Last week's shopping excursion was pretty much a bust, resulting in just one item bought, for my youngest sister. Saturday saw a little more progress -- I got the most difficult gift out of the way -- and I almost finished last night. All I have left are something else for my mom and a couple of gift exchange gifts for parties I'm attending.

One thing I planned to buy my niece was a baby doll, but she's two years old and most of the boxes were marked for ages 3 and up. Besides, have you taken a look at dolls lately? Scary, scary-looking things! Most of them look like they're possessed or something. Way too creepy. I couldn't give my niece one of those. And most of them do something, too, like talk, or pee, or walk in that zombie-like way. I don't want it to do anything, just be cute and cuddly and have the potential for doll clothes. I figure I can spend the next year looking for the perfect doll, like the one I remember having, so she'll be almost the magical doll-owning age of three when Christmas comes around next year. It will probably take me that long to find one.

Macy's verdict: It's a department store. It's owned by Federated Department Stores, the same people who now own what used to be the May Company I grew up with and is now called Kaufmann's. The signage is in the same fonts as Kaufmann's, which is a little disconcerting to me for some reason. Clearance prices seem to be better than Liberty House's. I keep reading about how they plan to have better selection and better everyday prices, but I haven't seen it happen yet -- although I did read that they are still dealing with existing Liberty House stock, and the changes will become more apparent over time. December grade: somewhere between apathy and OK.

Tomato Nation is one of the best things on the web. Today's article is especially worth reading, just for the one paragraph, if nothing else: "The bald eagle is CRYING because developers punted it out of its nest to build CONDOS..."
- posted by Lori @ 1:26:00 PM | permanent link | |