Lessons Newton Taught Us: Pants

Another valuable piece of information we would never have gained without our pup:

Whenever your human puts on pants, you must go smell them. Thoroughly.

Movie Review: Pretty in Pink

I just finished watching Pretty in Pink in its entirety for the first time. My considered opinion is very much meh. 5.0 out of 10.

Girlin' it Up in the Garage

Tonight, I performed some maintenance---manly, according to conventional gender roles---on my track car---double manly---while wearing Alison's slippers---girlie. I can't decide if my transvestite auto maintenance* should count as masculine, feminine, or simply strange.

* The floor in our garage has been quite cold lately, so I needed footwear. Alison's slippers** were conveniently placed, and I only planned to be out there for a few minutes.

** These are the slippers that Newton seems think combine all that's good about socks with all that's good about leather. Mmm.

Handerpants?

I don't think I've ever posted a clothing-related "Who ordered that?" post, but now I have a reason to do so: handerpants.

Whedonverse Alumni

Wondering what your favorite Whedonverse actors have been up to lately? Well too bad, because that's not the subject of this post. Instead, this post is about what a couple of them did some years before they me Whedon.

First up is this video for George Harrison's "I Got My Mind Set On You, from 1988.* The boy in the video is played by Alexis Dennisof, everyone's favorite rogue demon hunter. I found this video indirectly, because Dennisof's wife and co-actor, Alyson Hannigan, tweeted it, presumably to lightly tease the man. Please note the hairstyles and fashion in this video.

Second, and last, is this 1992 advertisement for the Nerf Slingshot. The spokeskid in the ad is Seth Green. His hair is priceless, I must say.*** The girls' outfits are equally timeless.

Enjoy.

* Interestingly, Harrison's performance was a cover. The song was originally written in 1962.**

** "Wierd Al" Yankovic created a parody of Harrison's version called "This Song's Just Six Words Long."

*** It's no worse than a 'do he's sported more recently, when he couldn't claim fashion impairment due to pubescent flood of hormones.

Vibram Five Toes

I've been aware of Vibram's Five Finger shoes for a while, but now I really want a pair.

Risto! No, it's not What You Say when Doing Magic Tricks.

Regular readers of our blog know that I've been doing CrossFit for about 2.5 years now. I like that it incorporates multiple exercise modalities and tries to provide general, functional fitness. Not surprisingly, CrossFit includes a bit of Olympic weightlifting,* which is great for developing explosive power and good for developing balance and flexibility. The Olympic lifts are also a lot of fun, at least in my opinion. The skill element is so great that I always feel a sense of accomplishment when I execute a lift properly.

One problem with these lifts, though, is that it's difficult to do them correctly with the typical cushioned athletic footwear. Shoes that are great for jumping, running, and other activities will leave you without enough stability when you are accelerating more than your bodyweight off the floor, or, especially, when you are at the bottom of the overhead squat phase of the snatch. Thus, I recently ordered a pair of Risto weightlifting shoes from Gwen Sisto and Ivan Rojas.** Gwen spent a lot of time helping me with the sizing. Determing the correct shoe size over the internet is always a challenge for me, in part because I'm so picky about it, and in part because my feet are unusually small. Sadly, the first pair were too big---I like my shoes to fit snugly---but Gwen sent out the next smaller size. The new shoes arrived today, and they fit quite well. So, after doing yesterday's workout of the day---I'm a day behind---in the new shoes, I practiced my overhead squat, clean and jerk, and snatch. Everything felt much better. I still have a lot of work to do in order to perfect my technique, but the shoes are already helping.

The Risto shoes, by the way, are hand-made in Columbia with local-to-there materials. The price is very competitive with other weightlifting shoes, and I must say that the service I received was very good. So, if you do any Olympic lifts, I recommend tyring dedicated weightlifting shoes, and, if you do, I further recommend that you give Gwen and Ivan your business.

* That's the snatch and the clean and jerk, and variations thereupon. Don't confuse weightlifting with powerlifting or weight training.

** Wife and husband, respectively. You can see guess where the brand name came from.

Betrayal

I need this shirt.

Public-Service Announcement: Snuggies Are Not For Driving

I know your Snuggie keeps you comfortably warm while maintaining your ability to move your arms, but don't wear one behind the wheel.

Smick-Smack

I made up the noun form of this onomatopoetic perfectly cromulent word while out for a walk with Alison and Newton:

smick-smack, noun.  A flat, backless rubber sandal secured to the foot by a thong passing between the first two toes, a flip-flop.

So, of course I had to develop a verb form:

smick-smack, verb.  To suddenly reverse one's direction, position, or attitude, to flip-flop.

Example:  The senator smick-smacked on the question of subsidising American smick-smack production.

Big Dress

I've learned many things from Alison.  This one I learned during our first dance at our wedding:

Big dress, small steps.

I am the Stig

Now if We Could Just Get Him to Howl Again

A neighbor, who owns two cuddly and snorty pugs, recently made Newton a snazzy seasonal bandanna. Observe how sharp he looks in it.

Ashley in the Car Seat

Here's a metaphor I developed after hearing stories of my dear sister-in-law's toddlerhood:

Ashley in the car seat, metaphor. Any person who is so uncomfortably warm that she must remove some or all of her clothing, even if restrained in some way.

The Purse Museum

So, every time I go to the mall, I have to visit the purse museum. A museum? At the mall? Dedicated to, what, the history of purses? Um, no, not exactly. That's just what I call the Coach store...because I just go visit the pretty things in there. It's not like I can actually BUY anything there...and it's all displayed so nicely with pretty lighting and such. See?


It kinda does look like a museum, doesn't it? Isn't that a clever name for the store? It sums up the niceness of it AND pokes fun at myself for my frugal spending habits. Haha! Clever! Catchy! I have to change it!

Why? Because I have the world's most awesome husband who, for my 30th birthday (can you believe I'm 30? me neither) bought me a COACH PURSE. Not just any Coach purse, but the one I have been stalking for, like, 3 years. This one:


I love it. Thank you, Michael!

Oh, the Shoemanity!

Alison has this habit of not untying her shoes before taking them off. I've tried to convince her that doing so is bad for the shoes, that it stretches the upper and stresses the seams, but she remains unconvinced. It makes me cringe every time she does it, especially when I've loaned her the shoes she's mistreating so. I'm not even sure how she can remove her feet from her shoes when they are still tied; I certainly can't. She must wear her shoes much more loosely than I do.

This could be---say it with me---a deal-breaker.

Lynx

I've just decided that all the men in our wedding party will wear these.

Wedding Dress Fitting...Oh Boy!

I went to IL this past weekend to have my first wedding dress fitting. I was SO excited! I spent the weekend hanging out with my sister who is home from college; Monday was the big fitting appointment. We were planning to go to the fitting at 11am, grab some lunch afterward and then Ashley was going to drop me off at the airport because my flight was at 5:30 in the evening.

We showed up at the bridal store and they remembered me. All the ladies who worked there got all excited and went in the back to get my dress. They hung it up in its opaque pink garment bag in the dressing room and I went in to try it on. My wedding dress! How exciting! I unzipped the bag and.....

...it was not my dress. It was some completely different dress that I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE. OH GOD, WHERE THE HELL IS MY DRESS?! So, attempting to be calm, I went over to the woman who was ringing up another bride at the counter and informed her that that was not my dress. She proceeded to look horrified (as did the woman odering her dress!) and go look in the back to see if something had been switched while I tried not to cry in public. It turns out that the factory transposed the dress number. Instead of sending dress #672 they sent dresss #762. Fan-freaking-tastic. And, oh yeah, they don't have a dress #672 in stock in my size, so the earliest they can get it to me is mid-late July. Keep in mind that the wedding is August 12.

So, at this point the ladies who work there are totally freaked out. I can tell that they are genuinely upset about this, and the woman who owns the store offers me two options:

1) They will order the new dress in my size and when it comes in they will ship it to me in MD and pay for me to have it altered out there.
2) They have a floor model of the dress I ordered in the store that has only been tried on a couple of times and is one size smaller than the one I ordered. They can have their seamstress let it out a bit and I can come back that afternoon to see if it will work and if I take that one, they will give it to me for half price.

So, I took option 2 with contingency plan 1. I tried on the smaller dress which mostly fit except for being a bit tight in the waist. Ashley and I stayed in the area. We got some lunch and hung out at the mall until they called us at 2:40 to let us know that the dress was ready for me to try on again. It did fit, actually, and so they took the measurements for the hem and sent us on our way.

Now, Ashley and I had to make it to O'Hare airport in time for me to make a 5:30 pm flight, which was a bit dicey since it was, at this time, 3:10 or so and we had to stop for gas on the way. Plus, we were coming from a different suburb than usual so we had to take a different route with which we were unfamiliar. Oh, and on the way we encountered a bad accident and a major traffic jam.

It all ended up okay...actually, it ended up better than okay since I made my flight AND I am getting my wedding dress for half price. Still, it was an extremely stressful day to say the least! *sigh* I should have gone with a Greek theme and worn a white bedsheet...I mean toga.

Can We Watch the Trek Marathon on G4?

I believe that I've discovered the two, reciprocal explanations for the success of my relationship with Alison:

• I've never forced her to watch any Star Trek.
• She's never forced me to go shoe shopping.
  

Bras on Parade

Two brassiere stories hit the news sites today. That's right: two.

• First up: apparently a university in China is offering a degree in "bra studies". I'm sure there’s a joke in here somewhere, probably about how, in my day, studying bras was considered extracurricular, but I'm way too mature and dignified to make it.
• Next on the docket: a Japanese company will soon offer furry, heated bras.The idea is to reduce heating costs thus save the rain forest.As both a man and an environmentalist, I can’t help feeling a bit left out.

On the grounds of equal opportunity, I expect there to be two stories on boxers or briefs in the news tomorrow.