Category Archives: A Guide To A Good Life

One man’s thoughts on how to lead a good life. A determinedly subjective view of the topic.

A Guide To A Good Life, Places

Manhattan, from the top of the Empire State Building

These are photos of the Manhattan skyline, as seen from the top of the Empire State Building. We got there just as the sun ducked behind the horizon, so we caught the beautiful transition from dusk to twilight to night.

These were taken last May — that will tell you how behind I am with my post-processing. You’ll find more info about that trip in this post. I keep trying to squeeze every bit of free time out of my schedule to work on my photos, and somehow it’s never enough. But enough complaining, here are the photos.

My world is tilting

We were so high up that the curvature of the Earth became evident, especially at wide focal lengths. You’ll see me play that up in a few of the photos.

New York, New York

Classic Manhattan skyline

I’m just amazed at all the life below. There’s so much squeezed into so little space.

A slice of the old town

Cut across the horizon

I love how the Hudson cuts a wide swath across the horizon.

Light up the nights

Parallels

The slanted perspective makes the curvature of the horizon more evident (at least I think so, anyway).

Overflow

I hear the Earth is round

Lines across a furrowed brow

Blue nights in NY

Moonshine

This is the top of the Empire State Building. It looks sort of like a spaceship, doesn’t it?

From here to the moon

Flatiron night

Night reflections on the Hudson River

Far as the eye can see

It was truly crowded at the top. We had to wait in line just to look at the view. People were snapping photos left and right, and shoving cameras between each others’ heads just to get a glimpse of the city. It was crazy, it was packed, and there were more people coming up every minute. I wonder if it’s ever quiet up there.

When we got back down, we were spent, literally. Then we had to make our way back to the hotel…

Standard
A Guide To A Good Life

Fat clothes for fat people

This post is a bit of a rant, but it’s something that’s bothered me for some time. Now that I’m married, I’ve found that Ligia has the same problem as me. We have a really hard time finding clothes that can fit us. It seems that clothing manufacturers out there have geared all of their clothes production toward fat people. I would even go so far as to say that we (and by we I mean thinner people) are being discriminated against. (I’m grinning as I write that…)

Every time we go to a department store, we can’t find clothes our size. For example, my pant size is 30″ waist x 32″ inseam. There is no such pant size in most places. I kid you not, try finding it. My shirt size is 16-16 1/2″ neck with 34-35″ sleeves. At that size, the shirt’s waist is gigantic. Somehow, they must think only extremely fat people wear those sizes. Have a look below to see how one of those shirts fits me. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

A shirt made for fat people

Ligia took these photos. As you can see, any way you look at it, there’s a ton of extra material around the waist, and on the sleeves. That material doesn’t belong there. I’m trying my best to manage a goofy expression, and yeah, I look pretty goofy…

A shirt made for fat people

I always have to find all sorts of creative ways of tucking my shirts in my pants, and I’m fed up with it. If I want well-fitting shirts and pants, I have to pay more. I shouldn’t have to pay 40-70% more for a piece of clothing simply because clothing manufacturers think everyone’s fat. Not everyone is fat!

Ligia has it even worse. She wears XS or size 2 clothing, but most of the time, those sizes are much too large for her in adult clothes. She has to go hunting around in the children’s department to find clothes that fit her. She’s a full-grown woman, past 25 years of age. She shouldn’t have to do that just so she can dress herself. We’ve honestly tried all sorts of stores. We’ve been to more expensive stores, including specialty petite stores, and still we have a hard time finding clothes in her size at reasonable prices.

I realize the trend these days is to get fat and fatter. We Americans have it too good. We’ve all got our particular excuses, but that doesn’t excuse our nation’s collectively huge waistline, and the lack of clothes in anything but large sizes.

Some people, like us, choose to remain thin, and it seems we’ve been forgotten by mainstream clothing manufacturers. We’re a persona non grata, an unpleasant reminder of what a waistline could look like. We have to shop in children’s departments to find clothes in our sizes and to get decent prices. Is it so hard to make clothes that fit us? It wasn’t so long ago when things were different. Clothing manufacturers, remember, it takes less material to dress us…

Standard
A Guide To A Good Life, Reviews

Random Harvest (1942)

Just saw Random Harvest (1942), and had to blog about it. What a wonderful movie! I had no idea it even existed until tonight. Ligia spotted it on TMC a week or two ago, and we moved it toward the top of the queue of our Netflix account. I’m so glad we did!

The story is fantastically beautiful. A woman (Greer Garson), meets and falls in love with an amnesia patient (Ronald Colman), a convalescing officer from WWI. His life, until then a dreary, monotonous stay in an asylum, begins with their chance meeting.

They move to the country, and he begins to write. He’s quite good at it, and emboldened by his success and the prospect of making a living from writing, he proposes to her. She accepts, of course, and they settle down to a beautiful married life.

They have a boy, and one day he gets a job offer in nearby Liverpool. They’re both very happy about it, and he sets off for the city right away. On his way to the job interview, he has an accident, and a concussion brings back all memory of his previous life, erasing his current one.

Naturally, he goes back to his family home (he happens to be an aristocrat) and picks up his life, troubled as he may be by the lapse of three years from his life. His now ex-wife, desperate, searches everywhere, falls ill and the baby dies. When she sees his photo in a newspaper some time later, she applies to be his secretary, and gets the job, but does not tell him about her identity, hoping that he’ll recognize her. He does not, and things go on like that for years: he, tormented by unrecognizable wisps of memory from the past, and she, so close and yet so far from his heart.

I won’t tell you more, because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it. Suffice it to say that it’s absolutely excellent. It’s a perfect screenplay, and Ms. Garson and Mr. Colman are absolutely marvelous in their parts, and they’ve now made my list of favorite actors and actresses. I was left speechless at the beautiful ending, and could only think “Bis, bis, bis!” I’m truly shocked that I did not hear of this movie until now, and want to find more like it. Record it, rent it or buy it, but see it. You must. You won’t regret it.

Standard
A Guide To A Good Life, Reviews

The Awful Truth (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937)Ligia and I just watched The Awful Truth (1937) for the second time. We love it! The cast was perfect for the roles, the script was witty, and the direction was wonderful. Cary Grant plays Jerry Warriner, a husband who finds his wife Lucy’s tale (Irene Dunne) of car trouble hard to swallow when she tells him she spent an innocent night at her father’s cabin with her music instructor. He, of course, has his own tall tale to tell — or rather, avoid telling.

They argue, and they divorce, but there’s a 90-day grace period. And of course, there’s Mr. Smith, the dog — Jerry uses him as a pretext to visit Lucy. During that time, each does his and her best to split their rebound romances through all sorts of wacky shenanigans. It’s a pleasure to watch them dog it out, each motivated by the love they still bear for the other. There’s a wonderful conclusion to the film, driven home eloquently by the director’s use of a grandfather clock and his/her figurines, animated by Cary and Irene. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!

Standard
A Guide To A Good Life

The decline of personal hygiene

I’ve come across so many pungent body odors lately that I’m led to assume personal hygiene is no longer important to people.

Just yesterday, I was in a department store, and two different people smelled so bad I almost vomited as they walked by me. They’re not isolated incidents, either. I’ve seen people of all walks of life and ages whose body odor was so powerful, so acrid, so stomach-turningly revolting, that I was left speechless every time. If you can stand it, let me reassure you this isn’t the smell of sweat after a hard day’s work. No, these people truly stink, as in a medieval, once-a-year bathing, wearing the same clothes for weeks kind of a stench.

How is it possible that in this day and age and country, when a hot shower and a bar of soap are so accessible, that so many people forego this daily necessity? How can it be?

Then, seeing people use the bathroom and not wash their hands (before and after) seems to be an almost daily occurrence. How grown men can handle their private parts after they’ve touched all sorts of nasty things (keyboards and mice being among the filthiest, even more so than toilet seats), is beyond me. And then, leaving the bathroom without washing their hands is an even more disgusting sight. To think, these ninnies then go on to shake other people’s hands, and to pat them on the back, or worse, lend you their pens, or touch your door handle, sit down at your desk to type at your keyboard… The possibilities are mind-boggling.

I’m not germ phobic, and I don’t wash my hands countless times every day – just when I use the bathroom or when they’re dirty. I don’t use hand sterilizers, either. I don’t have cans of Lysol spray lying around, ready to be used. I don’t think I’m cuckoo, but it seems that I see more and more people (no, filthy beasts) acting as if it’s perfectly alright to smell like a pig and have the bathroom manners of one as well.

Standard