"misery is my company": my journey to hollister
First off, since I haven't updated in over a month, I need to do a quick catch-up since a lot has gone on. I don't think I ever mentioned in here that Brian applied to PhD programs this winter. He ended up going 2/3 on acceptances, with "yes's" from UMass Amherst and Brandeis and a "no" from UCLA. He was also supposed to apply to BU, but their website seemed to screw up the dates and what he thought was an April 1 deadline was actually a January 15 deadline and he ended up missing it. So just last week, he/we decided to choose UMass over Brandeis. Obviously the Brandeis location is much more desirable, but their program just wasn't a good match for Brian at all. So we will be heading out to Amherst at the end of the summer.
So because we'll soon have to adjust to smaller income (Brian gets a nice TA tuition waiver and stipend, but it's nothing compared to his current salary) and since Brian will soon have to go back into student-mode for five years, we wanted one last fun trip before the PhD craziness. We first looked at smaller local things, like the Cape and Maine, but then Brian got the idea to just look at pricing for Disney cruises (which is what we'd wanted to do for a honeymoon, but the wedding keeps getting pushed back because of everything else getting in the way). So it turns out that they sometimes have nice deals for booking at the last minute because they want to fill the ship up, and so one week ago we booked a four-night cruise to the Bahamas for May 4th through May 8th on the Disney Wonder. It's nice because the four-night cruise will help us gauge whether we like cruises or not so that when we do have the actual wedding we will know whether booking a longer cruise would be a good idea or not. Annnnd last night Disney called and said that we'd been given a free upgrade from a "deluxe oceanview" staterooom (ie, porthole window) on deck 2, a category 9 (of 12) room, to a stateroom with a private verandah on deck 5, a category 6 room. Very nice.
And one night of the cruise is their pirate-/tropical-themed deck party, so I was looking this weekend for casual "tropical"-looking sundresses to wear since I have nothing "pirate" appropriate. I looked in a bunch of stores... Old Navy had a sort of tropical printed dress, but it was this horrible bright peachie pink color that just looked awful on my insanely pale skintone. It also came in black, but it loses most of the "tropical" effect that way. If it had come in blue or green or something it may have worked. Gap and Express had nothing. I even tried American Eagle and Aeropostale. And even Pac Sun was disappointing. I did try on a yellow plaid dress there, but the it was one of those dresses with no waist that make me look like my stomach is gigantic.
I was searching around a bit online and decided to at least take a look at Hollister's website. My line of reasoning was that they're based in California so therefore might have some "tropical" dresses. They had this cotton strapless sundress dealie that looked like it might work, so we had to head to the real store so I could try it on. I have never set foot in a Hollister. The weird cabana look of the exterior intimidates me. I knew it was popular with teens, but I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. I get up the nerve to walk in, and it's immediately about ten degrees hotter the second you enter the cabana exterior. And it smells like cheap guy cologne and is incredibly dimly lit. It was then I discovered that they have all juniors sizes there... as in odd numbers 1-15 instead of the women's sizes 0-14. Soooo, it really is a specifically-for-teens store. I always figured older people could shop there but just tended not to. So I'm in there, trying to figure out their layout amidst the stifling heat and cologne-soaked air and smoky-bar lighting, and I manage to find the dress from the website. Luckily, it's sized only in S,M,L type sizes rather than number sizes. But since it's a teen store in juniors sizes, and since even when I was in high school I had trouble with juniors sizes because of the whole big-hips thing, I had no clue what size I was and decided to go up from the usual and grabbed a medium and a large to try on.
Finding the dressing rooms was another adventure. Brian helped me find them on the opposite end of the store and then bolted for Pretzel Time while I waited in the longest dressing-room line ever. I was seriously the oldest person in line who was not a mother shopping with her tween-aged daughter. The heat became really oppressive right around that moment. And have I mentioned the emo blasting from the speakers yet? Yeah, there was emo blasting from the speakers. Just to clarify, in case anyone doesn't get what I mean when I say "emo," I mean the term as an insult. To me, emo equals fake, hackneyed emotion with no real depth as sung through whiny high-pitched vocals, often accompanied by dark hair over one eye and lots of eyeliner. And it is like nails on a chalkboard listening to their cliched crap, and I am so happy that I pretty much am too old for that music phenomenon. I think I actually prefer the bubblegum boy bands that took off at the very end of high school for me, because at least they made no pretensions of having any real depth. Anyway, back to the dressing room from hell... so Hollister is blasting this particularly obnoxious emo music through their speakers. It made me long for the booming bass of the club music typically heard at Express. I couldn't even tell if it was one album by the same band or just a cruel mixtape-of-horror. They played that song that I think I've heard on The N while waiting for Degrassi to come on that goes "and everything everything's magic," but I couldn't for the life of me tell you who sings it.* I finally got a room in the dressing room and try to get through the trying-on process as quickly as possible. The lighting in there reminded me of makeup mirror lighting in a backstage dressing room, only one where all but two of the lightbulbs are out. I started with the medium, and it of course felt like it was a little loose and like it might be slipping down all night were I to actually buy it, so I completed the teeniebopper effect by taking a few pictures of myself in the dim lighting with my cell phone and headed back out to show Brian.
After eating half a pretzel, I decided to venture back inside and try on a small. So it was back to the heat and back to the emo and back to the long line. Whatever emo band was playing really outdid itself on the particular song that was on when I got back in line. It was something about "happiness is a face that doesn't look good on me" and "misery is my company" and "wah wah wah dark clouds hanging over me wah wah eyeliner bullshit." yes, that is emo in a nutshell to me. I can't begin to tell you how miserable it was. Oh, and then a like nine-year-old walked in to try on the very same dress I had in my hand. Wonderful. So I ended up liking the fit of the small better (take that, teeenieboppers!), even though it magically became several inches shorter with just one size difference. But I did not end up buying it after all of that. It was expensive for what it was (something like $60), and I couldn't see myself getting much wear out of it after this trip. But I did get a nice fun story out of the whole ordeal, and it got me to actually update this thing, and that is always good.
*EDIT, 10:21pm: Brian so kindly did a youtube search for me and discovered that the song in question is "Everything's Magic" by (looking over at his laptop monitor) Angels and Airwaves. He is now playing the video. It is almost as awesome as being back in Hollister. If only it were 30 degrees warmer in here.... :P
So because we'll soon have to adjust to smaller income (Brian gets a nice TA tuition waiver and stipend, but it's nothing compared to his current salary) and since Brian will soon have to go back into student-mode for five years, we wanted one last fun trip before the PhD craziness. We first looked at smaller local things, like the Cape and Maine, but then Brian got the idea to just look at pricing for Disney cruises (which is what we'd wanted to do for a honeymoon, but the wedding keeps getting pushed back because of everything else getting in the way). So it turns out that they sometimes have nice deals for booking at the last minute because they want to fill the ship up, and so one week ago we booked a four-night cruise to the Bahamas for May 4th through May 8th on the Disney Wonder. It's nice because the four-night cruise will help us gauge whether we like cruises or not so that when we do have the actual wedding we will know whether booking a longer cruise would be a good idea or not. Annnnd last night Disney called and said that we'd been given a free upgrade from a "deluxe oceanview" staterooom (ie, porthole window) on deck 2, a category 9 (of 12) room, to a stateroom with a private verandah on deck 5, a category 6 room. Very nice.
And one night of the cruise is their pirate-/tropical-themed deck party, so I was looking this weekend for casual "tropical"-looking sundresses to wear since I have nothing "pirate" appropriate. I looked in a bunch of stores... Old Navy had a sort of tropical printed dress, but it was this horrible bright peachie pink color that just looked awful on my insanely pale skintone. It also came in black, but it loses most of the "tropical" effect that way. If it had come in blue or green or something it may have worked. Gap and Express had nothing. I even tried American Eagle and Aeropostale. And even Pac Sun was disappointing. I did try on a yellow plaid dress there, but the it was one of those dresses with no waist that make me look like my stomach is gigantic.
I was searching around a bit online and decided to at least take a look at Hollister's website. My line of reasoning was that they're based in California so therefore might have some "tropical" dresses. They had this cotton strapless sundress dealie that looked like it might work, so we had to head to the real store so I could try it on. I have never set foot in a Hollister. The weird cabana look of the exterior intimidates me. I knew it was popular with teens, but I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. I get up the nerve to walk in, and it's immediately about ten degrees hotter the second you enter the cabana exterior. And it smells like cheap guy cologne and is incredibly dimly lit. It was then I discovered that they have all juniors sizes there... as in odd numbers 1-15 instead of the women's sizes 0-14. Soooo, it really is a specifically-for-teens store. I always figured older people could shop there but just tended not to. So I'm in there, trying to figure out their layout amidst the stifling heat and cologne-soaked air and smoky-bar lighting, and I manage to find the dress from the website. Luckily, it's sized only in S,M,L type sizes rather than number sizes. But since it's a teen store in juniors sizes, and since even when I was in high school I had trouble with juniors sizes because of the whole big-hips thing, I had no clue what size I was and decided to go up from the usual and grabbed a medium and a large to try on.
Finding the dressing rooms was another adventure. Brian helped me find them on the opposite end of the store and then bolted for Pretzel Time while I waited in the longest dressing-room line ever. I was seriously the oldest person in line who was not a mother shopping with her tween-aged daughter. The heat became really oppressive right around that moment. And have I mentioned the emo blasting from the speakers yet? Yeah, there was emo blasting from the speakers. Just to clarify, in case anyone doesn't get what I mean when I say "emo," I mean the term as an insult. To me, emo equals fake, hackneyed emotion with no real depth as sung through whiny high-pitched vocals, often accompanied by dark hair over one eye and lots of eyeliner. And it is like nails on a chalkboard listening to their cliched crap, and I am so happy that I pretty much am too old for that music phenomenon. I think I actually prefer the bubblegum boy bands that took off at the very end of high school for me, because at least they made no pretensions of having any real depth. Anyway, back to the dressing room from hell... so Hollister is blasting this particularly obnoxious emo music through their speakers. It made me long for the booming bass of the club music typically heard at Express. I couldn't even tell if it was one album by the same band or just a cruel mixtape-of-horror. They played that song that I think I've heard on The N while waiting for Degrassi to come on that goes "and everything everything's magic," but I couldn't for the life of me tell you who sings it.* I finally got a room in the dressing room and try to get through the trying-on process as quickly as possible. The lighting in there reminded me of makeup mirror lighting in a backstage dressing room, only one where all but two of the lightbulbs are out. I started with the medium, and it of course felt like it was a little loose and like it might be slipping down all night were I to actually buy it, so I completed the teeniebopper effect by taking a few pictures of myself in the dim lighting with my cell phone and headed back out to show Brian.
After eating half a pretzel, I decided to venture back inside and try on a small. So it was back to the heat and back to the emo and back to the long line. Whatever emo band was playing really outdid itself on the particular song that was on when I got back in line. It was something about "happiness is a face that doesn't look good on me" and "misery is my company" and "wah wah wah dark clouds hanging over me wah wah eyeliner bullshit." yes, that is emo in a nutshell to me. I can't begin to tell you how miserable it was. Oh, and then a like nine-year-old walked in to try on the very same dress I had in my hand. Wonderful. So I ended up liking the fit of the small better (take that, teeenieboppers!), even though it magically became several inches shorter with just one size difference. But I did not end up buying it after all of that. It was expensive for what it was (something like $60), and I couldn't see myself getting much wear out of it after this trip. But I did get a nice fun story out of the whole ordeal, and it got me to actually update this thing, and that is always good.
*EDIT, 10:21pm: Brian so kindly did a youtube search for me and discovered that the song in question is "Everything's Magic" by (looking over at his laptop monitor) Angels and Airwaves. He is now playing the video. It is almost as awesome as being back in Hollister. If only it were 30 degrees warmer in here.... :P