• shopping,  travel

    Happy Birthday to Me!

    July 6, 2005 /

    I have fantastic pictures from the fourth of July. Not the regular joe grand finally shots of some city’s big fancy production either. No, I have pictures of renegade illegal fireworks shot at ground zero and all the snickering hooligans who are brave enough to set them off and get a ticket for them afterwards. It was CRAZY! Sparks and flares like you’ve never seen, right above your head! I’m surprised I still have my hearing.

    BUT…

    The pictures are on Toby’s camera and Toby has to work work work… so that means getting my pictures to this blog is second or third or fourth or fifth priority and my fantastic fourth of July blog post will probably happen sometime in December IF at all. ( Along with those Paris postcards and that movie I made of Rue Mofetard.)

    I’m just as bummed out as you are. Maybe even more because guess what else?

    My spy camera broke. $$#@!!!%$!!!! I’ll talk about it more later after I’m not so mad about it. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!

    In other news, Happy Birthday to Me! We are going new mom car shopping today. I have to say goodbye to my old faithful honda civic. She’s been so good to me. But alas, she’s just not made for carting a car seat around and around and Toby’s never liked her anyway. Sniff. Something about her being so low to the ground and invisible. Sigh! That’s what I liked about her. She was invisible to the cops and faster than a speeding bullet!

    The good news is I’m going to sell my old loyal jalopy to my Dad and he promises not to litter up the dash with junk mail and fast food cups. He has a habit of doing that and that would just make me cry. I love my old car. She even has a MP3 player installed! My dad better appreciate that.

    I just hope I love my new car as much as I love my old car. You’d think I’d be excited about getting a new car. I am! It’s just that all cars are ugly these days. I’m a pretty loyal Honda fan but all the cars out right now look like pimp mobiles to me. That leaves Volkswagen and Toyota. Toby absolutely forbids me to get any kind of SUV. That’s okay because I’m not used to driving big cars anyway. I just really really don’t want to get a soccer-mom-on-valium volvo or a mini van. No offense to any of you soccer mom’s who take valium. It’s just your car that I hate.

    I had my heart set on an all red mini cooper. (Yeah! Small is the new BIG!) But then I had to go and get pregnant and worry about things like getting rear ended with a car seat in the back.

    Mostly I’m excited to be spending the whole day with Toby.

    I’ll keep you posted.

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  • shopping

    Anti the Anti-Mall

    April 2, 2005 /

    Anti the Anti-Mall

    I went with my friend E. to the local “Anti-Mall” the other night. Anybody who knows me from back in the day, knows that this place used to be a regular haunt of mine. Now I’m lucky if I go there twice a year. It’s a fun place with shops like Urban Outfitters (though I hear it’s their worst performing store) and Buffalo Exchange (a store that reminds me of my college days in the bay area). But you know what? I think I’ve outgrown it.

    While I was there I felt overwhelmed by all the trends that I’m not keeping up with anymore. Everything is pretty this season with floral skirts and blouses trimmed in rough unfinished exposed seams and ribbons and criss crossing ties…and then the tank tops in every color. It’s all just so much! I love the shirts with the funny sayings and pictures of rainbow brite and all the shoes with sequins but I am just overwhelmed. I almost feel assaulted by the sheer quantities of cool stuff. Am I just getting old?

    You can pretty much buy anything you ever wanted from any country in any theme. You name your adventure, they’ve probably got an outfit to go with it. From the beaded bangles on your wrist to hand sewn flowers on your cotton mary janes, you’ll look like you just got back from a dusty market in Peru or Africa or deep in the inner city of Los Angeles! You can buy sweatshirt with screen printing and strategically placed safety pins that looks like you came from a punk concert in the 80’s or maybe you ran away to the London underground. It’s all here and it’s all for sale! Everything you can buy looks like it’s already been somewhere and done something fantastic. No adventuring or customization needed!

    I can just imagine the conversation,

    “Wow! Your shirt has bullet holes in it!!! Did you escape a drive by shooting?”
    “No, I bought it that way. And it came with this cool dog bite tear on the back too! And look here, there’s some glitter puffy paint that says I love pretty boys. I think this was when my shirt went to a rave in the Castro. ”

    What’s the fun in that? I want to be the one who goes somewhere and does something fantastic. Am I jealous of the clothes? Maybe I’m just sick of Urban Outfitters. Maybe it’s all La Coquette’s fault with her funny post about the study abroad girls in Paris.

    Speaking of the funny shirts with the funny sayings… (and I’m sure this has been said before) but what’s the fun in a funny saying on your shirt if everyone has funny sayings on their shirts too? It is fun that the whole world is now getting a shirt sense of humor but it just isn’t that special anymore!

    I’m just going to rebel. I’ll make my own shirts and I’ll buy clothes on my own adventures and hope someone asks me to tell the tales behind them. But it probably won’t happen because I’m sure there is nothing new under the sun that you can’t buy at the local mall or Anti-Mall for that matter.

    I’m probably just jealous that I’m not 16 anymore.

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