Quest for a jacket

No worries about the Red Wings. Not last night; they beat up on Phoenix 6-1 in Game 7, won the series and go on to face San Jose next. They played as well in Tuesday night's game as they struggled in game 6 Sunday afternoon. Maybe no more Sunday games on NBC. (Yeah, that'll be the day. The Wings are like the Yankees or Red Sox in baseball.)

I had a track meet in Florence Tuesday afternoon, and I left early to do some shopping in Iron Mountain. Shopko had advertised athletic shoes--buy two pair and get the cheaper pair at 50% off. But once I got there, I didn't really care for what they had. And I really didn't want to get two pair of athletic shoes, anyway.

What I really wanted to get was a spring jacket--something lighter than the heavy jacket I was wearing, the one I wore nearly all winter. After looking in vain for men's jackets, I flagged down a clerk and found out why. She said they don't have any now.

Hello? No jackets? Don't men still wear jackets in cool weather? I rolled my eyes, left, drove to K-Mart and walked to their men's department. No jackets there, either. They had various kinds of zip-front sweatshirts. But sweatshirts tend to get soggy if it happens to start raining.

Running out of options, my next stop was ***-Mart. Surely they would have jackets--I saw some there the last time I visited. The jackets were still there. I found one my size, pulled it on and started to zip it up. Uh-ohh. The zipper got stuck right at the bottom. After a few seconds, I got it loose and zipped it partially. But the zipper felt really flimsy. As I took it off, I noticed the fabric pull-tab at the end of the zipper was fraying. Brand new jacket, and it was fraying.

It's like that saying I use from time to time: "Buy cheap, get cheap." I wanted something better. Out I went.

But while I was at ***-Mart, I got another idea. ***-Mart had a Starter jacket, and it seemed well-built (even if it wasn't my size). Maybe I'll get a name-brand jacket. I went to the sports supplies store and came upon a Columbia jacket. Though it was on sale, it still cost considerably more ($29) than I had wanted to spend.

But it seems to be good quality, it looks OK (navy and gray; a bit subdued), and I bought it. I wore it during the track meet. It was sunny, temperatures were in the upper 50s, and I would have baked in the winter jacket. Nice and comfy in the new one.

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An e-mail I got Tuesday sheds new light on S's situation. Apparently she has come upon a solution to the problem of where she and her girlfriend are going to live.

She and her husband currently live on the bottom floor of a two-floor house. With her growing relationship with the GF and her husband's opposition to it, she has been looking for another place to live. No luck to date.

But now it seems the woman who had been living on the upper floor is moving out. S plans to move up there with her GF and split household expenses and utilities with her husband. Otherwise, she explained, he wouldn't be able to keep the house--he's been out of work for a while. So they will be separated ... by a staircase. Talk about "Upstairs, Downstairs."

This may present problems with my future visits, but S said he's going to have to adjust to her having friends visit. Keep in mind that S has invited me to stay the night with them when I visit by myself, and I'll probably be seeing them from time to time this summer.

We (my wife and I) will visit them late next week, as part of that Milwaukee-Madison-Beloit trip. I said we would take her and the GF out for dinner on our way down to Milwaukee next Thursday. But we won't be staying--we're continuing south to Milwaukee that night.

Also, she changed her e-mail address. She was afraid her husband would intercept her e-mail. It has happened before.

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I finally got a chance to experiment with Blogger's template designer yesterday. So far, so good. I made something I decided to keep for the time being. Maybe I'll experiment further. The mad doctor's lab is open again!

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My wife went to a concert in Iron Mountain Monday night with some friends. An Army band was performing at the high school, and one of her friends had an extra ticket. While she was gone and I was watching hockey (of course), my older son called, and we talked for quite a while.

Life is going much better for him now. Besides his GF, he likes the area he is living in. We talked about plans for their brief visit over Memorial Day. (They arrive Saturday afternoon and leave Monday morning.) He says they will only need one room. Aha!

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The sentencing hearing for my aunt's nephew (charged with theft from my aunt's estate) was scheduled to take place this morning. No news yet.

I wrote a victim impact statement and sent it to the district attorney's office Tuesday morning. A copy of it was sent to my cousin, who wrote back, saying we have done all we could. Maybe I'll get word later today.