Red K Blue Mart.

Earl and I finally got around to putting up the Christmas lights outside. Even though the we’ve had warm weather on and off for the past couple of weeks (aside from the snow and cold weather last week), we decided to wait on putting up the lights until it was below freezing and it was completely dark outside. It adds to the merriment of the gesture by making it a really big challenge for all involved.

We’ve lived in this house for three years and have basically followed the same template when putting up the lights around the porch. For some reason we couldn’t figure out how we got the lights mounted around the front door. So we said the heck with that and tried something new. After getting all the lights installed securely, we found several bulbs were blown and needed replacing. Since it was a Sunday evening, we headed to Wal*Mart (Always White Trash, Always) to see if they had replacement lights. We wandered through the “Trim A Tree” section where there were no trees and no lights to be found. After being reprimanded by a surly Wal*Mart “team member” (Always Bitchy, Always) that the Christmas Trees, Lights and Decorations are not in Trim-A-Tree but rather in “Live Plants”, I abandoned the cart and made a call to K-mart to see how late they were open. Turns out The Savings Place is open until 11 p.m., time to head across town. I think we can all safely assume that my blood alcohol content level was entirely too low to spend any more time in Wal*Mart (Always A Mistake, Always).

I love K-mart, especially our local store. They’ve done little to update the interior, aside from replacing the cash registers every few years. It’s like taking a step back in time. It’s the same size as every other K-mart in the world but it still has it’s “Big K” sign on the outside. I was delighted to see that despite that “Big K” thing, some ads posted had a “Kmart” logo on them reminicent of the old days, except it was all red. I don’t know why marketing folks have something against turquoise, I find a red “K” with a turquoise “mart” quite inviting. K-mart should stop trying to be everyone else and start being themselves. They should take a cue from Kmart Australia and implement that logo.

Kmart_Australia_Logo-2006.jpg

We found what we needed, checked out via a friendly cashier and headed home without spiking the blood pressure too high. K-mart is The Savings Place.