How Not to Die from Sitting

I recently read this article about how sitting all day is really bad for you. It listed the usual reasons like standing burns more calories, muscle metabolism changes, and you are at increased risk for various cancers. To top it all off, each hour of sitting results in a loss of 21.8 minutes from your life expectancy. Seeing as how I've been sitting most of my life, I probably have minutes to live.

After crunching some numbers, it's fair to assume that I've lost over four years of my life expectancy. I knew I had to put a stop to it. Not only that, I had to figure out how to get those four years back before it was too late. So I decided to alter my habits and keep a diary to hold myself accountable:

Friday July 11

4:00 p.m. Let's get started!

4:01 p.m. Since I've already been sitting here for the last six hours, we'll just wait and start the diary tomorrow.

Saturday July 12

11:00 a.m. Stood in my office thinking about my next blog post.

11:20 a.m. Sat down to write blog post then realized since it takes about an hour to write one, I'm sacrificing 22 minutes of my life for my dear readers. I hope you appreciate it, all five of you.

11:25 a.m. Decide to take a walk to offset my sitting problem. Walk to refrigerator and pour myself a glass of wine. Maybe alcohol isn't the best choice for my new lifestyle, but I believe it greatly improves my mental outlook so that offsets any bad effects from sitting.

11:26 a.m. Try to stand and type my blog. I do not have a standing desk. Ouch, there goes my back. I take a sip of wine.

11:30 a.m. A brilliant idea! Some exercise should get me some time back on the lifetime clock. I get on a stationary bike and start pedaling. But now there's a new problem: although I am exercising, I'm still sitting down, so the two acts just cancel each other out. I've got it! I take my laptop and get back on bike. Although I'm not gaining any time, I'm not wasting 22 minutes of life writing this blog. 

11:32 a.m. Sweat starts dripping onto my laptop. I'm now worried about getting eletrocuted. I put laptop back on my desk and get back on bike.

11:34 a.m. This is boring. I get my glass of wine and sip wine while riding stationary bike.

11:45 a.m. Lunch time! Prepare a big healthy salad of spinach and spring mix. Pour half a bottle of bleu cheese dressing on it.

11:57 a.m. Maybe that salad wasn't so big as I'm still hungry. I fix a large plate of bacon (it's okay, I'm on a low carb diet and can eat all the bacon I want). 

12:15 p.m. I happen to glance in the pantry to see a bag of Fritos. I grab a handful, but I eat them while standing. Unfortunately, you can't have just a handful of Fritos. I take the entire bag out. But I walk around the block while eating the bag. I'm starting to get the hang of this.

12:45 p.m. Feeling a little sleepy. Decide to take a nap. That article said nothing bad about laying down or sleeping.

2:30 p.m. St. Pauli Girl hands me a grocery list. The store is too far away to walk to but I really hate the thought of sitting while driving to the store. While driving, I open the window and poke my head outside the window. I believe that trying to keep my head still against the speed of the car offsets the sitting in the seat. I stop at a traffic light with my head still outside the window. A dog in the car next to me pokes his head out and barks at me. I bark back.

2:55 p.m. A genius move! I have the checkout kid bag my groceries in plastic so I can strap them all onto my arms. I load up all twelve bags on my arm and with my free hand pick up the 12 pack of pop. The cashier asks if I'm sure I don't need a carryout. "No," I grimace. I get to the car and realize I have to drop all of the bags to the ground to get the keys out of my pocket. I don't care; this exercise has probably added a solid 90 seconds to my life expectancy.

3:30 p.m. Decide to watch some golf on tv but while standing of course. To make it more interesting, I imitate all of the players' swings as they happen. I've never played so well in my life.

5:35 p.m. Happy hour! St. Pauli Girl and I sit on the patio and discuss the day's events over a glass of wine. I want to stand but my heels are actually killing me. I come up with an idea:

"Let's arm wrestle!" I challenge her.

"What?"

"Yeah, we're killing ourselves by sitting here. So let's get some exercise. I'll even go left handed!"

"You're stupid."

"You'd be stupid not to play! I'm going left-handed plus I'm pretty sore from golfing."

"Why don't you be useful, and cook dinner," she finally said.

6:15 p.m. That was a great idea; I can easily man the grill while standing. We have three grills, so I choose the manly Weber charcoal grill. I light the fire and stand next to the grill as it burns down.

6:45 p.m. I throw some hamburgers on the hot grill. I lean down and inhale deeply that wonderful charcoal hamburger cooking aroma. Then I slap myself on the head. I sit down next to St. Pauli Girl.

"I don't know. I just can't win," I say.

"What's the matter?"

"Charcoal has carcinogens. That breath probably cost me four seconds of life expectancy."

We sit quietly for a minute before St. Pauli Girl refills our wine glasses. She holds her glass out to me, "Here's to life."

"Every single day of it," I reply with a smile. Clink.

House Cleaning

Longtime readers may have noticed the absence of activity on this blog for the past month or two. But it's actually good news because we finally sold our vacation house (not really a vacation house, just a fancy way of saying we were paying two mortgages after we moved)! The contract had been signed in early May which meant that I spent two months staring out the window wondering how it would fall apart. Even now with a fistful of cash, I keep thinking a hand will reach out from the ground and take if from me.

And so ends an era in the lives of St. Pauli Girl and myself. With that in mind, I decided to clean up the blog a bit. The first change was the background image. Originally it was a photo of mountains in New Mexico. That didn't seem fair so I changed it to an image which better describes where we now live. The image is a “haboob” which happens several times a year in these parts. Granted the background doesn't do the image justice, so you can click on the “haboob” link on the right side for a live action video of a haboob.

We now live in a more urban area in west Texas which means fewer snakes, less yardwork, fewer meth addicts, and less gunfire but more haboobs. St. Pauli Girl has successfully transitioned back to Professor Pauli Girl. It's a bigger town but have no fear, I am still the real America.

I have removed a lot of the restaurant references because I never wrote as much about it as I thought I would. But there's a wealth of stories to mine from there should it become necessary.

When we closed our restaurant in 2009, we saved three of the most expensive bottles of wine. We opened one on 1/1/2010 for good luck and learned that even really expensive wine won't necessarily change your luck. We opened the second one in March 2012 when we sold our first restaurant effectively getting out of the restaurant business altogether. Finally, we opened the last bottle this past weekend to celebrate the sale of the house and the end of an era.

At one point, St. Pauli Girl asked, “What are you most looking forward to?”

“Being able to walk around without having to constantly look at the ground for snakes and scorpions and being able to use 'haboob' in everyday conversations.”

Supermarket Wine

The only reason to go to our local supermarket on a Saturday is for the free wine tasting. That almost makes up for the 6 near accidents you’ll have in the parking lot, along with dealing with the hordes of bubbas fighting for a jalapeno sausage sample or moms in bathing suits loading carts with cases of beer and hot dogs for family backyard shindig. And that’s assuming you even find a parking spot.

Last weekend, we fearlessly ventured into the store to pick up a few items and try to get out unscathed in less than 4 hours. As we came through the produce section, the announcement came over the loud speaker:

 “Ladies and gentlemen, please join the lovely Charisse as she samples some of our fine wines in the front of the store.”

We looked toward the front of the store where a bald, mustached gentleman in probably his late 60’s stood behind a table of wine.

“Huh, he doesn’t look like a Charisse,” I said.

“He’s not bad looking, but lovely is a bit of a stretch,” St. Pauli Girl countered.

Confused, we moved on to the rest of our shopping. As we came out of the snack aisle, we stumbled into a table where a young, blond woman stood behind four open bottles of wine.

“So there really is a Charisse?”

“Yep, that’s me. We’ve got four samples to try including two chardonnays, but this chardonnay is my favorite.” She pointed to one of the opened bottles.

Favorite? She barely looked old enough to drive, much less drink wine, and was much much too young to have favorites.

“Your favorite? Why is that?” St. Pauli Girl asked.

“It’s the sweetest.” She gave a sweet smile.

“We’ll try all of them except that one,” I said, unoffended. It wasn’t her fault someone hired her to peddle a product she knew nothing about.

We headed over to where the bald, mustachioed Charisse manned a table of wine. Alas, he only had one kind of wine to sample. And he liked to talk while he poured.

“Now this is a malbec, medium bodied, kind of in-between a cabernet and a chardonnay.”

“Um, yes. Okay.”

“And it’s from the Bodega winery.”

“Bodega?”

“Yes,” he replied pointing at the label. To his credit, the label did say “bodega.”

“That’s a big winery,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure they cornered the market of all wine in Spain and most of South America.” (Bodega means “winery” or “vineyard” in Spanish.)

St. Pauli Girl punched me in the arm.

“Do you make wine?” he asked, looking at me strangely.

What an odd question. I almost said that I had made it before, but I was afraid of extending the conversation. Then he pointed at my hat which advertised the Grapevine Cigar Company.

“Well, your hat says grape, and I just thought maybe you were a winemaker.”

“Nope, don’t roll cigars either.”

St. Pauli Girl grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

So in closing, I’d just like to let the store know that if you are providing wine samples:

A. Hire someone who can at least talk about wine in general. Or
B. Hire someone who won’t say a word. Or
C. Have young blond women provide the samples.

By what am I complaining about? It gives me one more small reason to put up with the traffic and customers of that store on a Saturday.

Some People's Choice

It’s the new year, time to get re-dedicated to the blog again. Okay, so it’s actually two months into the new year; it takes me a minute to get dedicated.

St. Pauli Girl likes to enter cooking contests. And she likes to win. She doesn’t always win, but I just want to point out that she takes them very seriously. To start the new year, she decided to enter a black-eyed pea contest at an establishment that shall remain nameless, but let’s just say they make fermented beverages from grape juice. For a $25 entry fee, she could potentially win a cash prize of $300.

On a bitterly cold day, we arrived at the contest, set up her serving area, then glanced around at the other twelve entrants, or “losers” as we liked to call them. With time to kill we shared a single glass of wine, complimentary with the $25 entry fee. It didn’t taste like a $25 glass of wine, but it was a decent glass of wine.

As we wandered about waiting for the judges to arrive, we noticed that everyone else seemed to know each other. No big deal; after all, this establishment was located in a small town, and of course many of the people would know each other. As long as the judging was blind as suggested by the rules on their website, we didn’t care. Ironically the official rules published on their website seemed more concerned that rogue entrants might come in and try to poison the public as noted in rule 14A:

“If the head judge demands that an entrant taste his/her own dish, the entrant must eat at least one full serving in full view of the head judge. And then the entrant must not throw up for five minutes.”

(Okay, that second line wasn’t in the rules, but I feel it was implied.)

After everyone was shoo-ed out of the “arena,” for judges’ sample-collecting (or so we thought), it came time to serve our black-eyed pea entry. We stood behind our dishes and handed out small taste to people coming down the line. At this point, we noticed that one of the employees had passed out ballots to everyone in line. St. Pauli Girl and I looked at each other, then noticed there was no judges’ table! Apparently, the contest had turned into a popularity vote while we weren’t looking. And, since we didn’t know anyone there, we also quickly realized we would not be standing on the podium at the end of the contest to receive a blue ribbon.

Whatever. We received a lot of favorable comments and had a pretty good time (probably as a result of the $50 wine tab we ran up). Finally, it came time to reveal the winners of the contest. One of the owners, a cross between Les Nessman and Buffalo Bill, took to the stage:

“In third place, why it’s defending champion and local celebrity chef Rachel Ratatouille.”

I glanced at St. Pauli Girl, “At least you beat a celebrity chef if you won.”

The owner continued, “And in second place, how about this, I can’t believe it. It’s our own warehouse employee Jimmy Dale!”

“Uh huh, I can see where this is going,” I said to St. Pauli Girl.

“In first place, holy cow! Well shut my mouth and slap me silly, it’s my own girlfriend Peggy Sue!”

Now I don’t doubt that those three people truly did receive the most winning votes based on the incestuous nature of the contest. But if you’re going to charge people $25, don’t you want to even try to appear to be on the up and up and at least pretend to follow the rules that you dangled in front of contestants in order to get their $25 entry fee?

I later pointed this out in a complaint to their website. I never heard back; I guess they were all busy spending the prize money at Rebecca Ratatouille’s restaurant.

Merrily Shopping

I’ve discovered I like grocery shopping. To be more exact, I like grocery shopping in stores that have bars and allow you to carry your drink around while you shop. I am not making this up. And to think I once thought it was stupid that shopping carts contained cup holders.

St. Pauli Girl and I recently went into the big city to do some grocery shopping at a store that I’ll call Whole Lotta Grocery Shopping and Tavern. Turns out that they have a real bar in their wine and beer section. After an hour of exhausting grocery shopping, we parked our cart, bellied up to the crowded bar, and ordered a glass of wine. And a cheese sampler. And then another glass of wine.

The grocery store ambience wasn’t great mostly because of the lighting, but the people watching was fun.

Me: Seems like everyone here is having a really good time.

St. Pauli Girl: Maybe it’s just us.

Me: I’ll drink to that.

The grocery wine bar has a small but nice selection of wine that can be ordered in flights or by the glass, as well as several draft beers. And since the bar really doesn’t need to make a lot of money, the prices and servings are very reasonable. Plus you can get your drink in a plastic cup to carry with you while you are shopping. And for you misers out there, guess what? The credit card slip doesn’t have a tip line! You don’t have to leave a tip, and you can blame it on the store. Or you can do what the guy next to us did: “Well, I’d leave you something, but there’s no line on the credit card slip. [He rummages through his cart.] Oh wait! Here’s a rutabaga for you.”

As we enjoyed our time in the bar, I tried to think how my life might have been different if these stores existed in my younger days:

Me: What are you doing tonight?

Friend: Going to Kroger’s. They’ve got 2 for 1 Coronas.

Me: Forget that! Albertson’s has 99-cent well drinks. Plus they have the best produce.

Friend: You’re right, fresh produce is the ultimate chick magnet. I’ll meet you there.

Although my friends always said the grocery store was one of the best places to meet women, it never worked out for me. Probably because my pick-up lines consisted of something like, “Hey, I see we both got the Salisbury steak. Do you know if you’re supposed to remove that little corner of peach cobbler before you microwave the rest of it?”

Yep, these youngsters have it good. Now you can amble slowly through the store sipping on a cabernet, and when you see a hot girl loading up a take-out container at the salad bar, you can take the opportunity to hook her with something like, “You know, that’s the same bean salad my grandmother used to make, God rest her soul. How ‘bout I buy you a beer over at the bar and give you the recipe?”

Our shopping trip/happy hour finally came to an end. I’ve never had more fun spending $200 on groceries. As we drove home, I said to St. Pauli Girl, “You know, I’ve been thinking we need to make our household chores a little more equitable, take some of the burden off of you. From now on, why don’t you let me do all the grocery shopping?”