Crash and Burn

Just like what normally happens after an extended visit, I'm burnt out! It finally caught up to me today, I overslept my alarm clock and was exhausted for the whole day. I came home with high aspirations of getting some exercise (today is my "off day" from the gym), but instead I rested my eyes for a few minutes, only to wake up an hour and a half later feeling much better. So I probably won't be able to sleep tonight, but....oh well.

I know I've totally slacked on the blogging, and that's weak-sauce since I ate some fine food and drank some fine beverages when my sister and her friends were here. By the way, they were excellent guests, just like I expected. They kept things tidy around here, so I have no complaints. Friday night was the big blow-out night when we did a little pre-partying before heading downtown to bOb, a lower cover-charge venue that had hot beats with a diverse crowd. We had a tight little group organized with seven of us in total and we all had a good time, though I guess not everyone was feeling quite so hot the next day. And even the day after that ;o).

So tomorrow is my Name Day! As promised, I will be celebrating it this year, though the party will officially be on Friday, when I'm going to go to the "First Fridays" party at the Guggenheim Museum on 89th St. DJ-spun music, contemporary art, and a cocktail bar all in one finely architected building? That should be interesting and awesome. I haven't actually visited the museum other than wandering into the foyer (sp.?) and gazing upwards in the cylindrical building.

There are some other major events going on in my professional life that are putting my employment status in limbo that I won't expand upon here, but they could have a major impact on my residence. Let's just say if things don't work out, I've got open invitations to take up residency in three countries around the world. You could always email me if you want to know what's up...

The J. Riley

MIA

Sorry, sister and friends are in town, so things have been too busy to do much blogging. I'm doing what she says....

Love At First Site?

Is love at first site just something that happens in movies? I don't think so! I'm happy to say that it happened to me recently. I was walking down to a local German bakery on a warm Sunday morning to get some breakfast food to increase my waist-length (my jeans aren't tight enough yet) and, low and behold, there was a soccer store less than a block from my house....errrrr, I mean "room". I stepped inside and was lovestruck by a true image of beauty. I had no idea they had models at NYC soccer stores, but I guess they do. Makes sense. There she was, sitting elevated next to the wall. I casually approached her and made small talk about the David Beckhams she was sitting next to. Being the suave player that I am, I incited jealousy by rubbing my fingers all over her Beckham-inspired neighbors. She didn't budge, but I could tell she was upset when I took the inspired-neighbor over to the other side of the room to find out what we had in common. But she wasn't my type, so I took her back a few minutes later. I kept playing hard-to-get, though and walked over to talk to the store owner and find out what the deal with my true love and he told me I was out of luck, she was taken. Damn....figures. The ones I'm attracted to are always taken! Being the gentleman, I left it at that and stormed out of the place. Fast-forward one week: I got out of work a few minutes early today, so I thought I'd see if she was still modeling at the store. Of course she was, still striking that imposing pose. We caught each other's eyes and I knew that today was my lucky day. I winked and went to find out the status on her, if she was still taken. As fate would have it, she was available and waiting for me. I took her home this afternoon and will remain faithful to her until I wear her out, if you know what I mean.



I was crawling through my logs today and was pleased to see that people are adhering to my wisdom and upgrading their browsers to be safe and secure. Well, upgrading Firefox, to be exact. Since you can't upgrade Internet Explorer to be safe, as well all know. Someone at 16541 Topping Way needs to upgrade, though. Do it. Click on the red or green arrow in the top-right corner of Firefox. Thanks.

I got a nice compliment from the team leader of my volunteer group today. She told me that she thinks I would make a great team leader and I should come to their Team Leader Open House to find out more about the opportunities. Well, I at least took that as a compliment. Another entry for my new Sunbird calendar!

If you've noticed in my pictures that I've been bulking up and getting huge muscles, you're right. I admit it, my muscles are out of control. Maybe it has to do with the steroids I've been taking. Believe me, I wish I wasn't addicted to the damn drug, but the doctor keeps injecting me with the thing in my sweet spot. My eyelids. Let's hope this takes care of my little "problem". And by "problem", I'm not talking about my lack of masculine muscles. Because I'm huge.

Comfy feet,
J. Riley

Hola Sunburn!

Very mellow weekend for me. As a result, my apartment is very clean! Did my volunteer gig on Saturday, took a bunch of youngsters to a Latino museum, Museo del Barrio, over in my neck of the woods, Spanish Harlem. I didn't know what to expect, but I was happy to see that our group had a 20-something, authentic Puerto Rican tour guide/instructor ;o) .... Actually the museum was pretty cool. You would think that we Californian children would learn that Mexico had a revolution in the early 1900's, but I had no idea until we visited a photographer's exhibit that visually told us all about it. I might have to go back and check out the guid....I mean museum sometime soon.

Speaking of Puerto Rico, last night I booked my first flight down to Puerto Rico for June. The flights are super cheap next month for some reason (~$200 round trip) and my friend Sean is going to be working down there, so I've got a free hotel to stay at. Apparently there's some scuba diving available down there as well, so I might have to dust off my dive log and certification card and get narc'd (scuba lingo :o). I'm kind of excited, I haven't had a real vacation since like September last year, so this will be a nice break.

Of course, the weekend before is Faryn's graduation from high school, so that'll be a few more points in my airline account. All of this activity, in addition to a plethora of meetings for work and visitors, is starting to drive me and my Palm Pilot mad, so I decided to check out some software calendars. I decided on Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird, conjured up by the same creators who brought you Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email. It's still very much pre-release, but it's free and it's pretty awesome. I even geekily figured out a way to centrally store my calendar on a website and access it from this program. That way I can access the same calendar from all my different computers.

Anyway, enough of that. Yoga time for me and my messed-up shoulder,
J.

Just One of Those Days....

So I was rollerblading through Central Park this evening, gorgeous blue skies above me and smooth asphalt below my feet when my aural glands picked up the sound of a saxaphone crooning along with simple drums and a rhythmic bass. Identifying them with my visual glands, I parked my tired back on a bench in a leafy part of the park with giant statues lining the cobbled walkway and enjoyed their sound for a few minutes and gave myself a breather.

Is this a dream?

On the way out, the sensual glands on my face were nearly stimulated by the cobbled walkway when I tripped on a small twig.

Somewhat lacking of grace,
J.

Herbal Viagra

It's gone limp. I've heard about these things happening before, but usually it happens when you and the package are a little older. For a while now, it would stand tall by the time I was back home for work and would be ready for an action packed evening. So why is today any different? Maybe it hasn't been getting the nourishment that every unit requires, I'm just not sure. I could have consulted some of my friends (or their wives / girlfriends) to find out what they've done when this happens, but most of them are not available at the moments and, besides, it would be pretty embarrasing to talk about. I'd feel like a total failure. There must be some kind of supplement to help prevent this, but I like to keep it natural, so I'm wary of any of that stuff.

I mean, what's a guy supposed to do when his basil plants that he just bought last weekend are wilty? And don't even get me started on the thyme and oregano. I guess I'll water them and see what happens...

One of my fans asked me today "So what's the deal with this 'self-responsibility plan'?" I thought that I'd made it pretty clear on the blog and I directed him to go back and read it. But I realized that maybe I hadn't really explained it. In fact, I realized that maybe it's something very hard to communicate. But I'll give it a shot for the sake of my personal history:

The way I see it, I am a very lucky person. I live in one of the greatest places in the world, a place that offers me much much more than I will ever be able to draw from and appreciate. I have a job that I really enjoy, coworkers and bosses that I can learn from and get along with, and can't remember the last "bad day" I had at work. I am financially stable and am able to save a little bit each month for the future, whatever lies out there. I feel like work and my living environment has made my mind like a sponge again, yearning to learn new things, both technical (IDS stuff, data networking, etc.) and personal (Spanish & art, music, literature appreciation, etc.). I have good friends that get me to open up more and experience new ideas and things, I belong to a gym that offers me a variety of exercise and health alternatives (such as saunas) at all hours of the day, and I'm healthy (well, I could be worse in any case). Though I lack a few items, in particular on the social front, I'm a pretty lucky guy and am pretty happy about things right now.

If things are going this well and I have a world of opportunities on my doorstep, why do I take them for granted? Why do I accidently sleep in until - let's just say 'late' - during the work week on more than one occassion? Why do I sit at home and watch TV at night when it's warm and beautiful outside? When I've been blessed with high metabolism and a tall, lean figure, why do I let my body go to waste? These are the types of things that the self-responsibility plan address. I kicked it off by promising myself to get up at 6:30 every morning during the week, no matter how miserable I am at that hour. I also pledged to do yoga, pilates, and a cardio class once a week, excusable only for social circumstances, in particular those involving members of the other gender. I also pledged to dedicate some time every week to studying for a technology certification test and cracking open my Spanish practice book.

Now these are just baby steps, but I think I'm on the right path, and I think it's been helping me out mentally. In fact, one part of the pact that was initially (and purposely ;o) left out involved my living conditions in my apartment, especially things like picking up after myself and doing dishes. However, I am pleased to say that for some really, really strange reason unbeknownst to me, I have been very clean all week, cleaning up my apartment every night and doing dishes every night. In addition, I have become more financially responsible. I've made wholesome, creative meals for myself or a guest or two every night (Lentil & Sausage Stew, leftovers, grilled cheese sandwiches on organic, fresh bread, and a pasta with a new marinara sauce) and have been preparing a lunch for myself every morning. Finally, I am challenging my usual evening schedule by exercising my mind and body by studying and going to the gym, or rollerblading in the park.

Bla, that's the long winded answer. It probably makes no sense to anybody else, but it makes sense to me, and that's crucial!

J.

Random Ramblings

It's Thursday, and there is a patched version of Firefox that was released today to fix some security holes. See the red arrow in the top right hand corner of Firefox? Click on it to upgrade.

Last night, after pilates (my body hurts) and grilled vermont-cheddar sandwiches, I had an insta-craving for Ben & Jerry's ice cream, my latest addiction. Part of the fun is going to a new grocery store to see if they have any mystical, rare flavors that have been previously unseen or discovered by me. Yesterday I found a true gem that I didn't know about before, and it fit my mold to a T: Half Baked. I've got five (dollars) on it....I'm smiling to myself after that phrase, does anyone else get it? Part chocolate, part vanilla, chunks of brownies, chunks of chocolate chip cookie dough, no nuts - and available as frozen yofurt (my pallet doesn't perceive any significant difference).

Someone asked me recently if I had any pet peaves and I couldn't think of any. However, I thought of one the other day: taking the elevator up one floor with a Super Big Gulp in your hand when there are stairs available. Unfortunately for me, most of the facilities I work in only have a few floors that you can enter via the stairs, so we're stuck taking the elevator one floor. Nonetheless, it's still annoying....

Wieder arbeiten,
J.

Name Day!

My Hungarian friend Roland told me that today was his Name Day. This brings up an interesting point to me: Name Day is something that I've heard of from my international friends, something that is very Euro, and something that I've never celebrated. Why is that? I have no idea. But I know that from this point forward, Name Day is going to be a very serious personal holiday for me. Very conveniently, Name Day for "Justin" is on June 1st! I haven't come up with a wish list of items that I want for Name Day, but I think that it will generally center around a social gathering on that evening. Since it's an international festivus, I think that an international theme is appropriate. So maybe we'll make a trek out to a Bohemian beer garden in Queens that I've been reading about or something. But fear not, devoted blogees, you will hear all the details once it's planned!

My theme for the weekend was sports and shopping. My home baseball team, the A's, were in town to face the Yankees for a handful of games, so Friday night I busted out the winter gear to face the chilly evening in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium. If anyone else follows baseball, you will know that the A's STINK this year, so I was prepared to be pelted by empty beer cups, popcorn, hot dog wrappers, chairs, etc. by the devoted Yankee fans sitting above me. It actually turned out to be a good game, though, and the A's finally won a game. They lost the following games in the series, but that's not the point....

Saturday morning I got up early and was amped to try out my rollerblades again. The rain that was predicted never came, so I strapped my 'blades on at about 10:30am and headed East towards the river. Lacking any rhythm or grace, I stumbled my way over sidewalk cracks, chewed up asphalt, and urinating dogs on long leashes to reach the holy grail of rollerblade terrain: smooth asphalt on a long, quiet avenue with little traffic. Somehow I managed to avoid putting my new wrist guards to use on the lovely terrain, though there was no shortage of flailing arms and lack of control.

After my mile and a half loop-d-doop, I stopped by an astro-turf park near by apartment to check out the future of Major League Baseball - a bunch of five and six year olds in their Merril Lynch-sponsored jerseys playing little league, which involved about 20 kids spread around the field and one kid up to bat. It was hilarious watching the fielding take place. No one could catch or throw, so I'm not sure how the innings ended. There was also no shortage of dads yelling "Get on the bag!", a la Will Ferrel on SNL, and no shortage of mom's toting Louis Vutton purses and walking their poodles. Ahhh...the stuff that movies are made of :)

The rest of the day involved developing a green thumb by purchasing some herb...I mean herbs...to grow in my apartment to help reduce grocery expenditures. I have nice, big windows that get lots of light, so we'll see how they do in the next few weeks. I have little doubt that they will die a slow, painful, premature death, but I'll do my best to avoid giving them the death penalty. In addition, D hooked Cathy's friend Lisa and I up with some free courtside tickets for a WNBA game down at Madison Square Gardens. Kind of hard to pass that up!

There was one other item on my shopping list that I hadn't completed after the game, so I headed to the world's largest department store. I've been contemplating the purchase of a new pair of jeans for months. You know how I am with my shopping - very impulsive. And this scares me when it comes to jeans, because most of the designer jeans that fit me are too much cash. While many people don't have any problem dropping $150-$200 on a pair of jeans, I just can't mentally cope with that. So I've set reasonable denim shopping limits on my purchases. I absolutely refuse to pay triple-digits for a pair of jeans and I shoot to pay for under $75. I can't just go to Old Navy and pick up some nice $30 pairs of jeans because they don't fit me right. You see, I'm kind of a tall, lean figure. "Regular Fit" jeans look like hip-hop clothing on me, and that's not my style. I need something restrictive, something uncomfortable, something slim-fitting. So off to the Macy's Euro-Selection-for-Men collection I went, looking for clearance jeans and sales. I pretty much picked out one pair of every brand in my price range and started trying them on to see how they fit my scrawny-ass body. After much, much deliberation and stress, I decided to go with fit over jean appearance and settled on a pair of jeans that were just under my preferred threshold over a pair that had the look I wanted, but were too close for comfort to my upper limit, even though they weren't quite as slim-fitted as I preferred. As I was returning the other less fortunate pairs, I found that the cheaper pair were on sale for $39!!! I was stoked at this point, and the blood started rushing to my head - should I splurge and go for both pairs since I'm getting such a good deal on this pair?? My face turned pale as I confronted this situation and I decided that I deserved to treat myself in this particular case. I work hard for a living, so why not? So two pairs in hand, I went to the register only to find that the $39 clearance pair had been marked down even more - $23!!! That's less than what I pay for dinner!! Yowser, was I elated!

Now I just need a reason to wear these new jeans. Anyone have a Name Day coming up?
J. Riley

Edit: I added a link to the Will Ferrell clip referred to....

Need Another Reason To Bookmark This Site?

This 6:30am scheduling protocol is working out pretty well. The only problem has been caused by me staying up until past midnight. When I do that, I tend to get worn out by the end of the week and go comatose at an early hour, such as last night, when I passed out at around 9:30 or 10:00 while studying (putting myself to sleep) following a sushi smorgasbourg (sp.)...

On a more somber note, most of you probably heard about the bomb at the British Consulate this morning here in New York. I heard about it after I got to work and kind of brushed it off as no big deal. But, the reality is that that happened less than a mile and a half away from where I live, and that kind of put things in perspective. Somebody actually went to a spot a mile and a half from where I was sleeping and put two bombs there.

Reminds me of my contingency plan if there ever is a big, bad situation such as what happened on 9/11 - the blog. Sometimes phones don't work, so keep your eye on the blog. Yet another reason why you should become a dedicated blog-reading addict :)

J.

20 Minute Abs

We all know that "you can't have six-minute abs...You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel." But 20 minute abs are totally do-able. Since I can't go to pilates tomorrow, and pilates is a key attribute of the "self-responsibility plan", I decided to spring for an abs class before yoga tonight. 20 minutes of grueling, masochistic pain. Ugghhh....but I gotta keep it up. Otherwise I'd not only fail myself, I'd fail my self-responsibility plan....

I had a world cultural and historical tour through my Upper East Side neighborhood on Saturday afternoon. I took a walking tour that detailed Central and Eastern European history in my very own neighborhood. I was amazed to find out that there is a plethora of Hungarian shops and stores all within a few blocks of me, including a bookstore, several churches (with services in Hungarian!), a bookstore, a restaurant, and even a Hungarian grocery store / meat market - the food kind, not the club kind. In addition, this neighborhood was also a booming area for the Germans, and we saw several German churches, a German bakery, and of course Schaller & Weber, the German grocery store with the best Bratwursts that I've had, only a few blocks from my apartment.

On such a gloomy, miserable, rainy day, I had to do something to get my spirits up. Why not a taste of Brazil? After my walking tour, I headed over to a school on Park Avenue that was hosting a capoeira batizado, where masters of the martial art/dance demonstrate their awesome techniques and "baptise" some of their pupils into the art. It was a very cultural, very amazing show of people doing double flips in the air, jumps, headstands, handstands, cartwheels, all while deftly swinging at each other with legs, arms, fists, but so well improvisationally choreographed that there was no contact. Checkout the link above for more information.

Saturday night was time to entertain guests in town to visit D and Cathy, including her husband Paul (who went back to college in CA). There was twelve of us in total, so we planned out a little trip to one of our favorite Italian restaurants in the East Village, Baldo Vino. We enjoyed another fabulous meal and a few pitchers of sangria there before heading back uptown to a dive bar called Racoon Lodge, where several pairs indulged in getting in front of the meager crowd and karaoke. After enough beer, I got talked into doing a rendition of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" with one of Paul and Cathy's visitors. Unfortunately, somebody had a camera on hand and took a video as evidence. If I ever get my hands on it, why, I'll............post it on my blog along with the videos that I took, of course! I'm always up for a little self-sacrifice in the name of humor for my devoted readers...

Sunday was truly a sun-day. Warm and blue outside, and devoted to my self-responsibility plan as always, I woke from my slumber sometime after 1:00pm. After eating leftovers for "brunch" at around 2:30 and thinking about when I was going to do my laundry for a few hours, I suddenly had the urge to go experience the great spring weather outside. I mean, it was like 60 degrees out there, that's shorts and sweater weather!!! So what better way to recommit myself to self-responsibility than to go shopping! But not for clothes this time - rollerblades! Random? Yes, quite. But I've been thinking about them for over a year and I didn't want to go another warm weather season without them. I was quite the accomplished blader back when I was young and reckless. Well, let's just say "when I was young". So I went down to the sporting goods store and checked out their selection. I couldn't believe how cheap these have gotten since the days when I used to purchase them at cost from my Aunt's sports store in Tahoe. I mean, most of them were in the $59-$79 range. Since I realized they were so cheap now, I went ahead and spoiled myself with a top-of-the-line pair. I mean, they were so comfortable, I couldn't help it. I was appalled to find out that this store only sold pads in a set for wrists, knees, and elbows. $30??? Dude, all I want are wrist guards!

As I sat there trying on my rollerblades and imaging myself do triple-lutzes in Central Park, a funny realization came to mind. I realized that this reputable sporting good store had a hip-hop radio channel playing throughout the store and it was playing Jay-Z's "Big Pimp'n". Does anyone else find that at least mildly amusing? A sporting good store playing some gangster rap about being a pimp? I realized that this city was so infused with hip-hop (and other!) culture that even gangster rap in a department store was acceptable. Awesome.

So I walked out the store with my new gear and felt kind awkward walking around with this stuff under my arms. So, I sat down, buckled up, put on my wrist guards, and headed home. From Third Avenue. Now, those of you who have been to my new apartment know that the streets leading from Third Avenue to Second Avenue (where I live), are quite steep. Maybe I could have come up with a better place to re-introduce myself to urban rollerblading than an uneven, narrow sidewalk lined with cars and full of pedestrians and a 15% downhill grade. I mean, I've only really walked in an urban environment like this, and let me tell you - transportation other than my two bony legs is much more complicated, what with navigating sink holes in the road, trying to stop or slow down with a new pair of rollerblades on rough terrain, etc. So, that wasn't such a good idea, but I did get home in a hurry. Maybe I should use these for commuting....Maybe not. Regardless, I'm stoked to start a new form of exercise in Central Park or along one the rivers seperating me from Jersey or Queens. Maybe I'll even dig up my hockey stick and go take on some junior-high kids somewhere....

As I pulled up to my aparment and slammed into my door on my flashy new 'blades, I got a call from Cathy that they were signing up for lottery tickets to see the Broadway show Avenue Q, which is one that I've wanted to see for quite a while. Half hour later and we were in possession of two $20 tickets for front-row seats to one of the best shows on Broadway. Normally these tickets are $100 a pop! This show is kind of unique in the sense that it is a puppet show, similar to Sesame Street. An R-rated Sesame Street that advertises "puppet nudity" and hilarious topics like graduating from college with a degree in English, relationships, one-night stands, unemployment, sexual orientation, racism, and homelessness. Sounds kinda depressing, right? You'd think so, but it was absolutely tear-jerkingly funny. The great part of the show is that they just come right out and say things that everyone knows, but nobody says because it's not "Politically Correct". Thus, there were songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist", "It Sucks to be Me, It Sucks to be You", "I Wish I Could Go Back to College", etc. It was very very funny. Summer, I think we should go see that one when you get here....

Not yet part of the self-responsibility plan, but still necessary, I have to go do dishes. :(
J.

P.S. Manteca residents, you need to be self-responsible and upgrade your Firefox! Or upgrade TO Firefox!