Customers who’ve come by the store this week have had the chance to get their photo taken with President Barack Obama. We’ve had life-size replicas on display and available for sale and advertised that customers could come by with their own cameras and snap a picture of themselves with the Chief, to be included in next year’s holiday cards, on their Facebook pages, etc.

On the whole this entertaining experiment has been a great one, filled with fun (and funny) moments in which both customers and staff members have mistaken the looming figure behind them for a real person and done a double-take when they saw just WHO that person was meant to be. Last weekend Lorna repeatedly caught the cardboard Barack out of the corner of her eye and thought he was a customer. Finally she conditioned herself to the notion that the "person" standing in that spot across from the register was NOT real. This worked fine until a customer standing right next to the soon-to-be President spoke to her and she literally jumped, thinking for a moment that the fake Obama had become the real thing. Like a dream had become reality. Much like many of us feel has happened today.