Notes from the road, so to speak
Dec. 9th, 2009 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melliciousHobby Airport, Houston, Monday morning
I parked in the main airport lot just because it's easy and not all that expensive, so I didn't have to ride a van, but I noticed on the way in that the Parking Spot vans have changed their color scheme - they've always been painted with spots, as long as I remember them being around, but the ones here are now maroon with white spots, and they say "Proud Partner of Texas A&M Athletics." Ah, yet another moving billboard. At least it's a mildly amusing one, I guess.
It's 9:45 or so - my plane's at 11 - and I am sitting inside the security perimeter eating a breakfast burrito. I didn't leave the house until 8:50. I forget how conveniently near the airport we live nowadays. I went the "back way" (meaning west up 518 to Hwy 35 rather than east to the freeway) and it took 20 minutes flat. I think the other way is about the same, normally, but I was worried about rush hour traffic on the freeway. No rush hour to speak of in Pearland and on Telephone Road!
Security pulled out the man right in front of me and a teenage girl behind me for further searches, but I don't think either of them was a purely random search. The guy set the alarm off on the walkthrough and they seemed to have seen something in the girl's (pink) duffle bag that they didn't like. I am always tempted to hang around and see how these things turn out but I guess that would be considered odd, huh?
I had my little LLBean overnight bag and I rolled on through with no problem. I also am wearing my LLBean barn coat, and come to think of it, the sweater that I threw on on the way out because I was cold may have come from there too. So I am just an LLBean traveler nowadays.
The burrito I'm eating came from Pappasito's, which is my usual airport breakfast spot. Maybe I'll stop and get some Peet's coffee on the way to the gate - Pappasito's is a local chain but Peet's is rare around here. I haven't found their coffee to be all that spectacular, anyway, but still, I should grab it while I have the chance. Pappasito's is not my favorite Mexican restaurant (and for that matter, it's owned by the Pappas family so not exactly authentic family Mexican). However, the burrito is quite passable. And huge, of course, as breakfast burritos tend to be - I won't want lunch for hours. Which is just as well - I can wait til I'm in Dallas and out of the airport to even think about lunch.
Around 6pm, at a Fuddrucker's near DFW
(See, I said I wouldn't want to eat for a long time, although this was even longer than I anticipated.)
One of the places I wanted to go this afternoon was the one and only Paper Source store in the state of Texas, which is at... Northpark Mall, I think? Or maybe Northpark Center? I don't think it's called anything so plebian as a mall, but it's a huge and very upscale one, whatever it's called, and I ended up getting the full tour, because even though I had looked up where the Paper Source store was ahead of time, I went the wrong way coming out of Dillard's, and had to make the full circle, almost, before I found it. (It's a square, actually, built around the four anchors - besides Dillard's, it was Nordstrom's, Neiman-Marcus and I think Macy's. No Sears here!) I didn't go in Nordstrom's but I did go in Neiman's. I was wearing old jeans from Wal-Mart and the aforementioned LLBean coat - which could really stand to be washed, now that I think about it - and oh my god, it was sort of comical to watch out of the corner of my eye as the salespeople sized me up and decided whether to try to sell me anything. A few did; most didn't. I've been in the N-M in Houston many times, and I don't think the employees there are near as snooty. But hey, I didn't buy anything so I guess the snooty ones judged correctly, really. However, I had a very nice conversation with a Chanel lady about Chanel Beige fragrance, which is apparently only available at that particular store. (I don't think that is the original N-M store because I think that was downtown, but it might well be more or less their flagship store nowadays.) I also sampled another new-to-me Chanel fragrance, "Bois des Iles" which I had read about someplace and knew to keep an eye out for. It smelled quite lovely, and so did Beige, for that matter, but not enough to tempt me to pay $200 for a bottle of either. (She should have tried for something a little less pricey, and I might have been tempted. But I think that her assignment at the time was to push Beige.)
I also went upstairs in N-M and looked at the jewelry - I just wanted to see what they were stocking. They had some lovely stuff - massively overpriced, of course. I may have to cross-post some of this entry on my jewelry blog, because we had been discussing something similar about high-end jewelry that I saw in an Elle magazine last week. I did see some jewelry that looked like some of that, but the "trend" I noticed was chain, chain, chain - necklaces with multiple chains in multiple patterns and sizes, mostly in gold. (Although there was some copper that was very nice.)
The Paper Source store was cute, but I have looked at their website so much, I mostly knew what I was going to see in the retail store, even though I'd never been there before. I bought some odds & ends: some cards that were on sale, and a dragonfly stamp, and such. I didn't want to give up traveling light, so I made sure I didn't get carried away. They do have some cute craft stuff, though. Possibly the biggest temptation was the home letterpress machine - I like that kind of thing and I think I would actually use it, at least occasionally!
Also, the shopping center as a whole was amazingly crowded, considering that it was Monday afternoon - not usually prime shopping time. They did have some kid-centric stuff like trains and puppet theaters, and certainly there were a lot of moms with double-wide strollers around, but even aside from them, it seemed amazingly busy. (I had a conversation about it with a very fashionable 20-something blonde in the (long) line at Starbuck's. She agreed with me, but didn't have any better theory than I did.)
The other plan I had for the afternoon was to find some bead shops. I found the first one quite easily - it was on Lover's Lane, not very far from said mall. I bought a few things but I was not blown away. Then I went northward looking for one that was allegedly in Carrollton, north of Dallas. I got very close to the place where I believe it to be, but I missed a turn or something, and by that time I was tired (I fooled around in the damn mall too long!) and I didn't turn around and go back for a second try at it, even though I will probably kick myself later about that. I headed off towards DFW instead and started looking for dinner, which I found just outside Grapevine Mills Mall. Fuddrucker's is not exactly fancy eating but it's not half bad, and I was hungry by that time.
I parked in the main airport lot just because it's easy and not all that expensive, so I didn't have to ride a van, but I noticed on the way in that the Parking Spot vans have changed their color scheme - they've always been painted with spots, as long as I remember them being around, but the ones here are now maroon with white spots, and they say "Proud Partner of Texas A&M Athletics." Ah, yet another moving billboard. At least it's a mildly amusing one, I guess.
It's 9:45 or so - my plane's at 11 - and I am sitting inside the security perimeter eating a breakfast burrito. I didn't leave the house until 8:50. I forget how conveniently near the airport we live nowadays. I went the "back way" (meaning west up 518 to Hwy 35 rather than east to the freeway) and it took 20 minutes flat. I think the other way is about the same, normally, but I was worried about rush hour traffic on the freeway. No rush hour to speak of in Pearland and on Telephone Road!
Security pulled out the man right in front of me and a teenage girl behind me for further searches, but I don't think either of them was a purely random search. The guy set the alarm off on the walkthrough and they seemed to have seen something in the girl's (pink) duffle bag that they didn't like. I am always tempted to hang around and see how these things turn out but I guess that would be considered odd, huh?
I had my little LLBean overnight bag and I rolled on through with no problem. I also am wearing my LLBean barn coat, and come to think of it, the sweater that I threw on on the way out because I was cold may have come from there too. So I am just an LLBean traveler nowadays.
The burrito I'm eating came from Pappasito's, which is my usual airport breakfast spot. Maybe I'll stop and get some Peet's coffee on the way to the gate - Pappasito's is a local chain but Peet's is rare around here. I haven't found their coffee to be all that spectacular, anyway, but still, I should grab it while I have the chance. Pappasito's is not my favorite Mexican restaurant (and for that matter, it's owned by the Pappas family so not exactly authentic family Mexican). However, the burrito is quite passable. And huge, of course, as breakfast burritos tend to be - I won't want lunch for hours. Which is just as well - I can wait til I'm in Dallas and out of the airport to even think about lunch.
Around 6pm, at a Fuddrucker's near DFW
(See, I said I wouldn't want to eat for a long time, although this was even longer than I anticipated.)
One of the places I wanted to go this afternoon was the one and only Paper Source store in the state of Texas, which is at... Northpark Mall, I think? Or maybe Northpark Center? I don't think it's called anything so plebian as a mall, but it's a huge and very upscale one, whatever it's called, and I ended up getting the full tour, because even though I had looked up where the Paper Source store was ahead of time, I went the wrong way coming out of Dillard's, and had to make the full circle, almost, before I found it. (It's a square, actually, built around the four anchors - besides Dillard's, it was Nordstrom's, Neiman-Marcus and I think Macy's. No Sears here!) I didn't go in Nordstrom's but I did go in Neiman's. I was wearing old jeans from Wal-Mart and the aforementioned LLBean coat - which could really stand to be washed, now that I think about it - and oh my god, it was sort of comical to watch out of the corner of my eye as the salespeople sized me up and decided whether to try to sell me anything. A few did; most didn't. I've been in the N-M in Houston many times, and I don't think the employees there are near as snooty. But hey, I didn't buy anything so I guess the snooty ones judged correctly, really. However, I had a very nice conversation with a Chanel lady about Chanel Beige fragrance, which is apparently only available at that particular store. (I don't think that is the original N-M store because I think that was downtown, but it might well be more or less their flagship store nowadays.) I also sampled another new-to-me Chanel fragrance, "Bois des Iles" which I had read about someplace and knew to keep an eye out for. It smelled quite lovely, and so did Beige, for that matter, but not enough to tempt me to pay $200 for a bottle of either. (She should have tried for something a little less pricey, and I might have been tempted. But I think that her assignment at the time was to push Beige.)
I also went upstairs in N-M and looked at the jewelry - I just wanted to see what they were stocking. They had some lovely stuff - massively overpriced, of course. I may have to cross-post some of this entry on my jewelry blog, because we had been discussing something similar about high-end jewelry that I saw in an Elle magazine last week. I did see some jewelry that looked like some of that, but the "trend" I noticed was chain, chain, chain - necklaces with multiple chains in multiple patterns and sizes, mostly in gold. (Although there was some copper that was very nice.)
The Paper Source store was cute, but I have looked at their website so much, I mostly knew what I was going to see in the retail store, even though I'd never been there before. I bought some odds & ends: some cards that were on sale, and a dragonfly stamp, and such. I didn't want to give up traveling light, so I made sure I didn't get carried away. They do have some cute craft stuff, though. Possibly the biggest temptation was the home letterpress machine - I like that kind of thing and I think I would actually use it, at least occasionally!
Also, the shopping center as a whole was amazingly crowded, considering that it was Monday afternoon - not usually prime shopping time. They did have some kid-centric stuff like trains and puppet theaters, and certainly there were a lot of moms with double-wide strollers around, but even aside from them, it seemed amazingly busy. (I had a conversation about it with a very fashionable 20-something blonde in the (long) line at Starbuck's. She agreed with me, but didn't have any better theory than I did.)
The other plan I had for the afternoon was to find some bead shops. I found the first one quite easily - it was on Lover's Lane, not very far from said mall. I bought a few things but I was not blown away. Then I went northward looking for one that was allegedly in Carrollton, north of Dallas. I got very close to the place where I believe it to be, but I missed a turn or something, and by that time I was tired (I fooled around in the damn mall too long!) and I didn't turn around and go back for a second try at it, even though I will probably kick myself later about that. I headed off towards DFW instead and started looking for dinner, which I found just outside Grapevine Mills Mall. Fuddrucker's is not exactly fancy eating but it's not half bad, and I was hungry by that time.
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