We also have tentative plans to go see Hangover 2 Saturday night.

As I mentioned, I have been real happy with using my Xbox 360 to serve up TV entertainment, especially with adding Hulu + to my arsenal which already included Netflix and Playon.tv.  I enjoy it enough that I think I am about ready to dump the Tivo that is in my bedroom.

Right now I have been migrating my 360 between the bedroom and the great room as needed.  It’s a bit of a pain in the ass.  Last night on a whim I took a quick look on Craigslist to see if anyone was selling a basic 360 for cheap.  Low and behold I found one, a guy selling his unit since his son went to college and no longer uses it.  The price was right, $90.

I called him and found out he lived right of a road I use for my commute to work.  I asked him if he would be interested if I picked the 360 up early on my way in.  Surprisingly he said that was fine.

I rolled up to his house this morning at 7:30.  When I was greeted he asked me if I could talk quietly, evidently his other son was upstairs asleep.  He had the 360 hooked up to his tv so I could verify it worked, which it did.  We quietly completed the transaction and I was on my way.

I have some extra vaca days to use, even with the upcoming time off I have for my PA Rumble trip and the Ireland adventure.  I decided to burn one by taking Monday off.  A three day weekend just sounded nice.