j030510 (imported)
May 10, 2003
Damn. 8:30 on a Saturday morning, and I’ve already:
- Jogwalked for 2.5 miles
- Snoozed for a bit
- Showered and shaved
- Gone to Lowe’s, a nursery, and Home Depot
- Gotten groceries
- Put away said groceries
- Weeded the rose beds
- Replaced a rose bush that was growing on only one wild stalk, and looked odd
- Fertilized and watered the tomatoes / peppers / strawberries / cantaloupes (no, we don’t really expect to get anything from the cantaloupes, but we gotta try)
- Returned to Lowe’s for blackspot fungicide
- Sprayed roses with fungicide
And now, here I sit at the computer with a bigass cup o’ joe, writing an entry.
Oh, and speaking of roses –
And speaking of pictures, let me answer one of my reader-asked questions real quick (by the way, keep sending them, please. I’m sticking them in a folder, and will answer some from time to time when things slow down here).
Reader "Bigzigzag" (I suspect that’s an alias, but I could be wrong) says: "You take such beautiful pictures! What kind of camera do you use?"
Thank you, first off. I love me some picture-taking. Our camera is digital, and is a Sony Cybershot DSC-P50. It’s a 2.1 megapixel camera, and takes images up to 1600×1200 pixels. We have it set to take images at 1024×768 in 24-bit color. For posting, I generally size the pictures down to 525×394 (I pulled that size out of my butt when originally sizing, but it seems to fit well on the site) pixels. Here’s a picture of a rosebud from this morning, in the full resolution we have the camera set to.
So I was standing in the alterations place just up the road –
Let me just interject here that we picked the best possible place in the world to live. Stalkers: take note, I’m about to give you something to work with. Within a one mile circle of our house — easily within walking distance — we can buy clothes (Kohl’s), get them altered, buy groceries (Publix, Winn Dixie, Bruno’s), get anything for the house (Lowe’s, Home Depot), reading materials (Books-a-Million), eat at a sit-down restaurant (Ruby Tuesday, Outback (soon), China Something, Casa Something Mexican, Thomas BBQ), eat fast food (McD’s, Wendy’s, KCF, Taco Bell, Subway, Lenny’s subs, Arby’s, Sonic, Smokey’s BBQ, Chick-fil-a, Hardees), bank (our personal bank, my company bank, and the bank where the publishing company account is), and get stuff for the Jeeps (Auto Zone, Express Oil Change, numerous gas stations). I’ve named about half of the shops around us. In short, if money was coming in, we could live our entire lives without ever leaving the immediate vicinity.
The coolest part? We’re right in the middle of a big yuppie neighborhood, and you can’t even tell all that stuff is right around the corner. It’s perfect, I tell you.
– posed uncomfortably on a pedestal in front of a full-length mirror, trying to explain exactly what I wanted to the woman helping me.
"It’s too big in the gut," I said, plucking at the crimson chambray shirt I wore. "Normally that’s not a problem, but this is for a pretty important picture."
She tugged at the shirt from one side, then the other. Cocking her head to the side, she said, "I dunno, I’ve never taken a shirt in like that before."
"It just needs to be tapered a little," I said, "so that it doesn’t bunch up and look weird. There was a different woman here last time I–"
"Korean woman?"
"Yes, ma’am. She’s done–"
"She’s over at Kay’s now, on Highway 20. I own this place now."
"Oh. She tapered a couple of shirts for me, and all she did was pin them in a little to enhance the v-shape, and sew them that way. They looked great."
She cocked her head to the other side and thought about this.
"It’s for an important picture," I added, helpfully. "I bet you can do it."
"What kind of picture is it?" The older woman with the red hair spoke up. She was leaning against the wall, watching us. When I’d first entered the store, she was on the pedestal getting fitted for a pair of pants. While I was changing into the red shirt, they’d finished with her and while she changed into another pair of pants they’d put me on the pedestal.
It’s rare that I find a woman willing to put me on a pedestal.
"It’s for the cover of a book," I said, thinking oh, shit, you had to go opening your big fat mouth again. Sometimes I tend to run off at the mouth, like diarrhea, when I’m talking, offering details of my life that no one wants to hear. Only now, someone wanted to hear.
My comment piqued their interest.
"Are you a famous author?" the owner said, pinning the side of my shirt.
I laughed. "Definitely not. I’m not really even an author. This book just sort of happened."
"What’s your novel called?" the red-haired woman said.
"Actually it’s non-fiction. It’s called –" I looked down, embarrassed as always by the title of the book. I’m torn, because when I came up with the title it was as a joke, but it’s such a damn good title I have to use it even though it sounds so damn egotistical. I mumbled the title. "It’s about losing weight. The picture is sort of an ‘after’ picture, so it has to look just right."
"How much weight did you lose?" the red-haired woman asked.
"About 170 pounds," I said, "give or take."
There were exclamations from both women, and the owner’s daughter, a girl of twenty or so who’d been working at the front counter, came back to listen in.
