Get Serious

Yeah, I won't be buying the little red dress in the shop window of Estilo on Second Street. Get serious. (And yes photographer LB does seem to be positioned, camera in face, to make a shot that I won't call by name for fear of attracting the wrong WEB searches.)

Yeah, I'll continue to wear blazers and slacks (pants suits they are quaintly called for women) and dressier tops and slacks and sweats and shorts and jeans.

I need to get serious, really, about something which is why I gave this title today. Picking the photo was just a matter of randomly picking one I took yesterday and had edited. But I need to get serious about my photography if I'm going to do it. If it's going to be shop windows with my reflection, then fine, but I need to stop using years-old point and shoots and old software (which I haven't learned that well anyway) and get fancy equipment and wait for the right lighting and I need to call it art and make an artist's statement and make quality prints and frame them in shadow boxes surrounded by found objects and mirrors and reflective things and put high price tags on them. I need to nod indulgently when people are attracted to them but repulsed by the prices. Because really, just snapping these eccentric pictures isn't a worthy endeavor without all that.

I need to get serious about organizing my space and my files and my finances. It isn't good enough to shrug my shoulders and act like I don't know WTF to do about investing my retirement funds. I need to be confident like the guys on TV who just know what stocks are beaten down to a low from which they will ascend without setback or scandal or obsolescence of their product. I need to be a serious investor who reads prospectuses and studies financial sheets. Have you ever seen a prospectus that wasn't a yawner from the get-go? And you know all those pretty people pimping the investments aren't capable of interpreting them either. This new Madoff scandal is amazing. I don't believe any of my investments are affected, but it gives you pause, huh? Yeah, I must get more serious about investment.

I need to get serious about exercise, too. There have been times when I actually kept exercise logs. Online. When I seriously thought about how much I was doing and when. Similarly, with diet. I have been known to at least write down all the junk I ate in a vain (but serious) attempt to reform.

I need to get serious about writing, too. It is not good enough to make up jokey business cards that say "Pretending to Write but Really Just Blogging." Either take it seriously or don't do it, right?

But retirement for me just doesn't seem seroius. It is this frivolous 'becoming something soon' time like childhood. All the serious decisions are somewhere in the future when you will be smarter and more in tune with your body, feelings and talents. Maybe it is a second childhood after all. And what could be serious about that?

Think Globally, Eat, Um, From Everywhere

Last night I did NOT eat this. The picture captures an impromptu 'surf and turf' of lobster and lamb that a friend got at Jezebel one night in August. I didn't take my camera last night but we went to 34th Street. I thought of going downtown but 34th Street is closer and, this time of year, people crowd up going to what I call the Trial of Lights. It's actually the 'Trail of Lights.' Maybe they got rained on last night. Serves 'em right. Bad traffic-making is the trial.

Anyway, 34th Street is lovely and closer to the house. I did not have lobster, nor lamb. No. I had the most politically confusing meal ever. A half dozen raw oysters. Blue Points from Canada. And foie gras. It was either from California or New York, I think, the only current sources in the U.S. Actually I shared these two dishes with FFP. My entrée? A dish designed around a program called 'edible Austin.' It was bison stew with root vegetables. The meat and vegies came from within miles of the restaurant. The idea is for chefs to put on dishes that, you know, don't burn a lot of fossil fuel getting to the table.

Oh...and I had two glasses of wine. I think one was from California. And one from Italy.

And, hey, my yogurt comes from Austin, too. And I'm about to go have some before I go, gulp, get a root canal. So if you don't hear from me for a while, just think 'ouch!'

Diet and Exercise

No I didn't eat the Migas in the foreground. Nope. I ate the Eggs Chorizo in the background! That was Sunday at Aranda's Taqueria #3, near our house. We had this day that was deliciously free of anything on the calendar although we had noted that Top Drawer Thrift store, also in our neighborhood, was having a tent sale with bands. But why go see them reselling all the junk we hauled out of this house? Would that be sad- or glad-making? So, really, no obligations.

As sometimes happens we took the 'no obligations' to heart and went off to eat a totally unhealthy, cheap breakfast answering 'yes' a couple of times when the waitress said 'mas café?' Yeah, big white endless mugs of black coffee. And reading some part of the Sunday papers. FFP was reading an article in the Statesman about Earl Campbell and I was reading the New York Times magazine which had its 'Year in Ideas' article.

It's so fun to do something like that, but then, belly full of that, can you really do anything? Can you really stay awake even with all that caffeine? Especially with really good football games to watch? (How about them Cowboys?) I'm not a football fan, really, but it can be entertaining while reading and dozing.

But I just checked in on the game now and then on a little 30-year-old TV in our kitchen. I wrapped the few presents that I'd purchased for the parental units and friends. In the process, I decided I'd clean out a closet that used to hold (before we owned the house) the hot water heater. We'd installed some metal shelves and for years called it the 'sports closet.' We kept bowling balls, tennis rackets, softball stuff and the like in there. The family is down to one sport (me playing tennis) and all my gear is in the tennis bag in the car. Gradually the closet became the 'gift closet.' We put things we might give as gifts, wrapping paper, gift sacks, bows, empty boxes, bubble wrap, party decor, empty sacks and costume things in there and I usually clean it out when I wrap the few Christmas presents we wrap ourselves.

So I wrapped the presents. I sat aside a few Christmas gift bags, tags, a little wrapping paper, some other occasion sacks and wrap and the bubble wrap and sorted out most everything else to give away. I actually found two gift-wrapped gifts (with cheaper tags on the bottom) that I had left over from last year and forgot. Some rubber chickens went in the thrift store pile, old calendars to the pile for the neighbor to give to kids in art class, empty boxes ditto. Books, picture frames and other things we'd saved for emergency gifts to the thrift store. I think I queued up nine or ten cubic feet of stuff to be outta here. I cleaned the shelves, swept the floor and put the few surviving things back in there. Not bad after a Mexican Breakfast!

The Cowboys won (I got the final score on that little TV in the kitchen while washing up some dishes) and I talked to a friend about her health issues and plans for the holidays and our plan to get together for a meal when another friend came to town.

At that point, it would have been easy to say: "You accomplished something!" and just settle in front of the TV and snooze. FFP had steamed squash and onions with dill and I had some with a little grated cheese along the way. You know, to round out eggs, chorizo, potatoes, beans and guacamole. I have a balanced diet!

But I didn't slide into my stylish red chair in the bedroom with the Times and another cuppa. No. I went to the gym. I read newspapers while peddling to nowhere on a recumbent bike for fifty minutes and then doing some weight work on my arms, chest, shoulders and back. I would have once considered this a stellar workout. But now it's an ordinary one for me. That's the vicious thing about exercise. The more you do, the more your body demands to offset the same unhealthy breakfast.

I went home and, of course, I finally slid into that chair. I ate something more. Maybe a couple of Clementines (the fruit component of the diet). Maybe some tofu dip and pita chips and a glass of Guinness. Maybe a little bit of cheese. Yeah, probably all of that.

Because that's the secret to life, eh? Diet and exercise.

Feed the Rich...Desserts

I was torn about where to post this entry. Here in my regular journal (which my husband says makes our lives an open book but I don't really think so)? Or in the Journal of Unintended Consequences, my other blog, which is intended to capture the chaotic results from well-intentioned (or not) actions? I decided to put it here because somehow I thought that would be less controversial. I'm not really raising an objection to feeding the rich. Everybody's got to eat, you know, to sustain life.

The photo is of a sausage-shaped big cheese (I think) at Mandola's Market, posing with some of its sausage friends.

Now, I consider myself rich. I don't have any debt, I can budget for things like 'gifts' and 'donations' and 'eating out.' I don't work. Yeah. The idle rich even. Hasn't always been so, but I was never as poor as my parents or grandparents once were.

I've noticed that, when you donate money to things or you entertain friends or do them favors or people think you are going to do them a favor or donate money, people give you free food and booze.

I have often wondered if you could just live off this free stuff. For weeks at a time. I'm not really trying to do that and, besides, it would probably require lining your pockets with zip lock bags as my friend SuRu points out. But yesterday when I got up I realized that for that one day I could probably get by on what was free. So I decided to try it.

Now first off, I'm not a 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' person. When I get up in the morning, I'm not usually hungry at all. I want coffee. Black coffee. And lots of it. So in my experiment I decided that I would allow myself unlimited coffee made in my very own Jura-Capresso E8. (See this entry also.) Of course, there are no calories in black coffee. Just a buzz.

During the morning, I went to my club and rode the recumbent bike for thirty minutes. The bike claimed I'd burned 200 calories. Just before I showered I weighed on the fancy-looking digital scales from Sharper Image that we bought when we decorated our remodeled bathroom. (See photo of bathroom in my old journal...the scales fit in with that decor. Hmmm...maybe FFP is right about the open book thing!) My weight was 163.6. Seems like the scale said just over 160 a few days ago. But it fluctuates. Who knows?

Around 12:20 we headed downtown. We got into a huge traffic jam at 5th and Lamar caused by the city's urge to close a couple of lanes of W. 5th every weekend. Still we found a parking place and found a bus that was taking the media around for a tour of markets as part of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. I figured...free food! While we waited for the bus to depart I took a quick swing through the Saturday Downtown Farmer's Market. (I imagined when we were living downtown how I would stroll through the market and buy some vegies and greens and goat cheese for the week.) I got a free taste of some delicious Hibiscus Tea. I saw that the goat cheese and honey people had those tiny plastic tasting spoons. But I figured a small taste would just send my juices up too high.

The bus headed out to Mandola's Italian Market near our house. For some reason they used the surface streets. As we drove by the University I saw some homeless guys digging in a trash can. I was feeling a little hungry myself. Several eateries on Guadalupe (Milto's, Ruby's Barbecue, Zen, NeWorlDeli) suddenly seemed very attractive. As we filed into the market to get a talk from one of the owners we walked by outside tables where people were scarfing late lunches (it was 1:15 by now) of pizza and salad and anti-pastas and all manner of stuff that was looking increasingly delicious. But there were no samples! The best I could do was to grab a little bit of cranberry walnut bread out for sampling by the general public. I listened to the owner talk about the operation (their own winery, imported Italian groceries, baking almost all their own stuff, very interesting actually, etc.) and tried not to feel too hungry. We were given a goody bag. It contained a jar of artichokes and olives and stuff in a tomato sauce, a pack of three or four baked crackers and some biscoti and cookies along with one of those napkin/cutlery packets you get with takeout. On the way out I looked at the bread sample basket...but all the samples were gone. Darn! In the bus, I ate one of the crackers and a little cookie of some sort. That took the edge off.

We drove back toward downtown and over to South Congress and were soon at Cissi's Market. This was feed the rich nirvana! I took a glass of the offered white wine but fortified myself before drinking much with chips on sample. They had some Austin Slow Burn Salsa Verde out, too. Then they started circulating with platters containing tiny bite-size hors d'oeuvre. Ah, heaven. Vanilla-poached lobster with Shiraz grits. Little pulled pork sandwiches on cornbread the size of pill boxes. They had a lot, too, so we were encouraged to have multiples. I began to think I'd survive on my free food diet. I sipped a little wine. I had one bite of lemon bar dessert. I'm not much of a dessert person. That would be my downfall on this regimen. A peek inside our goodie bag from Cissi's revealed a sack of coffee beans, giant home-style cookies and chocolate!

Next we went to Farm To Market Grocery. It's been there on South Congress for a while. A tiny space stocking a lot of food and a few gift items, it has 30% local products including flowers out front that are from the Hill Country. The people there were really nice and were passing out goat milk ice cream, sodas and water. And they gave us goody bags with a private label chocolate bar and a Butters Brownie. Now, as I said, I'm not much on sweets. I actually had eaten a Butters Brownie a few nights ago. (There was a sample in the media bag we got.) The goat milk part tempted me on the ice cream but I just ask others how it tasted.

We headed west of W. Mary and located the P&K Grocery. This place was ultra funky and hip at the same time. They had taken an old building, used antique fixtures where possible and had some antique glassware and china and collectibles for sale. They had a deli counter with hot sandwiches and other stuff. They make their own pimento cheese and hummus and hot dog condiments. They sell goat cheese on a stick (lolipops!). That made my stomach rumble. But they weren't giving them away. They were giving away little square pimento cheese sandwich samples and freshly made lemonade. Also deviled eggs but for some reason I didn't get one before we got on the bus. I'd regret that. That 1.5 inch square sandwich wasn't going to hold me long. And their goodie bag had samples of their hot dog condiments. Which would have been great if someone was giving away hot dogs!

When we got home, I had some coffee and water. I was actually a little hungry. The only free thing that wasn't sweet was some of those plain crackers and that artichoke concoction Mandola's gave us. So I opened it up and had a little of that with the crackers. Later a bag of caramel corn Cissi's gave us (a private label product with a light hand on the coating, not at all like Crackerjacks) called to me. As I always do with such products...I checked the calories in the entire bag...about seven hundred and eighty! They were pretty good, sort of salty and sweet, but I stopped eating after only a couple of hundred calories.

A few hours later, we dressed up and went to a house over near Lake Austin. The party was free. Well, if you don't count the hefty annual donation that had yielded the invitation. When I saw plates of food, I found the dining room and filled a plate with tender beef, roll and butter, green beans, roasted root vegies, roasted purple and white fingerling potatoes and rice. The offerings seemed a bit odd...no chicken or fish and a lot of starch but I wasn't complaining. I took some of everything and polished off all the carbs and a few ounces of the beef with a glass of free red wine. (I had finished a glass of white I'd gotten coming in.) Later I had a coffee and three mini madeleines.

At home Forrest ate some of the caramel corn and so I finished the bag. I was tempted to grab a cheese snack from the fridge, but true to my word, I stuck to coffee and what the world fed the rich today. Which seemed a little heavy on the sweet side. Let 'em eat cake, I guess.

As I finish this entry I'm waiting for FFP to come home. We might go to the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival Fair. There would be lots of free food. And we have press passes. But jockeying for free food with thousands of other people and drinking wine outdoors on a hot day sounds less and less fun now that I think about it. I haven't eaten so far today. I've had my coffee, a bottle of water and a walk around the neighborhood. I'm feeling a little hungry. But not hungry enough to go for the chocolate and cookies left over from the free stuff from yesterday.

Eat More Healthy Food!

Working my way down the resurrected resolutions I find another of those pesty "this never ends" type of resolution. Lose five pounds? Sure watch the scale, celebrate victory. But eat more healthy food? You get up every day and it's all over again with the fruit, the salad, the rich in Omega-something fish.

Well, I'm sitting here eating a Clementine. (I love sweet, easy-to-peel, no seed Citrus because I'm lazy but these gems seem only to be around and at their best in the winter.) I had a smoothie made from bananas that were getting a bit ripe, no fat yogurt and a drop or two of honey (local) and vanilla (not local). I had salad with carrots, green onions and raisins on the top. Slathered with Eastside Feta dressing, but still. Salmon and steamed squash medley may be dinner. (If FFP cooks and doesn't get a sudden notion for eating dinner in the bar at Fonda San Miguel restaurant around the corner as he did last night.)

It's a long slog to eat in a more healthy manner. A lot of choices, over a long time. So many things are like that.

Yeah, it's a long road with potholes full of alcoholic beverages, hamburgers, fries, barbecue and huge portions of cheese. I left the grated cheese off my salad a few minutes ago. But only because I forgot. I'm not that good. Fact is...cheese is fundamental for me. My bones may be stronger because of it or I may have high cholesterol because of it, but cheese is essential to my psyche.

I was reading the Science Times from yesterday's The New York Times (it's a regular feature on Tuesday). I was reading it today on the exercise bicycle (yes, I exercised) and there was an article about free will and how maybe we don't really exactly have it. Which means, of course, that whether I lose five pounds, drink more water, eat healthier foods, etc. is perhaps predetermined. My destiny is cheese. It's in my DNA.

Resolutions Past--Measuring Up

I reviewed some of my public Resolutions Past. I went through some of my public declarations of resolutions in my journal and I have to say that creating new lists is hardly necessary. Some items from the old ones will do fine. Life is funny in that accomplishments can be pushed aside by failures. Achievements can be minimized by a 'what have you done lately' mentality. As always, The Visible Woman has these thoughts about measuring up out in public. In case you don't want to slog through a search of my old journals, here is a representative list that I'll examine over the next few days.

• Lose five pounds. [This is a easy goal, it would seem. The spam says '32 pounds in three weeks' or '12.5 pounds in three days' but, no, my goal is to lose five more pounds and stay there.]
• Drink more water.
• Eat more healthy food. Fruit! Vegetables! Every day.
• Write! Not just this journal. All the short stories I've outlined. All the essays. Start on the novels and non-fiction books.
• Find an appropriate volunteer activity.
• Travel and, when I do, take the time to prepare by reading books.
• Pay more attention to investments and our budget. Save money.
• Continue my workouts and start playing tennis and maybe racquetball.
• Take Bridge lessons and learn more about Bridge.
• Cook more. Start making crêpes again.
• Get the closets, garage, drawers, shed, yard, storage room clean and keep them that way.
• Learn to make a movie.
• Learn more about photography.
• Geez, this list is too long...make shorter lists.
• Ride the bus and write about it.
• Get my mother's things sold or given away or packed and sent to my relatives.
• Read more books.
• Do some Windows programming and JavaScript and learn Linux.
• Hmmm...it's the same every year, isn't it? Why don't I make one list for all time (work harder, read, write, exercise, eat better, learn stuff, save money, lose weight, be a better person).

What's sad is that this list was made four years ago. And what have I done about all that? Not much. I think I lost five pounds that following year. In fact and think I lost twenty and gained ten back. These resolutions came a few months after my mother's death and a few months after I retired. So it was time to make some changes.

The thing about weight is that it is not, in and of itself, an indicator of health. But I do think that, compared to my 2002 self that I not only weigh less (about fifteen pounds less than when that was written) but am in better aerobic health, more flexible and have more muscle. Still, I think the pundits would say I am overweight if not obese. I should probably lose 15 or 20 pounds. However, I think I'm going to just make a resolution for 2007 to lose five pounds again. And I will do this by eating one less piece of cheese each day!

So we have the first resolution for 2007. Lose Five Pounds. In the coming days we will examine the rest of the list above and construct a new set of bullet points for the coming year.

Less than a Pound a Year

Soon I'm going to a high school reunion and I was thinking how the class changes, as a group. Marriages, divorces, deaths, children. And pounds. Oh, I'm sure there are people who have maintained their high school weight. But as a group, I bet we've gained.

Today's picture shows me reflected in a shop window selling coffee paraphernalia. I am a caffeine addict. At least I don't use cream in my coffee!

But, yeah. I've gained weight since high school. I've done it honestly though. By eating cheese. And foie gras. By drinking alcohol. By choosing rich sauces. By making eating out a hobby.

I did some math, though. On average I have gained .8 pounds a year since high school. If everyone in my class has done the same, then we've raised the weight of ourselves a few tons.

Actually, of course, this has not been a neat linear gain. Rather I've had my ups and downs. And my plateaus. In particular, when I retired in 2002, I had gained about 1.4 pounds per year since high school. But I've since lost about twenty pounds and kept it off. Hence the new .8 figure.

I had this idea some months ago that I'd lose some more of my excess pounds and exercise and build up my muscles and look really good for this reunion. Well, if not 'look good' (there is the matter of the goofy hair and stuff), at least look fitter and thinner. Didn't happen, though. I am pretty active and do some exercise, but with my eating habits it's all I can do to keep off that twenty pounds.

So, I'm off to the reunion a little heavier than when we graduated. (Of course, I don't honestly remember my weight in high school. I'm guessing.) But it's only a .8 pound per year gain. And that's only like twenty-four ounces of cheese. Per year. Or twenty-four Guinnesses. So two ounces of cheese or two Guinnesses a month over what you burn...and there you are, decades later, that much fatter... thirty-two pounds fatter. (Imagine, again, if I put cream in all that coffee.)

I'll bet my classmates have some gray hair, some balding, some drooping, some wrinkles to show for our years. And some pounds. I've got all of that. Actually I'm not very gray yet but my barber claimed the other day that my hairline was receding.