Now you know why I learnt to sew.

I understand all too well. I live in a city that famed Chicago columnist Mike Royko called “a shopping mall Shangri-La”, where I literally have two major malls within walking distance of my house and four more within a half-hour drive, and you couldn’t pay me to go to either for the last three months of the year. Yesterday, being an absolutely beautiful Saturday after our first real snowstorm in nearly two decades, was even worse than on Christmas Eve: the Czarina and I made the mistake of going to our local Half Price Books for a reading fix, and the combination of rampaging hordes and concentrated crazy was quite the experience. You’ll know if I go back, because you’ll hear my screams of “Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!” from there.

I like shopping, as long as it’s book and cd/dvd shopping.