Mmm ... crack. Er, linen.

Surprise day off today, well a surprise as of last Monday anyway. For whatever reason it didn't occur to me to check and see if we were getting the third off until I heard somebody talking about their four-day weekend, and by then it was too late to make plans.

So I haven't done a whole lot. Saturday involved visiting Koog, who managed to land herself back in the hospital with a blood infection. She needed earplugs, and knew that I was the sort of person who generally happened to have spare earplugs around, so she called me on Friday. Didn't manage to get back into the District early enough on Friday to make it over to GW during visiting hours, so I planned it for Saturday evening.

Most of Saturday and Sunday were taken up by the Playstation, as I finally finished up Tomb Raider - yes, the first one. I'm that far behind. Most days I forget I even have the Playstation, so turning it on and playing stuff on it is all the more rare. But the new teevee allows me to keep it all connected, so playing is less of a hassle (tells you how lazy I am, that unplugging an A/V cable and plugging another one in is too much of a bother). I got impatient though, so the last couple levels were more or less assisted by the previously linked walkthrough. Overall I did about two thirds of the levels myself, and the other third were either slightly assisted or totally handheld by the walkthroughs.

Today, determined to get out of the house, I headed out to Potomac Mills, where I intended to go to IKEA. After wandering around the mall a bit, I had a half dozen pairs of boxers from Old Navy, no new shoes (didn't know I wanted new shoes, did you? Neither did I until I got to the mall, but it was time for a new pair of leather sneakers), and not a whole lot of interest in anything at IKEA except for the restaurant and maybe some frames for all the prints I have stored in a shipping tube.

So I ate an early dinner at the restaurant, the Manager's Special. The Manager's Special at IKEA is always the same, some sort of running joke I guess. I don't know why they don't call it their "Featured Item" instead of the Manager's Special, but anyway, it's a plate of meatballs with gravy and lingonberry sauce, potatoes, salad or soup (I chose salad), and a large drink (lingonberry drink for me, of course), all for $5.95. Can't beat it with last year's Yankees. I added the almond torte for another two bucks and had a nice meal. Didn't buy anything, since I determined that I probably want to measure the prints I actually want frames for, and I hadn't thought to do that in my rush to leave the house.

So then I headed up to Tysons Corner, since the mall there has a JC Penney, and I figured (rightly) that the JC Penney would have the shoes I was looking for - some adidas Stan Smith Milleniums. The dude at Foot Locker in Potomac Mills had tried to tell me they were discontinued and the "Smithsonian" was the new model of the same shoe, but I thought they were sorta silly looking and didn't want a part of them. JC Penney came through, which makes the second pair of shoes nobody's had that they had in plenty. The others were my first pair of Converse Jack Purcells, which were actually lined with blue terry and much more padded than the Jacks available now. They took about two months' looking after seeing an ad in, I think, Rolling Stone. Sorta like the Milton Berle wore khakis ads Gap runs, 'cept they were for sneakers, and I think the ad was a picture of James Dean. I own a pair of the unlined ones too, but the first ones I had are still my preferred iteration of the model.

Anyway, bought the shoes, went to the Gap to look for bargains and found none. Went to Eddie Bauer to look for linen trousers, found none. Went to Banana Republic to look for linen trousers, and they were on sale. I'm no longer the size I used to be (feh) but I picked up a couple pair of trousers, plus a purple linen shirt also on sale. Then in the car I remembered that I'd gotten a gift certificate for bananarepublic.com from 800.com when I bought my teevee. D'oh!

What the heck. I ordered two more pair in different colors and used the gift certificate. I can always use more linen. As Krapsnart has said repeatedly, it's like crack. I avoided the linen boxers, which were not yet on sale, and it's just as well. I can see me not being able to deal with cotton boxers anymore after the first day wearing linen.

Oh, and speaking of boxers, somebody around here (Marn maybe?) was talking about how difficult it is to get men to throw away old underwear. I throw mine away when they die, including a pair that ripped that just went in the trash this weekend (I meant to throw them away after the last round of laundry but forgot they'd ripped until I wore them and ripped them some more). I have a couple pair of superstitious boxers (f'rinstance, the ones I wear on the first performance of any play or opera I'm in, for good luck) and those are pretty much relegated to only being worn on their superstitious occaisions, lest they get worn out and have to go. Because then where would I be without my lucky underwear? Anyway, except for those certain pairs I have no attachment to any of my boxers and I will certainly toss them when they're worn out.

Tomorrow's the Fourth, and there will be all the usual rah-rah, USA! USA!, my-country-TIS-of-thee down on the Mall (not the shopping mall, mind you - that'll be closed), but I have no idea if I'm going to partake of those festivities or not. Last year we ended up at a party on top of an apartment building in Adams Morgan with a great view, so it's not like I haven't done the Fourth in DC yet. Dunno.

link (2000-07-03)