These Shoes Hurt But I Love Them

Have you ever bought something and quickly developed an inexplicable attachment to it? Well I don’t usually do that. Stuff is stuff. I use said stuff for whatever purpose it was made for and move on. There are some exceptions to this. My car, Allycia, is a notable exception. Most of the CDs I bought in the early to mid 90′s fall in that category as well. It seems that I now have a new item to place in the afore mentioned category.

I bought a pair of Adidas Top Sala indoor soccer shoes from Eastbay about a month ago. They were in the clearance section which means they were marked way down. Definitely within my price range. When I initially discovered these wonderful shoes they had a pair in my size (Men’s 12) in stock. As usual I lolly-gagged around and didn’t get around to purchasing them for a couple of weeks. When I went back the biggest size they had was 11.5. That was a bit disappointing but I decided to get a pair anyway. Adidas’ run notoriously large at least in my experience so I figured that a pair of 11.5′s would be a little snug but fit just fine.

They arrived and I was ecstatic. Even if you don’t play soccer, Indoor Soccer shoes are great shoes to own. They’re comfy, lightweight, tough as nails to tear up, and snazzy looking to boot. Anyway I laced them up and put them on. The right foot felt great. It fit almost perfectly in fact. The left foot was another story. It was a very tight fit. I unlaced the boot (soccer term for shoe) and re-laced it making sure that the laces were very loose. I put the shoe back on and it fit okay though it still felt weird. I was a little worried about this but figured that everything would be fine once I got it broken in. A week went by. I wore them every single day. As the week progressed what started out as mild discomfort escalated to pain. I was adjusting my natural walking gate to try to compensate. Which I think only lead to more soreness. I can wear the right shoe all day with no problem. There is no pain, discomfort or anything. My left foot starts hurting minutes after I put the shoe on. And that’s while I’m just sitting down. If I start walking around it really starts to hurt. After a couple weeks of this I grudgingly came to the conclusion that the shoes are too small for my feet or at least my left foot so I stopped wearing them for a little while. When I got back from Waco I decided to try them out again. This happened to be a Sunday night and I was still wearing my dress socks from Sunday morning service.

I wore the Top Salas to church and came back home. There was no pain!!!! I jumped for joy. It would seem that the left foot fits like it’s supposed to if I wear thin socks (ala my dress socks) but when I wear my normal, everyday white crew socks they don’t because they’re too thick. The no pain effect seems to work when I wear either my dressy socks or a really old worn out pair of normal socks. You guys have no idea how happy this makes me. It means I don’t have to go through the hassle of sending my beloved shoes back or trying to sell them on Ebay. My next experiment will be actually playing Indoor Soccer in them. I figure if I forego wearing my usual normal sock, shin guards, soccer sock combination and just do the bare skin, shin guard, soccer sock thing the shoe should fit fine. At least that’s what I’m hoping. My left foot will be really smelly and sweaty afterwards but oh well. I can deal. The great thing is, I got several pairs of new socks for Christmas. Some were dressy socks (which I desperately needed since the washing machine monster has practically eaten all of mine up) but most were nice looking work type socks. Not quite dressy go to church socks (though I’ll be using them for that as well) but nice looking nonetheless. The great thing is they’re not much thicker than my dress socks, which means they suit the “No Pain in my Left Foot scenario” perfectly. I’m wearing them and my indoors as we speak with no pain whatsoever. I’ve had them on all day with no ill effects. This is great. Maybe I’m a cheapskate. I should have just gotten bigger shoes. But I just couldn’t do it. I’ve grown attached to THESE shoes. You guys can understand that right?

Drumline

The title says it all. Drumline. Go see this movie. It will change your life.

Beautiful Flight Attendants

I love flying. I think I’ve mentioned that before. That’s probably the biggest thing I miss about not travelling as much anymore. My flying experience was a very nice one this time around. On the way down here (here being Waco, TX) I had to catch two flights. Initially I was annoyed at having to take a flight to Atlanta (heading in the opposite direction of my destination) and then catch a plane from there to Dallas. Once I stepped foot on the plane though I didn’t mind a bit thanks to the flight attendants. They were all cute. Props to Airtran for getting beautiful new flight attendants to go along with their beautiful new plane. (The pilot proudly announced that the plane we were on was less than 4 months old. I love new planes.) Alas the flight was too short to truly soak in the flight attendants’ beauty. 48 minutes is just long enought for the plane to get up to cruising altitude, chill there for about 5 minutes and then start final approach to the destination. No time at all really.

I hate to say it but I ususally don’t notice the flight attendants because on the big carriers they’re usually middle aged women who look like your mom or even a young grandma. That wasn’t the case here. I’m going have to fly the smaller airlines more often. Cheaper fairs. Prettier employees. Win win situation if ever there was one.

Anyway the first flight was really short but the second flight was an hour and 40 minutes and you guessed it, more Airtran beauties. One young lady in particular took the cake. I didn’t get her name because I guess she forgot to put her name tag on that morning. She didn’t need a name tag though because she was fine. I think I’ll call her Ms. Fine because she was. I think she liked me. If a flight attendant rubs her rear end against your arm several times during a flight does that mean anything? Kind of like morse code for I think you’re cute. Write your name and number on the back of the napkin I just gave you and we’ll talk. If so I missed out because while she was well-proportioned, she definitely had room to walk down the isle without rubbing into me. It could be chalked up to normal random occurance on planes but if that were the case why didn’t the other flight attendants do the same? Ha Ha!! See my logic is flawless. You can’t come up with an answer for that one, now can you? I was a little upset that she didn’t get the chance to ask me what I wanted to drink. It was just the way the drink cart ended up I suppose. They were pushing the cart up the isle passing out the usual cookies and drinks. I had my fingers crossed hoping that I’d get to exchange a few words with Ms. Fine. Instead the other lady assisting Ms. Fine got to me first. She happened to be one of the older flight attendants (I suppose every airline has them). I gritted my teeth and gave her my drink requestwhile accepting the three cookies she gave me along with it. Then as they were pushing the cart forward to serve the next few rows of passengers, Ms. Fine rubbed up against my shoulder again. It was the darndest thing. Obviously an unsaid apology for not being able to get to me before the other lady did. If this was some ploy by the airline to drum up repeat business I think it worked.

I definitely enjoyed my first flight experience with Airtran. I will be using them again and recommending them to all my friends. Ms. Fine if you’re out there, I finally understand what you were trying to say. Airtran is a small airline, so I’m sure we’ll meet up again. Just make sure I get to talk to you during the in-flight service instead of that other lady. She was nice and all but you’re nicer.

Christmas Vs. X-Mas

I like Moby. I’d consider myself a fan. Aaron can attest to that. He had to endure walking into our dorm room only to be greeted by me in middle of a Moby listening session on several occasions. Stereo cranked nearly full blast. Sorry about that Mophead. Anyway Moby’s take on the Christmas vs. X-Mas thing closely parallels my own views on the subject. Aaron and I have discussed this on a couple of occasions. Like Moby, I don’t feel that leaving Christ out and replacing it with an X is blasphemous or anything. It just makes me sad.

Maybe the term X-Mas does have its place. Maybe we can use it to describe the hyped up, commercialized, Santa Claus and Rudolph, it’s all about the gifts and making money, let’s start our store promotions and commercials in October side of the holiday, which has evolved into the dominant attitude of our culture this time of year. Since that side of the holiday completely excludes Christ anyway why not give it a name suitable to its purpose. X-Mas: the Anti-Christmas. We’ll save the term Christmas to describe aspects of the holiday that truly do include and focus on Christ and his birth. To me Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ, born into this world many, many years ago. It’s about family. The very first Christmas (if you want to call it that) was a family gathering. Jesus was born into the family of Mary and Joseph. They spent that first Christmas night getting acquainted with their newborn child. The birth of a child is always a wondrous event in the life of a family but Christ’s birth was even more momentous because he would grow up to be the savior of the world.

I don’t wish to preach. Everyone has a right to his or her beliefs in this great country of ours. So with that I’ll wish a Merry Christmas to those that celebrate Christmas. To those that celebrate X-Mas, I hope you get the gifts you want. And here’s hoping you don’t work yourself do death putting in overtime to pay off the credit card balance when the bill comes in the mail in January. To those that don’t celebrate either one, have a nice day.

Snow!!!

It’s snowing!!!!!! Hooray for snow. I love snow. It doesn’t snow very often here in Memphis. Can you tell I’m excited? Before I moved to Tennessee, I had never lived any place that received snow. This is cool. It looks like it’s starting to stick. This is great. Day 2 of yummy audio goodness at work and snow. What more could a guy ask for?

Peter Gabriel, Yummy Audio Goodness, And Other Stuff

Y’all know how much I love discovering new music. Well my latest and greatest discovery at the moment is the new Peter Gabriel CD, UP. It’s great. (That is a woeful under statement but I use the word awesome way too much so I’m trying to explore other words to describe things.) Uhmm…. I can’t resist. This puppy is awesome!!! It’s extremely refreshing music that defies categorization. James, one of my coworkers, has been letting me listen to it all day. The album rocks. I’m not what one would call a Gabriel fan but this disc has got me interested. James is going to bring in a bunch of Mr. Gabriel’s older stuff tomorrow for me to peruse. Since I was on the European musicians who defy categorization kick today one of my other coworkers, Lakesha, let me listen to Sting’s latest CD of new material, Brand New Day. It’s pretty good. My favorite tracks from it include A Thousand Days, and of course Desert Rose (You’ll remember it as the song from that cool Jaguar commercial with the nice Indian singer in it. Came out a couple of years ago). James then produced some old school Sting (Early to Mid 90′s I believe) entitled Ten Summoner’s Tales for our listening pleasure. That contained Fields of Gold, which is a classic in my book. I also rediscovered a forgotten favorite, Shape of My Heart. That would be great to include in an old-fashioned mix-tape for your girlfriend. Ah memories….

Today’s musical odyssey was enhanced by some speakers I brought in today on a whim. I have owned two sets of Altec Lansing ATP 3 speakers for almost two years now. They sound incredible. I’m not talking about sounding incredible for computer speakers. These suckers sound incredible for speakers period. I’ve had them set up in my bedroom for the sole purpose of providing nice, crisp, stereo sound while watching television, playing PS2, or listening to my Discman. The setup I’ve conjured up is convoluted to say the least. I scratch my head daily wondering how I made the tangled mess of wires, speakers, and cords work. Basically I had my room divided into two listening zones. One pair of speakers and subwoofer envelopes my bed in yummy audio goodness while the other pair of speakers and subwoofer did the same for my recliner, which sits right next to my bed. So the two areas in my room where I sit and/or recline were covered. It’s a nice setup but due to an inherent flaw in my otherwise perfect setup, the speakers serving my recliner gave off a humming sound. Being the audiophile that I am even though I don’t yet have an audiophile budget, the humming annoyed me to no end. I’ve ripped the setup apart and put it back together numerous times in an effort to eliminate the hum to no avail. So in a last ditch effort to rid myself of the dreaded humming I’ve just been leaving the speakers off lately. Well this morning I woke up and thought, why not take this nice $80 dollar set of speakers that’s just sitting here collecting dust to work where I can put them to good use. So that’s what I did and just in time too. The crappy internal speaker built into my IBM 300 GL here at work has been getting on my nerves lately. Actually it’s always annoyed me. The audiophile in me cringes every time I hear audio reproduced by this sorry excuse for a speaker. Since that is an everyday occurrence my nerves are gotten upon a lot. ATP 3′s to the rescue. I hooked them up to the audio out port on my sound card and Wa La!! Yummy audio goodness ensued. My high bit-rate mp3s sound great now. That is thanks in part to the speakers and also to the DFX DSP Sound and Audio Enhancement plugin I’ve got for Winamp3. DFX made my mp3s sound decent on the crappy internal speaker so I knew they would totally rock coming out of my ATP 3′s. I was not disappointed.

So as you can tell this been a terrific day from an audio standpoint. Heck thanks to the audio, the day as a whole has been great. I’ve even stuck around here an extra hour writing this long post partially because I wanted to bless you guys with my tale of sonic bliss but mostly because I wanted to get a few more minutes of yummy audio goodness in before I went home. Sure I can experience it at home but only to a limited extent. There I’ve got to worry about disturbing the neighbors and a non-audiophile roommate. Generally I view the living room (which is where my good stereo/27” TV/DVD setup is) as my roommate’s domain at night. He doesn’t have a TV in his room so that’s where he hangs out at night. Here, after hours, I can enjoy the yummy audio goodness cranked up almost full blast without being disturbed. Audio heaven I tell you. Here’s hoping that you find your tiny piece of yummy audio goodness wherever you are today. Peace out.

P.S. Eminem’s Soldier is off tha hook on these speakers. Edited version of course. I’m heading home now but I had to slip that in there. Later.

Nice Idea But….

Here’s a nice idea, ‘High-Tech Ski Jacket Has Built-In Sound System’ but…. they’re kind of late coming up with it. My jacket plays music too. I put my Discman in my jacket pocket. Then I place my Headphones, whose cord comes out of my jacket pocket, on my head. A device stored in my jacket is producing the music I’m listening to. Just like the contraption in this article. Volume control is provided by a mini-remote built into the headphone cord. You guys are late. Get with the program and knock down the price. My setup cost a mere $50 bucks for the jacket and $30 bucks for the Discman. If I chose to sell my setup to the general public, I could put you guys out of business. You better watch your back.

Chinese Big Brother Is Watching

This ‘Net sites blocked by China go from expected to bizarre’ is kind of scary. Talk about big brother watching you. I’m glad our government isn’t doing this. That being said, I’m sure once the Department of Homeland Security gets up and on it’s feet they’ll give it a go.

The World’s Most Expensive Cocktail

Behold the (disputed) World’s Most Expensive Cocktail. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t drink. I’m too poor to afford drinks like that. I think I’ll stick with water. God’s All-Natural diet drink.

Editing: An Ancient Magic

I swear editing must be a lost, ancient, magical art. I try to edit my posts as thoroughly as possible before I post them. I do spell check in Word. Read over them 4 or 5 times just to make sure they make some semblance of sense. Then I post them and read over them again a couple of times. It would be logical to think that after going through such a rigorous editing/review process they would be as close being right as my feeble efforts can produce. Wrong!! That logic goes right out the window when it comes to my posts. It never fails. I have a habit of reading things that I post over and over again after the fact. That goes for blog entries, message board posts, comments I leave on other people’s blogs or my own. It’s crazy. I have no idea where that came from. Maybe it’s 12 years of having my Journalism Major/Newspaper Reporter/English teacher mom reading over and making corrections to every single paper or writing assignment I ever wrote in school. She always found some sort of grammatical, spelling, or content error. Maybe it’s some sort of buried obsessive-compulsive behavior surfacing now that I have a writing outlet that was absent for a few years. I don’t know. But it never fails, when I come back a few days later and read over the post that I have already read over at least 12 times prior I find an error. It always happens. So I go in, correct it and I feel better but the fact that I found an error feeds into my need to constantly reread my posts. So the process starts all over in a vicious cycle. I’m sure there’s something that I’m missing in this very post. Will it ever end? Gotta go. So many posts to reread. So little time.