Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | by nathan

You Smell Awful

When I tell people about my gym they sometimes ask why I continue to go there. The short answer is that they have a pool and cheaper membership dues than most other places. The long answer is that I joined in May 2007, and then in April 2008 the gym’s ownership changed and I had to go under another one-year contract, which is now almost up, allowing me, as of the end of this month, to quit at a moment’s notice with no penalties. I’m just not sure I can handle another commitment right now.

Also, the people at my gym are not those too-attractive intimidatrons that populate most workout spaces, the people who look they’ve been carved out of cream cheese and likely spend all day on the treadmill. They’re older doctors and state legislators, mostly, with just enough ridiculously attractive people thrown in to keep me running maybe that extra mile when I want to quit but have no excuse to.

Some of the people, though, my God. There’s Inappropriate Talking Guy. ITG, for short, is about 60 years old and creepy, one of those people who corners total strangers and tells them his whole fucked-up life story about his alcoholic, abusive parents, a story that is somehow woven throughout with a fair dose of conspiracy theory and really jag-tastic sexual commentary. People get cornered in the locker room or on the tradmill by ITG and immediately get this look on their faces like they’re being drowned in their own bathtubs. I avoid him at all costs. Mostly he chooses to catch young 20-25 year-old girls on their machines and talk their ears off, all while leering at them so hard it looks like his eyes are going to pop out of his skull. Every time he comes anywhere near me I give him a threatening look; so far I have yet to be cornered.

ITG has a new habit as of this week. He seems to have purchased a new 13" MacBook, and he brings it up to the workout floor, sets it in one of those plexiglas holders normally used for propping up magazines and books, and proceeds to surf the internet while on the elliptical machine. It’s weird, but he’s not surfing porn, and he’s not talking to people, so I’m content just to peer over his shoulder and see what sites he’s reading. It’s mostly CNN.

Then there’s Perfume Lady. PL arrives about 45 minutes after I do and always takes her place on the arc trainer next to me. Her face is buried so deeply in layers of makeup that she looks like someone iced her, like a wedding cake. Her hair is always perfectly tressed out in a style one assumes is meant to resemble Dido circa 2000. In her mid-40s, she purchases her workout clothes at Victoria’s Secret. One imagines she’s, oh, I dunno, maybe a Federal Judge or a world-renowned neurosurgeon.

Perfume Lady wouldn’t even cross my radar - at 160 beats per minute my thoughts are more or less restricted to "HOLY GOD WHEN WILL THIS BE OVER." Also I’m constantly doing math in my head, figuring out to the third decimal point exactly what percentage of my workout I have completed. It’s really, really hard to do long division in your head at 160 BPM. Perfume Lady has raised my ire because, as her name implies, she bathes in cheap Walgreens-brand perfume (one assumes that no sane person would pay more than a few quid to smell that awful). The gallons and gallons of perfume are a strategic measure aimed at hiding the fact that the woman smokes probably 3-4 packs a day, a fact that is betrayed not only by her yellowed fingertips but also by the fact that perfume cannot cover up cigarette smoke.

So, Perfume Lady walks around in a cloud of stink, and every morning she climbs up on the arc trainer next to mine - for some reason, always next to me - and sets the difficulty to 5 (default is 15; I do 40). Her eyes search the room for potential soul mates, or possibly just men who lost their senses of smell in childhood accidents. Her cloud chokes me; being on the machine next to her feels like having my windpipe pinched ever so slightly. Every day I work out next to her I have a headache the entire rest of the day.

So what do I do? How do I handle Perfume Lady without being a total douche? I could move machines, but see, there are only 3 arc trainers in the whole gym, and by the time she comes along I’ve usually been on the thing for 30-40 minutes and have got myself into a rhythm. The math problems are coming easier, Matt Lauer is on the TVs, moving is just not really that simple. Anyway, the furthest away I could get would be to put one empty machine between us, and the cloud is not small. This morning was particularly awful, and every time I closed my eyes I imagined myself reaching over and slapping her right off the machine and onto the ground, screaming "OH MY GOD DO YOU KNOW HOW BADLY YOU SMELL? YOU ARE CHOKING ME TO DEATH, LADY."

But I don’t. Not sure what to do, but it’s not that. In the meantime I’m going to take some sinus medication.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | by nathan

Hey Lady!

Brian took this photograph on Saturday as we were gardening. This little lady was in our peony just outside the back door. Every year it blooms out so fragrant and beautiful, and we’re eagerly anticipating that, but in the meantime the flowers are contained in these little spherical buds which secrete a sweet sap, making them a popular hangout for ants, bees and other bugs.

Monday, April 13, 2009 | by nathan

Nobody Poops But You

I don’t know about you, but when I saw the trailer for the Spike Jonze-directed film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, it sorta made me want to find the nearest hipster and beat the living snot out of him. It was just so - I don’t know, it just looked like it was trying too hard to be cool. This movie listens to bands that don’t even exist yet.

And so, when Schmutzie posted this, a hilarious send-up of the aforementioned trailer, well, I sorta instantly adored it. Ladies and gentlemen, Spike Jonze presents Everyone Poops: 

Monday, April 13, 2009 | by nathan

Weekly Reader - 13 April 2009

The Dark Side of Dubai
A fascinating, terrifying (and sorta long, but worth it) article detailing life in Dubai for the community of rich expats, some of whom have lost everything and cannot leave, and for the slave class who has been lured into the country and trapped into building the country. Heart-wrenching.

100 Pounds of Potatoes
Ever the useful website, LifeHacker presents a way to grow a hundred pounds of potatoes in a 4-square-foot box in your own backyard, or parking lot. I’m thinking of trying this.

The Saddest TV Deaths
I think we all shed a tear when Maude Flanders died, but for me the one that holds the most punch is #6, the episode of Buffy when Joyce, Buffy and Dawn’s mom, dies of natural causes.

NYT: Wine On Tap
"The bartender pulls the handle and the liquid pours forth from keg to glass with the distinctive gushing sound that has launched a zillion thirsts. Ah, yes, that fresh draft flavor — nothing like wine on tap."

Monday, April 13, 2009 | by nathan

This Photo Makes Me Smile

Sunday, April 12, 2009 | by nathan

Let There Be Life!

This was my garden at the height of its glory last year. This photo was taken August 9, 2008:

Seasons, as they say, change, and with some help from the people who flipped the house on that side of my property, who were kind enough to clear all the detritus out of that bed when they needed to some construction, back in early February the whole deal was looking something like this:

That was when I decided not only to go ahead and pre-till the whole patch up, but to double its size. So, then, after a really nice Saturday in February, it looked like this:

After that not much changed. I put down my spinach seedlings, as they were the only things that I knew could survive the freezes that were coming. By and large they did - well, four of them did. The rule in Oklahoma is that it doesn’t freeze after Tax Day, and after multiple checks and double-checks of the weather, I figured it wouldn’t freeze after the 10th. So yesterday was a day that Brian and I have come to love: First Garden Day.

I re-tilled almost the entire patch, being careful to avoid the spinach transplants and the volunteer tomatoes I hadn’t managed to kill by putting jars over them. Brian and I went to Home Depot, where I bought soil and sphagnum peat moss to make seeding mounds as well as a few plants that looked like fun, including two golden jubilee tomatoes, two fernleaf dill plants, and two pineapple sage plants. That stuff was great; rub the leaves and it smells exactly like pineapple. They grow to 3-4 feet and have beautiful red flowers.

I also picked up some lemon-scented citronella, as last year’s garden became Command Central for the central Oklahoma City mosquito population, and I’m hoping to mitigate that. I picked up some marigolds, as they are must in any vegetable garden. They help it look great and they keep away pests, especially nematodes, which will destroy a garden in a snap.

Brian bought a bunch of flowers and some jalapeno plants to try in pots. We got to work. I created seeding mounds in the north side of the plot for the golden zucchini squash and black beauty zucchini seeds. I’d planned to have those on the other side of the garden, but scrapped that plan when the volunteer tomatoes started coming up. Crop rotation is important, yes, but I was so excited to have volunteers that I was scared to disturb them too much.

So I seeded all my zucchini in four mounds from the north end to the center of the garden where the spinach was. I created another seeding mound at the south end for my remaining Currant Gold Rush tomato seeds, as all my previous tomato seedlings had died in the last freeze.

I put the marigolds down throughout the bed and seeded a bunch of purple opal basil all around the tomatoes and throughout the garden. I dug up a bunch of grass roots that had begun to produce and put the dill and citronella in last. Today I started pepper seeds in pots and pellets.

So now, the whole thing looks like this:

Here’s the map:

We had music going outside all day, we got sunburns and accomplished more in our backyard than I think we ever have in one day. I have really high hopes for it all. I ordered Brandywine and Beam’s Yellow Pear tomato transplants from SeedSavers Exchange, and those should arrive in just over a week. My Aurora and Rooster Spur Peppers are germinating happily away, and it rained today, providing much-needed moisture to the whole system.

Not only was the whole endeavour a fantastic workout - my legs haven’t been this sore in ages - but it provided a vital boost to my spirits after all the recent cold spells, which seem to be largely over. I can’t wait for all of this to grow up. I’m going to have so much food to share that it’s going to get out of control, even worse than it did last year, because now not only do I know more about what I’m doing, I have twice as much room to do it in.

Brian and I were talking earlier about how much we love green and yellow squash. I was raised on the stuff - boiled, steamed, or dipped in buttermilk and flour and then fried - holy God that sounds so good I might go to the store and make it tonight. I was flipping back through my garden photos from last year and remembering how great it felt to have grown food, created a crop in my own backyard. Here’s to another successful gardening year!

Thursday, April 9, 2009 | by nathan

Off To A Ripping Start

Any time I have a question about my garden I call my dad. He’s had gardens my entire life and he’s as good at growing vegetables as anyone I know. Last year my garden was a great success in large part because of the answers my dad provided to all the questions I had.

I started some seeds just over a month ago. They sprouted, and the sprouts died, which is more or less exactly what happened last year, so I decided not to be discouraged even though I could find no really good reason for my plant genocide. Some years are just like that, dad said.

As my baby tomato plants were shuffling off this mortal coil I noticed that my patch was showing signs of life - volunteer tomatoes, sprouting up from the remains of fruits that fell to the ground last summer! I was thrilled, but cautiously so; I knew that we had at least one freeze left. The day after I spotted these little plants around my plot, I was set to head off to Dallas for the weekend, and Oklahoma City was bracing itself for what Gary England promised would be 6-10 inches of snow. I figured we’d get back and all the volunteer plants would be dead. They weren’t; they’d begun to harden off, which encouraged me.

Still, when the weathermen predicted one final freeze earlier this week I wasn’t going to take any chances. I called my dad and asked him how to protect my brave little volunteers from dying. He suggested I put Mason jars over the plants overnight while temps dropped below freezing. I dutifully obeyed:

So the next day I let the air get back above 32, and went outside to take the jars away. Underneath the plants were black and wilted. Dead. The seedlings I’d left uncovered for a lack of Mason jars? THEY WERE FINE. Still plenty of little volunteer plants left, thank God.

So, we’re off to a ripping start. I have given up on starting tomato plants from seeds - possibly forever - and have ordered transplants from my favorite online seed catalog, Seed Savers Exchange. They’ll ship around April 20, which is the perfect time to be putting transplants into the ground. In the meantime I’m starting peppers and zucchini and basil and thinking that though we’re off to a bit of a weird start, this year is going to be even better than last.

Thursday, April 9, 2009 | by nathan

Strange Creatures!

Another sighting from the Norman Medieval Faire. All these creepy creatures have me considering writing a whole young adult fantasy-adventure series, a la The Chronicles of Narnia. Just those hundreds and thousands of other writing projects to get out of the way first, so start time - something like late next week.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 | by nathan

Two Cars In Every Garage, And…

…a human face on every fish.

Seriously though, I saw this on Saturday at the Norman Medieval Fair and dammit if he’s gonna haunt my nightmares then he’s gonna haunt yours, too.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | by nathan

Courage

I’m currently writing a column about Sally Kern - or, I should say, I’m TRYING to write a column about Sally Kern and it’s proving exceptionally difficult - but in the meantime the news out of Iowa and Vermont is really buoying up my spirits and maybe thinking that "mean and unfair in the name of Jesus" won’t be the prevailing order of the day. Check this video of Iowa’s Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, who refused cooperation in pushing forward a bill that would amend the Iowa Constitution to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman: