Clearly the Piano Player's Ancestor was on the Titanic.

Howdy all!

I'm working on a bang up Five for Friday this week, hopefully I'll get that out, but first I have to share a little moment in my life that could only happen to me.  (And like maybe the other 10 people who were shopping at Menards on Tuesday night.)

Let me start by saying the weather this summer has been FUNKY.  Up here in Southeastern Wisconsin we've had longer hot stretches than I can remember, and it's been DRY. Sunny, hot, humid, just perfect for those people (of whom I am NOT one) who like to go out and get all tanned while they're gardening or hiking, or biking, or swimming at the local city pool, or whatever it is people who like to be outside like to do.  As for me, I make sure I get my daily walks in before sunrise or after sunset or at the grocery store.  Scarlett O'Hara would envy my milky white skin.

Anyway, so the weather has been funky and really, really dry in terms of rainfall. Everyone I see will say something like, "Boy do we need the rain."  (Except I know they don't mean it because they aren't farmers and 98.7% of the people I've met who aren't farmers but do like to be outside really don't like rain because it keeps them from being, you know, outside.)

The dryness of our weather ended the last two weeks as God looked down from Heaven, realized He hadn't tossed any stormy weather our way in a while, and let loose with all kinds of craptastic weather events.  Super winds, tornados, thunder and lightning, hail, and RAIN.  Rain like you would not believe in the last several days.  

At this point I here my friend and faithful reader, Todd, who lives in Southern California, mock me.  See, I take every chance I get to tell him that Wisconsin weather is superior to California weather because our weather doesn't try to come INDOORS and kills us. You know, like the mudslides, the earthquakes, that sort of thing. Our outside stays outside.

Yeah...well, then this week happened.

But, Wisconsinites, and indeed all Great Lakes Midwesterners don't let a little precipitation get in our way. If we did, we'd never leave our homes during the 8.5 months of winter!  So, on Tuesday, even though the skies were darkening and storms were predicted, hubby wanted to go to Menards because he had a $33 rebate check burning a hole in his pocket and he wanted to look at stuff.

I hadn't eaten dinner yet, (it was about 6 PM) but I wasn't super hungry and figured an outing would be a good thing. So, off to Menards we go!

The thing you have to know about Menards...if you don't know...is that they have EVERYTHING!  Or, at least they have some form of everything, just maybe not the brand names you recognize.  (I mean, you know Dinty Moore Beef Stew? Well they don't have that...but they do have some kind of beef stew and I swear the label is in Russian.)  Menards is a DYI store that also sell some groceries, clothes, books, movies, (None of which I've ever heard of...) and all kinds of candy, furniture, and fun stuff.  You just never, ever know what you're going to find. 

It's the Forest Gump of DIY stores.  

So after wandering for almost an hour, Hubby and I had collected a little more than $33 of odds and ends: a novel, a dvd, two cans of deviled ham spread, a new overhead light for the basement workout room, all of which were tucked nicely in our cart. We were on the second floor which was no biggie. There's this great ramp/people mover that carries humans and carts to the second floor. (They also have elevators, but why would you ride in an elevator when you can ride a RIDE?) 

It was during this wander around the upper level that the lights started to flicker and God in His fury fired many, many bolts of light at the store...like He was mad at it.

I should mention, I also hadn't charged my phone in a while...I was running on about 24% charge.

And then it all went black. And stayed black for a minute while the generators were powering up the back up lights.

And the piano player played on.

oh, did I not mention her?  Well, to add to the fun that is Menards, there's usually a baby grand at the top of the moving rampway and some local high school kid or ex con looking for community service hours, or some local pianist just eager to twiddle away for a couple hours, will sit and play that thing while people shop for toilet seats and dog food and "as seen on TV" crap.

So the lights are out, which means the cash registers are as well. And there are a number of us, maybe a dozen or so, who fumble our way from the corners of the store to gather at the check out area, hoping against hope one of them will just spring to life.

And the piano player played on.

We stood for about fifteen minutes and I couldn't take it any more.  They managed to get one of the cash registers to reboot but things were moving slowly. Hubby suggested I go back to furniture, find a comfy chair, and hang out. He would text me when he was through the line.

Which is what I did. Having very little charge, I couldn't check facebook or anything, so I went old school. I found a wooden rocking chair there in the furniture department. I was parked just below the moving ramp, hence, close to the piano.  So I sat, rocked, and listened to a really twisted mix of the pianist's showtunes and the loudspeaker belting out "YOU SAVE BIG MONEY, WHEN YOU SHOP MENARDS."

The store employees ignored me, except for one guy who asked if I had people checking out up front. I ached to give him some smart aleck answer like, "No, I'm the ghost who lives here and moves crap around at night so the day shift gets mad at the night shift." But the pianist rolled into a very creative version of "Elinor Rigby" and it erased my snarkiness.

So there we were, the pianist on the abandoned second floor and me, in a rocking chair twenty feet below her.  And all I could think about was that string quartet on the Titanic, the guys who played until the boat was halfway under water.  

I'm fairly certain this piano player is descended from one of those guys. And I'm also fairly certain they're proud of her for playing on as thunder and lighting roared around her.

We finally got checked out, but here's one final thing that puts the cherry on the top of the night: That rebate check?  Yeah, we couldn't use it.  The cash registers could process credit payments, but not rebate checks. We'll have to go back and gather up another bunch of stuff worth $33.