Save me from plagiarizing

save me from having to plagiarize and go read this: http://amerryrogue.blogspot.com/2012/05/tractor-tires-cinder-blocks-sledge.html

this post has been brought to you by workout week:
Monday: walked 5.75 miles
Tuesday: See this link http://amerryrogue.blogspot.com/2012/05/tractor-tires-cinder-blocks-sledge.html
Wednesday: Biked to work 17.85 miles
Thursday: walked 5.14 miles

We had a health screening at my work this week and I'm rather pleases with the results, no so much in what they are but where I've come from.

One more milestone

As the title says, I've reached 60 lbs lost since January 16th.  That is all, planning a costuming blog for Monday or Tuesday see you then.

I will not be tanning with this mommy

Generally come awakening from hibernation...I mean spring, I’m as white as a ghost.  You would think after years of working at the Renaissance festival I would be a hint or two shades darker but no.  At fest, For the most part,  I’m covered aside from my face from my nose down and a “V” where the collar of my shirt is. I mean I cut grass at night so that I can conserve electricity by leaving the outside lights off and letting the moon reflect off my arms to guide my path.  For many years I secretly harbored a Jealousy over people with those perfect tans.  That was until I scrolled across this recently.

somewhere Ed Gein is drooling

Good lord what is that?!?!?  This woman made the headlines recently when her 5 year old daughter said, at school, she went tanning with her mom.  She has garnered her 15 minutes and counting of fame by saying that her daughters statement was misinterpreted. That she was present at the tanning place but wasn’t in the tanning bed blah blah blah…..great whatever hopefully that gets solved and figured out justice taken care of as it comes to it.  In the meantime….is this woman going to get any help?  In the article she is quoted as saying “I tan, she doesn’t tan”…… Lady you’re way beyond tan, I have leather hide that is probably softer and healthier than you are. 

Seriously…she’s 44 and looks like she’s putting on “Black face.” It reminds me of a production Of Mice and Men I did where they didn’t have a single African American male audition and one of the gentlemen had to wear dark makeup to play “Crooks.”  I can’t help but picturing the healthy face infomercial or whatever where they show the effects of the sun on your face and this cream is supposed to help that or something.  I’m pretty certain this woman would blow up the machine or it would read as an error if she tried to get a scan. My only hope is that she gets some help on this, as I’m guessing it’s a psychological issue or addiction.  Until then I’ll be wearing long sleeves and keeping this in mind next time I look at someone’s tan and feel a bit of jealousy.

I'm shutting up and enjoying the movie now

Being that I’m the only person left on the planet that apparently hasn’t seen the Avengers movie it brought up a good blog plan in my head.  I’m not much of a movie fan in theaters.  I can’t tell you why I just have lost interest in seeing movies in theatres over the years.  I can count on one hand how many movies I’ve seen in a theater in the past 5 years.  I think you get the picture…I’m not big into movies in theatres.   Anyway this leaves me playing catch up with all the other character movies I’ve missed for the lead up release to the avengers.  I’ve watched the DVD’s of Iron man 1 & 2 before so that gave me a little background.  Last week I checked out Captain America and came away impressed with that and this past weekend I watched Thor, which I thought had its moments and gave the backstory for the Villain in the Avengers movie.  This summer the revisited Spider Man and Batman are scheduled for release as well.

So what does all this have to do with today’s blog post?  I’m getting to that right now.  Movies are fake, they have become increasingly fake as I’ve gotten older (maybe the theme for not wanting to cough up 10.00 for a movie on a 52 million inch screen) I’ve read “The Physics of Superheroes.”

I love this book. It brings about my point of the lack of detail that we accept in movies today.  Almost at the end of "The Dark Knight," The Joker falls from the top floor of a building. In real world setting if you or I jumped off a building we would splat in 4 seconds.  (Gives a whole new meaning to life flashing before your eyes doesn’t it.) Batman has enough time to see the Joker fall,  react by drawing his grappling hook, fire it and save The Joker. The grappling hook would need to come out of the launcher traveling perhaps 1,000 feet per second, nearly the speed of a pistol bullet. Anyone who has ever fired any sort of anything (gun, paintball gun, crossbow, heck even bow and arrow) will be able to tell you about recoil.  The recoil from the grappling hook launcher capable of firing a hook/cable combination that is “slightly” heavier than a pistol bullet would throw even a Gotham’s finest backward (heck the Hulk would get tossed  a little I’d bet). Then the Joker was snagged in midair and his momentum halted in an instant, force equals mass times acceleration means a transfer of many hundreds of pounds to Batman, who is holding the other end of the grappling line. This would rip Batman's arm out of his shoulder socket instead of just grunting from the effort as he does in the movie.

This brings me to Spider Man; this reboot visits Peter Parker when he was still in High School.  Those of us that are nerds (Raises hand) will instantly tell you that per the comic book Peter Parker received his powers in College, not high school.  You’ll also know that his original love interest wasn’t Mary Jane but Gwen Stacy.  The reason I bring this up it’s what I knew before I read the Physics of Superheroes.  Gwen Stacy is thrown off the top of a bridge (much like the Joker previously) and falls.  Spider Man Shoots his webbing to save her…one webbing….Like the above example this causes instant momentum stoppage.  The force of the deceleration caused Gwen Stacy’s neck to be snapped killing her instantly which the COMIC BOOK went on to  described in detail and helped launch the brooding Peter Parker. 

Maybe that’s my reasoning behind the ho-hum in movies….the fact a .25 comic (I don’t know how much it was originally, definitely cheaper than the 2.25 ones now) can get a simple scene down better and more realistically than a multi-million dollar movie production. 

I’m going to shut up and eat my popcorn and enjoy the Avengers now.

Pouch making 101

Pouch making 101…….

In my honest opinion one of the greatest modern conveniences is pockets.   Jeans, dress pants, jackets and whatever else generally have pockets somewhere to carry your belongings.  The Renaissances pocket is a belt pouch.  Pouches are and can be made out of any material one desires.  I’m partial to leather. (Shocking I know) A few months back I offered to make a leather item of choice to our Winter Scarlett for her birthday present.  She took time to think on it and decided on a pouch. Now I haven’t made a pouch in a while as I was given a good half dozen by a former festie and haven’t had the need to make any.  So this was a fun refresher. 

Items needed:

Material (I use leather)

Pattern (I based mine off one I have done in the past, Google pouch patterns to find one you like)

Sewing machine (industrial for the leather will save you needles and many choice curse words)

Hole punch

Suede lace



material



The first step was making a pattern; I had a general idea of what pieces I needed so I set out to collect the fabric and leather to complete the project and did a paper mock up pattern to make sure the thought process and what I remembered were on the same page.  Now I used a upholstery leather (think jacket or chair) for the body and tooling leather for the flap and securing base (I’m making these words up, I’m sure there’s a real technical term for it, mine are simple and I know what I’m talking about in my head, if you proceed to a leather shop and use these terms I’m not responsible for the confused look you get from them.)  The reason I use tooling leather is because it’s heavier and sturdier and will be more likely to withstand the constant pulling and tugging from the drawstring portion of the bag and be less likely to rip out in the long run.  You can use any material really for either pieces, this is just my preference.



Pattern



Once the paper mockup was completed I set out to transferring the pattern to the leather and cutting it out.  The pouch body is an oblong oval cut in half (front and back) and a wide strip (I use 2.5 inches) that runs the length of the outside (circumference) of the oval.  

I’ve added a picture  below as it’s just easier to show a closer detail of what I cut out of the tooling leather than explain.  Essentially the front is a smaller scale of the body of the pouch and the back is a circle joined with a rectangle.  The dots are punch marks for holes and the dotted line is where to cut for the belt to pass through.



detailed tooling leather section pattern

Once all the pieces are cut out it was a simply a matter of sewing everything together. First step was sewing the tooling leather to the respective front and back pieces of the pouch body and then sewing the whole pouch together.  Take a minute to line up the flap and base piece to their respective front and back pieces.  The back of the tooling pieces should be against the respective outside portion of the pouch.  Once the securing flap and base has been sewn on sew the pouch together ensuring the finished pieces (outside of the bag) are touching (the pouch is going to be constructed inside out.)  Once the pouch is sewn together turn it right side out and punch out your holes in the bag for the drawstring.  I punch two holes per tooling section, two holes on each side of the tooled piece, and one hole on each of the side of the strip piece. For those keeping score at home that is a total of 14 holes along the top of the bag about a ¼ inch from the top.  Thread your lace through the holes starting from the back and ending in the front.

There are four more holes to punch out on the securing base.  Once those four are punched out take another section of lace and starting from the top two holes go in from the front and come out from the back through the bottom two holes, this will give you a loop to secure around your clasp on the top flap.

Finally punch a hole in the top flap and secure the button/clasp you wish to decorate the bag with.  At this point you should have a completed pouch.  Take a few minutes to pull the drawstrings a few dozen times to close and then pull open the bag to get the pouch broken in a bit.

One thing to note, I had to go back and re-sew was the front of the pouch to the side strip piece because they didn't line up.  Keep the front and back pieces pulled taunt against the strip side piece.  If you don't do this you’ll find the front and back pieces have a tendency to not line up and you’ll have to go back and rip the seam out and re-sew as I did.  Also if you’re using tooling leather make sure you decorate (tool) punch the holes and dye the leather prior to sewing it to the pouch.  It makes it much easier in the long run as you won’t have to fight the pouch body to complete the tooling.  If you’re following this step by step for some reason instead of reading it all first then you’re kind of hosed at this point.

Ta Daaaaaa

Just do a freaking pushup already

This week has been a very “blurg” start to it.  Sunday I started out eating okay for breakfast and lunch and then skipped the rest of the meals electing instead to have a cinnamon roll that was leftover from Saturday for my second lunch and dinner.  I didn’t get the egg bake done on Sunday so I didn’t have a breakfast for Monday but I stopped at a restaurant by my work and got eggs and a piece of steak and for dinner that night I had an veggie omelet without cheese from Keys café and had a piece of toast. 

Come yesterday I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything and it was the combination of the past two days and feeling like crap for not sticking with diet or allowing myself to cheat when there was really no need.  I made it through yesterday without any cheat sources and felt better today and thus far today I have been feeling much better.

For those two days I had a feeling of dread, that the diet was ending and that it was just a fad and all the newfound changes were……

<Anderson Pity party for one….your table is ready….Anderson party of one your table is ready>

Yeah, I threw a pity party for myself.  I made it through but it was the first real time I’ve encountered anything of resistance since I started back in January.    I’ve never been a fan of fears and I generally tend to avoid things that I know cause me fear.    For the past month plus now I’ve been doing assisted push-up (against a wall or countertop) before each meal along with air squats.  Gets the heart rate going and a nice boost of energy and gets the body needing food and being that the food I’m feeding it is healthy then it’s a good go round for all parties.

That little backstory brings me to my point.  I’m afraid of doing pushups.  Even when doing the p90x I did knee pushups.  The last time I can remember doing a successful push up was in football in High School.  I look back and I can’t tell anyone why I’m afraid of the proper pushup…but I am, kneeling, against a wall, whatever modified form you can think of I’ll do it.  But the traditional good old fashioned pushup frightens me.

Now why bring up the pushup you ask? 

Because……One of the goals I set for myself is to bench press 225.  Now….a regular pushup is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 – 70% of your body weight.  As it stands right now, if I can do a push up I “should” be able to bench press 225.  I haven’t tried the max bench press because each time I go to the gym it’s for a circuit exercise not to see how much I can lift; nor have I tried to do a push-up because, well I think I’ve hit that subject the last paragraph or so.

Last night I was home alone with my daughter and I thought I should give it a whirl, what’s going to happen?  I can’t complete one and she sees me on the floor and wants to play, I can and she sees me on the floor and wants to play?  I let the opportunity pass by and she fell asleep and I worked on leather stuff to support writing an upcoming blog with pictures.

Today I have thus far been struck down by the pushup Gods….It really started last night with my industrial sewing machine starting to act up on me while I was sewing a pouch and cowl together but I managed to make it through and cleaned out the sewing machine and readjusted everything to help it run properly.  This morning I managing to get a shower in this morning because I’ve been meaning to take a bath and relax at night but have neglected that for other projects.  (It’s rare I shower in the morning, I’m more of a before I go to bed kind of guy.) Driving in to work separately because I have to work tonight I got to my car pick up site and was getting my bag out of the car and smartly put my coffee on top of the car with my keys.  I grabbed my keys and the coffee cup got caught in the antenna and spilt over the side of the car onto yours truly.  So now I’m sporting the newest rage cologne “Eu du Espresso roast” I grab my bag throw it into the other vehicle that just arrived and grab my jeans and determine to figure something out.  I walk into work and we have a badge access system.  I go first and swipe my badge and hold the door for the person behind me as they scan their badge I start to go through the door and my badge leaps out of my hand back into the entrance hallway…luckily I have an old throwback football jersey here and am wearing that along with jeans, unfortunately I remember why I don’t care for this throwback jersey, it tries to strangle me, the neck hole is made for someone with a smaller neck, so it has been turned into a V-neck to avoid feeling like I’m suffocating myself for fun today….…..it’s going to be one of those days.

I need to just do a friggin pushup and get this over with

PS…if you never hear from me again it’s because I didn’t do a pushup….let it serve as a reminder to do your pushups!!!