Archive: January 2008

I have a theory that, in case of a lagging conversation, food quirks are always good fodder. I don’t let my food touch other food on my plate. JG doesn’t like meat with fruit (think ham and pineapple). A friend doesn’t like ice in her water, but she would like oil, vinegar, and hot sauce on her salad. Everyone has something.

But what about shopping quirks? With all of my talk about PDA memos, target-oriented shopping, budget tracking, and primary objectives, I regret that one may have received an inaccurate view of me as an uber-confident, self-sufficient shopper. In reality, however, my greatest shopping quirk is that I quiver without a second opinion. I routinely call my sister from fitting rooms, trying my best to describe the garment discreetly (I whisper, “They’re wide-leg trousers made of camel-toned, uh, let me see here … wool. And they’re lined. Is it bad that I can only wear them in cooler seasons?”). If I don’t have a shopping buddy, I ask anyone in sight for a thought on whatever I’m debating.

The question arises, then, why I would ever go shopping alone, and the answer lies in what I’m pursuing. For example, last year, I was in the market for a new suit, so I asked a friend to come with me. She was prepared to scout out sale racks, speculate over pants that would inevitably need hemming, and grab alternate sizes while I hemmed and hawed in a fitting room. In that situation, the shopping buddy helped me find a great buy with minimal hassle, and we both had a good time. Success for all!

On Saturday, though, I was shopping primarily for shoes, which was not a happy prospect because it rarely works out in my favor. If I can’t find the shoes of my imagination, the inadequate substitutes I find don’t fit, or the ideal pair is out of my price range, I mumble, get frustrated, lose patience with sales staff, and trot briskly through shoe aisles. I have no desire to subject anyone to that side of me. If I happen to find shoes that suit me, I have a hard time committing because — what if there’s a better, cheaper pair out there? How will I know? What is the return policy? And so, I ask people next to me, salesgirls, or my sister for advice so that the voices in my head are not the only ones at the debate. I feel confident in my ability to assess the fit of something (say, a sweater), but I am completely unsure of figuring out if this pair of shoes is appropriate for work or that jacket is too similar to one I already own or if it’s possible to have too much black clothing.

I hope to dear heaven that I’m not the only one with strange shopping habits, PDA and timetables notwithstanding. Maybe others need to park in the same lot, cover the bottom floor first, or have an Orange Julius or a pretzel in hand. Who am I to judge? Especially since I am shamelessly unable to resist asking, “Is this bag too big for me?”

[As of press time, all votes are "yes" to keeping it...]

At 10:30am on Saturday, I set out on a shopping mission. I was armed with a memo on my PDA detailing my total budget for the day, targeted purchases (separated into primary and secondary objectives), stores to visit, and item numbers for online finds I wanted to try on. I completed preparations by suiting up into my usual shopping uniform: fitted black t-shirt — for fitting under sweaters and jackets — and jeans at flat-length, since flats were one of the primary objectives. I put my hair half-up, confirmed that I had both a Christmas gift card and a cake plate to exchange, and off I went. This trip meant business. No messing around.

I very rarely go to an brick-and-mortar store, much less a mall, so when I do, I take great pains to make sure that the sheer effort of driving, parking, and walking is worthwhile. I know that it sounds psychotic, but the only way that I can deal with meandering mobs, incompetent employees, and hordes of Ugg-wearing, willowy teenagers is to know that I have an objective to fulfill, and no kid in Heelys will get in my way. Of course, one can’t account for the possibility that a woman in the food court would mention to her mother that “this little girl” (i.e., me) wanted to get by. Or that, due to poor crowd control at a checkout station with multiple registers, three people would cut in front of me with no notice from the staff. These were annoying scenarios, but minor setbacks in the big picture. Carry on, soldier!

Over the course of five hours, I walked my red flats into the ground, and my arms ached from hauling around my purchases, plus the porcelain cake plate I had exchanged. By the time I trudged out to my car with my purchases, my feet were crying out for rest. Somehow, I developed a bruise on the top of my right foot from, what, aggressive walking? Or shoe-trying-on? Wonders will never cease. But, wait — I need to keep my eye on the prize, that is, the massive amount of loot I brought home, all made possible by Christmas money:

• 3 pairs of shoes
• 2 sweaters (plus 1 for JG)
• 2 pairs of pants for work
• 1 jacket
• 2 pairs of yoga pants
• 1 pair of pajama pants
• 2 camisoles
• 10 pairs of earrings
• 1 necklace
• 1 calendar

I fulfilled almost all of my goals for the day: to find pointy flats, to expand my jewelry collection, and to find pants for work I could get altered for flat shoes. However, I failed to find affordable, black wedges in which I could walk without toppling over, so that’s disappointing, but the excitement of amazing deals will carry me through.

In my opinion, JG doesn’t have the appropriate level of appreciation for what I like to call The Parade of Purchases (and subsequent commentary about original vs. purchase price or how hard I had to work to find this exact item). Half of the fun is telling the shopping story, so I trotted out my proudest bargains for their very own photo shoot, as if my obssessive PDA memo weren’t crazy enough. As I put everything away, I was rather stunned by the volume. Three pairs of shoes? Ten pairs of earrings? It was all very unlike me, but so satisfying.

Today, I’ll bask in the glow of wearing my new jacket and black chandelier earrings, as I catch up on twenty missed days of my word-a-day daily rip-off calendar and try to incorporate stultify, esculent, gruntle, and hypocorism into my conversations. New clothes and new vocabulary! Monday could not get any better.

#88

I had been thinking about revamping the blog for a while. I really liked my simple theme, but the sneaking knowledge that it looked awful in Internet Explorer always bothered me. I had ignored it when I first moved to this domain because I was perfectly fine using Firefox, and I had no idea how to negotiate between the two browsers. I decided to poke around, ask a few tech-savvy friends, and investigate other themes before I took the plunge one way or another.

My investigation showed that, unless web designers agreed to an economy in which viable currency included handmade scarves, baked goods, and profuse thanks, I would need to take matters into my own hands, which was a conclusion met with great trepidation. Jen put up with my psychotic, question-filled e-mails, and recommended the following course of action:

1. Upgrade my current site to the newest version of WordPress.
2. Test to make sure things are okay.
3. Set up a subdomain to test out a new theme.
4. Fiddle as I liked, then apply it to the live site.

Hey, I thought, I can handle that! I planned on taking things slowly, biding my time, wading through lots of themes, and soliciting feedback as I went along. I would roll it out for some momentous post or a blogiversary, maybe. I would preserve the old, beloved theme with a screenshot on Flickr. No need to rush, right?

Well, the universe likes to take those intentions and laugh heartily, because last night, I attempted to take care of Step #1. Somewhere along the line, I’m sure I messed up some kind of file transfer, because my theme was completely crazy. After failing to restore it by one means of back-up after another, I made the decision to just go whole hog and set up a new theme. It didn’t make sense to try and rebuild what I had had if I was going to turn around in a matter of months to upgrade. I bemoaned the fact that I had not taken a precautionary screenshot of the site in its mashed-up, non-Internet-Explorer-friendly glory, but I suppose the first version will carry on for posterity. Sigh.

And so, as JG watched a rerun of My Name is Earl, I downloaded the Copyblogger theme and got to work, muttering under my breath. I knew that I was not the only one who had ever had trouble with an upgrade, but I could not believe that I was launching into Steps 2-4 in one evening. What happened to my timeline of a few months, universe?!

JG made me promise not to stay up all night, to be in bed by 10:30, so I begrudgingly pulled myself away at 10:45 after I had compiled a “to fix” list. I tossed and turned until at least 1am, with visions of CSS and sidebar widgets dancing in my head, and I was not sure that I should not have just stayed up and got everything out of my system. Today, after consulting Ross on reformatting title bars and container sizes and wrestling with comment notifications, I am breathless, but done. For the moment.

The new theme is, well, pretty much the same. The biggest visible changes are the navigation menu in lieu of sidebar links, the elimination of ads (like I was making any money on them), and the cute speech bubbles for comments. Because of the last item, I am reverting to my former style of responding to comments via e-mail, because the thought of two voices in one speech bubble is too much for the diehard stickler in me, although I’ll clarify anything relevant right in the comment when it’s helpful. I was giddy when I installed and tested a fun new plug-in that provides a magical, live preview of comment text. I also created two new sidebar sections, so click on over from your feed readers to check out four favorite posts, rotating monthly, and retrospective links.

I still have some fine-tuning to do over the weekend, like sniffing out the places where the original burgundy color scheme may show its face, and the rest of the items on my revised “to fix” list. Since the majority of the changes are more related to infrastructure, they should be invisible, for the most part, depending how much CSS-finagling I attempt without researching it properly. Most of all, I’m happy that I now have programming that is much more sound.

Isn’t it pretty?

According to our Westie book, we should groom Ted every three months. It sounds kind of unsanitary, but it has something about the oil in his coat, I think. The plan was to get Ted groomed in November so that he would be all snazzy for Thanksgiving, but the vet threw a wrench in that one when he recommended that Ted have a routine surgery three weeks before Thanksgiving. Surgery with stitches equals no baths for Ted, so December rolled around and we still hadn’t groomed our shaggy dog. JG got the number of our friends’ dog’s groomer, and he tried to schedule an appointment before the end of the year, but apparently, every other small terrier owner had the same idea, so the groomer was booked up.

The groomer just about flipped out when JG told her that Ted was 6 months old; apparently, we should have been getting Ted cut every 8 weeks. Are you kidding me? Ted was 10 weeks old when we brought him home, and he hardly had any hair to cut! She gave us an appointment for early January, and soon, we received a reminder postcard from her that was addressed to Ted. JG looked at it quizzically. “I know that the appointment is for Ted and everything,” he said, “but it’s not like he’s going to take the keys and drive himself.”

Despite a strange first impression, the groomer turned out to be great. She actually owns the top competing Westie in the country (she showed us his prizes and magazine covers), and she has a nice set-up for pet-sitting and grooming. In a pleasant surprise, Ted’s first appointment was complimentary — Puppy 101, the groomer called it — and he looked quite dashing when we picked him up.

The groomer did not give Ted a bath because it was pretty cold outside, so JG took it upon himself to do it the next day. Ted was not so pleased to extend his bout with pampering when he realized that it involved baby shampoo and being dropped into the laundry-room sink. Fighting off multiple attempts at escape, JG made quick work of the bath and managed to rub Ted down a bit, but not before the dog went ballistic when the towel went over his eyes. Upon his release, Ted spent the rest of the evening drying himself off on the carpet, which I did not catch on video, much to my chagrin.

What is this? In one weekend, Ted was transformed. The shorter hair made him seem like a bigger version of his puppy self, and the bath made his hair amazingly soft, almost slippery. Dare I ask — could it be that Ted is even cuter than before?

Come and get your (almost) daily dog dose with Rufus, Ben, Gus, and Zapp!