Astor & Black - Redux

So, 6+ weeks later I took delivery of my suits from Astor & Black. I must say, I love them. Despite the initial experience, the suits are awesome. The tux is exactly what I wanted and fits so perfectly. The suit is also awesome. As Aaron, the A&B rep said, "You'll never wear an off-the-rack suit again." He was totally right. It fits better, looks better, and I feel better. Two nitpicks were - they forgot suspender buttons on my tuxedo pants and they made my tux shirt out of the wrong color/fabric. The upside is, since it is custom-made - they just gave me the mistake shirt - which I am wearing now! So in 6 weeks they are going to fix my shirt, and my pants no charge. Word. I'm happy, but now I'm just sad I have to wear my other off-the-rack suit as well. Must make more money for sick custom wardrobe...

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What is it with MS Word's love of semicolons? People (real writers too) don't use nearly as many semicolons in novels and magazine. Perhaps it is my start-stop-start-stop writing style that prompts the grammar checker to insert this punctuation. Anyone else have this issue?

Stupid Homozygosity!

So yesterday I was sitting in the Prudential Center Mall waiting for a colleague to come so we could meet a client (whose entrance is inside the mall). I sat around for about 20 minutes whilst waiting, and did what I love to do - people watch. At 10:10 in the morning, there aren't too many people in the mall, but there were some: People who work in the nearby office buildings, people actually shopping, and tourists. I noticed that several groups of tourists would pass by and go into the stores I was near (Aldo & Arden B.). What I found odd is that they were all American tourists with tweenage and younger children going into generic mall stores in another part of the country.

I've always thought that the point of going on a trip is to experience new things - unfortunately (and I'm not at all the first person to say this), the chance to experience new things (if you're a shopper, this means new places to shop that don't exist in your market) is dwindling. However, if you are a tourist, and you decide to spend your out-of-town money at the same mall stores you have in Columbus, OH, then isn't it really your fault there aren't any options? You're reinforcing their business model by buying from them...

Either way, the mass homogenization of the shopping landscape in America sucks, but the American consumer's need for the familiar also sucks - perhaps more.