The High Heeled Ruminations Of Melrose Plant

[mlroseplant]

Speaking of shoe failures, I had a rubber sole come off one of my Sofft sandals last night. Chinese made, of course. Not a difficult fix at all, since I found the errant piece.

As far as actual working boots go, I have long given up on the idea of buying a pair of "lifetime" boots. The reason is because in my personal situation, the insides of my boots wear out long before the outsides, and by the time they get to that point, they are kind of gross anyway, and it's time to get rid of them. It must be something in my personal chemistry.

[mlroseplant]

It has been a while since I posted any pictures, so here is one. It is nice to not have to force myself to go outside, now that the weather is reasonable. Yes, I still drive old cars.

[Jkrenzer]

Perfect heel height and shape. Awesome shoes.

[spikesmike]

mlroseplant: Nice color theme and heels. Other. - What kind of old cars are you talking about? Those cars in your driveway do not look that old. Interests? I own a 1934 classic Buick. model 41 series 40. So, what are you driving? Mike

[mlroseplant]

19 hours ago, spikesmike said:

mlroseplant: Nice color theme and heels. Other. - What kind of old cars are you talking about? Those cars in your driveway do not look that old. Interests? I own a 1934 classic Buick. model 41 series 40. So, what are you driving? Mike

Yes, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, my cars are not all that old. My main car now is a 2004 Crown Vic. The backup car is a 2002 Buick Park Avenue. What I am getting at is that most people in my income range drive newer cars than I do.

While I do not have a great passion for cars, I do have a number of vintage lawn mowers, a hell of a lot of old instruments (which all get played regularly), and of course, a lot of high heeled shoes.

[Jkrenzer]

Automobiles are the worst kind of money pitt. Moving to North Carolina was a dream. Upon moving 12 yrs ago I rapidly replaced all of my Syracuse vehicles with older but 100% corrosion free units. My 2003 Ford 150 with a 97 suburban. My 2003 Mazda with a 2002 buick century and my 2006 jeep liberty with a 2002 Tacoma. I paid $3700, $6500 and $4000 respectively for each. Still have all and all still run great and all still no rust.

I'll never buy a brand new vehicle again.

[pebblesf]

2 hours ago, mlroseplant said:

Yes, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, my cars are not all that old. My main car now is a 2004 Crown Vic. The backup car is a 2002 Buick Park Avenue. What I am getting at is that most people in my income range drive newer cars than I do.

While I do not have a great passion for cars, I do have a number of vintage lawn mowers, a hell of a lot of old instruments (which all get played regularly), and of course, a lot of high heeled shoes.

Would love to find a nice old Crowne Vic, once I retire and don't have to drive so much.  My 09 Camry has just turned over 200K miles, and will/is needing all the normal repairs for a car of that vintage/mileage.  Never liked this car much, did really like the 99 Solara V6 I traded in for it though.  Somewhere out west, some little old lady has an old Solara in her garage, now I just have to figure out how to find it/her.  I'm not in a position to spend $35K on a new car, and really don't want what they have to offer these days anyway.  Those old Buick/GM V6s of the era were really great engines.  My buddy had a 99 Olds Intrigue, he did nothing but just drive that thing without doing even the bare minimum maintenance.  The engine was so quiet and smooth, until it wasn't, when he ran it out of oil.  

What kind of lawnmowers did you like/collect?  I remember my first job as a kid was working in the lawnmower shop, really enjoyed the Lawnboys of the mid 70s vintage, but they were an aquired taste.  I remember people bringing in poor old Briggs powered mowers cuz they were seized after being run out of oil.  I would just put a breaker bar on em, free em up, add oil, and the poor things just seemed to come back to life.  I don't ever remember seeing a Briggs with a thrown rod, more or less bullet proof.  Tecumsehs were nice running engines, but they wouldn't tolerate down right abuse the way the poor old Briggs did.  

Now, I seem to have re-collected all the old HO trains I had as a kid.  My Mom "thoughtfully" gave all my trains away to my nephew, never to be seen again.  I also collect all the old metal toy outboards motors of the 50s as well.  I collect the 1958 full size Evinrudes, but they are relatively worthless when compared to the "toys" of the era.  I have "collected" many of the vintage Adidas superstars/promodel/Stan Smith sneaks from the era as well.  The "sneaker head" culture is quite something, some of these things items are sold for a thousand dollars.

And, of course, now I collect all my favorite boots.  I need to remember to buy two pairs when I find a pair I really like, I tend to kill them pretty quickly navigating city streets/sidewalks, etc.  

Hmmm, I think I have a problem....

[Shyheels]

I used to collect things - most memorably baseball cards back in the day. I had pretty much the entire Topps baseball card collection from about 1955/6 to 1970 but around 1972 my mother sold the lot in some flea market. I was annoyed then, but now when I think about it I feel positively ill. They would be worth a packet today…

[Jkrenzer]

2 hours ago, pebblesf said:

 

Now, I seem to have re-collected all the old HO trains I had as a kid.  My Mom "thoughtfully" gave all my trains away to my nephew, never to be seen again.

You still run your trains?

I have tons of good loco's Athern and Atlas, AHM and others. Rolling stock, of limited quality. I also got heavily into European HO, DC not AC. All boxed up but I'll never likely run any of it again.

Willing to sell at very discounted costs if you'd be interested. 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Jkrenzer

[mlroseplant]

There is a lot of stuff to talk about here. First, yeah, no, there ain't no way I'm paying $35,000 for a car. There are many, many Crown Vics/Mercury Grand Marquis to be had for a very reasonable price. I got mine for $5,500 with no rust (difficult here in the midwest) and 90,000 miles. I'm very glad I don't need/want a pickup, talk about crazy prices!

Second, there are only Lawn Boys in our collection. Second cousin, once removed to your Evinrudes. My 14 year old son got the bug a lot harder than I ever did, and the collection keeps getting relatively older and older. He likes the pre-1970 stuff, and he actually mows 6 lawns with it, but when the grass gets so high (we've gotten a lot of rain lately), you pretty much have to dig out the "modern" stuff from the 80s as a practical matter.

I have no idea how, but we also have three vintage clocks. All working. One of them plays the Westminster chime every quarter hour. This must not be allowed to get to the point where we start buying parts clocks. Interestingly enough, I do not collect guitars, even though I'm totally the type.

[Cali]

I can see it now, a Lawn Mover Museum is in you future.  Maybe @pebblesf can open an Evinrude wing.

[mlroseplant]

I probably shouldn't own anything that should be in a museum, simply because I would want to use it, whatever it is. I am not a strict preservationist. For example, the mower I typically use on a day-to-day basis, while not a true Frankenmower, is a mishmash of 3 different years. It's a '72-'73-'74 model. I got it one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime. You'll know it's me when I mow through your lawn.

[mlroseplant]

Here is the outfit of the week, featuring my new Mary Janes, which I will post about later in the New Shoes section. Here is one regular picture, and one picture of me doing my very best pissed off looking model impression. Why do those people always look irritated?

[ohnoberty]

Well if elegant was the look you were going for then you nailed that!

[Cali]

Or did he slay it?

[Shyheels]

He did 

[mlroseplant]

Believe me, I slew nobody, but everybody who had anything to say rather liked the shoes. In fact, there was one woman who said something about them, and I replied, "Well, Marcia, I actually thought of you when I bought these, because they looked like something you would wear." She said, "Oh, you're right, those are exactly like something I would wear!" Although I don't think I've ever seen her wear anything above 3 inches. On rare occasions, 3 1/2. Maybe. It's funny, all the women who sing in that early church service band wear heels pretty much every week, but not Heels. About 2 1/2" average.

[mlroseplant]

Last night was the 4th week for the "big" farmer's market. For those of you who don't know, my wife has a side hustle making egg rolls and crab rangoons. The "big" farmer's market is not really a farmer's market at all in the true sense of the word, as about a third of it is food vendors. At any rate, it's on a city street that has been blocked off for the evening, so I always wear heels of some sort to work the evening. It can involve up to 5 hours of more or less continuous standing, with loading and unloading bookending the evening. We actually bought a full size cargo van to accommodate all of the necessary equipment to make this operation run.

I have not been very brave so far this year, and have been very conservative in my choice of heels. I have not worn anything so far but my Söfft "Calvados" mules, which are effectively 3 inch heels. I have them in 3 colors: Black, silver, and taupe. The reason I haven't ventured any higher yet is because I have been slacking off on the endurance training this month, and also because our sales volume so far this year is a big upstep from last year. We set up at 3:15, start selling at 4:00, and so far, every week by about 4:45 or so, there is a line of 3 people or more from that time until closing/teardown time at 8:00. I am pretty much tuckered out by then, and ready to go home. Achy feet would be a big liability in such a situation, but nevertheless I'm sure I will wind up pushing it by summer's end.

The Söfft mid heeled mules have not disappointed so far. It is very difficult at that height to notice that you're even wearing heels, and I've suffered no ill effects at all from any of the 3 pairs so far. I hope to get some pictures at some point of me actually working instead of taking a mirror selfie in the bathroom.

[Shyheels]

Heels aside, I love the sound of those eggrolls and crab rangoons. I wish you'd open up an annex in Sussex!

[mlroseplant]

I am probably a little bit biased, but my wife, despite all her faults, makes the best product available locally. I think it's because she has the perspective of having grown up in Asia, but also having lived in the West for a long time. She understands how to modify the Asian food to cater to the Western palate. Also, to be clear, I did not come up with the business name, "Egg Rolls Yum!" That's about the dumbest name I could ever imagine, but, like my own presence as an ugly old guy in high heels, it doesn't seem to have hurt sales. I do seem to have mastered saying, "Thank you! Y'all have a good night!" in an enthusiastic way.

A standing offer to Shyheels and all other hhplace people. While I seriously doubt we'll ever take our van to Sussex, if any of y'all ever make it out this way, you eat for free. That's not my decision, that's my wife's.

[Shyheels]

What a lovely offer!!! 

[at9]

Thank you. What a generous and lovely offer.

[mlroseplant]

Do any of you remember your fathers yelling at the TV? Maybe you've done it yourself. I caught myself yelling at the computer screen this morning. Do you know what it is in this world that really bothers me? When people try to sell a European shoe, such as Jimmy Choo or some such thing, and they convert size 39 to USW 9. I'm sorry, it is not, despite what half the conversion charts say. It just isn't. In fact, I'm trying to recall ANY purchase of size 39 I've ever made where I didn't regret it. I am done yelling now. In fact, I am done buying shoes for a while now.

[Shyheels]

Such things can be intensely frustrating, especially when you see them repeated again and again with such blithe ignorance. In such circumstances shouting at screens is entirely acceptable!

[ohnoberty]

So 2 things, first regarding egg rolls, and I'm sure I could dig through the forum and find out myself but could you narrow down the location? Even just to the State would be a start.

 

And secondly shouting at the TV or computer, oh yes! Not generally about anything in particular but just often, maybe hurling insults at the stupidity of people on the news,or even just the stupidity of people. Tiktok seems to be the home of stupid and time wasting, not that it's everyone but from what I've seen it's rife.

[Cali]

You only have to worry when the computer or TV screen shouts back. Until then you are fine.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Cali

[mlroseplant]

21 hours ago, ohnoberty said:

So 2 things, first regarding egg rolls, and I'm sure I could dig through the forum and find out myself but could you narrow down the location? Even just to the State would be a start.

 

And secondly shouting at the TV or computer, oh yes! Not generally about anything in particular but just often, maybe hurling insults at the stupidity of people on the news,or even just the stupidity of people. Tiktok seems to be the home of stupid and time wasting, not that it's everyone but from what I've seen it's rife.

Do you mean, where was the above picture taken? I think it used to say right on my avatar "Central Iowa," but for some reason they made us change it a while back. At any rate we're in the Des Moines metro area.

I only ever got on TikTok in order to study the mechanics of walking in high heels, using those Chinese street fashion videos that were popular a while back. Maybe they still are, who knows? But yes, TikTok is a very, very silly place. I have no idea why people find it so entertaining. Also, I don't even understand the name. I mean, who, besides us, actually still has clocks that go "Tick, tock?"

[SF]

Well not to sound contrary, but I do.  A beautiful Grandmother clock that stays wound for 7 days and chimes every quarter hour.  Keeps perfect time too.  I love that sound.  

And yes, I see no sense in Tick Tock either.  Seems like a tremendous waste of time, but that's my two cents.  sf

[mlroseplant]

14 hours ago, SF said:

Well not to sound contrary, but I do.  A beautiful Grandmother clock that stays wound for 7 days and chimes every quarter hour.  Keeps perfect time too.  I love that sound.  

And yes, I see no sense in Tick Tock either.  Seems like a tremendous waste of time, but that's my two cents.  sf

What kind is it? We've got two Seth Thomas "humpback" mantle clocks, one of which chimes every quarter hour, and one Seikosha wall clock.

[mlroseplant]

I dunno, I guess I just felt like wearing pink today. Some of it is technically salmon or coral, depending upon your eye. Aldo mules, Loft corduroy pants, no-name Vietnamese shirt.