Alexander J Oberlender

Tom Sawyer and the Art of Not Painting

Alexander J. Oberlender • Feb 04, 2021

I absolutely hate painting. Period. End of story.

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for some stuff, and the punishment that my genius mom envisioned was making me paint our wooden fence. I was reading Tom Sawyer at the time, so I’m not being sarcastic when I say she played that well. Though, she thought I was farther behind in the book than I actually was. So I started painting, and my friends wanted to play; we were around 11, so these were all neighborhood kids who would just come over as if we all lived in each other’s houses. I played up how much fun I was having painting this fantastic fence and how I couldn’t stand hogging all the fun to myself. Suddenly, my friends ask for brushes, and I took a step back while they basked in the joy of painting the fence. I know, I’m a great friend.

Sadly, I don’t seem to have a picture of that fence.

That brings me to today. I still hate painting, and my wife wanted to paint our baby’s room. I’ve hemmed and hawed for months, mainly because we had furniture that we couldn’t sell. Last week I finally sold that furniture. Begrudgingly I started priming the walls with her and regaled her with my childhood story in much more detail. She doesn’t enjoy my stories, so her reaction was, “so that’s why we haven’t painted?” And I had to fess up.
Mazi and Gabby painting the wall

Thankfully I have an amazing sister who jumped at the opportunity to help us. So this post was mainly to thank my amazing sister. I promise I’m not a monster; now that they have finished painting, I can finally get to do what I love, which is building furniture. You can just call me Harrison Ford. Or don’t; I’m good either way.

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When players want out nobody wins

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 17 Sep, 2021
“The Simmons drama will be great to watch” That’s a direct quote from my basketball text group with my dad and two guys who sit by us at the Heat games. While for us, it’s slightly entertaining, I also am getting tired of these public dramas.

Measuring and Cheating

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 02 Mar, 2021
Sorry for the delay. The last couple of weeks have been busy for me. I’ll write about what I’ve been up to later, but this post is back to weight. While I’ve been busy, I’ve missed the gym a fair amount, so I was concerned that the scale would suffer. But, thankfully, as of Friday, I was at 304.6 pounds. I’ve been getting exacting about the diet, which has helped. One significant change has been that instead of measuring things with a spoon, tea, and table, I’ve moved to measuring weight. This is because I’ve noticed that I wouldn’t be genuine in the measurements and would count a heaping tablespoon as a tablespoon, and when we’re talking about sauces, those calories can add up. When I measure with grams, it’s a lot harder to lie to myself. Just that one change has accounted for my weight loss the last week and change since the gym hasn’t been in the cards. Hopefully, starting today, though, I’ll be able to start working out again and shedding more pounds. I genuinely miss my elliptical (I use the same one every time).

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 16 Feb, 2021
It’s been a long week for me. First things first, today’s weigh-in was down to 310.0, from 314 last week. Very exciting!

What am I Doing?

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 09 Feb, 2021
Ok, slightly long post coming up, but I also have lots of pictures for you guys.

Happy Birthday in Heaven

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 05 Feb, 2021
This guy. Today would’ve been his 89th Birthday.

340-198-324-?

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 02 Feb, 2021
I’ve been overweight for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried almost any type of diet you can think of at one point or another. At 22, I weighed about 340 pounds, at least that’s the number I saw on the scale in March of that year; I had started to

Reboot

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 30 Jan, 2021
I’ve blogged on and off for years. With all the changes coming to my life right now, I thought it might be a good idea to start this back up again. In addition to politics, I’ll talk about sports, my weight loss journey, business as it relates to my master’s program, and finally, my baby girl and parenting journey. I try to write in relatively short digestible spurts, but there may be the occasional long post. I hope there’s something for everyone and you all enjoy it. Anything earlier than this post came from any of my previous blogs or posts that I wrote on that date but never posted. Enjoy!

When they go low we go high

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 11 Nov, 2016
I wish that I could reach out to everybody at once but, I don’t currently have that type of reach. I don’t agree with the violence coming from people on the left. At the same time I definitely don’t agree with the disgusting, patronizing gloating coming from the right.

History has its eyes on you

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 09 Nov, 2016
I went to sleep last night next to my tearful wife hoping to wake up to something else. But, alas that didn’t happen. Instead I woke up to my worst case scenario when this election started two years ago, and have struggled to answer texts from friends a

I am… We are… Je suis…

By Alexander J. Oberlender • 14 Jun, 2016
After a tragedy, social media lights up with posts expressing support and aligning ourselves with those who were attacked. In the wake of the Orlando shooting that was provoked by hatred I saw this meme:
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