Thrift Week Day Seven: Use Community Resources Day

Well, it looks like Thrift Week is ending not with a bang, but with a whimper. I was going to call this final day Visit Your Library Day, but I decided to expand it to Use Community Resources Day to cover more of the bases. Unfortunately, that didn't actually increase my options all that much. Since it was a rainy day in January, visiting the park wasn't particularly appealing, and local festivals usually take place on weekends (or occasionally on Thursday nights, when we can't usually make it). I did stop by the library, but there wasn't anything going on there except story hour for the kiddies. Since we're still in the middle of our Netflix trial, I didn't want to pick up a movie, and I'd already checked out the one book I particularly wanted to read last Friday. (I would have waited until today to get it, just to make Use Community Resources Day more useful, but it had just been checked in and I wanted to snatch it up before someone else got it.) So I just hung out for a little while, paging through magazines, so I could at least say I'd done something. Not very impressive, I must admit.

Sadly, the follow-up to my Shop Secondhand Day purchase isn't very inspiring either. I took the jacket to the local tailor shop this afternoon to get the sleeves shortened. At first she said she could do it, but once she turned up the sleeves and took a look at the lining, she claimed that in order to do the sleeves, she'd have to replace the lining as well—for $85—and she didn't think it was worth it. (This is the same tailor who told me last fall that it would be impossible to reset the sleeves in my lightweight coat. Honestly, you'd think this woman was going out of her way to avoid paying jobs.) So I'm going to have to see if I can manage to piece the lining together myself somehow, using my extremely rudimentary sewing skills. And after that, I'll see if I can find someone who's willing to shorten the sleeves for me—I suspect that job is beyond my abilities. Sigh. This $2 secondhand jacket is turning out to be a costly purchase. And I'm growing disenchanted with my local businesses....