The other side of the J CREW story

The downside of the J CREW sale was that I had seen the movie Contagion, aka A Public Service Announcement to Wash Your Hands and Stop Touching Your Face, a few days before going. I couldn't help but think that if one person had a contagious, deadly disease and shopped at the sale, all of Durham would be dead. Think of all the clothes one person would touch at a sample sale, then how many other people would touch the clothes he/she touched, etc. etc.

But I wasn't too scared, because after the movie I played Pandemic with friends (a board game where you either save or fail-to-save the world from 4 strains of a deadly virus) and we totally won. Plus, I work at the 2nd best school of public health, so maybe my connection to the dean would be beneficial given a dire situation. But maybe not.

J Crew Sale

This post is going to sound very materialistic and I don't even care.

Sample sales. I believe I had heard of them on various blogs.Wednesday night, I experienced one. It started in the morning when one of my coworkers came in excited. She was wearing a 100% J Crew cashmere cardigan that she had bought for 10 dollars. In Durham, J Crew had rented out an old Borders and filled the place with tables. On top of the tables were three boxes, below the tables two boxes. Each box was crammed with unsorted clothes -- there were children's clothes next to women's sweaters next to men's pants. No organization at all. BUT IT WAS CHEAP. All shirts and pants $10, dresses $10 or $15, sweaters and shoes $20.

It was nuts. Everyone in my office left right after work. Mae's strategy was to pick a corner and put everything in her size in a box. Angelica and my's strategy was to grab anything in a color we liked. (No surprise, everything I bought was a bright color. I think she was a little smarter.) A woman handed us a white trashbag when we walked in, and I stuffed clothes in and occasionally weeded out. There were no dressing rooms and no mirrors, so women were stripping down in public and men kept asking their significant other's opinion. I stuck to dresses and cardigans, because buying pants is a stressful business for me with mirrors and dressing rooms; I can't imagine blinding buying a pair. I wore my dresses around over my clothes while I picked through other boxes, trying to make sure the dress was worth buying.

But the best part of all was when I got home. I looked online to see how much some of the stuff originally cost. One of my 15 dollar dresses is still selling online for 250. When will I wear the four fancy dresses I bought? Maybe never. Or maybe I'll start dressing up for work like it's a glamorous wedding. Like I said, I don't even care.

Football

Okay, I think the universe listened to my complain and I am generally off blog duty at work. (Probably because I wasn't so great at it.) And that brings back the desire to blog again.

This past Saturday, two of our Wilmington friends came up to go to a UNC football game. It was great because we had this set up before we even moved, and it's been something I've looked forward to every time I've missed Wilmington. And in many ways it was a perfect day... pumpkin pancakes at Elmo's, 75 degree degree weather, sunny enough for a sunburn. Not to mention that Julie and Aaron are some of our most favorite people!

But let me tell you. UNC football. What a disappointment.

I've never been to a football game that wasn't Arkansas football. Not another college, not NFL. I barely went to high school football games. (And I certainly never paid attention to the game when I did. I'll have to tell you about my ignorance in another blog post.)

A picture Julie took. We were there early because that is something the four of us are good at. Well, Tim is usually on time, but he's the odd one out in this crew.

For example, at Arkansas, we divide the crowd up and one side screams "Arkansas" and the other side screams "Razorbacks." This is a fun activity. At UNC one side yells "Tar" and the other side yells "Heel." Could you think of two more awkward words to yell? Whenever I hear the word Tar by itself, I think of the terrible things people have done with tar, and yelling Heel just sounds hillbilly, and is hard to scream with emphasis. (Actually, at Florida they yell blue/orange, and orange is also really awkward to yell, but UF makes up for it with another zillion awesome traditions.)

Also, one of the things they do to get the crowd pumped up on the third down is to show a picture of the historic bell tower on campus and make a loud bell sound. Talk about intimidating. "You guys, it's serious, that bell is ringing." 

And UNC went down 14 without ever having possession. A fumble on the kickoff. They eventually came back (not for the win), but my heart wasn't into it. I doubted they could pull an Arkansas and win after a 19 point deficit. 

The band did play excerpts from movies at halftime. Who can't get excited about awesome movie scores? 

Whelp

I admit, I've been avoiding my blog. I have to blog at work-- not my own words, but post someone else's blog. It seems like a simple enough task, yet it is the most dreaded work task. I wake up on Monday mornings in terror because Monday is blog day.

I have started to really love my job, so I don't want to give you the wrong impression. I think it's just the fact I've made several typos/mistakes on the blog, and it's always a rush to get it done before noon because it requires the approval of a zillion different people, and it has to go through a zillion different drafts before it is done, which means I'll probably make even more typos. So why don't I just catch the mistakes I make? I wish I knew the answer. I think I've gotten so nervous about the whole ordeal, I'm adding to the trauma.

So whenever I think of something I want to write on my blog, I think OMG BLOG BLOG BLOG, and avoid it. Not that you're waiting around for me to post, but that's the explanation.