The Shadows on My Wall Don't Sleep

One of the forums I frequent is in the midst of a mudslinging bitchfest on the possibility/impossibility of being both overweight/fat and healthy. I'm not going to bother with generalizations like that. It just got me thinking about my own personal history and my recent apparent weight loss (such as it is).

The lightest I can remember weighing was 193 pounds. I can remember the number because I was so damned proud that I had lost 15 pounds. I was down to a size 14, I remember because I found some awesome robin's egg blue jeans with totally useless zippers in the pockets (useless in the design sense, they served no purpose at all) and they had a 34" waist. I was 5'4" and hadn't yet had to look for "tall" jeans. I was 12.

The smallest size I can remember wearing in my adult life was when I was 21, I was 5'9" and a size 24. I remember because I was having to get new clothing of some sort almost every weekend because of how quickly I was dropping sizes. I went from a size 32 to the 24 in just a semester or so, probably due to walking on average 5 miles a day 5 days a week with one weekend of all day hikes once a month. My bra size went nuts, from a 50B to a 38DD/36DDD and I was buying every bright color and wild print I could get my hands on because I could. No more plain beige, white, or black bras! I discovered that underwires were actually pretty damned awesome if they fit right. It was the first time that my bust became the fit issue with clothing rather than my belly.

I went from an estimated 360 pounds to 325. I know because I actually joined a gym and stood on a scale. I was bench pressing 197 pounds, curling 45, and resorted to the pneumatic leg press machine because it offered 790 pounds of resistance. I started training with the vague idea of making getting into power lifting competitions. I also developed a hatred for bikes and treadmills that had nothing to do with my aerobic abilities and everything to do with my still being very large and tall. Bikes never had a seat adjustment that made pedaling comfortable (and we will not discuss the comfort of the seats) and treadmills are made remarkably narrow for a device encouraged to be used for weight loss. Stairclimbers are of the devil.

Now, as of today, I am 327 pounds (if the scale is to be believed) and I have no clue what my actual size is. Based on the jeans that I have on hand it's probably a 28/30. I'm a lot less muscular than I was, alas. I can, in stretch knits and empire waisted styles with ample fabric below the bust, wear a size 24/26 shirt. I tend toward 2X tees that show that "yes, I do have boobs, thanks, stop calling me sir" rather than going immediately for the loose 3Xs. I find myself fairly comfortable about my size and body with the exception of my belly. The T&A are looking rather nice lately, in my opinion.

Thankfully, I know, if the trend in weight lost continues, the belly will solve itself. I have always lost weight in a certain pattern, under the bust for a while, from the face and neck, and then back to the underbust and belly, then thighs. I don't know after that because I haven't ever managed to get that far. Hopefully the boobs never get on the list because I've always, always been cheated in that department. A woman hauling around as many pounds as I do should have a RACK, goddammit!

Or rather, autobiographies. More precisely, what the heck should I put in the bio space for my LJ user info page?

Seriously, I'm not inclined to put the "I was raised in a small town in Massachusetts..." sort of thing there. I'm over 30 so my "formative years" are really old news and I don't think they're interesting or even overly relevant for people that what to know about the person I am now.

So I'm going to do a variation on the old "ask me five questions" meme.

Reply to this post with things you'd like to know about me. My political views, my favorite color, anything. If I'm comfortably answering in public I'll do so. Hopefully somethings will be suitable for my bio section.

I'm not feeling that well today, but much better now than twelve hours ago so I'm not complaining.

The broken lamp has a new shade. The style is different and it's smaller but with the bead trim from the old shade added it really looks rather nice. It does need a bit of work still, it wasn't meant for this style of lamp so it has an extra "lip" that I'm trying to figure out how to remove. I have a bottle cutter but the glass is a bit thicker than your average bottle. I'm wondering if I'd be better off with a dremel and some sort of cutting/grinding wheel.

hafoc, being the sweetie he is, actually bought me another lamp the day after the first took a header. He tried to sneak it in on his lunch hour but I happened to be in the house at the time so the sneaking didn't go so well. :)

On an unrelated note, I think people should go to his journal congratulate him on his first paid publication. :)

What else... I have brackets for the shelf. I have some doubts over whether or not the center bracket will hold though. The shelf is an odd shape, sort of an elongated and slightly lopsided D, and while the ends are 10" the center is 18" (the whole thing is 6' long). The widest portion will be right over my monitor (to save it from the cats jumping on it and sleeping on the vents) and I'm having visions of the cats jumping on the edge over the monitor and their weight flipping the shelf off the brackets, even with the shelf screwed to them. Maybe I'll bolt the shelf to the brackets, at least at the back edge.

I'm addicted to a reality TV show. Yes, I know, it's totally wrong. ( Read more... )

Wow, that was a long ramble now wasn't it?

( Now for a silly "quiz" thing )

toshirodragon just keeps popping up in these things. :)

So I'm reading the reviews for A Good Offense (the sequel to The Best Defense) and I find this:

"...im not getting the whole purple haze thing, it flew right over my head."

For some reason that made me snicker.

Frankly, the reviews joisbishmyoga gets for these stories often make me depressed. Apparently people are reading and yet not reading these days. It's like they forget things that they read just a few sentences ago. Their comprehension seems spotty at best, and ask them to remember something from a previous chapter? Not going to happen apparently.

Now I know I have a somewhat odd and persistent memory but I can't believe that people can really forget something they read just a few minutes ago. My ability to remember stuff I read years ago (decades in some cases) can't be that bizarre, and remembering something from a month ago should be really simple and common, right?

Anyone out there have any experience with "oil paint pencils"? I'm probably just going to have to play with them but I figured I'd see if anyone has any tips before I get started.

I think I'll post this in my deviantART journal too, just in case my few watchers have experience.

I have way too much stuff.

I spent the day rearranging my room and assembling a new, smaller, desk for my PC. The monitor takes up a hell of a lot of space and the keyboard shelf is a bit too small to make using the mouse on it really easy but I can use the mouse on the desk surface when doing mouse intensive things so it will work out okay.

The room seems a lot bigger now, which is very cool. Now I just have to sort the detritus and figure out where I'm going to put it all. The Jeep still has stuff in it (the monster color laser for one) and somewhere in there is a box with my speakers. I actually know exactly what box and where but the rest of the box contents require me to clear a shelf or two in one of the bookcases so that might be a while. I'll just use another set of speakers in the mean time.

Dictionary.com Word of the Day for Tuesday August 24, 2004

fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:
  1.  (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.
  2. Interchangeable.

Okay.... So how does a word that shares an obvious root with "fungus" get this meaning?

Fungible comes from Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi (vice), "to perform (in place of)."

Wait a minute here, "fungus" meant vice? Hmm, ursulav would probably come up with something about mushrooms on a vice sting, I however can only think that my taste for mushrooms now has an explanation.

(And if I remember my noun declensions correctly, "fungi" is actually the genitive form of the noun. Assuming it's part of the secoond declension anyway and not a masculine or nueter fourth declesion noun. Damn I miss my high school Latin class, wish I had a copy of the text.)

River Styx Road.

There's a road named River Styx. In Ashburnham, Massachusetts.

There's a sleepy little bedroom town with a road named River Styx.

In New England.

Who lives there?

Dang it, I just might have to take a look down there, just for the hell of it.

And if it weren't for a rollover accident there about 15 minutes ago I would have continued to be ignorant of its existence.

Maybe I should be less irritated at my brother for leaving his radio (he's a fire captain and the town constable as well as head of the highway department) on when he went out of town for the evening?

NAH! Time to go turn that blasted thing OFF, it's way too loud.

I don't know when fish, rice, and miso soup became comfort food for me but it has. It's probably a knee-jerk reaction to the beef and potatoes diet my father insists on. I've always been fond of Americanized Chinese food and in recent years friends have gotten me hooked on Japanese food (though my tolerance for sushi has died out, even for unagi) and if I avoid the hot stuff I enjoy Korean as well (no kim chee, thank you).

Anyway, the day is looking better now that I've had my miso, rice, and fish. And I even managed to find some mp3s of The Pillows. Now I just need to get my anime fix in and I'll be bolstered for the usual evening bitchiness around here.

While poking around the stationary aisle of Walmart I spotted something very interesting, a liquid pencil.

Papermate makes what they call the "Ingenuity Liquid Pencil", a 0.7mm ball point pencil. As far as I can tell it's a gel style 'pen' with graphite for the 'ink'. I'll have to break this thing in a little, just like a new gel pen, but so far it's interesting at least. The line is finer than I expected (I like 0.5mm leads for my mechanical pencils and 'fine' and 'very fine' pens) and the coverage is spotty. I expect both of those traits to work themselves out with use, though I'd prefer the keep the fine line. As far as erasing the liquid pencil goes, it works better the longer the 'ink' has to dry. It's humid today so there is a distinct pressure mark from the rollerball in the paper.

While the packaging says it's an HB 'lead' I find it really hard to smudge. I had to apply a fair amount of deliberate pressure to smear the stuff, and it only worked on the fresh lines. This could be good or bad depending on your typical use for pencils. If you're a smudgy shadow penciler then forget this thing, it's not going to make you happy. If, however, you dread the haze of smudged pencil in your sketchbook this might be just the thing for you.

A note on style: It's a rollerball, it writes like a pen, even if the 'ink' is made of graphite. Sketches look like ballpoint sketches, not pencil sketches.