On Friday, I decided I needed to go shopping. All of my jeans, save one pair, are at least a year old and I wear them all the time, work, travel, leisure, so they get pretty worn out. I'm also getting low on tops and since the warmer weather doesn't turn cool until October in North Carolina, I've still got a couple of months to make my shirts last.

I didn't have to be at work until 5pm, so I made my list. Ross. Marshalls. Rugged Wearhouse. Plato's Closet and TJ Maxx. Surely, I could find some jeans and maybe a couple of tops to get me through. I feel I should interject at this point that I HATE shopping, but only for clothes and shoes. Drag me to Homegoods or a book store and I'll be there for hours. Which brings me to my next point.

As you probably know, Borders is going out of business and is having huge sales during their final days. Since it's on the side of town where I was planning on shopping, I moved it to the top of the list. I could easily spend a little time in there and move on. An hour and a half later, my arms were full of books. I put a few back and ended up with five. One store = five items with no problems (and all at 50% off I might add). I scoured the other stores and didn't find a single pair of jeans that I could picture myself wearing day after day. I did manage a coat and four autumn shirts but no jeans.

So while I was unsuccessful at my intended task, I was able to feed my book habit with two sci-fi novels, a graphic novel, a book on writing essays and a study of cult TV. The downside of my geek moment is that in the coming weeks, I've still got to hunt for those jeans and a new pair of shoes, but my aversion to shoe shopping is is a whole different post.