Exploits of a 2-year-old

So mother and child are now at my apartment. It's been a long time since I've seen Nina, I guess nine years already. They were pretty exhuasted from the long flight from Euroland, but apparently awake enough for Marcus to figure out that my bed is pretty cool and is fun to jump on. Man, that kid has a lot of energy! It's pretty fun hanging out with him, though. Despite not being able to speak English, we seem to be able to communicate one way or another. After getting some dinner and going to the grocery store, Marcus was destroyed and fell asleep in a hurry. Unfortunately, he was so tired that he didn't wake up when he had to go to the bathroom (he's recently been potty-trained) and so today my futon got it's first war-wound. Nina wanted to know if I had stuff to clean it with. Uhhh....I have fabric softener sheets, will that work ;o) ? Maybe I should buy a tarp at my local drugstore!

Testament of Youth

On Saturday at the Williamsburg art & craft street sale, I found something that I'd been searching for for a while. With all of the visitors I have (and have had), I've been dying to find a visitor's log and journal. You know, this is where people who stay at my place can jot down a little bit about their trip and make comments about my keen ability to make them feel at home. And talk about how bacheloresque my apartment is or whatever. At the street sale, I found cool little scrap books that had really old book covers on them and a bunch of empty sheets of paper inside, as well as a few pages here and there from the original book. I found one called "Testament of Youth" that is (was) apparently written by a guy who's youth was disrupted when he was shipped off to World War I from England. While the story may not be synonymous with my experiences in New York, I thought the title was appropriate. So, if you've visited me before, you are now required to come back again so that you can sign my visitor's log :o)

J.

A Week in Overdrive

Tomorrow my Danish friend Nina comes to town with her 2 year-old child Marcus (say: Mar-coos). It'll be an interesting week, for sure. It's been a long time since I've cohabited with a child for an extended amount of time, no less in New York. My usual regimine of going to the gym, going out for dinner, going out to bars and/or clubs, experiencing nightlife, etc. will be temporarily suspended and I'll have to change gears to more of a "family life" situation. I guess that means doing more cooking at home (no problem here!) and more chilling at night rather than running myself ragged. Should be interesting, stay tuned for stories...

On Friday night Joclyn came over to enjoy some creative Americana cuisine cooked up by me. I marinated a couple fillets of pork tenderloin with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, fresh-pressed garlic, fresh-sliced ginger, and rosemary and it was delightful after some baking in the oven. For sides, I went with string beans with honey-lime vinaigrette and mashed potatoes (thanks for the blender, Graham!) with sour cream and garlic. Turned out to be a nice little meal. The extra large portions turned into a nice mid-day snack for Sean and I on Saturday, as well :)

Saturday, Paul and I headed out into the sweltering heat to adventure over to the ultra-hip Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Our only excuse for going over there was to check out some kind of arts & crafts street sale they were having. We knew that we wouldn't find anything to buy, we were just looking for an excuse to check out the industrial warehouse-laden hipster enclave that the area has turned into in the last ten years. According to my coworker, ten years ago this neighborhood is where your car would end up after being stolen - missing the wheels, tires, and every other valuable accessory. Fun! In any case, looked like a cool area. But it was HOT! Because we were going pleat-free suit-shopping for Paul (and potentially me) afterwards, we wore jeans and that was a mistake. We were drenched with sweat after an hour of walking around. At least it was reasonably dry heat, unlike most of the steamy, swampy weather we get this time of year.

Saturday night I was supposed to go to a party but the friend I was going with told me that she wasn't going afterall, so I altered my plans and hooked up with Sean, Brett (the third amigo in Puerto Rico) and some felines that Sean met and some family friends of Brett's who were in town. We found a sweet place over on the west side called the Boat Basin, which is basically a big outdoor area located under an overplace where you can eat barbequed food and drink cold beers. Very beer-garden like, it's rare to find a place that has ample space like this in New York. After hanging out there for a bit, we played our credit-card roulette game again and, being an expert in statistical risk, I calculated that the chances of me getting my card pulled again were very slim. This time, the odds actually worked in my favor and Brett got stuck with a pretty light-weight bill. Sweet, I love free drinks :).

Afterwards, we walked over a few blocks to a place called Jakes Dilemna. It was a pretty mellow collegiate-type place that had a back room called "The Living Room". The bouncers kept the curtains tightly closed back there, but when the waitress went in and out we snuck a peak and realized that there were a bunch of old, fat bare-chested guys back there with a stripper or two. Seeing those guys back there made us want to stay as far away from that place as possible, though.

A few hours and a few beers later, Sean and his new friend Emily (he sure has a way with girls 10 years younger than him ;o) and I headed back to the east-side before calling it a night. We bought some orange juice (Sean mixed it with rum - gross!) and headed up to his apartment to chill out, chit-chat, and hear about Sean's dilinquent youth. He's always entertaining to hang out with, so his rum-and-coke banter was even more entertaining...

Bedtime,
J. Riley

Keeping it Kosher

This week has been dedicated to recovering from Puerto Rico and I've done pretty well, if I say so myself. On Tuesday I was exhausted and passed out at about 7:30pm for a little nap. Well, I woke up shortly after 11:00 and knew that I was gonna be messed up that night. So, I pulled up the A's game online and watched a few innings of that. At about 12:30 I layed back in bed and did some catching up on my soccer magazines. I fell asleep shortly thereafter. But not for long. I woke up an hour later again and went through the whole deal one more time. Finally, after that I went comatose and woke up the next morning feeling great. I had tons of energy Wednesday and actually managed to do some cleaning of my apartment after work.

I missed pilates on Wednesday because my boss took my former co-worker and I out to dinner following a grueling meeting. Earlier in the day he gave me a heart-attack, though. We were BS'ing about this new laptop that he ordered me and then he takes me outside and says that he has bad news for me and walks me down the hall towards the conference rooms. He looks at me and says "I just found out that we are going to be doing another year of auditing". Uhhh...so what's the bad news?? I've been doing this stuff for a year and haven't mastered it yet, so I have no problem going forward and doing another year of it. Initially our contract was supposed to be up at the end of the month and I was going to be going into another group (same client, same boss, just different work). But, seriously, I'm totally cool with doing auditing. :)

So that night my boss took us out to little Israel (he's Israeli and my former co-worker is Kosher) out in Queens. Unfortunately, former coworker had to fly out like an hour after we got to the restaurant, which served up Kosher Persian food. The meal was fabulous, even if I couldn't eat at my normal pace....Speaking of going Kosher, I actually ate at least one Kosher meal per day every day this week - except today. And tonight I'm eating piglet tenderloin, so it's payback time :) . There's a very good cafeteria at a school across the street from where I'm working and they serve awesome Kosher meals. But not organic. So the chickens are probably still force fed antibiotics and raised 20 per square feet, but at least they're Kosher - whatever that means!

Anyway, I got tender loins to cook....

The J. Riley

Karma, Puerto Rico Style

For the second weekend in a row, I was jet-setting off to a destination far away from my home of New York. Last weekend was my family reunion / graduation party in California. A few days later and I was off to the foreign land of Puerto Rico, my first trip to the Caribbean. Well, to be honest, Puerto Rico was only really foreign to me because of my own lack of knowledge of this place. I say "this place" because I'm sitting at the San Juan airport at 10:00pm on Sunday night waiting for my delayed flight to take me back to New York at the cozy hour of 2:30am :o| ....

Anyways...this was going to be a guys' weekend out with my friend Sean and another friend of his from New York. And it was nothing short of epic. I profess to have been quite ignorant about Puerto Rico before I came. I mean, I know it's a US territory, but I am not really sure what that means. So I went ahead and built a mental picture of this place based on my prejudices from seeing how the Puerto Ricans in New York live. I guess maybe this prejudice is also based on my experience seeing some areas of South America as well. I assumed that most of the roads would be downtrodden, the people would not be very well educated, and there would be poverty everywhere. I didn't know if I needed a passport to go there, or if they used US currency. I wasn't sure if the people would be friendly or not to the Americans or what the political situation would be between us and them.

After a few hours in town, I realized how wrong I was about everything. The people here are wonderful, very friendly, very well educated, most speak English perfectly, and, surprisingly enough, most of the Puerto Ricans really dislike the New York Puerto Ricans because they give them a bad reputation. To hammer home the point of the similarities between Puerto Rico and the US, I came across an Anytown, USA shopping center when I was on my way to visit the rain forest - complete with a Sam's Club, CompUSA, Target, Office Max, Home Depot, etc. etc. So, really, the similarities are quite signifcant, although the differences in culture are also quite significant, especially when it comes to music and dancing. Salsa, salsa, salsa, it's everywhere!

So Thursday night I got to town and met up with Sean at his hotel, the pure American bubble of the Marriot hotel / resort. These kinds of hotels typically disgust me because they make everything so much like America and totally disregard the local culture. In this case, I was willing to overlook that aspect since I was getting a free room thanks to Sean's company. This place was such a big bubble that they were playing Beyonce and Hillary Duff songs at the pool while the rest of the city was blasting awesome regaettano (I think that's what it's called) and salsa music everywhere. I guess I'm just bitter about places catering to us Americans too much. That's what I get for being spoiled by my friends around the world showing me the legit, local experience I've come to enjoy in their countries.

But I got more of that on this trip than I expected, as well. Since Sean's working down there, he knows a bunch of the people at his client. So one of them, Isabelle (from Montreal, but now working in PR), took it upon herself to show us a good time. Friday night she and her friends took us to a street party called the Plasita (not sure how that's spelled), which is at place where there's a bunch of watering holes and restaurants. They close down the streets and bring in live salsa bands and it's happy hour from 6-11:00pm. We're talking $1.50 beers! This is a very local gig, I'm pretty sure that we were the only gringo tourists who were there, and I definitely felt out of place at first, especially with the language barrier. But we met enough of their friends who spoke English that we didn't feel out of place for long. We didn't have anything to eat for dinner Friday, so we just ate a few pinchos, which are like little marinated chicken kababs, from the street vendor. We did that for a few hours, finally getting home at around 4:00am feeling pretty well.

Sunday, Isabelle again hooked us up, taking us and her friend Patricia (from Venezuela) on a topless (referring to her Jeep, of course) road trip around the north and eastern coast of the island. Again, we got a very local vibe on one stretch of road where there was shack after shack selling pinchos. There were so many, some of which we're burning kindling wood with the nails and everything to cook the meat. Hmmm...a little sketchy. But along with the pincho stands, there were a bunch of open-air bars/restaurants overlooking the ocean and serving up cold daqueries (sp.?) and appetizers, of which we partook, of course. Even in this off-the-beaten-path area most of the people spoke perfect English. But you know when you go to a place where they don't speak English, you're getting the real deal. And that was at one little stand that was serving beer (of course) and plates of rice/beans/meat meals. It was over 100 degrees outside by this point and humid as hell. We were just dripping with sweat, it was nuts. We pretty much all switched over to water in a hurry at that point, it was just too hot to be dehydrated. But the food was nice and greasy rice and chicken, I'm sure it took a few years off our lives, but at least it's worth it :) .

Friday I had to (ahem) "work", so I spent a few hours by the pool doing a project write-up. I tell ya, somehow I could see myself doing that kind of work for a few years sometime in the future :) . Afterwards, Brett and I took our rental car for a spin to the El Yunque rain forest, about an hour and a half away up in the mountains. It was very pretty up there, and very tropical. The pinnacle of the trip (other than finding the Home Depot and CompUSA shopping centers along the way) was running in our sandals about a quarter of a mile up and down a narrow cement trail along the edge of a mountain. At the bottom was the holy grail: a waterfall with a swimming pool (natural, of course) at the base of it. And of course I forgot my camera, because it would have been a perfect picture. You could sit underneath the waterfall and lose a few inches off your height because of the weight and volume of water pressing on your head. It was a great little spot, I could've hung out there for a few hours.

Thursday night, after I got to town, Sean and I walked over to a little outdoor cafe that looked over a park and had some latin music playing before the tunes switched over to the DJ playing ambient downbeat chillout music. Of course all of these events took place in shorts and sandals, it was warm and humid outside 24/7. We had a few drinks out there and chatted it up with some of the other tourists who were there, but it felt very relaxing and very local, even though it was just a few minutes away from the Marriott. The waitress promised to teach us how to salsa if we came on Saturday night for the live salsa band.

Of course, our intentions were good and we planned on going back there on Saturday night, but those plans changed. Saturday we woke up about four hours after we went to bed, sometime around 8:00. We headed downstairs and ate the ridiculous Marriott-priced breakfast and then headed out 100 feet to the beach. We setup shop there and pretty much didn't leave the whole day. We had a giant umbrella to somewhat protect our white bodies from the sun, though Sean and Brett got hit pretty hard with the UV rays. I was cowering from the sun, mostly because I glow in the dark I'm so white. I new I'd fry if I was in direct sun for long, so I spent most of my time in the water and hidden under the umbrella and towels. I doused my back once in the morning with the awesome Bull-Frog 38 SPF spray-on gel and didn't have to put anymore on and I didn't get burned. I highly recommend it for you other whities out there.

After swimming in the 80 degree water and enjoying the "scenery" for a few hours, we headed back to the pool and chilled in the moderate shade of the palm trees while enjoying some more scenery and cat-napping. We went back and forth from the pool to the beach pretty much the whole day until around five. Our new friends, a mom and her 20-something daughter on vacation from North Carolina, headed back and we decided to meet up later that night in Old San Juan, the historical downtown area with beautiful narrow streets, clubs all over the place, and Spanish architecture galore.

After chilling for a few more hours and preparing for the night, we headed downtown to a recommended restaurant called Baru. The dishes were all tapas styled with lots of options. We went for the Sorrento ham, skewered prawns with yuca, goat cheese risotto, and dessert: filet mignon. We chatted it up with our neighbors a Puerto Rican guy who lived nearby and his British wife and her British friend. Between each dish we ordered drinks, so by the time we were done I had drinken sangria, a Red-Bull and vodka (we were tired from our day in the sun!), the most amazing mojito I've ever tried, and, to cap it off, a glass of port. Talk about a mixture from hell. And that's how I felt after that combo along with the rich dinner. My finely-tuned, sensitive pallet can't handle being overwhelmed with tastes like that ;o) . After all these drinks, Sean and Brett started to get obnoxious and that's when Sean got hold of my camera and took a ton of random shots, as you can see in my photo album.

And they also came up with the brilliant idea that only one person was going to pick up the Manhattan-style tab, over $200 :-| . I was down with a little excitement and a free meal, so on to credit-card roulette it was. All the credit cards went into a folded up napkin and then they were mixed up and one was drawn by our waitress. And the winner is.....drum-roll please....Me! Oh, wait. That sucks. You would have thought the other two won the lottery with all the noise they were making. All I knew is that I wasn't buying another drink the whole night, they had me covered :) . On our way out, we met some local felines at the bar for a drink and tried to figure out where our next destination was. We had decided to meet up with our Mom and daughter friends from earlier in the evening at the NuYoRican Cafe down the street, which had a live band playing salsa music and a vibrant atmosphere.

We met up with them down there, but at 1:00am the Mom was not in a stellar mood and clearly wasn't having fun, so they took off. We hung out, listened to the tunes, pretended to dance, and chatted it up with some other tourists there. Whenever there's a vacation, there's always Germans, so I got to practice out my conversation skills for the first time in a long time. Like always, they were astounded that there was an American that could speak German. That's my competitive advantage, you could say ;o) . Eventually, the boys were ready to pass out so we headed back to the hotel at about 2:00.

Brett, the addicted compulsive gambler headed to the Blackjack table when we got back and I just went with him to watch. I decided to have some fun, though, and that's when I got the karma on my side. I slapped down $20 at the $5 table and about an hour and a half later I walked away with $275. So I was the big winner that night: I won credit-card roulette, I took it to the casino with the jackpot, and I even won the coin toss for the bed as opposed to the roll-away bed when we finally did head back to our room.

So that was my weekend in a nutshell. And now it's back to the grind, hopefully I get caught up on my sleep, since I got a total of about 15 hours over the last four days. Man, do I live a tough life or what :) ???

Exhausted,
J. Riley

MIA: Brain Bucket

Last night my gym was closed because of the Jewish harvest holiday. So, in lieu of stretching my bones, I hit the park with my 'blades. It was like 90 degrees outside yesterday and was swampy feeling outside. Not exactly conducive to outdoor activities, but I needed to do something and my options were limited. As I soon as I strapped on my job-protecting wrist guards (imagine if I hurt a wrist, I'd be useless at work), I had to hit myself in the head with the plastic protection because I realized what I forgot to bring back with me from Cali: my helmut from my storage unit. Damn. That's going to end up costing me like $30 to have to go buy a new one so that I can have some reasonable comfort in not killing myself when I'm doing somersaults off of curbs into on-coming traffic on Park Avenue. Well, something like that. I guess it also wasn't too bright of me to see how fast I could go backwards last night, either. On second thought, maybe a thumping of my head on the asphalt would do me some good afterall...

Paul, who left New York to go back to school and study horticulture at Cal Poly, is coming back to town for the summer tonight. Just in time, too, because I think that my herbs need some serious mouth-to-chlorophyll recesitation. The thyme and oregano are not looking so hot. Well, to be more accurate, they are dead.

Note to self: stick with the basil, it's easy to grow.
J. Riley

Congratulations

I had an amazing weekend, and this one didn't even deal with walking tours, delictable restaurants, or stiff drinks. I returned to my roots on Thursday night back in California for my two sisters' graduations. One was graduating from San Diego State, the other being the last bird out of the nest was graduating from high school.

Lacking bedtime reading material on Thursday night, I found a stack of various pictures in the bedroom, including some of me and some of my siblings as youngsters. I had no idea that there are pictures of me with my cowboy boots and spurs on, sitting on top of a horse, Pico, getting ready to ride around with my sister, who was on another Bay Quarter-horse, Flasher. There were a bunch of other childhood pictures in the stack, and it made me a bit sad realizing that we are all grown up now and no longer full of youthful ambitions and Kodak moments. But, after dwelling on that for a few minutes as I tried to sleep, I came across a theme that I mentioned in a blog sometime in the past. Although we can never go back in time to capture those moments, the best thing we can do is capture them right now. In another twenty years, I'll look back at my pictures of me in my twenties and be able to appreciate the fact that I did my best to capture my history, both in words and in pictures. That really motivated me to take a plethora of shots throughout the weekend.

And what a weekend to enjoy. My mom and dad put a lot of hard work into preparing for the entourage of their kids returning home and their own brothers, sisters, and parents coming to town for the celebration. I returned to a house that had recently had significant interior remodeling done to the main bathroom and to some of the rooms. Fresh carpet everywhere, it was like returning to a new house practically. All the months of sacrifice that my parents put in this year paid off big time, the house was beautiful. The gardens were in full bloom, the sun was shining bright without a cloud to be seen except for the occassional marine layer from the ocean creeping over the crest of the mountains above the valley.

It was the perfect backdrop to a perfect weekend. As far as I was concerned, there was absolutely nothing that could have been better. It was great to be reunited as a family in celebration for the significant accomplishments of my precious sisters. It wasn't the usual run-around, trying to meet up with old friends for a few hours or anything like that. It was strictly family time, and that's what made it so great. Everyone got along and everyone had a great time. It was like going on vacation, it was very refreshing.

So here are the pictures.

Best of set of the grads:
Faryn Walking
Faryn Walking. Again
One More Action Shot
The Fam + a twin
Meet the Parents
Summer and Friends
Flowers for a Grad
The Family in our Back Yard
Pearls, pearls, pearls. Get that girl some pearls.

On second thought, just look at them all.

Missing everyone,
J. Riley

For Eyes

Now that my eyelids have chilled out a bit, I figured I'm due to upgrade my glasses. From the myriad of tests that my eyes have been through, I know that my old glasses are still pretty close to my prescription from two years ago, so I figured I'd concentrate on some tinted shades this time around. I get kind of annoyed wearing my sweet orange wrap-around sunglasses because I keep running into walls and things because I can't see. A few of my other coworkers recently upgraded (we're all geeks, therefore we all wear glasses), so they've all figured out the ins-and-outs of getting the best deal. I'd seen that some of the new auto-darkening lenses that are out are pretty sweet, so I figured I'd look into those.

An hour and several thousand bucks later, I had my order placed for some nice brown-rimmed frames with auto-tinting grey lenses. I'm pretty stoked about getting them, and hopefully they'll get here before I'm blinded by the overpowering sun down in the Caribbean next weekend...

After much deliberation, I also renewed my lease on my apartment for another year, beginning in September. I had seriously considered moving towards downtown, but the truth is that my apartment is pretty darn nice, even if it is a hike to the subway station and doesn't really have anything exciting going on nearby. Hopefully by next year I'll have some more cash put away and I can consider actually buying a place somewhere. Maybe. Not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment yet...

J. Riley, Four Eyes.

The Tuesday Update

Last Friday, I finally had my Name Day celebration. I sent out an Evite to some of my friends and acquaintances in a bid to load up the Guggenheim with people that I knew. Naturally, about half of the invitees couldn't make it. And half of the people that said they could make it didn't show up. I guess it wasn't very well organized on my part, since there were several hundred folks inside, scattered throughout the Guggenheim's world-class gallery. I arrived with Joclyn, a girl I've been on a few dates with lately and we met up with Alan and Andrea, who arrived not long after we got there. The only other people we ran into were some folks that I share mutual friends and went to college with, but that's alright. They were on the Evite, too.

In any case, the event was great. This was the kind of party that you see in movies about Manhattan, the type of event that guys like James Bond would attend (substitute yellow taxis for his Aston Martin and other guest's limos). It was a very diverse group of people, many of whom (myself not included) were dressed up in suits or chi-chi outfits. The cash bar downstairs served a few types of wine along with the standard cosmopolitan and sour-apple martinis. Ambient music mixed by a "world-class DJ" (who had no results when I googled him) flowed through the speakers setup around the exhibits and the crowd was generally in a good mood. So, after enjoying a toxic apple martini, we headed up to the exhibits to find out what the Guggenheim was all about. Now, I'm not much of an art interpreter, but that martini turned me into a true modern-art aficionado ;o). It was a lot of fun, for sure...

Saturday the weather turned fabulous on us and I was fortunate to be volunteering for the day with some kids. We took them out to Coney Island's aquarium next to the ocean and let them check out the sharks, seals, walruses, jellyfish, etc. It doesn't have quite the enornimity (I just made that word up, I think) as the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but most of these kids hadn't been to one before, so they got a kick out of it. One of them even proclaimed that he hadn't ever seen a fish before, so it was pretty neat. It also gave me the chance to renew my vows to visit Coney Island at some point this summer. I gotta ride the rollercoasters, eat Nathan's Hot Dogs and swim in the polluted water while I have the chance!

After being totally worn-out by the kids, I went home, ate some leftovers, and passed out on my futon for a few hours, only to wake up at 9:00 with no plans for the evening. Oh well, I guess I can take a Saturday night off every once in a while and recuperate - and clean my apartment!

Sunday was an even more phenomenal day as far as the weather goes. It hit almost 90 degrees outside, but with low humidity so it was very much bearable. I hit Central Park at about 11:30 with my blades and spent a few hours toiling around, checking out some live music, admiring the views, smelling the roses, watching the break-dancers etc.

After chilling out and catching up with people on Sunday, I watched the Tony awards at Cathy's place in the evening. They are the equivalent of the Oscars, only for Broadway shows. After seeing those, I realized how few shows I'd even heard about this year. So, with that in mind, I'm planning on hitting up some mid-week show lotteries in the next few weeks. Tonight I plan on trying my luck for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is supposed to be hilarious and is starring John Lithgow (of Shrek fame). I know the movie was great, so the show must be even more hysterical!

Thursday night I'm heading back to Cali for Faryn's graduation. Can you believe that she's graduating already? Unreal. It'll be nice to be back home for a few days, especially since many of my readers will be joining us for the celebrations for her and Summer's college graduation on Saturday. The last chicks are leaving the Haines nest, what are my parents going to do with all of their free time??

J. Riley
PS - Don't worry about my job, it looks like everything is fine. South America or Europe is gonna have to wait :o)

Happy Name Day to Me

Today seemed just like any normal day to me, visiting a few hospitals on an island off of Manhattan followed by meetings in the Bronx. Running around, checking out network equipment and following my auditor's checklist/database and attending tense audit meetings. But today is special, even if it didn't feel special. It's my first annual Name Day! Unfortunately, it seems like nobody but my Euro breathren want to help me celebrate it, as I haven't received any well wishes except from a few DEDICATED friends and family. What's up with that?

J. Riley