SOLD to the Ladies Who Don't Know What They're Doing...

What would be the best way to spend one's first post-summer-grad-school-class weekend?

If you were thinking something along the lines of "going shopping all day with your best friends/co-workers," you would be correct.

The idea for today's shopping trip came about on Wednesday when we decided to go watch the rhythmic gymnastics event at the Special Olympics.

We rushed to get there after our class was over.  We took some free hand clappers and went to find our seats.  Unfortunately, the events of the day were running ahead of schedule, so we only got to see the awards ceremony.

What does our day of shopping have to do with the Special Olympics?  Nothing, really.  But on our way to the Special Olympics, we saw a sign that was advertising the UNL auction that would be held today.  I have had friends make some amazing purchases at the UNL auction, so I suggested to my team that we go check it out.

We were the 119th group to enter the auction this morning!

None of us have had much experience with auctions, so we kind of had to learn as we went along.  There were some crazy well-experienced auction-goers who showed us how it should be done.

Our primary goal was to get more metal bookcases for our classrooms, but Tiff also was interested in a laptop computer.

Unfortunately, Tiff was outbid by some crazily obsessed computer guys perfectly nice strangers.

On the bright side, we won the metal bookcases we were after!

After only three hours of waiting, we purchased six metal bookcases at a price of $4.00 each, making our grand total of the day $25.68.

For those of you who don't understand what a steal that is, you should know that low-end metal bookcases retail for $129.99 each.  That means we saved $754.26.  Yay for us!  I am kicking myself, however, for not bidding on one of the two pianos that were for sale.  One went for $50 and the other for $45.  Maybe next year.

We left the warehouse at around noon, picked up Adam, and headed for Omaha for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.

My conclusion after our lunch experience is that 20-page menus should not be allowed.  How is a person to decide what to eat?  I meant to take a picture of our delicious food and desserts, but when they put the slice of Stefanie's Ultimate Red Velvet Cheesecake in front of me, grabbing my fork became a higher priority than grabbing my camera.  So that you can understand, I found a picture online of what this heavenly dessert looks like...

Trust me, this picture doesn't do it justice.

Anyway, here we are after we ate.

While in the Westroads neighborhood, we thought we needed to walk off some of our lunch, so we went to Von Maur.

I swore that I would not buy anything there.  You see, I took myself on a bit of a celebratory shopping trip yesterday and bought two pairs of Nikes and some shirts.  I won't tell you what I spent, but I will tell you that yesterday brought back memories of the Father's Day shopping trip.

But then I saw these in the shoe room:

I have had my eye on Sperry's since my friend, Kevin, introduced me to them in February.  They retail for $75, but in the shoe room, they were only $50.  The pattern contains every color that I wear, meaning they will match most of my wardrobe.  They are versitile and amazingly comfortable.

Although I was feeling strongly that I shouldn't purchase a third pair of shoes in a less-than-24-hour period, my dear friends reassured me that it would be a good purchasing decision.  That's what good friends are for... to help you justify things that you can't seem to justify by yourself.  And besides, why delay purchasing something that can be put on a no-interest Von Maur charge card?

Our last stop of the day was at Apples and More: A Teacher's Store in Bellevue, which was the reason for going to Omaha.  I could have spent hours in that store, but we didn't get there until 4:00, and they close at 5:00 on Saturdays.  We all found quite a few things for our classrooms, so it was a worthwhile trip.

Now, I am really done shopping for a while.

Until I go to Chicago in two weeks.