Last night, on the way home from work, I stopped by the local mall in search of cuff links. There are a handful of people (my boss, but also some clients of ours in the oil & gas bid’ness) who wear French cuffs and I thought it might be neat to have at least one shirt with them. I got one about a month ago but hadn’t worn it, as I needed cuff links first. I really like the way French cuffs look, it’s kinda classy and cuff links these days can be pretty cool – an additional way to be stylish and different. Well, French cuffs are pretty different in and of themselves!
Anyway, first stop was at Nordstrom – way expensive (eg $80) and not even all that cool. I had remembered a funny story my boss once told about being at JC Penney and being told they didn’t sell any shirts with French cuffs. He laughed at them, because they were standing next to a display case of cuff links. Anyway, I remembered the story and headed over to JC Penney and theirs were only $20, but they were complete crap. On the way, I bumped into Bobby and said hi to him. While I was leaving the store, I ended up going through the home furnishings department, and caught the employees in the middle of unboxing all their Christmas decorations and putting them up! They had several big trees up, fully decorated, and a bunch more boxes they were emptying. I couldn’t believe it! I asked one of the four people working on this project, “you can’t be serious?” She seemed a bit freakish in her response, which came with a wide-eyed expression on her face “Oh yeah, we’re totally serious!” I think they were really into it. September 7th has to be the earliest I have ever seen Christmas decorations, other than at those Christmas stores that are open year-round. Some stores have already got Halloween stuff out, and I even thought it was a bit early for that! Oh, well. I was in Lowe’s on Monday and noticed they have received several boxes marked “Christmas lights” and the boxes are in a cleared out “seasonal” section of the store but they haven’t started unpacking them yet.
I’m announcing here that I am running a betting pool for the date that Stonebriar Centre puts up the Christmas decorations inside the mall. $10 per bet, closest calendar date without going over wins. I get to play, too, and my bet is Oct 26th.
Coming out of JC Penney, still dazed from seeing fully decorated Christmas trees in early September, I ran into Bobby again, and I related to him the horror of what I had seen. We had a good laugh, and I mentioned that I was already formulating a blog post in my head.
At Foley’s, I finally found a nice selection of cuff links at reasonable prices ($25 – $30). I really like the pair I bought, and I’m wearing my French cuffs today, and I love this shirt! I will probably get more shirts with French cuffs and more cuff links as well. Cuff links would make a nice Christmas present, by the way 😉
As it turns out, today was a good day to wear the French cuffs. Gabe (my boss) asked for me to stand in for him at the ADAM Energy Forum, which meets at the Dallas Petroleum Club on the 39th floor of Chase Tower. We’re members of the ADAM thing, and for the price of an annual membership we get to go to the monthly meetings, which include a presentation by a member about themselves and lunch. Lunch is over-the-top, and generally consists of salad, steak, baked potato, steamed veggies, dessert, bread, tea & coffee. The dessert today was a scoop of vanilla ice cream, rolled in pralines and served in a silver dish, covered in fudge. It is important to note that the desert is not presented to you with the fudge already on it – no – the servers come by and pour it over later. It’s meant to be a marketing excercise, but I’ve found most of the people are just there to be social and eat. I always manage to pass out a few business cards but nothing has ever come of it. I think Gabe has had the same results, although I reckon he tries a lot harder than I do. That’s why he’s the boss!
Apart from the nice lunch, I don’t like going. I hate marketing and making chit chat with people who probably don’t want to hear from me (they want to “do a deal” – buy or sell oil & gas properties).
One more gripe in this rambling entry – it costs a fortune to park downtown – 1 hour in the Chase tower was $5.80. The parking garage of that building does not accept credit cards. Fortunately, I had the cash on me, but I rarely carry any cash any more (plastic works – and seems to be preferred – in most places). I find it quite brutal for a parking garage to not only charge these usurous rates, but then to not accept credit cards as well. Now I’ll get an expense check for $5.80, which will sit in the bottom of my desk drawer here at the office until it becomes too old to cash – like a few other I have like that.