Heat and Humility

Today in Minnesota it cracked 90 degrees for the first time since last summer. Thankfully the full onslaught of humidity hasn't hit, otherwise I would be melting into a puddle to be mopped up and never seen again. When I got home from work all I wanted to do was put on a pair of shorts, t-shirt, and my sandals. I suppose if you think about it a certain way this clothes shedding could be considered 'Minnesota Molting.'

Now I am neither a geezer nor a prude, but I witnessed an early molting this April when our family went to one of the mid-Wisconsin over zealous indoor water park tourist traps. When did swimsuit companies start buying material by the square inch instead of the square yard? Most of these strips of cloth should come with a consumer warning label. When you watch news magazine shows that do makeovers or What Not to Wear they almost always extoll the virtues of dressing to your body type. Is swimwear exempt from this admonition? Maybe the warning label should read 'did you actually LOOK at yourself in the mirror?' or 'prepare to be leered and ogled (and not in a good way).' Trust me when I say that NOBODY wants to see me in a late 70's retro speedo, what makes you think I want to see you in it? There are very few people on this planet that can pull off the SI Swimsuit or retro speedo, and most of those are already in the magazines. For the rest of us, we need to be a little more prudent in our choices.

Wearing a swimsuit is not a crime, nor should it be. Neither do I follow Islam and expect women to be completely covered (except maybe my beautiful young adolescent daughter). What I wish is the term 'socially acceptable' to be defined a little more narrowly, for people to look in the mirror and think "that's not o.k." Victoria has no secrets...she has revealed them all. What I wish is people would leave a little for the imagination.

First Post and Voyeurism

I wonder what the attraction is. Actually I know what the attraction is; we are voyeurs. I have been meaning to set up a blog and start writing for some time now, and tonight I finally did it. The plan was to set up my blog, write my first post, shower, and go to bed at a reasonable time. As I have hit my mid 40's I define a reasonable bedtime rather narrowly, usually before the 10 o'clock news is over. But here I am after 11:00 p.m. and just now typing. What happened?

Blogs happened. Occasionally I would have a friend or colleague ask me to check out their blog, and I would. But most likely that would be the end of it. I would read a few posts, maybe add a comment, but that was as far as it went. I didn't troll the site reading all the other blogs and posts, peeping through their electronic window trying to 'see what's in there.' I was afraid I was going to feel like a little kid reading his big sister's diary...you know it's wrong but it's just sitting right there. If she didn't want me to read it, she wouldn't have left it where I could find it. So what if it was in her top left drawer under her bras? She still shouldn't have left it where I could find it!

Anyway, tonight I have to admit that I was a voyeur. I spent WAAYYYY too much time reading other folks blogs and not creating mine. Am I the only one who has done this? Have I just graduated from tire kicker to cyber stalker?

Well, here I am. This is my first blog and my first post. Feel free to peek in my window and have a look. I don't know where this blog will go, but I am hoping you will find it interesting, thought provoking, and maybe even a little humorous.