Life in a Smaller Town...

I have spent the previous 20 years in the bosom of the Nation's Capital, also known as Fairfax County, Virginia. It has all of the amenities that a great suburbia needed - local malls, great restaurants and a ton of actives to fill your weekends; whether if you had kids or not. Except for the higher price of real estate and the fact that I was beginning to hate the hour long commute to go anywhere, it was a great place to live.

But as all of these wistful tales usually reveal, I moved away from the relative comfort of the former Murder Capital of the World and into the direct path of Hurricane Alley - the Florida Panhandle. And while the price of housing is more affordable and the commute was reduced by more than a half, it's the little things that I'm beginning to miss.

That's what these posts will consist of - me nitpicking about the stuff that little towns lack. most of the time, the post will be short and to the point but there are sometime when I need to get things off of my chest. Case in point, please read below.

Tuesday is usually new DVD/CD release day and I have only has one Yellow Tag store, one Red City store and three Bullseye stores in my general vicinity. I know. I live it every day. Please don't cry for me, really. But as you might suspect, I can get geeked if something is coming out on Release Day.

Yesterday, a new metal CD with a Yellow Tag exclusive DVD came out at $7.99 (highlighted in the Weekly Ad) so I decided to stop by said store to pick it up. I got there and found that both racks for the CD was empty. I was beside myself. I was thinking, "It friggin just came out today - I know that not everyone in this city came here before 4 PM and sold it out. It's just not possible."

I checked the band's white placeholder in the music section and saw nothing as well. I almost walked out the door but knowing how this business is run, I decided to ask a Store Representative if he could locate the missing CD.

After pointing out the empty racks to him, he went to the other place that I looked and, shocker, it wasn't there either. He then went into the back. After a few minutes, he came out with their entire order in his arms and gave the first one.

As I went to check out, I thought that only in this store in this small town would the highlighted exclusive release for this week wouldn't be stocked until 4PM. Now, this incident could be chalked up to more of a "Clerks"-bred apathy but I doubt that it would've happened in Northern VA. At least it would've been before 4 since there were three Yellow Tag stores within 5 miles of my work. Damn, I miss that.

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