retail necessity

So after yesterday afternoon's "seam splitting incident", I had to be a little inventive this morning, and then put in some serious shopping miles this evening...

I could have just winged it with my black pants, but I was supposed to have that meeting this afternoon (which got rescheduled until tomorrow morning... grrr) and I didn't want to have to be worrying about the hole in my pants. So I pulled out the tan pants I bought for Stu's birthday two years ago (yikes, really?) and teamed them up with a blue dress shirt. Not great, but not bad.

I also discovered this morning, much to my chagrin, that the sweatpants I wear every morning have succumbed to the issue that pretty much all my pants fall victim to eventually, I'd worn right through the thighs in the last week or so and hadn't noticed. That's part of the problem with being a fat boy... thighs that rub. I swear, 82% of every pair of pants I've ever owned during my adult life have stopped being wearable because I've worn clear through the inner thighs... the rest of them are fine, could have years of wear in them, it's just the thighs that go. The other 18% I either got too big for, or (and I like this one much better), the pants got too big for me. But mostly it's the thigh thing...

Annoying, but true.

Anyway... after I got home from work, I bundled myself into the car and headed down to Red Circle on the hunt for some new dress pants. Now, I've documented the search for Appropriate Dress Pants previously... but sadly, since I've had this most recent pair, I've now become accustomed to the (as I read on one of the labels tonight) "Cross Pocket Flat Fronted Businesswear Pant"... and I like it. Normal pockets give me varying degrees of "Elephant Ear Pocket Syndrome" (ie they stick out funny whenever I do anything), so I want me some CP action... and in a nice flat front... pleats are so last century (and not flattering for your larger gentleman, yet that's exactly what they had in abundance... both single pleat and double pleat pants).

Of course if I was Regular Joe I would have has no problem (actually, if I was Regular Joe I wouldn't have either the EEPS or the thigh issue, so we wouldn't even be having this conversation, so let's move on shall we). Although they only had the one style in the CPFFBWP, they had a number of them, just not in my size... not even remotely approaching my size... which is irritating.

However it does bode possibilities for other stores... so a little excursion might be required on the weekend (and if I get finished with work early enough tomorrow *fingers crossed* I might head down to the city store and see what they have)...

Getting back to tonight's adventures though... Red Circle were having a "buy two clothing items get the second one half price" sale thing going on... and there I was, in need to pants and unsupervised in a department store (does Red Circle technically qualify as a department store?)... dangerous, hey. They happened to have some cute, dark wash, distressed jeans, so I picked up a pair to try on, as well as finding a couple of pairs of possibilities in the dress pant arena. One was pin-striped (I should give up on that though, I love the concept, but I'm just not built for the pin-stripe) and the other were kind of dark grey.

Now normally the whole concept of dark grey dress pants would have put me off, but these were a "premium businesswear pant", which sounded impressive... plus, flat front *yay*. Interestingly though, the Universe has a way of biting me on the bum for thinking things too loudly... I was only thinking earlier today about the price of dress pants and was having a conversation with myself about the fact that I normally only pay around $X, and why would you ever want to pay more than $Y for a pair of pants anyway. And then I tried on the "premium pant"... they fit goooood, and they didn't look half bad, even with the whole dark grey thing. Okay, so they weren't $Y, but they were midway between $X and $Y. Serves me right for thinking disparaging thoughts.

So the pin-stripes were a non starter, the premium pant and the jeans were a go, then I started poking around the dress shirts.

I'm blaming Tom... he of the previously indicated and much mentioned Pink Shirt Thursday (even if the only thing that's pink about his Thursdays these days is the beef)... I can't help myself, I have to look and see what they might have in the way of pink, pink related or pink adjacent shirts... and to add to my retail cock-blocking, they had some nice pink (or pinky purple or purply pink... its all good) striped/checked (not on the same shirt obviously) shirts that were reduced to very reasonable prices. But of course they had limited sizes, and mine wasn't one of them (what was particularly annoying is that in one case they had every single size below mine and then every single size above mine... but not mine).

I did however end up with a really nice blue/blue/blue/green/blue/green/white striped shirt (it's got lots of different shades of blue) and a fairly bog standard white shirt with a widely spaced blue check on it.

In the end I spent a goodly amount of time wandering around the menswear department... never did find a new pair of a sweatpants though... all the ones in my size range where just plain ugly. And when I got to the register I'd spent way more money than I'd intended to, but by the same token I'd saved myself $40, which is always good.

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