Shopping, It’s like gambling

only you win EVERY TIME! 

Somewhere some shopping addicted soul just clicked on this blog and wanted to slap me.  I don’t blame them a bit.

The best part about visiting the neurosurgeon in Baton Rouge?  The gorgeous lean dark-haired, piercing-eyed doctor?  Well, no.  But that was close!  Daaaaannng…he were HOT.  And, no ring!  For a split second, I wondered how quickly and quietly my wedding ring could be slipped off and stowed in my pocket.  Hey, Paladin, at least, I wasn’t thinking of tossing it at you and jumping onto the doc’s lap.  Ok, for a minute.  Seriously.  He was HOT. 

The best part of visiting the neurosurgeon was that he was next to a shopping center!  A very chic, shopping center at that.  It was the kind of place where you go to look, and then go to Filene’s Basement to buy.  Is that just me?  I should have been born Jewish.  Clearly.  It was filled with boutiques ala Melrose Place, but it also had a few places that you could afford to buy at like Barnes & Noble, White House Black Market, and a cinema and lots of restaurant grills which I realize were also a mix of prices.  For someone who isn’t as penny pinching as me, it would just be normal.  But as Rose from the Golden Girls once put it, I can squeeze a nickel til the buffalo poops!  In general, I do not do full price.  Homey don’t play that.  So when I caught sight of a little place I call heaven, I thought, “I’ll look, but I won’t even THINK of buying unless they have a clearance section.”  Then the pearly gates opened…

Heaven also goes by the name: Charming Charlie’s.  How?  How did you Texas girls not tell me about this???  I would drive to it.  I don’t care that it’s three hours away!  It’s like It’s Fashion (a black girl version of Cato…in other words: Cool…owned by the same company as Cato), but just for accessories.  They have some clothes but nothing over a large.  The main focus is on accessories and I just cannot fully explain to you how awesome this place is.  I could have dropped $300 in 20 minutes flat, and I wouldn’t have been sorry!  The handbags were so very of the moment and most were only $35 and decent quality at that!  The jewelry stole my heart, though.  It’s mostly costume jewelry, but again, it’s good quality and cheap.  I got this for $10:

The turquoise enamel is thick, the crystals on the edges of the petals are well set, and the faux pearl doesn’t look too “faux” if you get my drift.  Although all of their rings are on adjustable or elastic beaded bands, this is a piece that I can tell will last for many years to come.  In fact, pretty much every piece I handled had good quality construction and value.  In this day and age, that’s like finding $20 laying on the street.  I could have covered over half my Christmas list with less than $200, and everyone on it would have thought I’d spent double that.  The good news is there’s a shop in San Antonio, but it’s near the surely chic La Cantera Golf Course and I have no idea how to get to it.  Hmmm…dilemma.  Charming Charlie’s alone would have made the trip worth it, but then came Madeleine…

La Madeleine to be precise.  I’ll admit it.  I wasn’t impressed.  Not one bit.  I was very put off that la Madeleine turned out to be a cafeteria.  The food was good and because they had a 2 for $7.99 deal going, it was a good deal (as in cheap for that shishi shopping center).  I saw the desserts right up front and since a couple of the mini-tarts were only $1.59, I thought, “Well, I’ll try them.”  I had the rather sweet but vacant girl behind the counter box up a mini-creme brulee tart, a mini-fruit custard tart, and one slice of Sacher Torte ($3.99), and we went ahead and got our trays and had our lunch.  Like I said, I wasn’t impressed especially and I was a little put out that Miss Sweet but Vacant saw us standing there with menu’s for a very long time (the set up at the front door looked like you should wait to be seated) without saying, “Hi, can I help you?”  Instead she just watched us warily.  Finally, we just sat down assuming that the service was crap and someone would notice us seated in their station and say something.  Instead, I notice the ladies next to us had a cafeteria tray, asked her about it, and she explained that it was cafeteria style.  Like I said, Madeleine didn’t have me.  Then we headed out on the interstate and I opened the box.  I can’t say they are the finest, but they were VERY good pastries.  In the rural area we live in, that kind of thing isn’t lurking around every corner.  The raspberry glaze between the layers of chocolate torte made me exclaim; it made me groan in pleasure.  Uh yeah.  I’ll go again if I get a chance!  Besides, they had the best vegetarian choices in the area.

All in all, we had a fruitful day out on Thursday.  We talked and hopefully made just a little more headway in identifying our issues.  We had a nice lunch which turned into a fabulous evening of dessert.  And, I shopped!  I got my ring above and Christmas gifts for Bell and Martian:  a Victorian/goth choker & earring set and a wind-up summo wrestler game.  I’ll let you figure out which one got which gift.  When I came home with the summo wrestler game, I had to make sure it worked (it’s was only $5 on clearance) and Brian’s brother Jon and I started playing with it.  It could be addictive.  I had to make myself put it up.  It was awesome!

Know who else is awesome?  La Dishy!  She gave me this award, and it made my day.  It really did.  It kind of makes me want to make my own award.  Maybe I could use a sumo wrestler in it!  😀

The only thing is that I got caught up in my own existence and now this lovely award has made its way to pretty much everybody over there on the side.  Hmmm…what to do.  I hate to repeat even if the ones receiving it are awesome enough to get it twice!  So, I’m going to do a total cop-out and tell anyone who hasn’t gotten it yet to have at it.  Just be sure to link back to Dishy and/or myself.  🙂

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Musicians

I know a lot of people who play instruments and who like to think of themselves as musicians.  To me, it’s like being an “artist”.  In my eyes, you’re only an artist if you live for creating or make a living from it.  The people I know who play instruments do just that: play.  It’s a matter of focus.  That’s why it always impresses me when I see someone doing something that they truly are passionate about despite the expectations of others.  I get kind of a sense of that when I listen to this:

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Trekkie Alert!

You probably won’t like this pre-scheduled post.  And, if you haven’t seen the new Star Trek movie and want to, I don’t think I’ll spoil it for you, but I can’t promise it.

When M. was in Iraq, my Saturday afternoons were spent in a soft, big king-sized bed in a dark room with the only light coming from the G4 channel (previously TechTV).  G4 played the original Star Trek for a couple of hours every Saturday with a twist.  It was interactive!  At the bottom of the screen a question would be displayed and G4 would stream the answers they were getting from a chatroom using the same question.  It was live and it was awesome.  The questions sometimes sucked, but if they did, they were usually changed pretty quickly to ones that would get more interesting answers.  The questions were things like, “What would your first assignment be as a red shirt?”  The answers were fun, “I’d get assigned to watch the green chicks; so, at least, I’d die happy.”  I didn’t join in the chats.  I just loved “listening” to them.  Trekkies are an odd bunch, but I love ’em.  You just never know who is a trekkie.  It could be the CEO of your company and the CEO might answer to the mail clerk “Kirk” in his roleplaying game. 

But, I’m no Trekkie.  I don’t speak Klingon.  Heck, I don’t know a single word of it!  But, I can tell you what pon farr is, and I love the original Star Trek.  Kirk will always be Captain of the Enterprise in my book.  No, stinkin’ bald, emotionless captains for me (though I think Patrick Stewart is a great actor).  No, thanks.  I loved the original for it’s humor and it’s cheesy sets.  I still want a media/computer room set up just like the bridge with my very own captain’s chair.  I’ve seen pretty much all of the Star Trek television shows at one time or another.  My family faithfully watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with Picard and his cronies every Saturday night on our local, fuzzy ABC affiliate (back before satellite came to our neighborhood).  But, I didn’t memorize any episodes, and until now, I don’t think I’d ever seen a single Star Trek movie.  I started with this one.

The new Star Trek prequel is great!  I highly recommend it for all ages.  They kept the humor and the green chick…as it should be!  And it will probably turn even get your 12 yr. old into a trekkie.  Director J.J. Abrams delftly avoided any backlash with an alternate reality plot and I pray that they do sequels!  I don’t get all the fuss over Chris Pine.  He did well.  Just not so well that I want to put a poster of him up on my wall.  I might have to put one up of Karl Urban aka Dr. McCoy though.  He stole the show, and the boy is HOT though not so much in this flick as in that fansite.  And, my only complaint about Simon Pegg was that he didn’t get more screen time.  Shaun of the Dead is Scotty!  LOVE IT!  I so want a sequel where he gets to shine.  And, yeah, I would lay down my hard earned money and get up at 10pm on a Sunday night to go see it.  Oh and, here’s a tip for the ladies:  Don’t suggest going to the matinee of the new Star Trek or any other blockbuster guy flick because when crap comes up and you can’t make it to the matinee he WILL REMEMBER (when do the brain scars start working in my favor, Paladin?) you promised to see it with him and you’ll find yourself in a dark theater at midnight on a Sunday night/Monday morning celebrating Mother’s Day and fighting a desire to break out of the eerie coffin-like theater!  Yeah, I still don’t enjoy the theater experience.  I think it has something to do with heads bobbing out of the darkness.  But, I loved the movie and would pay the exorbitant theater prices to see the sequel (but I might have to start sneaking in snacks…$5 for a soda? wth? when I saw SATC in Natchitoches I spent less than $10 for the ticket, a soda, and popcorn…in Leesville that would have cost close to $20!  ridiculous!).

Things I didn’t like?  The music for starters.  I get that they were trying to make it operatic and Star Wars-like, but it just flat out drew my attention away from the story several times and killed the mood in my opinion.  And speaking of Star Wars…holy Jedi!  What was up with the sword?  I mean.  If the original was cheezy, then that deserved some Gouda.  I get that most Star Trek fans are also heavily into Star Wars (personally, never seen it…any of it…and I have no desire to do so), but try and find your OWN way to make the sword cool.  I’m sick of Star Wars rip-off crap (the fight itself was spot on, btw).  As for things that were cool looking but essentially pointless, Kirk and Spock as kids?  USELESS.  I’ll grant the Spock part since it’s tied to a pivotal moment of the movie (it was still too drawn out though), but the Kirk crap could have been summed up by adding him a townie sidekick/enemy during the bar fight.  As if a 12 yr. old kid could pull off a move like that.  I get it; Kirk is exceptional.  Yada yada yada.  It annoyed the crap out of me and I could think of a dozen far more believable scenes which would have gotten that across.  You could have at least made him 15. 

That said.  Paladin, when can we go see it again???  Oh, and was it just me, or was Nero totally do able?  Mmmm…a little dirty is good…

So what would your first assignment as a red shirt (they’re the guys that always get killed in the first 2 minutes of an episode) be?

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