I'm not updating this very frequently lately, am I? The experience of losing what I'd typed the other night made matters worse, too.

Anyway, let's see ...

I bought stuff Tuesday night. The impetus was that I decided my man-purse had gotten completely out of control, and I set out to ensmallen my entire payload. First stop was the Sprint store, where I replaced my old clunky Qualcomm (nice phone, works really well, great interface, absurdly large by today's standards) with a Motorola flip phone. Sprint finally offers a dual-band small phone in three varieties - a black one, a silver one you can get silly snap-on covers for, and a different silver one they call the "Timeport." Technically, they're all the same phone, but the Timeport includes their computer connection kit in its purchase price and the other two don't. Since I don't particularly need a 14.4 wireless modem, I bought the black one, which in addition to being cheapest is also a couple millimeters smaller than the Timeport. I don't know why. Motorola still can't make a phone with a good interface, but it's much improved over their older Startacs with the one-line LED display and super-cryptic interface.

You can change the "banner" on the display to something 12 characters or less. Mine says "Underpants" now. My old Qualcomm most recently said "Sneh." Before that, it was "...I hate'em" in reference to the line in Repo Man.

After purchasing the phone, I headed to Tysons for a new wallet, since my old Dooney & Bourke has two problems: it's big, and it has one of those plastic windows for the driver's license which has not aged well. I suppose I could send it back to the Dooney people and get that window replaced, and maybe that's a project for a later date. I had bought that specific wallet years ago because it was large enough to hold most European currencies, but still rather thin. I carried it until I adopted the man-purse concept after finding this bag at Whole Earth Provision Company (crappy site, great store) in Austin, TX. They've actually modified the bag a little since mine, and I don't think the particular changes they made were an improvement. I carried that bag for about 4 years (I think) but it was wearing out and not quite serving my needs, and I've gone through two different bags since then with little success. So I ended up at the Coach store in Tysons (I'd seen another interesting wallet at the place in Tysons II where Emily bought her laptop case and the briefcase for Patrick, so I knew of one option already).

I ended up getting two things there: a card case (holds 4 credit or driver's license size cards, plus other stuff jammed into the middle), and a leather money clip. I've done the money clip thing before, so I don't know if this will be an optimal solution or not. The card case/money clip combination has less leather overhead and thus takes up less space than a full-blown wallet, so this may just work. But I have eliminated the man-purse (for now) and I don't have a wallet in my back pocket annoying me when I drive.

While in the Coach store, I heard a song on their sound system with a singer who was oddly familiar, but I couldn't place who it was. The song was "Whatever Lola Wants," which it turns out is from "Damn Yankees" and is therefore an Adler and Ross number. Learn something new every day. I settled rather uneasily on the idea of it being Bobby Darin, but something told me that wasn't right so when I got home I did a bit of research and figured out it was recorded by Mel Torme. I couldn't identify Mel Torme. It amazes me that I didn't recognize the Velvet Fog. Hmph.

After Coach, I stepped into Nordstrom for the specific purpose of buying some actual black dress shoes, since I own none that fit (I have some Bostonian cap toes, but they're a little too small and not quite stylish enough for the suits I have) so I've been wearing Doc Martens the past couple times I've worn a suit. Ended up with some Kenneth Coles which, oddly enough, have rubber soles. They looked better than the leather soled ones which were also from Kenneth Cole. They also had some other shoes from To Boot New York which were too square-toed for what I want, and some really nice but expensive Salvatore Ferragamo dress oxfords that I liked but, well, I don't wear dress shoes enough to spend $380 for one pair. The Coles are monk straps, but I can't find the exact ones on the website to link to the picture. You'll just have to imagine them yourself. Or go to Nordstrom and look around the men's shoe department until you see the ones I got. Also bought a black dress belt since I haven't had one that fit in several years, and I don't want to be discovered wearing a suit with a braided leather belt.

I'm more vain than I tend to let on, it seems.

I've actually been thinking about that lately, because it occasionally bothers me that I don't dress better on a regular basis. But I've narrowed it down to the root cause: there are no casual clothes that fit me. I'm what should actually be a good standard size (a 42L in suits) but my arms are too long and my chest too normal for the clothes that most companies make nowadays. I require a 37" sleeve if I want my shirts to look right, and nothing comes that long except nice dress shirts and XL-Tall casual shirts, which otherwise billow around my chest like I've been inflated and look ridiculous tucked in. There's a fold-in-and-tuck method to try to flatten out all that puffy shirt, but it only works as long as you never sit down or bend at the waist - so trying to use it is an exercise in futility. So except when dressed in tailored suits I look like a schlub or a grad student. I've tried to find fashionable clothes and there's nothing that fits me.

So I wear almost the same thing every day: jeans or shorts, t-shirt, contrasting untucked buttondown on top of that. This is not a wardrobe that's going to enable me to get past the style enforcement at, say, the 18th Street Lounge, which is sad since I can walk there from home. It's also not a wardrobe that's going to aid me in meeting single women in style-conscious DC. So I have reasons for wanting to dress better than I do, but frankly I probably won't bother to try much harder than I have before. I've tried already, and I know the clothes just aren't out there.

Now, wasn't that interesting?

In other news, I'm going to Toronto this weekend, to go hang out with some very good friends and probably help them paint more of their new condo. There will be lots of hanging around with people I like very much. This is a good thing.

(2000-03-30)