Saturday, April 8, 2006
Dreading Shopping?!
I need jeans. Badly. I'm down to a single pair of jeans that has the distinction of being fully intact, long enough, and not completely unflattering. Considering I basically live in jeans these days, even during the week, this is obviously a problem. Like most girls, though, I truly hate jeans-shopping. Ordinarily, I enjoy shopping, but jeans and swimsuits are a special category.
For the guys or girls with perfect figures out there, picture this: you go to the mall, hoping against hope that the same style you bought and liked six months or a year ago still exists at that little store you got it from. Of course it has been discontinued, because it's "last season's" style. Honestly, people, they're jeans! Disgruntled, you move on to the big department store. Once there, you find yourself grabbing at least four different "fits" from each designer. Almost an hour after arriving at the store, you get into the dressing room, your arms and back aching from carrying a hundred pounds of denim around the store. Here you may have to argue with the salesperson because there's a rule that you can't bring more than 6 items into the dressing room at once. You proceed to try on pair after pair, becoming more and more horrified with each one. There's the pair that has pockets in the back so big that they go halfway down the back of your thigh. There's the low-rise pair that you were initially excited about, but once you have them on you find yourself wondering if you have any underwear at all that wouldn't show above the waistline, and you're pretty sure you would never be able to sit down in them in public. There's the other "low-rise" pair from a different designer that has a waistband that not only covers your belly button but is also so narrowed that it feels like you're being cut in half. There's the pair made for someone with the figure of a 12-year-old that has no room for things like hips. There's the pair from Designer A that's two sizes smaller than you normally wear and is still baggy but has short legs, and the pair from Designer B that's two sizes larger than you normally wear and still doesn't come close to zipping. After an hour or so of that, you sigh heavily and walk out of the store emptyhanded.
You then proceed to repeat this process in all of the smaller stores in the mall that have any chance of carrying jeans. Eventually, after a good five or six hours, the lucky ones will have a short list of maybe two pairs that you consider wearable, in shops on opposite ends of the mall. Your walk has become a trudge, and you feel like your head is going to fly spinning off your neck if you see one more square inch of denim. Discouraged, feeling ugly, and just wanting it to be over, you walk the length of the mall one more time, buying both pairs of jeans and promising yourself you'll make a decision between the two in the morning. Of course, in the morning, you try them both on and realize they're hideously unflattering, so you have to return them to the mall, find another mall with additional options, and repeat the experience all over again.
My original plan for today was to start this jeans-shopping odyssey. I didn't end up being able to talk myself into it, though, so instead I have stayed mostly at home, reading and watching the spring rain outside my windows. On the up-side, I guess I'll be well-rested for a long day of shopping tomorrow.
Friday, April 7, 2006
Cherry Blossoms
I've been teased by several people for being in DC and not taking any photos of cherry blossoms in the spring. I hope this will, once and for all, prove that I did indeed take a photo of a flowering tree, it's just not the picture you see on all the postcards. This was taken at the Foreign Service Institute, or FSI – the place where I spend the majority of my time these days.
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Women in Straitjackets
In an article in today's New York Times, I was struck by the following:
"The comedian Bill Maher recently noted that while other countries elect a wide array of female leaders, our women politicians are still expected to wedge themselves into a 'straitjacket' and act like men."
Agreed. And it's true throughout Washington DC, not just in the case of politicians. But the straitjacket comes from Brooks Brothers, so it's got to be a good thing, right? On the other hand, one would think by now, with all of our talk of egalitarianism and inclusion, we would have moved beyond such shallow and dare I say unreasonable judgements.
As it is, Bill Maher seems to have hit the nail on the head. Why else would it have been such a huge and sensational event when Condi wore a pair of knee-high boots to work?
Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Peer Pressured
So I've finally been talked into it. I resisted for as long as I could, but wouldn't you know I had to give in sometime. Yes, it's really true: I've started a blog. So many people have said that it's the best way to easily keep in touch with family and friends when living a nomadic lifestyle, and I felt so guilty sending those periodic mass emails, that I finally bit the bullet and entered the blogosphere.
For those of you with whom I've really been in poor touch, the update is this: Korean language training is currently going about as well as can be expected. I have pushed the end of my training forward by about a week, so my ETA at Embassy Seoul is now somewhere between the 11th and the 15th of August. I think. Yes, I'm planning early, but when you're in language training from October to June, you start thinking about what's next by around March.
Girl in the Rain 