What happens when (select) local Longs Drugs stores have a 90% clearance on Christmas ornaments and decorations? You get an explosion of impulsiveness that looks like this.

Of course you need Christmas-themed Mickey and Minnie Mouse in large and medium sizes.

And you need even more medium size mouses.

But it’s not only Disney items on clearance, your childhood Rudolph friends like the Abominable Snowmonster aka “Bumble” are on sale.

Really though, despite these enormous savings, what would you do with these impulsive purchases? I would have preferred to save up for these Kyrie 2 Abominable Snowmonster kicks instead.

Next I went to Longs. They recently got the same Kodak photo kiosk system I saw at Target. There was an attached scanner, so I started going through the steps. What a piece of junk that Kodak photo kiosk is. Maybe it’s the hardware, maybe it’s the software, or just that touch screen, but the kiosk would just bug out. At best you could touch the Start Over button and start again. At worst, the kiosk would get stuck in a loop – warming up scanner, capturing image, warming up scanner, capturing image, over and over. When finally one photo scanned successfully, I tried to rotate it. Is it just me or is timing the click on the okay button when the image is rotated correctly much too difficult?

Eventually the system just wouldn’t accept any more and was just hung. So I went to a different Longs. This location had the older Fuji system that was easy enough to operate. The cost of two prints is $0.41 or something like that, but then the clerk says he can’t print school photos due to copyright issues. He had gotten into trouble for doing this once already. I had no release consent form on me since the picture was taken at the beginning of the school year. Maybe I could call the photographer and ask for a release over the phone. Who took the photo? No clue.

Next I went to a neighborhood print shop. Sure, they could resize and print the image…after 24 hours. They needed time to scan and resize the image manually then print it out. 24 hours? Heck, I would have taken a printout made using PowerPoint.

So who could accomplish this seemingly daunting task? Walgreens. The store had two staff members working the photo services desk. A third Walgreens employee helped me with their kiosk system. Seems like the days of 3×5 photos is no more. A 20-minute print time was like 20 seconds, and I had to pay $0.78 for two prints. Woe is me. Thanks Walgreens!