duck-shaped pain

1. It was a good day for the simple fact that it was "warm" enough that I could go without socks. Any day without socks is a good day, because I really don't like wearing them. My feet feel stifled in them, and most of my favorite shoes look sort of dumb, I think, with them. I try to make sock-wearing palatable by buying super-fancy socks, but the first sockless day of the year is always a good one. Sure, I was also wearing a big sweater, but my feet were pleased.

2. The checkout aisle in the video/music/book store I went to today used to be occupied with stacks of candy. Impulse items for people to buy, things for children to grab, something to look at while the guy in front of you keeps having his credit card declined. Today I noticed that most of the candy was gone, and in its place was about 15 or 20 different brands of peppermints. Extra-strong peppermints, ginseng-enhanced peppermints, "extreme" peppermints -- things to ensure that the collective breath of the Grand Valley is as frosty as a room-sized ice cube. [1] I don't remember there being peppermints there before, but it's not as if I was looking. Anyway, it's an odd store. It used to be pretty decent (or I used to have lower expectations -- take your pick), but it's gotten a lot worse since I moved back. There's the rare good find (I found a tape of The Fall's A-Sides there for a quarter about a year and a half ago), but overall, selection is sad, especially in the music section. The books still offer a flickering glimmer of hope, but the space allotted to the good things shrinks daily, and the square footage occupied by books about diets and/or Jesus is ever-expanding. And now the peppermints.

3. Two bumper stickers on the same truck: "FEAR MY AIRPLANE NOISE" (accompanied by crude plane drawing) and "I (HEART) THE BIG SALAMANDER"

4. Went out for cheap Chinese food for lunch. Most of the good restaurants in town shut their doors for Saturday lunch, so if it's Asian food I want, I have to go to the reliable ol' dollar-a-scoop place. Sesame chicken, lo mein, shrimp steam rolls with some sticky spicy sweet sauce. Always some interesting people there, drawn by the price or the scarcity of food on that stretch of North Avenue. Today's example was woman who, before every bite, sprayed her soon-to-be-eaten forkful of food with some red liquid that looked like cough syrup. Since I was sitting in the booth next to her, I could hear every word she said, as she explained to her dining companion that this was some sort of magic diet spray that would render any food it touched calorie-free. She ate six egg rolls, doused with red fluid. Yum yum.

I'm not proud to admit that I spent my day off looking for a new bag. This means that I had to go to some of my least favorite places in town -- the mall and REI.

The reason for this was that the bag I bought a mere four weeks ago at the G*p is now falling apart. The not-very-heavy load of books, notebooks, work-related crap and lunch that I haul around each day has proved to be too much for this delicate wilting flower of a messenger bag. The strap is coming apart, right at the point where it joins the main body of the bag. Only half of the width of the strap is still attached to it, so I foresee that some day soon, probably at a time and place where it will be least convenient for me, the whole thing is going to come off, and I'll have to carry my load around in my arms. So before this happens, I want to find a new bag and take the old one back with some sort of annoyed righteousness.

I have a bag I like very, very much, but it's too small for textbooks. It barely holds magazines. What I want is a larger version of that, but that seems to be, from the available research, impossible.

I found very little in town that I liked. I found something decent at the mall, but it had an annoying, overly large, and irremovable logo that turned me off. Most of the things I found looked like they were made for people who don't ever carry anything, so I came home empty-handed.

The one possibility that I found was this bag, which seems to have a bounteous amount of space for a relatively small bag, and lots of pockets and pen holders, too. The problem is that the sides are more rigid than I'd like (which would probably be less of an issue once I filled it full of crap), that it's sort of pricey, and that buying it would mean interacting with one or more REI salespeople, who are the worst in town. I would be more likely to buy a damn membership (yes, I know it's a good deal, etc., etc) if every person in a green vest that came by didn't mention it, and then try to argue with me when I said I wasn't interested.

So I'm thinking about that one, and then, while poking around the 'net this evening, I came across this company's bags. They look pretty durable -- if I'm going to buy something in this price range, I want something that's going to last -- and I like the umpteen options available. If anyone out there has any experience with them, let me know. I don't always like buying things that I can't see in person beforehand, but I'm fairly temped.

[1] I don't know what that means. I was really stretching there for a simile.

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