Monday, August 11, 2008

Yeah, definitely a business major.

Today Molly and I reunited briefly to drive to Portland, where I dropped her off downtown and headed over to Washington Square Mall.  I spent nearly an hour in Barnes and Noble, and came out with two books that are lengthy enough they should take some time to get through.

Afterwords, I decided to wander the mall for a while.  I bought a shirt at J.Crew and checked out some of the offerings in the mall.  I couldn't help but repeatedly catch myself pondering marketing tactics, positioning, and the rationale behind mall/consumer culture in the U.S.  It's interesting that my main form of entertainment at the mall has become pondering sales strategies of businesses.

This store would have been a dream come true as a kid.


And of course I had to check out the Crocs kiosk.  They had very limited selection, but did have the turbo straps that have otherwise been hard to find.


Following the mall, I headed over to Joey's house to briefly challenge the queen of Boggle (Joey's mom).  I am infamous in that household for being the only person to defeat her in head to head competition of word formation.  I managed to repeat the feat once today, but that was only once in 7 games.

I ended up at my aunt and uncle's place where I'll be staying for a couple days, and immediately scoped out a perfect relaxation spot where I will be doing some reading.


We had some dinner, set up their camper to air out for their trip to family camp this upcoming weekend, and settled in to watch the Olympics for a while.  I caught myself once again dissecting ads and thinking about what I thought impact and recall would be.  I've actually been really impressed by the quality of many of the ads during the Olympics so far this year.

  

I'm settled down now in "the dungeon" where I will be sleeping (it's just their basement).  The smell down here reminds me of family vacations staying here as a kid.

4 comments:

  1. 1. The Olympics are so addicting!
    2. I saw a commercial for Crocs the other day and it looked like they made a high-heeled version???
    3. No running of the Peachtree. I prefer to be alone when I run. Having like 50,000 of your closest strangers around isn't al that appealing. However, I do run through the Peachtree. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy b/c it appeared as though I started my run a mile or so early. You ran it right? In Crocs too?

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  2. I agree to the blog comment replies... haha.

    I must admit I have never worn a pair of Crocs. You either love them or hate them and I might be on the disliking end. However, I'm uneducated on their comfort. The only thing I see is that everyone and their brother seem to have a pair... maybe there is something to them?

    Can't believe you ran the 10k in crocs! I have a hard enough time with my knees and shins in regular running shoes. Props for that!

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  3. Adam, I totally know the feeling of constantly critiquing advertisements and marketing strategies (some are just plain awful and others are pretty awesome - don't really notice the ones in between).

    That's great you went over to my rents place for a good game of boggle. Reminds me of this clip (at the end) http://www.hulu.com/watch/19403/family-guy-she-dumped-on-me

    Keep up your migratory nature my friend!

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  4. what were the names of the books you got?

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