I need a personal shopper

Joss Stone�s voice makes me feel sexy, how the hell does she do that?

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Yesterday after work Danielle timidly asked me what my route home was. In true lawyerly fashion, I turned it on her and asked her how she would have me drive home. Turns out our cute little pedestrian was angling for a ride to the mall to shop for an outfit to wear to her engineer boyfriend�s ring presentation on Friday.

As she bounced into the mall like a lamb to the slaughter and I merged back into traffic, I figured I would make like a lemming and see if I could find a pair of spring pants that didn�t make me want to cry when I looked in the mirror. I headed over to M@rk�s W0rk Wearhouse where I proceeded to find one pair of pants in the casual, cotton vein in a colour I enjoyed. On the way to the fitting room I stopped to admire the sale rack of fleece vests in the colours of sage and burnt copper. The tag bummed me out: Men�s/Hommes. That means the fit will suck and the bottom of the vest will cover my ass even if it�s an XS, which isn�t happening anyway. Le sigh.

Have you ever begun to undress in a fitting room that has the mirrored wall on a side that could conceivably really be a two-way mirror into some sort of security office? Anyone?

No go on the pants. The rest of the women�s side of the store featured the suckiest spring colours a girl could ask for: I think the marketing twats were out one warm evening in L.A., eating granitas from some shi-shi place on Melrose when they decided they were going to force everyone to wear the colours they were eating. I suspect it was a drunken joke that went horribly wrong the next morning when Ted, probably still a little hungover, presented the damn idea to his superiors. �It�s just crazy enough to work!�, they chuckled, so very pleased with their new idea. (Ted was later beaten to a bloody pulp out back by a dumpster).

On the way to the door, having lost over an hour of my life and with my self-esteem in tatters, I spied it. A bag. The bag. My Spring 2006 bag. And what�s that? It�s on sale? Score!

So, at least I left the store with something that fit.

Posted at 3:10 p.m.