i forgot about this blog

ever since i got a tumblr i pretty much forgot that this thing existed. i found it today when i clicked on a blogspot link and realized my work computer auto logged me in. it's not as fun or cute as tumblr but it's better for text and typing and thoughts. i have missed you little baby blog, but i'm back now and ready to show you some lovin'.

it's almost spring and i can taste it. the sun is finally shining into our office and it's making me dizzy with euphoria. even though it's still only ~50 degrees out there (which, comparatively speaking, is sahara-like and welcome) i am already dreaming of rompers and bicycles and beach towels spread on the sand.

i have a lot of plans and goals and wants and needs for spring summer seasons 2011. i want a new lightweight bike that i can haul up and down my stairwell without the aid of steroids. i want to pay off some more debt (ugh). i reeeeeaaaallly wanna jump ship and move to the east village at the beginning of summer (probs the worst time to try finding an apartment in nyc, period). i wanna practice french conversation with julia (and get like, tres good). i want to take a road trip, a million times over, to the midwest and the southwest and the west in general - to the beaches and the trees and the lakes streams oceans of Americanada. i've used up all but 9 of my vacation days, so, we'll see how many places i actually end up getting to. i want boat shoes that don't make my feet look awkward. i want an actual boat. i wanna go kayak with my little cousins and swim in the lake and get so tan that people ask me where I'm from.


want want want WANT WANT WANT WANT NEED NEED NEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDDDDD

god i'm needy

i <3 travel

so 2010 is already looking good! in 9 days i head to Paris with Marla for MLK weekend. I haven't been since the first time I visited in October 2008 so I'm really excited. I love Paris so hard, it's seriously the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Of course, I haven't been to that many places.

Afterward I'll be heading to London from Tues - Sun for work. Luckily Friday will be a short day and I'll have the weekend to hang out in the city. I love London but I'm terrified it's going to be freezing.

then three weeks later in mid February I head to Egypt for 8 days. I just have a loose itinerary for now but I'm planning to do the whole Cairo - Giza - Alexandria pyramid thing for a few days then head south to do a felucca cruise up the nile. holy shit! this has been a total dream of mine since i was a kid.

after egypt i fly to dubai for Resh's sister's wedding. Animal and Resh will be there and we'll have a week to enjoy the Arabian peninsula and all those really, really, really effing tall buildings and camels and stuff. although i'm sure i'll get my fill of sand and camels in egypt...

i'm not sure what i'll be doing from April - July but hopefully I can do a road trip with Kait and Sam u el after he graduates - that's the plan for now. Cross country trips have been planned before but they've never worked out - at least for the three of us. So i'm not banking on it.

Then in july, Resh's close friend from college is getting married in Salzburg, Austria, where she now lives. We're going to take a week off of work and spend 10 days in Western Europe - probably Budapest, Vienna, then Salzburg. That's really exciting too because the furthest west I've been in Europe was Berlin, and there only for 4 days.

Finally I think in September we are going to try to travel for labor day. We're thinking another week off and 10 days spent in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Resh's cousins live in Copenhagen so that's an excuse to visit. I am REALLY excited for this trip, maybe more so than the others.

The goal is to do Barcelona and the Canary Islands for Thanksgiving but we'll see. Resh is employed in the non-profit sector, after all, and she doesn't have THAT many frequent flyer miles. I've started my own account in earnest so that I can help but I really don't care to pay full price for two people for too many vacations a year. Luckily I get many more days off than she does so some of my travels may be solo.

I should probably be in London for work two or three more times this year as well - I am trying to push for a short secondment in the Paris office but it's tough as we just got a new CMO for NY. dang but oh well.

i am just feeling so happy about this i had to post.

flakeblogger

yeah, so i never update this thing. oh well. i see that my last post referenced my attempt to quit smoking right after Christmas this year - as an update, it was entirely unsuccessful. however, since then i have successfully quit, thanks to the help of my beautiful and health-conscious girlfriend. i have been on the wagon since May 29th, making this about my 20th day. well, i did have a fag or two last saturday, 'cause i was intoxicado and it was my best pal jose's birthday and well, old habits die hard, don't they?

still, i'm pretty impressed with myself. i'm at the point where i don't even want one anymore - the thought of it makes me kind of nauseous, and there'll be this funny little taste in my mouth. although i do still crave them - weird, right? i want to "smoke" but the actual smoke itself really grosses me out. i guess its the psychological addiction lingering even though the physical need for nicotine has faded.

kait and sam u el have also quit smoking all leaves. it is a difficult transition time for us all but i think it is made easier with the solidarity. although to be honest, since i've begun dating resh (my gf), i haven't seen the pair too often. actually very sad about that, but what can you do.

ok, that's enough procrastinating for now. baaaack to work. sigh.

back in action

This blog has been dormant for a while - ever since I got back from Cali. Reason being, I started a new job at an even fancier corporate law firm and I felt a little nervous being so exposed on the internetz. Sure, none of my posts were overly revelatory or intimate but over time it was sure to trend that way. But I find that I now miss the cathartic effects of blogging and wish to return to the forum. So, here I am. You've missed a lot - new job, trips to Berlin, Paris and London, Marla and Ani going off to law school, Brother returning from China, Roommate getting a new girlfriend. So on and so forth but rather than bore you with a recap I'll just hope you decide to e-mail for details. On to present day.

It's the weekend after Christmas and I'm upstate visiting relatives. I decided to take this time of utter social seclusion to quit smoking - my little cousins are so cute I hope to be unable to inflict them with the rage I am expecting any time now. All the websites say so - I'm looking forward to anxiety, tension, and mouth sores. God, I would kill for a cigarette right now and it's only been two days. I'm a pretty heavy smoker in stressful times, and what with the economy right now, it's pretty stressful times. A pack at least every other day. So right now, my body and mind are going crazy trying to think of ways to access nicotine, all of which are totally unrealistic and often really gross (think picking through the crumbs in my shoulder bag trying to find shreds of tobacco - yeah, no.)

Smoking is such a gross habit - i know this, the effects on my health are obvious. But I just want one so badly right now! I keep reading through all the websites stating the effects of quitting, and they're so not helpful. OK, yes, in fifteen years I will have the same risk of heart attack as a non-smoker. Big deal. In fifteen years I'll have three extra sets of lungs in lab jars in the fridge of my space jet. Who the hell cares about fifteen years from now? I'll be thirty-eight and thus boring, uninteresting, and probably deserving of death. Right now, all I can concentrate on are the "mouth sores, black mucus, tightness of chest, constipation, dizziness, and insomnia." The next two to three weeks are going to be an utter delight, I can tell. And who knows, I may be boring you without purpose - when I return to New York (and to autonomy / availability of nicotine) I may be right off the wagon. God knows if there were a cigarette here now I would be sucking it like a vampire sucks veins. Mmm. Cigarette.

OK,OK,OK time to ask for a scrip for Chantix. Except suicidal thoughts aren't such a great replacement for something that only MIGHT kill you.

mobile post test

Testing 123

san frannnnn

Cali is rad. I love it here and wish I were never coming back to New York. OK, well, that's not true - NYC ain't so bad. It's just that this city is so.o.o.o.o.o chill. Saw some touristy stuff and also gorged on the ubiquitous cali staple, In N Out Burger.

Met a lot of smart and interesting people so far. It just feels more REAL here, less poseur than Manhattan / Williamsburg. If I didn't live in New York I would definitely live here, earthquakes or no!

I'm just updating this really quickly then I'm off to explore by myself since Alex is at work. (Her apt is so fly BTW. I wanna be her new roommate.) I'm going to walk through the park then go to Ocean Beach. It might take me all day to walk there but A is an iBanker and might be working til midnight so I have plenty o' free time.

Probably peacing out from SF tomorrow to hit up Long Beach / LA with Rachel. Holla for SoCal but tears for leaving the Bay.

Update:

San Francisco was one of the best cities I've ever visited. It was so relaxing and clean and interesting. There were a lot of scary homeless people in random spots though. I definitely want to live here someday for at least a few years.

After overstaying my welcome with Alex (about 5 days), I hopped an early morning BART bus to central SF to catch a private bus to LA. It was the cheapest route I could find and it only cost a pittance - maybe $70. After some navigational troubles I found the "Station" - which consisted of a tiny sign outside a fast food joint. I of course immediately went into the restaurant (NOT In 'n' Out unfortunately - it was something weird I don't recall) and got some lunch. The only other people there were also obviously waiting for the bus to LA as they also had duffels and backpacks. The guy next to me decided to strike up a conversation.

At first I was wary but he seemed like a nice, jolly guy. I of course immediately started talking about my "girlfriend" so he would know I was gay - and think I was definitely not single. Usually this method serves well to weed out the guys who are just looking to pick you up - if they are just looking for conversation, they don't mind at all that you're a homo.

So this guy and I got on well - he was a photographer and he had a lot of tips for a first-timer to LA - what to see, where to go. He told me I looked like a "Silver Laker" as I guess that's Cali's version of Williamsburg. (For some reason, people in SF / LA all know what Williamsburg is, which is random. At Alex's house party, a friend of hers who was originally from NYC commented, "Oh, she looks like someone from Williamsburg or something" and Alex had to laugh.) Anyway, we struck up such a rapport that when we boarded the bus, we took seats side by side.

This turned out to be a good decision. The first thing he did was offer me a sticky chocolate brownie, accompanied by an exaggerated wink. Sweet! The 5-hour ride, which in exchange for its cheapness offers literally no sights of beauty or interest along the route, went by very quickly. He was an interesting dude, for sure. Turned out he was a photographer of the old and arcane. He told me a really, really long story about photographing "ghosts" in Louisiana swampland. Sounds like he got a bunch of creepy pictures of old furniture in run down houses. Sorry, but stories of "open drawers" and "shadows on rugs" will never be enough to convince me of the existence of spirits.

When we arrived in LA, night had fallen and we parted ways. Out of an exaggerated need to "save trouble", I had insisted to Rachel that there was no need to pick me up all the way in LA, and I agreed to take a bus as close to Huntington Beach that ran at night.

Big mistake.

Turned out that this entailed taking a subway from the bus station to some random spot in downtown LA. I have taken many a metro system (NY / LN / DC / Boston, etc) but LA's was the most confusing by far. By the time I figured out how to get where I was going, I missed the next ride.

So I found myself on a darkened street in downtown LA surrounded by homeless people and sketchy dudes. It's 11pm. I'm 5'2" carrying a blue duffel and looking way out of my element. Can anyone say runaway prostitute?

It was surreal. I felt like I was in some kind of post-Apocalyptic world. Surrounded by huge, shiny chrome and glass office buildings but standing by heaps of trash and wandering ragged beggars. So far, I don't like LA.

I wait on a metal bench for the bus to arrive. According to the schedule it's supposed to show up at 1145, but it never comes. I wait. Call Rachel, wait some more. Men and women walk by, pushing rusted shopping carts filled with plastic bags and various recyclables. I pretend to talk on my blackberry so the numerous men also waiting for the bus don't talk to me.

Finally, 45 minutes later, the bus arrives. Taking public transport in LA SUCKS. You clearly need a car. People taking public transport seem to be really poor and the drivers treat them like dirt. Some poor guy was screamed at for taking a bicycle onto the bus - it was obvious that he needed it for work, and that the bus driver was obligated to take him on anyway, but he just took the piss out of the guy for no reason. Afterward, the driver looked at me as if to commiserate, like, "what an asshole, trying to take his bike on board!" I pointedly looked away. The driver was white - so was I. Everyone else was black or latino. It was a long drive to Huntington.

Rach and Pete picked me up at the bus stop and we drove to Pete's house in Huntington Beach. Such a cute little beach town although it felt pretty suburban. I guess it was. I don't think I could ever live in such a boring little grid. Manhattan may be a grid, but that's a totally different setup and there is lots of diversity. This was much more monotonous.

Pete's in a band and it was a total band house. Guys crammed together, two to a room, instruments and cables everywhere. But it was really clean, and nicely set up. I didn't feel uncomfortable at all, despite the overwhelming scent of Axe and testosterone.

rockford peaches

BTW my basketball team won our first game on Monday! So we're 4-1. I actually played well - I scored three times, and one was a three-pointer SWISH - nuthin but net yo. I'm like MJ without my own brand of high-top specialty shoes.

We started out so cocky, man. I remember the first game, when we still had enthusiasm and hope, and almost everyone would show up. We had a couple girls who were taller than 5'5" which is always good news in a game like b-ball, and we're all stretching on the court, flexing our biceps and triceps and quads and also explaining to me where these muscles are exactly. Then the other team walks in and it's like scrimmaging the Chinese National Team - a set of diminutive Asian ladies all of whom are under 5'5" for sure. Ha ha ha! we all laughed, amusedly flipping our hair, the glow of imminent domination already illuminating our faces and widening our vicious grins. I remember there was a lot of power-drunken high-fiving.

Of course we would win, after all, we had some tall chicks and also we were prepared to get violent. Plus a lot of us had these really official-looking terry cloth headbands from American Apparel and everyone knows how reliably these boost athletic performance.

But we didn't. Turns out these chicks were cutthroat and devoid of pity - total sociopaths. And they kept calling plays in their language that we couldn't understand which is practically cheating. I got a fist to the voicebox and a malfunctioning kidney from this neanderthal-browed point guard and that was it. I gave up and sat in the stands fingering rosary beads for the rest of the game.

We lost. By a lot. You know what they say, pride goeth before a fall. Luckily now we don't have any pride and look where it got us! We won a game! Well, the other team was late and had to forfeit, but I still had a point.