Obsessed with Obsessed!

I feel that this game isn't anywhere near as involved or complicated as Farmville, but somehow it is insidiously addictive ... perhaps because it is so mindless! I find myself playing it when I want to procrastinate and avoid thinking about things I need to do (like packing, in the present case). Yesterday I spent so much time playing this stupid game that I literally dreamed about little "O"s all night!!

Obsessed!

My Walking Route

Ever since I returned from our July, 2007 trip to Paris, I've been walking the same 4.2-mile route just about every day, in sweltering summer humidity and in the icy blasts of winter. Caroline, Alec, and I had spent so much time just walking around in Paris that when I came home, I really wanted to incorporate a regular walk into my day, in addition to my morning workouts.

I walk the same route every day because I find it easier to set off mindlessly on the exact same path, able to concentrate on whatever recorded book or lecture I happen to be listening to at the moment. In this way, I've explored such subjects as Victorian Britain, the Middle Ages, Greek mythology and philosophy, and the history of the Papacy with lectures from the Teaching Company and Modern Scholar, and listened to books ranging from The Moonstone and Barchester Towers to the entire "Amelia Peabody" mystery series (20 or so books!) by Elizabeth Peters.

Although my route doesn't change, the scenery, the circumstances, and the weather (!) certainly do. As I complete my circuit day after day, memories of previous walks will often come flooding back. As I round one particular turn at the far end of my walking route, dripping with sweat in the blazing summer sun, I might remember how I took shelter under some pine trees a previous winter when a sudden shower of sleet sent me scurrying off the road. I might remember worriedly rushing the last two miles home as I heard the city storm warnings going off and watched ominously black clouds moving closer and closer. A particular location in my route will bring to mind the time I watched with fascination as a snake shimmied across the road or I carried a turtle to the safety of the grass on the other side, or the day Alec drove up from behind, unable to wait until I returned home to tell me that he'd gotten a 235 on his PSAT. I cherish the beautiful spring and fall days, when the temperature is perfect for walking, and enjoy them all the more remembering times when a 20-degree windchill has turned my face to a frozen mask or when I've been caught in a sudden downpour and gotten soaked to the skin.

At least half of my walking route is on roads without sidewalks, in an area of Lexington which, though only a mile or two from downtown, has changed little from the time when it was the city's countryside. Needless to say, the proximity to downtown combined with the rural ambiance has made this a very desirable place to live, and housing prices have soared. In the past three years, I have watched several houses being demolished and replaced with new structures triple or quadruple the size. At the end of my photos, I have pictures of three houses that I have watched undergo this transformation ... the first two being "trophy mansions" that have been built from the ground up and the last a much more imaginative (and, in my mind, livable and attractive) remodel of an existing ranch-style house.

Shout Out to Target

I really love these plastic tumblers! $2.99 for the tall glasses and $1.99 for the shorter ones. (Of course, the fact that there's iced decaf hazelnut coffee in my tall glass makes it look extra appealing!) Going to Target always gives me a warm, happy feeling ... the very opposite of Walmart! Maybe with Walmart's redesign, I should feel more positive about it, but I always have to force myself to make a trip there, whereas I'll find any excuse for a trip to Target. The aisles are wide, the floors are polished, there's rarely any wait to check out, and the quality of goods, especially bedding and kitchenware, is so much better than Walmart. Not to mention that, as far as I know, there's no website for "People of Target" ... that says something right there!

Murder Must Advertise

I’m now listening to this murder mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers for at least the third time in its unabridged version and have decided that this might possibly be my all-time favorite light reading (or, in this case, listening). Not only is Lord Peter Wimsey a most dishy hero (I’m pretty sure Ms. Sayers was hopelessly in love with this character of her own creating), but the who-dunnit-and-why mystery is satisfyingly complicated without being convoluted and the characters, most of whom work in an advertising agency, extremely well-rounded … they “jump off the page” even though the book was written almost 70 years ago. Best of all, it’s brightly witty and satirical, even laugh-aloud funny at many points. Drawing from her own experience in an advertising agency, Ms. Sayers makes Pym’s Publicity come alive, and I suspect not much has changed in the advertising world since her time. Her description of the firm is a case in point:

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym’s Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong’s fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer’s time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity’s worth producing — for some reason — poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

Sandals

I love these sandals! Perhaps that’s why I have three pairs. I’ve told Marsha before that I fear I have the makings of a shoe hoarder. It seems like the story of my life that I find a pair of shoes, or a shirt, or a whatever, that I love to death, and then the store/company no longer makes them. So I’ve gotten to the point where when I find something I like, I end up buying multiples just to ensure that I have a good supply for a few years.

Things I love that I can no longer find:

• Tissue polo shirts from J. Crew

• Cute beaded or flowered flip flops from J. Crew that are NOT made out of plastic but instead have comfortable ribbon straps and a leather thong for between the toes

• Sun-washed polo shirts from Johnny Boden

• Privo skimmers with mesh inserts

Anyway, I’m glad that I grabbed these sandals because I see that DSW Online no longer offers the turquoise color. Marsha grabbed the black ones, so we’ll have to see if she thinks they’re comfortable.

Colors

Back in 1987 or 1988, my mother showed me a book she’d just bought called Color Me Beautiful. I seem to remember that my mother was an “autumn,” whereas I believe I was either a “spring” or “summer” (whichever looks best in cool pastels … needless to say, I don’t have the book in front of me, my mother’s copy having disappeared somewhere after she died). At the time, it seemed to make sense that some colors would suit a person better than others … and it explained why I was instinctively drawn to certain colors which turned out to be part of my “palette.” Certainly, the concept seemed to ring true after my mother’s death, when almost all of her beautiful clothes in shades of olive and rust and shades of brown … colors which suited her olive-toned skin, dark (thanks to Miss Clairol) hair, and hazel eyes, looked quite wretched with my blonde hair, bluish-grey eyes, and fair complexion.

However, even at the time, I felt there were problems with this whole color thing. First off, going to the store with a swath of swatches in your color palette and expecting to find clothes in those colors is a fantasy. As we all know, clothing designers decide long in advance what colors are going to be “in” for a particular season, and if olive green isn’t one of those colors, you’re going to have to hunt long and hard for any olive green clothes. Furthermore, who wants to be stuck season after season, year after year, wearing the same old shades? Do we really want to be stuck in such a rut?

All of which is prefatory to saying that I bought a T-shirt last Sunday in J. Crew which I’m absolutely sure is NOT “my color.” The photo below really doesn’t do justice to this shirt. It is not just an anemic pale-shrimp color. Think fluorescent orange highlighter pen … and you’re closer to the mark. But my eyes were drawn to it like a fish to a bright, shiny lure (an analogy which would be dear to my husband’s heart). Perhaps I am loving it not wisely, but too well.