college 18 Comments

Ten Years Ago Today

In the Spring of 1996, I had just returned to BGSU after a semester of Academic Suspension. I was assigned to live in Rodgers Hall, and my randomly selected roommate was Mary.

This is important. Follow this.

Mary was attending BGSU because she had followed her boyfriend, Andrew, up from the University of Dayton. Andrew was originally from Toledo and had returned there after he had — flunked out? Quit? My memory isn’t quite sure of which. At any rate, he came home and his girlfriend came along, to be near him. And I was rooming with her.

Mary had recently gone to a party where a couple of Andrew’s high school buddies were in attendance. Apparently, she had told one of the guys that he dressed like he was gay. This, of course, had pissed the guy off, and made him not want to be at any parties with his buddy’s girlfriend anymore.

When Mary found out about my parentage (can girls be bastards?), she remembered an amusing anecdote about the young man she’d offended, and how he had mentioned that he needed to find a girl without a father. She decided to hook us up, kind of as an apology for telling him he dressed gay. At Mary’s request, Andrew gave her Aaron’s e-mail address to give to me.

And the rest is history. ^_^

Ten years ago today, I wrote about this new boyfriend of mine, and what we did and how I felt. I was fairly graphic, as I didn’t want to forget any single moment, so there will be some judicious editing of explicit things that I (and Aaron, I’m sure) would not be comfortable sharing with the internet.

As a final aside before I get into the journal entry: at this point in my life, I still considered myself Mormon, but inactive. I was, in fact, a virgin, and I am not at ALL ashamed to admit that. Aaron, on the other hand, was totally wanting some nookie (by our third date), but got derailed when I told him that I was a Mormon and didn’t have sex. Yet.

So, with all the backstory out of the way, on with our story:
Continue reading →

randomness

Birthday Meme

I hadn’t planned on posting this to my blog, but since I’ve already posted my results in the comments of three different LiveJournals, maybe I should just go for it. For reference, I originally saw this on  sheryls‘ LJ, but it’s run rampant since, so I guess I’ve snicked this from pretty much the entire internets.

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year. [My 30th birthday is coming up on April 22nd, in a couple of weeks.]

Events:
1509 – Henry VIII ascends the throne of England after the death of his father.
1970 – First Earth Day celebrated.
1993 – The web browser Mosaic version 1.0 is released.

Birthdays:
1937 – Jack Nicholson, American actor
1950 – Peter Frampton, British musician

Death:
1996 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist and writer (b. 1927)

photography

Under the Radar

I was just updating my About page to reflect my upgrade in digital cameras and blogging software, when I noted that one of my links was broken. So, I went to the Konica Minolta site to find a new link to my camera’s info, and found this instead:

Konica Minolta Photo Imaging, Inc. ceased the camera business on March 31, 2006.

As of April 1st, 2006, Sony Corporation is providing customer service for Konica’s, Minolta’s, and Konica Minolta’s cameras (excluding single-use cameras) and camera-related products except for the binoculars.

Apparently, somebody must be behind on reading her photography magazines. I’m sure I should have heard about this before now. Ah, well. That sucks.

Incidentally, it looks like the specs on my manual-focus Minolta X-370s are no longer available online. You can, however, read about my new Minolta point-and-shoot. Hmm.

health & fitness 6 Comments

Insecurity

Am I so insecure?

I was deleting my trackback spam today when I came upon a real trackback to my blog. At first I thought it might actually be spam, but it looked legit, so I clicked on it anyway. In the last paragraph of the linked post, I read:

Breakfast Burritos are not something you use to lose weight. And neither are “low-carb snacks from Big Lots”. The whole “eat less and exercise more” thing has worked for me. This lady seems rather nice, but her energy into the planning of weight loss might be better used in doing things to actually losing weight. The fact that she is nice and this post is hating on her weight-loss plan, well, this makes me feel bad.

I immediately got that “I hate conflict” feeling in my chest, which goes hand-in-hand with my “I hate being wrong” and “I hate being hated” feelings. Not that this person hates me; they’re just dogging my diet plan. Which, considering my lack of measurable progress lately, I guess I can understand.

And, I mean, I can’t be too upset. After all, they did say that they feel bad that their post is all hating on my diet plan. That’s cool. I left them what I hope sounded like a nice (if slightly miffed) comment, inviting them to come leave a comment and join the discussion. I’m not averse to hearing other people’s opinions on weight loss.

Even so, this person’s post made me sit back and take a look at what I’m doing. I’m eating five small meals a day. I’m cutting back on fat and eating low-glycemic carbohydrates. I’m walking for a half hour every day, and I’m doing mild strength-training with my PUSH DVD three days a week. I’m sure the PUSH workouts will increase in difficulty as I progress onward, though.

I’m slowly losing inches, and very slowly losing weight. I guess that’s the positive way to look at it; the scale is moving in the right direction. But now I wonder if I should be doing *more*. Forcing my ass out of bed in the morning to do cardio, for instance, is something I’ve known I need to do, but I haven’t yet done.

Is it wrong that a complete stranger can make me feel so ill-at-ease with my fitness lifestyle? I was feeling positive and satisfied with my moderate successes. Now, I don’t know. I thought I’d been trying hard for nearly three months now. Suddenly, I feel insecure and pissed off and indignant and vulnerable and exposed and dumb and fat and wrong.

I’m not sure what to think of my reaction to this.

Update, 4/7/06: Now that I know that the “breakfast burrito” thing is a running gag on Manhattan Offender, I can see how I misunderstood the tone of the post. I can totally dig the burrito thing now. Last night, though, I really didn’t know how to take it. Like I told Rod over e-mail, I’m just going to chalk this one up to one of those strange internet things, and let it go.

gardening

Seedling Update


[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

The seedlings are just over two weeks old, and they’re starting to show me what they’re made of. The catnip (above) is growing like mad, and I’m seriously contemplating planting it in a container, rather than in my soon-to-be herb garden. If I actually plant it in the ground, I expect that it will run rampant and destroy all growing things in its path.

The parsley is finally coming up, the sweet basil is growing tall and stately, and the lemon basil is about on a par with the parsley.

I’ve managed to kill four out of six hollyhocks, thanks to us being out of town during an apparently crucial watering weekend. (Who knew?) One had already died from damping-off, and three others just died of thirst. My two remaining hollyhocks are about 2-3″ tall and not very strong. One already needs staked, which can’t be good. I’m hoping they’ll grow out of it (so to speak).