Year: 2008

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To Erma Bombeck, With Love

As many of you know, I’ve been struggling with my weight & fitness for the past couple of years. I was in pretty great shape when I met Betty, & got lazy, for starters, which was then exacerbated by (1) pretty extreme depression after 9/11; (2) quitting a job that was very active for writing, which is not; and (3) getting older and having my metabolism slow. Effectively it’s been a decade since I worked out at a gym regularly, which is embarassing to admit, though I have almost always walked regularly, and some distances, do some yoga, work out with free weights & calisthenics, & of course try to watch what I eat.

Recently, I joined a gym again because watching what I eat and walking a lot and doing at-home workouts wasn’t helping.

But – I know this is going to be a shocking revelation – I am totally out of shape. I go to the gym in my baggy sweats and t-shirt, and get on the Precor elliptical machine, which is kind to my flat foot and bad knees, and start pedaling. In minutes, I notice how much slower I am going than anyone near me, and yet – and yet – my heart rate shoots straight out of any health zone, weight loss or cardiovascular. I slow down a little more, take breaks, watch my heart rate respond, and then notice I have become the literal tortoise to the hares pedaling around me. Continue reading “To Erma Bombeck, With Love”

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Dallas: Another LGBt Rift

A gay bar, and its gay bar owner, have decided to ban drag queens and trans women from their “Trashy Tuesday” night – exactly because the bar night is so crowded that they don’t have time to babysit the bad apples of their crowd.

“How do I separate one draq queen that is being bad from others?” Moore said. “We don’t have the time on Tuesday nights with all the people in here to sit there and tell them apart from one another. If a drag queen misbehaves one week and then the next comes back in a different outfit I wouldn’t be able to recognize them. That’s why I don’t want any of them in here on Tuesdays.”

Wow, now that IS tricky! How about you just ban the person who does the bad stuff?

(from The Dallas Voice. More at their blog. Thanks to Ben for the tip.)

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Dishdrawer Boor

Has everyone seen the ad for the Fisher & Paykel Dishdrawer? A woman is putting dishes away, from the dishwasher into the cupboard drawers. As she bends over the dishwasher, and then the drawer, again and again, her husband, sitting nearby on a comfy chair, is saying “Dish” and then “Drawer” which becomes “Dishdrawer” & voila, he’s invented this genius new thing.

& All I can think watching it is, He should get off his genius ass & help her.

But on a more serious note, I wonder sometimes if the reason women aren’t known to have invented as many things is precisely because they’re usually busy doing stuff while the guy is sitting there watch them.

For my sister, who has put away more than her fair share of dishes in her life, a very very happy birthday.

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CT

A very happy 30th birthday to CT who is one of our favorite people ever.

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Just a Guy

Our downstairs housemate of the past 5 years or so left today, to move to his hometown, where he got offered a job he couldn’t turn down. I’ve been friends with him nearly two decades; he’s the one who made my wedding gown, and who watches our cats and feeds our fish while we’re away, and saying I will miss him is the understatement of a century.

I’m also a little envious that he got that job, the one that you’d leave NYC for, and that he’s going home to have his close friend and family nearby. There is a certain disjointedness in my life these days, and I know that mine will not come together in the ways his is – my parents are retired in FL and there’s no way on God’s green earth I would ever move down there, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be home. Maybe that’s a good thing. Instead I stay here in Brooklyn, with my sister 20 blocks away and more friends than I can count.

Except, of course, the one I’ll be missing starting today.

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Partners, Talking

On BBC, an interview with the (female) partner of an MTF and the (male) partner of an FTM is worth listening to. Though I will say the FTM in question turned into a jackass, not a man.

Most interesting to me are their thoughts about their sexual relationships.

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Footloose: NYC Style

I know this may be hard to believe for people who don’t live here, but it is illegal to dance in bars in NYC. Really. Places have to have a cabaret license in order to allow dancing. The law’s 82 years old, which means it was created in 1926, which means it was probably created in the midst of Prohibition to combat speakeasies, and we never removed it.

Well go figure, but Mayor Bloomberg is talking about looking into it.

(I’ve dated myself with the Footloose reference, no? Amazing what a huge deal that movie was at the time.)

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Abortifacient Irafaciens

The Bush administration distributed a memo that would make birth control pills abortion:

According to the HHS draft, “abortion” takes on a very broad meaning: “The Department proposes to define abortion as ‘any of the various procedures — including the prescription and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.’”

RH Reality check has a link to the leaked document. The whole thing is ridiculous – the last legs of the Bush administration, trying to redefine “abortion” as any kind of birth control or family planning. Coming soon: woman saying no to sex defined as abortion. As much as that’s Onion-y, I fear it’s what the anti-choicers are really all about – women barefoot & pregnant.

(via Carpetbagger).