All I wanna do is a... and take your money.

One of the major problems with moving to a new city is that for quite a while after you get there, you don't know where anything is. For example, where to buy cheap stuff. In an attempt to remedy this situation, I decided to find Goodwill today.

I recently read an article in CNN.com which suggested that more people are shopping at thrift stores because the economy is in such a horrible state. It then quoted a woman in New York who had just purchased a designer bag from last season for $950 at a thrift store.

$950?! At a thrift store?! Forget you, New York thrift stores. You are clearly doing it wrong.

Unrelated - Right now, this very moment... is the first time I've been in my apartment with the sun shining!! Eeee! It looks so nice! There is hope! Here, look:



My neighbors probably think I'm some sort of creepy photo-taking stalker person. They just very pointedly closed all the blinds in their apartment. Whoops.

As I was saying: To me, cheap can be anywhere from $0-$20, depending on exactly what you find. I enjoy thrift stores very much, because they generally sell things that are my definition of cheap. The lamp purchase yesterday with the bonus dangly things made me realize that perhaps one of the problems with my new place, while roomy as the Metrodome, is that it seems to be trying to be classier than I am. I am not classy, I decorate with thrift store purchases. I buy stuff like silly lamps with bonus dangly things, put up posters of Yoda on my walls, and I light rooms using Christmas lights. This is the way I am.

So today, in an effort to both figure out where things are in town and significantly enrich my life by going back to my thrift store decorating roots, I set out for Goodwill. Um, also I burned the lampshade of my other lamp with some Christmas candles several weeks ago and broke the harp while trying to take the shade off, so I needed yet another new lamp. I win.

One thing to know about Green Bay is that Everything is near the stadium. Everything. The issue is that when the Packers are playing at home, you can't do anything because it is impossible to get to Everything (literally. They change the direction of the streets). Since the Packers really sucked it up this year, I was finally able to venture out today to find cheap stuff. After my morning pot of tea, I wrote down the street Goodwill is on, and set out. I got over to the stadium part of town and realized I should have written down more than the name of the street, because I don't know where anything is. Unfortunate. After turning around several times, I turned onto the street I'd written down, and found... Target.

This was neither surprising nor helpful, since I seem to be hardwired to find every Target within a ten-mile radius at a particular time. However, because I have this uncanny ability, I had already found the Target much closer to my house, and was instead frustrated that I had found a Target instead of a Goodwill. I drove up and down the street several times, hoping Goodwill was on the same street (it was not), with a growing need to use a restroom.

So I went back to my apartment. On my way back to the apartment, I thought to myself how helpful it would have been in that situation to have one of those fancy cell phones with the Internet so I could look up the correct address of Goodwill. Of course, the phone wouldn't have helped my bladder.

After writing down the correct address and directions and using my bathroom (which is unfortunately probably not as clean as one I could have used in a gas station if I had one of those fancy Internet phones), I set out for Goodwill again.

Luckily I found it (an hour and a half after initially setting out on this adventure) and found lots of wonderful things. I spent a grand total of $16.34. I then found a going-out-of-business Steve and Barry's where I got some completely adorable pants, two shirts, and some shoes all for $5.16. Thanks, going-out-of-business Steve and Barry's!

However, my favorite purchase of the day is what I set out to find in the first place:


An awesomely ridiculous lamp. I'm going to call it a plamp (get it? Get it? Plant + Lamp = Plamp!) or maybe a lampent (get it? Lamp + Ent = Lampent? Fine, maybe you're not a geek). My favorite thing about the purchase of this lamp (apart from the fact that the original tag said $56 and I got it for $6) was that the Goodwill tag said "One-of-a-Kind" on it, with another, identical lamp sitting next to it on the clearance shelf. Um. Two of a kind is the new one of a kind?

Totally worth a two-hour quest.