Saturday, February 27, 2016

A Strangely Warm Saturday in February

Dog Park and Extra Exercise--Saturday, 2/27/16

Focal item: Grey snowflake cardigan

I bought this cardigan, which was pretty pilled and a bit ratty-looking, at the thrift store for a bad reason.  J. Crew cardigan are expensive, and you almost never see J. Crew at Goodwill, so getting one for $6 is a steal, right, even if it's in kind of rough shape?  Well, maybe.  I've only worn this item once (the winter of 2014, I think) since I bought it, so that's not such a great bargain after all.  I decided to give it another try after working on it with my new sweater shaver.

Because this is clearly a weekend wear cardigan, I looked to this fairly casual outfit inspiration with the idea of pairing the grey cardigan with something orange.

From bridgetteraes.com

And I found myself with my Watership Down T, which has a bit of orange in it, and a big partly-orange scarf.


Grey snowflake cardigan (thrifted, J. Crew), $3.00/wear+
Bootcut jeans (thrifted, Kohls), $1.75/wear
Watership Down T (Out of Print), $4.60/wear
Black/blue/orange floral/brushstroke infinity scarf (Kohls), $3.72/wear
Grey/rust/tan tribal flats (Payless), $4.00/wear

Outfit total: $17.07/wear

The result was pretty awesome, though this was more in spite of the cardigan than because of it--it's really flat out too short on me, in addition to its other shortcomings.  I think I would have liked the whole thing even better with the grey cardigan my mom gave me when I visited at Christmas (even though I will admit that this one is warmer).  So, sorry J. Crew cardigan, it's time to send you back to the thrift store.  Thanks for helping me learn an important lesson of thrift shopping--don't get so excited about a brand name that you pay too little attention to everything else!


In other news...Because it was crazily warm today, I only wore the cardigan part of the day (when the open windows let in a bit extra cool air).  Robert and I took advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures--like EVERYONE ELSE IN TOWN--to take a walk along the river this afternoon, and we finished up by checking out the dog park.  I felt a little bit less like a creepy dog stalker today because I saw a couple other people without dogs watching the dogs too.  (So, maybe less like a lonely creepy dog stalker anyway.)  I think my favorite dogs of the day were a trio of dachshunds being walked along the river by two people.  Two of the dogs were older (grey at the muzzle) and one of them needed to be carried part of the distance.  Dachshunds have such a funny walk.  I think about 60% of their energy goes into lateral motion so they have a very waddle-y style.

This evening I doubled-down on my exercise by doing some PT/strength training while watching two episodes of Elementary.  This week I have made a point of watching some TV in the evening and doing some light non-aerobic exercise during it (in addition to the approx. 3-4 times per week that Robert and I watch Death in Paradise and use the treadmill and bicycle).  I'm really enjoying it--in part because I do not have any specific goals/routine in mind but do whatever I feel like.  (I have done enough weight lifting/strength training in the past that it's easily to do a bunch of different things while focusing my attention on the TV program, which serves as a nice distraction so I do more exercise than I otherwise would.)  I got started on this because I wanted to get in the habit of doing the PT exercises for my knee again, and because I can't do those exercises for the length of 1-2 episodes, it made sense to go ahead and so some other exercises too. 

2 comments:

Jen M. said...

Warm day in Feb, dog park... sounds like it should have been my Saturday! Except that we went to an open house, not the dog park, much to Audrey's disappointment. But if I can speak for all doggie parents, and I'm sure I can (lol), we love people who love our dogs, so you needn't worry about being seen as a stalker :)

Sally said...

Jen, I'm glad one of us made it to the dog park! :)

No one has seemed visibly creeped out or even confused by our presence at the dog park sans dogs, so I guess the doggie parents understand that that high concentration of doggie-ness is going to attract animal lovers.