These Achin' Bones

I think it's time to face the music - I am officially old. I don't know what's happened this calendar year, but my body has begun aching whenever I do anything that requires to use of a muscle. Tight calves after walking home from work, a tight lower back after sitting all day, strained muscles after moving furniture into a 5th-floor walkup apartment. Not to mention the idea of staying up all night isn't as enticing as it once was a few months back.

I guess the only way to get out of this little phase I'm in is by exercising those things that are lacking - i.e. working out more, buying an exercise ball to sit on at work, and staying up later on the weekends. I need to start doing weights at the gym. Yes I still have the exercises you planned for me, Summer. And no, it has not moved from the spot you put it before you left. I started out by helping to move furniture to Hurricane Katrina victums apartments in New
York on Saturday. I hung out with a couple guys from the Park Service who had provided the trucks to move the furniture and got a taste of the city from their perspective. One of them was from "the islands" (i.e. Caribbean) and the other was born and raised right in Harlem, where we were delivering our load of goods. I definitely upped my "street-cred" by hanging with these guys, doing my share of awkward-couch-lifting up narrow staircases and demonstrating my
proficiency in using double-negatives in sentences. One thing I gotta say about Harlem is that there are some *really* nice apartments up there and who knows how much they cost, I'm sure it's less than what I'm paying now. The idea of not being able to safely walk home at 3:00am has it'd drawbacks, however...

Exhausted after my day full of manual labor, I crashed early on Saturday night (see what I mean???) and woke up bright and early Sunday morning to go out and have a Sunday brunch with Sean. To hit a restaurant up at 10:00am anywhere in the city means that you get right in without having to wait since the city doesn't really wake up until about noon. Well, anywhere but Clinton Street Bakery, that is. I've been there for dessert and half-priced wine once, but not
for it's infamous brunch. Who would imagine that there would be an hour wait at 10:30am in this far-east corner of the city? It was certainly good-eats, but I'm not sure about waiting an hour for it!

I've decided that my diet is lacking in fruits and vegetables (other than enriched semolina wheat and tomatoes), so I have endeavored to cooking a wider variety of them more often, including a variety of squashes (g-a-s-p!), radishes, parsnips, carrots, bananas for my cereal, etc.

J. Riley, bouncing on my exercise ball that I bought as a replacement chair at work.