Other Changes

Beyond diet, exercise, and changing careers; Taj and I have been making some other changes to our lives these last few months. We canceled our television service...... I know! Crazy right! Yep, no television service for us anymore. We are getting away from the TV and trying to engage life more fully. I have been spending a lot of time in the garage wrenching on bikes of course, Taj has taken up Yoga at the new Yoga studio in Gresham, Fluid Yoga. She has been pestering me to give it a try as well but I haven't got the time in my schedule at this point. A few more weeks and I will run out of excuses though!

We have both decided to take up sewing, Taj and I are both interested in the Steampunk and Pirate scene in Portland. We have attended several events locally in which everyone dresses appropriate for the genre, costumes are spendy! I was quoted near $200 from a Victorian style vest in my size. See they don't make vests for guys my size and it would have to be made custom of course. Eventually I will be small enough to start buying stuff off the rack but even then Victorian style clothing is very spendy.

I had my first sewing lesson at PDX Seamsters studio in SE Portland last night and it was a blast. We didn't do much beyond straight stitches and learning how to sew on a curve, but it was pretty cool. I was not the only guy in class either, two other male students were in my class and the person teaching was also a guy. We finished up the first class with a little hand stitching and I have to say, these huge hands of mine are not made for that sort of stuff. Gonna need a lot of practice to become half way decent at that. My hope with sewing is to be able to produce my own bicycle jerseys (way expensive to buy), hats and other similar items as well as costume stuff for Taj and I. With our new budget being what it is, saving money on anything we can will be a big help.