Wearing A Barrel: Stylish?

It’s coming.

Ominous clouds are gathering on the horizon, choking out the sun, and turning the world a sickly shade of grey. A cold breeze is snapping through the trees, whistling eerily through narrow alleyways, and causing wind chimes to play a haunting tune in a foreboding key. Streets and sidewalks are empty. All that can be heard at the playgrounds is the creak of the swings, pushed not by children, but by the wind.

A storm is rolling in. It will soon be here.

Yup, it’s almost time to go clothes shopping again, an event that will surely make my life metaphorically cold and wet. I shudder just to think about it. I’d almost rather have my entire current wardrobe disintegrate with age and then turn to wearing a barrel than buying new clothes.

I believe the last piece of clothing I purchased was a shirt at a Blackhawk concert. Before that, I believe it was a shirt at a Brooks & Dunn concert. I kid you not. However, I’m getting a little long in the tooth to wear concert t-shirts without looking like I’m going through some sort of mid-life crisis.

That means that I will eventually have to saddle up and brave a trip to some type of retail outlet that sells clothing. I usually can shop for clothing for about forty-five minutes at a time, twice a year, but that’s pushing it. This means that I have to be incredibly efficient when I go, or risk having a terrible wardrobe that will haunt me for months on end.

So far, I’ve gone with the terrible wardrobe option, and I don’t see how that’s going to change in the future. I guess that’s the price you pay for limiting yourself to one dressing room excursion per shopping outing.

They should make a clothing store that is empty except for one rack of jeans, one rack of solid-colored shirts, long and short-sleeved, and a selection of no more than two styles of generic hoodies. Then you would not be confused by a seemingly endless array of choices. There could be specials once a year where shorts, khakis, button-downs, and polos are sold. Heck, it could even have a drive-through, where you just order off of the menu like at a typical fast-food restaurant. (“I’ll take the Business Casual Combo please. You’d better super-size it. I hate to admit it, but I’m still carrying a little holiday weight.”)

I would go to that store.

But that’s just a pipe-dream, because I’m too lazy to be an entrepreneur and start one of them up, which means that I’m left with no option but to show up at Kohl’s one Saturday morning, hoping that a mad dash through the men’s section will net me something that is actually wearable.

Shudder. Anything besides clothes shopping sounds infinitely more fun than clothes shopping itself. Especially writing overly-dramatic introductions to blog postings.

“It was a dark and stormy night…..”

The Sandwich Ordering Blues

So I’m wondering just what this all means. In particularly, I'm wondering what it says about me.

How’s that for a teaser intro? That’s called ‘hooking the reader.’ Actually, it may be called something else entirely. Honestly, I’m too lazy to look it up, and I just went with the first thing that came to my mind.

Anyway….

Today I stopped by Jimmy John’s, since cooking would not have fit in with my plans of collapsing after work and doing absolutely nothing but the requisite breathing.

Now, I get food at Jimmy John’s once a week, at most. One of my character flaws is that I get into ruts easily, and so it has become with Jimmy John’s, as I always order the exact same sandwich. (My excuse for this: After working all day, who wants to make even more decisions?)

Today I walked in and noticed that the cute-but-always-seemingly-angry-or-just-emotionally-detached girl was making sandwiches. I had no problem with this, as she makes good sandwiches, and I believe that everybody has the right to be annoyed with, or detached from, their job. Anyway, I was about to put in my usual order when she, totally out of character, suddenly blurted it out, complete with the holding of mayo and adding of onions, all in the form of a question.

Obviously, I had become predictable.

I wasn’t sure if she thought she was being nice or if she was just having fun. Regardless, I nodded sheepishly, suddenly feeling stupid. Then I made a crack about knowing that it would be six dollars, because that’s how I handle awkward situations, with un-funny attempts at humor.

A moment later, though, I realized that I was annoyed. More importantly, I realized that I could never eat at that particular Jimmy John’s again.

Here’s why.

I understand that I’m predictable. I’ll admit that I like knowing what’s coming. I don’t consider that to be a bad thing. However, I do have a problem when I’m basically accused of being predictable. It’s pretty much the same as saying I’m boring, and who wants to be known as Mr. Boring Guy? I mean, you never hear girls swooning over a guy and saying something like, “He wears the same shirt every Thursday! Oh my!”

As for never going back to that particular Jimmy John's, you’d think I'd have other options, but I really don’t.

If I went back and changed my order, I would essentially be admitting that I was boring, which would mean that I was desperately trying to change myself, just to gain the approval of others. Not an option.

If I went back and ordered the same thing, with the mindset of I should do whatever makes me happy, I would then be proving just how boring I am, and Same-Shirt-Every-Thursday-Man would gain just a slightly tighter grip over me. Also not an option.

So now I can’t go back, ever, ever, ever, not unless I wait for the entire staff to turnover, in which case I could start again with a clean slate.

There’s no room for debate. It’s just how it is.

Now, I realize that this whole thing is quite ridiculous. Still, I’ve already made up my mind, and I don’t think it’s going to be changing anytime soon, which is why I’m wondering what this all says about me.

Am I being petty? Should I eat whatever I want, whenever I want to, even if I’m branded as the guy who never changes his order? Long live Mr. Same-Shirt-Every-Thursday-Man!!??

Or am I justified in my anger? Should I not have to put up with insinuations of my level of boring-ness? Should I take my business elsewhere, and let pure economics take their toll, as that particular Jimmy John’s would then start to lose six dollars a week?

Or should I just quit whining about frivolous stuff and cook more?

It’s a lot to think about, and it’s going to take some time. All I know is that I won’t be thinking about it over Jimmy John’s. Those days are gone.

Gimme, Gimme!

I remember as a kid going to the Copper Country Mall with my family. Each time, I assumed that I was going to get something out of the deal; namely, a toy, purchased by my parents. I also remember the first time that it didn't happen. I was crushed, going home empty-handed, as the world as I knew it had changed. It was now crueler and more hash. There may have even been a tear or two shed on my part.

High school can be so rough.

Ha! Just some misdirection age humor there! Not original, I know, but always effective.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is about windshield wipers. Really. Let me explain.

Sometime before Christmas I decided that I needed a good pair of boots for the Minnesota winter. It was a snowy Saturday, and I braved the slippery roads to drive a few dozen miles to a Fleet Farm. There were approximately eight million people milling about, all placing themselves in the most inconvenient of spots, in a conspiracy whose only purpose was to drive me insane, but I pushed through them to the footwear aisle, arriving there only slightly deranged. Unfortunately, I came away empty-handed. The only boots I wanted were not stocked in my size.

Conventional logic says that I would have just left after snapping my fingers and saying, “Oh, shucks!”

However, this is when I turned back into the kid at the Copper Country Mall who always needed a toy. There was no way I was leaving that store without purchasing something. Not after driving through the snow and slush just to get there.

So I bought windshield wipers. The problem is, of course, that I didn’t really need windshield wipers. The ones on my car were not great, and an upgrade was not the worst idea in the world, but they were still functional.

So, as you can probably guess, I never installed them. To this day they are still sitting in the backseat of my car. Sometimes I notice them out of the corner of my eye and wonder if it's sad or funny. Probably a bit of both.

I could always install them, just to try and save face, but it’s probably too late for that. Plus, my current wipers are doing okay, so the effort involved doesn’t seem to be worth the reward.

It’s getting to the point where I’m intrigued as to how long they can sit in my car before I actually use them. Six months? A year? Even longer?

As a mature adult, I feel like what I did was irresponsible, not to mention a terrible investment. However, the kid in me is smiling happily from ear to ear, because he got to take something home.

So who wins? Easy. The kid. No regrets!

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Blah

“As slow as molasses in January.”

How applicable. I have no energy. I have no ambition. Typing this makes each of my individual fingers want to fall into their own little sleep comas. Holding my eyelids open is too much work, so I alternate them at five second intervals; right, then left, then right, then ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ……

Well, it’s not quite that bad, but if there ever was a time for lethargy and the urge to wear pajamas twenty-four/seven, it’s January and February. The holidays are over and it’s the busiest time of year at my work and everything is dark and gray and cold and covered in salt. Even worse, it’s still way too early to even begin looking forward to volleyball season. Ugh.

I kind of figured that the January/February cabin fever stage of life would pass once I’d moved out of Wisconsin. However, it’s still making its presence felt here in Minnesota, although I have to say it’s not as bad. At least here I have weekends with things to do. Still, the weeks can get long, and once I get home from work, motivation is at a premium. For example, I’ve been trying to watch The Pacific, a World War II miniseries, but it usually seems like a lot of work to hook my laptop up to my TV and put the DVD into the laptop, so I normally just decide to stare vacantly at the ceiling instead. (I have an interesting ceiling, though, so don’t worry.)

I hope this doesn’t sound too much like whining. If so, I apologize. I hate whining. However, it’s all I have to write about because my brain has decided it doesn’t want to be very creative. I think the cold and gray has temporarily short-circuited it.

Maybe I need a jump-start, a sort of jolt from a Life Defibulator. (patent pending)

Mountain Dew? Perhaps.
Snowbank after Sauna? Hmmmm….
Watch hockey games? Let’s not get crazy here.
Watch The Pacific? TV….so far away…..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ