Tuesday, November 27, 2007

New Experiences

In the spirit of The List, I am trying to generally be more open to new experiences. In my regular life, I crave stability, normality, and routine. Although my job gives me plenty of opportunity to never experience the same day twice in a row, I still shrink from a lot of change in my personal life. But, I'm trying new things on my list of 73, so why not jump on other new experiences?

Last Wednesday, K's good friend R and his new girlfriend E came over for dinner. E was visiting Austin for the first time from London, so R decided part of her visit should include a trip to a country bar. Never mind that none of us regularly (or ever) hang out in country bars, it would be one more opportunity for her to take some fun "Texas-y" pictures. R decided the place to go should be the huge six bars-in-one Graham Central Station, in Pflugerville. He'd been there a couple of times for happy hour to one of the non-country themed bars, so he had some idea of what the place is like. K & I had never been there, but K got in the spirit by wearing his boots & cowboy hat, and I wore my new brown boots.

We realized upon arrival that visiting GCS the night before Thanksgiving was not the best idea--the parking lot was packed. We saw a girl walking to her car, so we pulled into her row and waited for her to leave. She had other plans. She got in her car, started it, and appeared to make a phone call. (Maybe she was just checking her messages.) Then, she either changed her shirt or put on a coat (it was difficult to tell which, since we were several feet away, in our own car). By now, about 5 minutes had passed. K flicked his lights, in case she somehow couldn't see us waiting for her. I don't know if that irritated her, or she just still didn't notice, because she got out a camera and began taking photos of herself. By my count of the flashes, she took six photos of herself. Six photos of herself sitting in her car. Finally, after a ten minute wait, she pulled out and left us her space.

There were two long lines to get into the main entrance, but we luckily picked a short one. Once inside, we headed for the country bar, which had a huge dance floor. E was not impressed by the huge crowd (nor was I) or by the loud volume (which made it difficult to hear each other), but we found a space along the railing of the dance floor to watch. I love to watch people dance. Whether they really know how to dance, or are just flailing along, (and honestly, if they have some crazy moves, all the better) watching people dance never fails to cheer me up. R & E took a couple of turns around the dance floor, and dragged us out there when a fast song came on. K almost never dances, so we enjoyed being silly.

From there, we moved to a smaller room that was playing 80s music, but even though we found a table, we didn't stay long. E kept saying the place made her feel old, and I could definitely empathize. A large marjority of the people there were in the 18 - 21 age range (we could tell by the X on their hands) and seemed to be there to pick up people and/or get hammered. Neither were on our agenda for the evening, so we left. I don't think any of us are eager to go back to GSC, but at least now we know exactly what we're missing!

Next on the new experience list was holiday shopping. The only time I've been shopping on Black Friday was a couple of years ago when K & I went to his home town for Thanksgiving, and I went shopping with him mom, two sisters & SIL at 8am to the local mall. They live in a smaller town, really a small town in a triangle of small towns, so the mall wasn't as crazy as I would expect an Austin mall would be. But last week I got an email about the Thanksgiving Midnight Madness sales at the Round Rock Outlet, and I thought it might be fun to check out. We're night owls anyway, so it was likely we'd still be awake after having Thanksgiving dinner with my family, and the outlet is only about 10 minutes or so from our house. I checked the list of sales before we headed out, and determined a few places to shop. I suppose it might have been a good time to shop for people on my Christmas list, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to buy that would be at the outlet. Well, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to buy for anyone else at the outlet. ha! But I thought it would be a good time to score a few deals for myself, and K always appreciates a bargain.

We arrived a couple of minutes after midnight, and drove to the back of the shopping center to park. It was filling up quickly, but there were still a good number of spaces open in the far back. Once we started walking around, we quickly realized that it was going to be very very busy, and that many of the people shopping were pretty serious about their goals for the evening. I was surprised to see a line snaking out of the Coach outlet--at 10 minutes after opening--with at least 25 or 30 people waiting to enter the completely full store. I guess the store was at the limit of their fire code shopper allowance? I have no idea what people were looking for because Coach wasn't on the list as one of the shops doing a special sale. As far as I know, they were just selling items at their usual (outlet) prices. K left me in Nine West, where I scored a cute pair of brown dress shoes for $35. (I'm trying to incorporate brown into my wardrobe more, and only had open-toed brown summer shoes & brown boots.) We met and walked over to Ann Taylor, where he dropped me off to head to Nike Town. It was busy, but I knew what I was looking for ($40 100% cashmere sweater), so I found it quickly, looked around a bit, and then waited in line for 20 minutes to pay. K found a couple of things at Nike, but was so discouraged at the huge line that he decided the sale price wasn't worth the wait. On the way out, we walked around a little bit more and saw a line almost as long as the Coach line at Starbucks, and saw several people walking around with small children or babies in strollers. I was most surprised at that--just from knowing how my nephews do when they're out of their usual sleep pattern, I couldn't believe people would be dragging kids around at midnight or 1am just for stuff like half-priced sweaters! We were home just after 1am, and I think K is at least satisfied that he never needs to Black Friday shop again. I might go again if there's a midnight opportunity, and if I can get my act together enough to actually shop from my Christmas List instead of just for myself. I kind of got swept up in the sale excitement!

1 comment:

ashley said...

i went to the san marcos outlets at midnight last year. its a totally new experience! but the coach outlet was the same... the line was RIDICULOUSLY long to get in and people were walking out with large bags of stuff. I saw two woman walk out with two large shopping tote bags of stuff (Each!)... maybe they have some secret sale or something?