Emily (wife), Matthew (brother), and I were walking around in this really big mall. I think that originally it was supposed to be in New York or something. It was full of all these expensive "fashionable" clothing stores and not much else, but it was still fun to look around and see all the tools shopping because they thought they NEEDED these stupid "fashions".
We got down to one of the ends of the hallways, and there was a set of doors there that led to the outside. I could see the parking lot out there. To my right, just inside these doors, was a big store that was labeled as "New York, Paris, and [some city I can't remember]" At this point I realized that we were actually in Paris. I made some comment to Em and Matthew about "Hey, they really DO have these stores in New York and Paris!" Neither of them seemed very impressed.
I'm not sure what happened next, but eventually I found that I was walking alone. Em had gone off to look at something that I didn't feel like looking at. I was feeling a bit miffed about that for some reason, and I knew she was, too. As I walked around, I ran into Em's parents. I found her mom first, but I can't remember what she was doing exactly. I think she was messing around with some display that was up, getting a bit more involved with it than I thought she should. I left her mom and went and found her dad.
Her dad was sitting down at the end of this main intersection area, and he was watching the kiddie train go round and round. The walls here were very tan in color, and there seemed to be all sorts of stairs and levels around here. The kiddie train area was even down about 6 feet or so below normal walking level.
He was down there just sitting on a bench. I think I wound up telling him that we would be ready to go soon. He got up off the bench and looked around, adjusting the waistline of his pants, and then we went up and found Em's mom again. Em's dad got her to stop what she was doing and come with us. I think it also took us a little while to find Em since she had gone off shopping. She was still a bit miffed at me, and she didn't seem to want to talk to me. We all went out and got into their Pacifica. The parking lot was actually a dirt and grass field surrounded by a row of trees. We got out of the lot and drove down a dirt road a ways.
Eventually we wound up at this place that was a lot like a Renaissance Festival. It was really interesting, and we looked around a bit. We finally made it into this one shop that had a ton of different stuff in it, but not much of it was renaissance related. It was just kind of like a general store, but it sold some really strange stuff. I spent way too long looking around in there, and that in itself was getting Em all antsy at me.
Then I started picking out a bunch of stuff to buy. That just peeved her off. At one point I made one purchase. I went up to the counter, which was at the far right of the store, and handed over my stuff. There was a woman who was also at the counter that had several kids running around and she was buying them a bunch of candy. After she was done, I did my purchasing. I don't remember what I bought the first time around, but I had a good bag of stuff. After that, I decided to look around a bit more. This was just too much for Em, and she left with her parents to go wait outside.
I went out with them at first to try to get Em to stay in there with me, but she wouldn't. She thought it was stupid that I was still shopping in there. So I went back in and looked around some more. I realized that something that may be making her mad is that I hadn't bought anything that was strictly for her. So I looked around for something specifically for her, and I found a green suede wallet. I, for some reason, though this would be perfect.
I got out my blue ballpoint pen and wrote something on the wallet front. It was something along the lines of "For my dear, sweet, and loving Emily". I took it up, with a few more nik-naks and made another purchase. When I did, I saw that my first purchase was wrong. The receipt listed about five or six items of candy that I hadn't bought. I showed that to the lady at the register, and I told her that those were items put on my receipt by accident because the lady in front of me with all the kids had the candy, not me. She took those things off my receipt and refunded my money. I then purchased the rest of my stuff.
On my way out, I saw a computer monitor that caught my eye. This was some sort of super nifty monitor that had some strange built-in stuff to it. I think it had a built in "terminal", as in Rxvt or Xterm that normally runs under Linux. Also, the design around the outside perimeter of the monitor was really neat. It was $799, and, for some odd reason, I thought that was a great deal. I went up to the register to buy it, and I found out that it was actually a monitor that I had ordered, and they were holding it there for me. I thought, "How odd... but great!" I purchased it, and just as I was ready to leave, I saw that there was a gallon of milk on the receipt that I had not actually bought. I went back and got that straightened out. I felt bad because I thought they were thinking that I was just trying to get away with all this free stuff (candy and milk), but I showed them that I didn't have any of it, so they had no choice but to take it off.
I left and found Em sitting with her parents on a bench under some sort of gazebo type of structure. We left and came home. Em asked me on the way home, "So, what was it about this monitor that we should have been looking for in the first place?" In other words, if I really liked this one, why did we get my previous one. I just told her that I didn't know because I knew that she wouldn't understand the details of it. As I looked at it all wrapped up in bubble wrap, I realized that this was a 15 inch monitor! I was pretty upset because now that "great price" no longer seemed very good, but I was stuck with it.
I brought it home to the Villas apartment and plugged it in and started up Windows. The monitor did some cool stuff, but everything was really small and cramped on the screen. Then when I tried to shut down and restart my computer, it just kept going immediately into Windows. It wouldn't let me get into Linux. I was pretty miffed now that this "great deal with awesome features" was turning out much worse than I already had, and I had spent so much money on it.
After this, we all went to bed. The bed was in Matthew's old room at Grandmamma Miller's house. Em's parents were actually the ones sleeping in the bed, and Em and I were sleeping at the foot of the bed on the floor. I woke up first, and I wound up getting all the stuff I had bought together. I found the green suede wallet with my writing on it, and I got it ready to present to Em. She woke up, and we talked briefly about how I was sorry that I went on that shopping spree. She was still a bit upset at me, but she forgave me for being such a stinker about it all. I pulled out the green wallet and showed it to her. She looked at it distastefully, thinking I had gotten it for me. I flipped it over and showed her the handwriting. She realized it was for her, and before I could see her reaction to it, the dream ended.
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