At Least They're Not "Short" Shorts...

It’s probably a good thing that, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really care what other people think.
If I did care, I would no doubt be mortified by the fact that the new shorts I bought today make me look like the biggest dork in the world.
For a variety of reasons I’m not ordinarily inclined to wear shorts, but it was a concession that I became willing to make last summer when I was spending hours outside walking every day.
So far it’s been cool enough out that I can get away with wearing sweat pants when I walk, but I’ve been running into a bit of a problem.
Said problem is that I have too much shit I have to carry with me when I walk. I’ve got my cell phone, my wallet, my keys, and my MP3 player, which doesn’t have a case.
What I’ve been doing is putting my MP3 player in one pocket, my keys and wallet in the other, and wearing a sweatshirt to put my cell phone in one of its pockets.
As the temperature rises, the sweatshirt will be out of the question. The sweat pants could, conceivably, still work, as they are pretty thin and light, but shorts would probably be better. Unfortunately, my existing shorts don’t have any pockets.
Today when I was out shopping I was looking to see if there were any equally light sweat pants with more pockets than my current pair. There were none, but there was a pair of really dorky-looking shorts with pockets to spare.
Because, in this case, function outweigs form, I bought them.
They do work well in carrying all of my stuff…but they look really dorky, particularly as they hang down well below my knees.
Then again, that does help address one of the issues I have with wearing shorts.
My ethnic background is as follows: Finnish, British, and German.
This is not a combination that typically leads to golden tans in the summertime. In pure point of fact, most albinos are only slightly paler than I am. My naturally pale skin has only become that much more vampiric after more than two years spending a good portion of my time holed up in the dark, windowless dungeon that is my work environment.
My point? Years ago I spent an entire summer day outside wearing shorts.
I managed to get severe sunburn on the backs of my knees.
You can imagine how much fun it was to do things like sit. Or walk. Or stand.
Since that time I’ve been wary of wearing shorts other than for swimming, particularly since my skin tends to burn even with extreme SPF sun block.
But now, with my new dorky shorts, the backs of my knees remained covered. Hooray!
In any case, from this day forward as I go walking I will have plenty of carrying capacity.
And I’ll look like a bigger dork than Urkel.
Still, as mentioned, I don’t care what people think, and it’s not like it’s going to have any sort of impact on my ability to impress whatever ladies I might encounter out on the trails.
No, my utter lack of charm and social graces take care of that, rendering my appearance irrelevant.
Of course, the majority of my encounters with ladies on the trails tend to consist of them jogging quickly past me, usually in the opposite direction, and usually while pushing a stroller with at least one baby in it.
Still, I am able to note, as they go past, that most of them smell nice...
In any case, as should be apparent, I went out and did some shopping today, after going for my usual morning walk.
A little over a year ago I weighed about 190 pounds and had a 34” waist.
After I quit smoking and started walking upwards of ten miles every day and being more careful about what I ate, I dropped to a low of 167 pounds and a 30” waist.
Anticipating that I would keep up my healthier lifestyle, I bought a new wardrobe last summer.
Over time, though, as my levels of excess, pointless energy that resulted from quitting smoking died down, I began walking less, and I found myself becoming less disciplined in my eating habits.
Of course, concurrently I began a weight-training regimen which I had hoped would help to compensate for the fact that I wasn’t out walking all the time.
It didn’t.
Not to the extent that I hoped it would, at least, and as I began to gain weight, a significant portion of it was muscle, but a fair amount of it was new fat.
In any case, the end result is that I now weigh 208 pounds, and I have a 33” waist.
The fact that I weigh more and still have a (slightly) smaller waistline does speak to the fact that much of the gain has been muscle, but it is clear that I have some work to do, and the end result is that most of my new wardrobe doesn’t fit anymore.
So today I bought some new jeans, though one of them will need to be brought back, as Old Navy apparently measures differently from the way Levi’s does.
On the topic of the Levi’s, though, I got a hell of a deal on them.
They were on sale at JC Penney for 2 for $55 ($40 each if purchased separately). I thought that was a bargain and, after sifting through the racks, managed to find two pairs.
(As an aside, people who are as short as I am, apparently, are supposed to be much fatter than I am. It’s always difficult to find jeans that have the right waist and inseam size combination.)
Along with the jeans I grabbed two shirts, one on clearance for $13, and the other for $5.
So I was a real bargain hunter, but it got even better.
Before tax, I was expecting my total to be $73, but the grand total was $61, even cheaper than I’d expected. Turns out the jeans were even cheaper than marked, as was one of the shirts.
All told, compared to the regular prices, I saved over $82!
…I just realized that I’m getting excited about saving money on clothes. Clothes, for God’s sake! It’s not like I got a bargain on a PDA or a Tablet PC or something.
*Sigh*
On my way to the mall I stopped to visit Kathleen at her new job and we had lunch together, or rather, I had lunch and she sat with me, as she was about to go to a meeting at which lunch would be provided.
Once I got to the mall I went in to the branch of my bank to make use of their cool new change dealie.
Basically it’s like those “Coinstar” things, but they don’t charge you anything to use it, even if you’re not a customer (though I am a customer, so that part is pretty much irrelevant). I had about $80 worth of change at home, so I thought I’d try it out.
Naturally when I got there I was behind a woman who was cashing in like $1,000 worth of change.
I don’t actually know how much it was, but it was a lot. She had about a dozen bags full of what appeared to be, based on the word “tips” being written on the bags, and how many singles there were mixed in with the change, tip money.
If it was her own, saved-up tip money, I’d say it was a couple of years’ worth.
Either that or she worked somewhere that has some sort of tip sharing system and that she was cashing it all in to deposit it into the payroll account or something.
In any case, it took a very long time for her to finish up.
As she neared the end, she turned to me and apologetically stated that she was almost done.
I smiled and shrugged congenially, thinking that, given who I am, something like this was completely unavoidable anyway, and that sometimes it’s pointless to rail against your fate.
She was actually kind of cute, but she was married, and had two kids, one of whom was in a stroller. The older kid, a girl, was pretty darned adorable, though, and I was amazed at how patient and well-behaved they were.
I love my nieces and nephews very much, but I can’t imagine the kind of havoc that would ensue if my sister’s kids were forced to try to stay quiet and out of trouble for that long…
In any case, that’s going to do it for this entry. I may be back later.