New Addition(s?) to the Cat Colony!

When I moved into my new apartment, the first ‘neighbor’ I met was actually a stray black cat from across the alley. I was standing on the back steps, seeing how the alley looked and there was a tiny black cat traipsing along the fence. She saw me and scampered over. That was odd, and I guessed she was an indoor/outdoor cat. Nope, she was a stray, who spent her entire life on the streets. But how did she and the 4 other cats get to be so friendly toward strangers??

It turned out that there was 2 good samaritans who had been feeding the colony for years. One, a neighbor, found the mother cat and took care of her and when she gave birth, had each cat TNR’ed and released back into the alley. Each morning, one of the feeders would bring fresh water and feed them once a day, and track their general health. She would spend money for antibiotics and is an overall saint. When the first feeder’s health started to decline so the second one fed the cats on a regular basis but she lived a neighborhood over. I offered to feed the cats when the weather turned cold and I ended up taking the reins permanently. One neighbor jokingly said I’m not allowed to ever leave.

The colony was 8 cats each with their own individual personality and habits. Most of them are siblings with a smattering of discarded pets who found their way to the alley. Over the past year, we lost 3, one I fostered for 2 weeks while he rested from bite wounds and a rabies quarantine and he eventually got adopted, and two were put down from medical complications.

For a while I was wondering if the colony would grow or just disappear over time. Part of me wanted to have more cats present so the colony could thrive but I think it was selfish for me to think that way. But then in the past couple weeks, I noticed a tan cat magically appear. He’s super skittish, not sure if he’s TNR’ed as he wouldn’t let me near him and the other cats hiss and growl at him if he’s near. Last week, as I was feed them dinner, I counted 5, turned around and saw another black cat run up. He was tentative at first but smelled food and immediately warmed up to me. I was a little confused by the presence of the new cat and didn’t get a good look at him. He immediately inserted himself into the colony and ate with the other cats. Food brings everyone together.

TanCat doesn’t seem to know boundaries. Krampus (black cat) does not like social time.

The next morning, I went out with their bowl of food and he was there and this was the first time I got a good look at him. He’s a largish black cat with white socks and a funny white mustache. He has a cloudy eye and his meows sound like Ray Romano which is kind of hilarious. He immediately ran up to me and started rubbing himself against my legs which means he’s a stray. He has his ears clipped so I’m not too worried about him impregnating the other cats (who are also clipped) and he seems to do well with the other cats. This is the first week with him and I’ve dubbed him Franklin.

Franklin greeting me in the morning.

So the colony is doing well, vaguely back to 7 if you count Tancat and they have houses built to stay warm and 2 meals a day, come rain or come shine.

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Fitness Journey (and everyone's invited!)

I’m turning 39 this year and it’s scaring the living daylights out of me. Working an office job has killed my body in ways that is truly embarrassing and now I’ve decided to take back control. But exercising and dieting has never been for me. So how do you lose weight when you can’t sweat or have a 9-5 job?

Gamify your life. At least that works for me. I’m competitive in strange ways and if I can create goals that work like a video game with metrics that I can measure success, then I’m on board. There is no lose mechanism (except weight!) so I am not going to make myself disappointed with the results if I feel better in the end.

Goals: Lose 10 lbs. Then 20 lbs. Then 30 lbs. Go until I am at the weight I want to be at.

Rules: I have to count calories (for now it’s just calories but not sugar yet), but still eat responsibly and healthy. I have to weigh myself every day at roughly the same time each day, which means first thing in the morning. I have to track my habits which will serve as metrics for general well-being. There’s no timetable for losing weight. I’m not going to change the number of calories I eat, and I want to stay at 2000 calories per day which I think is good if I do light to medium workouts.

I started this on January 1. I weighed myself mid-day and found that I weighed a eye-opening 180 lbs. It hurts so bad knowing that I’ve let myself go this much. I decided that starting then that I’d do some pushups and get to 60-80 a day and other types of exercises. See if I can work my way to 100 comfortably.

Then the tracking began. Folks suggested that I download apps on my phone but truthfully, I’m rarely on my phone. I hate being on my phone except to play music and know that I’m never checking my phone at work or at home so this idea went out the window almost immediately. I instead opted to create a spreadsheet on Google Sheets to keep open while at the office and home where I track each item I eat and the number of calories I took in. If I bought it then I also included the dollar amount which will serve me for future uses.

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This is the findings from last week. I added more data that I thought would be helpful, like tracking my weekly caloric intake and talking about my journey thus far. I want to celebrate the victories, no matter how small and still give myself room to improve. This week I also added some special fields that will automatically flag caloric intake of over 300 calories in a single item. I’m not necessarily trying to avoid those items but want to be able to glance at the ‘big ticket items’.

In my bullet journal I started tracking my habits as part of my self-improvement for 2020. I wanted to track things that I found meaningful and is a way to track the victories, or places I can work on. Those categories are intentionally limited to art/design, water intake, exercising, mood. The latter portion of my year was pretty dour and I want to be mindful of my mood during the start of the new year. The metrics are pretty self-explanatory for categories like water intake (1 = 1 cup of water), and exercising means I did 20 of some form of exercise. As I do more, this metric really comes down how active did I feel for the day. Did I knock out 100 push ups? What about other types of exercises? Some categories are without a set metric for art and design is if I felt creative, did I draw, or design something in my iPad? Mood I think is pretty self-explanatory.

Lastly, and the biggest shame, is my weight. I need to own it for this year. I have the starting weight and now I need to track it every day roughly at the same time and be held accountable to it. I can’t be afraid to look at it anymore and so I created another page to track my weight. For both the habit tracker and weight tracker, I added graphs because my visual mind likes to see the pretty pictures associated with my hard work. I’m not going to beat myself up each day if I gain weight. I know I’m working on myself in a good way.

You’ll notice there small triangles in the top right of some fields. I found that you can add notes without having to create extra fields which can clutter the space. If you hover the mouse over each item, you’ll see notes I added, which depends on the page you’re on. For the weight tracker, I included the exercises I did for that day. For the meal tracker, it is a daily review of things I found worked, things that didn’t and want I want to do in the future. This is different from the weekly review where I want to think back about how I did for that week and celebrate the victories and make new plans for the next week. The day to day reviews celebrates the journey.

So here’s to 2020, goals without the guilt!

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New Years Resolutions (a work in progress)

Welcome to 2020! I usually think about how I can better myself and this mental process begins late 2019. I want to be reasonable with my goals, in part because I need to not feel defeated if the goals aren’t met and honestly, I kind of need a win.

Categories are listed in my bullet journal:

Create:

• Make one thing everyday

• Take picture and post to Instagram

• Blog weekly

• Update website monthly

Save Money / Make Money

• Buy less Starbucks

• Meal prep

• Take bus more often

• Budget track

• Cash diet

• Sell more stuff/crafts

• Grow savings

• Pay down credit cards

• Save $200/month

Self-Improvement

• Meditate

• Habit Tracker

• Bullet Journaling

• Exercise 20-45 minutes a day

• Nap less

Think I can do it? Time will tell.

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Vintage Singer 66 Repaired with photos

Singer 66 has been fixed up thanks to Brother Vac and Sew (special thanks to Tracy for the helpful plug!). I ended up chatting with the owner for 30 minutes and he gave lots of helpful tips on how to sew heavier materials such as leather/denim and gave me a shim which helps adjust the pressure foot to step up or down while sewing. It's a family owned business and the tech who did the repairs was very helpful. If I keep the machine oiled, the owner said that the machine shouldn't need to be brought ever again since the machine is all metal. Below are pictures from this morning and the leather is 3 layers deep with some lighter fabric tossed in for good measure. It goes through leather REALLY well, and I'm super pleased with it.

This machine is one of the most common in its era and often you can find them in thrift stores for 20-30 bucks. If they're in good condition, getting them fixed up professionally means you have a machine that'll last you forever. Each one will have its serial number listed which you can google to see the date of manufacturing (this machine is from 1935 thereabout). It will only do straight stitches and cannot backtack but I only need it to do one thing and it does it extremely well. The wallet photos below is the first thing I sewed when it came home.

If you are in DC and need a sewing machine or vacuum repaired, please check out Brother Sew and Vac: http://www.brothersewvac.com/.

Leather Wallet

Wallet dyed royal blue is done.  Below are the pictures.

Reflections and critiques from finishing up the second wallet:

This year I am tackling leatherworking.  The main goal is to learn the fundamentals and make wallets, card holders and then maybe book coverings.

Below is the wallet 2.0 (1.0 is effectively a leather version of the vinyl wallet 7.0). It looks good and below are my comments and reflections:

Form factor is good, the pieces are easy to measure and cut, glue and assemble. Both panels are 3 6/8'' x 4 6/8'' in dimension.

From use, the inner leather needs to be thinner to cut down on the profile.

The leather I'm using is from a gift a professor I use to work for. It was massive so it'll give me good mileage.

Other notes: The corners need to be curved which will help with the profile as well (making it look smaller than it really is).

I'll cut out more of the pattern using 3-4oz leather and see how it feels as panel 1 and 2 and then make a hybrid of both.

Vinyl Card Holder

This weekend I designed and sewed a vinyl card holder.  I also pulled out my leather hide sitting in storage and tried that as well and both look very snazzy.  I may need to tinker with the design a bit since both are very tight.  I think I need to buy special glue to adhere to the back of vinyl to add a decorative fabric for the parts exposed.

Tentative future projects

I wouldn't mind doing these down the road:

Business card holder out of vinyl. Design incoming.

Leather wallet.  May use Wallet 7.0 as the template.

Updated To-Do List

I think I have 5 completed wallets 7.1 for the craft fair. I also created 5 boxes to sell them in.  This weekend I want to:

Create 3 or 4 more wallets

Construct 3 or 4 more paper boxes

Create a handout/blurb for the wallet design for the sale explaining how to use the wallet

Create a label for the QR code to direct people to my website

Add unsold wallets to Etsy for sale

Take better pictures of the wallets for Etsy

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As a side note, one of my colleagues who is beta testing wallet 7.1 REALLY loves the wallet.