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Strollometer - I need this. It’ll tell me how fast I’m movin’ with the stroller. Frickin’ sweet.

I have a mirror attached to the corner of my monitor. It helps me notice people walking up to me while I have my headphones on. One of the side affects of it is seeing all the foot traffic that passes by my cube every day. And also, the over abundance of people that stare into my cube while I work. I can’t blame them, I have the same horrible habit.

“Do you want some ice cream?” I asked Court last night.

“Sure,” she responded.

“Okay, I’m going to swing out to Shinders and then by Cold Stone for some ice cream.”

“What’s at Shinders that you need?” she inquired.

“Um…uh…Comic books”

I had just read an article on Slashdot about the latest issue of Captain America. In a sudden rush this boyful glee came over me as I was completely possessed with the thought of reading this comic book. It’s a feeling I haven’t had since I was 15, when I first collected.

This all stems from a recent conversation I had with a co-worker. We got to talking one day about comics and such. I try not to let my nerdy side out too much but I couldn’t help but reminisce about the good ol’ days of my childhood when I’d spend the week trying to convince my mom to take me to Shinders on Saturday so I could pick up the latest X-Force. The co-worker brought in some recent books to wet my appitette a bit. The art and storylines were great and I feared getting hooked again.

I came home with 5 new comics from Shinders. I threw them on the table while Court and I ate our ice cream. After our dessert I picked them up and started thumbing through them. Court asked to see them so I showed her my new pride and glories.

“No,” she exclaimed.

“What?” I knew what she was getting at.

“You get crazy with this sort of stuff.”

“What do you mean I get crazy?” I figured my best defense was denial.

“Remember the Simpsons toys? We still have a stack of ‘Experience’ magazines. You have to own EVERYTHING when you collect stuff”

“No..No I don’t,” I said. The truth is: yes, yes I do.

“Can we throw out the ‘Experience’ magazines?” She asked. I figured it was a fair trade so I agreed.

“I promise, Court. I won’t get crazy. I’ll keep them in a box so they’re not in the way”

“What good are they going to do in a box?”

We went stroller shopping this weekend. With all this new territory we’re trekking through, I can’t help but feel a little ill-prepared. I am constantly wondering what Drew and Michelle are doing since they are due in about a month. Take for instance strollers.

I’ve been laboring over our stroller choice for about a month. There are two schools of thought when it comes to strollers these days: 1. Buy a travel system that includes a stroller and a car carrier (which snaps onto the stroller when not in the car) or 2. Buy the car carrier and stroller separately. Option 2 tends to be significantly more expensive than the first option. So I got to wondering what is better about getting separate pieces. Will I need them to be separate? Which option is better in the long run? I got so bad that I couldn’t stand to even think about it. I would freak out in the stroller isle at Target and run away.

We ended up at Babies ‘R’ Us on a whim Friday night. We started shopping for strollers seriously that night. We started poking and prodding them, collapsing them, carrying them, etc…just to make sure we knew what they would feel like. Another couple had shown up and was doing the same thing. Unlike us though, they seemed pretty obsessed with a single kind, the Metrolite by Graco. After I noticed the depthness of their prodding I started to wonder what was so great about the Metrolite. Court started watching their research too. Soon, we were wondering if we should be looking at the Metrolite. Curious, we waited for them to finish with it so we could take a look.

A half hour passed and the couple continued to poke at the Metrolite. We grew tired of waiting and moved on to the furniture department. We walked the rest of the store looking at all the other fun stuff we needed. I kept an eye on them, though. I really wanted to look at the stroller.

Finally fed up waiting for them, Court and I trudged back over. By now the couple had 3 other strollers out and were poking at all of them. They had everything from your run-of-the-mill stroller up to the Rolls Royces out, running around the isles. While they weren’t looking Court test-drove the Metrolite. We decided it was exactly what we wanted. It was light, all-in-one, and snappy-lookin’ to boot. We grabbed it and ran…well, we grabbed one of the boxes and ran.

I couldn’t help but feel like I hadn’t done enough research. We had looked at them before, done some price comparison shopping, did our online research, yet we were not spending hours making sure it was perfect. Was I being a good parent? Was I being as good as them? I don’t know.

On Saturday we were over at my parents house for Michelle’s baby shower. Drew and Michelle had received the same stroller, just in another color, that we had purchased on Friday. I was relieved. If it’s good enough for their kid, it’s good enough for ours.