Thrifting Lately.

I’ve always been a fan of thrift stores. At first they were a bountiful source of ironic t-shirts and tacky clothing that comes prepackaged with being an angsty teenager who desperately wanted to be clever. Throughout college I filled my dresser drawers with thrifted shirts to wear under my Piper suit and during countless rehearsals. It has only been recently that I realized the true potential of scouring through piles of other people’s tax deductions.

After we got married, Jodi started picking up pieces of furniture from thrift stores, Craigslist, and flea markets to refurbish them. She‘s just cool like that. The table is her most recent project and she got the globe at the same place. The globe has Soviet Union in nice bold print across it. Bonus!

Through a combination of too much time spent on my Google Reader and life dedicated to public education (read destitution) I started looking at thrift stores in a different way. I have started to stock up on dress shirts, ties, and shoes that with a bit of discernment are in quite a supply.

This is what I lucked out on today.

The wing tips are Florsheims size 11 and the loafers are Giorgio Brutini size 10.5. The latter fit like a glove and I’m pretty excited about rocking them sockless for the rest of the summer. $6 a pair and a good shoeshine later and I just almost doubled my dress shoe collection. I’m well on my way to being a crotchety old professor.

A Reading Man Pt. 4

 

Blow My Mindsday: March 9, 2011.

Links! Here is a start of a weekly post about some of my favorite things I’ve wasted time on lately.

–Devour sifts through the best of the best of YouTube then puts them all in one  handy spot for your viewing pleasure. The kicker is that it is all in HD.

–Fifty and Fifty is a collective, curated project where fifty designers are invited to represent their state by illustrating its motto. New pieces are posted each weekday.

–The Material Review is the Tumblr account of one of my longtime blog reads, A Continuous Lean. It is solely a photo blog of anything and everything cool.

-This bit of fun comes from the good old folks over at McSweeney’s. Have you ever wondered what your favorite classic rock band says about you?

-Shaine Claiborne shares his thoughts and some interesting tidbits over at The Huffington Post on What Would Jesus Cut?

-Maybe it is because both of our parents are educators or some other reason, but I applaud  Jon Stewart for slamming Fox News for scapegoating teachers. When you are done watching the video give the site it’s on, GOOD, a once-over. It is definitely worth your time.

Library sub.

I have been the on-again off-again librarian substitute for East Lake Elementary here in Chattanooga. Here is a bit of a walk-through of where I worked.

Things heard while subbing.

*Child: “Mr. Frye? Uh, it smells like butt and eggs in here.”
Me: “Does anyone need to go to the bathroom? Anybody?”
(silence)
Me: “Let me rephrase that. Did anyone need to use the bathroom about one           minute ago?”
(kid smiles and raises his hand)
Child next to him: “Well, we just made your day exciting didn’t we Mr. Frye?”

*”Did you know that we have the Verizon guy as our substitute today!?”

*”He was sick with the chickenpops. It was bad. He had a chicken here and one here and here and they were exploding and stuff.”

*”Kindergarten, how do I need you to behave right now?” “Um, good. Yep. ‘Cause if we don’t then our moms will beat our butts.”

It’s the ‘011, son!

So I thought that fifteen days into the new year was an appropriate time to discuss resolutions. Punctual, no? Chattanooga schools have been out for the entire week due to six inches of snow that will not go away. That has left me with plenty of time to loaf around the apartment while contemplating the slow atrophy of my brain. Figuring that this behavior was not representative of how I plan on spending the rest of the year I started thinking about goals for the rest of  The ‘011.

Along with the ubiquitous goal to exercise more this year I have decided to set a goal all about reading. I plan on setting aside a portion of every day to turn off the television, put away the laptop, and just read. The second half of this goal is to read something educational/scholarly daily online. I figure that both of those will help to focus both my personal and professional pursuits. That and the fact that I was disappointed with having realized I only read 31 books last year. I plan on reaching at least 50 this year and could easily do that just with the backlog of books taking up space on my shelves. One down and 49 to go.

While this goal about reading will be one of my regular focal points as far The Rumpus is concerned I don’t want to limit it to being my only resolution for the rest of the year. If I happen to come up with any more you guys may or may not see a post about it in the future. Who knows? That being said, I still want to hear any suggestions or whatever brilliant bits of cleverness that you guys have floating around as well and add them to my list. I’m excited about this new year and the idea of spending more time honing skills that I enjoy such as this blog and so on. Here’s to a great year.

Happy Christmas, Harry!

Oh brother.

Matthew Frye shaves for the very first time at fifteen years old.

12-22-10

Norman Rockwell

“Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”
—Norman Rockwell

www.nrm.org

Time for reading.

Ah, Christmas break. This print seemed appropriate for how I want to spend my time for the next few weeks.