Monday May 6th 2024

The mercury is climbing in the old thermometer or the digits are climbing in the newfangled electronic thermometer. Either way you look at it it is getting warmer. Today’s sky was filled with lots of fluffy clouds and only a slight chance of an afternoon rain shower. The temperature peaked around ninety degrees. Warmer days are in the forecast for the rest of the week.

I went to the big outlet mall near Disney today. It was my first visit. I’ve been to the older outlet mall at the north end of International Drive near the Universal theme parks before, but today was my first visit to its newer sister mall. The outlet mall on Vineland Drive has been there for many years. It is just new to me.

It is very popular place. On a week day afternoon I had a hard time finding a parking space. There were lots of people walking the maze of walkways between shops. This is the first mall I’ve ever seen roped off lines outside the doors of shops. The biggest line was understandable at the Disney Character Warehouse, but they were common at other stores as well.

My intent was shoe shopping. The pair I wear most of the time is nearing the end. I’ve been buying shoes from Amazon the last few years, but thought I’d check a few of the outlet shoe stores. What I found were shoes slightly higher in price than Amazon, but with a store “sale” of buy one get another pair of equal or lesser price for half price. This seemed to be the approach at all the shoe stores in the outlet mall. I don’t need two pair and I wasn’t wowed by anything I saw. I think its back to shopping at Amazon.