Tuesday, June 19, 2007

de calciamentis

Huh? Well, it was the custom in Latin to title a work by what it is about, so lots of titles started with de—about/concerning. This post is about a mundane little item called sandals, hence de calciamentis.

I don't buy many name brand items, but once in a while I find that they are the better buy, and then I do. For example, I wear sandals all the time in the summer; I used to go barefoot, but have given that up, so sandals are the next best thing. I also am quite hard on them, frequently going through 2 pair in a summer. Sure, they were the cheapo Target ones, but that still comes out to $16-20 per year.

Four years ago, I decided to invest in a pair of expensive sandals, Tevas. They were on sale for about 30% off, but still a lot of money. Well, those sandals lasted me for four summers! I finally had to retire them yesterday because I had worn the soles off them. Needless to say, I am sold on Tevas.

I have no idea how many miles they had on them, but I walk over 5 miles per day just to work and back and with Debbie at night. That doesn't count any other walking that I might do. I also wore them for lots of day hikes. So they had plenty of miles on them. Requiescatis in pacem, calciamenta!

3 comments:

Noah said...

what, no pictures?

Andy said...

Shows you how much Latin I know. I was thinking calcia = bone (y'know, calcify...) and mentis = mind, and so your post was, therefore, about boneheads. Made sense to me at the time. :-)

J. P. van de Giessen said...

This reminds me about the carpet slippers of my father, he walked about 30.000 kilometers on them. And after that they were showed in the shop-window of the local shoemaker, with the following message: Dit zijn de pantoffels van Jan Stap Allemachtig (These are the carpet slippers from "John with the long step")