Anyway, I first went over to the smaller Dollar Tree store, and they didn't have any foam brushes, but I did make a big score ... they had hardcover copies of "Bible Code II: The Countdown" there! I'd read the original Bible Code book, and found it interesting enough to wonder what was in the follow-up, and it was a gas getting it for a buck, rather than the $26.95 cover price!
I then headed over to Deals ... picked up two 12-packs of the damn brushes, a little clip-on flashlight thing, and then made a FIND ... they had road atlases in! Now, mind you, these were 1995 road atlases, but I've been toying with getting moving on one of those projects I came up with to submit for the Art*O*Mat project, and I was wanting shredded maps for the "filler" in the boxes. I had been trying to figure out how to do this "cheaply and easily" (I mean, I could spend a lot of effort trying to find used maps or something, or I could have bought "retail" road atlases), so having this "fall into my lap" was great! I bought six big road atlases, which should keep me in shredded maps (we recently got one of thsoe paper shredder things for the office!) for as long as I need 'em.
Oh, by the way ... just in case any of you were "left hanging", breathlessly wondering how our amorphous weekend vacation plans were coming ... I think we have a schedule! I'm picking up the car at 9am on Friday, and we're going to drive straight through to Baraboo, WI. Check into a hotel there, and then spend the afternoon at Circus World, unless The Wife can find a horse riding place to take The Girls. On Saturday night we're staying at Treasure Island up in The Dells, and their deal includes use of the Bay of Dreams waterpark (and all this other stuff, it's amazing how huge they've gotten, although most of that doesn't open for a while yet) from "opening" on the day you check in till "closing" on the day you check out. So, on Saturday morning, we'll grab breakfast at the hotel in Baraboo, and just drive up the road to Treasure Island ... do the pre-check-in (to get our waterpark wristbands), and swim for a few hours, grab lunch somewhere, maybe play some miniature golf, and wait for the official 4pm check-in when we can get into the room. Then, more swimming, dinner, sleep, breakfast, more swimming, checking out by 11am, and more swimming until mid-afternoon when we dry The Girls off and drive back to Chicago. Such a deal (well, not really, it is painfully expensive to go to The Dells ... our room on Saturday is like $200.00 ... only made palatable in that the waterpark by itself costs $26.95 per person per weekend day, so having two days at the waterpark for four people would come out to more than that!).