Adventures in Dress Shopping As Told Through Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

Thumbs Up: Decide to go to dress shopping. Frocks made me happy.
Thumbs Down: Decide to go dress shopping. Trying on numerous items and scrutinizing my every last flaw in a mirror? Not so much.

Thumbs Up: Find cute dress at Forever XXI. After the red dress fiasco of 2007, this is reason to celebrate.
Thumbs Down: I'm not busty enough for said dress. Let me reiterate -- I do not fill out the bust of this dress (Hi. I'm Jaime. I'm 4'11" tall, weight 100 lbs and have a 32D chest. Even an atheist can see that God is mocking me here).

Thumbs Up: Leave Forever XXI mumbling curses under my breath. This gets a thumbs-up because I am no longer surrounded by inept employees or ear-bleedingly awful techno music.
Thumbs Down: Leave Forever XXI dress-less.

Thumbs Up: Enter Charlotte Russe, having been seduced by huge sale banners. HALLELUJAH! Find a super-cute black and white polka dot frock in my size!
Thumbs Up: It's on sale!
Thumbs Up: It's on sale for $4.50!!!!! (For me, this was like waking up in the morning and finding a decaf skinny vanilla latte on the nightstand and John Krasinski soaping up in the shower. For you, this might be an orange juice, a smoothie, a nice cup of tea, Krasinski, David Beckham, Jennifer Aniston or my fiance's personal favorite, Kristen Bell).
Thumbs Up: It fits!!!
Thumbs Down: The zipper is broken.
Thumbs Down: The zipper is broken to the degree that I can't fix it.
Thumbs Down: The zipper is broken in such a way that I can't MacGyver the dress together via a complicated pastiche of safety pins and fabric tape.
Thumbs Down: Face the inevitability of leaving yet another store, dress-less. Face the inevitability of not purchasing a ridiculously cute dress for a ridiculously low price.

Thumbs Up: Call Paps and ask him how much it costs to have a zipper fixed (He's in the business. He'd know).
Thumbs Up: Paps says not to worry about it and to mail the dress to him where he will not only fix the broken zipper, but also have my dress cleaned and pressed.
Thumbs Up: Being a drycleaner's daughter is awesome. Being Paps' daughter? Even more so.

I won't be able to wear the cute new frock to the wedding tomorrow, but I've got my stand-by dresses available and they should suffice (Stand-By Dresses: A black Donna Karan and a my pink 'Jackie-O' dress -- always appropriate and always flattering).

Lesson of the story: Be nice to your drycleaner.

Oh and why do I think I like Pumpkin Spice Lattes when I hate pumpkin pie?

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

Thumbs Up: Chet Baker. I've been listening to more and more of his stuff lately and it makes me happy. Good Sunday morning music to soothe that killer hangover.
Thumbs Down: That killer hangover. An oddity considering the closest I came to an alcoholic beverage last night was a Diet Coke. I think this may be payback for all those nights I got merry and woke up the next morning feeling fantastic. In the words of the incomparable Riggs -- I'm getting too old for this shit.

Thumbs Up: The trailer for Rob Zombie's reimagining of Halloween. When I first heard about the project, I was weary. Having seen House of 1000 Corpses and knowing of Zombie's penchant for low-budget gore, I was worried that he'd turn one of my favorite movies into a Karo-swathed bloodbath with no correlation to the original except the name. But the trailer doesn't look too bad. Not a huge fan of the new mask (stitching? Really?) or the jump-cuts (MTV-style editing has ruined a generation of filmmakers....and this coming from a girl who counts Baz Luhrmann as one of her favorite directors), but hopefully, the picture will deliver. One of the scariest things about Halloween was Carpenter's use of light and shadow to terrify as opposed to visceral carnage. Hopefully, Zombie keeps this in mind.
Thumbs Down: Allergies. In addition to being allergic to crunchy peanut butter, excessive sunlight, pseudophedrine, caffeine, certain types of laundry detergent and fabric softener and orange juice -- I've discovered that I am allergic to clean cars. I have a rash on my foot due to car shampoo. Nice.

Thumbs Up: New episodes of The Sopranos and Entourage tonight. I've come to the very disturbing conclusion that if I was not with my ridiculously cute boyfriend, I would date Turtle (not Jerry Ferrara. Turtle). It would be the greatest relationship ever -- hang out in Los Angeles, play video games, smoke cheeba, drink and eat. Sometimes, it kind of worries me just how much like a 14-year-old boy I really am.
Thumbs Down: The United States Postal Service. They were supposed to deliver Dan's birthday present on Friday and he still hasn't gotten it. Apparently, my definition of 'Priority Mail' and USPS' vary greatly. Hopefully it gets there by Monday and if it doesn't....well, I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do.