dragonimp

Bombay Nick's Chai Bar

We stopped by this place after voting. If you at all like tea, I definitely recommend checking it out. The teas are a bit pricy, but worth it: high-quality, hand-blended looseleaf teas, including several all-organic wellness teas, all original recipes. The big draw for me is you can get real chai - not that syrup stuff available at most coffee shops. They even have a spicy coffee blend that's good - and for me to say something coffee-related tastes "good" is pretty remarkable.

Stopped into Barnes and Noble today. I haven't browsed - truly browsed - through a book store in a while. It was very satisfying. It also got me thinking about books and Amazon's e-reader, kindle. Personally, I don't think an e-reader could ever completely replace the physical book. There's something sensual about books that can't be reproduced. The heft of the book tells you something about how much information is inside and what kind of read it's going to be. When you're reading it, you can see at a glance how much you've read, and how much of it is left. Browsing in a book store as I did today is a completely different experience than browsing Amazon. I found two books serendipitously on the bargain shelf that I never would have gone looking for. You can follow trails at Amazon and find some interesting things, but it's still not the same as moseying through the shelves. And then there's the feel of the book, the paper, the cover, the binding (I know I'm not the only one who looks at a book's construction) - and flagging pages doesn't work the same with an e-reader.

I read an article last semester talking about the kindle and the pros and cons of e-readers in general, and I will admit that e-readers have their place (or will, when the price comes down to something reasonable). Text searching, for one thing. Being able to carry many volumes at once. Instant access. But it won't replace the codex.

After the book store we went shopping for clothes, which was ... productive (at least in my case - 4 pairs of pants for $24!), but not nearly as enjoyable an experience.

Back when I first put on this weight I had the thought of "maybe I'll actually be able to find clothes that fit now!!" Obviously that was a moment of delusion, because I had forgotten that today's styles simply are not cut for my body type. I don't think they're cut for anyone's body type, but they're really not cut for mine. Probably 95% of pants that otherwise fit gap at the small of my back. Even pants that are otherwise too small will gap. All four of the pairs I bought today come with belts, otherwise they wouldn't be manageable (okay, yeah, for $6 a pair I would have bought belts, but it's nice that they come with them).

Ironically, I'm still apparently in the same size range I was in before, even though I've outgrown most of my old pants, but that's the vagueness of the fashion industry for you. Where a size 6 could be larger than a size 8, and neither of them fit right anyway.

(I'm getting a kick out of having to shimmy my pants over my hips, though, I haven't had to do that in years.)