Four mid-twenties single men should not have this much fun in this way on a Saturday night...
It began around 5pm or so as my roommate, Justin, decided he could wait no longer to finally eat at a Chick-fil-a. For those of you who have not been blessed with the opportunity to live near one, Chick-fil-a is what many would argue to be the best fast food restaurant chain in existence. Home of the chicken sandwich, with delicious waffle fries and chicken nuggets that you can actually believe came off a real chicken, Chick-fil-a is to the south what Ale-8 is to Kentucky...which, I've just realized, is an even more obscure jewel of the food industry, so I apologize for the bad analogy (to give you a bit of perspective, if you've never tried Ale-8, you haven't really lived; it's that good). Chick-fil-a is a fast food chain in the southern states, with a few obscurely random western locations blessing us out here on the So Cal coast. There is one about a mile from where I work in Orange County, which makes everyone I know rather jealous, because the nearest one to where we live is about 15 miles away. Down a busy highway. Which is a bit of a drive to make for a chicken sandwich, no matter how delicious.
Justin has been longing to make the drive for months, and tonight he finally decided the time was right; he would wait no longer for his precious chicken dinner, so he convinced the rest of us here in the apartment to make an evening out of it. After a bit of convincing (especially for me, the one who can enjoy it any day of the week), we piled into his car and headed south.
And the traffic sucked. But we cared not, for Greg kept us entertained, first with live tv on his Verizon cell phone, then with the GPS lady on his phone trying to direct us to the restaurant while we refused to follow her directions:
"Turn left in 300 feet"
U-turn!
"Recalculating route..."
After a bit of debating whether or not the restaurant was located in the mall the GPS had led us to, and after a little circling of the parking lot, leaving the parking lot, and immediately re-entering the parking lot, we headed inside, found the fabled destination in the food court, and partook of its delectable quick cuisine.
And now I'm gonna stop with the silly wordings like "partook."
It was great. A little taste of our college years (3 of the 4 of us went to school in Kentucky, where we were spoiled on both Chick-fil-a and Ale-8). And we somehow wound up with an extra serving of waffle fries, which just made the trip that much more worth it.
Afterwards, each of us nice and full of greasy chicken goodness, we decided to walk around the mall a bit. And that was when the fun began...
As we got off the escalator onto the second floor on our way down, Justin spotted the Yankee Candle Co. store nearby and suggested we stop in. Seeing as we all appreciate having a few good scented candles around the apartment, and the ones we bought last were nearly spent, we figured we might as well. And so we headed over to the store, walked on in, and proceeded to spend the next half hour there.
Candle stores really are amazing. They smell like what you can only wish your home smelled like all the time. And even with so many varieties of scents, the smell that hits your nose as you walk in never fails to entice you to open a few jars and test the candles out. Vanilla Lime, Mid Summer's Night, Mango Peach Salsa, so many to sample. And with it being mid-November, there were the Christmas scents as well: Red Apple Wreath, Home for the Holidays (which, yes, is in fact a scent, not a vacation), and our personal favorite discovery: Christmas Cookies, which had our mouths watering the moment we popped open the lid.
Down the shelves we slowly moved, trying each new candle along the way. Some were good, some were not, some were strong, some were weak. There were a few nostalgic scents that brought back childhood memories, and other candles that amazed us with their accuracy, such as Clean Cotton, which smelled exactly like a freshly washed load of cotton laundry just as you're pulling it from the dryer. And to top it all off, there were those few incredible scents which just screamed at us, "You want me to go with you on your honeymoon!"
The store had a nice deal going on their Christmas candles--buy one, get the second half off--so we decided on the Christmas Cookies scent, and some cinnamon one which I can't remember the name of and I'm too lazy to go downstairs and read it off the label. And with the purchase came a nice coupon which we could redeem on-line if we wanted to receive $10 off our next purchase.
But there was one thing that had grabbed my attention and wouldn't let me walk away: the rows and rows of little candles, which were on sale: twelve for $18. Over 40 scents to choose from. You could go home with a little taste of so many good candles (yes, taste; I'm getting tired of the word "scent"). So I turned to my roommates and said I would buy us the dozen little ones to put in our bathrooms and asked for their suggestions. Then to go with them, I bought a few glass holders so the wax from them wouldn't run all over our countertops. But wait, there's more! we discovered. The guy working the counter showed us these decorative metal candle jar toppers which would allow us to burn the larger candles we'd bought more evenly so that we wouldn't waste the wax nearest the sides of the jar. They even had one on display near the cash register, so we could see that they actually worked. It was quite the debate which top we would buy. We each had our favorites, but it came down to two that we were torn over. So Greg put them behind his back, then I moved them around so not even he could know which hand held which, and Justin and Jake played rock-paper-scissors to see who would choose which hand. I was happy to see the one I considered the better of the two get picked :)
And as we're setting my new dozen little candles on the counter next to our new handy candle accessory, we finally think to ask the guy which scents he likes the best. And wouldn't you know it, he points out a Black Cherry scent that we had all somehow overlooked. He described it as being so potently strong and good, a moose could enter your house, relieve itself on your couch, and this candle would still be all you could smell. So we all headed over to it to see if he was right, and boy was he. One whiff of it and I capped the jar and took it up to the counter to add it to my spoils. And since I was now buying a jar candle myself, I decided to toss in my own favorite jar candle metal topper thingy (I'm pretty sure that's what they were really called), which, unlike our other one, was not so Christmas specific in its design and would be better for year round usage.
It took a little while to ring up my selection of candles, as I'd gone for twelve different little ones, but it was okay because while he rang them up, Greg was busy on his phone, using the internet to enter in that coupon Justin had received so that we could get $10 off my purchase without having to go all the way home just to use a computer. It took a little while, as the signal inside the store wasn't very strong, but in the end, he received his coupon code, the guy entered it in, an I saved $10!
And loaded up with two wonderfully smelling bags, and with the longest receipt I've ever received from a store tucked away in my pocket, we headed out of the store smiling and laughing at how much fun we four guys had just had in a candle store on a Saturday night.
Then, to reclaim a bit of our masculinity, we went directly to the store that specialized in medieval swords and perused the weaponry for a while before heading home.
