Yeah, so finding the perfect of shoes: priceless, well, maybe not exactly *price-less*! *Found* myself at Aldo's at lunch today, due to an emergency situation that arose this morning involving my Guess sandals which, when I come to think of it, I had only worn for like the mere third time this season, I mean, talk about shoddy craftmanship, pretty to look at but fall apart just like that, well, I might have subjected the right foot to too much strain by buckling the strap on the first hole so that, not only was it chaffing my ghastly still pale (from underexposure!) ankle raw, but they were impeding my braking and accelerating capabilities. Ok, so I managed not to inadvertently commit suicide or accidently manslay fellow motorists/pedestrians. But at the office, to refresh my eyes from my computer screen, I glanced at my feet to admire my own sandals lol how vain! And upon closer scrutiny and to my horror, I noticed how the strap had ripped within an inch or more accurately, a millimeter of it's life. And so yes, that's how I found myself at Aldo's to rectify my little situation. Well, I know that every self-respecting female keeps a back-up pair at the office, "Because you just never know, right? Contingency plans, they're called, but what you don't understand is that I had my favorite tan belt that I got from H&M for ten bucks a few years back if I may add, to cinch around a pink Zara button down shirt worn over my five bucks forever 21 tights lol, so I specifically needed a tawny tan pair of shoes. The intent really, was for me to get me some cheap ballerina flats, but unfortunately, the size seven's were too snug and the eight's were just humongous...So I just picked up the beckoning slingbacks with a platform sole at the ball and a nice stilletto heel perched on the shelf at my eye-level. Ahhhh, Cinderella moments, got to love them!!! I had been chatting with the dropdead gorgeous salesclerk the whole time, and we got talking about commissions and I had mentioned about kumee's working in retail himself. "We said 70$, eh" I asked her. "Well, I could give you a 10% percent discount" she replied "it's reserved for special customers." I'm telling ya, there seems to be this tacit solidarity between retail folk, in a mall coppy kinda way, and yes, so I scored a small discount by virtue of being kumee's wife lol.

I was skeptical about the inexhaustibility of things you could blog about man-purses, but I was proven wrong, now how much less is running
the risk of reaching the saturation point when it comes to shoes??? My friend Farah has a blog wittingly called "Will Sing for Shoes" cute,
definitely and realistic, too! Really, what lengths would you go to for a pair of shoes???

On Ice Cream Cakes....

So maya coined the portmanteau for a cross between an elephant and a dolphin: a delephin, lol! Speaking of elephants, did I ever mention that Maya has a memory of that of an elephant, I'm not sure whether my analogy is correct, I figure, as the adage goes "they never forget" - I'm not sure either whether this makes her unique among her peers or if sharp memories are characteristic of and common to all kids anyways. Maya's a tad precocious but I don't think that necessarily elevates her to child-prodigy-ish levels lol. Ok, so she never forgot our promise we made that we would buy her an ice cream cake on our next trip to DQ just to appease her after denying the poor child some two weeks ago. And sure enough, after Kumee and I had finished sharing a Banana Royale Blizzard and the kids had polished their sundaes, we headed home with Maya's molded ice cream cake listing around in the trunk of our car as we negotiated Henri Bourassa...(it was intact when we got home, in restrospect, I'm not too sure why I didn't just carry it on my lap!)

And this is the problem with kids, the cake was just visually appealing like eye-candy to them, as it turned out, ice-cream in cake form isn't their cup of tea after all...so what do you do with 14/16th's of a DQ Ice cream cake? Well, you assume another incidental and yet veeerrryy important parental role - that of kid's leftovers finisher-designate!

Anyone who has ever followed me for any length and at any given period of time would likely know that facebook is one of things I keep harping on and on about...it's gotten so old and it's so lame and yet here I am...time and time again I've asked myself why I even bother, I mean just what is the appeal??? Maybe it's how it's proven itself to be an excellent (if second-rate) resource for a quick low down on the world's state of affairs...how did you think I learned of Osama's unceremonious death? From a friend's status update, of course, a news lede summed up into one neat sentence!

Am I addicted? Nah, I'm not enslaved, I can quit anytime I want, I've only like done so some, uh, ten times....

Quick post to give Deb of PIX me Photography, the credit she sooooo deserves, for her wonderful talent as seen in her generous photo contributions e.g. shoe pic above! I really like our unique collabo. Yup, so 52 Weeks got a makeover, because he's vain, and the Inside Skinny got insanely jealous, so I had to give her one, too, I hope you like it! (and that the new color motif won't trigger migraines)

Haven't had the time to write something original and specifically for this blog, so here's something from the other one, 52 Weeks. I know, I know, I'm so lame....sorry!

So I followed a friend's (who happens to be a writer) advice to "find a niche" and so yes, this blog was born out of a need to kinda narrow down the things I write about. And naturally, after winnowing off all the chaff, Kumee/men's fashion is the grain that remained. Now, just when I thought that this was niche enough, I came across a site devoted to satchels and only satchels, lol. Just how much blogging can one do on satchels alone? Plenty...apparently, lol! On that site you'll find anywhere from the latest styles and innovations in satchels (e.g. ones with neat built-in battery chargers!), references to them in the media (e.g. protagonists "Indiana Jones wears one" or more recently "Jack Bauer wears one" (wazzz uppp???) and literature, to sightings of notable people sporting satchels a.k.a the man-purse.

I'm grateful to have stumbled upon that blog because honestly, personally, all I had on them is that Kumee has a handsome Cole Haan one (that I would totally use if only it wasn't such a pain to switch bags and transfer my personal effects each and every time, uh, forget that!!!) which doesn't make for a very interesting blog post, and yet satchels, are a metro staple, that certainly deserves some mention.

If I had concluded on two posts back, that there couldn't be anything else that is the "object of so much scoff from the self-professed "machosexual" (what a ridiculous term, lol!) other than the pink shirt," then, the man-purse definitely takes the cake as the runner up!!!

Source Code Spoiler

Re: Source Code. Think of it as an action movie version of Groundhog Day. Without criticizing Bill Murray himself or his acting (because we like Bill Murray!) whatever luster his character in the movie lacked was definitely compensated for (and more!) in Lost in Translation, and whatever sensory stimuli Groundhog's plot gipped us of, is definitely supplied in Source Code. Protagonist Colter Stevens is the guinea pig for a military project, developed around the existence of the "source code" - the brain's "black box" record of an individual's last minutes. He is made to re-live this eight minute window of an ill-fated Chicago commuter train passenger, over and over again, with the hope that he will recover info as to the identity of the train's bomber. With his photographic memory, everytime, Stevens is able to pick up more and more details and ultimately uses them to devise a plan to alter what happens, "thwarting" the unspeakable tragedy.

* In reply to my fave writer Jessica Zafra's question, "since when did Jake Gyllenhaal get so hot"??? Easy-peasy: since Prince of Persia!

One of my earliest recollections of what has become a life-long love for clothes, clothes, clothes, is of when I received a "Disco" Barbie. She had roller-skates and was dressed in no less than a gold *lamé* bell-bottom jumpsuit lol. I clearly remember wanting an identical outfit for myself soooo bad that in my little girl's mind, I thought, if I willed for it hard enough, my doll's flashy metallic number would by some uncanny superhuman force transform into a kid's size seven! Needless to say, it never happened - disgruntled - I now have a compulsive shopping habit (and a shoe fetish!) as a result. But I also have loads of fun these days dressing up my own daughter!

Once upon a time, little boy outfits were limited to pint-size overalls and the sailor costume, reserved for special occasions. Generation X-ers, though, have so much at their disposal and like to dress their own progeny the very same way they dress themselves, rendering their little ones, tiny mini-me's that it's almost scary! Jaden, the sole heir of Kumee's tie hoard, might be too young to actually want Ken's clothes and "will" for them to fit him, but already, he's being groomed to be dapper like his Daddy.