memories 1 Comment

Making Do

Don’t worry ’bout your laundry
Forget about your job
Just crank up the volume
And yank off the knob

—Weird Al Yankovic, “UHF”

I know it’s not quite what Al had in mind, but whenever I think of this lyric, I’m reminded of the television my Mom and I had when I was in early high school.

It was a small color TV, maybe a 12-incher, circa 1982 (or before). This was the last TV we owned that had actual knobs to change channels, and a smaller knob below the channel selectors, labeled “Pull On / Vol.” This was how you turned on your television in the days before remotes, kiddies: grab the knob and pull. (Unless it was a twist-knob instead of a pull-knob, in which case you clicked it to the right to turn the TV on and then adjusted the volume, like the black-and-white TV we had when I was little. But I digress.)

The only problem was, by the time I was in high school — actually, long before that, now that I think about it — the power knob had made a break for it. All that was left was a small, black post with one flat side, barely protruding from a round hole in its wood-grain housing. To turn the TV off, we simply unplugged it. To adjust the volume, we carefully pinched the post with our fingertips and turned it, usually levering against the flat side of the post to make for easier and more precise adjustments. If we accidentally pushed the post back into its housing, into the “off” position, that meant getting the tweezers out of the bathroom and spending a few minutes way too long coaxing the post back out of its home.

Eventually, one of Mom’s boyfriends visited our apartment and was aghast at the outdated television we were watching. He bought us (among other things) a brand new twenty-some-inch newfangled TV with a remote, and we finally entered into the 1990s with the rest of society.

I think it’s funny, though, how I never really thought about how ghetto our old TV was. I mean, I didn’t really care that it wasn’t new or fancy; I was just glad that it served its purpose, like my bed (a frame salvaged from a discarded sleeper sofa) or my desk (an old sewing machine table).

We just made do with what we had.

randomness 2 Comments

Weekend Shopping

Last weekend, Aaron and I had an agenda. We were going to peruse the monthly flea market at the Wood County Fairgrounds in Bowling Green, hit the BG Goodwill while we were in town, and drive through downtown to see what’s left of our old familiar haunts. After that, I thought maybe we’d hit Levis Commons (one of those outdoor malls) in Perrysburg on the way home.

We decided to eat lunch in BG, which went well; we tried the Old Town Buffet, a newer Chinese buffet on N. Main Street. They had different food than we were used to getting at a Chinese buffet, which was good — kept things interesting. Plus, they had good (if tame) sushi, and were reasonably priced. And I was good and only ate one plate of food, plus a little dessert. Score one for our BG trip.

The flea market was at least something to do, and someplace to walk around. There wasn’t anything we were interested in actually buying, but some of the stuff was fun to look at. That, plus it’s always interesting to people-watch at the flea market. Our trip around the booths was short and sweet, and we were fairly ambivalent about it. Didn’t suck, but wasn’t great.

Same with Goodwill. Looked around everything except the clothes (which take up most of the newly renovated and expanded store). Noticed some overpriced video games and systems that we didn’t want. Left after our brief spin through the aisles.

After Goodwill, I let Aaron take me to that bastion of evildoing in retail, Wal-Mart, so he could see if they had any HD-DVDs on clearance. (Aaron, being the consumer of many dead media formats already, waited until HD-DVD was officially dead to purchase the HD add-on for his Xbox 360, thereby getting both the player and the movies at blowout prices.)

Of course, they didn’t have any.

Our BG trip was getting more and more dismal. No Madhatter to visit, no interest in book-shopping or coffee-drinking at Grounds, no interest in just walking around campus. On our way out of town, we drove past campus and ogled at the not-really-new wider streets and the quasi-new street signs and all the corporateness that has sprung up around campus (Starbucks, Chipotle, and the like). Then we hit the highway and headed toward home, by way of Perrysburg.

It was still a little chilly to be walking around outside, but we made the best of it. Sort of. We went into Lane Bryant first, and left without buying one item. All of their “spring fashions” looked like the 70s and the 80s had a fat baby — the blouses all flaunted the worst patterns possible, and I couldn’t find much of anything I would wear. Then we walked to Maggie Moo’s, the ice cream place, since we’d never been there — and, for once, we realized that ice cream really wasn’t calling to us. Then we stopped into J. Jill, just because I’d never been there before. At first, I thought I’d finally come home, because all the clothes looked like something I would wear; then I looked at the price tag on a particularly stylish skirt, and I promptly headed for the door after reading the $100 price tag. Somehow, we even managed to not really enjoy the bookstore: neither of us really had an agenda, and none of the magazines or manga or anything really caught our eye. So we just went home.

Well, that sucked.

Surprisingly enough, Sunday was a completely different story.

Aaron had heard that the Value City Department Store in Maumee was having a closing sale, and that the whole store was some ridiculous percentage off. He heard right, and we had a great time just browing the aisles for cheap awesomeness. We left Value City with a non-stick pan (from the collection of Rachael Ray), a decorative basket, a new purse for me, a pair of very thirsty and soft microfiber dishtowels, and three very awesome pairs of shoes for me, of which this is but one:

Our cashier was a character, and she topped off the whole experience by talking about how she’d heard about cooking cabbage and noodles for the first time that weekend, when someone else had bought a non-stick pan and told her that was what they were planning to make in said pan. This woman was an absolute hoot.

But the day kept going! After that, we swung past a gelato place for our first-ever taste of gelato (and, boy, was it yummy), followed by a trip two doors down to Avenue, where I bought myself the clothes I had been hoping to find at Lane Bryant the day before. I now have two more pairs of work/dress pants, a knit sweater, and a hooded spring jacket. Oh, and a nice lady in line behind me gave me a couple of coupons that saved me $17. Score!

So, last weekend was quite the odd dichotomy of suck and awesome. All in all, though, I think the awesome outweighed the suck.

weight loss 1 Comment

Spring Challenge Begins Now

Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is the day when James and I reset our Weight Loss Challenge. Since both of us did relatively well in January, then started to slack in February and March, James came up with the idea of having a do-over starting the first day of Spring. And here we are:

(I know my feet look grotesquely veined and aikido-scarred in this light. So be it.)

James has informed me that he’s going to win before I leave to go on vacation on May 7th, so I guess I’d better step it up. I’ll have to lose just under two pounds a week to hit my goal of 194.5 in time to maintain it for a week before leaving for Hawaii. For those of you keeping score, 194.5 will be a recent record low for me; I think my record is 195, actually, and I only saw that for a day or two several years ago.

So, how am I going to do it? Well, I figure that doing what I was doing back in January would be a good start, since I lost an average of just under two pounds per week through January and into February. My plans would therefore include a.) attending Aikido regularly; b.) planning my meals in advance (sometimes making a week’s worth of lunches on Sunday night); and c.) practicing restraint and portion-control on weekends. My general guide will be the Reasonable Diet’s “I-Week Diet,” at least in the beginning: fruits, veggies, lean meats, whole grains, and no sweets (although that’s a terrible oversimplification). As for calorie breakdowns, I’m planning to keep it reminiscent of the Zone Diet: 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, and 30% calories from fat. That seems to work well for me.

As usual, I’ll be tracking my food with my DietOrganizer Palm OS app, which totally rules. It’s actually a big part of my strategy, as I can see my calorie percentages as they readjust during the day. The only thing it doesn’t do that I wish it did is sync to my computer so I can see the graphs and manipulate the data on a larger scale. I also bought myself a fancy pedometer that I’m going to calibrate tonight and start wearing tomorrow. It came with tracking software, too, so I can sync it up to my PC and track how far I’ve walked over time.

Something else that’s going to be important is sleep. Yes, sleep. I’ve read about enough studies that link changes in sleep with changes in weight, so I’m going to make a concerted effort to get a minimum of 8 hours a night. I usually only get around seven hours during the week, if that; I tend to sleep in on the weekends, though, usually getting about ten hours, and sometimes twelve if I’m feeling especially lazy/snuggly. My plan is not to expect too much of myself during the evenings, as far as productivity goes, and to turn off my computer by 9:30pm. (So, if you see me on Google Talk or AIM after 10pm on a weeknight, tell me to wrap things up and go to bed already!) 🙂

I’ve lost 7½ pounds so far this year. (More than that, actually, but I gained back a few and re-lost them.) I’m back to where I felt stable and quasi-comfortable last year. Now it’s time to step it up and get down to where I’ll start to actually feel good again.