A Piercing Look

Last summer I was chatting with one of the other gardeners over in the old Fenway Gardens. I had been sweating away for a while and by that point had my shirt off. A mutual friend stopped by. When he saw me he did a double take and said something to the effect that I was ripped. "You should get your nipples pierced!", was his final judgment.

Now as a matter of fact, when I was a much younger and more carefree Ganome and had much more disposable income, I had had my nipples pierced. I had gone about in this happy state for several years. Then I got quite ill and wound up in the hospital for a week. One of the many drawbacks to my hospitalization was that they made me remove all jewelry. By the time I was back home, the piercings had closed up.

As memory serves, the actual piercing process was not a pleasant experience and was not one I felt I wished to repeat. But the idea stuck with me. Over the winter, I was visiting my dentist, Dr. Hunky and we were talking about tattoos and piercings and he evinced some surprise at my undecorated condition. After I got home I contacted and old friend who used to be a piercer to ask her advice on anyone that was reputable around town. She gave me the name of a shop and I sat on the information for a while longer. I was not particularly anxious to relive my past experience, but the idea of having pierced nipples with the novelty of actually having pecs was very tempting.

Finally by the end of the winter, the combination of boredom, tax return money and what must have been a desire to return to my former state of stainless steel decoration won out. I headed off to Chameleon in Harvard Square.

I wound up meeting an nice young fellow named Owen who did the job. It was quick and relatively painless. No one was more surprised than me. You can see the results. I've heard that body piercing is so 1995 and no one has it done anymore. This pleases me no end to hear. It's always better to march along on your own than to follow the crowd. Whatever the case, I feel like I have worked far to hard to develop some actual pecs, so I'm gonna have fun with them.

Maybe it's time to start saving for more tattoos.

Busy Weekend

I've had a productive weekend. Yesterday I spent a few hours at C.'s so he could teach me how to use PhotoShop to clean up some architectural floor plans so they can be used as a digital reference for space at work. It was a perfect day for it. It was cold and if not rainy, gloomy and threatening.

Today I managed to do a couple of loads of laundry, put in some time at the gym, go grocery shopping and get a couple of hours in at the garden. I am now simmering tomato sauce in preparation to assembling a scallop and eggplant parmesan, using the recipe that Brett Stewart posted on his blog. Brett is apparently a man of endless talents, blogger, commentator, humorist, activist and who would have guessed, cook. On top of being hotter than a tin roof in July. Too bad he's taken, or I would have moved to Toronto by now.

I suppose I could make a start on cleaning my apartment as well, however I forgot to hire a bulldozer. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Next weekend is out of the question, since I will be spending Sunday eating Jell-o salad in the bosom of my family. I could have ducked out of this I suppose, but that would have meant abandoning the Niece to face this ordeal alone. While there are those who consider me heartless, not even I could leave the Niece to that fate. Besides, if nothing else our family is amusing in a "god I wish I had a gun so I could shoot myself" kind of way.

I long ago came to the realization that killing my family was not the answer. That would only lead to prison, which would just be another version of my family with the disadvantage that I wouldn't be able to occasionally escape for a quiet walk by myself. No. If I am going to molder, I would prefer to do that in a tasteful urn, not in some prison cell where I would undoubtedly wind up working in the laundry.

The garden is coming along slowly but surely. I have still not been bitten by the gardening bug. I can see what I need to do and I am formulating my plans for the garden, I just am not experiencing the overwhelming enthusiasm that is usually what accompanies spring. Things are starting to turn green, I am getting an idea of what has survived and what will have to be culled. I even moved a couple of plants, yet nothing. However, hope springs eternal. I am hoping that if I keep going through the motions I will eventually become excited about gardening. For the time being all I really want to do is get the chore out of the way and then go and reward myself by doing something simple like treating myself to a cup of take out coffee. Hanging out in the garden is just out of the question.

On the other hand my work out is going much better these days. Not that I have made any real gains in my routine, but I seem to be redeveloping my enthusiasm for pushing myself. I am back to setting goals for myself and even if I don't reach them, it won't be for a lack of effort on my part.

So, perhaps there is hope. Maybe if I just stick with the garden through this rather joyless period, I will be able to start enjoying the activity again. I've even set some goals, so who knows?