Category: To Occupy my Time

Lint Wrap Up.

Well, the season of Lent is over and I think it is time to call and end to my season of Lint. I was going to extend the Lint project through orthodox lent, but I’ve decided not to as I am busy with the garden and other projects and a soon-to-start class.

I went great guns at the beginning, but the last few weeks tapered off into nothing. I started Parkour classes and those take up five hours of my Saturday with which I would otherwise have been doing Lint things. I accomplished some good things in that time:

  • Divided my closet into summer and winter wardrobes.
  • Donated all clothing that I didn’t like
  • Realized how few clothing items I love
  • Explored some new consignment stores and reacquainted myself with some old favorites.
  • Bought eight items of clothing and accessories.
  • Tried on 30 pairs of pants. Found one that fit.
  • Read a lot about style and wardrobe assembly
  • Learned a handy trick for checking pants to try on.
  • Realized I need to shop constantly, not just twice a year.

And so, with that last realization, the lint project lives on. I’m going to try to go shopping at least every other week until I get to a point in my wardrobe that I feel like I have enough. I’ll most likely go to the Goodwill store on the way home from church, but I could also regularly visit two clothing resale places that are near my job. I’m still on the lookout for pants that fit and still really need new tops. When I find new items I’ll post them here.

Resolution 2008 Update. Letters written March 11-20.

Mid-month saw the arrival of my Letter Exchange magazine and provided relief from poor Sara who would probably get a letter every other day if I hadn’t found discovered this great source. She would like the letter getting, but then feel guilty when she didn’t respond promptly, which I’ve told her isn’t a huge deal as she certainly hasn’t resolved to write a letter a day, but you know how she is. When I wrote a letter to a LEX member, I’ve included what they wrote in their listing.

  • March 11. Sara. Letter.
  • March 12. Sara. Letter.
  • Letter back! Nestor Ramos.
  • March 13. LEX Letter. Do you blog? Where? What about?
  • March 14. LEX Letter. Charm bracelets. Tell me the story behind your favorite charm. If you don’t have one pretend you do and tell me the fictional version of your favorite charm.
  • March 15. LEX Letter. 1.5 miles from an empty mailbox.
  • March 16. Jenna. Letter.
  • March 17. LEX Letter. Let’s write topic letters. Simple start: five favorite T.V. shoes and why. Initially, no politics or religion. Your topic next.
  • March 18. LEX Letter. College student living in Savannah, Ga. Send me your tips on surviving college life.
  • March 19. None. Bad mood.
  • March 20. LEX Letter. Thirtysomething writer looking for a penpal who can be supportive like the perfect bra in a world where gravity wins.

Nestor Ramos is my movie review boyfriend, as I think I’ve mentioned before. I enjoy him because he is very funny, as his letter back proved. An excerpt:

Thanks for writing! Always nice to hear from someone who enjoys my work. Actually, you’re the first. But I imagine the second will be pretty nice too. Mostly I just get mail from people who are upset because I’ve mocked some movie in which they were an extra. The time I said Cher was built from wax and car parts, some lady offered to spit on my grave.

I sent off a big packet of five letters to the letter exchange on March 19. It will be interesting to see if I get any letters back. It’s a little weird writing letters to people you don’t know. But I excel at blathering on both on and off topic, so it isn’t too bad. I really need to work on my handwriting. I hope people can read my blathering. Perhaps I should have had a year of resolving to write neatly before my year of letter writing.

Do you want to write to any of the LEX Letter people? Tell me by posting a comment and I’ll tell you how you can, even without being a member of LEX. Though you should be a member of LEX. It’s very fun.

Recycled Fashion.

Today was a teacher planning day so there was no school. On these days, Art4Life, the before and after school care program at our school has “all days.” They usually do something fun, like today when they made clothing out of recycled materials:

B’s stunning hat:
I’s sassy shirt:
M’s spotted skirt and hat ensemble.
B’s fabulous purse. That would be a four-square ball she has repurposed.
P’s lovely headband/hat.
M had a fabulous dress made for her. The front:
The excellent sleeves in the back.

The Letter Exchange Arrived Today!

I’m so excited! It’s a little magazine, with articles about writing and letters but I’m most excited about the listings. I won’t run out of correspondents for many weeks, and maybe even some will write me back. I wrote my first letter tonight to someone who wrote:

Do you blog? Where? What about?

Others that sound interesting to me:

  • Charm bracelets. Tell me the story behind your favorite charm. If you don’t have one pretend you do and tell me the fictional version of your favorite charm.
  • Define the good life.
  • How does understanding your family history contribute to your sense of self?

I can’t wait for the summer issue to come out to see if anyone writes to my listings.

The only time I like flowering plum trees…

…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.

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.