…is right now in the spring when they are blooming. The rest of the time I find them to be an “eh” tree. Sadly, there is one right in front of the house. I think it clashes with the paint job and dream of it taking sick and having to be removed. I could then replace it with a more color appropriate choice. I’m so superficial.
Category: To Occupy my Time
Give me a “S”! Give me an “O”!
Give me a “R”! Give me an “E”!
What’s that spell? Sore!
Yep, that’s what I am. Really, really sore. But it’s an interesting sore, and not like any I’ve had before. Generally, when I start some new venture, I end up sore, but the soreness in very localized. Last fall, for instance, I ill-advisedly did 30 lunges when I had been doing none and I ended up unable to sit or stand without grunting. My hamstrings and quads hurt for more than a week. I was, however, able to easily grab a can off the the upper reaches of the cupboards without any trouble. Or usually when I start a weight training program my arms end up hurting while I can walk around with no problem at all.
Sunday I woke up and before I even moved I knew I was sore. Getting out of bed, I felt the whole extent of it. I am sore from my neck to my feet. I feel like cartoon characters must feel when the steamroller rolls over them and they get pumped back up with air. Everything hurts. And everything hurts about equally. Reaching up to get something? Ouch! Sitting down? Ooof. Turning my torso to the right or left? Eeek.
I practiced my rolling tonight in the backyard and there seemed to be much more grunting than there was on Saturday. This might be because there was no music playing to cover up the grunting, but I have a feeling it is because the whole act of squatting, curling and rolling causes wincing.
Resolution 2008 Update. Letters written March 1-10
The handy thing for me about this resolution is that I often have the thought, “I should get (or make) [insert name here] a card.” They should get a card because something is sad or happy or interesting in their life and I bet they would like a card. Then I never get around to getting/making the card and the moment passes. With my handy resolution, the cards get gotten. Or made. They are mostly made.
I have a card making box with blank cards, (I just use the Avery kind you can print on your computer printer–though I never print them on my printer), crayons, markers, glue, construction paper, pastels and scissors. I actually enjoy making the cards, though the results are sometimes a bit uneven. That happened with Allegra’s card. I wanted to make a sun on the front of the card and so I cut out a big round orange circle. I then cut out many tiny orange sun rays and carefully arranged them and then glued them onto the card. I glued the orange circle on top, admired my work, went to write something on the inside and discovered I had glued everything to the envelope.
- March 1. Amanda. Card.
- March 2. Hafidha. Card.
- March 3. Deborah. Card.
- Email back! Teresa.
- March 4. Teresa. Letter
- Letter back! Leath.
- Letter back! Nicole.
- March 5. Allegra. Card.
- March 6. I think I wrote someone this day, but I didn’t make a note of who. I’m nothing without my notes.
- March 7. Forgot.
- March 8. Leath.
- Letter back! Sara.
- March 9. BroMAunts. Easter inquiry.
- March 10. Dana. Letter.
- Letter back! Sara.
Also, due to this resolution I’ve found an effective means of communication with my brother, mother, and aunts (BroMAunts). If I want to ask a question to all of them it takes four phone calls, minimum and usually more if I need to relay information back. I don’t like to talk on the phone anyway, much less making four phone calls. If I write the question–say “What are we doing for Easter? And does anyone want my extra Asparagus crowns?”–four times on postcard and send it off they talk amongst themselves and get back to me. It is much easier.
The other happy thing about these 10 days is that I got some good letters back. Honestly, there is nothing nicer than finding a letter in my mailbox. It’s better than chocolate.
I’ll be playing catchup.
I’m really behind on blog posts. I had a few busy weekend there and it all plied up. I’ve got the drafts in for the rest of February and I’ll get working on them. Look for: book updates! Lint updates! Resolution updates! A three sentence movie review! It’s all coming soon. But in chronological order. So you’ll have to keep clicking on February. So sorry.
Parkour and me.
The Oregonian once per week publishes a feature called, “My Workout.” I enjoy reading about what other people do to get and stay in shape and I also pick up good ideas. One guy does push ups and sit ups daily equal to his age, which I think was 45. I thought that was a good idea so for awhile I did push ups and lunges equal to my age and sit ups three times my age. Then I got bored and wandered off to other things.
This week, the “my workout” featured Adam Dunlap, who spends four hours a day doing parkour. In the feature, he explains what parkour is, and if I could ever get the article to pop up in the very lame Oregonian’s search engine–there. Here’s his explanation:
“Also called free running, parkour began about 20 years ago with a Frenchman named David Belle. Practitioners are called tracers or, in London, where it’s popular, traceurs.
In Dunlap’s words: “Tracers interact with their environment using only their bodies to overcome obstacles in their path. Whether it be a 12-foot wall, a 10-foot drop, cars, rails or other natural or man-made obstacles, a tracer learns the appropriate techniques to overcome even the most difficult terrain.”
How I explain it: running and jumping.
Here’s a YouTube video of a female doing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLzuqCEm5rQ
And here’s Adam Dunlap himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SetL292wrHs
I’ve been feeling better lately, with much more energy and looking for something to do. I don’t want to start another weight program, and I’ve been building up the bike muscles again, but frankly, I’ve been feeling bored. The Oregonian feature had a few links about parkour, which I notice did not show up in the online version, and so I took a look. It turns out that Adam Dunlap himself is teaching parkour, and an 8 week class was starting on March 8. I emailed him to see if there was still space available and there was so I decided to do it.
The first class was today. Adam gave me a discount because I’m the first woman to sign up–it’s a sport that attracts adolescent males. So the discount was nice, but then I was worried it was going to be me and a bunch of 17 year olds.
I took the Max and then a bus and then walked (the gym is all the way out in office-park hell Beaverton). When I got there I found my classmates were: an 11 year old boy, a 12 year old boy, a 17 year old boy, a 20 year old guy, a guy around my age and me. The class was so much fun! First of all the gym is really cool. It has some treadmills, etc. and some dumbbells, but the majority of the gym is a big open space with some fun things along the side wall. If you click on that link above, there are some pictures at the bottom. They have a double staircase and a bunch of things that I’m sure have real names, but I would describe them as, railings, sort of parallel bar railings, some varying platforms to jump up to and down from and some u-shaped things to jump over and run under.
We did a warm up, then did some things like ducking through railings, and bear walking on parallel bars and jumping up to the platforms and bear climbing up the stairs. It was hard, but very fun. My scalp was sweating and After that we took a fitness test and worked on crawling and rolling. It turns out I need a lot of practice crawling, and my roll over my right shoulder isn’t so great, but my left shoulder roll is good. I got to demonstrate that for the class. After rolling, we did a cool down and that was it. I came home and took a bath but I can tell I’m going to be sore tomorrow. But that’s okay. I had fun.
Resolution 2008 Update. Bloom is off the rose.
So I’m at a stuck point in this resolution. At this point I’ve written to a lot of people I know and a lot of people I don’t know. I feel like I’ve run out of people to write to. Added to that, is the fact that I’ve not gotten many letters back, which I entirely expected as no one writes letters anymore. What I didn’t expect, is how depressing it feels to open an empty-except-for-bills-and-ads mail box every day when I’ve been writing so often. So I’ve been researching pen pals.
Pen pals. You remember those from when you were little, right? You had a friend from overseas and you wrote to them a few times and then never again, right? They were fun because they had funny terms for everything like “pen friend” and “girl guides” and “go on holiday.” I need something like that, but an adult who wants to send mail, not email. Not surprisingly, given that no one writes letters anymore, it was a bit difficult to locate such a thing.
I did an Internet search for “pen pals mail” and came up with a lot of crap. Let me tell you what I am not looking for when looking for a pen pal. I am not looking for love, nor am I looking for love from attractive women. So pictures of attractive women displayed prominently on a pen pal web site are not something that would keep me reading. Nor do I like flashing things on web sites. You think they are fun, but I think they are trashy and I navigate right away. I am also not looking for a site that is jumbled and cluttered and looks like Aunt Matilda revved up her new fangled computer and haphazardly built a site. Note that those last two things often go hand-in-hand.
I flirted with the idea of writing a prisoner, but the prisoner web site I went to was kind of skeevy. I did find a nice organization that connects people with Jewish inmates. Apparently, they make up a small percentage of prisoners, but antisemitism is rampant in the prison system so it is especially hard for them. Non-Jews can write to Jewish prisoners too. If you are interested, the web site is http://www.jewishpenpals.org/.
I did find some promising things, they are as follows.
The coolest one I found was called postcardx. ( http://postcardx.net/ ) Here, you can click a link and send a random person a postcard. You can also add your address to get random postcards, and there is a link to discuss things. I will use this when I am totally desperate, and have absolutely nothing to send to anyone.
A long shot, though quaintly old-school is SAPE (http://www.michander.com/sape/) formerly known as the Soviet-American Penfriend Exchange. For the cost of a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope for those of you born after 1985) you theoretically get a list of a bunch of potential pen pals in former Soviet countries. I’ve already sent off my application, but don’t expect anything will come of it.
One of the most interesting leads I’ve found was the Letter Exchange. (http://www.letter-exchange.com/). Here you subscribe to the Letter Exchange and three times a year you get a publication with some articles and “listings.” Each listing has a number associated with it. If you are so moved, you can write to the person who posted the listing, but instead of sending it straight to the person, you write the number from their listing on the front of the envelope. Then you put that letter (or letters) with correct postage attached, in another envelope and send the whole thing to the Letter Exchange’s address. Once they receive the envelope, they forward the letter to the correct person. Genius! The person can then write you back directly if you have included your return address, or if you have listed your LEX number, they can write you by sending a letter to the Letter Exchange which will be forwarded back to you. With your yearly subscription, you get 20 free words to make your own listings. Once you have used those 20 words, each word costs 50 cents. There are a variety of categories to list under.
I’m pretty excited about this option and have already printed out my subscription form and written my listings. They are:
1. In the category of “Women’s Studies”: Are women’s colleges necessary any more?
2. In “Insights”: I’m overweight, but I’ve never felt better.
3. “Nature and Gardening”: My best camping trip? Bruno Sand Dunes. Yours?
I’ll send my subscription off tomorrow. My listings will appear in the June publication and they will send me the current issue as soon as they get my application. I can’t wait!
Resolution 2008 Update. Letters written Feb 11-29
This 2/3 of the the month saw me run out of people to write too, start to feel like a stalker because of the number of letters sent to the Oregonian, and miss my first days of writing. I’m glad I missed a day so early on. I once heard a tale (fiction, I think) of a senator who in his 30 year career never missed a vote. Near the end of his life he was even carried into the Senate chambers so he could cast his vote. When offering advice to a new Senator, his first instruction was to miss a vote early on. By missing a day in the first month of my project I have relived the worry that I would just stop writing. Now I know I can miss a day and still bounce back.
11 letters to people I know, 6 to people I don’t know, 2 days without writing. My three letters I’ve written to politicians in February didn’t sway any issues. Although I got a very nice letter back from Representative Kotek and she agrees with me, not enough of her colleagues agreed with us.
February 11 Jane. Get well soon card.
February 12 Sara. Postcard.
February 13 Nicole. Thank you note.
February 14 Commissioner Eric Sten. No on Island Expansion of the River District. This plan was approved.
February 15 Nestor Ramos (my movie review boyfriend).
**Letter back: Representative Tina Kotek. re: no on OSU’s palatial new basketball arena. She agreed with me and thanked me for writing. Sadly, the funding plan was passed.
February 16 Gaya at Savvy Plus.
February 17 MAunts. Postcard inquiring about state quarters.
February 18 Mary Lou Andre, author of Ready to Wear.
February 19 Jenna. Letter.
**Letter back. Alison Bechtel.
February 20 Territorial Seed Co. Thank you.
February 21 Kristi Turnquist. Letter agreeing with her Oscar article.
February 22 Dad & Barb.
**Postcard back. Sara.
February 23 Nothing. Completely forgot.
February 24 Nothing. Didn’t make time.
February 25 Leath. Letter.
February 26 Sara. Letter part I.
February 27 Sara. Letter part II.
February 28 Sara. Letter part III.
February 29 Barbara. Letter.
Update re: duct tape and parade/Randy Leonard letter from last time. You can now be fined for marking your space at a parade with duct tape. Well thank god Commissioner Leonard has saved us from that non-problem.
Lint Progress: Consignment store names.
What is it with consignment stores and dumb names. For example:
Seams to Fit.
What’s Upstairs.
It’s like the owners think cute or punny names are fun. To me though, they are just irritating. Even my favorite consignment stores are guilty of this.
There is the very hard to say out loud:
Here We Go Again Consignments
And even my my most favorite consignment store has a lame name:
Savvy Plus
It sounds like a more innocuous version of Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway.
The only consignment store with a good name that I can think of offhand is:
Zombie.
Lint Progress: Goodwill on 10th part II
I had some time to kill before watching the Oscars, so I made my way back to the Goodwill on 10th. I tried on a lot of pants and found a pair that fit–black even–but I didn’t really like them. I realized that if I bought the pants, I would just be perpetuating the dislike of my closet. So I put them back. Having more time to kill, I tried on skirts. Nothing really worked there either. Then I moved on to dresses.
I’ve always loved dresses, much more so than skirts. I like that you just put on a dress and you are done. Of course, the mix and match abilities are more limited than with a skirt or pants, but dresses are more fun for me. I found two excellent additions to my wardrobe.
This is an excellent dress. It can crossover seasons and can be dressed up or down. Though probably I shouldn’t appear in public in stripy socks and slippers. It also, as the picture indicates, has excellent twirl factor, something I’m always looking for in a dress. The material is thick and luxurious feeling. When I bought it, it was a bit too big at the sides, so I had it taken in and it fits perfectly now. I’m very excited about this dress.
This is also a fabulous dress. It’s got a very nice wrap front and two layers of fabric which makes for a nice skimming effect the style books are always talking about. It’s a little fancy for where I work, but I can wear it to things like winter weddings, (which I bought it for) holidays and parties.
I also found some shoes. They were barley used and much more comfortable than the shoes I was wearing. I snapped them up.
It was a good shopping trip.
Lint Progress: Closet Tryout
Today was part two of shopping in my closet. After removing all the things I don’t love and am not wearing, I was to try on all my clothing and find great new combinations, making note of them on the handy form I cribbed from “Ready to Wear.” Then I could make a list of what I needed to take with me while shopping.
It didn’t go as planned. I was very tired from my weekend in general, but had made it a goal to get this step done. I started with my long black skirt. I paired it with every top and top/jacket combo and made note of what worked. And that was all I could take.
I know I should do the mix and match things, but it’s not going to happen. I basically know what I need: about three more pair of pants, all new tops, new dress shoes, new lace-up shoes, new bras, new underwear, new socks. We’ll just go from there.