For Comparison's Sake....

The motif of my week? Leg lamps, apparently. I've encountered two today! What are the chances of that happening? Actually, pretty high in Cleveland, the home of the actual Christmas Story movie house. There are a lot of fans of the lamp here in town.

First, I wandered into the main conference room at work, and there in the center of the table was a mini leg lamp -- a nice replica of the original Christmas Story one. It even has the fringe! We had purchased it for our boss, Rob, earlier last month for his birthday. Apparently it has now become part of the permanent decor. I should volunteer to give it a home should he tire of it, however. It's rather cute.

Then at lunch, I saw what I had been hoping to see for the past week. The elusive leg lamp yard inflatable. I knew such things existed, as a friend sent me a text message last week saying he had driven past one in someone's yard. I specifically drove by the same house to see it the next day...but alas...it was not in the stars for me. It was a deflated heap of plastic. And, the next time I went past, it was gone! I felt so unfulfilled.

But today, my dream came true. I wandered into the FYE store at Tower City Center on my lunch hour in search of a headphone adapter for airplanes so I can use my own headphones instead of the annoying airline-issued ones when I am on long flights and want to watch those highly edited movies they show. No such luck on finding the adapter, but I wandered smack into inflatable leg lamp Nirvana. I paused to look at a rack of discount CDs near the entrance and saw, behind a very large, hairy dude, THE LAMP!

I wanted so badly to get a picture of the lamp itself, not with him in it, but he was loitering at a display of DVDs, carefully and oh-so-intently inspecting the descriptions on the back of each and every one of them. My lunch hour was ticking away, and I feared I might not get a photo if I waited until he finally managed to make his way through the entire shelf of selections. So...I surreptitiously slid my phone out of my pocket, sized up my shot, pretended I was writing a text message and clicked the shutter. Success. But I still wanted a picture of the lamp in its glory. Not to mention the 50-percent-off sign and the remaining inventory of such a glorious item, a distinguished "major award."

I lingered a bit, and sure enough, serendipity smiled upon me. DVD-lovin' guy finished his perusing and left. But wouldn't you know as soon as he moved out of the way, some slacker-type in a puffy ski coat moved into the same spot. Undaunted I pulled out my camera, resituated myself to take a shot of the leg without ski-coat dude getting into it and again snapped the shutter. Once again...SUCCESS!I had my picture of this quality holiday decoration.

For those of you thinking it might be a nice addition to your yard next holiday season, don't hesistate. As you can see, there only appear to be two left still new in box. The original price? $79.99, but one could be yours for the discounted price of $39.99. What a deal!

I don't need one. After all, I am the human leg lamp. Although, I will confess I need to replace my fishnets. They had a bad encounter with my beaded handbag in the early hours of New Year's Day. The handbag won.