I bought socks today.

This may seem like a rather mundane and specifically un-blog-worthy topic, however for me it is quite a big deal. See, as far as I can recollect, I have not bought myself a single article of clothing for over five years.

Generally, I notice very little about my appearance, so those around me usually notice when things get shabby and replace them for me. My mother-in-law has been particularly generous and helpful in this regard.

However, in Bonn I consistently run out of regular socks and am left wearing ankle socks with pants in the winter for a week or two before I have reached a critical mass of clothing sufficient for a laundry run. As you can imagine, this is neither warm, nor particularly fashionable.

In addition, at some point I was sitting next to a similarly shabby professor at a talk in Spain. Our legs were crossed in ways such that our feet were lifted up next to one another. He was wearing these great cream colored socks with blue corduroy pants I was rather envious of given the yellow toe tube socks and jeans I was sporting. It slowly donned on me that no one in Europe wears white socks. As a result, they have one more thing they can rely on subtly not matching anything else they are wearing. Since subtly not matching is basically the basis for my whole look, it seemed like a great idea. Any, after today, I have 14 new pairs of socks varying from black and gray stripes to blue plaid to solid light brown. I cannot wait to sport my new socks about town and have warm ankles between each laundry day!