my sometimes-skeptical social commentary

Archive for the ‘health’ Category

I was lucky to have friends in town for a mutual friend’s wedding this weekend. It’s amazing how many people I know from “the old days” that I’m not in touch with anymore, even though they are good and decent people… we just don’t make the effort to drive to faraway cities (or to the West Coast, for that matter).

The men I talked to were mainly all dads, and I think the consensus was that we take trips mainly with or to family, so other trips to see friends are squeezed out of the schedule. I mentioned to another friend the other day that I’m trying to get all my friends and family in one place, something I called “Total Thomas Convergence” (or TTC for short). I have a few great friends in Buffalo, but in fact everyone I know is extremely busy, as is my little family, so we rarely have social time with grownups who are not immediate members of our family. (Fortunately, the grownups who are immediate members of our family are also good and decent people!)

We did end up having a little bit of a pool party, too, because we had a few people who were in town for the wedding come over. The thermometer in the pool said 80, but none of us who went in the water felt that was an honest reckoning. In fact, one swimmer was sure it was 80 Kelvin, not 80 Fahrenheit.

And I did manage to finish the steps up to the deck before the guests arrived. After they left, I finished the railing and the gate on the deck, so it is now as safe as could be. I have a little more to do on the deck, however, including a handrail for the steps. I’m also going to do a little wiring, so that there is an outdoor, grounded power outlet for the pool filter, and I’ll install a motion-sensor light on the peak of the garage to shine down on the pool. (The web-cams are already installed, but they are not infrared cameras, so the lights will come in handy at night.)

(oops, my finger got in front of the camera lens)

Lexington Co-Op has all kinds of good chocolate, including the organically grown Equal Exchange brand. I picked up two bars, one labelled “VERY DARK” and one dark with almonds. It is really good chocolate. The very dark chocolate is 71% cacao content. Mmmmmmmmm

I had a great lunch at Lexington Co-Op, too. I put a few scoops of assorted vegetarian, vegan, and meat-based dishes from their hot bar into a cardboard take-out container, grabbed a bottle of unsweetened green tea (its cap is in the photo too) from Honest Tea ( . . . ” such a lonely word . . . ” ), and then grabbed a piece of cake from the cooler, too. I know it sounds like a lot of food. But I like to eat.

But it was also a great lunch because I was with friends. I hadn’t seen R.T. in a while, and he was in town for a short visit, so it was a little reunion with P.D., R.B., and me.

Something about eating vegan, organic, and socially conscious foods at an open-air patio table on Elmwood made me feel conspicuously urban, though.

Remarkable sandwiches are so rare, so today when I was done with my turkey on rye, I snapped this photo to suggest that if you’re near Porter Avenue and you’re hungry, stop by the Custard Corner & Deli.

The amount of turkey meat was generous, and the bread, lettuce, and tomato were so fresh you could tell someone had just washed the vegetables.

Even the dill pickle was good.

You can’t get that across the street….

I haven’t worn a suit to work since… I really can’t tell you what year it was. I had a job in the early 2000′s where I wore a suit most of the time, so instead of wearing the same one every day, I purchased a few of them and rotated them throughout the week. (I usually wear a short-sleeved shirt or a dress shirt without a tie these days.) Other than weddings and funerals, I don’t have many suit occasions.

I’m really not a fan of dry cleaning. Mostly I keep my suits clean by not getting them dirty in the first place, but every now and then they just have to be cleaned, otherwise the fabric will wear out.

I have to check if all of my suits still fit me (not that I’ve gained weight or anything… ha ha), but now I know where to take them to get cleaned. There’s a place on Elmwood Avenue that doesn’t use the traditional dry-cleaning chemicals. They use water–so technically it isn’t “dry” cleaning at all, but the owner told me that he washes REAL FUR in his store, with water and the special soap-stuff they use, and the fur wasn’t harmed a bit. In fact, he says the chemicals that traditional dry cleaners use can leave a residue on your clothes that attracts oils and can damage your clothing. “Wet cleaning” leaves your clothes clean, so no oil builds up, which means they stay cleaner longer and don’t wear out as fast.

Isn’t that where you’d like to take your dry cleaning from now on? Check them out: Eco Friendly Custom Cleaners is located at 152 Elmwood Avenue. Oh, and one more thing–the chemical most dry cleaners use? It has been banned in the USA, because it is bad stuff. Think about it.

I have songs in my head for everything. I see a word, hear a phrase, something, anything, can trigger a song. One of my friends once said there is a soundtrack to my life.

The name brand of this tea is obviously meant to be a pun.

Want the song in your head? Listen to it at pandora.com.

When I was a kid, we always had a gallon jar of “sun tea” around, either brewing in the window or cooling in the fridge. We started out with a plain glass jar, the kind pickles used to come in, and we would fill it with water, a few tea bags (mostly we had the Red Rose brand, which is an orange pekoe type of tea leaf –where did all those figurines go?), and let the jar sit in a sunny window for the better part of a day. Once sun tea became more popular, there were gallon jars available at the store with spigots in the bottom to make it easier to pour a glass.

I don’t care for brewed iced tea (it’s too strong), and I don’t like sweetened iced tea (it’s too sweet). I recently tried honey-sweetened green tea, and it was okay (it’s not too sweet and not too strong), but the only reason I drank it was that I was very thirsty, and the other choices were soda, juice (everything in the convenience store was sweetened with corn syrup), and overpriced bottled water. (I like spring water, but when they charge $1.49 for a small bottle, that just bugs me.)

We never brew sun tea at my house anymore. I don’t really know why. Maybe I just like tap water so much I don’t need to spend the effort to make the tea. Also, I tend not to have a lot of caffeine these days, limiting myself to a couple cups of coffee in the A.M. and maybe a green tea later on in the day.