Why I’m Fat

In lieu of my usual Middle-aged Musings Monday (or Monday Mental Meanderings, I guess), I would like to give a brief shout-out to a local business.  Yesterday, Steven, our friend Kim and I had a good meal at Asteroga Ale House in Herkimer, NY.

We had just left Little Falls, where we met with other members of LiFT Theatre Company to brainstorm about the interactive murder mystery we are doing at the Overlook Mansion in February.  I’ll write more about that later!  Theatre stuff always makes me work up an appetite.  OK, any little thing, including the mere passage of time, works up an appetite for me.  Be that as it may, I wanted to eat and dragged Steven and Kim along with me.

It was shortly before five p.m. when we walked in and easily found seats at the bar.  I like to sit at the bar.  We ordered drinks and perused the menu.  I got the special of 1/4 pound cheeseburger with curly fries.  Steven got a BLT sandwich with chips.  Kim, who generally eats light, ordered sweet potato fries.  While we waited for the food, we looked at a football game on the television and chatted about our upcoming theatre projects.

The food tasted really good.  I shared my fries with Steven but still chowed down on a lot of them myself.   This is why I have such trouble meeting my weight-loss goals.

The Asteroga Ale house is located at 122 W. Albany Street, Herkimer, New York, phone number (315) 219-5578.  You can Like them on Facebook.

 

Grey Run

I bet some of you thought I was never going to run again (while others of you are saying, “I never thought that!”).  I confess, I had my own doubts.  But today it was a choice between go running or eat something and I chose running!  I believe this demonstrates that there is indeed hope for me. (Full disclosure:  I ate something after the run.)

It was 40 degrees out, five degrees below my perhaps arbitrary border for running in shorts and short sleeves.  I found a pair of log johns that were only semi-dirty (I always feel so reduce-reuse-recycle when I wear something more than once before washing it) and pulled a long-sleeved running shirt out of my pile.  I was going to look for a ARMY t-shirt with a reflective decal in the back, but the sun was up and I was in a hurry.

Spunky wanted to go out when he saw me bustling about getting ready, so I took him for a short business meeting, then I was off.  Right away I thought, “Why oh why did I ever stop running?”  I also felt that the time not running had not wrought total havoc on my body.  Just a note:  I did not COMPLETELY stop running; let’s just say my habits have been  sporadic.  I turned right on German Street. Usually when I have not run in a while, I turn left, then go down Caroline Street, up Margaret, then down Henry.  That sounded boring to me.

It was grey and gloomy out.  I admired the bare trees against the sky, as I always do.  Perhaps I will venture out later with my Tablet and try to get a few pictures.  Soon it became apparent that my lack of running regularly had, naturally enough, had a negative impact on my body.  My legs were quite unhappy with me.  I sternly told myself that one must have the not so fun runs in order to get to the good stuff.  I tried to distract myself by deciding where to run.  Up Main Street and down the nice path?  I saw a man walking a dog in that direction and decided against it.  I do like to stop and pet a dog, but in the first place I did not know if that was a pettable dog and in the second place, I didn’t think it was a good idea for me to stop.

By the time I got to the end of German Street I had run almost ten minutes.  Oh dear, that doesn’t usually take me that long, does it?  Then again, what did that matter?  I set out to run a certain length of time; who cares how much ground I actually cover?  I thought a 20 minute run would be good.  I tried to feel happy about being halfway there.  It really wasn’t a horrible run.  Just kind of grey, meaning the sky and my mood.  Well, how much of life is in the grey area?  I’m thinking, a lot.

I looked at houses as I passed.  I saw one that still had red ribbons and wreaths on the porch.  As I ran I was narrating in my head that I went down this street, then that to the other, but that is more words than I feel like typing right now.  I ran by Herkimer’s Historic Four Corners.  There were poinsettias, red and gold foil, in the urns outside the Historical Society.  I made the sign of the cross as I ran by Herkimer Reformed Church.  I also noted the County Courthouse and 1834 Jail which make up the other two corners.

My run ended up being 22 minutes long.  I said good morning to three dog walkers as I walked around the block for my cool-down.  They were across the street from me, so I still didn’t get to pet a dog.  I petted my own dog when I got home.  I felt very happy that I ran again.  I hope to keep it up in the coming weeks.  I’ll probably write more blog posts about it.

 

Not Useful But Not a Bad Saturday

Once again, I post in haste on a Saturday so I can get back to enjoying my evening.  Hey, bloggers like to relax on their days off, too, you know!  I am at the coveted bra off, sweats on, wine drinking, TV watching, with husband hanging portion of the evening.  Why did I not post earlier in anticipation of this time?  No good reason.  I could not think of anything good to post about, but, really, when has that stopped me?

It has not been a usefully-spent Saturday.  I don’t know if I even did enough to warrant a Scattered Saturday post, but let’s try anyways.  We slept in till 6:30 this morning and could have slept even later but Steven had to go to work.  Rats!  After we hung out and had coffee, and I made my usual Saturday morning phone call to my parents (I call them other times, too, of course, but the Saturday morning call is kind of a thing), I started writing post cards (another Saturday morning thing).

I waited till after Steven had left and I took Spunky for a business meeting to walk to the post office.  Spunky did not walk with me.  He doesn’t seem to care for long walks.  I started making it an even longer walk than last week, but I got kind of cold and depressed, so I walked back home sooner than planned.  At least I got some exercise.

Back home I worked a little more on the murder mystery LiFT Theatre Company is doing at the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls, NY.  I read a few of the newspapers that collected all week (I don’t get the chance to read them every day).  I looked at Facebook.  I took a short nap on the couch.  I did a load of laundry and folded the last two or three that have been waiting to be folded (don’t judge me).  I talked to my sister on the telephone.

Finally I judged it OK to pour myself a glass of wine and sit down in front of the television with my knitting.  Ah, my favorite time of day.  After a while I changed into my sweats and started fixing a fairly interesting dinner.  At last Steven came home!  Now he is looking at the television and waiting for me to finish my blog post so we can go on to the movie watching portion of the evening.  And I think I’m there.  Happy Saturday, everyone.

 

Not Lame, Love!

In lieu of my usual Friday Lame Post, I thought I would share a few photos of the lovely Valentine’s Day decorations my sweetie-pie husband, Steven put up.  Steven has a real talent for decorating.  He does the various seasons at our house.  It brightens up my day.  Here is the mantle over our fireplace:

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I decorated the grapevine wreath. I was really into grapevine wreaths and my hot glue gun for a while there. Perhaps I should get back into it.

 

We almost never use our dining room table, although I do have a couple of jigsaw puzzles I’d like to work on at some point.  Usually Steven puts a seasonal table cloth on, but apparently the Valentine one he had got damaged.  I personally like the doily look.

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I gave him the roulette wheel in the center for his birthday one year. I found it at a second-hand shop.

 

The buffet is also in the dining room.  Ignore the mural on the wall; that was there when we moved in.  The poster partially blocking it was displayed in the lobby of Ilion Little Theatre during the run of Leading Ladies, the show I directed last spring.

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The juke box is out all year. It is one of Steven’s prized possessions.

 

This is the window over our kitchen sink, looking out into our backyard.

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I carefully held the Tablet so as not to photograph the dirty dishes in the sink. Um, I mean, there are no dirty dishes in my sink.

 

Now I must start thinking about Valentine’s Day.  What, oh what, can I give my beloved husband?  As you can see, we already have a lot of cutesy little stuffed toys, heart shaped boxes and other Valentine memorabilia.  I’ll try to think of something good.  Then I’ll write a blog post about it.  In the meantime, Happy Friday, everyone!

 

And Don’t Call Me Buttercup!

I’m taking a Blogger’s Sick Day.  Anybody who doesn’t care to here anybody else complain, STOP READING NOW!!!  Don’t tell me to suck it up, buttercup.  I sucked it up all day at work.  I am THROUGH sucking it up and I am going to whine if I feel like it!

Well, that made me feel a little better.  Now I’ll try to write some semblance of a blog post.

I have had a migraine for two days now.  It was worse today, especially the nausea.  But I tried to keep working. I succeeded somewhat.  I was kind of hoping it would magically vanish when my workday was done.  Sometimes headaches do. That is a phenomenon many people have noticed.  This one did not.  However, I managed to drive home without mishap, and now I am writing a boring blog post before taking a very hot shower and lying down.

One thing I am happy about is that I do not have  rehearsal tonight for Steel Magnolias (remember? the play I’m in at Ilion Little Theatre).  It is instead the night for the theatre group’s monthly dinner meeting.  I am sorry to miss the meeting, but I must confess, not too sorry. For one reason, everybody brings really good food and I always eat too much.  That is not good for my weight loss goals.

Oh dear, I feel I should make a concluding paragraph and I am quite blank.  And I really want to get to that hot shower.  Damn!  But anybody who wants to whine about it, please feel free.  I won’t tell you to suck it up.

 

Picture This: A Set in Progress

I’m really liking the idea of Wordless Wednesday, where I show pictures.  And I have a few pictures that I kind of promised to show soon, of the set for Steel Magnolias.  I showed a couple of walls the first day they were working on it.  I missed a few steps of the work in progress, but I remembered to bring my Tablet to last night’s rehearsal and snapped a couple of shots before we started.

Lots of props and set pieces have been added.  This first shot shows one of the people responsible for making the set look so good, Kim Darling.  She went to a lot of antique and second-hand stores last weekend.  If she had called me to go with her, that would have made a great blog post!  Oh well, I had other stuff I was supposed to be doing.

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She’s placing the Christmas tree. By my standards, that makes this a Christmas play, and I’m sorry we did not do it in December. Oh well, I always say, you can’t have everything.

 

The next picture shows cast member Kelly Stone, who plays M’Lynn.  Imagine my surprise when I found out M’Lynn is short for Mary Lynn.  I used to live next door to a Mary Lynn, roughly a hundred years ago, when I was a wee tot and lived in Oneonta, NY.  But I digress.  I snapped this shot just before we started rehearsal.

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Picture her hair in rollers, to get the complete picture.

 

After taking that shot, I quickly panned to the right (stage left) for one more shot.

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It may seem that the walls are oddly painted, and in fact they are.  I always find that amusing. As any theatre person knows, we like to reduce, reuse, recycle.  Actually, I think it is more along the lines of  “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”

I look forward to taking more pictures of the set, and telling you more about the cast and the production, especially a month or so down the road, when this blog becomes All Steel Magnolias All The Time.  In the meantime, Happy Wednesday, everyone, and I’m going to go study my lines.

 

Off the Cuff and On to Rehearsal!

I spent my breaks at work studying my lines for Steel Magnolias, the play I am in at Ilion Little Theatre.  Production dates are the first two weekends in March.  That makes it just a little early for this blog to become All Steel Magnolias All The Time.  However, I don’t have much else to write about today and I REALLY don’t want to blather on about how I’m having trouble writing, as I have done too many times in the past.

We had rehearsal last night.  You should see how much the set has progressed!  Alas, you cannot, because I did not think to bring my Tablet and snap a couple of pictures.  We have rehearsal again tonight, so perhaps I could remedy the omission in a future post.

And I just this minute remembered something!  I am supposed to have my bio for the program ready by tonight!  Oh no!  Longtime readers may remember that I have a problem with bios.  I think I wrote a blog post about it once.  Oh well, I’ll come up with something off the cuff (what, ME? come up with something off the cuff?  SAY IT AIN’T SO!).

As I was saying, the set is filling in with set pieces and props.  Now we have to learn our lines, so we can drop our scripts and pick up the props.  It is just a bit awkward, script and pencil in one hand (to make notes about blocking), prop in the other.  Then you drop the prop or lose your place in the script… um, not that everybody does that.  Some of my fellow cast-members are most adept.  OK, I’m the big klutz in the bunch, as usual.

Well, this post is not amounting to much, is it?  I guess there is not a whole lot to report about the play.  But I suppose this will have to do on Tired Tuesday, because I have to get ready for rehearsal.  I hope I remember to bring my Tablet.

 

Mentally Meandering down Memory Lane

Now I see what I have to do.  I have to write Monday’s post in advance, because I am clearly not capable of writing on a Monday.  That is, if those two sentences don’t count.

However, I do not feel I should have another whiny post about I Can’t Write Today, so I will do the photo trick again.  That was kind of fun last time, wasn’t it?  Let me see what I have downloaded…

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This is one of my favorites.  It is the LiFT Theatre Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing, performed last August at the Utica Zoo. That’s me in the green shirt holding a pitchfork, trying to intimidate the big guy.  Me and the guy in the white shirt were the Watch, and we had just uncovered a villainous piece of lechery.  We were pretty pleased with ourselves over that.

 

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Here is the whole cast of that production, at Canal Place in Little Falls, where we presented the play as part of the Canal Days Celebration. It was great fun, and the audiences seemed to like us quite a bit.

 

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OK, this is one of my heroes, Weird Al Yankovich, as a monk on Galivant, an absolutely marvelous show that, alas, is no more.  The reason I include it today is that I had two parts in Much Ado About Nothing (as anybody who read my multiple blog posts about the show may recall).  Unfortunately, I don’t have an pictures of me as Friar Francis.  So I thought I’d stick in a substitute.

So this is my blog post for today.  My Mental Meanderings took me down memory lane to last summer’s theatre adventures.  That is appropriate, as I am posting this before hurrying off to rehearsal for my next theatrical adventure, Steel Magnolias at Ilion Little Theatre.  More about that adventure later.  And more about further adventures with LiFT Theatre Company!  As always, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

 

Typing… About… Writing…

Must… get… blog… post… written.

You know, like in the comic books?  I don’t read a lot of comic books, but I know there is often a frame with the hero going through something dire and saying he must… do… something…  I find that perfectly appropriate for Wrist to Forehead Sunday.

I truly am feeling very wrist to foreheady this afternoon.  For anyone just tuning in, wrist to forehead refers to the old timey heroines about to swoon.  I stole the expression “wrist to forehead” from a former co-worker.  I think I made the pose and she said, “It’s a wrist to forehead situation.”  I know I have explained this before, so my apologies to longtime readers for being redundant.

The reason for my current angst is that I am having the damnedest time writing.  Yesterday I managed six post cards and a blog post.  I have other things to write!  What the blankety-blank is my problem?  I know, I know, I have to just sit down and bloody well do it.  Well, I am.  The first thing I have to write is today’s blog post.  And here I am, typing away at it (as Truman Capote famously said, and as I have previously quoted, “That’s not writing, that’s typing”).

And I see I am over 200 words.  That is all I require of myself for a blog post.  Self-indulgent, you say?  That could be.  Then again, I am not burdening my readers with too long of a post.  I don’t always read the really long posts myself.  Oh dear, any bloggers reading this who make really long posts might take offense at that.  Then again, you never know. Maybe I read all of THEIR posts, and it’s the BORING long posts I give up on.  I hope nobody has given up on me.  That would really be a wrist to forehead situation.

 

Scattered, then Snapped on Saturday

No, I didn’t suddenly snap and murder somebody, although that would have made quite the blog post, I suppose. How much internet access do they grant you in jail? I’m figuring if I murdered anybody I would get caught.  It’s all very well to trash talk that I know how to commit a murder, but in fact, any murderer I’ve written about has gotten caught.  But I digress.

This was hands-down a better Saturday than last one, because I didn’t have a headache.  I didn’t even have to take any medication to make it happen; I just got lucky.  Or blessed, I suppose.  However, I can’t say it was any better of a Saturday in the category of getting stuff done.  No, that, not so much.  But I shall attempt to make a blog post about what I did do, so I can get back to watching Snapped (you know, from the headline?).

Steven and I got up at the delightful time of 6:30 a.m.  That is SO much better than getting up at three! No, I’m not whining about getting up at 3 a.m.; I do it for a reason and I do not repine.  However, I LOVE getting to sleep in a little!  Even when I can’t exactly sleep (I am a long-time insomniac, but don’t worry about me).  I had no plan for the day, but I knew there were several things it would behoove me to get done.  Go to Melfe’s for work shoes, study my lines for Steel Magnolias, finish writing the various murder mysteries I have committed to, clean the house, do laundry, go running… the list went on and on.

I crossed out the first item mentioned by strategically postponing it till Wednesday, Steven’s next day off.  He wants to go to Melfe’s to see if they have any shoes that might be good for his work.  Having good shoes makes your work day SO much easier to get through!  After chatting on the phone with my Dad and Mom (that was not on the list, but it is something I almost always do on Saturday), I wrote a few postcards to the folks I usually write postcards to (that was not on my list, either, but it is something I usually do).

After Steven left for work, I felt kind of like a lump pondering what to do.  When Tabby was our dog, she loved to walk with me to the post office.  However, Spunky does not like to take long walks.  I took him for a short business meeting, after which he contentedly snoozed on the couch.  I went upstairs to take a shower.  After I was naked but before I was actually in the shower, I noticed what I had been noticing all week, that the bathroom really needed cleaning.  I have heard about women cleaning naked, to keep from messing up their clothes.  I tried it.  It was no problem, except when Spunky started barking and I wondered if someone was at the door.  I put on a bathrobe and ventured down.  False alarm.  I finished cleaning and showered.  Now what to do?

Finally I sat down and started working on my lines for Steel Magnolias.  I do the trick that was taught to me by my fourth grade church school teacher, Sister Mary Christina.  It was how she taught us the Act of Contrition (fourth grade is when you make your First Confession, or Reconciliation as I guess it is called now).  I include the trick for any possible benefit others may derive from it:  Take it one or two sentences at a time.  Say it out loud ten times, looking at it, say if five times not looking at it.  I still have to study the lines after that, but the trick really helps.

You know, it is kind of boring to say a line out loud over and over, not to mention hard on your throat when you have a little post-nasal drip, which I often do.  I persevered as best I could.  Finally I decided to take a break and walk to the post office.  I even thought of doing a Pedestrian Post and just writing about the walk, because I took a rather long way back and stretched it to almost a half hour.  I need the exercise and I really wasn’t up to running.  If only it were not face-hurting cold out, my life would have been perfect.

Back home, I studied my lines some more, spent some time looking at Facebook, read the newspapers I had been neglecting all week (this could be construed as a cleaning chore, since I put them in the recycling box when I had finished with them), waited for Steve to come home for lunch.  The only other remotely useful thing I did was go to the liquid store (as it is sometimes known) and purchase some white wine, a glass of which I am currently enjoying.  Oh, and I took Spunky for two more business meetings.  Good dog.

Ooh, look at me, over 800 words.  I wonder if anybody will read to the end?  If you did, thanks!  I hope I wasn’t boring.  And I hope you are having a wonderful weekend.  Peace out.