Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Shopping Score....

From yesterday's To-Do list, there were quite a few shopping items I needed to beat. Here is the score.
  1. Hair cut -- Done (although something seems to be afoot behind the scenes at the barber shop....)
  2. Cargo-pants/Levi's -- complete waste of time--rant to follow.
  3. Boots -- score! 1-pair black Sketchers lug boots. 1-pair brown leather GBX.
  4. Lavie's eye-exam - new Rx needed but eyes pretty as ever!
  5. Birthday gifts -- found plush Carebear w/DVD and Little-People princess set.
  6. Birthday party - hung out and watched kids swim.
So, about those jeans. I ran out to the local mall knowing I could score a pair or two. Two hours later I had no jeans and was getting very frustrated. Lavie didn't go with me so I have a harder time convincing myself of the fit. I have some Lee jeans that fit nice but they are just a little tight on my upper thighs. So after 2 hours of frustration, I left the mall and hit Target to get the birthday presents. Target had an awesome sale on all it's jeans. Wranglers, Levi's, Lee's. I knew the size to get 36x32/33 so I grabbed some pairs (normal & relaxed) to try on. Ummm. Excuse me...where is your fitting room?

So, our Target store just did a major remodel in the Spring. Apparently they have only one changing area in the whole store. It is right in the middle of the Ladies Apparel section. I was assured it was "uni-sex"--ok, I think I am cool with that. So I head over there. There is a mass (throng?) of women and small kids all spilling in and out of the changing rooms. A scrum waiting to head in. Nope. No way. Nada. Ain't going to happen. Too outnumbered. So I pack up 8 or 9 pairs of jeans that look promising and (with other items in tow) check out. My plan is to try them on at home, get Lavie's opinion, and then take back the ones we don't like.

Later that night I try them on. The waist sizes are ok. But I suspect I know why they are on sale. Even though they all are 32 length. they seem to run in actual range from 30 to 36. Wow. The fit on the back of my legs is even worse. I could probably fit 2 legs in one. Not cool. Ok. So out of the 8 or 9 pairs I bring home, two pairs are close. 1 pair of Wranglers normal fit and 1 pair of Levi's normal fit. Only problem with the Levi's ends up being that the outside side-seam does this twisting number and ends up on the front of my shin. I had a pair like that once before and it drove me crazy. I was always trying to twist them back but they were "made" that way. So I'm just taking them all back and going to make the longer trek down to Eddie Bauer and get maybe two or thee pairs for the price of 10 at Target. Now I know why they were so cheap. I really hate buying clothing for myself.....I was in a dark mood for the rest of the night.

One shining positive of it all was that I got an early birthday present out of it from Lavie.

I have a REALLY nice Seiko chronograph watch. It has a shimmering dark green face and a gold/stainless bracelet band. It weighs about a pound. It has been my daily-wear watch. I've had it for many years and it was a birthday present from Lavie. About two years ago "something" happened and the date indicator stopped working. I took it for repair but discovered it would cost more to fix the watch than it would be to buy a new one. So I have been wearing it daily but just (when I remember) manually advancing the date. So Friday at work I was writing out service tickets in the field for work I was doing on the computers and I couldn't remember what day it was and my watch was no real help, so I called Lavie and told her for my birthday a new watch with a working date counter was a good idea.

While pounding the mall yesterday in my fruitless search for jeans, I stopped by our favorite jewler and checked out the watches. I found one that looked perfect. Later that night Lavie went by with me (ugh! return trip to mall--will the pain stop?) and agreed. She got it for me! Now I have a low-key watch with both weekday/date counter that work. Sweet.

While I'm on watches, one of my first was a Casio LED. I got it as a Christmas present while on vacation down in Florida. There is a UK store that sells retro versions of it. I think on mine, you had to press a button to display the time because it would run the battery down fast if it were always on. Early LED's were not very power efficient. Thinking about that landed me on Retro thing: Casio Retro Watches page. Memories...had one like that. Of course I had the Swatch. But my most meaningful watch as a teen was one I saw in a SharperImage catalog, saved up the money for and ordered. We were staying with the neighbors as Mom and Dad had taken a trip somewhere, so I was checking the doorstop each day for it's delivery. When it came, I cut my hand in excitement as I opened the box. It looked just like this one except it had a fine blue line around the words on the face and it had the outline of a Marlin or Sailfish on the side in matching blue. Now that was an awesome watch. I was so proud of it. These Casios bring back memories as well. One of the kids in high-school had one of those calculator wrist watches. Man--that was the ultimate in cool. (GEEK!)

Opera celebrated it's 10th year a couple of weeks ago. Before FireFox I really used the Opera browser a lot. They were giving away free registration codes (check out all the posts) for a day so I snagged one. I just got done loading Opera8 on my pc this morning. Too bad, it didn't impress me much. I used to like it alot, but the style is kinda clunky to me. I couldn't easily customize the bars and it seemed slower than FireFox loading pages as well (that's not good as I am still on dial-up). I guess I will keep it on a little bit longer. But I am really not impressed. At all. Used to be a nice alternative browser. I think I would rather use IE than Opera at this point. That's sad.

See you in the skies.
--Claus

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