Wellington · Living

I blame trying to keep up with Twitter and Facebook for my failures to post to my journal. Checking them, checking my forums, checking checking checking, and I end up with no time to be. To write.

But I've got time to workout, because, dammit, I'm paying for it, so I'm going. So let's write about my workouts, 'cause there was a progress check, and more to write than can just be Twittered.

( Last night I had another six week progress test with my trainer. )

All good news, really. The best news, though, is that while I thought this six-week boundary meant the heavy lifting was over, and it was onto fat burning time, it's not. We're just going to really begin the hypertrophy phase in two weeks. I'd thought that this was the muscle-growing phase, and so with the boundary, that'd be the end of muscle gains for a while. But no, Pete's been upping the weights, but keeping a mix of strength and stability exercises all this time. He wanted to do that for eight weeks, then begin the low-rep, high weight, get-massive program. When I get back from my beach vacation, we really begin.

So, maybe not in the best shape for this summer, but hopefully in good for fall. And really, has there been that much reason to have a beach body this "summer" so far?

State T-shirt, bitches!!

OK, hard to miss Michael Jackson passing. But who else all died this past week? Quick, tell me, before they're totally forgotten...

Most entertaining quote I've read so far on Michael Jackson's death: "Once he dies, he doesn't have any obligation to perform."

My first reaction, was, well, duh. Then my second thought was that if zombies could be made of celebrities, concert promoters would have houngans/bokors on staff.

The third thought was that if anyone famous was already a zombie, it would have been Michael Jackson.

The trouble with me mourning his death is that I already mourned him lost decades ago. But I still have sympathy for his loved ones, and all those who loved him, for whatever reason. And I feel bad for all those who only ever knew him as what he turned into, without loving him before he changed.

Today is the longest day, not in hours, but in future memories. I'm sure that_cad and swirlychick will remember it always.

Congratulations to you both on being enfinaced.

Wellington Street has never been more fascinating to me. Take these quotes from the garden tour book, one describing the space at the Columbus end of Wellington, the other the space at the far (park) end:

"The Victorian, gothic style building was destroyed by fire many years ago. The vacant lot evolved into a horseshoe pitching area, complete with old sofas and miscellaneous chairs. ... [a] developer needed the land for staging. Couches, chairs, and horseshoes gave away to machines, disruption, and a ravaged piece of land. The developer left the entire parcel enclosed with chain link and no access. A few neighbors cut an opening and the path was made. Other like-minded South Enders began dropping off plants..."

"Wellington Street was a 'no man's land' back in the 1960s— the place where you might recover your stolen car. In the late '70s, the building at 32 Wellington burned, and, when the City razed the building, a headless body was found. It was never identified."

The garden tour this year went heavily into Wellington Street places, very likely due to the large amount of my immediate neighbors who work on the Land Trust, Wellington Green, and other South End community boards. I can't believe how much I got to find out about them.

My neighbors at 11, 13, 15, and 17 Wellington Street knocked down the fences between their back gardens and have been sharing one large 80-ft wide garden space, with four harmonious styles, for years.

My neighbors at 8 Wellington have an amazing roof-top deck garden that they've been tending for a decade. They had a photo album of their garden with shots of 111 Huntington slowly filling in as the pictures progressed. Their house is absolutely fabulous (had to go through it to the roof), and the roof garden the talk of the tour.

I swear, my empty window boxes are positively SHAMING me right now. I'm flushing red just thinking about them. I live on a street where the community broke into someone else's lot to guerrilla garden it, and I'm sitting there with empty window boxes right across from the scene of their struggle. Who knows, they may break in and take over...

Written from stop #20 (ignore the second floor).

In other news, apparently my downstairs neighbor's garden is on the South End Garden Tour this year. Who knew 3 Wellington would be on the tour? Not me. No warning given whatsoever. So much for walking around naked.

On the other hand, I don't begrudge the masses a peek at Wellington Living. After all, I've been publicly blogging about it for years now. I almost feel like going out and pointing out such sights as the Worst Cable Hookup possible, and Most Annoying Parking by an SUV in a Small Alley. But then, they're noticing those anyway...

A fabulous time was had by all at the Kiki Room in the Estate.

Enough dancing was had that DJ Wilhelm was generally held to have done his job. It turned out I could plug in Clothar, and so was able to manipulate the mix on the fly. Much manipulation ensued, to try to match the music to the immediate desires of the dancers. I was surprised to have to add a bit more disco, to skip the 80s until the end, and by the fact that the very handsome bartender Mark kept giving his DJ free drinks.

Our special guest was Miss Marguerite, also known as Perfect Peggy. She showed me up as usual with her extreme fabulousness. I'm amazed by this one photo (below):

We'll keep that for her first album cover, I think.

I didn't do much for Pride this year, but there were two special incidents that stuck out.

The first happened as the Pride Parade was still starting up. Like last year, they lined up the parade starting four blocks from my house. While I was getting my hair done at Cha Cha Cha, we'd seen folks drifting by Michael's giant plate glass window, in all their entertaining variety. unappropriate wanted a bit more time before we went biking, so I went down to see the parade start. Instead of having the parade go by me, since it wasn't moving, I went to the beginning and walked to the end.

At the end of the parade, around where the South End Branch of the Public Library is, I snapped this picture, which is really my neighborhood in a nutshell.

See, the lady in the wheelchair and the one with the green shirt and orange lai, they are there every sunny weekend, with clothing and nicknacks lined up along the library park fence. I have no idea if they ever really sell much, but they are there, and I always look, every time.

This weekend, they were invaded by drag queens, and they didn't even bat an eye: no, instead, they jumped on the chance for sales. Yuppie breeders were going by with their strollers, people were having a good time in the street, and neighborhood fixture black ladies were helping drag queens find shoes. Peace and love, everybody!


My other Pride story doesn't come with a picture, but still has a happy ending. So, unappropriate and I did go biking, which was a story completely unto itself. I got back, barely showered and ate, then raided for three hours. I made the whole raid hit a hard stop just so I could hit the dance floor at T.T. the Bears ("Heroes" night, of course) with unappropriate by 11:30pm. Again, the night at "Heroes" could be a whole story until itself, especially around the hot Tall One I chased most of the evening. But the real story happened when I was walking home.

Yes, I ended up walking home from Central Square, at 1:45am in the morning. This after a 30+ mile bike ride of some difficulty. Anyway, I'm walking south down Mass Ave, almost to MIT, when these two young black turks and their two ladies turn onto the avenue behind me... and start making noises. OK, yes, I dressed a bit gay. Not over the top, but the skin-tight eggplant T-shirt was kinda a giveaway. Whatever: Pride, bitches! Anyway, they're talking to themselves, and the two guys start in with actual comments. The one I still don't understand, but that got me to answer back, was the question, "How many balls can you bench press?" (Quoi?)

My answer: "Four. Yours and his, how about it?" The one who asked the question actually jumped back, and suddenly I had no fear, just sass. That's right, honey: here, queer, get over it. This is Massachusetts, baby! OK, I only thought those last two. All I said was, "Hey, see back over there? Gay Club: this is our neighborhood too." (OK, the club was the Paradise, skeavy and now under construction, so I don't go there, but hey.)

So then the two girls jump in with the defense of their men, by asking stuff like "Why don't you like pussy?" Answer: "Do you like it?" Much hemming and hawing as we continue walking. Finally, one of the girls asks, "Don't you like girls? Why would you turn gay?", and I give the flippant shock answer "Because dick is so good, right girls?" They nodded sagely, and one actually did a full-on "Uh Huh!" and that was that. A little pride and understanding, early in the morning.

Maybe I could have been a little less stereotypical, but at least I didn't give ground or act embarrassed. Full of pride is what I'd have to say I was, and that's fairly unusual for me. Can I get a "You Go, Boy!"?

Hey folks.

Just a reminder: this Saturday, June 20th, is the 16th Annual South End Garden Tour, from 10am to 4pm. It's a self-guided, at-your-own-pace tour of my absolutely fabulous neighborhood's gardens. It's great fun poking around in other people's obsessively kept backyards, getting a glimpse into their houses. There are some fantastic hidden corners of the neighborhood to see.

The money goes to a very worthy cause, the South End Open Space Land Trust: they support a lot of community gardens and open spaces, including the lovely garden parks at the two ends of my street. I plan to go a bit after noon, or later depending on how bad my hangover is from DJing my sister's party at Estate the night before. But in order to take other folks around, which I love, I'm happy to delay to meet up. I do need to be done by a hard-stop of 3:30 to make a gallery showing (it's quite a weekend coming up!)

Alas, not my server, nor am I gonna roll and level a character just to participate. Or pay for a char transfer.

But go WoW Pride Parade! Arkibal the Purple Paladin will be with you in spirit.

—it's amazing how it's been uncovering the cool old pictures folks have around. I guess it's the all-inclusiveness of it that's inspiring people.

My sister and my brother-in-law had a great time in New York in the 80's: the pictures don't lie.

One of the dangers of LJ is when your friends post, it makes you think the history is recorded. But if it ain't in your own journal, the rest of your friends don't know, and you'll never find it later yourself. So I gotta catch up!

For instance, last weekend unappropriate and I went on a bike adventure, which was only recorded in his journal. See, unappropriate has a fabulous bike. Here's his post on Clyde the Bike with pictures. Like I've started back up on working out, Nick's using his new bike to get in shape. And we've done a few weekend rides together. Well, last weekend, since we'd both spend weeks getting into better shape, we decided to push it. No, not in the Salt'n'Pepa sense: please, people.

I biked to his place in Central, we took the T to Alewife, and did the Minuteman Trail to its end in Bedford. So far, nothing we hadn't done before. Then, Nick says there's this trail to South Billerica if we'd like to tack a bit more on. Now, we were feeling pretty good, since we're at the midpoint of the ride, and the trip from Lexington to Bedford is pretty much all downhill. I was a bit hungry 'cause I hadn't eaten lunch, and it was like 1:30pm, but I had a powerbar. So, sure, we go off in search of this trail. Well, after you cross the Great Road, this "trail" turns into a gravel path through the woods. Since my bike's a mountain bike, and Nick's bike has all the fenders you could want to block shit flying up from the ground, we continue. This trail quickly became muddy, then sandy, then at one point I swear it turned into a stream bed. But, thanks to some new padded biking gloves and my awesome mountain bike, I'm doing OK. Finally, it petered out in the parking lot of the Raytheon campus in South Billerica, next to Route 3. We had no fucking idea where we were, and let me tell you, there's nothing there. Nothing.

So, only now it dawns on us, we have no choice but to go back. We looked around a bit for some other way back, but there was too much danger of getting lost. So back we went. And, of course, when we got to Bedford, it was all uphill to Lexington. Luckily, I had a tremendous motivation: I was starving. I mean, I don't think I've been that hungry in a long time. I just concentrated on getting to Lexington and food, and somehow made it.

Once in Lexington Center, I spotted the Bertucci's, and could not be persuaded from it. They chopped my salad into coleslaw, but I didn't care: I had rolls and steak and carbs and yum. We then beached ourselves for a little tanning before heading back the long downhill to Alewife.

OK, here's the second place we were stupid. Once again, we'd just finished a long downhill, and had rested a bit. So in the name of exploration, we decided to bike back to Central, instead of taking the T. Dumb, dumb, dumb. This time what got me through was getting to Harvard Square. Once there, since I've done the commute down Mass Ave so many times, it doesn't seem to take any time. We managed to get to Central, and Nick went off to his reward. Me: I had to bike back from Central home.

So, I ended up biking all but 2 miles of the round trip from Boston Proper to Billerica and back, some of it off-road trail biking (~7 miles of that). I think it was like 30-35 miles or something like that. I was able to sit at my computer and raid that night, but only by locking my legs in place. To think unappropriate and I had discussed the possibility of dancing that night.

The punchline of all this is that I've only just kept on abusing my poor legs. The next day, I had to head from my place to Inman Square. It being a Sunday, the #1 bus was barely running. So I started walking. I got to Central Square before the #1 bus finally passed me, so I just kept on walking. The return trip went the same way: I was at the Harvard Bridge before it came, so ended up walking home. Monday, ha, was the first day of my new, more intense, strength building routine. Guess what we started with that day? Yup, lower body! Fun! What with running Wednesday night, and another workout last night (squats! split squats! hamstring curls! Further exercises so painful they're named after Eastern European nations!), I'm looking forward to a couple of hours in a car today, and on a train tomorrow, doing nothing with my lower body.

OK, I lied, this is all American Idol news. Well, at least about the reactions.

Can I just say how distracting it is to a geek/old timer/loser like me that the abbreviation for American Idol is just "AI"? Statements like "Adam really IS AI" and "Arkansas made the rest of us take their AI" are really confusing when your first reading is always "Artificial Intelligence" Oh, language shifts, you happen, I know, but you hurt me.

Also: what the hell with the sides going crazy about "Christians vs. Gays" and "States vs. the United States"? You'd think Arkansas seceded, or Pat Buchanan ordered the Right to kill all gays. I never, never thought I'd read the sentence "This is revenge for the Miss America results." Woah, people. Woah.

So, I've been meaning to post about the excellent girlfriends' day out my sister Cathy and I had last Friday. But there were some pictures of most excellent discoveries, but they sit trapped in my Razr until I can find an old USB 1.1 Mini-B cable with which to download then. Which may not even be possible anymore. Stupid inherited phone from my boss!

Oh yes, you read right: it was specifically a "girlfriends' day out." At at least two different points before, Cathy has actually turned to me and said, in all seriousness, that I am her only girlfriend. She's seriously deluded: she has plenty of girlfriends. But she does live with two to three men, no women, and her office is currently filled more with guys than she's used to. So I can see how she might be needing some girl time with her closest gay relative.

( We started Friday out perfectly from its very first moment... )

So, tonight was my six week progress check in at Fitness Together. Wow, it's been six weeks since the return post; I had no idea.

( The results were good. )

Then, since the test only took half our time, Pete was all like, let's fit in that upper body workout anyway. Nice. Nothing like leaving with a huge pump. Also, he got me up to lifting 60 lbs dumbbells tonight on the dumbbell bench press, so I'm feeling back to strong there again. That's not that much weight, but it was for twelve reps, so I'm sure I could do more with the barbell, if he'd let me. But right now he's all about the dumbbells. No wonder my forearms are thicker.

So, in short (too late): Woo-Hoo YEAH! [fist pump]

Also, I guess I should have believed ejvc when she told me I looked bigger. And thanked her and the rest of y'all for your compliments. Thank you.

I swear I do not photograph well. This is the best of fifteen pictures, all trashed for freakiness. Why does smiling always make it look like one of my eyes is off center?

But, here you go, only because I did promise some kind of picture of the sought after shirt. I'm thinking a size smaller might have made the black work better, but I do need to have some flexibility in it. I swear it's good in person.

Ugh, this is why I hate cameras. They hate me, so I hate them back.

It is at times like this that I am hit by how laughable it is that the conventual common value for the word "nearsighted" is a negative one, while "farsighted" is positive. Because in an eye health context, it's the total opposite. Thanks to an eye exam that required my pupils be dilated, I'm currently farsighted, and it SUCKS.

I'm only able to write this post by use of Apple's Universal Access settings: I used them to set the font so fracking large the guys working on the Hubble space telescope could read this.

With everyone in my family except a few lucky souls having ended up farsighted, I know it's in my future. But OH HOW I WILL BE FULL OF HATE OF IT.

As an update to my little "I want that" shirt post, I just went back to the store, because they hadn't called me yet to say it was in, and they'd said Thursday at the latest. Well, guess what: the other store blew it, and forgot to send the shirt over. From listening in on the phone conversation, which I kinda insisted on doing (he tried to walk to the back to make the call, but I followed him), it looks like the shirt was set aside and they do have it. So hopefully I will get it by Monday now.

Because this happens to me pretty much 75% of the time I want a specific, non-dull-basics item, I'm not too hopeful. I'm fully expecting to hear it got sold out from under me or lost, and, in the meantime, all the other ones they had at all the other stores have been sold.

My feeling is that most retail clothing works that if you can't get it that moment at the store, you're usually screwed. And, if you're a weird size like me, they won't have it in your size at that moment. The solution apparently for most consumers is: go to the stores all the time, and strike immediately. Once again, I take some glee that retail and such consumers are feeling the financial pinch, because god dammit, the hard-working money-saving no-free-time folks want their revenge!

They offered me 30% off the item in question for my troubles. Well, yes, that's nice of you, but considering it's one shirt, I doubt the discount was worth my time, and just cuts into your profit. Dig that grave a little deeper, morons, and don't be surprised when your store goes under.

Sadly, this has filled me with pessimism that I'll have any fun shopping in stores with my sister tomorrow, because, foolish me, I'm actually looking for specific items.

So Friday my eye caught this T-shirt/jogging shirt athletic thingy on a mannequin in the window of the City Sports right around the corner from work, and I said to myself, hey, I like that... but, why bother, they won't have it by the time I get around to going in there.

Yesterday, as I was leaving, I surprised myself looking for it again, and being pleased to see it, although I still didn't believe I'd ever buy it.

This morning, as I came back by it again, I decided I really liked it, but probably wouldn't have time to get in and search for it, plus it won't be there.

At the beginning of lunch just now, I looked at it, decided it might be fine to try to find on-line some time, but walked by.

As I was walking back to the office, I finally stopped in the store, looked around for it, couldn't find it anywhere but on the mannequin, and walked out.

A half hour ago, I went back. I talked to three people until they got the real guy who could handle the difficult task of finding something. I then made him search all over the store for it. I then made him look it up in the computer, find what other City Sports had it in stock, and call immediately to have them yank it off their shelves and send it to this City Sports. They found one large (no mediums apparently exist in this world anymore) in some store way out in the boonies, and I didn't let them off the hook until the voice on the other side of the phone said he had it in his hands, and was setting it aside to send to Cambridge. They'll call me when it gets in, likely Thursday, but possibly tomorrow.

I'm thinking I'll be dropping by to poke them tomorrow to see if it came in.

Now, it's just an athletic shirt. I'm having a hard time understanding why for this shirt, I got past my natural pessimism about clothing and sizing to force my way to get what I wanted. I think some of it has to do with some current clothing dissatisfaction. I haven't bought anything except a basic essential item replacement in four or five months (i.e. an eternity to that_cad and swirlychick, who right now are wondering if their friend has become a hobo.) But some it was just sheer desire to get what I wanted for once, dammit. There was a point when the assistant went over to the mannequin to see if I could just have the one shirt on it, and declared it a small. I just nodded, because I already knew that, not by being able to measure with my eyes, but because that's how it always is. If I want something, the very rare times I do, forget it, it's out of stock, not in your size (I hear "you freakishly huge freak; why do you even try liking this style?" in my head.)

So, for once, mine. Hopefully the next time I see something, I'll just go right to getting service and making it happen, instead of the usual pessimistic pass-by.