  Today was another weekend-day which exemplified Consumership at it's finest. GAP freaked up my day Ben-style by playing "The Hardest Button to Button" while I was in the dressing room. ("What? A White Stripes song? At GAP?!? " ) I will spare you the horrid details of my downward spin into the fleeting high that is shopping.
But I will tell you that I did buy the sweatshirt I have always stole from Leigh-- the softest, warmest, coziest thing you can buy for fifty-four dollars and thirty-one cents. I happened to buy it at the one, the only, REI. I'm not sure if you (the reader) are familiar with REI. It is a store that originated in Seattle, expanded to Spokane, and eventually diffused to most of the Inland Northwest.
It is a magical store. The shelves are filled with GORP, Nalgene bottles, hiking/skiing/camping/ kayaking /canoeing/fishing/rock- climbing supplies. (And a bonus, no hunting gear) And the employees! For every humus-eating, leghair growing, same-sex-oriented female, there are two or three shaggy-headed, gorgeous, rugged, man's-man males. Yum. We also wandered to B&N where I bought a delicious story that, in its first page and a half, made me fall madly in love-- The Perks of Being A Wallflower . My demands in life are few, but I hereby demand you to read it. If you have a heart, and I honestly hope you do because life is futile without one, you will love it. It is self-proclaimed about "...the dilemma of passivity vs. passion" Our dear Charlie is "... caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it" Once again someone has torn truth from my world and written it in perfect, definitive words. "So this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be. " Truer words may never have been spoken Affectionately... Anna 
