I’ve only been to one other golf tournament in my life, and that was a bunch of years ago when the huge crowd and I followed someone named Tiger Woods from hole to hole. This weekend we had freebie tickets to the Humana Challenge…
in La Quinta, California
and I was hoping to follow some upstart named Bill Clinton, but this time from the Champions’ Lounge at the 18th hole:
And BTW, yes, that’s the reissue camera bag that I recently bought back after selling it for some crazy reason:
But wait, let me rewind a bit. La Quinta is the golf destination in the desert area because of its predictably beautiful sunny weather in the dead of winter. Except for today. I woke up to a rainy Pasadena, and the weather forecast was so dire for the Palm Springs area that I chose to leave my (cute but white) planned outfit at home. But as we got closer and closer to Palm Springs, the drizzle stopped and the clouds parted till all we could see were wind generators:
And by the time we pulled into the parking lot for the PGA West, it felt like 80 degrees, especially in my black pants and sweatshirt..
so it was quite pleasant to get to the lounge for some shade and a cold drink. We get settled in for about an hour and grabbed lunch…
when I looked up and saw this rainbow halo effect around the sun:
And then it got weird thirty minutes later. The winds started coming in, blowing huge ripples across the water. The tent’s roof suddenly looked/felt really flimsy and flower pots fell over. Then ladies with headsets came in and asked us to evacuate the tent. We all filed outside and while it looked so deceptively beautiful…
signs and scoreboards bent over then fell into the water:
Kiosks also collapsed…
and that’s when the sheriffs showed up to clear out the entire event. By the time we got to our cars and filed out of the city, a dust storm blew in so quickly that in an instant visibility was down to almost zero:
But a few miles later, it was as if nothing had happened. There was not a single cloud in the sky:
So much for finding Number 42 at number 18. I’ll just have to settle for this:
Tags: Bill Clinton, Humana Challenge, La Quinta, PGA West, Tiger Woods
I’m pulling a Tiger Woods and making an unnecessarily public apology today. On the way to shopping rehab I’ve done a complete face plant. Have fallen and cannot get up. My shopping ban has been a total failure; I blame some of it on my weakness and a lot more on the releases of Sonia Rykiel at H&M and Jean Paul Gaultier (JPG) at Target on March 7. So after this week (hey, at least I’m not lying about cheating with JPG), I will head back to rehab. No timeline as to when I will return to the sporting world of shopping.
Since all of my shopping skeletons are rattling their way out of my closet anyway, I might as well confess about the jaunt to Robertson Boulevard this past weekend. You know, the short but deadly block where you can find the second Chanel boutique (I actually love this cozy location a little more than its big sister in Beverly Hills) a few doors down from the paparazzi’d The Ivy restaurant and the enchanting Les Habitudes boutique.
I had stopped by Robertson to check out the new 1969 boutique that the GAP has recently made a permanent fixture after using it as a pop-up store for the Stella McCartney for GapKids release. If you like denim as much as I do, this is a fun place to see all kinds of jeans openly displayed in a way that I wish I could replicate in my own closet. OMG I’m such a liar! I didn’t come here to check anything out…I came here to buy a jacket that had quickly sold out. I know, there’s a GAP in every town to supply the whole country but believe it or not, they do come up with something once in a while that becomes a hard-to-find best seller. The Robertson location had the only XS that I could find in this region. So here’s the $59.50 black knit motorcycle jacket (PS: my lil sis even had a 20% off coupon for me to use! what a score!):
But even standing inside the GAP at 109 S. Robertson, I could feel the gravitational pull from 125 N. Robertson. It’s probably whatever voodoo spell Karl Lagerfeld has put on me that made me march straight from the GAP to the Chanel boutique. I knew it was wrong, didn’t want to do it, but my feet went on autopilot, and there I was inside the breezy foyer of the store in under 60 seconds. Putting this Chanel addict inside the white walled boutique is like locking an alcoholic inside a liquor store. So many beautiful bags and shoes and clothes on display! Who cares that I’ve seen a Chanel jacket reinvented a million times–with each season’s new buttons and trims, it’s as if I’m looking at it for the first time. And I fall in love all over again. So maddening that Lagerfeld refuses to release an ugly collection when I’m on a ban!
Anyway, on the first floor near the window, what do I spy but a black knit motorcycle jacket–the very same one that I had seen from trunk show pictures earlier this year. The very same one that had been added to my Spring buy list:
Let’s just say the tax alone on the Chanel version is about 4 times the total price of my GAP one after tax. And except for the quilting on the hems and logo on the zipper pulls, I honestly can’t say I could justify the sticker shock. Chanel’s leather version of the moto jacket, however, is a different story. Now that’s one cool jacket but it’s also twice as much as its knit version. I clutch my GAP find a little tighter and think I’ll save my pennies for a classic Chanel tweed jacket instead. On some trendier pieces, it’s enough to fill the craving with something non-designer as long as the quality and fit are decent. And of course if the price is right!
Luckily the rain was coming and that prodded me to leave the store before I could talk myself into buying something…some thingS. I’ve already failed the ban and couldn’t make it worse by sticking around here. But this one brief peek inside the boutique did trigger a question, and I’ll blog about that in the next entry.
Anyhow, in the words of Tiger Woods, “I want to ask for your help. I ask you to find room in your hearts to one day believe in me again.” Because let’s face it, I don’t believe in me when I say I can stop shopping. Do you?
Tags: Chanel, Gap, H&M, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Robertson Boulevard, Sonia Rykiel, Target, Tiger Woods
