Shoe Zen

Among other news, I did manage to find myself employment, which is great, but most importantly means that I was able to buy myself the sort of boots that I have had my eye on for quite a while (basically since fall officially started). For this outing, I decided to go to Macy's, for several reasons:

• I checked out DSW online and couldn't find the style I wanted
• Macy's is having a boot sale
  
• I went online and got the shopping pass coupon for Macy's
• Macy's is two blocks away and DSW requires a subway trip

I got to Macy's off of 34th, and, not wanting to ask for directions to the shoe department, just started heading up the escalators. The escalators at Macy's might be my favorite thing about the store, because they are still made out of wood:Looking at it now, this is not the best camera work (thanks, iPhone), but you can get the general idea. Unfortunately, I was meeting J for lunch, so I didn't want to search around for the really cool set of escalators where even the treads are wooden.

Escalator-awe aside, the shoe department at the big Macy's is amazing. I kept not seeing the store directory, so I just rode the escalator until I saw a sign pointing me in the right direction, on the 5th floor. Now, I had decided to go alone because my shopping habits strain even family ties. I like to circle the store to see all of the options available, before jumping in and trying something on. I settled on three finalists and captured the attention of the salesperson, who whipped out the PDA to "call" my shoes from the stockroom. She scanned them in and the people in the stockroom just paged her after they had them ready and she brought them over.

I tried each pair on, and one of them was a clear loser, since I hadn't noticed that the boots didn't have a zipper, just stretch sides. How can I get my jeans to stay down in the boot when I have to pull the boots up? J pointed out (later, at lunch) that I could have just gone out and purchased a pair of skinny jeans, but I don't think that I'm built for skinny jeans, or buying jeans just to wear with a pair of boots. After much pacing, mirror examining, and sending pics to my sister, I finally decided on the "right" pair:OK, this picture is horrible, but you can see the huge-ified here.