On outlet shopping, and New Year's resolutions

On my trip to Washington last week, I went on an outlet-shopping-trip. We have outlet stores in Canada, but not the way they have them in the US of A: consolidated in long, efficient strips parallel to the highway, their loading doors facing the passing traffic, interspersed with the occasional fast-food restaurant for sustenance. We could probably develop outlet shopping experiences like this if we took it a little more seriously, but personally, I prefer to think of it as an American Thing: go to the States, go outlet-store shopping. It adds to the experience, giving it a polito-cultural bent I like.

Anyway, outlet shopping is sort of fun in an isolated, surreal way, but it also tends to spoil one for normal clothes-shopping. I bought a blazer from Eddie Bauer*, for example, for $8.99. This is all well and good, and I'm going to wear it to work tomorrow with a scarf I bought for $7, but it sort of provokes the question: so, why would I ever pay $95 for this? And since, as I mentioned, outlet shopping is an American Thing as far as I'm concerned (and not for frequent or regular exposure), this means that normal shopping is thus held in lower esteem.

But anyway, we had a coupon for 20% off a purchase over $75 at the Eddie Bauer outlet store (which my mother very cleverly found online), and with James's jeans and my blazer and dress pants and librarian cardigan, we were almost there. So I grabbed a couple of pairs of socks almost at random to push us over the $75 mark. Well, let me tell you about these socks, Internet. These Eddie Bauer outlet-store socks are made of ANGORA. They have snowflakes on them. They are the nicest things I have ever had on my feet. They make me want to take a greyhound bus back to Washington (or Montana, or wherever) to see if there are more. The thought of wearing other socks just makes me sad, now. I actually think of these socks as pirate socks, because they don't have skulls and crossbones on them, but do you think pirates like socks with skulls and crossbones on them? They don't. They're pirates; they don't need to be reminded that they're pirates. Instead, they loot the very best sock-booty, and you can bet those socks are freakin' angora.

That was all a very long way of saying: I have these socks I really like. I made a delicious potato dish in my crock-pot, which I also really like. I went to see Juno, which was a delight: I really liked it. I got my paladin to level 62 today, and I watched some of season 2 of Fraggle Rock, which I got for Christmas from James (who I really, really like). I'm almost finished Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which makes me want to change my life. I'm going to make some card-catalogue-esque desk storage, which is a good place to start. Lots of things are making me happy, and it feels like a good day for a new year.



*I love Eddie Bauer, which I am well aware is weird. I'm looking forward to being old because then I will be able to stop there with complete impunity, and not question whether the things I am buying are making me look like an old person, because I will be an old person. See what I mean?