Pants! Pants! Pants!

DID YOU KNOW? The word "ambiance" can also be spelt "ambience." Apple spell check does not like the latter, but, then again, they don't like the word "spelt" either.

I can't believe I have written three blog entries without mentioning the most spectacular drunk dial I have ever received. This one was from Esther, who called me a day after my birthday to alert me to the fact that she was "in a very fancy restaurant" and that a member of her dining party had noticed Senator Arlen Specter was sitting in a corner of this very same restaurant. We talked about a few ways she could immortalize this moment for me--for example, taking a cell phone picture of the back of his head as she went to the bathroom, or asking Senator Specter to sign her breasts, but I don't think any of that ended up happening. I got kind of afraid of what other diners were thinking, because it did sound like she was yelling into the phone (though her excitement was, of course, completely understandable), so I let her go without ever finding out what transpired between her and the senator. Anyway, I'm just glad that somewhere in the world, there is somebody who thinks, "Senator Arlen Specter? I need to call Sam. Right now."

"I sprained my ankle while taking a poop." I mean, it's more or less the truth. I've embellished the story a little bit; for example, I tell people that I was reading an article on corn ethanol, instead of looking at historical presidential election results on Wikipedia. And I'm not sure that my ankle is actually sprained, although it does feel a lot like the last time that happened. But, I mean, the point is that I'm limping, and the time that I started limping coincided with a movement of my bowels, so I feel like my statement is still valid. And if you have to have a story about why you're limping, and that story can't be "I got into a knife fight with Ann Coulter" or "I was injured on American Gladiators. By Hellga." I guess "I sprained my ankle while taking a poop" is one of the more colorful explanations you can have.

In other news, today I went to Buffalo Exchange to buy some more pants. I didn't find anything as life-changing as the $14 pair of Banana Republic black jeans that I'm currently wearing, but I did grab a pair of red corduroy dress pants (no, really) and another pair of H&M jeans. I guess buying H&M used from a thrift store kind of cancels out the fact that it's probably made in sweatshops. I don't know. Anyway, speaking of environmentally and socially conscious purchasing decisions, Buffalo Exchange has this thing where, if you don't need a bag, they give you a token worth the value of the bag, which you can drop into a bin and donate to the charity of your choice. I usually just take my backpack over anyway, because I have way too many plastic bags in my life, but today I was actually on my way back to campus to grab my backpack, which I had left in lab on Friday after prelims.

So today, I bought my red corduroy pants and my used sweatshop pants, and the cashier dude was like, "Want a bag?" So I said, "Yes," a little bit shamefully, because he looked like one of those people that only showers once a week and steals Naked Juice out of the dumpster behind Trader Joe's. Which is cool, but I feel bad hurting the Earth in front of people like that. Well, apparently, he said something else, because then he said, "You know about our tokens, right?" I thought he was just trying to lay a guilt trip on me, but then he just handed me a bag token and my pants. I guess the most plausible explanation is that he had actually said, "Got a bag?" but in my head, I have decided that he is just a renegade hippie, who refuses to give bags to any of his customers at Buffalo Exchange. Battle on, Xena.

So, that's how I donated five cents to the rainforest today. But, really, it is now one of my life goals to go to the rainforest and to visit the tree or spider monkey or whatever it is that my 5 cents ended up saving, because I don't think I have ever had a less comfortable bike ride than I did today, biking uphill on Telegraph Avenue, dodging cars, hippies, dogs, and burning incense, with my poop-sprained ankle, carrying a red corduroy pair of pants.