No reason other than the Beatles reference….
Random Stuff from the Week that Was
So, last week was my 40th birthday, as I noted at the time. Because of work schedules, we rarely celebrate birthdays on the dates on which they fall; instead we schedule some time off as near as we can, and celebrate then. It was a great week, though, it really was. Of course, it got off to the perfect start, with this happening:
And the week really did stay about that good! I worked a short work week before taking a five-day weekend (which includes today, so I’m back to work tomorrow), and I wasn’t unproductive during that work week, either. Then The Wife and I had a nice couple of days off together, during which we took a little trip, and as several people asked me on Facebook and in e-mail, there were pies.
But more on those in a bit…random thoughts and stuff first.
:: Autumnal weather has at last taken hold in Western New York…which, for me, means “time for overalls”. That’s just one of many reasons why this time of year is my favorite. Cool weather means overalls, and time off means naps!
Of course, naps are always welcome, but there’s something about naps in fall and winter that makes them so much better than naps in spring and summer. Sometimes naps in summer feel like wasted time. Of course, that’s just humans, I suppose. Cats never feel like napping is a waste of time. In fact, I wonder sometimes what the evolutionary benefit is to cats of getting all that sleep!
I also wonder where cats slept before the invention of the cardboard box.
:: Car repair places irritate me. We had to take The Wife’s van in for some work, and wouldn’t you know it, they found other stuff wrong that really needs to be fixed soon soon soon! We’ll get those things fixed, but not at that place, which is almost certainly overpriced. The only reason we went there is that we needed to get the tires rotated, which is free since that’s where we got the tires. We also had them check the oil and find out what the “Check Engine” light was all about, which is where it all started. Luckily it’s not super-pressing, so we can save up money and then get the fix done. But ye Gods, I hate the “Hey, we found some stuff on your car!” stuff.
But hey, at least we’re not this guy:
Ye Gods, indeed! This, folks, is why I maintain a state of deep suspicion of other people when I’m driving.
:: The Wife and I made our annual excursion to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival this weekend. We discovered this festival quite by chance in 2007, when we planned a getaway sans destination. All we knew was that we were going away, but we had no idea where. I did some Googling and found out about this Festival, and aside from 2008 (when The Wife journeyed to see her ailing mother), we’ve gone every year since. But Ithaca’s quite a long drive from Buffalo (two-point-five to three hours), so we always stay someplace in Rochester overnight and then take the remaining drive the next day. This year we stayed near the Eastview Mall, and we had dinner at PF Chang’s, where we’d never eaten before.
We loved the meal we had there. They have a nice “dinner for two” menu which made the meal more reasonable than we’d even expected, and the food we had was really quite good. No, it wasn’t as good as the best Chinese I’ve ever had — that honor goes to a dim sum place in Toronto, and the Shanghai Restaurant, also in Rochester (Henrietta, specifically) — but it was certainly better than the local takeout joints we like to frequent at Casa Jaquandor. I took some photos of our food, and I put them on Flickr, but…they’re not very good photos. Too dark, really. I was taking them with my phone, and I had the flash off as the phone flash is an LED that makes everything look slightly unnatural. Sometimes I like that effect, but not with food. Anyway, we shared an appetizer of crab-filled wontons (pretty much the same idea as any “crab rangoon” you’ll get anyplace else, although much better prepared), cups of hot-and-sour soup (again, same idea, but terrifically prepared), and then we split Kung Pao Shrimp and Orange Peel Chicken. It was a wonderful meal.
And the place was packed when we arrived, so we put our name on the list and then went to wander the mall for a bit. It’s been several years since I’ve walked a mall. I remember the Eastview Mall from when I was ten years old — the place has been there for many moons — but it has more than doubled in size since then, and now it is positively massive, with several wings added since then that are actually larger than the one wing that used to comprise the entire mall. Lots of folks think that malls are dead, but they’re not; they seem to be accreting, though, so an area with a bunch of small malls eventually becomes an area with one big mall.
Oh, and for ten bucks I got a set of Star Wars cookie cutters at Williams-Sonoma. Score!
:: The next morning we departed Rochester (OK, Victor) for Ithaca. Someday I want to have more than just a single overnight trip for this journey, because really, I just love that part of New York State. It actually starts right in my own town, with the start of Route 20A, which is my favorite drive anywhere. It’s just a gorgeous drive, through the hill country that rests about ten to twenty miles south of the flat I-90 corridor. Sure, since we were going to Rochester I could have saved at least half an hour by taking the Thruway, but why do that? The Thruway has zero personality…and to drive it, you have to pay tolls. Ugh.
After spending the night in Victor (a southeastern suburb of Rochester), we drove the next day first through Pittsford and some of Rochester’s eastern suburbs and then farther east, through towns like Phelps, Palmyra, Waterloo, and Seneca Falls. I always love driving through these towns, with their central business districts lined with brick buildings, occasional crossings of the Erie Canal, and out in the country between towns, driving past farms and properties where the houses often look like they were built before the Civil War. Undoubtedly, some of them were. There’s a real sense of driving through history, I find, in those old towns. Waterloo bills itself as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Seneca Falls played a role in the women’s suffrage movement. And Joseph Smith originally hailed from Palmyra…which means that in the space of less than fifty miles, we drove through the birthplaces of Memorial Day, womens’ rights, and the Mormon church!
And then there’s the drive south to Ithaca itself. Because of the presence of the Finger Lakes, each one running north-to-south, between Buffalo and Ithaca, there is no ‘straight line’ route available. You either drive south, and then east; or you go east, and then south. We always do the latter, so we can drive along the shores of Cayuga Lake. The Finger Lakes are just stunningly gorgeous, all year. I adore that whole region…and at last, it was into Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival, huzzah!
:: On our previous trips to the AppleFest, each time it’s been a gorgeous, bright, crisp, sunny Fall day. This time…not so much.
Yeah. Brrrr. Luckily I wisely dressed in layers.
Cold, rainy, and dingy.
As usual, there was a pilgrimage to Autumn Leaves Books, with their nice stock of F&SF. I could spend an hour here, easily. Autumn Leaves is not your “typical” used bookstore, with dim lights and stacks of books teetering everywhere; this store is bright, spacious, and organized. This time I wrote out a list of books that I wanted to look for — mostly space operas, of course — and I actually found one. I also bought an SF book by LE Modessit Jr — I’ve never read him before — and a fantasy trilogy by an author I’d never heard of before at all. Why not?
It wasn’t all bookstores for me, though…we looked up a knitting/crocheting store for The Wife, and she loved the place. She’s developed a real love of crocheting over the last couple of years, and she’s always on the lookout for good places to buy supplies. She liked the selection, the bright organization (some yarn stores can be dark and depressing, she says), and the pair of women who worked there were very gregarious and helpful. Of course, I know next to nothing about yarn, so while she was looking at stuff…
…I was taking photos of myself in the mirror and of cool-looking yarn.
Eventually we warmed up with some hot cider…
…and had a lunch of waffles and fried chicken. Now, I had expressed some skepticism of this food combo when I first encountered it, but I must admit…it’s a terrific match! Loved it. Next year we’re getting two of ’em. There’s this wonderful little restaurant in the middle of the Downtown Commons in Ithaca that features waffles in what must be dozens of permutations.
Finally, after touring all of the craft tents (where we bought The Daughter a bracelet and where I bought The Wife a necklace-and-earrings set), we decided that it was time to start heading home. And it was a good time for that, too, because this is what the weather turned out like an hour or so later:
On the way home we stopped for dinner at a joint in Avon, NY called Tom Wahl’s, which is a burgers-and-dogs drive in…but the burgers were really very good and their onion rings are fantastic. It’s a chain in the Rochester area, and their root beer is awesome.
:: And finally, there was my favorite part of the week: the coconut cream pies. Four of ’em, thick and gooey and creamy. Mmmmm, pie….
Then to blow out the candles…
…and, finally, splat!
Here’s the video I made of this pieing.
Yeah, I know, it’s weird. So what? It’s also fun. Life is just too short to take oneself seriously all the time. Maybe I’ll get five pies in my face when turn fifty! A pie in the face isn’t exactly a birthday tradition for me — we do it once or twice a year whenever, depending on opportunity — but maybe it will be now. Pies in the face rule.
So, to recap: the Bills beat the Patriots; I get to wear overalls again (which, I might add, are all fitting better since I’ve been losing weight!); an overnight trip with my wonderful wife through the finest parts of New York; used bookstores; yarn stores; new jewelry for the ladies in my life; dinner at PF Chang’s; Star Wars cookie-cutters; waffles and fried chicken; burgers and onion rings at Tom Wahl’s; and I get hit in the face with four coconut cream pies.
That’s a great week, folks.
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Cool air arrives, HUZZAH!!!
August was typically wonderful, as August usually is; it’s by far my favorite of the summer months, being packed with our favorite summer activities and also generally less hot and less humid than July. But even so, I am always grateful when September finally rolls round, because that’s when things usually start cooling off a bit more.
Of course, this particular September started off with some abnormally hot weather, but that’s OK, since it was a matter of time before it broke, and break it did with today’s high temperatures only in the 60s. Which means, after several months in shorts, overalls weather has returned! Let there be dancing in the streets and wearing of the bibs!!
(Yeah, I’m odd. Bite me.)
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Acquiring
For the first time in four or five years…I have a new pair of overalls!
They’re a white painter’s pair by Carhartt. I haven’t owned any painter’s overalls prior to these, and I haven’t owned any Carhartt’s, either. So, I managed to strike two birds with one stone, huzzah!
I was actually kind of surprised by these, when they finally came in the mail and I opened the box. The fabric is thinner than I expected, so these will wear quite a bit lighter than my usual blue denim overalls. But I’m happy to have a pair in a color other than blue or black or hickory stripe; these will contrast nicely with dark-colored shirts and sweaters this fall and winter. So, color me excited!
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Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!
[Link fixed]
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: Back in the day — and maybe even now, I wouldn’t know — Marvel Comics had a character who was inspired by the 1970s disco craze. She was a mutant who went by the name “Dazzler”, and she was basically a human disco ball: her mutant superpower was the ability to absorb sound energy and convert it to light. In her first appearance, she was singing at a disco and using the throbbing beat and ambient noise to create her own psychedelic laser light show. Interesting idea, actually, and Dazzler had her own title for a few years. (I read it for a while. It was really pretty “Meh”.)
But apparently Dazzler was created with the intent of putting her in a movie — a movie that might have been one of the most whacked-out, grandly weird superhero movies of all time. The movie would have co-starred KISS (yes, the rock band at the height of its painted-faces fame) and Rodney Dangerfield playing multiple parts. Read about it here — it’s so insane that I can’t help but be sad that it never came to pass.
(Thanks to SamuraiFrog, who posted this on Facebook.)
:: Minor leaguer throws no-hitter, but it is later — two days later — officially ruled not to have been a no-hitter. And yet, the very fabric of baseball’s space-time continuity would have been destroyed utterly if the reverse had happened last year for the guy who did throw a perfect game but was not credited one because the umpire screwed up. Sure. Whatever. (I still think that folks who think that baseball would have been thrown into chaos if we for one second considered that maybe, just maybe, umpire decisions shouldn’t be treated as Sacred Writ even when they’re wrong were full of crap.)
:: Greatest video ever!
More next week!
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Overalls weather!
Usually, from June to mid-September at the earliest, I might get to wear overalls a handful of times, because it’s just too warm for them. Not that overalls are especially hot, per se, but the bib and the back part do tend to rest where…well, where I tend to produce the most sweat. I’m better at dealing with heat now than I used to be, but I’m still not up to wearing overalls in summer.
I’m not sure how the rest of this summer is going to play out, but so far in June, we seem to have a pattern going where it will get seasonably warm (or even a bit warmer) for a few days, say five or six days, and then we’ll get two or three days of unseasonably cool days that lots of folks whine about but which I find highly pleasant and refreshing. This weekend is one of the cool weekends — highs in the low 60s, which is not usual for June in these parts! So I get to wear overalls this weekend, huzzah!
Will this pattern hold? I doubt it, but I’d love it if it did. I’d love to be able to wear overalls to the Erie County Fair, but it’s always too hot by Fair time. We’re knocking on the door of July, which is always my least favorite month (mainly because of the heat), so we’ll see.
By the way, that plant in front of me is one of two ivy plants that we have. That one is actually grown from a cutting I made off the original plant, which you can’t see because it’s behind me (except for one tendril sticking out from, well, behind my arse). Usually our ivies shed most of their leaves over the winter, even though we bring them inside, but that didn’t happen this year, so both of them are doing abnormally well for being this point in the summer. Also note the hummingbird feeder — we have three, The Wife loves hummingbirds — and the hummingbird light next to the feeder. It’s solar powered, so it charges through the day and lights up at night.
I like our balcony, and I wish it got enough sun that we could have a real producing tomato plant. That line of trees there, on the right side of the photo, keeps going well past where the camera is, giving us nice shade but also enough shade that tomato plants will grow but not produce fruit. Oh well.
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I stand in awe….
UPDATE: I forgot to include a link to the article I quote. Fixed!
See the older fellow in the middle, there? That’s a guy named Trygve Trooien. He’s a farmer in South Dakota, and he collects overalls. He owns more than two hundred pair of them!
“It kind of started by accident,” said Trooin of his bib overall compilation. “I’m a packrat. I save everything, including my old overalls. And when you live in a house that has 18 rooms you have a lot of space to store things.”
About a dozen years ago, Trooin realized that his compulsion for saving had inadvertently resulted in an extensive bib overall collection. A friend of his suggested that Trooin put on a fashion show as a way to share his bib overall collection with others.
“It seemed like a good idea,” said Trooin. “I now have over 200 bib overalls in my collection. There are 80 different kinds that include 42 different brand names.”
Wow. Two hundred pairs! This puts me to absolute shame. Last time I counted — as part of Ask Me Anything! August 2010 — my collection topped out at between 25 and 30 pairs. That struck me as a lot, but wow, does Mr. Trooien ever have me beat. That’s absolutely amazing.
I actually have not purchased a single pair of overalls in several years, but now I’m wondering if I don’t need to start up again! I do still check eBay once in a while, mostly for vintage pairs — I’d love to find a white painter’s pair that has a “traditional” chest pocket, as opposed to the big triangular pocket that most painter’s pairs have — but I’m rarely tempted, and even when I am, the bidding quickly shoots up higher than I have any interest in pursuing.
What cracks me up is that Mr. Trooien displays his collection by having “fashion shows”! He gets a bunch of women together, and then they apparently walk a runway showing off his overalls. This is awesome!
More photos here. Long live Trygve Trooien! He’s a big damn inspiration, I tell you what!
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Wavy
Let’s go antiquing!
Over the last year, the Orchard Park Antique Mall has become a favorite place for The Wife and I to spend a few hours. The Sunday before last, we had a couple free hours…and we still ended up rushing through the back parts of the store because our time started running out.
I’ve decided that what I love most about the antique thing is that, while there are familiar things that are always there (several booths of action figures, for example, heavy on the Star Wars), there is always something new, something that’s really pretty unique, something that I’ve never seen before or something that I have seen before but maybe wouldn’t mind buying. You really, truly never know what you’re going to find in antique joints.
Like…a sombrero!
(Yeah, finger on the lens. No idea how I did that. Sorry. But notice the print of comic art down there, next to the sombrero: “But I had to kill her! We wore the same dress!”)
No, I didn’t buy the sombrero. Nor did I want to. It’s the principle of the thing, folks!
Nor did I buy these Toby mugs, although I gazed wistfully upon them for quite a while:
They’re the Three Musketeers, although I’m not sure which is Athos, Porthos or Aramis. Toby mugs are always expensive there…which breaks my heart because I want to own some, really badly. I think that Toby mugs look absolutely awesome. There are always quite a few available at the Antique Mall, but they always go for upwards of $50 or more. Someday!
This bust of Richard Wagner wasn’t there last time:
It had no price on it, oddly. This might have tempted, had it been cheap.
Of course, there are books:
I bought both of these…Phantom for The Daughter, who is hugely into The Phantom of the Opera, and the omnibus of Ian Fleming’s original James Bond novels for myself. Huzzah!
And for all the “OMG, I really want that!” which you’ll find in an antique joint, there are also the items that are remarkable in other ways. Such as…this handbag!
Hand-made, never used. French in origin. All the puzzle pieces fall into place!
The Antique Mall is a brightly-lit store of modern look; no dark and dusky alcoves containing items of unknown origin here. But that doesn’t mean that grim things don’t reside there:
AIEEE!
And if you want furniture with mirrors, well, the Antique Mall is the place for you. The mirrors seem faulty, though; every one of ’em seems to be showing some dork in overalls. Buy with caution.
Yeah, I am slowly getting bitten by the antiquing bug!
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Answers, the I’ve lost count!
Time for a few more answers to queries from Ask Me Anything! 2011. This time out I got some questions relating to the overalls, so here are a few of those.
Lynn asks: Can you remember your first pair of overalls? Wax nostalgic.
I can vaguely remember them. I was quite little, in the preschool age, if memory serves. I wore the living heck out of those things. I don’t remember the brand, but I remember that for some weird reason, I liked them tight. No idea why…especially since, for as long as I can remember now, I don’t like tight clothing much at all. I recall that they had the standard buttons to which the buckles fasten, and then there were two atop the bib pocket (like on the pair of Dickies I’m wearing over there, in the sidebar photo in the “Your Humble Narrator” section), and for some reason I thought that the lower buttons were where you hooked the buckles. (Hey, I was four, and I might not have been the intellectual marvel you now know. Stop laughing!) But this practice ended up in one or both of those buttons occasionally ripping off, so my mother was often sewing the stupid thing back on. Until finally they decided that I had outgrown those overalls, and got me a bigger pair. I think.
My overalls memories don’t start becoming more clear until high school and college, when I started wearing them in public. That resulted in a few conversations of the “Huh, I didn’t know you wore overalls” type…and then, people pretty much stopped commenting on them. Of course, this was Iowa, where seeing people in overalls isn’t exactly like seeing rogue pachyderms in Central Park.
And a reader named Jenny sent in a bunch of detail-related queries:
Enquiring minds want to know:
Button fly or zipper fly – which do you prefer on overalls?
What’s better on the sides of your overalls, 2, 3, or 4 buttons? Whatever
your choice, why is that better than the others.
Buttons: copper, nickel or other? Which is better?
Last question. If you were a late twenties gal like myself, who
unfortunately missed the overalls glory years of the 1990s, what brand
would you recommend which you can actually get today?
I have to admit that I don’t have a whole lot of preference on details like this! The type of fly doesn’t matter much to me…unless it’s a fake fly entirely, in which case I’ve purchased a pair of overalls from an eBay seller who doesn’t know a man’s pair from a woman’s pair. Yes, this has happened. I thought I’d scored on an awesome pair of white Lee overalls, only to have them turn out to be women’s overalls. The Wife now owns those. They fit her a lot better, anyway.
Side buttons — thinking about it, I’ve never owned a pair with four buttons. That would seem a tad like overkill. Most of mine have two; three was more prevalent on pairs from places like Gap and Old Navy, back in the 90s when overalls were popular. I used to own six or seven pairs from Gap, but I scaled that back when I lost quite a bit of weight a few years ago, and now the only Gap overalls that I own are the ones pictured in the sidebar pic at the bottom (the one where I’m wearing the green tie-dyed hoodie). Those have two side buttons, actually, as do my Dickies, Lee, and Key overalls. Generally I leave the top pair of buttons unfastened, for comfort reasons.
As to the metal comprising the buttons — I generally don’t care about that, either. My Gap overalls have silver hardware; my Dickies mostly have dark bronze-colored hardware; my Lee and Key overalls have gold hardware. Again, no real preference here.
I will say, though, that in general I like overalls that look functional; like they’re actual workwear or could be. The “busier” they look, the less I like them (which is why I don’t own any pairs by Liberty; there’s just too much going on there on the bib). I just like them basic, and comfortable.
As for recommending overalls for women, well…I know they’re starting to show up in stores again now, but I don’t really know what brands are out there. Personally, though, I’d just recommend going the vintage route. Clothes from the 90s could be considered “vintage” now, right? I’m putty in The Wife’s hands when she wears a pair of these Old Navy overalls, and my favorites ever on her are these Gap ones. Or you could go really vintage, as this blogger did, with great results.
And remember, in my opinion, overalls are “flattering” — for a different idea of what “flattering” means.
More answers to come!