Sidelined.

Stayed inside this morning because I’ve instituted a new exercise caveat that it must be a ‘double digit’ temperature outside before I will go for my morning constitutional. And this morning, the thermometer reads ’3′. Also, I reached that point in the Couch-to-5K (Week 3) where I start hurting myself unintentionally again, so I’m taking today off, and figuring out where to go from there. Probably some strength-building about the stomach and legs so muscles stop getting wrenched around, and returning to just simple walking for a while. Which, given the icy terrain outside, is a workout in and of itself. The local streets are a rink these days.

Making strides in the 1001 things lists. I watched another movie-film: Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr., and now I am ready to watch all the Buster Keaton films, because that guy is awesome (90-year-old news flash). No progress on the remaining two-and-a-half hours of Birth of a Nation; probably going to try to finish that off this weekend. Again.

I am now 100 pages in to Vanity Fair, and still liking it.

And I’ve listened to about 10 of the albums on my list, and rather than go through them one by one, I’ll just tell you some of the things I’ve learned:

(1) Depeche Mode: who knew? I didn’t know. I listened through Music for the Masses and liked it a lot. Also an unexpected delight: Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual de lo Habitual.

(2) I really don’t care for Madonna’s albums all that much. I know, right?!?! I have listened through Like a Prayer and Music, and most of Ray of Light, and I find that the singles are good…mainly because I can sing along, but the rest is pretty much boring, rambly filler. Although, to be perfectly fair I should give Ray of Light another chance because I was listening to it in the car while I commuted through a blizzard last Thursday. These are not optimal conditions.

(3) Clearly, from the above, the 1001 albums I have to listen to will not all be winners. Scritti Politti.

And projects: I’ve started a new one that should be easy to finish – I’m crocheting all my old yarn into one big, multi-colored afghan. It’s very pretty right now, and about lap-sized. I am working off a big ball of a sage green right now, and plan to finish with cheap yarns from various Goodwills and/or Salvation Armies. Pictures will be forthcoming.

Out in the Cold.

Sorry I didn’t post anything yesterday. I ended up locking myself out of the house at around 5:00 AM, and couldn’t get back in until 8:30, when J was up, and we left for a trip to Portland. I took two hour-long walks, and spent about an hour and a half trying to teach myself to pick a lock using a screwdriver and two safety pins. It didn’t work so well, but at least it was warm in the barn. Then, of course, I spent the rest of the day rattling doorknobs to make sure they weren’t locked behind me. Locking yourself out: it sucks.

So, I’ll try to make this one extra long to make up for yesterday’s absence.

Didn’t get a lot of reading done this week, because I started and stopped a couple of different books. I’ve settled on Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, for now, which is so far very readable. I did listen to three more albums, so that’s three fewer I have to listen to before I can die. Wait, what? I heard two Pet Shop Boys, one which I liked (Very) and one I didn’t care for (Behavior). I also listened to the Nirvana MTV Unplugged, which was pretty great. I feel like I’ve listened to that one before, but I listened again to be sure, and also, because it’s good. This week I’ll be able to listen to a bunch more; I’ve culled about twenty from our collection that made the list (look out, Scritti Politti, here I come!). I haven’t picked Birth of a Nation back up yet, because, as I say, I’ve been busy and/or locked out. Also: three hours long. As is Intolerance, another movie on the beginning of the list. And I don’t know where I might find the time or inclination to get through all seven hours of Les Vampires. No reason I have to work my way through the list chronologically, I suppose. Maybe I’ll watch me some Dr. Caligari – that’s short. Or some of the Buster Keaton. He seems nice.

Jogging this week has gone well – I finished my second couch-to-5K run this morning (I brought ALL the house keys with me this time). I thought I would feel bad running this winter, but the fresh air and exertion actually feel good, like I’m actually accomplishing something when I exercise. So far I am unharmed, unfrostbitten, and have found myself a well-lit route that won’t get me hit by a car or bitten by an angry little dog. Now I’m looking for a couple of pairs of sweatpants to wear and maybe a lighter-colored jacket, because right now I’m dressed for shoveling snow, not jogging two miles, and it’s hard to move in four layers of clothing.

We went to the bank while we were in Portland, and I now have four bottles of Two-Buck (and fifty cent) Chuck wine and $250 of Christmas cash burning a hole in the bank envelope. Not sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I know I have to spend it on something awesome before it goes to something terrible like bills or food.

I guess that gets you up to date. Sooner next time, I promise.

Mid-Week Update – I Can’t Keep Up This Frenetic Pace.

I’m not taking an hour-long walk  in 5 degree darkness, thank you very much. If you think I am, you cray-cray.

Otherwise, so far so good this new year, you guys. Except yesterday at work was colossally awful. And I felt sick all night. But I had a good night’s sleep, and I haven’t eaten too poorly. Sunday I raided my closet for shirts to get rid of: seven are flat out going, and about ten more are on borrowed time (they’ve been sectioned off in ‘let’s see if I wear it’ land). Also, I cleaned the trash out of my car.

I have begun working off the 1001 lists again, just for fun, and I’ve made exciting progress. I’ve now seen two films (A Trip to the Moon and The Great Train Robbery), read a book (Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen), and listened to two albums (Fiona Apple’s Tidal and Daft Punk’s Homework)  I must hear before I die – they were pretty good! Tidal, especially, I thought was a fine album that you should listen to again if you haven’t recently. I had it on while I was making stuffed peppers one night.

I’m currently making my way through Birth of a Nation - I’m about half an hour in, and (for right now) it’s more watchable than I thought it would be. As silent films go. They really did have faces then!

I’m reading Aesop’s Fables, which is number one on the books list. There really are a lot of them, and I don’t know if it’s my translation, but some of the morals seem…unsupported by the source material. Although not untrue! The good part of this book is that I can flip it over and read The 1001 Nights on the other side.

And I’ve gone through what CDs we have to glean more of the 1001 albums: looks like I’ll be listening to some Pet Shop Boys (Behavior and/or Very) today.

And. I’ve only left myself a half hour, so this is what you get. I haven’t even edited. Lucky you.

2012: I Can’t Get My Fingers to Type You Yet.

After much hemming, hawing, and deep thought, I’ve boiled down this year’s resolutions to the following:

1. Take better care of myself.

It includes eating breakfast, taking a morning walk (if not a morning jog), flossing regularly, and generally avoiding foods that make me feel gross and/or ill.

2. Make more stuff.

Write more, draw more, take more pictures – I used to like ALL this stuff. I’m planning on setting time aside to work at these things.

3. Have less stuff.

In addition to buying less, I will be assessing what I currently own, and figuring out if I still need it/use it. If not, it’s donate/sell/trade or trash time this year. A lot of my books and CDs will be leaving my shelves this year, as well as clothes that are worn out or no longer fit, games I will never play again, etc.

4. Finish things.

To include household projects that are still in the planning stages, a quilt that is just patches right now, a shirt that is still just a pattern and some fabric, and lists of things I meant to watch/read/listen to that I haven’t quite gotten around to yet.

 

That’s it; pretty easy. As for deadlines and finish lines, I’m not setting any. It’d be nice to weigh a certain weight, or have a certain amount of cash in the bank, or have done x number of y things by z date, but for right now, I’m focusing on getting the habits in place slowly, because why punish yourself, right? If I were to make a fifth resolution it would be 5. Chill the F*** Out.

Also, 6. Watch that Potty-Mouth.

Now that THAT’S over.

Good morning! And a merry Boxing Day to you and yours!

God. It’s been since October? I wish I could tell you that you missed out on a whole bunch of exciting stuff while I was gone, but…you didn’t. Christmas yesterday was the high point, surprise surprise. We both got a lot of cool stuff for each other (excluding my gift of socks for J, which turned out to be the UN-cool, wrong kind; hey, I tried my best). Good books, DVDs, CDs, booze and candy…fantastic. And J’s mom gave us each $250, which was super-duper generous of her. It was a very nice haul.

And now I have the day off, and no plans to do anything with it. It’s possible we’ll after-Christmas shop, but I don’t know where, or what we might possibly need/want. Or how many bitches I might have to cut to get through it with my sanity on the other side. My guesstimate is seven bitches.

Spending this morning re-downloading games I bought this summer. With my new computer! That’s right – we finally replaced COMPUTRA. She just lost our stuff one time too many (civil union photos, anyone?). She’s sitting behind me, all sullen-like, with her keyboard perched atop her, like the dusty end table she now currently is. I bought a Dell from Best Buy in late November? early December? I don’t remember…anyway, I bought it because it was cheap and good, and 1-2 months later, it’s still good. Wonderful, in fact. J has inherited the laptop, which seems to suit his needs just fine.

So. Now that the Christmas rush is over, it’s Boxing Day week, which means I’m going to be spending probably an inordinate amount of time assessing and re-assessing and worrying over my goals for 2012. One of which is certain to be that I need to write more (thus, this blarp you’re currently reading). Another most definitely is to lose the twenty or so pounds I gained this year (What up, belly? Wine and chocolate cake much?). Along with all the usual crap I think about then don’t do anything about and then feel bad about. So, yeah – tune in for that.

I’ll try to draft something that coheres better than this next time I write. Which hopefully will be within days, rather than months.

No Post Here.

Hiya.

Not much brewing this month, clearly, since I couldn’t think of a single thing to post about until right now. And honestly, right now it’s just that I’m in the middle of doing laundry, and had some free time.

So, I started jogging again this week. I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep it up, but I’m doing my best. I’m on the first week of the Couch to 5K again, because I want to go easy on my…everything. So far no ill effects. The pronounced, disheartening jiggling ended after day one, thankfully. I’ll be starting week 2 tomorrow morning bright and early. Jonesing for a treadmill, because my morning walking/jogging route is pitch black, cold, and fraught with traffic these days. I’ve been altering my route slightly, but I keep getting slightly lost in the surrounding neighborhood and/or running across random dogs in people’s yards. Let me tell you: sudden loud barking when you can barely see and already have an elevated heart rate is not great on the nerves.

We are pretty much certain to ditch cable television in the near future, which means I’m trying to think of ways to connect a new laptop to a 10-year-old television. Or a 6-year-old computer to a 10-year-old television. There is a $5 wire set on Amazon that will ostensibly hook COMPUTRA to the television, but given COMPUTRA’s bouts of peevishness and bulk (no offense, but ooh, she hefty) I think we’d much rather use the laptop. Unfortunately, our Generation Z laptop and our Generation Y TV refuse to talk to each other without lots and lots of money involved. Irritating.

Considering, also, the Roku. Probably going with the Roku. Eventually.

I do not promise to try to post more regularly, but I’m pretty sure I might? Maybe? I like to keep you guessing.

 

 

 

A new blog post! Well lah-dee-dah!

Ugh. So sick this week. But I’m here. You do not want this cold – I’ve had it since last Friday, and it knocked me down for three days straight where all I would do was read mystery novels, eat sandwiches, sleep, and play Twilight Princess. It was terrible, I tell you! And apparently, it went interspecies,  because Josephine has been sniffling all week.

Last post July 24th, huh? Wow. I wish I could say something intriguing had happened here between then and now, but nope. We are holding steady. It’s pretty pathetic. Quiet. Not terrible, actually.

If you’re tuning in for the results of the weight loss challenge I set myself, you’ll be as disappointed as my Wii Fit balance board when I tell you I’m back up to 170 lbs. Did I mention all the sandwiches I’ve been eating? Also, the couch-sitting? It’s unfortunate. That’s all. I’ll try to do better next time. For right now, more brownies, please!

Trying to think of what’s been going on around here lately…

We’ve had some real skanks move into the neighborhood – that’s something, right? They all look about 14, and one of them has a baby, and they all walk behind the stroller cussing like sailors and being basically terrible. I don’t know where they came from, but I can only hope they go away soon. They walk slow like they’re casing our house for a break-in, and they’re making our sunflowers droop.

That’s not true. We didn’t raise any sunflowers this year. We did get a small crop of tomatoes, though, from our little vegetable patch, as well as some peppers, and we may get one or two little pumpkins. The squirrels done went and et up the lettuce that came up. Stupid, thieving, salad-loving squirrels. We also had a bumper crop of porch basil (that is, basil that we grew on our front porch). That’s about it for the harvest, though.

The ShmetFlix debacle: we ended up dumping the physical DVD-in-the-mail plan, and now just have streaming, which I’m guessing we’ll probably only keep until we’re done watching the series we’re currently watching, because they’re not getting much that’s new and interesting in the streaming realm. I will not be paying for any service they’re choosing to name Qwikster because I have standards. I mean.

Oh! COMPUTRA, COMPUTER OF THE FUTURE crashed herself again in August. That’s not new, but it is news. She is running again, but we are still going through the painful process of trying to restore the zillion pictures and documents that got lost in the crash. Including, but not limited to, our wedding photos. Hateful, elderly computer-bitch. I kick you! *light kick* So we’re both on one laptop these days, and looking at a new computer for J that will run faster and not die quite so often. If you have one of those you would like to give us, you may do so.

Sadly, that about catches you up. See you in December! Or possibly sooner. I make no promises.

Mmm. Zephyr.

Well, we made it through the swelter of yesterday with only moderate bickering. Actually, it was fairly pleasant here until the afternoon, so I can’t complain. Of course, very little got done just the same, which means today I’m all a-scramble. I’ve got to mow the lawn, vacuum the fleas, clean the litter box, scrub the top layer off the bathroom, do nine loads of laundry, and that’s just the basic chores. There’s a very pleasant breeze this morning, which should make my time outside quite enjoyable.

I’ve been downloading Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition all week, because it’s 24GB of game, and we have a puny internet connection; I’m hoping to scrape up the last vestiges of it today. They got me during the sale: my price limit was $10, and I bought it for $10.20.

In the interim, I’ve been playing Elder Scrolls. SOOO much Elder Scrolls. Both Morrowind and Oblivion simultaneously, and I’m playing as an Imperial Fighter/Knight in both, because my computer game playing style is ‘(1) see enemy, (2) charge at the enemy and click until one of us is dead’. There’s not a lot of finesse in these fingers is what I’m saying.

So, hey, what are you watching these days? We’re watching about 9000 different television shows – right now we’re in the throes of catching up on Ugly Betty, Prison Break, Clean House with Niecy Nash (how DARE you judge me?), and Weeds over NetFlix streaming, and we’re also recording both Gordon Ramsey’s Master Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, because I like cooking and creative cursing. Right now we’re still getting about two NetFlix movies a week, but that’s probably going to go away once the price increase kicks in this September, because the DVD queue is really eating up a lot of time and resources that could be better spent doing other things. Also, we cheap.

Last night we were treated to Red Riding Hood, which I have no feelings about whatsoever. Just none. As PG-13 horror/fantasies go, it was there, and then it wasn’t. Julie Christie, unnecessarily spiky trees, Lukas Haas – I shrug in response.  Next movie is my pick, and I’m gunning for Gremlins 2: The New Batch. Because what’s a shared NetFlix queue about, if not passive-aggressive vengeance? Also, I like that movie. Shut up.

All right. Time to go and see to various things.

Can’t Spell ‘Summer’ without ‘U-M-M’. Or ‘ER’. Or the ‘S’.

Okay, I’m choosing to believe the weather widget on my laptop that says it’s 72 outside this morning. It is hot as all get out in the study, and for some reason the bullet fan isn’t working, so it’s like a little sauna. Yes, I could move the laptop downstairs, but that would mean moving. That’s not going to happen for at least another half hour yet.

Hi! How are you doing? Fine here, except for the summer swelter and our troubled cats, who are currently plagued with fleas. We’ve doused them in Frontline Plus for Cats, but so far all that has happened is that the fleas seem…less agile, so they’re pretty much just dropping off the cats and crawling around sometimes. When the cats aren’t mewling pitifully or licking themselves in an inappropriate manner in inopportune spots about the house, they’re finding strange and inappropriate places to sleep (like atop two plastic bags full of paperback books from a book sale)(Josephine) or in a dark, cool corner of the kitchen on top of J’s gardening shoes.

We are very glamorous here.

Speaking of glamorous, the titty count outside my office window increased 200% yesterday afternoon. What happened to the rugged shirtless gentlemen playing touch football? Why oh why is it never the rugged, shirtless gentlemen anymore? Yesterday’s show was a transient lady who decided it was too hot for a top and let it all flop out in the park out there with three male friends, all also ill-advisedly shirtless. They lolled on nasty-looking towels all afternoon, to the confusion and amazement of the office staff above. Because what’s wrong with you, this is a place of business with giant glass windows! There is a beach not a mile away!  There are times when I miss body shame. Like, basically all the time.  For others, of course. I’m Nature’s Gift.

Also, that park. Those four will be damned lucky if sunburns are the only skin-related ailments they picked up yesterday. The grass and trees there are basically fertilized with equal parts homeless man urine and seagull poo. And don’t get me started on the Hepatitis Fountain. At least it’s not running right now, so attendance in it/on it/around it is down to just seabirds, and the random incontinent toddler.

Ick.

Er, I mean, Portland is a wonderful town. Very…scenic.

Meanwhile, chez nous, the gardens are blooming better than expected. We have managed to grow a pea! And three green beans! And some porch basil that is doing pretty well, and that I have been using in various cooking projects all summer. No tomatoes – our only hope for these is the enormous tomato plant on our porch, because the vegetable garden isn’t…well…it doesn’t…it’s not right for growing things, right now. For whatever reason. It’s too sandy, or salty, or shaded, or something. We planted sunflowers that now get full sun all day long, that aren’t doing a thing yet but looking old and shriveled. We do have lots of mint and oregano and a big, leggy dill plant which we are just staring at because we don’t know what to do with it. And chives, although the chives we didn’t plant – it just randomly is planted all around the house because the former owners were weird. There is some on the front lawn next to our steps, as though it were pretty flowers and not garlic chives.

I am down four or five pounds as of last night. It swings back and forth, my weight, in an unreliable manner that seems to have no bearing on whether I have eaten well or exercised. Never more than a pound at a time. As of last night, I was at 167. I have been as low as 166. I’m really sort of at a loss. But whatever. I’m trying my best.

Plans for today include being inside of various air conditioned spaces and sweating. Probably some light to moderate cursing. You?

Better.

Finally, a progress day yesterday – I dropped a wild 1.5 pounds between Friday and Saturday. I guess the hour walk, and hour mowing the lawn, and 30 minutes pushing around our 20-pound vacuum cleaner really paid off. I’m at 167.5. I take this on faith, as the only visual cue of a 4 pound weight loss, as far as I can tell, is trimmer-looking shins. Bring on the capris! Now scour that image from your mind’s eye! Just keep scrubbing!

I’m currently enjoying a summer sale on computer games: I’ve bought 3 over the past two days for a total of , like, $12 (which I didn’t spend on soda, candy, or red wine, so it’s extra for me and I can do what I want with it – you’re not the boss of me). I bought Elder Scrolls IV, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Bioshock on Steam, and have been downloading them since Thursday (I have a good but intermittently slowwwww connection). I bought older games because quite honestly I don’t really know how well the laptop will be able to run the really new stuff – I tried a demo of Dragon Age II, and although it worked, it was…pretty skippy. I’ve been running 8 year old games on it fine – but 4 or 5 might be a stretch. I think the newest I’m probably going to be able to go is Dragon Age: Origins, which I’m hoping will pop up on sale somewhere at some point. Because I won’t spend more than $10 for computer-generated gay elf sex, that’s why. It’s called ‘standards’.

Another walk this morning, and perhaps a trip in a car, but otherwise, no big plans for the rest of the weekend, really. Planting plants. Laundry. Moving big pieces of furniture. The usual.