There’s not much that I love as much as great pairs tap dancing.

I saw this next one on TCM last February- it’s Christopher Walken on Gene Kelly:

The scene with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor is here. It won’t embed. Go watch it, though. It’s great.

Wait, where are you going?  You wear contacts?  Then you need a new pair of backup glasses.  Or a pair of prescription sunglasses.  Or swimming goggles or wind goggles or whatever.  You can get them too!

Okay.  So I bought two pairs through Zenni Optical, each of which cost about $40 including shipping, and they arrived about 10 days after I ordered them.  These were not name-brand frames, but you can’t tell a difference unless you’re particularly fond of wearing a brand name on each side of your head.  The quality is pretty much the same.

But I also bought a name-brand pair (Ray-Ban) from Coolframes.com.  I saw them at LensCrafters and really liked them, and then I found them online for much less (less than half the cost, or more than $200 cheaper).  Other than the name on the side, I don’t think there’s much difference in the frames, and there is almost certainly no difference in the prescriptions (with one caveat).

So I am very happy with my experience.

This is what I did:

- Got an eye exam from a qualified optometrist (actually, an opthamologist, but either one works).  I made them write down clearly what all the numbers were and identify them.  I don’t have astigmatism, so there are only the two numbers for me (my prescription is different in each eye), but you can get glasses for astigmatism and for bifocals online.  Just make sure they write down the whole prescription for you.

- Asked for my PD or pupillary distance.  This is usually measured by the person working in the frame shop.  It is measured in millimeters.  If you have bifocals, you should have two of them, I think.

- Did my research.

- Ordered one pair from Zenni just to check the quality, as a tryout.  (These were really trendy red frames.)

- Ordered a second pair from Zenni because they were cute.

- Ordered the more expensive brand-name pair from Coolframes.com because I loved them in the store and wanted a new pair of everyday black frames.

Okay, so here’s the research part:

I have a giant melon of a head, or so it seems to me.  I always have to get giant hats because normal ones don’t really fit me.  And I have had glasses that were too small for my head before, and they cut into my temples and were totally uncomfortable.  I do not want to go back that direction.

But it’s hard to tell online what glasses will fit and what will not.  And that is why they have sizing information on the frames sold online and on the frames they sell in the store.  I didn’t know this!  I’ve been wearing glasses for 24 years and I never knew that there was sizing information.

So I went to LensCrafters and Pearle Vision and I tried on a stack of frames, making mental notes as to the size range that seems to work.  It became clear that the temple length (the temple arm is the part that goes from your face to your ear) didn’t matter too much for me, personally, but I needed a lens width (the measurement of the width of the lens itself) of at least 53mm or a total width of 139mm, and the bigger the better.

Even with the measurements, it’s not perfect.  Some of the temple arms bow out from the sides so they fit looser than the measurements suggest.  Sometimes they have a very small bridge width so they might be tighter than the measurements suggest.  But I got a good sense of it from trying on a lot of items at the stores.

Then I went online and browsed and considered a lot of different frame styles, and eventually made a selection.  And I have been very happy with the way it all worked out.

Other than the sizing, the other issue is choosing the lens itself.  There are lots of options.  One option is to select high indexing, which is a process by which they make a strong prescription with thinner lenses.  This costs more, but it means that your frames aren’t as heavy and there isn’t a Coke-bottle effect.  I have had high indexing for a long time, but there are several options as to how thin the lenses are, and this was the caveat I mentioned above.  I went with 1.61 indexing on the Zenni lenses, and 1.67 on the Coolframes.com, all of which appear to be slightly different than my old glasses from LensCrafters.  When I switch between the glasses, there’s a moment where I have to readjust my depth perception and my focusing because the lens thickness affects this quite a lot.  But it’s very minor.  Overall, I don’t sense much difference between my old Ray-Bans and my new Ray-Bans and my two pairs of off-brand Zenni glasses.  Maybe after some wear, it will be more apparent.

And, yes!  They have swimming goggles and wind goggles and you can put sunglass tint on any pair of glasses, which is pretty awesome.  I paid nearly $500 for my last pair of prescription sunglasses, which makes me not want to wear them out of fear that I will break them.  (Obviously I don’t have vision insurance.)  $40 for prescription sunglasses is cheap enough that I wouldn’t have heartburn for a week if they fell off a boat or the side of a mountain or something.  (You know, when I am out boating or mountain-climbing, as I do.)  It wouldn’t be nearly as painful to lose them.  And it’s good for your eyes to wear them, so there’s that too.

So, this is me recommending getting your glasses online.  The cost difference is enormous, but I am very happy with the results.

Anyway, I did almost exactly what I intended to do this weekend.  On Saturday morning, I got up early and drove over to St. Louis for a Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and a run by my favorite antiques store (I bought a picture- paid far too much for it and later discovered that it weighs about fifteen pounds, but oh well).  I did it all and got home around 1:30pm… pretty good time.  When I got home, I cleaned out the freezer and fridge and scrubbed everything down, then cleaned out the ‘snack cabinet’ (where we have traditionally stored cookies and chips and trail mix and anything else snacky).  I threw out a lot of food, but I knew I would have to.

Tracy came into town and stayed over on Saturday night.  We later went to dinner with my sister and her notboyfriend and then on to see a late show of the Harry Potter movie.  (My verdict: it was better than the book, which is not saying much as Book 6 was by far my least favorite of the Harry Potter books.  When I first read it, I thought it was a total waste of time.  After I reread the whole series last summer, however, I thought was better in context, but still felt like Rowling was treading water.  I thought the movie was okay, overall.  Book 3 and Movie 3 remain the high water marks for the series.)

Tracy headed back to KC yesterday afternoon, after lunch at a Mexican place in town with my parents and sister.  And I did a fair amount of working on photos- enough to get through all my Netflix discs (I’m currently watching Northern Exposure, season 4).  Tonight I will finish off my wedding from last month, very exciting.

I did a post over at the photo blog last week, and I intend to do at least three new posts there this week (with more to come in the future, I expect).  I have been very negligent over there, but I realized that my exhibit photos point to that website and I could possibly make some sales if I set it up right.  I mean, on the last exhibit rotation, my photos did not have my website on them, and I sold two.  I’m not saying I will sell more, but it’s certainly not helping if I haven’t updated the blog in four months.

When I finish the photos tonight (and do a few for photo club tomorrow), I can work on some family photos that are past overdue and also start to focus on the house organization that I have been ignoring for a few weeks.  Yay!

To keep this from being an entirely Things I Did and Things I Plan To Do entry (there are far too many of these on this blog), here is a list of Things That I Bought That I Love:

• Scout’s Seat Saver:  So Tracy left and took her Suburu Forester with her, and I miss it.  (Yes, I miss her, too.)  My car is newer, and the back seat does not fold down (for whatever stupid reason), and the seats are dark navy blue, so every piece of dirt shows up on them.  Tracy never minded having dog hair everywhere, and I would borrow her car to haul mulch or furniture or whatever.  I dreaded this car access being stripped from me.  I thought about buying a beat-up truck or something, but I saw this months ago in the pages of the Duluth Trading Company catalog, which was at my parents’ house, and immediately I wanted it instead.  Then I thought, “I’m going to pay what for a blanket?”  And then finally, after weeks of hemming and hawing, I did buy it.  And I love it!  It easily installs over the headrests in the backseat of my car, protecting the dark upholstery from dog hair and mud (inevitable after trips to the dog park), and I even hauled mulch in it last week with minimal spillage.  Martha the dog does not love it, but she is used to it now.  I am glad I bought it, because blankets would not have protected the floor carpeting or kept her out of the front seat.  It is great.
• Bedside tables & lamps:  They’re all vintage, so I’m not actually pimping anything on this one.  But I have not had bedside tables or lamps since I was in high school, or possibly earlier, actually.  After I started collecting furniture in my own apartment in college, it was always something I intended to get, but matching the waterfall furniture in my bedroom proved challenging.  I just never got around to it.  This spring, I bought matching bedside tables and two huge matching vintage lamps, and I cannot believe that I did not do it earlier.  Not only do the lamps pull the whole room together, I love being able to read in bed and then just put the book aside and turn out the light, without getting up.  Just one of those things that makes you slap your forehead and go, “Duh!  Why didn’t this happen earlier?  Much, much earlier?”
• La Crosse Battery Charger and Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries:  I did a lot of research when I wanted to convert to rechargeable batteries again.  I had one of the earlier, first-or-second-generation chargers and some sets of batteries, but they weren’t exactly intended to last forever and certainly didn’t.  The La Crosse charger is intended to last awhile, and helps the batteries last longer too.  It allows you to set the charge time for the batteries (the slower the charge, the longer the battery life), and the Eneloop batteries are really the best rechargeables I’ve used.  They hold a charge much longer than some of the others I’ve used.
• Well, if we’re going to start on photography stuff (because that’s why I need a boatload of rechargeable batteries with a long charge life), the Better Bounce Card.  If you use an SLR with a speedlight, you should learn to bounce your flash and use a bounce card.  There’s one attached to your speedlight, but it’s not as great as using the ridiculously simple ABBC.  It works much better than most flash diffusers because it doesn’t eat light, plus it costs much less.  You could make one yourself, but I bought the one he sells because it comes with the custom-made rubber band.  I love it.  I use it every time I use my flash.

There was something else that I was thinking of the other day, something that I bought on a whim but I love it and wouldn’t part with it.  I can’t remember now.

Happy Moonday!

It’s an amazing world.

So, yes, I finally have a fully-working television/DVR at my house, which is very exciting and kind of weird, since it’s been about six weeks that it’s all been sorta nonfunctional.  Things record and I don’t even have to be there to change the damn channels!  If the DVR software wasn’t so leaden and nonintuitive, it would be a complete success, but too bad.  However, the nice satellite installer guy told me that I could get and install a device on my dish that would allow me to use the dual tuner aspect of the dish receiver.  I am not sure when I will get around to that kind of thing, but it’s nice to know it’s an option without the hassle of having him run a second line through the crawlspace in the attic.

Well, it’s been nearly three weeks that I’ve been living alone in my house.  It is still a giant mess of a place, unfortunately.  I’m always behind on yard work, it seems.  I did get the front flowerbed weeded yesterday, and put down all ten bags of mulch (it still could use another three bags, and I want to get to that this weekend), but the back flowerbed is looking weedy again… I feel like I could spend all of my extra time on the flowerbeds, and it would never be enough.  It’s time I started pulling them out, because they exist now as just a series of little wildernesses.

Inside the house, I am forever moving stuff from one room to another, shuffling things around.  Things are piling up in those rooms in disorganized messes, but the idea is that I will eventually puzzle out a way to organize it all.  And now I have that goal, that quarterly resolution that I set last week, to finish it all by October!  It is totally do-able, but I have to spend more time, especially on weekday afternoons and evenings when there is a lot of temptation just to sit in front of the tv set.

Anyway, I like living alone.  I like having all the space in the world for all of my stupid shit, and I like having a sense of control over my papers and files and even the bills.  I was afraid of getting control back over the bills, which Tracy paid consistently on-time while we lived together, which was not the case in my earlier years… but so far I have been very consistent about paying them on time, even though the house is in general disarray.  I’ve been good about dealing with the mail every day.  I’ve been good about dealing with the dishes every day!  So far, so good.  There were a few days last week when I didn’t deal with my daily messes on the same day, but that phase passed.  I came to like living in a clean space, and I want to keep it up.

This weekend!  This weekend should be both productive and fun, if I play my cards right.  The weather is supposed to be BEE-YOU-TIFUL, if you like your summer weather cool and comfortable rather than hot and humid.  And I DO!  Tracy might come in tomorrow and hang out, but I’m not sure whether she’s staying over tomorrow night or not.  I plan to head to St. Louis first thing in the morning and get back to Columbia in the early afternoon, with stops by Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and The Future Antiques.  After I get home, possibly some time can be spent cleaning out the fridge and freezer (there is a lot of expired food in there, and the whole thing needs a scrub).  Then, later, we may go see the new Harry Potter movie and get dinner with my sister and her notboyfriend, if we work it all out.  I hope to be productive, photography-wise, both tonight and on Sunday.  So that all should be good and fun!

OOH.  Did I mention that The State finally came out on DVD this week?  Did I mention that I have been waiting for this for, like, fifteen years?  It is disappointing that it doesn’t have the original music.  I will never understand how music companies and recording artists can object to having music included on DVD productions when the music was included in the original work.  Like, seriously, what harm is there?  I can only see good.  If, for instance, I am reintroduced to music by the Breeders or other 90s musicians who are nowhere to be found in current mainstream music, and then I go, “Wow, I loved my CASSETTE TAPE of this in 1994!  I should really buy this ON ITUNES!”, how is that not a positive thing for the musician?  Now I will be introduced to a completely different, yet soundalike artist, and I will throw my money at them instead.  TOO BAD FOR YOU, KIM DEAL.

But.  I am very happy about The State DVD release because I am a giant nerd.  I loved that show.  I know all of the sketches.  I can recognize the voices of any of the members if they do voiceovers of commercials or whatever.  I will love them all until the day I die.  And the past few weeks of intermittant media coverage around this AMAZING UNSTOPPABLE FORCE OF COMEDY has been fabulous for someone who has had literally nobody to geek out about this show with over the last fifteen years.  (I used to post to the State USENET groups, people.  I spent $70 in 2003 for videotaped dubs of all of the original episodes JUST TO SUPPLEMENT the tapes I HAD TAPED MYSELF.  I mean, giant nerd.  GIANT nerd.)

I will stop now.

If you didn’t follow the link, you’re missing out on an Eco-Friendly Chronometer that literally runs on itself!  It’s what’s next in classic timepieces!

It’s a small clock that is powered by water and lemon juice.  It runs 6-8 weeks on water and lemon juice.

I don’t see that the clock’s website itself is billing it as a travel clock, but the design blog referred to it as such.

And, as such, I think it’s an insane proposition made by people who either don’t travel, or have no grip on reality.

First of all, it doesn’t run on itself; it runs on water and lemon juice.  And you can’t take it in your suitcase filled with water and lemon juice, so you have to empty it and then refill it at your destination.

With lemon juice.  Which is so easy to procure!  When I asked, on the blog, where I was supposed to get lemon juice on the road, another commenter told me, “Lemons.”

(Asshole.)

Yes, lemons!  Of course!  How silly of me not to realize that, upon landing at my destination after hours of flying and cabs and hotel check-in lines and hauling luggage, I should just pop out and grab myself a lemon or two at the nearest organic market.

Then what?  A knife?  A cutting board?  Should I just squeeze the lemon right into the clock?  How much lemon juice should I use?  Do I now need a measuring cup?  What about the pulp and seeds- is that a problem?  Will the acid eventually wear away the inside of the plastic clock?  How often will I have to rinse it out, because that little spout thing looks like it will be hard to use with a plastic bottle brush.

Not to mention that I personally live in a town with hard water.  I am pretty sure that clock would start to show the signs of hard water damage after a few months.

After being flamed at the blog, and then (of course) spitting off an irritated response with a condensed version of these points, I felt bad and decided to be empathetic.

I mean, let’s just say you do need a traveling alarm clock.  The one you had is broken, let’s say.  Let’s say that, although you could buy a replacement travel clock PLUS rechargeable batteries for the $16 that this one costs, you want to be eco-conscious.  And you don’t want to use your cell phone alarm.  And you don’t want to use the clock in your hotel room.  Or the wake-up service at the hotel.  And you don’t, for whatever reason, want to buy a solar-powered clock.

Yes, let’s just put ourselves in those shoes.

The clock is cute.  And $16 isn’t terribly expensive for an ostensibly green piece of electronics.  The solar clock will run you $30 on Amazon.  (Though, of course, we aren’t taking into account the cost of lemons over the life of the clock.)

But then this empathy led me to try to imagine the kind of person who would consider this a reasonable excuse for a travel clock.

I have come to the conclusion that this kind of person seems like a real pain in the ass to know or be around, and if I ever had to travel with this person, I would shove a pencil into my eye.  Can you imagine sharing a cab with a colleague who, upon finally getting a cab in an unfamiliar city, suggests that the first thing s/he will do in this new city is find a lemon?  To use in an alarm clock?

I wonder if I’m going to get banned from that blog now.

I think I’ve decided that I’m ok with that.

Pants rant!

I had a nice weekend, wearing stretchy jeans that fit when they’re really clean but stretch after a few hours’ of wear and then are loose enough that I need a belt to keep them on.  Grr, stretchy jeans!  (Yet a pair of non-stretchy jeans still fit weirdly tight, same as they did before the diet.  I don’t get it.)

Anyway, it was a nice weekend, pants or no pants.  (Mostly I wore pants.)  Tracy and I watched a couple of AFI movies- Caberet and A Streetcar Named Desire.  I was not into Caberet and don’t really understand its place on the list.  Actually, it’s only on the new list, the AFI list that was released in 2007, where it falls at #63, right above The African Queen, Tootsie, Network, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, all of which seem vastly superior.  I mean, it wasn’t bad, but I felt like I’d seen it before I saw it.  Maybe Liza Minnelli and her short dark hair, long legs, and spidery eyelashes were a revelation at the time, as was the choreography by Bob Fosse, but none of it was really a surprise to me (especially as Liza Minnelli has been rocking the same hairstyle, lashes & short skirts for the past forty years).

Both Tracy and I apparently went through play-reading stages in high school, at which point in our lives we’d both read A Streetcar Named Desire, but neither of us had seen the movie or a stage production.  It seems kind of appropriate to go through a play-reading phase in high school, when you’re desperate to experience something big and new, but all you can do is read the lines and stage directions on the page, and it’s hardly the same.  We were both surprised to discover that this was Marlon Brando’s first real movie role, and how young he was!  She’d never seen him in anything from the 1950s, though I was totally enamored of the movie version of Guys and Dolls in junior high (during my Broadway musical phase) and that was my first Brando experience.  I had totally forgotten that Vivian Leigh plays Blanche- for some reason, I thought it was Elizabeth Taylor.  But then we had to discuss Vivian Leigh and I discovered that Tracy has never read the book or seen the movie for Gone With The Wind.  And that’s just a shame.  The new AFI list puts A Streetcar Named Desire just above Rear Window and just below It Happened One Night, and that seems appropriate.

We went out to antique stores and thrift stores on Saturday afternoon, and came home with more furniture for Tracy, and some kitchen stuff for me.  Tracy also bought two lamps and a set of matching juice glasses.  Then we stopped by my aunt’s house because she’s in the process of moving, and we scored two bookshelves (one for each of us) and a desk (for me) there, as well as a bunch more kitchen stuff.

On Sunday, we went up to see my parents and friends who’d come in for the day.  It was a cold and blustery day after a pretty warm Saturday, but we had a nice time chatting and discussing various current events.

Why do I always say I have great weekends, but then I list what I did, and it sounds like not much?  I guess it was just all very pleasant.

Yesterday, I talked with an upholstery shop in Ashland about redoing my new couch.  Their fabrics are online, so I started looking through fabrics.  I have no idea what I’m going to do.  I’m concerned about pet hair showing up and yet I love the look of bright solid colors on furniture.  I already have those two chairs that are in a neutral stripe, so I want something that has some color.  I’m almost certain that I want a blue or green or something in-between.  And obviously it should be able to stand up to some wear and tear.

My red couch is looking pretty raggedy these days.  Besides being the only furniture in the house that the dog is allowed on (and the dog knows this), it’s been right under an arched window for three years, getting sun every morning, and that hasn’t helped it at all.  The red is pretty faded in specific spots.  It’s sad to see things get older when you use them, isn’t it?  That red couch was the first big new piece of furniture I’ve ever bought or owned, and it was pretty awesome at the time.  Now it looks sad.  I intend to do a lot of rearranging after Tracy takes the furniture to Kansas City, and I think the red couch is going to go in another room, and I was thinking of dressing it up with some colorful blankets and throws and pillows- stuff that can be cleaned if the dog drools all over them, but entertaining for me to look at.

Tonight (after the pants-shopping and a stop by Ace Hardware for a number of things), I promised to help Tracy get started on sanding down the four wood chairs she bought.  She wants to paint them green to go with her bright yellow table.  I need to get some chrome polish as well, to see if we can make the legs of the table look good too.

Some of this I bought for myself (obviously, the hairpins are all mine) but a few of them were gifts for other people.  I bought the tote as a gift for my sister-in-law for Christmas.  And the shelf thing on the bottom row was for Tracy, because she was talking about getting a tchotchke holder.  That’s her word for a small shelf like this.  This was just so cute that I couldn’t help getting it for her.  She has a lot of little animal statues and toys, and they will look cute on it.

I like all the colors!  I buy a lot of colors on Etsy.

I had another road thought lately that I think I’ll share with you as well.  Lucky you!

After the bridge collapse in Minneapolis (was that last winter?  nope, August 2007), I notice that the Missouri Department of Transportation has started putting up these Safe & Sound signs on the bridges all over the state.  They’re intended to let us know that they’ve checked out the bridge and it’s in good shape, and we shouldn’t worry about it cracking open and sending us to our deaths anytime soon.

I am all for the testing of bridges and ensuring that they’re in good shape!  Great program!  Great use of resources!  Providing jobs in Missouri in tough economic climates!  Probably should have been done before the calamity in Minnesota, but better now than never.

However, MoDOT people, am I supposed to be comforted by those signs?  Because there are bridges where there are no Safe & Sound signs! 

Am I supposed to think that you just haven’t checked those bridges that don’t have the signs?  That is frightening.  I wish you’d just not put up any signs then.  

Now I see a sign on one bridge and then the next bridge, I’m like, what?  But then by the time I’ve noticed that there is no sign, I’m already on the damn bridge!  Which may not yet be tested!

Or- worse, tested and determined to be Unsafe & Unsound!  But they don’t have signs for that.  

They also don’t have signs that indicate how close to failing the test the Safe & Sound bridges are.  And how long is this testing going to go on?  Is this an ongoing test?  For how long will this bridge be Safe & Sound?  Is that sign going to remain there permanently?!?

Some information is available on this MoDOT webpage, but unfortunately the page also contains this line:

Approximately 1,100 of them are in poor/serious condition. The Safe & Sound Initiative will address most of these bridges.

Emphasis mine, obviously.  Well, good luck out there, my friends.

I have it in a soft case right now because the Speck ToughSkin that I want isn’t available in my town.  So I keep cradling it like a baby, just in case it might leap from its case through my fingers and crash into bits on the floor. 

It could happen!

I learned today that one of my current favorite shows, Pushing Daisies, is probably going to be cancelled, and it’s very disappointing because it’s such a cute show and so unique.  The style is wonderful and the storyline is fun and yet it has a very surreal and absurd sense of humor.  It totally works, so I’m very disappointed that it will be cancelled and shit like Private Practice still lives to waste airspace another day.  On the other hand, Chuck seems to be alive and well, at least for now.  I thought that one would be cancelled right away, but it’s having a pretty good second season.  I like that show too, but it’s nowhere near as cute as Pushing Daisies, although the inclusion of Adam Baldwin was inspired casting.

We are supposed to have a Thanksgiving party at work today, but I thought it might start a little early so I could eat a bit before I have to leave at noon.  That’s not happening though, so I will have to leave just as the fun begins.  I brought some bread from Uprise Bakery and some cookies.  I might have to break into those cookies before I leave, though.  Or maybe a piece of bread?  Please?  Take pity- it’s a long drive to the airport.  No, actually, I plan to go home and slap together some Tofurky sandwiches, cut up an orange, and we’ll eat in the car on the way up.

I realized yesterday that I was doing the math wrong about our timing this afternoon, so we have a little more time than I thought.  Not much, though.  But I don’t have to be a crazy worry person.

And it’s Southwest.  I can’t tell you how much I like Southwest Airlines.  When I started flying them instead of American, I wanted to hug every flight attendant.  Big planes!  Choose my own seat!  Suffer-no-fools mentality of the staff!  Ah, I love it.  I love that they fly out of the little terminals, like the East Terminal in St. Louis or Midway Airport in Chicago or that new concourse at BWI (which is where we have our layover today).  That makes it even easier.  I don’t think I ever get a better deal through Southwest than other places, but it’s totally worth it in terms of my anxiety levels.  I would even understand if they decided to start charging for checked baggage, like everybody else, but they don’t even do that!  Aren’t they nice?

And to round out a happy, love-filled entry (I love iPhones and Speck ToughSkin cases and Pushing Daisies and absurdity and surreal humor and Chuck and Adam Baldwin and Tofurky and Uprise Bakery and Southwest Airlines and the East Terminal at the St. Louis Airport and…), I have to admit that I love the Candy Cane Hershey Kisses, and I’ve already bought and consumed some even though I have a visceral reaction to the holiday music piped into all of the stores already.  I’m not a fan of Christmas before Thanksgiving, and yesterday I realized that one of my neighbors has put up all of their Christmas trees already (YES, you heard right, I said ALL of them… they must have five full-sized Christmas trees, one for every window in the front of the house, and that’s only what I can see from driving by and gawking from my car) and it’s only today a WEEK before THANKSGIVING and I still have not put away Halloween decorations.  Whatever.  The point is that I love Candy Cane Hershey Kisses.  They are, by far, the best Hershey Kiss available and that includes the plain chocolate ones, but there is still room at my table for the Lemon and Orange ones that they have at Easter.  I think it’s something about the white chocolate that I like so much.  Anyway, I love you Candy Cane Hershey Kisses!  Call me!

I dropped off two pairs of pants to be hemmed at a tailor at Crossroads Shopping Center.  If you’re familiar with Columbia, it’s at the corner of Broadway and Stadium Blvd.  I hate Crossroads.  There’s only one way into the parking lot, and that’s from Broadway, and you have to approach it from the east because there are no stoplights and you can sit in traffic trying to make that left for many minutes.  And then when you are ready to leave, you have to take a right onto Broadway going west because you will sit there for many minutes before you will be able to cross the street to go east.  You can try going out the exit on Ash St., but with the new shopping center across the street, it’s hard to get into the lane to go left or straight, so you end up going right onto Stadium.  And making a left onto Ash is too difficult because the exit is too close to the stoplight there, so you can’t make a left if there’s traffic waiting at the light.  And if there’s no traffic waiting, then there’s probably too many people coming the other way.  It’s just a big pain in the ass. 

Unfortunately, the shopping center is home to the best Chinese restaurant in Columbia and the only standalone big box pet store in Columbia (although that’s a bit misleading because it’s a very small Petco- roughly half the size of a typical Petco), as well as the AAA office, a branch of my credit union, my favorite frame shop, and a UPS Store, as well as random other shops.  Anyway, I avoid Crossroads when I can.

I dropped the pants off at the tailor in the middle of the day last week, after a dentist appointment, and I didn’t notice the hours.  I figured I would pick them up today after another dentist appointment, but I ended up there during the lunch hour and the shop was locked up.  That’s when I realized that the hours of the damn tailor are 8:30am to 4:00pm.  ARRGGHHH.  Do you WANT customers?  What the fuck?  Clearly they don’t want ME as a customer, and I will be very happy to not give them any business from now on.  Fine.  I just have to figure out when I’m going to TAKE OFF WORK to pick up those pants.  RAAARRAGHHH.

In other news of my relationship with members of Columbia’s small business community, I also sent emails to a business in town when I realized they were plagiarizing some stuff on their publicity materials and website.  I noticed that they had done so because I frequent one of the websites that they were ripping off.  And they were doing it in a really obnoxious way: using full paragraphs of text verbatim without any attribution, but then including a quote from a different source at the bottom of the blurb, with correct attribution.  Over and over again.  I thought that was deceitful and I called them on it. 

The business in question (which I will not name here because I am not that big of an asshole) is a cool quirky little place with lots of cred with the cool quirky indie kids.  Let’s just say that they are big supporters of arty indie entertainment, ok?  So it’s pretty hypocritical for them to collect all the cred that comes with running a cool quirky little place but yet directly steal from cool quirky little websites.  I mean, right?  That’s a bunch of bullshit, right there. 

And, of course, I got a very defensively written response from the owner, who basically accused me of being petty.  Which, fine.  Ok.  In the grand scheme of things, a little bitty business using blurbs without attribution isn’t that enormous of a deal.  It’s not corruption on Wall Street leading to massive bailouts totalling billions of taxpayer dollars, or a corporate lobbyist benefitting from deals with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while acting as the campaign manager for a national Presidential candidate, or whatever.  No one said it was a gigantic big deal.  But notice that I didn’t take my findings to the local paper, expecting a full inquiry from the city council.  I wrote an email to the business owner, and I suggested that they start citing their sources.  Because to do otherwise isn’t just illegal, it’s unethical.  And it’s uncool (although coolness shouldn’t be an important factor in their legal decision-making processes).  And, as a small business, they should be aware of what might hurt other small businesses.  Seriously.

Let’s see.  Do I have any other small businesses to bitch about?  No, I don’t think so.  Except: why are the Quiznos restaurants in town only open until 8pm?  Why are the Subway franchises on campus the only ones that have that delicious ‘veggie patty’ option when they’re all owned by same guy?  And why haven’t I figured out if there’s another pet store in town that sells the particular brand of ridiculously expensive pet food and compostable cat litter that I buy, so that at least the markups are lining the pocket of some small business owner rather than the nameless, faceless corporate behemouths at Petco?  Also, maybe this make-believe magical pet store is more conveniently located?  

I am pretty disappointed in the thing about the plagiarism, because I have been a big fan of this small business and its various endeavors, and I am a regular customer.  And now I just have a bad taste in my mouth over the whole thing, and it’s irritating that they can’t just be cool and honest people.  I mean, didn’t we learn what plagiarism was really early in school?  And is this or is it not a college town?  Way to be a role model, there. 

Now I have to decide if it’s enough of a dealbreaker for me that I’ll have to avoid their business until they get their shit under control.  Is it?  I don’t know.

Fine, I’m done.  I’m going to go back to my work now.  Yes, I have work to do.  Shut up.