Summer Starts....Now!

Scientists haven't figured out why yet, but lately I've been....motivated. It's really weird. I am not sure what it was that flipped the switch for me - among other things, it could have been the realization that I will most likely live until I'm only 60, it could have been the wife telling me that I should try to accomplish more things with my plethora of free time, it could be the start of summertime in Astoria, or it could have been the new book that I'm reading that has opened my eyes and my mind to what is there for me to experience.

So on the weekends, I've started exploring my living environment - destination unknown. Well, that's not totally true. Last weekend, out of sheer boredom, I decided that I had to experience an article that I read when I first moved to this hood: The Top 5 Sandwiches in Astoria. Sandwiches? Really? It sounds kind of boring in light of the fact that we live in a crazily diverse area, but I decided that it would be a worthwhile adventure to undertake on a beautiful weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't start until Saturday evening on the 4th of July, so I only got through two of them - last weekend. The first one I hit was the one with the most consonants and the fewest vowels on the list: Cevapdzinica Sarajevo. Apparently Google Maps can't figure out our weird hyphenated addresses any better than me, so it was quite an experience finding this place. Was it worth the journey? Yes, because I got to see a new neighborhood and found some cool looking places to hang out and eat. But the Cevapi were a little bit fatty/greasy for my taste. But at least it was interesting!

The next day, I was going to hit up Sal, Kris & Charlie's Deli on my way to the park after stopping by the office to pick up my sunglasses. On my five minute walk to the office from the bus, I came across a gem among the chop-shops and warehouses that line the roads near my office: A newly opened dance studio that has lessons nightly on Latin dancing! Wholly crap, I had totally been thinking about taking some lessons with Erika when she gets back, and this place is like 5 minutes from work with reasonable rates and probably no customers! More on this later...

So after snatching my glasses, I headed to the deli to get me a monster 'which. I was cracking up because this deli is just that - a typical New York bodega-style deli, but they were packed with customers ordering artery clogging meat between two slices of bread. This thing probably had more calories than I had eaten in a week but, you know, I didn't really care! For the first time, I had a sandwich in my hands that brought me back to the epic meals I used to eat on the weekends in SLO-town during college. I mean, look at this thing!


Anyway, after spending the day basking in the sun and digesting five pounds of processed meat, cheese, and bread, I came home with my next mission in mind. The community college next to my office offers Spanish conversation courses that I neglected to enroll in a few months back due to me being lazy and assuming that I shouldn't have to pay for something that Erika can do for free. I found out how well that worked when I went to Peru last month and was more mute than at any period in the past! So I checked into it again and found that a class that offers two hours of lessons two days a week is going to be starting in August. I figured that I could enroll in Spanish II since I'm not completely hopeless in Spanish, but Erika insists I need to enroll in Spanish I. I guess I should have figured that out after being out of my league in the free classes I took in the past :o/ .

So, this summer is shaping up nicely. I took my first Salsa class last night (free every Thursday night) and, as expected, I was the only student who showed up. This place is fresh off the boat, so that didn't really surprise me. But it turned out to be brilliant - personal classes are normally expensive and I got a lesson customized to me! I was actually surprised at how my limited knowledge of the basic salsa step and rhythm carried over to the moves that I learned. I had an awesome time though and pretty much quadrupled the number of steps and moves that I can break out on the dance-floor now :o). Erika and I will certainly be attending a plethora of these classes starting Sunday!

Of course, I'm going to have to try to fit those classes in between the other events going on this summer, though, such as the free movies in the parks that are starting this week. Free mainstream DVDs in Astoria Park on Monday nights followed by independent foreign films at Socrates park on Wednesday nights. So it looks like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights are scheduled. We've gotta take Salsa lessons somewhere in between, though!

The J. Riley, taking full advantage of the summer this year!

Liverpool is Good For My Health

First of all, the wife has a blog. I suggest you brush up on your Spanish first!

If any of you have had the pleasure of gazing upon my "sleek" upper body (with a hint of jealously, no doubt), you would know that my arms and shoulders are built for typing on a keyboard, not doing push-ups. In fact, I often struggle with doing 10 of them, which is pretty sad. Add on my honeymoon weight to my belly's center of gravity and...you get the idea.

Well, recently I instituted a workout program that coincides with Liverpool's wonderful run of form at the end of this season. Whenever they score, I am so full of adrenaline that I immediately drop down and give them 15 pushups. When it's against a bigger team, I usually can do 20, which is quite a stretch. Well, lately, they have been the top form team in the league, on fire. 4-0 against Real Madrid, 1-4 against Manchester United (!!!), and then this Sunday's game, when they had a chance to go within one point of Manchester United at the top of the table after ManU lost the day before. Not only did they win, but they one emphatically: 5-0! Suffice to say that by the end of the game, my arms were shot - I managed to do 55 pushups over 60 minutes :-o , by far a personal record. If only Liverpool could play everyday, I would look like Mario Lopez...

I'm slowly adjusting to life with a laptop. I am quite happy about being able to clean around my desk now that I've gotten rid of most of the wires that are here and I love that I can hook it up via HDMI to my big screen TV and watch...ahem...borrowed movies. But: Vista sucks. DO NOT UPGRADE TO VISTA! I had to google to figure out how to change the folder settings! In fact, the only benefit that I see is that I can Alt-Tab to the desktop, which is quite handy. Other than that, it is bloated, slow, and full of incompatabilities with iTunes. 4 gigs of RAM should be enough to run Firefox and Thunderbird without the hard drive thrashing as much as it does, it's ridiculous....

J. Riley, you're welcome for the Liverpool update. I know you were all dying to know.... :o/

A Day in the Life....

I've gotten some recent not-so-subtle messages from people saying things like, "Gee, your incessant blogging is swell and all, but what about life with Erika? How are things at home?". And that is a very valid question, for sure. After all, getting married to someone from a different culture, who speaks a different first language, comes from a different lifestyle is bound to beg the question.

To be honest, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I proposed to Erika back in February. Since we first met in Lima, there was always a comfortable feeling between us that allowed us to be ourselves and understand each other even when things were being lost in translation. I had a choice - I could continue aging and spending long weekends in Lima, or I could take a chance that just felt right. But I had no idea if she and I could get along for an extended amount of time in a single household. We spent one week together in an apartment as a pilot run to see what would happen. She was always confident that we knew each other so well that there wouldn't be anything new that would throw us off track, but I was getting warned by people that "all the little things" are what cause problems - things like choosing which side of the bed to sleep on and the fact that her dog wouldn't eat if she wasn't at home :o/! What if we both wanted to sleep on the left-hand side? In any case, the pilot run went even better than I expected and I got to experience the wonders of a Latina "wife".

After this trip, I was pretty confident that there wouldn't be any major problems, but I still wanted to wait a bit to actually get married once we were in my comfort zone - and outside of her's, juuuuust to make sure. Well, apart from the first day after the red-eye flight home - which was admittedly awkward living in the Bronx (I mean, where do you start with New York when you are living there?), the results have been even better than the initial pilot run.

It is a little strange for me to get used to a new "system" of cleanliness, such as washing the dishes daily, vacuuming and thoroughly cleaning the apartment weekly, and washing towels and blanketsmore than twice a year. Good riddance to this habits of a bachelor! But the partnership of marriage with someone you can call your best friend is a wonderful and efficient thing. You can do so much more with so less time, it's amazing!

For example, this evening. It helps that I live about 15 minutes away from work via a bus (by the way, I now hate MTA buses) because I now get home by 5:30 or 5:45, like today. With summer over and all of the free events finished, I want to start going to the Beefcake Musclemania gym more than once a week like I have been. So I changed into my gym clothes and coerced my other half into going with me for the second day in a row. We hit the gym, did our cardio and beef-a-reeno exercises and got home around seven o'clock. Summer (the sister) says to eat carbs and protein immediately after exercising, so into the kitchen we go to scrounge for a recipe to actually cook dinner. After haggling over a few options, we settled on salad and a pasta. Into the salted, boiling water went the Trader Joe's Spinach and Chive fettucini (buy this now!) while Erika washed and cleaned arugula and basil for the salad and I got the crushd garlic, fresh parmesan, and olive oil all ready to go. Sorry, we're missing out on the protein tonight, Summer - my progression to beefdom will have to wait.

After dinner, it was time to try to kill the angel-food cake that someone made me at work, along with peaches and whipped cream. The kitchen was a disaster, but it had to wait because it was time for me to sit on my ass and learn some Spanish with Rosetta Stone (sidenote: Astoria rocks, we found a church nearby that offers free Spanish lessons! Sign me up, since my wife won't talk to me in Spanish for an extended amount of time, mostly because I revert to English). After Spanish, I jumped in the shower in order to clean the muscle-oil off my body and shave my 8:00 shadow so that I can sleep an extra two minutes in the morning.

With thirty minutes of easy Spanish lessons done, Erika had to start her homework, so back to the kitchen I go to voluntarily do dishes on a weeknight while Erika chats with her mom and gets back to studying. By 9:00, the kitchen is spotless, the trash cans are all emptied, and I am reading about Liverpool's game earlier in the day (we won, of course). 9:00pm, and all of this has been accomplished!

When I lived in the Bronx, it was more like this: Arrive home after an hour and fifteen minute commute at 6:30pm. Relax for a half-hour, change my clothes, get to the gym at 7:30pm. Exercise for an hour, shower, arrive home at 8:45pm. Eat a Cliff Bar on the way home for dinner because by that time, it's too late to cook a full dinner for myself, eat it, and clean up after myself and get to bed at a decent time. The wonders of a great partnership!

So, in summary to this novel of a 45-minute blog, things are wonderful around here, I could write all night about all of the things that I have learned and experienced. But it's been a busy, efficient day, and it's almost time to settle down for the evening :) .

J. Riley, by the way neither of us cares which side of the bed we sleep on :)

Ketchup

I've got some serious miles to cover on my blog - pun intended! I've actually been pretty busy lately running around to see various doctors since my diagnosis of myotonic dystrophy, not to mention the regularly scheduled trips to the chiropractor, orthodontist, California, and Peru :o) .

First of all, three weeks ago I went out to Southern California to attend my friend Jeff's surprise birthday party and to hang out with my good friend Ryan. I got an awesome deal on flights and it was a three-day weekend for me, so I made the trip on pretty short notice. As I've said before, I usually don't like to go to LA because there are so many different pockets of friends and family there that I would have to spend a week there just to visit them all. So if I didn't visit or I didn't tell you I was going, don't blame it on me - blame it on...something else (??).

I've been in sort of an outdoorsy mood recently, so Ryan stacked the weekend's events around various outdoor activities - which is a good thing because 66.6% of the time there was 70-80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Saturday I woke up early (jetlag) and Ry and I got some early morning breakfast at a local joint before heading down to Newport Beach to go water kayaking around Balboa Island on a perfect, warm day with a light breeze. We took our time, spending most of the day cruising around, giving my shoulders a nice workout while admiring the rich and the famous's huge yachts. I can't imagine living in a place and having one of these monstrous things sitting right outside my house. I don't ency them, I just think it would be kind of crazy to have a lifestyle like that.

After a short visit back at his parent's house, Ryan and I went home and relaxed until our night-time event - Jeff's birthday party at a place called El Coyote in West Hollywood. It's a classic, old school Mexican restaurant from the 1930s with mediocre food but an interesting atmosphere. I can't put my finger on exactly what, but LA is definitely much more different than New York, but I can't really tell you why that is. Anyway, after that we went to a bar called St. Nick's and had a few drinks before heading back home.

For some reason, when I stepped off the plane the night before, my voice was squeaky and was going away - probably from the air-conditioning on the airplane. It was even worse by Saturday night so I asked my local pharmacist - the bartender - to prescribe me with something to make it feel better. One shot of Patron tequila with hot sauce and salt later, and my throat was in fact feeling a little better. It was a short-term fix, though...


Sunday, being the other 33.333% of the weekend, was overcast and cold, a good day to sleep in and be lazy. Ryan's friend was having a barbecue at his house that day so we headed up to the hill above Long Beach to his place in the afternoon. He made some wonderful burgers on his massive barbecue set and we had a good time meeting his friends, one couple - half of which was from Bulgaria - recently getting married and dealing with Greencards and what not. Interesting to get their perspective on the amount of time dealing with the government for such matters. The evening's meal was followed up with some drunk piano debauchery, Ryan's friend and the gay couple from next door singing pop classics while playing the piano - well I might add!

We finished up the night watching two movies - Alpha Dog (with my hero Justin Timberlake) and a movie with Morgan Freeman and John Cusack. I found the story-line of Alpha Dog to be pretty blase, but I thought the acting was great. The other movie, however, was absolutel probably the worst movie I have seen in my life. Poor story, poor acting, it was just terrible. I lost an ounce of respect for those two actors' agents' skills in finding them good movies to start in after seeing that one. It was so bad, I don't even remember the name of it. But don't watch it :-s!!

Monday, my last day in town, Ry and I headed up to the hills above Palas Verdes (sp.) to try to go hiking. He hadn't been up there before, but we figured it was close and the views should be nice for such a nice day, so we hit the road and spent some time trying to figure out if there was actually a trail or not at the place we found online. We found some marked trails, took some other unmarked trails and finally ended up in some rich people's backyards. We wandered back downhill and enjoyed stretching the muscles and getting some California sunshine.

After burning those calories (do I sound old yet?), we went to a nice Greek place in downtown Long Beach and ate a ton of food and had a bit of wine in the nice weather before it was time for me to go to the airport and fly on my red-eye back to the cold, wet NYC!

J. Riley, Next stop: Peru

The Ultimate

I've spent many a moment standing in the pasta aisle, staring at the wide assortments of pasta and having an internal debate as vicious and vigorous as Hillary vs. Barak. Oh, the things to contemplate when it comes to pasta. Egg noodles or semolina noodles? Quinoa noodles or whole wheat noodles? Store brand or "imported" brand? Organic or genetically modified? Cheap or more expensive? Most of these are a moot point when at Trader Joe's, but let's leave them out of this. Because the biggest debate of them all is - what is the ultimate noodle shape? My pasta book makes various arguments about surface area vs the types of sauce you are using, etc. etc. But I have never been convinced that ziti noodles make my chunky homemade Bolognese sauce taste better or richer, so I give them all an equal platform on which to impress me. I can now say, with unequivocal certainty, that I declare the elusive pinwheel pasta the best-in-class! Many other pastas are slippery and can be difficult to get many on your fork at one time while chunks of meet often find their way to the bottom of the bowl. Not with the pinwheel! Easy to load up, easy to eat, and easy to re-heat - just don't overcook them! Please, hold your applause and thank me later for this tip. Try it yourself - the Pasta Challenge.

In completely unrelated news, I spent the last three days doing two things: recovering from another bout of the cold (thanks to the changing weather everyday) and dreaming about the new keyboard that I ordered that arrived at my office on Friday, when I was home sick. And by keyboard, yes you guessed it, I mean computer keyboard, not the kind that requires coordination and that emits waves that our eardrums translate into music. Unless you consider the clatter of fingers on hard plastic to be music (as I do). Anyway, my new Logitech Wave keyboard arrived to give my hands some much needed respite from repetitive motions during my work day. And this keyboard is gorgeous (yes I was complimented on it by several people today, who will probably steal it out of envy)! And comfortable (oooh)! And ergonomic (ahhhh)! And quiet (gaaasp)! Yes I did think about this keyboard pretty much all weekend and would like to add the wireless Wave keyboard/mouse combination to my Christmas list for my home computer! Well, along with the hands-free Logitech blue-tooth headset that I can use for Skype! Or scrap it all and buy me an iPhone :)

J. Riley, I also spent part of Saturday rock-climbing in a gym downtown with volunteers and kids. I didn't climb due to forearm/hand issues and my cold, but I did spend an awful lot of the time thinking about that keyboard while the kids were flying up the walls with ease!

Cultural Extravaganza Road Trip

Sean has recently purchased (outlandishly, of course) a new bike for running errands, touring the city, getting exercise, etc. I have considered doing the same but am having a hard time justifying the $300 purchase right now, when I can rent one for $35. Sure, after a few years it would pay off, but I am still hesitating. Anyway, we decided yesterday, despite my sore-throat-cough-and-evening exhaustion (something I caught in the hospital down south?), to do a serious road trip along the East River, going up to 125th Street, bypassing the high-security mental institution on Randall Island, crossing the Tri-Borough Bridge into Queens, then heading south through Astoria, Long Island City, into Greenpoint, into the hipster enclave of Williamburg, and then crossing the Williamsburg Bridge back into Manhattan.

We left at about noon with Sean already exhausted from the 91 block ride from the nexus of the universe to my apartment, but I was feeling fresh with my newly rented Euro-urban "step-through" (aka girl's) bike and we headed off into the great unknown that is Queens and Brooklyn. It was completely casual and a true stop-and-smell-the-roses type tour that I've wanted to do for a while. We hit up the MoMA PS1 museum, a sculpture park with people doing yoga in it, watched a children's Tae Kwan Do demonstration (or so I assumed it to be), found a Czech-Slovakian store full of goods from that part of the world (I happened to be wearing my Czech Republic soccer jersey so of course I had to stop in and practice my Czech), and finally found our way to Williamsburg in time for lunch.

We stopped into a place called Fada that looked intriguing, desperately seeking as many calories in the form of hamburger we could get in order to replenish those we had burnt. We were quickly re-directed to Teddy's Bar and Grill, which the hipster waiter promised had the best burgers around. And we proceeded to absolutely gorge on nachos, giant tasty burgers with cheese and chili, and polysaturated salty curly fries.

In a food-induced como, we rolled down to the river and found a random "State Park" with people sunbathing, reading, and playing soccer along the river. It was amazingly quiet on that side of the river and it was very refreshing. I am starting to like that area more and more, just like everyone else in the city.

We finally made it back to the madness of the LES and relaxed our exhausted bodies and watched the second half of a movie at Sean's. After the movie, it was time for me to head back uptown to get my bike back in time. Of course, at this point the sky got seriously dark and it started to rain. Perfect. I didn't really mind because I was hell-bent on beating Sean's one-hour commute uptown so I sprinted uptown as fast as I could, even when it started absolutely dumping rain. At least the river-side trail was cleared of pedestrians :o).

J. Riley, I found out when I returned my bike that my food-induced coma caused me to leave my credit card at the restaurant. I had to make a road-trip back out there today to pick it up, but this time I stopped at Fada and ate brunch with the NY Times. Yummy! :o)

Running: The Aftermath

So I am finally feeling the ill effects from running distances (though nothing major) on concrete. I think I'm getting shin splints because the area around my shins are killing me. I stopped running for a week because of this and now am pretty much planning on just running sprints on the spongy astro-turf at this park near me, which sucks because the security guard there is a pain in the ass. A few weeks back he kicked me out because I was walking on the outskirts of the field (which is a running track) because there were soccer teams who were going to be playing. Uhhh....I'm not exactly using the field. Yesterday, he tried to pull that again and I said (referring to the sub-10 year old children practicing) that it didn't look like they were playing and proceeded to go past him and started my sprints. After about 15 minutes, he said "ok, that's enough", even though half the field was still unoccupied and I was completely out of the way of the practice. I talked with the guy for about 10 minutes, trying to logically reason with him. He clearly just didn't want ME there. There was a dad playing with his kid on the field, but there was no problem with him. Just with me, running on the side of fields. Finally I said that I was only going to be there another 10 minutes, I'm going to the middle of the field where there was no one. He said something like "well if the parents complain, you're going to have to leave". Like a parent is going to complain about somebody using a completely unoccupied part of the field. Well, then again, this is New York.

Did I mention that I'm in Peru? I didn't think so. Erika's mother was suddenly scheduled for surgery tomorrow, 6/6, so I booked a (unreasonably cheap) direct flight down here and thanks to my boss for his understanding and flexibility in allowing me to work from here. Not that he reads my blog (or knows that it exists ;o). So, I'm here, working from my youth hostel (or their neighbors') wireless internet connection!

J. Riley, I don't really classify this as a "vacation" trip, but I'll label it as such anyway.

Finally I Have a Social Life!

I've been madly irresponsible with this blog lately, and it's about time I start carving 15 minutes out of my week to update people before I lose my fan base! Of course, if you're using Google Reader, I'm probably just another person on your list and any of my posts are just a bonus to you. But I digress....

So, a couple things. First of all, the weather here has been just amazing lately, except for a few thunderstorms and some rain. Today was probably the hottest day of the year, the second time I've felt my back wet while walking home from the office - ahhh, summertime is almost here! Time to ditch the backpack and leave the laptop at work. Rather than putting my bathing suit on and heading to Central Park to sunbathe afterwork like most people (errr...like most people I am checking out on my way home from work ;o), I've taken a liking to running sans shirt. I am actually surprised that more people don't do it, it's quite liberating. I'm sure most people who happen to see me flash by them shirk in horror when they see me (or at least are temporarily blinded), but I figure that if I can't get tan this way (or at least skin cancer), I can't get tan anyway (and will probably still get skin cancer).

Last weekend was pretty busy, I went mini-golfing with my volunteer group and barely escaped the impending rain, but still had a lot of fun. As is typical lately, I had a flurry of cancellations a day or two before the event. I am fine-tuning my organizational skills and procedures to prevent this, but I guess sometimes there are things you just can't prevent. Last summer it was kids not showing up, but I'd rather have few volunteers and more kids, as has been the case lately.

After golfing, I ate a ginormous hamburger from a greasy diner that I've never tried before by my house. One of the kids had eaten a burger at the mini-golf course and I was salivating all over the ground watching him eat it, so I stuffed myself silly with one before I met up with Alan and Andrea for the rest of the day. We rode down to the Brooklyn Bridge and (gasp) actually enjoyed doing something people all over the world come here to do, walk across it. We hit up a chocolate place for Andrea and then got some awesome ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory, sitting next to the stormy water and getting fat. Awesome.

Being in Brooklyn, we could have gone anywhere in the city afterwards but decided to hit up the old stand-by neighborhood downtown, the East Village. We stopped at a very nice place (which we need to try brunch at) called the NoLita House for happy hour (2-for-1, 7 days a week!), waiting for our appetites to pick up. Well, really Alan and I since Andrea is "practicing" being pregnant and not drinking anymore :o/ . I wasn't convinced.

With our whistles whetted and our appetites lubricated, we headed to a noodle place that we'd all read about called Momofuku Noodle House for a simple noodle dinner at a tiny place with a single bar-style table right down the middle of the room with people lined on either side eating their noodles. It was alright, but I think I wanted Alan's spicy kimchi bowl rather than my "mystery pork" dish (I suspect there was pork throat in there, since I saw it on other dishes), but it was a cool place nonetheless.

On the verge of throwing up from gluttonous feasting that day, we went to another chocolate place so Andrea could get a melted-bar of hot-chocolate (que richo!) while I contemplated the best place to vomit within a proximity limit of six feet. I had "that taste" in my mouth before deciding that it probably wasn't the best thing to do in public and distracted myself with people watching instead.

With the English Premier League finished, I was stuck watching Spanish La Liga soccer on Sunday morning before taking a jog and then entertaining Melissa while I was doing chores around the house like laundry and waiting to meet up with my family's good friends Frank and Sally. They came to town to see their daughter and generously offered to take me out to dinner anywhere I wanted. I guess they didn't know what they were getting themselves into with an offer like that, so I whipped open my plethora of guides before remembering that I'd always wanted to go to WD-50 but it was a little too trendy and creative for an average night in the LES, my neighborhood away from neighborhood. It is well known for it's inventive tastes and I thought they would enjoy something a bit different than the norm. Somehow I managed to get reservations the day of and it was good eats-on! Wow, this place was like a palette amusement park between the quinoa with...some...taste, shredded brussel sproats with apples, tagine-spiced lamb broth, scallops, apricot cous-cous, etc. etc. etc. It wasn't a lot of food, but it was very interesting. The desserts left something to be desired with more style than substance, but they were good conversation pieces, if nothing else.

Being in the neighborhood, we capped the night at Teany's tea shop of course and tried out the latest teanychino (candied apple teanychino!) and now Teany has a few more massive fans to go along with my parents!

Like all good things, the night had to come to an end however and I had to head home to make my nightly phone call before getting ready for the busy week. I had a root canal to wrap up on Thursday but, more importantly, had the Champions League Final on Wednesday. I wasn't sure how to leave work early two days in a row, so I made up a story how they had to create a mold of the hole in my tooth on Wednesday and then Thursday they would put the custom porcelain crown in and though I doubt my boss bought it, he didn't care. He probably wouldn't have cared if I said I was leaving to go to a bar to watch my team, but I didn't want him to think I'm not dedicated to my job (I'm not, really ;o).

I got lucky though when my dentist said they had an opening an hour and a half before the game started, so I got my filling (no crown necesito!), jumped in a cab and hauled but down to the Liverpool bar, only to find out that it was already at capacity!! Arggghhh...I could hear them singing inside and everything. With my Liverpool scarf wrapped around my neck, I hopped back in the cab to go to a bigger place, the "overflow" bar. It was also packed and I saw so many people wearing red running towards bars around town, it was great. Liverpool has the best fans in the world, there's little doubt about that. So I joined the throngs of people at Slainte, a big Irish bar with lots of flat-screen TVs and hundreds of fans. There was singing, drinking, cheering, jeering, and lots of Scouse accents in the bar, it was an awesome atmosphere. Too bad we didn't win, I'd probably still be there singing You'll Never Walk Alone, their theme song and famous Kop classic. Next year, boys, we'll be back....

J. Riley, BTW, I'm growing a beard just for the hell of it. I like the nasty beards that the stylish Brits have at my work and you don't see many shaggy people here in the UES. Once you can see it (stupid blonde/red hair cross-pollenations), maybe I'll take a picture.

Surprise! I'm Abnormal - for an Upper East Sider

One of the things many people struggle for in New York (methinks) is an identity. Something that makes them unique. Obviously everyone is unique in their own way, but you wouldn't know it by looking around in the neighborhood that I currently camp in, the Upper East Side (UES). The demographics of this part of town are as follows:

1.) Inhabitated by a.) recently graduated frat boys and sorority girls, b.) young professionals who most likely went to Ivy League schools and work in finance or another high paying job, c.) young families, d.) old money aristocrats.
2.) Most common ethnicities: WASP or Jewish.
3.) Income: Middle Class (for New York, ha!) -> Extremely Wealthy with Trust Fund
4.) Common social events: fine-dining, wine tasting, binge drinking, exercising in Central Park, black-tie house parties (depending on where you fit in #1)
5.) Dress code: Business Casual to Professional, Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Bloomingdales

Hello, identity crises! Where do I not fit into this narrow guide of the UES? I'm a young professional making a good income, WASP as WASP can be, securely Middle Class, enjoy fine dining and rollerblading in Central Park, and have a closet stocked with Banana Republic and other business casual clothing (for work). Well, the other half of my closet is soccer clothing, but still.

Ahhhh, but there is one attribute where I deviate from this classification. And I demonstrated this at Alan's SURPRISE 30th birthday party on Saturday night! I like to expand the horizons of us sheltered UESers by venturing to new parts of town. There was Astoria (Little Greece, Queens) and Greenpoint (Little Poland, Brooklyn) for my birthday last year, there was Jackson Heights (Little Columbia, Queens) for my end-of-my-social-life-for-the-year party in late October last year. Not to mention trips up to Melissa's in the Bronx (Little....well, Melting-Pot-minus-WASPs?). So when Alan's wife was planning the party and was considering a bowling party downtown, a light went off in my head: Harlem Lanes! I had been there during the day with my volunteer group and it was supposed to be a hopping place at night. We ended up standing in line in the middle of Harlem at 10:45 at night on Saturday to get into this place, it was so popular. And we were the ONLY non-African-Americans in the place. A couple white kids, some Asians, some Indians and a WHOLE BUNCH of bruthas and sistahs. Awesome, I was in my element. Alan was surprised to see all of his friends inside and they all asked us "how in the world did you get Alan to come up to Harlem to go bowling?" It was easy, he 's never surprised when I show my true colors below that standard UES outer shell :o).

J. Riley, disco bowling to hip-hop and watching "The Fight" (boxing match between Mayweather and De La Hoya) while bowling and drinking beers for two hours was awesome.

We're Going To Athens!

I use the word "we" pretty liberally, as in "we" - Liverpool FC. For the second time in three years, they have beaten an arch-rival in the semi-finals of the premiere football tournament in Europe: The Champion's League. In their 100+ year history, this is the seventh time they have reached the final, so two times in three years is pretty significant! The finals are in Athens on May 23rd and, cough cough, I can already feel food poisoning from a terrible lunch coming on the day of the final. I wish I was going to Athens instead, but I'll have to put that on hold this year.

So where in the world have I been? In New York, actually. Since recovering from my standard Tupac Amaru's Revenge from South America, I have reignited my running passion and my nights now consist primarily of a good +1 hour of exercise three to four times a week (yoga included) as well as 1/2 hour Spanish lessons four-five times a week from my illega...I mean downloaded "trial" lessons ;o). If I manage to make it through all sixty lessons, I'll probably be fluent. But there's no way I'm that smart! We'll see how far I get however. Add nightly phone calls down to South America as well as the typical errands like shopping and EATING and it's a wrap for the night.

On the social front (i.e. the weekends) I once again embraced Nana's genes and established my dominance in Texas Hold'm poker a few weeks back, wiping the table clean of chips up until it was me and my former roommate. He managed to prevail in the end but it was quite a comeback for me since I was down to just a few chips at one point and I at least got the money that I put in back in my pocket for coming in second place (a whopping $10). I think they're going to stop inviting me to these poker events ;o).

This past weekend I headed down to Brooklyn to experience the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. This is a massive event to celebrate Japanese culture and checkout the 50+ varieties of Cherry Blossom trees in full Spring bloom spread all through the gardens. Since we were so far into Brooklyn, we decided to head down to the classic old-school Coney Island amusement park afterwards. I had never actually been there and a portion of it will be torn down later this year probably so that they can build some expensive high-rise eyesore apartment building in this historical place. It was quite a run down place, probably not somewhere you want your teenager to work at but we thoroughly enjoyed hearing the game hawkers yelling out their deals, palm readers attempting to lure us in, signs for things like "Shoot The Freak" and burlesque shows, the wide assortment of fried food available, and of course the classic "Cyclone" rollercoaster which reminds me of the Big Dipper in Santa Cruz. Next time I'm in Cali, I gotta go back to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, that's a place I never really spent enough time at (probably for the best ;o). Anyway, if you want to see pictures of all this, check out Alan's pictures here.

Last week my Shakerika was terribly sick with a bacterial infection which caused her to stay home every day from work and get daily injections - yikes. This couldn't have come at a worse time because her mother is also going to the doctors daily for a more significant reason - she found a lump in her breast :o| . It has been removed and biopsy results come back tomorrow, but prognosis is not good at this point. I'm sending positive thoughts and energy down to her and her family right now in this time of need....

J. Riley, blame my employer for my lack of posts, they're blocking blogger again!!

Wow

It is on days like today that i realize why people from around the world flock to this city that I inhabit. Surely it must be the first real day of spring today, Central Park was in full bloom with every tree lit up in pink, white, purple, etc. Absolutely breathtaking day here. To round it off, I did a park clean-up with about 8000 other New Yorkers way way up on the upper west side early this morning before running an errand and then dusting off the rollerblades for a tour de Central Park, complete with a watchful gaze of the roller-skate/blade disco/funk dancing and a freestyle bongo drumb ensamble. What an absolutely stunning day....

J. Riley, I'm finally recovered from my stomach, tomorrow I restart bootcamp...

Left Hurting

Just when I thought everything was going right, I am left hurting.

A couple weeks back, two weeks+ into my new bootcamp workout routine (which hasn't been re-established thanks to the standard two-week Tupac Amaru's Revenge), I started noticing that my left heal was bothing me when I wear my stiff leather shoes to work. It's a blister-like sensation, but there is no blister and it feels like it is on the inside of my skin rather than the outside. It doesn't hurt to the touch, it doesn't hurt when I stretch back there, so I don't know what's wrong, but it doesn't seem to be going away. So, I have self-diagnosed it to be a ruptured achilles (the same doctor diagnosed my brain tumor a few years back, as some of you remember).

Then, on top of this, my left calf is notoriously tight and went ballastic on me earlier in the week, knotting up like a sailor's yoke and hurting when I pressed in on the massive ( :o/) muscle underneath the skin. It's possible that has to do with dehydration from Tupac Amaru's Revenge.

Finally, it has relented to it's standard just-tight stage and now my glutious maximus feels all bruised (no vulgar comments, por favor ;o) just behind on the outside of my hips even though all I did all weekend is lay in bed trying to recover from my illness....

J. Riley, I have a sneaking suspicion all or some of this may be connected. Literally. And figuratively.

Lo Siento

Last night I went back to the gym for the first time in over a week (busy social schedule has kept me occupied). It's unfortunate that I just got my routine figured out at the same time that the rest of the population decided to lose some weight and join a gym as their New Year's Resolution. Lucky for me last night was Open House night at my gym, which meant there were over one million people in the building getting a tour of the facilities and taking body mass indicator tests. The also had upper body and lower body strength tests, but I didn't even bother taking those since I probably wouldn't even register on their scales. But, in any case, I did my workout and exhausted a few muscles before my sauna session. I am happy to note that I stepped on the scale and have now set a new record for weight - I'm up to 157 pounds - and that was after working out! Previously, I was consistently at 150-155 since I graduated from college, despite some people who happen to be old enough to be my parents somehow thinking I was overweight and always greeting me with "Justin, it looks like you've lost some weight" after not seeing me for a few months :o/ . Well, to be fair, they were allowed to say that at Christmas since I had, in fact, lost five pounds post-surgery. In any case, hopefully the additional poundage is a result of my dedication to working out...

At the same time, I'm also getting myself prepared for my first big vacation of the year down to Peru next Friday. I'll be spending about a week with my friends Vanessa and Kira in Cusco, the legendary capital of the Incan Empire and then a few days in Lima. I did most of the tourist things in Cusco the last time I was there (Machu Picchu and what not), so this time I'm planning on just hanging out with my friends and doing some more local stuff like local clubs and hot springs a few hours away in the mountains. In Lima, I'm meeting up with a new group of friends. My old college roommate Ryan's girlfriend lives in Lima and he will arrive there to visit her the same day that I come to town. I understand that she has an itinerary for Lima and I understand that it will include meeting up with her friends (sweet!) and checking out the local discos and black-market CD shops. That works for me!

J. Riley, who is my new friend from Bucharest that keeps visiting my site?

A Taste of Finland

A couple of years back, while working in Germany, I visited a friend of mine who lives in Finland with some college friends of mine. There are many memories from this short trip north - spending the night in the most "dangerous" part of the Helsinki - which is not saying much since I think it was rated the most safe big city in the world or something like that - the train station, watching the sun set (which lasted +1 hour) at 11:00pm or midnight, and of course the sauna sessions, which lasted a few hours in a small, wood-fired sauna on the shore of a lake at my friend's "summer" cottage - as opposed to their winter cottage. Ahhh the good life of living in a small socialist country that has "quality of life" at the top of their list :o) . We spent a couple long nights in that sauna and ever since, I've been addicted to them and utilize the one at my gym whenever possible, especially during the cold winter months.

Well, this weekend it was freezing here (literally) and I'd heard of this place called the Russian and Turkish Bath, of course located in the eccentric East Village on 10th Street where all good things exist (such as the Liverpool Support Club bar). Being a metro of Scandinavian heritage, Sean was up for checking this place out as well to escape from the misery of the outdoors. It was a flat-rate entry fee and the place has a plethora of soaking options:

• The Turkish bath is a hot, steamy room with heat rising from underneath the wooden benches that has a cold shower that cools you down when you need it.
  
• The Swedish sauna is the traditional hot, dry room with wood paneling.
  
• The Russian radiation room was like a furnace inside with traditional Russian sauna massages (for a small fee, I'm sure), stone walls, and pails of ice cold water to douse yourself with (it was so hot that I have a welt on my back from leaning against the wall for a split second).
  
• A steam room, showers, and a pool of ice water to jump into to cool off (and close all of your open pores between sessions.
  
• Russian beer and food (like borscht!) at an upstairs cafeteria.
  

J. Riley, If it wasn't for the 5000 NYU students inside the place (mostly male, unfortunately), it was like heaven for sauna connoisseurs! I can't wait to move to 10th Street...

The Great American Cop-Out

Today was an interesting day for me. If you read yesterday's booooring blog (despite a very un-boring week), you could probably tell that I was worn out or not in a very literary mood. This opinion will only be exacerbated once you learn that I fell asleep at around 7:30, woke up at around 8:30 with just enough time to brush my teeth, get into my PJs, and crash again.

So why the boring blog? I have a theory. My story begins tonight, a cold, dark winter evening at my chiropractor's office. He gave me some stretches to do on my exercise ball at work that were totally awesome and I felt very good going in there. He cracked me up and I thought back to last week's discussion about how when he doesn't go to the gym for a while, he starts going there for 15 minutes, then slowly increases his time to build up. Since I've been pretty set on starting to go to the gym for once, I decided tonight was the night - and picked my favorite gym cop-out: yoga. Yoga is great for my mind and I figured it would feel great after a nice spinal alignment. And I do tend to break a sweat when doing yoga, but let's be real. It's not REALLY working out. My upper body mass probably isn't going to change with yoga.

But, alas, I had my times all mixed up and I arrived 15 minutes after it actually started, and I'm NOT about to walk in while everyone else is doing their Ujai breathing, duh. Damn, I was stuck. My mind immediately thought of the cop-out number two: sauna. I was planning on a session after yoga since it was ass cold outside, so maybe I should just go chill in there for a few hours. I thought back to my sauna days at the West Virginia YMCA (pretty much your only option for wasting time in that desolate state) and talking to a young guy who had just signed up to go the Air Force (pretty much your only option for work in that desolate state) and had just started going to the gym to get ready for boot camp. His preferred method of working out? Going to the sauna.

So I stared at the dreaded exercise machinery in front of me and wondered if I actually had the courage to step onto a treadmill after a long, long hiatus. I cursed myself and then went to the locker room and stripped off the first layer of Adidas outerwear and headed upstairs to do something on the treadmill. I was wearing socks from work (hot!) since you take off shoes and socks in yoga, so the idea of running wasn't too appealing. Plus I didn't have headphones and I didn't want to DIE. So I started being that lame guy on the treadmill who isn't manly enough to sprint for an hour and just walked at a leisurely pace. Feeling pretty much worthless, I decided to give myself a workout and massively increased the incline and increased the speed, determined to carry on for a half hour work out. Baby steps.

My mind started running as I stared at the sweet LCD screen in front of me, reading the headlines from America's worthless mass media stations. As the treadmills around me became occupied, I found it entertaining that the girl next to me was running so hard and fast that she couldn't help but hold onto the front of the machine. Dude, if you can't keep up with the speed, you do know that these things do have adjustable speeds, right? Whatever, who was I to judge since I was walking up a hill while she was at least running.

So after my baby steps workout, which built up quite a sweat, I might add, I headed downstairs and hit the sauna. And my mind started racing down there. It suddenly brought back memories of pretty much every sauna session. I sit in there and pretty much all I can think about are things to blog about. So, I am now declaring that saunas are damn good for the mind and if I ever write boring again, it's probably because I haven't been to the gym for a while. Or maybe I'm just tired.

So, what did I think about? Well, for one, my family is drawing names for Christmas this year since nobody really needs or wants much. Or we're poor. Or cheap. Whatever. I found out later that Summer got stuck with me, so here's what I want from Summer. A subscription to Men's Health (to support my new gym rat lifestyle), a new iPod battery, and/or dryer sheets.

After asking me if I could read (he later apologized, saying he meant if I could physically read without my glasses, which we had earlier discussed), this old guy gave me his NY Times in the sauna and it was the Business section. I realized, as I have noticed lately, that I am more interested in business topics again after rebelling against "The Man" (aka my employers) pretty much since I graduated. This has strangely coincided with me beginning to invest in stocks again for the first time since, again, I graduated. It also coincides with a reduction in the interest of drinking copious amounts of liquor on weekends for the first time since I graduated. And it also coincides with the realization that people my age are starting to send me Christmas cards. Crap, I'm growing up!

Just for the hell of it, I stepped on the scale on the way into the sauna and it measured a tidy 147 pounds. Some of that was probably water weight that I lost while, ahem, "working out", but some of it also probably has to do with the liquid diet earlier last month. Maybe my sister knows if weights tend to lag behind changes in diets. Because I certainly don't know.

J. Riley, Summer, pencil me in for December 21st or 22nd at your gym. You need to teach. And I need to learn.

And the rest of you need to learn how to download Firefox Version 2.0! Susyash will be especially pleased with it because it spell checks while you blog. And we all know she needs help with that.