Holiday adventure: New coat both hot and cool

It’s the day after the most wonderful time of year and time to do a little shopping. Some people are into shoes, others sweaters. Me? I believe in that ancient Talmudic saying: You can’t be too rich, too thin or own too many jackets!

So it was that I spent the morning checking out all the special after-holiday sales here in the Land of Cotton. For some bizarre reason, the Sears store in my little corner of the world is selling off all its merchandise, tinkering about with its space and reopening in the early spring as a K-Mart. I understand such things happen. What makes this bizarre, however, is the store was a K-Mart a year or two ago before it closed and reopened as a Sears outlet. Go figure!

Sears mostly offers up, ah, Sears stuff. But they also sell goods by Land’s End – that would be all the warm, comfy, sort-of-rustic-in-a-good-sort-of-way clothing that generally has me thinking of snowy nights sitting beside a crackling fire. But I digress.

I bought a pair of pants – actually, if you only buy one, shouldn’t the proper reference be I bought a “pant”; just wondering. The lovely Miss Wendy was along and also doing a bit of browsing – we’re sort of co-dependent shoppers. She needed to run some errands, so we headed off in different directions.

I ended up at Kohls, a happening place that offers sales on top of sales on top of sales. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever buy anything from this place at full price. Then again, I imagine the store’s full price has been jacked up a 1,000 percent so the merchandise can be discounted and sold off at reasonable sale prices. Oops, I digress yet again.

I spotted a winter jacket, something I need like a new hairbrush, which is to say, ah, not much. I’m pretty certain if I took inventory of my closet, I’d find something like three windbreakers, two leather jackets, three dress coats – two dressy and one sort of casual – a puffy winter parka and at least three light-weight fleece jackets.

But, well, the windbreakers are a little too light, the parka too heavy, the dress coats, um, too dressy. The winter jacket at Kohls seemed to be right in the zone – rain-resistant, not too light or heavy – and just the right size and fit. Besides, I liked the brand name – zeroXposur!

I’m thinking if I wear it along with my new “pant” from Land’s End, I’ll not only be enjoying a snowy evening and crackling fire, but I’ll probably be planning my next snowboarding adventure at the next X-games. Can anyone out there say RAD?