Not feeling terribly inspired this week. There are several rants bubbling around inside about various political topics, but the worthlessness of casting pearls before swine has got me down, so I'll hold off on those.
My weekends aren't long enough. This is, of course, a function of my job not being enjoyable enough. My commute is, holidays which others get and we do not aside, a minimum of an hour and a quarter. I've been in the planning phase for a month now, which involves no deadlines and thus no pressure to get anything done. And the product I work on isn't terribly inspiring to begin with.
So, drudgery. Which leads to perceptively short weekends. Last weekend I did laundry and went shopping on Saturday, then went shopping for clothes on Sunday and played a fun game of Call of Cthulhu at some friends' house.
It's an odd phenomenon, but one I suspect you can relate to - a day on which you have plans, even plans to do fun things, is not the same as a day on which you have no plans and must do nothing. I had a fine time on Sunday - even the shopping was fun - and yet I really needed Monday off to sit around the house.
We almost didn't go out on Sunday. It had snowed lightly all night, and was in fact snowing at ten thirty when we left home. The roads were plowed but slushy. The radio news was a litany of closed churches and sunday schools.
But I needed slacks, so we drove the hour and a half out to Leesburg, to the factory outlets. The snow let up en route. And when we got there, we had the place to ourselves.
It was great. Parked right up front, no lines, no other shoppers to navigate around. Just us and the store clerks. When you need to shop, if you can arrange it, go shopping immediately after a minor snowstorm. I can't recommend it enough.
As I say, I was shopping for slacks. (I warned you this was a slow news column.) I wanted pleated front wrinkle-free khakis. That's what I wear to work. And I wanted dark blue and/or khaki of some hue. No grey, no green, no brown. Brown pants are for old men.
My favorite pair of slacks at the moment are from Structure, but this mall did not have a Structure, so I ascertained which men's clothing stores they did have, and then followed my list. First I went to Tommy Hilfiger, but they did not have any wrinkle-free slacks. I'll hang my clothes up right out of the drier, but ironing them just isn't going to happen. Since I was passing, I then went into Nautica, and they did have wrinkle-free pleated front slacks, but I looked at the label on the ass and realized that Nautica was a brand for old men. So that was a no.
Then I went to J. Crew. Now, usually I like J. Crew, but the store they have at the outlet mall in Leesburg is a pastel nightmare of trendy thrashed-looking clothes. Nothing even vaguely professional. So that was out. Then I went to Calvin Klein, but all of their clothes are for gay New York nightclubbers. Lots of silky black and so on. Nothing for work. I bought five pair of long underpants.
I was working my way up the socio-economic branding ladder, so I next visited Polo / Ralph Lauren. And they had what I wanted - but only two pair. So I bought two pair of slacks, and went to Brooks Brothers.
I have not previously been a Brooks Brothers patron. For one thing, their brand image is more Wall Street-y than my self-image. And, similarly, I expected their clothes to be more expensive than I was looking to pay for. However, in the event, they were little more expensive than the other stores I had visited, and the quality was much higher. The Tommy Hilfiger slacks had loose threads and dubious seams; no such problems were in evidence with the Brooks Brothers slacks. And the reason for the perceived pricing difference is that Brooks Brothers carries higher-end clothing. Suits and so on. The khakis were comparable - $40 a pair to $30 at Tommy and Nautica - in price, but BB also had $150 dry clean only slacks. Which I did not buy.
But I did purchase two more pair of slacks, as well as four shirts, and considered the entire trip a great success.
The Call of Cthulhu game was also a success - four and a half hours from character creation to finish, a two-thirds party wipeout, and everyone happily panicked a few times during the adventure. Fun was had all round.
But then we got home at eight thirty, had dinner, and it was time to go to bed and get up for work.
Weekends need to be longer.
- Sun Ra