The Early Bird Gets The Prime Parking Spot

Sometimes change takes a while to adjust to. Things changed for us at work starting today. We are under the "Winter Parking Regulations". We have an L shaped building with two parking lots. One building is Corporate & the R&D labs. The other is production lines and warehouse. Our parking lot has a slight decline to it and is closed off for the winter. Melting snow seems pool up in the center of the lot and once the temperature goes down it freezes. A few years back someone had slipped in the parking lot and was out for a few weeks. The solution to this problem was to move the parking from Nov 15th through April 15th. This move causes all the production workers on this side of the building to park and walk about 1/2 block to the time clock, and then back to the production area. For years we've requested them to move the time clock. The entire process is silly. We're pretty convinced that the reasoning for leans more toward cost savings on plowing the lot. Thus we are now under the race for the prime parking spots. Being that I am an early start I usually get a prime spot. I just have to beat out the guy who comes to work 2 hours before his start time to read the paper, burn his toast and get the prime spot. Today was successful.
Had a pretty good weekend, yet a little bit on the boring side. I managed to get the kitchen painted and put back together in one day. Did get a little help from Barney with the high areas, which beat having to climb up and down the ladder. And then as a thanks to him, I dragged him Christmas shopping. Funny thing is he thinks he's done now. The few items we got are about 1/4 of the shopping that needs to be done. After the mall shopping he suggested that I do some shopping online as many places are offering free shipping.
The biggest mistake I made was suggesting that we should purchase a flat screen TV for the bedroom. My shopping trip Saturday was to purchase gifts for other people. It appeared that every store we entered that carried televisions, I lost him. If we walked past the electronics department I'd all of a sudden turn around and see him checking out televisions. I had to tell him several times that I didn't mean buy it today, as prices would most likely be dropping as Christmas neared. I found something else to do yesterday as he was plowing through the Sunday ads. I felt a little bad when I suggested we purchase a different fridge instead of the TV. The look on his face was priceless. Like I said, I felt a little bad.