What with laundry, grocery shopping, fixing lunch (bone-in ribeye steaks), and then eating lunch, I had not gotten to my writing for the day. But now I am fueling up with a (probably unwise) energy drink and #amwriting.
Tag: shopping
2020-04-02 17:04
Here I am, wearing one of the facemasks Jackie made, ready to go to the grocery store, or the mail room, or the laundry, or whatever.
2019-08-11 15:21
A rare treat today: A grocery store bagger who knew what she was doing. (Kids these days have no idea that the V8 juice cans shouldn’t go on top of the bananas, that each package of chapstick doesn’t need its own bag, or that you shouldn’t put one lonely perishable item under all the paper products.)
2017-08-22 15:17
Just spent a very pleasant 20 minutes tasting fancy olive oils at Grove Stone. Bought two: A small bottle of Koroneiki and a larger bottle of a blend of that and Manaki. https://grovestone.com/
Bought new boots
I don’t hate shopping. I sometimes say I do, but it’s an inaccurate shorthand. What I hate are a cluster of things inextricably intertwined with shopping. I hate driving from store to store. I hate the mall. I hate agonizing about the tradeoffs between choice A and choice B, especially under time pressure, and especially under conditions of imperfect information.
I’m a lot happier buying stuff on-line. But not boots. I never buy shoes or boots without trying them on.
I also dislike spending money, especially spending largish sums of money, such as the $168 (including tax) that I just spent for a pair of boots.
I think I like the boots. I wanted a pair of waterproof, lightly insulated, hiking boots. This pair is all those things, plus they fit well and feel good on my feet. I’d had in my mind that I’d get GoreTex waterproofing and that the degree of insulation I wanted would probably be 200 gm Thinsulate, and I didn’t end up getting either of those. These are just “waterproof,” which probably means that the leather was treated with some sort of sealant—probably adequate for my purposes. And they’re insulated with 200 gm Primaloft, which is also probably at least as good as Thinsulate.
I decided that I needed these boots, because last year I found myself staying indoors too much during the winter, because I didn’t have adequate footwear for cold and wet. (We get a lot of cold and wet in Central Illinois—slush, snow, rain changing to snow, melting snow, cold rain falling on snow or ice, freezing rain, freezing mist. If you can think of weather that’s cold and wet, we have it here.)
With the right boots, I’m hoping I’ll be able to get myself out to walk, even in inclement conditions. Plus, there’s the slight extra boost that comes from the novelty factor of new boots.
And, with that in mind, I’m heading out now to walk a mile or two, to start breaking them in.