My Top 10 Thrifting Tips and Tricks

In the midst of a worsening recession, a lot of people are looking for new jobs. Some are switching industries or trying to "move up" to better-paying, more-stable gigs that offer benefits. So what do you do when you have a closetful of too-casual workwear and an upcoming job interview at Big Corporate Company? You could plunk down $40.00 or more for an outfit from Chez Target or, if you really want to go all-out, plunk down over $100.00 for an outfit from your local mall.



But what if you have, say $20 and a couple of hours to kill?



Get thee to a Goodwill or similar and prepare to put in a couple of well-worth-it hours hunting for treasures. I've been at it for years and, in the spirit of solidarity, I offer the following tips and tricks to the ranks of displaced mall-shoppers who may find the world o' thrifting completely bewildering and/or "like, totally icky."



1. Get over your squeamishness. Seriously. Hands and clothing can be washed. Unless there are CDC workers roaming the aisles of Goodwill in HAZMAT suits, you have nothing to worry about. That said, I never buy the following items secondhand: underwear, bathing suits, socks, workout wear or anything that can't be thoroughly laundered or dry-cleaned. This includes hats and purses. Purses, in particular, can carry loads and loads of microscopic creepy-crawlies.



2. Take your time. Clothing is usually organized by type and size, and perhaps roughly by style, but you're going to have to look more carefully than you would in a retail store.



3. Thrift stores in more affluent areas tend to have a greater selection of name-brand women's clothing in small sizes (we're talking ridonkulously small sizes. Double-zero? Seriously? Maybe Andy Warhol was right).



4. Do. Not. Buy. It. Just. Because. It's Cheap. Dropping $50.00 on a pile of clothing that "almost fits" or that you'll "find somewhere to wear" isn't worth it. Be picky. Be critical. Buy things that are well-made and fit not only your body but your wardrobe and lifestyle.



5. If you're long and lean, thrift stores aren't the best places to find close-fitting t-shirts. Repeated washings tend to make t-shirts shrink up and stretch out. If you're petite and curvy, however, this will work to your advantage.



6. Go ahead and be a name-brand snob! A $5.00 Xhilaration top at Goodwill isn't as good a deal as a $6.00 top by, say, Ann Taylor Loft. The latter is usually better-made and will last longer.



7. Clothing that fits well always looks to be of better quality. Unless you really will have an item altered (and can do so at a price that doesn't break your budget) skip it. Small fitting annoyances become big fitting annoyances of the sort that relegate an item to back-of-the-closet, I'll-have-it-altered-someday oblivion.

8. Here's a tip that will cut your shopping time dramatically. Know your size and your proportions, and develop a couple of measuring tricks to "pre-screen" an item before you bother trying it on. I have trouble finding things that fit me under the arms. When in doubt, I measure along an item's underarm seam with my hand. If the distance is greater than the distance between the tip of my middle finger and tip of my thumb, I know the thing won't fit. Even if it fits everywhere else, that's a pain-in-the-neck area to have altered. For me, it's not worth it.

9. In that spirit, be realistic about alterations. Hemming can be done inexpensively, but altering, say, the shoulders of a blazer? Not so much.

10. Do allow yourself to be a little bit adventurous. A great-fitting item in a flattering cut and color is a good deal if it allows you to add a bit of fun to your wardrobe (provided, of course, that you get down with your adventurous self and actually wear the thing). Okay, so you've never worn a halter top, but if it looks amazing on you, is a color that brightens your day and is a measly five bucks, then go for it, sister!

Additional tips and feedback are always welcome.

YES WE DID!!!

There's an amazing feeling of unity and possibility coursing through the United States of America right now. For the first time in years, people are filled with hope. There's definitely a lot of work to be done; there are two wars on, and we're facing a huge financial crisis, but like so many people, I can't help feeling that because we could do this, we can do anything.

I completely overwhelmed. I just don't have any more words right now.

German Two-Way Prepositions

This video, which appears to be a class project of some sort, made me laugh out loud. It's delightfully dorky and taught me some grammar. Win!

Verbs Past, Present and Future

No matter what some people say about the joys of "living in the moment" one still can't get by in this world without being able to discuss things that happened in the past, could happen in the future, or might happen if certain conditions are met. Being a native English speaker, I've got a fairly good handle on saying things like "I had some awesome beer in Bavaria" and "I could soooo eat a giant plate of hot wings right now.*"

Since my study of the German language has been largely catch-as-catch-can, I've missed out on a lot of the basics of the grammar. I understand a lot of the German that I read and a bit less of what I hear, but as it turns out, producing grammatical sentences is going to require a lot more work on my part. Speaking as the grown-up version of that one weird kid in your English class who actually liked diagramming sentences, I say bring it on.

The German course I'm taking right now is great. The software's full of multimedia goodness and interactivity. The emphasis seems to be on virtual immersion. There are almost no grammar drills. Since my goal in taking the course is not merely to pass, but to dramatically improve my fluency, I've been hunting around for resources.

My current favorite is this Vocabulix site. It offers verb conjugation drills in English, Spanish and German. It's quick, user-friendly and has actually helped me install the future tense of the verb werden (to become) into my brain in the last 48 hours. Seriously. Three days ago, I couldn't have told you in German that I will become a ninja. Now, I totally can!

Ich werde ein Ninja werden**!


* Mmmmmm . . . hot wings.
** You know, in case I get tired of linguistics or need a career to fall back on.

Gremple: Systematizing German Verb Conjugation

My German grammar skillz. Let me improve them.

This site, Gremple should help me do just that (at least when it comes to conjugating verbs). From the site:

"Gremple is a German verb conjugation tool. Its purpose to help non-native speakers to learn to conjugate German verbs. The idea underlying Gremple is to develop a precise description of German verb conjugation, with a minimum of data stored for each verb, and as much of the work of conjugation as reasonably possible transferred into a system of rules. This aids learning because it is easier to understand a system of rules, particularly where their underlying motivation is reasonably apparent, than to memorise a large quantity of apparently disordered (and therefore meaningless) data."

Enter a German verb and click "Konjugieren" (conjugate) or "Show How." The former gives you the same sort of verb-conjugation table that can be found at lots of other sites. The latter? Well, that's where it gets interesting.

Here's the "Show How" for the verb sein (to be). The verb and its conjugations are broken down into their component parts (stem, ending, irregular ending, etc.).

There went the rest of my morning.

Lemon Pasta, Potatoes and Cannellini: Adventures in Garlicky Goodness

This weekend I made penne with lemon, potatoes and cannellini. It turned out very well, though I made a few adjustments to the recipe:

I couldn't find vegetable bouillon, so I skipped that. Since I had several containers of low-sodium organic chicken broth on hand, I used some of that instead of the called-for vegetable broth. I probably also went a little nuts with the spinach. Lastly, I learned that "mince" isn't the same as "very finely chopped". My husband suggested that there shouldn't be discernable chunklets of garlic in this dish. I don't know that I agree with that. Love me, love me after I've eaten lots of tasty garlicky goodness, right? Right? Honey?

This was my first foray into the world of garlic sauteeing, and it really was fun. I stood over my pan of spiced olive oil, dumped in my painstakingly almost-minced garlic and felt fairly proud of my handiwork. That it had taken me a solid half hour to skin, chop, mince, de-bone, whatever three cloves of garlic didn't faze me. Stir. Gloat. Stir.

I've still got lots of spinach and about a pound of little golden potatoes left over. Eggs, feta, I'm looking at you. Come to me, omelette-y goodness.

Ausflippen und Das Jupiterprojekt

New words are fun, and my favorite new fun word is ausflippen*.

From Langenscheidt's German-English Dictionary (thank you, Google Books):

"'ausflippen v/i (sep, -ge-, sn) F a) freak out, b) flip one's lid."

Ausflippen sounds as if an English-speaker made it up as a joke. It's exactly what I'd have come up with if I were trying to say "flip out" in German and didn't know the word for it**. In my never-ending efforts to lovingly poke fun at my husband, I've come up with similar constructions over the years such as "I have your ass ge-kicked (at Tetrinet)" or "That got totally up-ge-messed***."

I ran across this word last night while perusing my pocket dictionary. I picked up the book intending to look up "gern", "waehrend" and a word which I think means "airlock" but which wasn't in the dictionary. As usual, I got sidetracked, reading through column after column, watching words morph into other words through the addition of various affixes.

The reason I'd been looking up the-word-that-I-think-meant-airlock, by the way, is that I'm reading Das Jupiterprojekt (The Jupiter Project. My husband read this when he was a kid. The cover of our copy is all old-school sci-fi, complete with a space station that looks like a tin can with a rocket motor in one end. How could I not read it?

Usually, I read a book in English first, then tackle it in German (I've yet to finish a German edition of anything, by the way. The older I get, the less free time I have for fun reading). This time, I'm reading the German edition first. Tempted as I was to read the summary on the page linked above, I refrained. It'll be fun to read the English version and find out how far off-base I was (or, more optimistically, that my German is better than I thought).


*Still not quite as funny as ausfahrt.
**and was trying to be funny
***Oh all right, we rarely say "messed", but this is a family show

Sugar Sugar

Dear god, Splenda tastes terrible in coffee.

McCain on Energy?

"McCain Touts Plans to Fuel U.S. Energy Needs

From the article:

"In Fresno, McCain said his plan is a new and innovative attempt to address the energy issues confronting Americans. "Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil," he said.

He called for "Clean Car Challenge" tax credits for low-emissions cars, including a $5,000 tax credit for zero-emission cars and lesser credits for other lower-emissions vehicles. He also proposed a $300 million prize for "the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids and electric cars."

Sweet! A Republican who thinks outside the oil drum!

The Tesla cars, which McCain praised as the model of energy efficiency, carry a price tag of nearly $100,000, but "in the 1980s, the cost of a cell phone was as
much as a thousand dollars," he said. "I see this as the future of automotive
technology in America ... it clearly has numerous environmental impacts with
regard to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."

Oh crapness. Just when I was getting all excited about the possibility that the Republican candidate had ideas for positive environmental and economic change, McCain dashed my hopes by comparing apples to oranges. Well, my hopes might not be entirely dashed, but if he thinks the development of cell phone technology (and the rate at which it went from being astronomically expensive to very affordable for millions of Americans) is comparable to the rate of development of affordable cars that run on something besides oil, then how well-thought-out are his ideas about the environment?

Remembering something I'd heard on a History Channel program about personal computers, I threw together some search terms and found a Wikipedia article about Moore's Law. This law states that that the number of transistors that Science can cram onto an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 months without an increase in cost.

I'm not an engineer, still, I had the feeling that McCain's comparison was flawed. If that was the case, I thought, then how practical are his ideas for green technologies that average citizens might one day be able to afford? I Googled "Moore's Law"+automobiles and found an interesting essay on Moore's Law and Communications by Martin E. Hellman, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford. Apparantly, Moore's Law doesn't apply to automobiles, at least not according to Professor Hellman:

"To put Moore’s Law in perspective, imagine it applied to automobiles. The
typical car that costs approximately $20,000 today would have cost $200,000 five
years ago and been limited almost like corporate jets to high level management
and very wealthy individuals. Twenty years ago, cars would have cost $200
million and been as rare as rocket launches into outer space. Conversely,
looking just ten years into the future, cars would cost $200. Body shops and
auto repair facilities would go out of business, with great economic
dislocations, both positive and negative."

That makes sense. It also makes sense that a presidential candidate would go to California and preach a clean, green tomorrow while standing in front of a bunch of $100,000 sports cars, allaying any fears that these types of vehicles are impractical by mentioning that cell phones have gotten much less expensive in the past 20 years. Photo op!

By the way, my apologies for the crap formatting within most of the block quotes. No idea what went wrong there.

Badass Custom Decals

I've been eyeing some of the wall decor at Blix for awhile, but Etsy carries graphics by a wider variety of artists. Badass Custom Decals. offers these (among others) which are, as the name of the shop asserts, badass.

A Change of Pace

As the tagline implies, this blog is dedicated to whatever happens to be on my mind when I feel like making a post. Though this has not heretofore been evident in the content of this blog, I do have more on my mind than food and language. The upcoming election has drawn me out of my safe little shell of posts aobut food and random DIY projects and into the real of posts about things that really do matter to me.

It would be easy to jump on the Obama bandwagon and not look back. I could vote for him just because he's a liberal and hey, I'm a liberal too! Awesome! Pass me a beer, I'll see you guys in November! That, however, wouldn't be responsible or satisfying.

In the coming months, I'll continue to read up on the issues that interest me and begin to post my findings here. For the most part, it will be newsfilter, links-to-informed-opinions-filter and, yes, the odd post about weird German candy. As I continue to transition from a voting decision based on gut feeling to one based on facts and reflection, I'll post my own takes on specific issues (with the caveat that I'm not even close to an expert on the economy, health care or any other Big Election Year Issue).

Feedback, links, citations and political discourse are welcome.

Want.

Haribo Forever Fun are little gummi fruit-yogurt-thingies which I Can't. Stop. Eating.

My husband isn't too thrilled with them, which is surprising since he loves Haribo's gummi bears. One of my co-workers thinks the Forever Fun things "taste like the mall" by which I think she meant "taste like the mall smells." In a flash of whatsit, I realized she was right. The near-empty open bag of Forever Fun gummies is indeed exuding that perfumey, fruity, sweet-shop-at-the-mall sort of smell. Damn. I'm eating an icon of consumerism. And I want more. How appropriate.

Fck Vwls

Fck Vwls

Rock That Bath Mat

A few weeks ago, I toured a model home whose contents were enviably tasteful, homey and sleek. Among the items I coveted was a bath mat made of polished river rock.

My first thought was "Those probably run about fifty bucks a pop." (I was right). My very next thought was "I could make one of those for far less money."

Finding suitable stones seems easy enough. Most big-box retailers which sell items for the home sell bags of polished stones as vase fillers. IKEA has them for about a dollar a bag. Granted, I may have to buy loads of them to find compatibly-shaped rocks.

Adhesive and backing are another matter. The backing has to be absorbant, but able to dry quickly (mildew on my river rocks would not add to the "natural" feel in a particularly positive way). The adhesive has to be very strong, and able to withstand direct moisture and humidity. I'm guessing hot glue is right out. Maybe I need some kind of epoxy?

While it might be simpler and safer to simply pony up the dough and buy the bathmat, I just can't do it. Fifty-eight dollars for a bath mat?

Hello, Kitty?

One of the major problems with the Web is that it allows you to more or less Google your own brain. You can grab onto the smallest piece of an idea and, after a quick search or two, tap into a huge pile of knowledge you didn't even know existed. Having crammed that knowledge into your brain, you begin to get ideas. For example, I randomly Googled "Hello Kitty" awhile back, and turned up Hello Kitty Hell. After reading a few posts, I realized that my inner five-year-old was all "OOOOOOOoooooooooooooo, that's cuuuuuuuuuuuute!"

Oddly, my actual five-year-old self wasn't into Hello Kitty. At five, I probably would have thought Hello Kitty was "babyish." Also, how would you "play" Hello Kitty? You could maybe brush your teeth with a Hello Kitty toothbrush or something, but if it couldn't be built, invented, adorned with paint and glitter or in some way "improved" by the addition of cardboard, I was pretty much out. Basically, I missed the whole Hello Kitty Experience.

While I can't see giving our guest bathroom a Hello Kitty makeover, I can totally see some Post-It notes shaped like Hello Kitty's ginormous head. Earlier this week, I checked Amazon, Target and even Sanrio's website. Fail. Either the product doesn't exist, or my Google-Fu is lacking in Fu-ishness (or Googleosity. Or something).

I thought the backbone of the Hello Kitty merchandising phenomenon was stationery. No Post-It's? Fail, fail fail, Kitty!

Maybe I should just break down and buy a Hello Kitty laptop instead. Then I could send the cuuuutest e-mails EVAR instead of leaving notes.

Political Expression (and Equation)

The equation

[charismatic person] + [good public speaker] = HITLER

Has officially been overused by individuals represented by the expression:

[Person who doesn't like Obama] - [well-constructed argument based on fact].

Because hey, why put in all that time and effort learning stuff about candidates when there's Godwinned snark just begging to be shared? No one really wants to discuss politics anyway. It's impolite. Diffuse that tension with a joke so we can all get back to talking about Britney.

Random Linkage

It's time for some random linkage!

You want to know more about Lederhosen, you say? But you can't be arsed to go all the way to Bavaria (or even Wisconsin)? Look no further than the Virtual Lederhosen Museum

In the mood for something a bit more English-y? And Transylvania-y? And animated? Take a trip down memory lane to Castle Duckula (In German as well, if you like).

Since it's the weekend, maybe you (unlike me) plan to actually get something done around the house. Maybe you want a new piece of furniture. Maybe you feel like buildling it yourself, but not necessarily according to plan. Ikea Hacker can hook you up (or at least inspire you).

And finally, this guy is in hell. Poor bastard.

Hallo, Welt.

Glueckliches Neujahr, alles!

(Es ist nur ein bisschen spaet!)

Fashion Emergency!

It is winter! Sort of! And on this fine Monday morning, static stopped me.

Damn you, static cling! Here I am trying to be all chic and wintery with the matching and the tights and the complete absence of any item of clothing with a cartoon monkey on it, and you rain all over my fashion parade with your electrical charge. Fortunately, a co-worker had a handy solution in the form of a ginormous can of aerosol hairspray. It smells a lot better than Static-Guard, and works really well when applied directly to staticky tights.

This morning's battle with static cling made me realize that, as a Busy Professional On The Go(TM) I should probably have some sort of wardrobe emergency kit in my office. Like any good nerd in need of information, I Googled "wardrobe emergency kit" for ideas that went beyond anti-static spray and a lint roller. I found loads of articles with a range of ideas. This article from MSN's Lifestyle section mentioned a "cashmere wrap" and a clutch purse on its list of "Hard-Hitting Fashion Extras." More sensible items like a sewing kit were listed under "Quick Fashion Fixes." The wrap was suggested for those days when the temperature in the office drops below freezing. While I'm sure that would look all kinds of chic, I don't want to take time out of my work-day every seventy-three seconds to readjust my swanky cashmere wrap. Also, I do not want to be That Girl Who Swanks Around In A Swanky Cashmere Wrap Which is Always Falling Off, God, Why Doesn't She Just Wear a Cardigan Like a Normal Person?

Other items suggested by most of these articles include tiny safety pins (WIN!), a sewing kit (STAPLER!) and the aforementioned lint roller and static guard (CATS! WINTER WEATHER!).

I can really see someone going overboard with this concept. Somewhere (probably in New York) there must be a woman with a job straight out of chick-lit* whose desk drawers are crammed with fixes for every possible fashion emergency. I imagine her to be some sort of fashion emergency office ninja, ambushing linty, coffee-stained co-workers on their way to the break room and making them over in five minutes or less. Hell, that could be her entire job description. She could be Chief Executive In Charge of Lint Roller Acquisition and Coffee Stain Removal. Swanky.

* Fashion magazine editor, handbag designer, PR agent for hand-bag-designing, magazine-editing firm, etc.

OFF!

Perfume that smells like bug spray: bad.

Very very strong perfume that smells like very very smelly bug spray: worse.

Very very strong perfume that smells like very very smelly bug spray applied liberally to the person of the individual standing next to me in an elevator: badly worstest.