summery shopping

The glorious weather from yesterday carried over into today...

Actually, if anything, it was maybe a little too warm (yeah, I know, I'm a wuss... but I'm more of a fan of Spring and Autumn really)... but that could just have been because we were out amongst the weather a lot more today. And the change is on it's way in as I speak, so it's all blustery out there, which is nice too...

But enough about the weather...

Today was probably slightly more successful from a shopping perspective than last week... although we did cover a lot of the same ground (well, in part anyway).

After the Ritual Supermarket Trawl, Return and Unpacking (and the Ceremonial Filling of the Fridge) we headed into town to revisit some of the same stores and look at some of the same things we looked at last week. I also took my Penguin bookbag from last week too... which came in quite handy and I really like carrying it around. How long before I get bored with it is anybody's guess though.

Anyway, we stopped off at Athlete's Foot (where I bought my last pair of walking shoes) because they had some cool chunky-ass thongs I wanted to check out and ask the price on. But, alas, it seemed like I was having Bad Sales Assistant Karma all day and none of the girlies in the store wanted to help me (okay, they were all with customers, but still). In the end I just interrupted one of the girls before she went off and got some shoes for some random guy and asked the price of the "thong"... $115 (what the?)... turns out they were Fit Flops... which are supposed to give you a workout while you walk (and yes, they do actually come in men's styles, the website just looks very girly). Me, I just liked them because they were essentially platform thongs... I'm a simple man with simple tastes really.

So after that we headed up to Spotlight to take another look at net curtain material... we'd looked last week, and I knew how much the stuff I liked was, and I knew that I needed 14 metres (it's a big window and while I could probably have gotten away with 12 metres, I wanted a little more, and there was no way in hell I was going to buy 13 metres, my luck is bad enough as it is)... but at $8 a metre, it was an expensive proposition ($112 worth, as it turned out... nearly as much as the Fit Flops) and I couldn't commit to a decision, so we left it and went off to do the rest of our wandering...

I'm not completely sure where we ended up wandering to... I know we hit Borders briefly (no purchases though), there were some vague attempts to look at clothes for Ma (the less said about that the better)... and eventually we ended up in EzyDVD (always dangerous). Now I've been salivating over the finale of Season 2 of Doctor Who for MONTHS now... it's come down to a more reasonable price, I really want it, but I could never fully talk myself into getting it.

Until today obviously...

Then I realised that they had the finale of Season 3 out on DVD too, same price... damn and double damn. My ongoing Bad Sales Assistant Karma came back to bite me on the ass though... I couldn't find a few of the things that I wanted to take a look at, and both of the staff out wandering around the floor (both boys this time) just seemed to be avoiding me, dealing with other people (although, really, it doesn't take two of you to deal with one customer)... finally I basically buttonholed the more pierced and interesting of the two and made him take me to various things, one of which it turned out they didn't have, one of which I didn't buy and the third of which was the possibly appalling D.E.B.S. The only real reason I bought it was because it was featured in a Queer Cinema documentary I bought the other week (dyke director, from memory), plus it was $10. I know it's going to be bad... but I hope it's so bad it's almost good.

They were also playing part of the Top Gear box set in the store, and Ma had pointed out last week that it was a pretty reasonable price... and the pair of us stood there for about ten minutes just watching it on the screen, so that kind of settled it (even if it is pretty much the same stuff they've been playing on teevee recently), and the box set has now gone away for Christmas...

We were then struck down by Food Indecision... we both knew we wanted a drink, but couldn't decide on what, if anything, we wanted to eat... so just settled on going to the Bubble T place again... while we sat around drinking our respective beverages we discussed the net curtain situation, and in the end decided that it made sense, even it it was something of a huge outlay.

Before we went back up to Spotlight though we swung back through Athlete's Foot because they had some other funky looking shoes... "MBT Physiological Footwear" (yeah, I know, pretentious much)... they had this cool looking curved sole (kind of ugly shoes though) and I just had to try them on. And yet more bad Sale Assistant Karma (BSAK), because either all the girlies were busy still/again, or the one who didn't seem to be was ignoring me (but she may have been taking care of the dopey girl who kept jogging around the store to try out her shoes). Honestly, I should have asked the price of the shoes before I stood around like an idiot for way too long and then they didn't have my size and then the stupid wench who eventually served me kept telling me I was walking wrong in them (well screw you too dear). But eventually I did ask her how much they were... and when she started off with "Three", I knew it was going to end badly, and with two additional digits... in fact, I have no idea how much the incredibly overpriced shoes actually are, because I think I repressed everything after the three...

Our final stop was, of course, Spotlight... but again, BSAK... I finally made a decision, Ma also decided she was going to buy some new curtains for her kitchen (they had little seahorses on them... I actually think they were fairly ugly overall, but it's not my kitchen or my window, so what do I care), and we headed over to the register...

And what did we find when we got there... the Cheech and Chong of the over 50's female set... okay, so they weren't actually stoned, but they were incredibly annoying, dithering over what hooks they could hang a bamboo blind up with. ITS A BLIND, BITCH, USE A BIGASS HOOK DAMMIT...

Anyway, they dicked around for far too long, but then went off to dither over hooks and let the dopey girl serve us (only to come back halfway through and pay for the blind, which then made the girly have to wrap part of it up with sticky tape or whatever, don't ask)... A-NOY-YING! After all that, she rolled out my 14 metres of material... well I assume it's 14 metres, I will really have to measure it myself at some point, because she seemed to be being VERY arbitrary with her measuring... I'm sure I have something like 14.5 metres... but what do I care, having paid THAT much for the stuff, I think I'm entitled to a little bit of free fabric.

We won't discuss the rather stupid idea we had on the way out of the store, stopping to look at off-cuts of fake fur fabric. Now I LOVE fake fur fabric... the really soft and tactile good quality stuff... love, love, love, love... but it's bloody expensive, and even these tiny offcuts were pricey, but there I was feeling them up, until I suddenly realised that I was covered in all the loose fluff from like half a dozen different colours, lengths and types of fur... not a good plan...

Then there was the somewhat expected insanity when we got back here of taking down the old curtains (and a brief bout of cleaning the windowsills) and putting up the new ones (it's exactly the same pattern as the old set actually... there wasn't anything else I liked, and I bought the last ones from Spotlight too, about 500 years ago now)...

And, to finish, is the fact that because we didn't really have any lunch today, I'm currently starving... and even though I technically have a fridge full of food, I'm thinking of maybe going out to get pizza... it does sound plan-like...

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