Pants rant.

I've got these yoga pants that I mostly love. Except when I have to do any actual exertion in them. It's cooled off here the last few days, so I've been wearing pants instead of shorts for my daily walk, and I don't know who decided that exercisewear should be as unabsorbent as possible, but I'd like to smack him. Because you just know it was a him.

My yoga pants are rare and prized possessions, because if you think plus-size exercise clothes are hard to come by--and they are--they're nothing compared to plus-size petite exercise clothes. It's apparently crossed very few people's minds that there may be some short pudgy girls out there in the world and that they might want to get some exercise to rectify their pudginess, since there's obviously nothing they can do about their shortness.

So I got a wonderful pair of petite XL yoga pants at Land's End several years ago, and then because Land's End stopped making the wonderful yoga pants before I could get any more (of course), I also have two slightly less wonderful pairs from L. L. Bean.

I checked the label on my Land's End pants after my walk today and they're apparently 39% cotton, which you'd think would have some sort of cooling effect. However, they're also 48% nylon, and that's where the problem lies. These pants feel exactly like the navy blue polyester bellbottoms I used to wear in grade school, when I'd go out and play a hearty game of kickball at recess and then come inside and sit in a damp, gooey waist-to-ankles mass of man-made "fabric" that never dried.

That's exactly how these pants feel. And grade school flashbacks are seldom enjoyable for me.

I just can't understand why clothes made for sweating should be made of the worst possible material for letting sweat evaporate.

If you know of any flattering black petite XL exercise pants made for short pudgy girls who actually sweat, let me know, won't you?

RIP, Epson Photo R320.

Our printer died a quiet death the other day and now we have to replace it. We bought it three or four years ago, and I remember telling someone at the time that if it were possible to marry an inanimate object, I'd marry that printer.

It printed hundreds and hundreds of gorgeous photos for me, in every size imaginable, and although it had gotten a little cantankerous in its old age, I still loved it dearly. It took me far, far away from the limitations of film cameras and Wal-Mart 4x6" photo processing, into a world where I could take a picture, crop it, print it as big or small as I wanted, and have a scrapbook page completed, all in an hour's time.

So goodbye, old friend. As we throw you into the garbage can, remember that we didn't want to, but your warranty was just too short.