Futon Potato

I made a big step towards having a normal apartment lifestyle today by purchasing a full-size futon. I realized that I needed something QUICK last weekend when I was watching TV and sitting on my BED. It's hard to sit with good back-lengthening yoga posture on a bed. So, on Saturday, I will be able to sit more with good posture, and therefore watch more TV. Excellent!

Speaking of potatoes....I started rehabilitating the eye chalazion today. I found out, from my licensed practitioner, that putting a microwaved (30 seconds) potato in a wet wash cloth can help transition the chalazion back to the ugly nothingless that it come from. Since these pet chalazions seem to keep popping up (pun intended), I decided to go ahead and name it. I call it Nate.

Nate and the chalazion are very similar, yet unique in their own way. Nate was one of those guys that was harmless, annoying, but someone you just kept running into, no matter how hard you tried to avoid him, just like the chalazion. Just when I thought that I'd seem him the last time, he "popped up" and started working at the same place that I was working at in college. Sound familiar? Yea...

Nate and the chalazion come from different backgrounds, however. Nate from the private gated community streets of upper-class Los Angeles, and the chalazion from the streets of the New York slums....

J. Riley

Birthday Pictures

I've posted my birthday pictures. You would be wise to look at them. And not laugh at them. Euro pics are still being worked on! But, if you must have a sneak preview, take a look on sixpak.

My Monday night Yoga class is being elevated from an intro class to a "normal person" class. This means more Down-Dogs and Warrior-poses, thus increasing my breathing from deep, back-of-the-throat breaths to hyper-ventilating breaths. Regardless, I achieved a deep state at the end of class, during the part of class we are supposed to just breathe and relax with the lights turned off. It was like I was dreaming, I had peaceful images in my head. Or maybe I was just on the crux of falling asleep.... :-/ . Good session, regardless....

J. Riley

Mission Impossible III: The Microwave

This was a weekend of running errands. Still nursing my cold, I ran around town trying to finish my apartment, looking for things like glasses for my cabinet (thanks Dad!), Bath and Body Works "Wallflowers" scents, etc. After runnings some errands and eating a grilled cheese at Sean's favorite grill (I was nursing my cold, he a hangover), I relaxed at home for a while, preparing for the evening. Being my birthday, Paul organized a dinner with some friends, location unknown to me. We ended up going to a North African place called Le Souk down in the East Villiage. Paul has a talent for finding these places. The dinner and entertainment was great, as the pictures will show. I'm sure that I am beat-red when they made me put dollar bills in the female belly-dancer's...err...clothing. And when she made me get up and dance with her. Much to my friends' chagrin, I refused to put money into the male belly-dancer's clothing. I mean, do male belly dancers even really exist in their native land? Of course not....which is why I wouldn't tip him, despite the fact that he could shake it almost as well as the girl ;o) . On the way home, we found a few cool lounges, like Sala. Because of my cold, I made sure that I only drank healthy drinks that night like Sangria, which, being red-wine based, is high in antioxidants ;o) ....

Today, my sole goal was to find a microwave. I checked a local place, but couldn't find one under $60. Surely, a low-end microwave should be cheaper than that (I don't need a built-in toaster, and I don't need a silver-plated one). KMart should have some cheap microwaves, right? I strolled downtown and, come hell or high-water, they were sold out of the cheap ones. Again, only silver or gold-plated ones were left. Well, I needed to go to Bed Bath and Beyond anyway to find my garlic peeler (which I didn't find, BTW) and they didn't have a cheap (enough) microwave. Geez, I'd just spent five hours looking to save $10 on a microwave. I stopped in a futon store on the way back to the subway and bought a futon within minutes. Remember the yogurt story, this is not unusual.

Anyway, Paul found a microwave in his apartment's basement. Microwave installed, crisis averted, $64.99 saved :o)

Old roommate Ryan Hess is coming to visit this weekend possibly, and Leif from Germany (and his girlfriend) are coming next week. And the sisters still have no confirmed flights to come visit me....

J. Riley

Chicken Soup For The...Wallet

So, all the travelling in Euroland has caught up to me. In addition to my pet chalazion, I'm also nursing a nasty cold., which decided to hit me yesterday after lunch. Maybe it was the free-range Brooklyn beef I ate at the free lunch provided by the hospital yesterday, who knows.

Regardless, I'm nursing this puppy and hoping to be fit for the weekend's festivities. So, rather than going to a party at my former boss's newly renovated apartment (oh, woh-is-me - I can't hang out with a bunch of EY people :o| ), I decided to take it easy tonight and have some chicken soup.

Whenever I need a ready-to-eat meal, I like to go to the neighborhood gourmet grocery store, Zabar's Vinegar Factory. Much like Whole Foods (or, as Ewa calls it, "Whole Paycheck"), it has fantastic grocery items, produce, and home-made items like soup - though I admit that I've never actually purchased any of these items to date (fore-shadowing!). I was totally ready to fork over the money required to buy this chicken-vegetable soup, but then I found it and saw the price tag. $5!!! $5???? $5 for 16 ounces of soup? I mean, I knew it would be good, but $5 good? I can buy a can of Campbells for less than a $1. So my brain began to churn over the numbers and the utility gained by eating $5 chicken soup versus $0.79 chicken soup while my eyes perused the freshly-made soup shelf looking for a lower-cost alternative to make me feel better. I quickly realized that, even though I just got a massive raise and can live comfortably in NYC on my new salary, this gourmet shopping thing is going to be tough. Especially for things like....yogurt (inside joke: I have mentioned to my friends here that sometimes I will deliberate for up to 10 minutes in front of the dairy section on whether I should by the yogurt on sale for $0.59 or if I should buy the good yogurt for $0.64 - and this is after I just forked over $5.00 for some gourmet, organic potato chips.)

I bought it. I ate it. It was excellent. But $5 excellent?

I'm going to bed,
J. Riley

Post-Vacation Blogging Quandry

As great as my vacation was, and as refreshed as I feel about life following it, there are certainly more serious ramifications of the vacation on my blogging abilities. Witty blogging requires a certain rhythm, week in and week out, and the vacation has definetely interrupted that rhythm. So, bare with me as I just ramble on about life until I get back into that witty rhythm....

Well, the weekend is almost here again, finally. I realized upon my return that there are some household items that I need to acquire in order to develop my lifestyle from caveman-like to industrialized-like. Items such as:
- A microwave
- Smelly stuff to...uhh...alter my apartment's aroma
- Love seat / Futon / Something-other-than-a-wooden-chair
- A cross-cutting shredder, to get rid of the evidence
- Zabar's bread, from the grocery store 2 minutes away

I am happy to say that the floor in my apartment is once again visible and I have left the dark ages and now have a cable modem and cable TV! This means I can now watch soccer pretty much 7 days a week. This also means that I can write during peak-blogging periods, at night when I'm in a goofy mood....

Google Mail Invitations

I have four Google Gmail invitations. This web email account gives you 1000 Megabytes of space (1 Gigabyte), which is pretty sweet. If you want an account, email me!!

Eu Retornei (or, The Return of J. Riley)

So, I survived my trip. I am in the process of organizing, collating, and blogging my trip along with the digital pics that I took. I hope to have things organized sometime this week.

But, really, my apartment is thoroughly trashed and needs my immediate attention. It's a synonym of what Iraq looks like with President Bush in charge. And people are going to vote for this guy :-? ???

From North Brooklyn,
J. Riley

Lagos

Hey folks, I´m checking in from Lagos, Portugal. It´s on the southern Atlantic coast of the country and is beautiful. Wait til you see the pictures! We got hooked up with a ~$20 per night apartment with a full kitchen and everything here in town. Yesterday we spent at the beach, where Alex proceded to increase his chances at getting skin cancer by getting fried. I, the older and mature one, lathered up with my SPF 36 sunscreen and am looking nice and pale still. Surprisingly, the water here is quite chilly, around the same as Santa Cruz. But, it´s so awesomely beautiful here, it´s worth facing the cold water to relax.

Cheers,
J. Riley

I´m alive!

Hey folks, I have four minutes to write about my whole trip so far. So hear goes nothing...

I´ m in Portugal at the moment, been in Lisbon for three days now. This is an awesome city, I´ve really enjoyed it. Lots of seafood and very pretty. I was in Spain before this, in Alex´s small town. The geography is just like CA only the majority of the people speak only Spanish or Portuguese. Oh wait, I guess it´s the same in CA....but lots of dry, arid landscapes, taking lots of photos, which I´l post later. On our way to the beaches in south Portugal after this, and then to Sevilla in Spain for a few days. I used some points to treat Alex and Verena to a stay at the Sheraton for free here, they were excited about the five-star hotelling that I´m used too.

Hope all is well,

J. Riley

I may have Chalazion numero

I may have Chalazion numero tres incubating on the same eyelid :-I . I hope they have running hot water in Spain

Eurobound - The Next Chapter

Well, tonight is the big night. I will be heading to Euroland for the second time this year, following up a successful trip to Germany and the Czech Republic in December 2003 / January 2004. I will be meeting up with my friends Alex and Verena again and will once again establish and secure my position as the third-wheel of the group.

This trip takes me to Spain and Portugal, where I will travel for a whole ten days. Yea, the new job gives me a total of two weeks paid vacation, so I don't think I'll be taking many more trips to the locations on the right in the next year :-( .

I don't expect to be hanging out online during my trip, but if I'm blind-sided by a high-speed connection at one point on the trip, I'll be sure to drop a line and let you know about the warm, baleric nights along the Andalusian penninsula.........

Peace Out,
J. Riley

The Midnight Special

So I've been piggy-backing off of my neighbors wireless intenet connection(s) for the past year, but I think that the free-loading has finally been put to a halt, but I'm not sure what the cause is. In any case, this, along with the fact that I'll be on vacation for 10 days starting on Thursday, means a shortage of blogging for the next few weeks. But, I digress....

The 3-day weekend came, and it is now about to leave. For you internationals out there, today is Labor Day. Friday night was pretty mellow, my former roommate Alan and his girlfriend came by and I cooked us some organic dinner, though it was a bit late by the time we sat down and ate (gotta love the traffic at 9:00pm on a Friday night coming into the city!!). I made a pitstop at my favorite gourmet grocery store, a mere block down from my apartment, and picked up an organic whole chicken (3-pounder), and whipped up some organic brown rice, cooked in free-range chicken broth and saffron. I didn't realize that brown rice takes a bit longer to cook (like, 40 minutes longer), which further delayed the full meal. But the chicken, treated with some oranges, rosemary, and onions, turned out quite juicy and quite tasty. Happy (free-range) chicken makes happy consumers :o)

Saturday, I was in for a treat. Jennifer Pitzen, who some of you may remember as my baby-sitting employer for my last two years in high school, was in town for the US Open Tennis Tour. I haven't seen any of the Pitzens for at least five years, probably more like 6 or 7 years. I used to babysit their three daughters, who were all in middle-school or elementary school the last time I saw them. Now, one of them is a year away from graduating college, the second is in her second year of college, and the baby of the family is entering high school. Unreal! So I spent the day with Jennifer, Rachel (the middle child, who is attending American University in Washington DC), and a few of Rachel's friends. I don't follow tennis, but it was pretty fun to see a top rated player like Agassi from the second row in the stands.

Saturday night was my former roommate Alan's open house, or "trying to think of a reason why we should go out", party. Well, we went out. We headed downtown to a cool hotel lounge called the Church Lounge, which was a pretty hip and pretty swank place, the type I don't frequent too often. After about an hour there, we walked down the street to S.O.B., a Latin dance club. Being the night before Brazilian Independance Day, I had high expectations for the atmosphere and I wasn't let down. We all had so much fun that we ended up staying until almost 4:00am! I got a chance to show off my moves (or lack-of) and get some cardio exercise on a weekend!

Sunday was the Brazilian Independance Day street festival in midtown, which was crazy! I gotta say, those Brazilian's sure do like to have their fun. There was lots of music, food, Capoeira (which is sort of like a martial art, sort of like dancing), and tons of Ronaldo jerseys.

After running errands, Sean and I met up for a movie (Wicker Park, which I highly recommend), followed by a trip down to Brasserie Julien to meet up with one of his acquantinces. It's a pretty cool French restaurant with good wine and a cozy atmosphere. They show old black and white French movies on two television sets set behind the bar. I was highly distracted by what was behind the bar, and I'm not talking about the television sets ;o) ...