It's Dangerous for me to Shop in Norwich

Wafflestomper has stomped its last. After a few practice runs up and down my hallway, I have to say I'm doing better with the whole walking thing than I thought I'd be! I think I look mostly normal when walking, though maybe someone can detect a slight limp due to my left calf muscle turning into a bag of soup. However, I think my knee is jacked from the past three months...it feels like there's a bruise underneath my kneecap, if possible. And, uh, not to be pessimistic or a whiner or anything, but after going into town shopping...my foot kinda hurt much like it used to. The same old ache, pretty much. We'll see how this goes.

I know I've lost weight since moving to England in August, and I've always guessed it was around 20 pounds, but today I went into the Gap to try on cargo pants (I wanted baggy pants I could fit layers under for Iceland), I discovered that I am now a size 2 US. I almost exclusively buy pants from Gap back home, and usually I'm about a 6 with the help of a belt, though some pairs I own are a 4, and one pair I own is an 8 from my "worst" period with weight. I have dropped from a size 8 to a size 2, and even that needed a belt. (Also, apparently all English people are tall, because they only sell regular length pants at the Gap in Norwich, with no ankle lengths to be found). I'm not sure how I feel about all this weight loss, since I keep having to tighten my seatbelt-belt every few weeks, and I've run out of notches in my regular buckle-belt. I suppose I'd like it more if I was losing all this weight in my thighs and upper arms.

I wonder if you can also lose weight in your feet, since I bought a pair of warm, waterproof hiking boots on 50% off, and I'm down a size from what I usually am (the box had US sizes on it as well, but I still went for half a size up so I can fit multiple layers of socks and my brand-new foot warmers underneath). Conversely, my hands seem to have grown: I bought women's large gloves, which were the most expensive Iceland purchase: 30 fricking pounds, but gloves were perhaps the thing I needed the most. And they have pockets for handwarmers. I can't complain too much.

While out buying all sorts of rugged winter gear, however, I fell in love with a dress. Of course, I have very few (if any) places to wear a nice dress these days, nor do I have £95 just lying around, but I think if I were a dress, I would be this one:
I tend to not even allow myself to go into Monsoon usually, since I inevitably drool over something in there that I can't afford and have little use for, but today I couldn't help it. Isn't that dress perfect? My brain even started to rationalize its use in Greece (doesn't it look like it would need to be worn on a night out in Greece?), but then I remembered I'm not going on some fancy holiday eating in nice restaurants and staying at a five-star resort: we're going to be staying in another moldy hostel, we're going to be on a student budget, and the sorts of things we'll be doing will probably require the use of my new mountain shoes rather than this silk dress. You can't climb the Acropolis in this, you won't have anywhere to hang it in a stinky hostel room, you can't wear it while buying a gyro from a street vendor, and you can't eat for two weeks anyway after blowing all of your stipend on it. However, this camisole in the same color scheme and at a much better price might need to happen:

This could definitely be Acropolis-friendly (as well as entire-trip-friendly), since I could wear it with just about anything. I'll watch to see if it goes on sale soon. OH RIGHT, Monsoon doesn't have sales. I think I need to get a job there purely for the discount.