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Friday, February 14, 2014

me, pinterest, and some consumer complaints

I don't really "get" some social media and I resist a lot of the rest of it, but I did recently get sucked into Pinterest (three or four years after the rest of the world, right?).  I have no idea how to punctuate the previous sentence, btw.  It may or may not be a surprise to you all, but I like to shop.  Unfortunately, I don't have much money and I refuse to run up enormous amounts of credit card debt, so a lot of the time I am reduced to window shopping or, more specifically, online window shopping. Because you can do that at midnight in your pjs. C'mon now.

Pinterest is genius for this I am finding. I specifically made a board called "things i want, january 2014" and filled it with things that I, y'know, wanted after seeing them online but did not feel it was wise to immediately waste my cash on. Then I was able to go back to these things one or two or three weeks later with the idea that I could reevaluate whether I really wanted them...and 90% of them were sold out. That's a huge money-saver right there, I tell you what.

Like, look at these $50 pj pants from Anthropologie (LOL) that Pinterest saved me from:

 
They're adorable. And now I can just look at them forever without actually wasting fifty fucking dollars on them.

Or this pink sweater:

I don't actually wear pink, I just get seduced by it every winter around this time when I'm so sick of all my drab winter clothing I could spit.

Or these Frye boots:

I couldn't even start to convince myself I could afford them.  But those are some cool boots, yo.

Or this Athleta vest that sold out almost immediately:


But I really really really still did want one of those super thin, lightweight down/down-alternative vests that are out now, because you can comfortably wear them indoors in your cold house or office. Which leads us to the next portion of this blog post.

A couple weeks ago I went to the mall on my day off to see if I could buy a vest similar to the sold-out one above. I went to The North Face store.  The nice young man working there asked if I had any questions.  I refrained from asking my actual question which was, "Why is nothing ever fucking on sale in this store?" Because if that crappy massage job I just suffered through 6 months of*** reminded me of anything, it's that it's NOT NICE to be sarcastic to the underpaid.  No, I just took my leave of his store sans sarcasm and empty handed. Because I was not going to pay $149 for the vest I wanted. So sorry, so poor cheap.

Nevertheless when I returned to the mall later in the week (I had to go to the Container Store and buy a lunch box system because I'm still being good about taking lunch and snacks to work and I was getting liberal hippie guilt from all the plastic ziplock bags I was using), I returned to North Face. And my unspoken sarcasm was dis-proven****. They were finally having their winter sale.  So I bought this:


Which still was not inexpensive, but which I've been wearing almost every day and which frankly looks cuter on me than on that model. Or so I delude myself.  I don't wear mine over an ugly purple turtleneck, so there is that. And M2 told me it brings out the color of my eyes. So.

Pinterest is also good for some fitness stuff.  I found this board which I thought was full of really cool ideas for conditioning/bodyweight workouts, if you're into that sorta thing.  I wanted to try this one:


But I kinda think it requires an interval timer to be done correctly. Which would mean another trip to the mall.*****  I could end up at North Face.

xoxo

***Did I mention in here that my Christmas present to myself was quitting that miserable massage job?  Down to one job. So much happier.

****Spellchecker insists disproven has a hyphen. Really?

*****I wanted to buy one on Amazon but it's really hard to tell in the product descriptions which ones are user friendly and which ones suck. I think I'd wanna see in person before I plunked down my $20-40.

3 comments:

  1. So we have made many many purchases at the North Face outlet in Berkeley, CA, where things actually are on sale but guess what? Some of them lately have been really crappy! I have a down coat that sheds fleecy feathers on anything I wear underneath it because the seams weren't closed properly, and a waterproof windbreaker that leaves a trail of big white flakes of plastic coating in my wake as it disintegrates before my very eyes.

    I used to LOVE north face, and probably not all their products have been re-engineered to suck, it may just be the cheapo outlet stuff and I refuse to pay their regular retail prices. Anyway, harumph.

    And congrats on quitting the job, yay!

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  2. That sucks, Crabby. You know, I've wanted a North Face Osito fleece for a couple of years now (I think I may even have posted a pic on here at one time) and kinda stalk them online to see if I can get a color I like in my size on sale, but I've never pulled the trigger b/c the online reviews are so widely varied. Some people love them to death and think they're the greatest jacket ever. Other people complain they shed fuzz over everything endlessly. How can both things be true? It makes me wonder if North Face does have quality control issues where some batches are great and some are made out of crappy inferior fabric. :-/

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  3. Free interval timers app for your android phone/tablet?
    Not yet found free cool boots tho'.

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