shopping

everything my technolust heart desires

2008-03-07T16:37:27+00:00

I have a question for my phone geek friends. My current workhorse phone is a well-loved and well-worn Nokia 6800.

It is a market anomaly: it is one of the few phones available that has a QWERTY keyboard. I have loved it because it has suited my needs well over the years. My phone tends to be used more for text messaging than phone calls, so I value ease of text input over most of the flashy functions that other people obsess over.

It does not have Bluetooth, though, and I'm really wanting a wireless headset. Adam's call last night to test out his new Jawbone headset impressed both of us greatly. I wantses one of those.

My parameters:

We are T-Mobile customers, and do not wish to change. We have a plan that suits us well and is surprisingly inexpensive as well. I actually don't even know if we're still under contract. We don't see a reason to shift services, so whatever I purchase needs to work with T-Mobile.
I think the iPhone is seriously sexy, and I want one, but I'd have to unlock it and it's $pendy.
There is a Nokia 6800/6822, which is the successor to my current phone. It is cheaper than the iPhone but gets so-so reviews. It is hard to tell how much of those reviews penalized the phone due to its lacking features that I just don't care about and would rarely use, like a camera or mp3 player.

I'm wondering if it's really worth saving up for the iPhone and the resultant unlock gambles, or if I should go with the cheaper, sure-thing option that doesn't get me everything my technolust heart desires.

why I married him

2007-11-18T20:02:15+00:00

Sarcastically muttered near the peanut butter: "Holy shit! Thanksgiving is this week? Why the hell didn't anyone tell me? When did this start getting scheduled in late November?"

Seriously, just don't go to grocery stores the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It's an ugly sight. Rows and rows of SUVs in parking limbo outside while their owners do something that has a lot in common with scurrying, without the 'movement' part and with lots more 'blocking the cereal aisle and access to all the milk because Hubby Dearest doesn't know whether Wifey Dearest wanted 2% or 1% or whole milk and what the hell is acidophilus, anyway?'

You could practically hear the screams of anguished housewives: "WHERE IS THE CONDENSED MILK! I MUST HAVE CONDENSED MILK OR MY THANKSGIVING IS RUINED!"

It's like Kabuki theatre, but with yams.

After we filled our hand-carried basket of items for the next few days, we realized that we only needed a few more items, so we split up. "You go get the chicken. I'll get the cereal and I'll meet you over in the produce aisle." A few minutes and a bag of Brussels sprouts later (Why are you looking at me like that? we LIKE Brussels sprouts!) we were both desirous of a speedy exit.

As we were walking away, I said, "You know what would be awesome? Grocery store terrorism. Go over by the frozen foods and yell, 'Oh my God, they're out of turkey!'"

Jeff paused for a moment and shook his head. "No, there's a better way. Don't yell that. Yell 'Oh my God, there are only two turkeys left!' Then watch the stampede."

I nodded to myself as we passed the cheese counter. "I knew I married you for a reason."

How to survive a Chinese market

2006-06-19T21:18:09+00:00

After nearly eight years of living here, it's rare now that I feel like a fish out of water, but there's one store left in this town that makes me self-conscious every time I enter it.

I heard that. You, you, and especially you, you dirty-minded little thing—I'll see you after class. Not everything in my life is about that.

Despite everything that's said on television and in those alluring ethnic cookbooks with their come-hither-and-eat-me covers, I've been wondering if I'm the only gaijin hitting up the pan-Oriental markets this side of the Mason-Dixon line. If the stunned and frankly nosy looks of the shopkeepers are any indication, my hair and eye color are either setting off warning bells or I've suddenly started looking like a shoplifter.

There aren't too many Chinese markets in Huntsville, despite UAH's propensity to attract non-Americans to its graduate engineering programs, and my guess is that the shopkeepers are always surprised and taken aback to see anyone they don't know, much less someone that looks like, well, me.

My most humiliating experience at a Chinese market came a couple of years ago at the now-apparently-defunct Shinsegae. I'd worked up the courage to wander through the store, going from item to item scanning hopefully for clear packaging or occasional English inscriptions in the hope of understanding what was inside. I'd only found one item that I needed, but wrote down a few things to look up when I got home. After leaving the shop, I sat in my car and pulled out my omnipresent Small Spiral Notebook to write down some notes, only to be startled by the shopkeeper knocking on the window of my car and demanding to know what I wanted, and was I a health inspector?

I never went back.

Shortly thereafter, I found Choi's, which was slightly closer to me, and slightly less daunting in that the shopkeeper might stare at me and follow me around the store, but seemed to draw the line at following me out the front door.

Small blessings, I suppose.

Of course, then there was the time that I tried to buy curry at Choi's, only to learn that Choi's was apparently one of the last grocery stores on the planet not to take credit or debit cards. While I've since encountered a few other ethnic grocery stores like this, they are a mystery to me. How does a business in the age of Visa and MasterCard survive without taking plastic?

I remember putting my curry back on the shelf, embarrassed, and slinking home.

Today, I picked up cat food at the pet store, got cash back at the counter, and headed to Choi's on a quest for dried mushrooms. Huntsville's slowly gotten more accepting of foods that aren't quite White Bread American Pass The Beef Y'all, but dried mushrooms of any kind are still impossible to find anywhere aside from a Chinese market, so it was time to swallow my pride and pop in.

After discovering that Shinsegae appeared to have closed (it was always a pretty dark and forbidding place, so it could've just been a scowly Monday for them) I headed to Choi's and tiptoed in, hoping I could slip in unnoticed.

Whatever.

I was too proud to go to the desk and say, "Hi, I suck and can't read any of this stuff, so where are the dried mushrooms?" Instead, I wandered the aisles and played a fun little game of "I wonder what that is, and if you can eat it?" with myself.

I did, eventually, find the dried mushrooms.

I've apparently learned more about Chinese, Thai, and Korean food in the past few years than I'd given myself credit for. There were far fewer mystery foods, and more things that, while exotic and unusual, were at least familiar to me.

I paid in cash.
I wasn't followed to my car.

Success.

Colorado #6: Lucky Denver Mint

2006-02-27T05:45:12+00:00

The incantation remains the same:

Memory, leave me something - I lose so much on a daily basis; give me this, on days when I was happy, for the days that will inevitably come when I am not, so that I may remember the taste of these moments that, inevitably, go…
— 'Rockies on my right,' 10 October 2004

Any other day, I would have said that this day did not go as planned, but in truth, we had few plans; just notes and directions scribbled down in a notebook, hopefully enough to get through the day. Denver was supposed to be Saturday, but Chris came down with a bug. Instead, I watched television, made food, and gamed with Jake while Chris slept off the worst of it with NyQuil.

Sunday afternoon found us swapping tasks: grabbing showers and tracking down directions. Past the silliness of me wanting to hunt for shoes, we agreed to hit up a comics/gaming store and SecondSpin, the enormous used CD shop I had mail-ordered from for several years. In the midst of a staunchly non-commercial trip, this would be the day in which I spent money.

'It happens too fast
to make sense of it,
to make it last'

It had snowed. It was just enough to dust the parking lots, partially melt in the heat of the day, and freeze back into patches of ice. It was just enough to make the spun-sugar mountains off in the distance glow blue-white in the early afternoon sunlight as I put the car on cruise control and headed south.

Shoes first, we agreed. I expected to find nothing, expected to walk in and laugh at the designer remnants and joke with Chris, which we did, but not three minutes after arriving in the store, I saw a glimpse of fabric that caught my eye. It was so simple to pull them down and tease Chris with them, for they were purple, and anything purple was fair game where he was concerned. Except that I looked at them and, amidst blanching a little at their price, realized that I might be holding my one regret from this trip if I didn't at least try them on.

They cost enough to justify calling a friend and asking for an opinion, an opinion that I truthfully knew before she even answered the phone. The same opinion that I was getting from the laughing friend next to me: buy the shoes, you know you want them.

I did.

The fact that shoes like that were actually made in the doll-sized 5½ that I required amazed me.

Much of the day is unimportant. Some may be written about later. We proved that there is, indeed, a place in the universe where Arkansas and Colorado intersect; right down the road from SecondSpin, actually. When I whipped the car around in a U-turn to get to the store (which I missed on the first go-round), we chuckled at the congruence of street names and then walked in the door.

Chris walked straight to the DVDs and said, "Oh, I am in trouble here." I went about it in a more organized fashion; I had my list of CDs to seek for Jeff, and stuck to it. Afterwards, I called him and told him what I had found, which appalled Chris.

Chris: "Isn't the point of a gift to be a surprise?"
Me: "But what if he's already bought them and I don't know about it?"
Chris: "Um…"
Me: "Besides, even if he knows, he still gets the anticipation. He doesn't get his hands on these until I'm home."
Chris: "You guys are odd."

I bought two CDs for me. One, an impulse buy, a Sander Kleinenberg double-CD set that I thought Asai had recommended. The other, planned: Jimmy Eat World's "Clarity," which I had long associated with Chris after he'd given me mp3s from that album to listen to in my spare time.

We were late, later than I thought we'd be, as we prepared to go home. Buckled into the rental Stratus, I stared at the two CDs and, at the last moment, picked "Clarity" to put in the player. I already associated it with Chris. This would be just one more moment.

I could feel the emptiness of the hourglass. It was no longer time to rest and relax; it was time to go back to the apartment and pack, because it was nearly time to fly home. It hit me during the second song, hit me when I remembered the title of the second song was "Lucky Denver Mint," and I had it. Many moments pass by quickly, unremembered; I knew this one would stick.

Music. Chris, talking. The steering wheel under my hands, the glow of the speedometer, weaving through I-25 traffic. The knowledge that I'd just seen my last Colorado sunset of the year, and that tomorrow, the sun would set on me in Atlanta. This 'here' would devolve back to 'there,' and we would go on with life.

On the road back from Atlanta two days later—Valentine's Day—I played 'Table For Glasses' until I had it right.

I came home with a pair of purple Givenchy shoes*, a song in my ear, and no regrets.

* and before you all collectively lose your minds, the shoes were 80% off, and less than $100. I am insane, yes, but not that kind of crazy.

shoes #1: welcome to the cult

2005-12-30T16:30:56+00:00

I said I wouldn't become my mother, and that you would never find a rack of shoes in my closet and another set underneath my bed and another set of lesser-used shoes underneath the guest bed. I still say that. I think it's true; knowing a potential pitfall exists can sometimes help you avoid it.However, I skirted one pitfall only to discover another: the cult of Nordstrom. I get it, oh, I get it.

It was the damn makeup, see.

Back in September 2003, I wrote about my unexpected discovery of the goodness of Birkenstock, otherwise known as shoes that actually fit (the entry 'hippie sandal-wearing freaks'). Since then, my momentary $50 splurge on off-white Birks has proven to be one of the wisest $50 expenditures in my adult life. I knew I had unusual feet, but I figured I just wasn't trying hard enough to find shoes that worked for me.

Then I took a recommendation from a tech staffer and went to Perimeter Mall for a MAC makeup consultation (June 2004, 'A red for everybody'). The easiest way to get to the store required me to—you guessed it—walk through Nordstrom. Nice store, I thought. (I'd never been in one before; they aren't terribly common in the South.) Lots of shoes, and lots of women buying them. Maybe I should look into this, and hope that I didn't pick up the shoe-hoarding gene, after all.

I went home, did a little research, and discovered that Nordstrom had rabid fans. We're talking cult following, altar sacrifices, the giving of firstborn, etc. I was a little confused. True, it had looked nice, but it looked like a department store. I've seen lots of those.

So I thought, what the hell. I plotted going to Perimeter Mall on my next trip of Atlanta, which was coincidentally coming up Real Soon Now. I figured I'd hit up DSW (supposedly this massive shoe warehouse) and Nordstrom, and if I was lucky, I'd come home with a pair of shoes that fit.

Apparently I looked lost when I walked into the shoe department, because the next thing I knew I was sitting down in this uberplushy chair and some fellow with an enormous smile had set down my backpack and packages for me was taking my shoes off for me.

"Sevens?" He tsked at me. Do people actually tsk out loud any more? Apparently this guy did. "Your feet are far too small for a seven. Let's measure to find out." I was about to open my mouth to blurt out my size, but the next thing I knew I was being guided to stand up, and there was the cold metal of the measure against first one foot, then the other. "Yes, definitely not sevens, but I see why you wore them. You probably can't find shoes that fit."

Goodness, was he cooing at me? "So, uh, what size should I wear?"

"Your feet are different sizes. Technically, you're a five and a half wide, with a high instep. Your left foot," at which point he gestured to the toes in question, "is a little longer, almost a six but not quite, but is just a little wide. Your right foot is a little shorter, a true five-and-a-half, but definitely a wide." He tapped the littlest toe on my right foot. "This is where most of your shoes break, isn't it?"

I nodded, then asked the question: "So … do you have anything I can wear?"

"Of course. What were you looking for?"

I think my jaw actually fell open at this point. What did he mean, 'of course'? I'd been looking for shoes for nearly six months, and it was this easy all along? I managed to blurt out "a pair of simple, classically-styled loafers" before he nodded and headed to the back.

I resisted the urge to bellow "and bring me my peeled grapes and a blond slaveboy!" But not by much.

When he came back out, he had not one, but three boxes. He was dumbfounded when I slipped my feet into the first one and—I am somewhat ashamed to admit this—actually jumped up and down and squealed when I realized they fit. They really fit. As did the second pair, and the third.

I chose one, the mid-level shoe, and asked if I could wear it out of the store. He grinned, and tucked the beastly sevens into the box before pulling up a chair.

"Now, let me tell you a few things. We carry a lot of shoes here, but your size is on the fringes, even for us. You are always going to have trouble finding shoes that you can wear. You will be able to go up to a 6 wide, and sometimes a 6.5 wide, in some shoes, but given your foot width and instep, there are likely to be some styles of shoes that you just cannot wear."

I nodded—there seemed to be a lot of that going on in this conversation—and kept listening.

"The good news is that you have an opportunity that most people don't. Because your shoe size is so rare, you are likely to have much better luck in clearance racks than most people. Your size will either be the first sold, or the last. If it is the last, you stand a good chance of getting truly good shoes at extraordinary discounts if you're prepared to look periodically. You won't be able to go out the night before a party and find the perfect shoes, but if you're patient, in time you will find what you want."

I still wanted my slaveboy, dammit.

"I'll box these sevens up for you." He grinned.

On my way out, my Nordstrom shopping bag swung gaily from my fingertips, and I marveled at something: the sound of my footsteps. Good-quality shoes make an unmistakable, solid sound when walked in, a solid tap against the ground that most cheaply-made shoes just can't duplicate.

I sent text messages to friends celebrating my discovery, and wandered off to buy tea.

When I returned, even though I had already made my purchase, I thought, Why not. I went to the clearance rack, even though it was the 'designer' clearance rack, and started looking around. I chuckled at the frivolous shoes, marveled at the pretty ones, and then spotted it.

I picked it up, and realized I was in serious, serious trouble.

But that's for the next story.

Attention shoppers

2004-12-06T02:54:42+00:00

Part One: Women

There's a rule. Don't go to Yarn Expressions on one of their variable-percentage sale days. (Draw a ticket to determine your discount. Most people get 20% off, a few people get more, one person gets 75% off.) Sure, the flyers are lovely, and the possibility of drawing one of the lucky tickets is enticing, but the actual experience of trying to make a purchase at the store on sale day can only be described as craptastic.

Think you're the only knitter in northeast Alabama? Think again, bucko, because every grandmother with a knitting fetish gets the little announcement postcards and they all show up, garbage bags in hand, ready to loot and kill at the slightest provocation.

Think marauding herds of knitting grandmothers, all with the scent of Sale Yarn in their nostrils, stalking the perfect skein. God help you if you get in their way.

Did I mention the checkout line?

One person. One keyboard. One skein of yarn, laboriously keyed in at a time. One machine to process credit card orders. Large numbers of women standing around with garbage bags full of purchases, many of them filled with multiple hundreds of dollars worth of yarn.

You don't want to know how long the wait was in the checkout line.

During the last sale day, I was out of town. I asked Jeff to pick up one skein of yarn for me. The women in the store took pity on him, because he was out shopping for his wife, and was therefore a good husband, and he only needed to buy one skein so why didn't they just let him through to the front of the line?

Must be nice. Me, I had three skeins of sock yarn and I stood there for an hour before I looked at my purchases and had a sudden bout of sanity.

I was standing in line for an hour to save maybe four bucks. Judging from my place in line, I would be in line for at least another forty-five minutes before I'd get a chance to have my purchases rung up. I really didn't need any more yarn, and I really wasn't sure this yarn was worth the wait.

I put the yarn back up on the shelf, crumpled up the 20%-off ticket I'd gotten, and went home, hoping that when it came time for my next yarn purchase, I wouldn't hate myself for not having used the sale.

When I left, women were clutching garbage bags full of yarn and waiting patiently. Me, I'm not exactly the patient type. I went home, had a sandwich, and got in my gym time. I figured it was a better usage of my afternoon.

* * * * *

Part Two: Men

We sneaked off for our usual Sunday lunch together, Jeff and I, ending up at Firehouse Subs. He had his sub with a side of fully-leaded caffeinated beverage; I had mine with a healthy topping of habanero-pepper sauce.

Across the parking lot I could see the sign for Dick's Sporting Goods, my usual resource for sports-ish stuff. I'm still tossing around the idea of picking up a pair of hikingish shoes for the time I spend in Colorado and Utah, and I wanted to see what they had. Can't hurt to look, right?

I wheedled Jeff into making a quick stop over there, so we drove the short distance and I wandered into the back of the store.

I stared for a moment to make sense of the shoe section's layout. Men's on the left, women's on the right. Ok, there's the men's hiking-shoe section … where are the women's shoes? I scanned section by section: walking, cross-training, running, basketball, but no hiking shoes.

I walked around for a minute or two before being flagged down by an employee.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah. I'm looking for women's hiking shoes."

He began to walk toward one of the low shelves, and picked up a shoe. "This," he said, "is all we have."

"Two pair?"

"Yep."

"Do you people think that women just don't hike?"

"This is all we have."

A wall of men's hiking boots, and two pair for women. I think I was supposed to be consoled by the number of women's swimsuits they had for sale, though. If that store's to be believed, that's what women are supposed to do.

Jeff, on the way out: "Well, what did you expect from a store named Dick's?"

I'm not certain I'm consoled.