Tag: overalls

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A Walk in the Woods

Up the ravine

Yesterday I had several hours in the afternoon during which I was alone: The Daughter was elsewhere, and The Wife was at work. So I decided to go back to Chestnut Ridge Park, where we spent some time last week. It’s a place that deserves to be nearer and dearer to my heart than it is, because it’s so beautiful and close and yet I don’t get there all that often.

Chestnut Ridge is a park run by Erie County in the “Southtowns” region, where the terrain starts becoming more hilly as one moves away from the flatlands that surround Lake Erie. The most famous feature of Chestnut Ridge is its giant sledding hill, but it’s a very beautiful natural place, with lots of hiking, riding, Nordic skiing, and snowmobiling trails. Somewhere within its boundaries there is a natural “eternal flame”; that’s high on my list of things to see next year when it starts getting warmer.

Yesterday, I went to a part of the park I’d never been in before. The road follows a ravine to the left, although the ravine is behind a ridge and can’t really be seen from the road. I came to a parking area, where another road split off to the left and went down toward that ravine. The road was gated shut, although quite a few folks were walking past the barries anyway; I suppose the road was only closed to motor vehicles so that the park people could save money by not having to plow it.

That road dropped down to a steel-deck bridge that spanned the ravine. The view above is the upstream side of the bridge; here’s the downstream view.

Just downstream of the bridge

One thing that always amazes are the signs of life, even in the midst of a wintry forest. Such as this sapling:

Sapling - Chestnut Ridge

I was only out there for about an hour, but what a wonderful hour it was!

Eyes forward!

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Of things bibbed

A blogger who is even more fascinated with overalls than I has decreed November 20 as “International Overalls Day”. As befits the content of this blog, I may be participating. Further announcements as events warrant!

(Of course, November 20 is a Friday, so I won’t be wearing overalls until after work. I find mildly ironic that my job is one for which overalls would be an ideal uniform, but I doubt I’ll convince the Powers That Be at The Store of this.)

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They’re in, they’re out, they’re in, they’re out….

Apparently there was some kind of big fashion show or something like that this week past, at which Ralph Lauren showed, as part of his collection, a model wearing overalls.

I continue to be confused by the whole enterprise of “fashion”. A certain look or group of colors or whatever gets declared to be “in” by one of a very tiny community of people in New York City, and then pretty soon everybody’s wearing what they’ve declared to be “in”. And then, gradually, those looks are replaced by newer ones, and the older looks are unanimously viewed as “out”, and in some cases, the “out” looks get filed under “OMG what was I thinking!” And then someone comes along and declares the now-hated “out” looks to be back “in”.

Now, if more people are wearing overalls six months or a year from now, fine by me, but I just figure, “Here’s something that works for me and I’m gonna stick with it, thank you very much.” I don’t much care that they’re “unflattering”, whatever that means (especially as we seem to live in a period wherein “flattering” apparently means, “revealing of every single curve on our bodies”). It just amuses me that overalls were “in” during the 1970s, they never really went away in the 1980s, they came back big in the 1990s, they were “out” in the 2000s, and now Ralph Lauren has decided that they’re back “in”.

As for the overalls the model up there is wearing, in themselves, they’re definitely more my speed as things go: they look more functional than designed. But I’ll bet Ralph Lauren worked hard to get them to look that way, weathering them and distressing them in various places, when you can get the same look by doing an eBay search for “Vintage overalls” and spending, in some cases, a lot less than these Lauren creations are likely to sell for. Or you can just buy yourself a brand new pair, keep ’em for years and years, and just wait for them to look like this.

I just find the whole thing weird.

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Twelve


Pumpkinville 07 027, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

Twelve years ago today, the woman pictured here voluntarily became my wife. I’m not entirely sure what possessed her to do that, but I’m glad she did, because it spared me the trouble of kidnapping some woman and holding her captive in my basement. Thanks, Dear!

Kidding aside, I’m glad I had her to walk beside me, and for me to walk beside, over these years — both the good times and the bad. I’m luckier than I deserve, I suspect. Hoping for twelve more years, and twelve more after that, and twelve more after that….

(And a few months ago, on her birthday, I posted 100 things I love about her. Always a good post to revisit!)

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Where I chickened out


Rainbow , originally uploaded by Four20moon.

Just saw this on Flickr. Last time I geared up to do some tie-dying, I briefly considered doing this, and then decided it would be too weird even for me. I’m glad that someone’s willing to go where I fear to tread, though!!!

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Strapping young lad, isn’t he!

A while back I decided that instead of monitoring my body-reshaping progress by the use of a scale, I’d use the metric of the shoulder straps of my overalls. Well, today I reached for the “official” pair I’ve designated for this odd exercise, and sure enough, I had to draw in the straps by about an inch. Here’s where things stand right now:

That doesn’t seem like much, but another development is that I can now fasten the upper set of side buttons on this pair without sucking my gut in too much:

I am sucking in a little, but it’s more like William Shatner as Captain Kirk gut-sucking, as opposed to, say, William Shatner as TJ Hooker gut-sucking. I still won’t fasten those side buttons as a rule for a while yet, but this is still exciting progress.

I’m also getting stronger, slowly and steadily; I have increased the weight on every weight-training exercise I do several times since I started the program back in January, and I am noticing some pleasing curvature to my upper arms and my legs. That’s a deeply satisfying feeling. I can’t wait to be able to compare myself in January 2009 to the one who showed up at the Y in January 2008, and so on.

In the course of my renewed devotion to health, I remembered a website I used to follow back when I last embarked on a weight loss program. This was back in the waning days of 2001, starting a month or so before I launched this blog and continuing for more than a year afterward, a period over which I lost slightly more than fifty pounds. The site is called One Phat Man, and it’s the self-told story of a guy who, through changes in diet and exercise, took himself from over 350 pounds to down near 200. (He hasn’t updated in a long time, but his archives are all there.) It was quite a story, and I found it pretty inspirational at the time: there was no gimick, no “take this powder and swallow this pill” stuff, nor any “Stick to this hyper-regimented diet plan for eight months to lose weight” rigamarole, nor any “Eat nothing but protein, that’s the ticket!” weirdness: just a simple message that basically boils down to “Choose which life you want to lead, and then live it.” I love that message: sure, it takes work to get healthy, but if it really matters, it won’t really feel like work. He also has the ideal response to the whole “But when your program ends you’ll just gain the weight back” arguments: If you continue to do the things that transformed you, you will continue to stay transformed. That’s exactly right.

That’s what I’m doing, as well. Am I eating more protein? Yes I am, because I’ve learned that it requires more energy from the body to digest, and because I’m not so much concentrating on losing weight as removing fat and adding muscle at the same time. I’m also eating a lot more salads; I’ve ditched all dressings except for extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar; I’m eating breakfast regularly (usually a whole-grain, high-fiber cereal like shredded wheat with a half-cup of blueberries and a glass of OJ). I’m making my lunch to take to work every day, which is both healthier and much less costly.

But there are things I’m not doing. I’m not eliminating things from my diet completely. Once a week I skip my usual mid-morning snack of yogurt-and-granola and substitute a coconut donut (pure heaven). I haven’t cut back at all on my coffee consumption. I’m eating more fish; we keep frozen tilapia filets around as a staple now (just thaw, dust with flour, and then pan-fry in a bit of seasoned oil). As healthy as we’re trying to eat now, though, we still go out to the Chinese Buffet once or twice a month; last week we drowned our sorrows in maple syrup; the other night neither The Wife nor I felt like cooking, so we got a pizza and breadsticks from Capelli’s. I still eat chocolate, but in much smaller quantities. I’m discovering that I can feel satisfied with just three gingersnap cookies, as opposed to grabbing half the package. I have a box of Thin Mints that I’ve been working on for a month now; time was when a box of those would be gone in a matter more of hours than days. I’ve vastly reduced the amount of pop I drink each week, but I still grab a bottle of Cherry Coke for Saturday afternoons, which I drink in the evening after putting the groceries away (just finished it, whilst writing this post) and we still enjoy the union of Caffeine-free Pepsi and spiced rum. For snacking, I keep apples around, and peanut butter; mixed nuts and pistachios. Crackers and potato chips? Not so much. Tortilla chips, though? Still here, just not consumed all that often.

That’s how I’m doing it, a little at a time. Onward and upward. Or downward, as the case may be.

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Go away, or I shall quiz you a second time!

I saw this at Paul’s place, and of course I made no effort to resist it. Because resistance is futile.

Your best friend tells you she is pregnant. What is your reaction?

“Congratulations”, I suppose, although I’d have to work hard to conceal my astonishment, given what I know of her life situation. Actually, it would take me a few minutes to get to “Congratulations”. My immediate reaction would more likely be, “Gwaaahhh?!”

When is the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face?

With my fists? Not in a great long while, years, in fact; I don’t like fighting. With something else, though? and not in anger? Well, I’m always open to possibilities.

What is the last thing you spent money on?

My lunch today [Explanatory aside: I wrote this post on Thursday night and saved it until today.]: a piece of pizza, a couple of chicken fritters, and a medium Sierra Mist. I almost always drink water with my meals, but for some reason I was in the mood for some sweet, sweet carbonation today.

Do you think you gained or lost weight this past month?

I lost, you’d better believe it. I haven’t checked the overalls straps lately, but I discovered the other day that I have officially dropped a pants size.

Crunchy or Puffy Cheetos?

Puffy, although I do like the Crunchy once in a while. One of my great, great vices is Cheetos. Hand me a bag, and you won’t get the bag back until it contains naught but a few grains of Cheeto dust.

(BTW, it will forever break my heart that Planters Cheez Balls no longer exist. My God, I loved those things.)

Congratulations! You just had a son. What’s his name?

Quinn Jacob.

Congratulations! You just had a daughter. What’s her name?

Fiona Quinn. (Our plan was always to have Fiona carry her lost older brother’s name with her. Little did we know what her own destiny would turn out to be.)

What are you craving right now?

Pie.

What was the last thing you cried about?

The end of Juno. I’m not sure why.

When you buy something and your change is 2 cents, do you keep it or tell the cashier to keep it?

I almost always take my change. When I get home it goes into a jar, and when the jar gets to be a certain degree of fullness, I empty the change into the CoinStar machine at The Store. (I know, CoinStar keeps a small percentage of my money, but to me that’s worth it to avoid the drudgery of rolling my own change. I hate rolling change.)

What color is your tissue box?

Umm…er…it’s a Pirates of the Caribbean tie-in box of Kleenex, with photos of the lead characters.

Do you have a ceiling fan in your room, and if so, is there dust on that fan?

No ceiling fans in the current incarnation of Casa Jaquandor, which I find a bummer. I love ceiling fans.

Scariest thing you’ve experienced in the last year?

The Wife’s hospitalization, the loss of Baby Fiona, and the aftermath of all that, which went far longer and deeper than I had thought possible even at the time. In fact, it’s still going on.

Do you wear a name tag at work?

Yes, and it has my name on it. Cool, eh? (I tend to be pretty bad with names, and I’m constantly forgetting the names of people who introduce themselves to me. It’s really for the best that I work in a place where nametags are worn.)

Have you ever had a garage sale?

When I was living with my parents, yes. Since then, no, although I’ve moved some old stuff of mine on eBay, which is nothing more than a garage sale writ large.

What color is your iPod?

Clear, so I can’t find the damn thing. Oh wait, I can’t find it because I don’t own one. Crud. (I would like to get some kind of digital music player sometime, obviously; it doesn’t necessarily have to be an iPod.)

What is the last alcoholic beverage you had?

Caffeine-free Pepsi with Southern Comfort. [Updating note: I bought a case of Labatt’s yesterday. I haven’t sipped a Labatt’s in years, but for a long time it was my favorite beer.]

Are you happy right now?

I’m sitting in my armchair (which is quite old and in need of replacing, but still, it’s my armchair), writing answers to a blog quiz on my laptop while watching The Celebrity Apprentice (yeah, I’m still hooked on this show). I’m decked out in overalls and a favorite old sweatshirt, I’ve had a yummy salad for dinner with a glass of red wine, and I’ve just finished the afore-mentioned Pepsi and Southern Comfort. So yeah, right now I’m happy.

Who came over last?

Well, my sister visited last week, although we just met for dinner and she didn’t see Casa Jaquandor, but that’s who. At that time I gave her her much-belated Christmas presents (books by Guy Gavriel Kay and Christopher Moore, copies of the LOTR complete scores, and a few other knickknacks).

Do you drink beer?

Certainly. Beer is a wonderful thing. (When it comes to drinking, I’m pretty much of a lightweight. An eighteen year old girl in October of her freshman year at Ohio State could drink me under the table within an hour.)

Have your brothers or sisters ever told you that you were adopted?

I’m sure that something of that nature was said at one point or another; we expended the typical amount of energy that siblings expend in saying mean stuff to one another over the years. I don’t remember it specifically, though.

What is your favorite key on your key chain?

My favorite key? Huh? That’s pretty odd, innit?

What was the last movie you watched at home?

We all watched The Living Daylights.

What is in your pocket?

Right now? Nothing. But I had my cell phone in my pocket a while back.

(Not that anyone asked or anything, but here’s something a bit odd: Despite my love of overalls, I never carry stuff in the bib pocket. I hate having stuff up there. Makes me feel top-heavy.)

Where do you hurt?

My feet are always a bit sore toward the end of my work week.

Has someone ever made you a Build-A-Bear?

For me? No, but we took The Daughter there once. She didn’t quite grasp the concept at first, and became freaked out when she picked up the unstuffed carcass of a unicorn.

What’s something fun you did today?

I read some of Alice in Sunderland (review forthcoming after I finish it, but if the remaining three-fourths of the book are as brilliant as the first quarter, wow). I went with The Family to the library and to 7-11 for drinks (where I also sprang for a SlimJim for each of us). And then I read some of my favorite blogs.

What is your favorite aisle at Wal-Mart?

I never shop at Wal-Mart unless I am looking for something I literally can’t find anyplace else, and that never happens. I can’t stand Wal-Mart. I don’t like them as a company to begin with, and the Wal-Marts in this area (except two that are too far away to be of any use on a regular basis) are too dirty for pleasant shopping.

When is your birthday?

September. I share my birthday with George Gershwin, which makes me happy. You may all start saving for my presents now. I’ll be 37 this year.

Is there anything hanging from your rear view mirror?

No.

What kind of milk do you drink?

Skim, which I rarely drink anymore, since I prefer water. I put milk on my cereal every morning, though. My current cereal obsession? Berry Burst Cheerios. Those are good, and I say that as someone who has never much liked Cheerios.

(Speaking of Cheerios, the silliest bit of product placement I have ever seen in a movie involved that cereal. In Superman, after Pa Kent’s funeral and Clark has found the green crystal, we cut to the kitchen table of the Kent farmhouse at sunrise, and Ma Kent’s arm swoops in and plunks a big old box of Cheerios on the table, right in the middle of the sunbeam that is streaming through the window. And if one sits through the film’s end credits all the way to the end, one will see the following: “Cheerios by General Mills”. That has always made me laugh.)

What is something you need to go shopping for?

Pie. That craving just isn’t going away, darn it all.

But this is the point in the week when we start putting together the weekly shopping list for my Saturday excursion to The Store. This week’s items include sandwich bags, a jug of spring water, milk, ice cream, some lunchmeat, bread, crackers, Colbyjack cheese, eggs, apples, bananas, a jar of garlic (I think), some pistachio nuts (how I love me some pistachio nuts!), and maybe some red wine. (There’s other stuff, but I can’t remember offhand, and the pad with the list is on the fridge door.)

On the “frivolous item” front, a couple of recent film music CD releases have tripped my “Gotta get that!” circuit breaker: the FilmScoreMonthly label has come up with an official re-issue of the wonderful music Elmer Bernstein wrote for the classically goofy animated flick Heavy Metal (Oh Taarna!), so now I can stop listening to the bootleg CD I have with its crappy sound quality, and Intrada has re-issued the campy, but fun, Stu Philips score to the 1979 movie Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I know, I know, but I had the LP as a kid and played it to death, and there’s some powerful nostalgia at work for me with this one.

As usual, this quiz has no provisions for tagging people, so here it is if you want it.

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Measuring Progress


Straps I, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

I’ve made few bones here about the fact that I’m generally overweight, and have been for years. I’m not so overweight as to be unhealthy, but I am at an age where that does start to be a concern, so in recent months I’ve started to slowly move myself into a healthier kind of living. This starts with eating more fruits and vegetables, obviously, and it also involves more exercise on a regular basis. At first, exercising more meant going for brisk walks on a regular basis (four or five times a week).

Of course, the onrush of cold weather ruled out daily walking once the snow started flying, which is why my regular exercise plan fell by the wayside for a short while — until the first week of January, when we were able to activate our membership at the local Y (given to us by my parents, in one of the greatest Christmas presents they’ve ever given us).

So now we go to the Y three or four times a week, and I’m doing a combination of weight training and cardio work. I’ve been doing this for about six weeks now, and I’m feeling great: stronger, calmer, and less likely to take out my frustrations on my own fictional characters or on helpless pieces of scrap wood. I haven’t been so unfit as to be out of breath on a normal basis, but I’m noticing that it takes more work already to get my heart really racing. I’m also drinking gigantic amounts of water as many health professionals say to do. (Personally, I think that drinking lots of water is beneficial mainly because it forces you to walk more. As in, to the bathroom.)

So what’s with the picture? Well, I have no real way to quantify any weight loss I enjoy as I embark on my new “Sculpting A Better Me” focus. We don’t own a scale, and frankly, I don’t want one. Scales can be discouraging when you hit a plateau, their constant presence can lead to obsessive weight-checking, and on a sheer practical note, our bathroom is roughly the size of that video phone booth Heywood Floyd uses to call his daughter from the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, so there really isn’t room for a scale in the first place.

So how to know if I’m definitely losing weight? By the more-satisfying measure of how my clothes fit. Watching a number on a scale decrease over time is nice, but really, finding the shirts one wears getting bigger and finding other shirts that may have been uncomfortably tight a year ago now perfectly wearable is much nicer. Orders of magnitude nicer, actually. So is the fact that a week ago I had to buy a new (smaller) belt, because the old one simply had too much extra belt hanging off the end after I buckled it. And — ideally for me — is the fact that I’m having to shorten the straps on my overalls for the first time in several years. Huzzah!

So I’ll occasionally post another variant of this photo as I make progress reports, for comparison’s sake. I’ll have to use this one pair of overalls for this series exclusively, since I long ago discovered that the length of shoulder straps can vary between even virtually identical pairs of overalls from the exact same manufacturer. Here we go!

(By the way, I don’t know about other Y branches in Erie County, but the Southtowns branch is just a stunning facility. I just love the place, and the very best thing is that it’s all of 1.5 miles from Casa Jaquandor. Come spring and summer, I’ll be able to walk there and back again for my workouts. Life is good.)

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The Unnamed Hero Cometh!

OK, folks, I just saw this “Make Your Own Superhero” gizmo over at Aurora Walking Vacation, and I just had to give it a try, using his suggestion of creating a superhero based on myself. Here it is!

How about that! Lightning from my right hand, and a blaster in my left; long hair blowing in the wind; some kind of green energy crackling ’round my Eyes Of Hot Instant Death; nifty wristguards that may or may not have extra powers within them; and on my feet, Rollerblades of LightSpeed! Note the battle scars on my powerfully-muscled arms, and the necklace made from the teeth of my vanquished Rigelian foes! Note my faithful companion through many dangers, Ozzy the Avenging Ocelot! Zap! Pow!

(Yeah, my alter-ego is a smoker, I’m sorry to say. Maybe the cigarettes deliver some kind of super-duper battle drugs into my bloodstream or something. And yeah, I was surprised that overalls were a clothing option there, too.)

I did have a problem, though. See that empty text box at the bottom? That’s where the name of your Superhero goes. Problem is, I couldn’t think of a name for this guy. That’s where you all come in. Put your suggestion in the comments!

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