Wet Night Thoughts

It's a rainy Thursday night, and, except for the guinea pig, I'm alone. The offspring is at a girl scout troop meeting. They've merged the troop with another one, and so instead of having two meetings, one hour each, every month, they have one that lasts about two hours.

I spent some of the time wrapping two Christmas presents. I'm not a particularly good wrapper, but I try, and with the help of a lot of Scotch tape, I get it done. I was going to look into ordering some gifts on line, but that didn't work out. Partially, it was because the site of choice, Bloomingdales, has such a good security system that it won't let me order without giving it the secret password -- and their offer to mail me the secret password seems to have a glitch, as it's been about twenty four hours, and no password has dropped, ker-chunk, into my email box. I suppose it's a good idea, because what I was going to buy was just a little silly something, and I didn't really need to order it. I wonder about the effectiveness of Bloomingdale's online systems, though, when things like this happen. Years ago, the chairman of Scandinavian Airlines Systems said that it was important to keep the tray tables clean, because the passengers could see them, and if they were dirty, the passengers got a 'dirty' image of the airline. They wondered about the things that they could not see, if the things that they could see were in bad repair. I am willing to bet that the failure of Bloomingdales to send me a forgotten password -- or let me just reset it on the fly -- doesn't really call into question the integrity of their electronic operations. But it did cost them a sale.

Instead, I went to a recently opened branch of Coldwater Creek, and I bought two nice pieces of clothing there. The store is in a small shopping center that's recently opened not too far from where I work. They're trying to make it an upscale deal, so along with CC there is a J Jill, a Talbots,an Ann Taylor Loft, a Bombay Company, and some others. Have to say that both Talbots and J Jill seemed to have a bit of a problem with the idea of a guy walking around, looking at women's clothing. I don't think that they thought it was creepy -- the way that the people at Victoria's Secret did, first time I went into one of their stores, years ago -- but they just didn't seem comfortable with me there. I noticed that the salespeople -- all but one women -- went up to women as they entered, but they didn't for me. No matter. I found stuff that I liked in Coldwater Creek. Part of it was that I just liked the way the store was decorated and laid out, which includes that they did not have rock music playing, as J Jill did, and Ann Taylor. Talbots had some nice music, and they did have one nice burgundy silk blouse that I thought about -- but I'd already both the things at CC, so I wasn't too moved. I still want to get more, but if this is all I get, it will be okay.

So this evening, instead of shopping, I wrapped the two presents, and then I watched West Wing for about 90 minutes. One was a current episode that I'd taped last night, and the other was an old one. I will almost always watch West Wing, if its on.

I hear the garage door. I think I'm about to not be alone.