December 28, 2005

i took this entire week off (week between xmas and new years) and what have i been doing???   i've been cleaning up my apartment and furniture shopping.   what's so difficult about furniture shopping?  if you're me, you would know this is something i just don't wanna deal with and just wanna get it over with.  that means i'm just gonna buy whatever i see that looks functional, which is something i'm trying to avoid, but i know i'm gonna do (which is also why i haven't bought anything yet).  i'm trying to get my friend's wife to give me a hand.

today i went to bed, bath, and beyond and gothic cabinets. yesterday i went to jennifer convertibles (read and heard nitemare stories about them so not gonna buy from them) and the door store.  i'm gonna go back to bed, bath, and beyond tomorrow (actually today since it's about 3am right now) and pick up some stuff (folding chairs and tray tables - so i can sit in my living room and watch tv).  here's what i need for my apartment:

couch, coffee table, dining table with chairs, garbage bins, storage bench (by the foyer), file cabinets, 2 light fixtures, and some picture frames (gonna print some photos and hang them up).   i need to get to ikea and check some stuff out over there.  maybe this weekend or next weekend. 

as for cleaning my apartment, i've thrown out so much stuff (old books, old mags, old this and that) and it doesn't look like i've done a single thing!   meanwhile i spent hours on it.   unbelievable!!!  i wanted to workout tonite, but my apartment was in such disarray that i couldn't bring myself to go.   oh well, there's always the team workout later.

i'll be updating my web album soon, once i get my pics organized.  i'm thinking of posting some pics from my vegas vacation a couple of years ago, as well as some grand canyon pics.  who knows, i may change my mind cuz it's a decent amount of work to sort through everything.  we'll see.

December 21, 2005

yesterday i ran the full length from home to work, approx 6 miles.  today i got a ride from 34th street and 9th ave. 

have i mentioned how much i hate running?   well, with this transit strike and having to run as much as i have been first thing in the morning, have i also mentioned that i'm not a morning person - getting up and out the door by 7am  just to catch my ride at 34th street and 9th ave so i can get a ride down to work. 

so i figured today, catching a ride at 34th street is only a 2.5 mile run, so it's a piece of cake.  because of that i decided to carry my coffee cup and some food with me, with a total weight of at least 5 pounds.  well, let me give you a little more info... my coffee cup is one of those metal vacuum sealed cup / thermos jobs, and the food was dense chinese buns (roast pork buns).  since i'm so not a morning person, i didn't think of putting everything into a knapsack and running like that, but instead put them in one of those plastic shopping bags and just hold them in my hand and run.  real bad idea.   it made the run much longer than it should have.  

i think the strike will be over by the end of this week.  maybe friday or something, but hey, i could be wrong.   stupid city union workers...  i had to miss my team's speed workout cuz i don't know how much longer i'm gonna have to run to work and i need to keep my legs as fresh as i can.

December 20, 2005

today we had a transit strike for the first time in 25 years.  i decided to run to work... 6 miles one way.  running to work wasn't so bad.  i did a 10 minute / mile pace and got to work in exactly 60 minutes... perfect.  if i had walked it would have taken 2 hours.  running back home was much much worse.  i left work at 4 so i can run while there was still some light, but the streets and sidewalks were jam packed, esp from the 30s to the 50s.  i was just bumping into people all over the place (damn tourists) and eventually decided to just run in the street with all the cars.  i'm sure i'm gonna have to do this again tomorrow and probably the day after that.  i of course brought my metrocard with me hoping the strike would be over before quitting time.  suffice it to say, it was wishful thinking.  i'm still gonna bring my metrocard with me tomorrow cuz it would suck if the stike were over and i didn't have the damn thing.

is there a good side to this?  the only good side is that it's forcing me to get my running in.  i had been lazy and hadn't been running much, maybe twice a week - speed workouts and saturday morning runs - total of approx 10 miles / week.  if this keeps up i'm gonna be running 60 miles / week.  i'm pretty sure my body isn't gonna like this strike thing too much.   to top it all off, my longest run ever is only 7 miles.  i'm pretty sure my body isn't gonna isn't gonna like this strike thing too much.

i need to find a job closer to my apartment.  2 miles or less preferably.

oh, did i happen to mention it was only 22 deg F this morning?

FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!  i really really really hope my legs can hold up.

December 12, 2005

yesterday i was going thru a box that was still sealed up from my move 3 years ago.  it still had the packing tape on it so i know i hadn't touched in since then.  well, it was full of pictures.  it had pics of my cat back when he was 9 weeks old and pics of me back when i was swimming every day (hardcore swims).  there were a couple of pics where i was in swim trunks and had hair and glasses as well as a toned swimmer's body.  it's safe to say... i don't look like that anymore.  man... how quickly your body goes to shit once you start slacking off.  i think i'm gonna go workout tonite.

December 10, 2005

this morning i was debating on whether or not i should get out of bed and do the saturday run with the team i'm on.   i turned on the tv and noticed it was a c-c-cold 27F and had pretty much written off the run.  it kept nagging at me cuz i think i've been pretty lazy lately and decided to go run.  i'm glad i went, but i'm hoping running in the cold will eventually get easier - eventhough i was bundled up, my legs just didn't wanna move and we were going slow!!!

so after brunch i turned on the tv and noticed back to the future was on. for some reason, and i do this all the time, eventhough i've watched it a ton of times and i even own the dvd trilogy of it, i still watch it when it's on tv!!!  it's definitely one of my favorites if not my favorite movie of all time (written and directed by robert zemeckis).  here's a bit of trivia on back to the future... did you know eric stoltz was the original marty mcfly?  he was fired after 6 weeks of filming cuz he was too serious for a comedy.   another bit of trivia is that billy zane (the bad guy on titanic) played one of biff's henchmen.

December 9, 2005

so the day started off like this... i get out of the train station to walk to work and while i'm crossing the street someone driving in a city vehicle (one of those dark blue cars with the city emblem stating "for official city use only" starts backing up.  not only are they backing up, but they're turning the corner while they're backing up.  guess what, i was crossing the street at that corner they were backing up and turning into.  i think that blue car with the city emblem is a frickin' traffic ticket car too.  wanna know how close they got to me?  they got close enuf so i was able to put my hand down and hit the trunk repeatedly before they stopped.  i'm not exaggerating one bit (there was a witness).  to make things worse, we had a reasonable amount of accumulation of snow this morning so i couldn't run since the roads were slippery.  so i yelled at her (woman driver) and all she could say was "sorry!!"  damn city employees... they don't work and they don't watch where they're driving.

December 6, 2005

i'm a king of queens fan... huge kevin james fan.  tonite's episode had carrie pole dancing for doug.  well, in the end, doug was teaching carrie how to pole dance and i just about peed in my pants, and this was the second time i saw this episode.  it was so funny i had to record it.  to my faithful readers, here's the clip of kevin james (doug heffernen) pole dancing for carrie.