Tax Free Weekend.

Well, the Rock family will be sticking close by the Fortress this weekend. Why? Because in North Carolina there is a Tax Free Weekend right before school starts. I mean, it's not a bad thing, if you think about it. Most everybody needs to try to save some money, right? Especially with the economy in the crapper, taking off that 7% sales tax is a great for people trying to pinch pennies. Which is a lot of us. Including me. Especially since the pay cut at work (thanks jerks! those free t-shirt with the company logo on them DO NOT make up for cutting my pay 12%!).

But fortunately, I don't need to rush out to Wal-Mart to get anything. I'm not going back to school. I don't need new clothes. I work in a blue collar job where an old t-shirt and pants are what you need to do the job, as "nice" clothes will get crap all over them. And it's a good thing we don't need to go to Wally World, because it looks like this:

Yep. Pretty close. Except this pic was taken some time around November, and it's hot as hell out there now, so I guess it'd be a sweaty stinky mass of people instead of a cold mass of people.

Well, we do need food. Groceries. Crap. Well, I don't want to wade into THAT melee. So I have three choices:

1. Tell my wife it's her week to go shopping alone, and send a 5' tall, 100 pound woman into that writhing heap of humanity unarmed to bring my fat ass some food.

2. *I* go in there alone, sparing my wife and taking the brunt of the punishment on myself. I like this option better, as I am 240 pounds and have taken martial arts for 6 years I think I'd have a better chance.

3. We do like my priest did in my old parish. He was so popular in town (seriously, people LOVED him. Folks who weren't Catholic would come up and say hi. He actually started wearing disguises to restaurants so people would leave him be to enjoy his crappy Chinese food.) that he couldn't shop for his groceries like normal people did. He hated it. So, he'd go to Wal-Mart at 3 in the morning. Seriously. No one's at Wal-Mart at 3-4 am. Except drunks, and lazy ass college students(me!). So I'd be looking at the dollar frozen pizzas and see Father moving happily and whistling as he was picking out carrots and getting Pilsbury Grands Rolls.

Anyways, we'll probably go out late tonight. Like, after midnight. And buy groceries. Catholic Priest style.

Fat Rock