Beds and Boca burgers

It was a fairly eventful weekend, although it doesn't make for exciting blog print. Stardust was wonderful, although they changed a lot from the book, so it was not as faithful a rendition as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, it was a well-crafted and engaging fantasy movie, although I would hesitate to call it a classic. Perhaps subsequent viewings might change my mind.

Saturday I slept in late until after noon since Bee and Tara were off on their own and Bug was spending the day writing. I woke up with a very stiff back from being in bed so long, and I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and buy a new bed. The current double bed I had been sleeping on was not only too short for my liking, but it was also too firm for my liking, since it was a donated set following the fire of 2005.

I had bought a new bed last year that was very well-used earlier this year when I was recovering from surgery, but I lost that one in the March 2007 fire. The reason that the donated mattress survived the recent fire is that I had given it to Bug to replace that awful inflatable Sleep Number bed she was using. So when I moved into my current apartment and bought all the furniture, I got a bed even more firm than the one I'd given Bug. Since she likes firm beds, we switched them, and that's how it came to be that I was back to sleeping on the bed I was sleeping on in Houston after the first fire. But with the disposal of that bed, there are no more pieces of furniture left from my days in Houston.

So Saturday I went to Paramus to find a bed, but first I stopped at the big B&N bookstore to look around. I had picked out a book and DVD, but didn't buy them because I discovered I'd left my coupons at home. I'm sure they will still be there when I go back this week. On the way to Sleepy's I stopped at Burlington Coat Factory and found several nice tops, mostly in black. This was a nice find because they were the same brand as Tall Girl typically carries that are designed for tall women, but at 75 percent off the price that Tall Girl would charge. I got two short-sleeve tops and two hip-length tunics with 3/4 sleeves.

At Sleepy's I tried out all the Simmons mattresses (I'm a fan of their pocketed coil design - two of the last three mattresses I've actually purchased have been Simmons) and liked their pillowtop the best. It was pretty expensive, but they gave me 20 percent off, and free financing for two years, so that makes it a lot easier to pay for. Sometimes it's nice to have good credit. Plus, they even threw in a dust-mite barrier cover for free, plus free delivery and removal of my old mattress (about $200 all told) since I had to wait around so long. The best part of the deal is that I bought the mattress at 9:30 p.m. and they were still able to deliver it on Sunday. That's what I call service!

Sunday morning I got up before noon and went to buy some queen-size sheets for my new bed and pick up my monthly prescriptions. Almost as soon as I got back, the delivery truck arrived and we set up the bed. Ah, it's like sleeping on a cloud! Unlike the rest of my family, I like soft beds, and this one is probably the softest I've ever had. I should have done this months ago - sleep is too important to skimp on.

The rest of the day was spent washing sheets and preparing for my diet, which starts today. It's the South Beach Diet again, and I'm back in Phase 1, which lasts for two weeks with minimal carbs and fat and no sugar. That means I'm eating mostly eggs, nuts, turkey, low-fat cheese, Boca soy burgers and stir-fried vegetables for the next two weeks. At the end of two weeks, I'm supposed to be 8-12 pounds lighter and ready for Phase 2. We'll see if I'm as successful this time around as I was last time I did this.

Google Black

Just a short entry today, as I have things to do at work before there's a happy hour at 4 pm - we are saying goodbye to all our summer interns, which is as good as any reason to celebrate around here.

Practically the only time I talked to any of them was when I was asked to be one of the four judges for their summer PR project. I was a pretty hard judge - more of a Simon Cowell than a Paula Abdul, despite being the only woman on the judging panel. But there was one crusty judge that out-Cowelled me - he's our resident friendly curmudgeon who has been around longer than anyone. I think he's in his 70s, but still walks around and says hi to everyone every day. But he was a tough judge!

Tonight Tara and Bee are picking me up in the city to go see Stardust with Bug later, which is great because I don't have to take the train home. Another reason I have to get going, so I can leave on time to meet up with them near the American Museum of Natural History, assuming the subways are working after a day of rain. Yesterday's storm caused me to be about two hours late to work due to flooding in New Jersey along the rail line.

So for those environmentally conscious readers, here is a Web site that my Corporate Responsibility team leader forwarded me today - http://www.blackle.com/. It's basically the Google homepage but all blacked out so that you conserve monitor power while using Google's search engine. Pretty ingenious, if you ask me. Al Gore can stop crying now.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Movies, magic and Speed Racer

I saw a very interesting and fun movie last night - The Illusionist starring Edward Norton and Jessica Biel. I didn't have much high hopes for it because of reviews I'd read, but it turned out better than expected. The ending was very satisfying, and that's important for a movie - to end well, and a happy ending certainly doesn't hurt. I'm not going to say more because some of my readers are interested in seeing it and I don't want to spoil it for them.

I've always been fascinated by magic - the stage kind at least. Real magick has been a recent interest. I used to practice sleight-of-hand tricks with cards, coins, balls, etc. I can roll a quarter across my knuckles, make a golf ball appear between my fingers and throw a playing card about 15 feet indoors with enough force to break a corner. These are mostly flourishes, not real tricks, because I never had the discipline to practice. But for as long as I can remember I've always been interested in cards and card games.

This past birthday my family got me my first tarot deck and a book to study on the art of tarot, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. I used to have a card game called Dragonmaster that used a deck very similar to a tarot deck - large, colorful cards with beautiful artwork. In fact, the same artist did a vintage electronic game called Dark Tower which I also enjoyed playing as a child. Interestingly, this game was discontinued due to a copyright infringement lawsuit and now is becoming increasingly a collector's item. I wish I still had mine - they go for hundreds of dollars now on Ebay, but I'd like to play it once more for old times' sake.

Anyway, speaking of nostalgia, I've been watching episodes of Speed Racer a lot lately - I bought the first five seasons on DVD and I'm just starting the third season. What strikes me is how violent the show is when seen through an adult's eyes. As a child I didn't pay much mind to the number of casualties that occurred in a typical race - as long as all the major characters made it out okay, what did it matter right? But in one episode when Speed and Racer X (in disguise) race through a volcanic mountain course, at the end Speed says that 96 men started the race and only two made it out (!!!) you realize what a tremendous toll in human life we're talking about just for a sporting event. I started counting car crashes in some of races, but couldn't keep up. But it's not just the car crashes - there are numerous scenes of people being gunned down by machine guns, burned alive in pools of molten lava and all manner of mayhem. Lots of organized crime bosses, Speed almost goes blind in one episode, nuclear bombs in cars, ICBMs, etc. etc. It's funny how I never realized how violent these shows are until now - a loss of innocence I suppose.

I had a nice dinner with Agnieszka last night at Uno's Pizzeria, and she gave me a copy of Milan Kundera's novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as a belated birthday present. The movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin, has long been one of my favorite dramas, and I've been meaning to read this book forever, and now I have no excuse! We talked a lot about expressing emotions and how we each have difficulties in our own ways. It reminded me of a French movie called Un Coeur en Hiver (A Heart in Winter) starring Emmanuelle Beart (from Mission Impossible) that I'd recommend to anyone with a Netflix account and a taste for foreign movies with bittersweet endings.

24 hours of Bourne

The theme for this weekend was pretty much summed up in two words - Bourne and Police. With The Bourne Ultimatum coming out this weekend, I suggested to my family that we should go see it, but none of them had ever seen a Jason Bourne movie, and it didn't make sense to see the third in the series until you'd seen the other two. So Friday night I stopped at Best Buy on my way home and picked up The Bourne Files, a three-disc set of the first two movies, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy with a bonus DVD in a mock expandable folder. It's on sale for $14.99 this weekend, plus you get $5 for using a Mastercard, which make it less than $5 per movie - you can't beat that! I had actually purchased The Bourne Identity separately about a week ago from Borders for $11 (before I knew about the three-disc package) but since I hadn't opened it I was able to return it on Saturday and get my money back.

So Friday night we watched The Bourne Identity, and everyone seemed to like it - it's definitely my favorite of the three. Some of us wanted to just plow ahead and watch The Bourne Supremacy that night, but as it was getting late, we decided to watch it Saturday afternoon before going to see the third movie at the theater Saturday night, which we ended up doing. We came out of The Bourne Ultimatum at the theater only a couple hours later than we'd finished the first movie the night before. After three Bourne movies in about 24 hours, we figure the next one should be called "The Bourne Redundancy".

Now, I'm a big fan of spy movies, if you consider James Bond a real spy. I've seen every Bond movie ever made, some of them more times than I can count. I also loved Sneakers and I was even a big fan of the Bond spoof TV show Get Smart, which is coming out on the big screen next year. But I have to say there are few spy movies as smart and contemporary as the Bourne movies. Unlike Bond and some other spy movies, Bourne movies are totally serious. No quips, no corny punchlines, no laughing in the face of danger. In the Bourne movies death is a real threat (except when Jason Bourne is driving a vehicle, apparently) and the violence is brutal and realistic. But what I really like about the Bourne movies is how the character is so smart - he's always thinking two or three steps ahead of his situation, and the films do a good job of portraying that intelligence without dumbing down the movie. In other words, you have to pay attention and be pretty smart yourself to follow what's in Bourne's head with what the director shows you.

On Sunday afternoon we went to Giants Stadium to see The Police in concert on their reunion tour that I'm sure you've heard about. Our seats were way up in the nosebleed section, but aside from the distance it was a nice view of the entire scene, and the breezes were cool up there. After sitting through two opening acts, Sting, Stewart and Andy hit the stage about 8:30 pm and played about two hours with two encores. The Police have long been my favorite all-time band, and it was great to see a concert where I and most of the audience knew all the songs, and you had 50,000 people singing "Roxanne" in unison. It was probably the best rock concert I've ever seen in my life so far.

Heel thyself

Interesting article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:

Heelpolitik: The Power of the Stiletto
Why Female Executives Keep A Pair for Clashes and Crises; Ferragamos to Be Fired In

Look under many a powerful woman's desk and you'll find a serious pair of heels. Whether they're on her feet or tucked in a drawer, the shoes' key attribute is a three-inch spike that, if redirected, could put your eye out.


I've been wearing a modest heel more often lately, not the lethal stilettos a la "Single White Female", but heels nonetheless, usually about two inches. Being almost six feet tall, I really don't need the additional height, and with my size 12W feet it's hard to even find decent shoes to begin with. Despite this, I have a fairly impressive collection of shoes, most of which I've never worn outside my bedroom. I bought most of them after the fire of 2005 when I didn't have any shoes and got caught up in building a shoe wardrobe.

Back when I was job hunting in New York, I wore heels on days I had to walk a good piece from interview to interview. I picked shoes that looked good and made my feet look smaller, but they didn't fit well and consequently I have problems with bunions now. These days I'm a little more sensible with both buying and wearing my shoes, but it was a hard lesson to learn.

Probably the highest heel I have is a three-inch skinny heel on a bright pink strappy sandal. It actually does fit pretty well, but it's hard for me to walk in, and I'm sure I couldn't go very far if I did try to walk in them. I suppose I bought it because it's such a rare event to find a pretty shoe that actually fits me. Plus, I thought I might want something dressy if I were ever to go to a cocktail party or fancy dinner where I wouldn't have to be on my feet very much.

But the truth is that I'm not really part of that world anymore, if indeed I ever was. However, I do admire women I see who can walk around on four-inch heels with ease - I just feel sorry for their feet.

this...is...SPARTA!!!

I had my family over to see 300 last night, which of course was released on DVD yesterday. We're all fans of Frank Miller, who wrote the original comic book on which the movie was based. I've been a fan of Miller's since college when his classic Batman story The Dark Knight Returns was published in the original form (yes, before it was a trade paperback, I read it in individual issues). As you may know, that landmark work completely reinvented the Batman mythology from being a self-caricature in the Adam West-Burt Ward TV show to the obsessed and ruthless vigilante that defines his character.

I even wrote an opinion piece in my college newspaper about this change, and got some flack from a bleeding-heart liberal who took offense to my implied support of justice without due process. However, a fellow Batman lover (and someone a little less literal in their thinking) came to my defense with a letter that made two points - first, if you see Batman beating up on somebody, you KNOW that person is guilty, and second, that of COURSE he reads the college newspaper every day, like the real-life person that he is.

In addition to Batman, I was also a big fan of Miller's art in the Wolverine mini-series by Chris Claremont, one of the early solo adventures for Marvel's favorite mutant, and Miller's work on Daredevil in the Electra/Bullseye era and his graphic novel with artist David Mazzucchelli called Born Again, both of which I recently reacquired in trade book format. Heck, I've even read Ronin, one of Miller's less-known works.

I hadn't embraced Miller's more recent work with Sin City and 300 until I met Tara back in 2005. And I'll admit the first time I saw Sin City at a friend's apartment in Houston, it kinda grossed me out. But it wasn't long before I came to appreciate the Miller vibe once again, especially the artistry in Zack Snyder's film rendition of the epic Spartan/Persian battle.

Plus, check out this cool collector's edition of the DVD that I got from Best Buy yesterday - it includes a replica Spartan helmet cast in resin and painted to realistically look like bronze, plus four movie poster postcards. They were in very limited supply (only 15 per store), so I was smart enough to buy one online and pick it up at the store after work. Sure enough, by the time I got there to pick it up, they were sold out - I actually overheard people asking for them and being given the bad news. And of course, the very next day they are now going for more than twice the purchase price on Ebay. Seems like someone could make some money doing this sort of thing if one were so inclined...

Anyway, a fun time was had by all last night, with a kickin' movie, popcorn and frozen treats aplenty. It was nice spending time with my family where we didn't have to go anywhere and still make it a special evening.

Tour of the Brooklyn Museum

I know it's probably just me, but it seems like the weekends are getting shorter. That would be quite a conspiracy if it were true though. Maybe it's some government plot to get more working hours out of the economy to pay for the war. On that note, here's an interesting and on-target column from the Weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal:

Rich Man, Boor Man

Anyway, not to get political or overly negative (two things I try to avoid like the plague), I did have a productive and enjoyable weekend, and it seems like I'm settling into a bit of a groove on weekend with Saturdays being used to clean the apartment, cook and run errands, while Sundays I try to spend time with my family since everyone is off work.

Saturday I went to IKEA to return something and bought a cheap TV stand to use in the bedroom. Since I bought my new LCD TV a couple weeks ago, my old TV has been sitting unused on the floor, so I decided to hook up my spare VCR so I could watch tapes in bed if I wanted to. I think if I had cable, I still wouldn't want a TV in my bedroom because it's just too invasive and I'd end up having it on way too much. But since it can only play tapes, and I don't have all that many tapes, it's just an occasional use set for tapes I might check out of the library or whatever.

I also stopped by Globe Shoes in Paramus again and picked up two more pairs of the Softspots Lilly sandals that I wore to my job interview last week. It's not often that I find comfortable, feminine shoes in my size, so it's worth stocking up, especially when they are half-price for the season. I also stopped by Target and found some nice scoopneck shirts, a new pair of jeans, shorts and a pretty orange skirt in the clearance rack. Unfortunately I've been gaining some weight since my surgery in January so I've needed some new clothes to wear until I can lose the extra weight, which I intend to start doing in the next few weeks once I make some preparations. I lost 60 pounds in eight months back in 2005, so we'll see if I can come close to duplicating that feat. If I lose half that this time, I'll be pretty happy, as long as I can keep it off. Hopefully with no more major medical complications in my foreseeable future, I'll be able to maintain a healthier lifestyle going forward.

Saturday night my family and I watched Touch the Sound, a documentary about deaf musician Evelyn Glennie, a movie I first discovered at the Angelika Theater back in Houston. I had arrived at the theater early to see something else, but I poked my head into this movie and saw the first 10 minutes or so, and resolved to see the rest with Tara (which we finally did last June when I gave her a copy of the DVD). It's a stirring portrait of an artist and another good documentary about improvised music (Keith Jarrett's Art of Improvisation is also well worth seeing).

Sunday we woke to sauna-like conditions to head out to the Brooklyn Museum to see an exhibit of Asher B. Durand paintings that was closing on Sunday, so it was our last chance. Tara and I saw this exhibit back in April, and we wanted to show Bee and Bug before they took it down. It was just as beautiful as we remembered, and we were heartened to see that about a third of the paintings belonged to the New York Historical Society, so they will eventually be on display there for us to revisit. I also got yelled at by a guard for taking this photo of Durand's 1853 painting titled "Progress (The Advance of Civilization)" - but at least I got the illicit photo I wanted.



We also toured the museum's world-class Egyptian section and the rest of their American wing that Tara and I saw last time we were there. Then we went to the mysterious fourth floor (which required a special elevator and age-appropriate advisory) and toured the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and some installations of colonial period houses and furnishings.







There was also a beautiful ballroom called the Beaux-Arts Court that is a magnificent space in and of itself. Unfortunately, like many parts of the museum, our enjoyment was tempered by a lack of air conditioning, requiring the use of noisy fans for air circulation.



On the fifth floor there is also a visible storage exhibit similar to the one at the New York Historical Society, but quite a bit smaller. However, the dim lighting in Brooklyn makes it a more intimate and evocative space than the brightly lit and sunlight dappled rooms in Manhattan.



Two of my favorite sculptures I've seen recently are at the Brooklyn - one titled The Greek Slave, and the other is The Lost Pleiad, which reminded me of the character Yvaine in Stardust, a movie I'm looking forward to seeing next weekend. Marvelous work, and the installation of the Pleiad is particularly dramatic, as it is placed in its own darkened room with spotlighting.





On our way out, I bought a poster of John Singer Sargent's work, An Out-of-Doors Study, that I intend to have framed and put up somewhere in the apartment. Amazingly, it was pouring down rain pretty much all day long, except for the few moments when we were coming and going from the parking lot to the museum. Fortunately I didn't have to get soaked twice in one week!

After our return to our respective homes to prepare for another workweek, last night I finished reading Charles de Lint's The Little Country and it's not far to say that this might be a life-changing book for me. I still remember the day I picked it up from the bookshelf, as if I were drawn to it. Tara has some of de Lint's books (including this one) but she couldn't recommend this particular one to me because she hadn't read it yet. But there was something about this book that drew me to it, even before I'd read a single page. I lost my original copy in the recent fire when I was about halfway through it, so I had to replace it immediately (fortunately with an identical trade paperback copy). It reminded me of the ephemeral nature of magick if one does not continuously keep to one's intended path. For those already on a such a path, or anyone interested in finding magick in their lives, I highly recommend this book.

The week in review

Guess it's been a while since I've posted (a week, which is about my limit these days). I've been pretty busy at work, not hair on fire busy, but lots of things piling up on my desk that need my attention. So I only have time for a brief recap on major events over the past seven days - please forgive the tone of brevity.

Working backwards then, I talked to my old boss in Houston last night online, the gay one. I told him about my interview on Monday (more about that in a moment) and let him know what I've been up to. My old company is having a 20th anniversary party in September and all former employees (even me) are invited. If it weren't for the fact that I have practically no vacation time left, and it's the day before an opera I'm seeing (more 'bout that later) I would totally go. But alas, I think I shall have to wait for my boss's retirement party, which could come as soon as January.

Last night I also started my allergy shots, one in each arm each week for the next seven months. No adverse reactions yet, but it's a very low dosage of allergens (dust mites, bermuda grass, aspergillus mold, feline dander and ragweed, in a tiny little cocktail vial). After seven months, I'll slowly transition to monthly shots for the next few years.

Tuesday I got to get out of the office for the afternoon to attend a green communications conference since I'm on Agent K's (my office) corporate reponsibility team. There was a great presentation by the lead marketing communicator for the Ford Escape Hybrid - she was British and I love how foreigners have all these different words they use, like "crikey" and "flippin' HUGE battery". Anyway, she sure made me want to buy a hybrid SUV for my next car, except that I just owned a Ford Explorer before Yoshi and I wasn't really happy with it.

On Monday I had my job interview at the new firm, and wouldn't you know it, that was the day it rained like monsoon season in southeast Asia. I wore my new shoes that I'd just bought on Saturday, and I got soaked! I think I got extra points for venturing out in that weather though. The firm is a mid-sized company similar to the one I left in Houston - the owner actually knows the owner of my old firm - and it's 80 percent women. We had a nice little chat, I showed them my stuff and they asked what kind of salary I was looking for. Unlike last year when I was looking for my first job in New York, I didn't feel any pressure to get the job, so I told them honestly that they would have to pay me in the six-figure range to get me to leave a large firm like Agent K to come work for a firm nobody's ever heard of. So we'll see if I make the cut to the next round.

Sunday Tara and I had a date planned, but the day didn't start well due to some lingering issues from an incident on Friday, but we did manage to salvage the day with a trip to the Natural Science Museum. I wanted to see parts that I hadn't seen yet, so she took me to the gem and mineral room. On the way we passed a new anthropological exhibit about the evolution of the human species, everything from our physical development since Neanderthal times to the development of our culture, language and music (which Tara found fascinating since she's a musician). Here's a photo of some early carvings of the female form made by primitive man.

In the hall of minerals, we saw samples of all the gems and minerals of the world, many of which you could touch. The latest of this collection was this giant sample of stibnite, which reminded us of Kryptonian crystal technology in Superman's Fortress of Solitude (the original one).

There were also some pretty amazing samples of various crystals, both in raw and cut form, and of course, gold (a display of traditional prospector's tools).

We ended our visit with a quick tour of the Rose Center and the Hayden Sphere, which dominates the north end of the museum.

Saturday was a very productive day for me - I bought a new summer dress, dust covers for all my bedding, a couple pairs of new shoes, a TV stand, cleaned up my apartment, washed all my bras and sheets, etc., etc. Also, it felt good to sleep in late because we were out late on Friday night picking up Harry Potter books for my family at midnight. We also had a very satisfying dinner at Cheeburger in Palisades Center right before midnight. I'm not as big a Harry Potter fan as the rest of my family, but I do like the movies, and someday I might get around to reading the books.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the dinner Agnieszka and I had at a Polish restaurant called Royal Warsaw last Monday, I think. I had steak tartare again, which was very interesting. You can see they do a deconstructed version where you mix the ingredients together yourself (the chopped things at the top of the plate) and serve it with the raw egg yolk and additional condiments like smoked sardines, pickles and mushrooms.

Even more interesting was Agnieszka's dish of flaming kielbasa, served atop hunter's stew, which is kind of like a mild sauerkraut-based stew. It arrives in a blaze of glory at the table, which had died down a bit by the time I'd whipped my camera out to take a picture of it.

So that's the gist of my adventures in the past week. On Friday, September 21, Agnieszka, Carol and I are going to see La Boheme at the NYC Opera, which should be fun. It will actually be the second time I've seen La Boheme this year, but since it's one of my favorites and the other two are new to opera, I don't mind at all. Then on August 5, a week from this Sunday, my family and I are finally going to see the Police in concert at Giants stadium. So many fun things happening lately - I feel so blessed!

I'm okay...

Those of you who follow the news know that there was an explosion caused by a ruptured steam pipe in Midtown Manhattan yesterday afternoon at about 6 p.m. That was right about the time I was leaving work, but I didn't hear anything. Considering it happened less than 15 blocks away, I'm rather surprised.

Today as I was getting my lunch from a nearby Chinese restaurant, the air was full of the sounds from news helicopters bouncing around the skyscrapers watching over the blast area. Curiously, there weren't that many people walking around - perhaps everyone is worried about the possibility of asbestos, or another eruption happening.

It is kind of scary to think about living in New York, where events such as this occur. But I suppose other cities have their own risks from crime, earthquakes, tornadoes, hazardous materials, etc. It's just a part of life - if you worry so much about that kind of stuff, you'd be a shut-in.

In other news, I went to see an allergist yesterday, and he ran some tests on me as to why I've been having allergy symptoms lately. It turns out I am allergic to dust mites, cat dander, ragweed and other fall weed pollens, and one type of mold. Since medications have been ineffective pretty much all my life, I'm thinking about going on allergy shots. This is a pretty big commitment, because it's weekly shots for the first seven months, then monthly shots for the next 3-5 years. First I have to check if my insurance is going to pay for this, and then I have to decide if it's worth all the trouble of going to the doctor so much. It seems like I have so little free time as it is already.

I've got my acting class tonight which I had to skip for the past two weeks because of work and the July 4 holiday. There's supposed to be big thunderstorms this afternoon though, so I hope I don't get soaked on the way there. I've also had several recruiters contact me the past couple of weeks, and one of them wants to line up a meeting for me next week for a VP position at another PR firm, so we'll see if that comes to anything.

Birthday bash

While it will be 39 years in September since I took my first breath of air in this world, yesterday I celebrated the milestone that has taken on greater importance to my present life. It was on July 15 three years ago that I set my intention to take control of my destiny and become the person I am today.

This was by no means an easy decision. I knew by choosing this new life, I would lose some aspects of my old life, and as it turned out, I lost a lot more than I ever expected to. In setting my path, I knew there would be both challenges and rewards. I didn't know if my life would turn out better or worse in the long run. But contrary to my old nature of choosing the safe choice, I realized that sometimes in life, you have to risk everything (or in poker terms, go "all in") in order to fullfill your potential, to grow, and to have a chance at being happy and to live without regrets for things undone.

Last year I made the decision that from now on, I would celebrate my birthday on July 15 instead of the date on my driver's license. The reason is that July 15 is the anniversary of the event that brought me to my family here in New Jersey, and the life that I cherish now. The original date in September marks the anniversary of my link to my birth family, the day that I emerged from my mother and joined my father and older brother in that family. To me, that family doesn't really exist anymore, at least the one that included me. So there's really no justification for celebrating the date which I joined it, whereas there is ample happiness and love to celebrate for the anniversary of starting on the path that eventually brought me to my present group of loved ones I consider my family now.

To celebrate, we went to Six Flags Great Adventure, something I've been wanting to do since I moved here last year. I love thrill rides, and there's a monster one at SFGA called Kingda Ka that we wanted to ride first. Luckily Bee is also a fan of such rides, but Bug and Tara are not, so we spent a large part of the day separately in pairs. Kingda Ka holds the world records in speed (128 mph) and height (456 feet, or 45 stories) and accelerates to full speed in 3.5 seconds before shooting you straight up to the top and plummeting to Earth in a spiral.

It was an incredibly short line when we got on for some reason, so Bee and I got to sit in the front car after about a 30 minute wait. The sensation of speed at launch is pretty overwhelming, like being shot out of a cannon. A somewhat equivalent acceleration would be that of a top-fuel dragster which reaches 333 mph in 4.5 seconds. However, without the benefit of a windshield or other protection, especially sitting in the front car with nothing to break the air in front of us, it felt like my face was going to peel off and I had to shut my eyes because 1) to keep my contact lenses from being torn out, and 2) to keep my eyeballs from going with them. Next time we go, I'm definitely going to wear from eye protection, like polycarbonate sports goggles, so I can see what's going on and enjoy the ride more.

After Kingda Ka, we went on The Great American Scream Machine and Medusa before taking a break (which I needed because I was getting a bit of whiplash). My favorite coaster at SFGA however was Nitro, mainly because it didn't have any inversions and therefore did not require over-the-head restraints. It has a wicked first drop of 215 feet and there's lots of zero-G time along its mile-long track. Here's a picture of me waiting in line with the Nitro train in the background.

We went on plenty of rides, including the Congo Rapids water ride, the ferris wheel and the Skull Mountain mini-coaster (where Tara and Bug joined us and re-discovered their pronounced distaste for thrill rides) and also spent some time in the arcades and gift shops. I bested Tara once again at air hockey, but she took first prize in our skee-ball tournament. Bee played DDR for the first time and worked up a sweat to Ricky Martin and Queen remixes. Tara got a Green Lantern power ring that lights up with flashy lights, and I got some sun visors with Batman and Hello Kitty icons on them. For dinner we stopped at a Burger King where I got my birthday crown.

We drove a little more than an hour home to open my presents and omg, so many wonderful things my family got me! Books, DVDs, board games for us to play, decks of Tarot cards and star constellation cards, both things I want to start learning about. I got the first volume of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus and the Comics Journal Library book on Frank Miller to name a couple of things.

Also an out-of-print copy of The Sandman Presents: Taller Tales written by the author of Fables. I also got DVDs of Loving Annabelle and Captain Horatio Hornblower one of my all-time favorite adventure movies.

After all the presents it was getting too late to do the cake, so we saved that for tonight. I can't wait to get home so we can continue the birthday fun!

Cute car!

I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the new Smart micro car that is headed for our shores from Europe. I remember seeing cars like this when I was in Paris a decade ago, and it's nice to see that they are finally going to be available here. They get more than 40 mpg, cost under $12,000 and are perfect for squeezing into tight parking spaces in New York.

I'm seriously thinking about putting down my $99 to reserve one when they come out in 2008. It would make a great second car to take the burden of everyday driving off Yoshi so he can age more gracefully. Plus they are so cute! I'd get a Passion in red with a black interior.

Movies and museums

Well, it's back to work for me after a relaxing five-day vacation/weekend. Tuesday night there was an inkling to see a movie, but I spoiled that idea by going home with a dead cell phone and crashing for a few hours from exhaustion. Still, we made up for it on July 4 by driving through the pouring rain to Palisades Center and having a nice dinner at the food court, followed by a trip to Dave & Busters where I introduced my family to one of my favorite racing games, Daytona 500. Tara showed off her rusty 80s arcade skills on Donkey Kong Jr., Bug (all 5' 1" of her) was the only person to score a hoop in basketball, we played a little skee ball, and I narrowly bested Tara in a game of air hockey. It was the first time any of them had actually played games in a D&B's, which of course is a popular attraction in Houston (for lack of much else to do). It reminded me of the many times I've been in the past, playing skee ball with Pearl, racing with my old friends James and Candy, and yes, the fact that it was the place where I first kissed my ex-partner on New Year's Eve 1994.

After D&B's we went to the bookstore for everyone to reserve their Harry Potter books, then we went to see Ratatouille, which was marvelous. It's amazing how Pixar can make movies so good that each successive new one becomes your favorite until the next one comes out. After the movie we played more motorcycle racing games and Buffy cleared the road in an 18-wheeler simulation game. Buffy was clearly the queen of the night, having won every race she played, once beating me with less than a second remaining in the race. Oh well, there's always mini-golf...

Thursday morning I went to see my doctor for a referral to an allergist because I've been having more and more problems with my allergies. The rest of the day was spent running errands and just hanging out at home, but Friday morning Tara and I took Bee to a special morning yoga class and we went to the Montclair Art Museum which gratefully is free at lunchtime on Fridays. They have a special exhibit on comic book art that we would have loved to see, but it starts this week instead of last week. We did get to take a sneak peek of them putting it up though. The rest of the museum isn't much to drool over, although they have one very nice Asher Durand painting that is the highlight of their collection.

Next we went to the Montclair Book Center to browse for books while we waited for Bee to finish her class. I picked up a Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean graphic novel, Black Orchid, a book on Cognac and a beat-up little book called English Cricket that was originally published in 1947.

Once we picked up Bee we went to Fuddruckers for lunch, and wound up eating so much that we had to take a protracted break at my apartment to rest. I actually can't remember what happened after that, although I'm pretty sure we went swimming at some point in my apartment pool. It felt like one of those summer days from childhood where it feels like you have all the time in the world to bask in your indolence. In the evening there was an idea to go see another movie, but we realized in time that we were all pretty tired from the day and decided to hang out at home and watch the Yankees game instead.

Saturday we did finally go out and see the Transformers movie in the afternoon, and ugh! we spent most of the early part of the evening either talking about how bad it was, or trying to wipe out the memory that we'd actually wasted the time to watch it. It was a big disappointment for Tara, who had been looking forward to the movie since she was about 12 years old, and yet concluded that it was probably the worst movie she's ever seen. For myself, I was never a big Transformers fan, so to me, it was just another overbloated Michael Bay movie. His star sure has fallen since the days of The Rock and Armageddon.

In order to clear our minds from that movie (which henceforth shall not be named) we made a quick dash into the city to spend an hour at the Met before closing. We started in the Egyptian temple as we usually do, and took pictures there for the first time ever.



In the American wing we discovered an acoustical quirk in one of my favorite rooms, a 360-degree panoramic painting of the gardens at Versailles in France. Standing in this room and looking around, it feels like you are standing on the plaza behind the Palace at Versailles looking across the vast formal gardens stretching to the horizon. Because the walls are curved, we found that when we stood at opposite ends of the room, sounds and voices would follow along the curve of the wall so that even a whisper could be heard from 30 feet away, much like a parabolic dish focuses and directs waves. Pretty neat.



We ended our quick tour in the new Greek and Roman galleries, visiting the second floor for the first time, where I snapped this shot of the main hallway from the back of the gallery.



Sunday we started winding down our vacation by running some errands during the day, including buying a new 37-inch LCD television monitor for my apartment because the old tube TV I got along with my embedded furniture is starting to discolor. After bringing that in and setting it up, we went for another quick swim to cool off, which unfortunately was just enough sun to cause my face to start breaking out in hives yet again. That was bothersome on Monday, but luckily they are gone today. Apparently I'm just going to have to hide from the sun like a vampire from now on, especially since it's routinely getting into the 90s up here now. Nothing compared to Arizona of course, but hot nonetheless.

A step back in time

It was a fairly uneventful weekend for me, although my family had a lot going on. Saturday I spent most of my time at my apartment, doing laundry, rearranging my books, tidying up and so forth. In the evening Bee and Bug left for an overnight camping trip, leaving Tara and me home to watch the cats.

We went out to the big Barnes & Noble in Paramus, where I found several more things to add to my birthday wish list, and bought a DVD of Gattaca that was on sale, and a copy of the Nylons' Greatest Hits, an acapella/percussion quartet I used to listen to in my old life. After we closed them down at 11 p.m., I pretty much went straight to bed because I wasn't feeling all that well with my allergies and an upset stomach.

Sunday I got up late and took Tara out for breakfast before going to the New York Historical Society in the city. I first saw this museum while watching a PBS program called "Secrets of New York" last year, and found they have an extensive collection of Hudson River School paintings. The Hudson River School gallery was a spectacular room, with a high ceiling decorated with grayscale scrims over the large square windows to diffuse the natural light. Best of all, it was blissfully uncrowded, and many moments we would find ourselves the only people in the room except for the guard. There was also a nice Tiffany exhibit, but nothing close to what we saw at the Met a couple months ago. Here was one window that graced the stairwell.



The most fun in the museum, however, was on the top floor, where most of the artifacts are kept in storage behind glass. Here are all sorts of historical objects, from the whismical to the magnificent. I especially liked this large sculpture of Abe Lincoln, which we nicknamed "Big Abe."



The things that made us laugh the most were the old campaign buttons from the World War II era, the time of FDR and Truman. Somehow, I don't think Confucius ever said this to support FDR's third term:



Here's one that people probably remember:



Also, I liked this one, which seems to resonate today:



And here is something from the recent history of 9/11:



Afterward we went to Papaya King and had hot dogs and sausages before going home to meet up with Bee and Bug, who had just gotten home from their trip, and fortunately did not encounter any bears. This week everybody is on vacation except me, but I will be off Thursday and Friday to take advantage of the July 4 holiday.

Bad words

This should come as no surprise at all to anyone who has met/talked to me for any length. I don't use "impolite" words very much, although I'm not opposed to using them. And according to the analysis, the only bad words on this blog were "sex" (twice) and "dead" (which probably referred to something other than human death).

I suppose part of the reason is growing up in the South - call in Southern gentility or whatever, but public swearing is definitely a lot less acceptable than here in the Northeast. The other day I was going into the mall and there was an elderly couple standing just outside the door, and the woman (who was almost old enough to be my grandmother) was dropping f-bombs like it was WWII all over again. You just don't hear that kind of language in Houston, unless there's blood in the streets or something.

The other reason is that my parents didn't curse, at least in English. My dad once told me that when he was in the Chinese Army, he and his mates used to swear a lot, and for some reason decided to reform themselves by fining themselves for using bad words. So by the time I came around, the strongest epithet I heard growing up was "goddamn". It wasn't until I was well into high school that my dad felt like it was safe to say "bullshit" around me, and he's never used the f-word around me. And I've never heard my mom say any word that you wouldn't hear out of a nun's mouth.

When I was in college I wrote an editorial that was published in the school newspaper about how the f-word is overused and that it has lost its power to shock, and hence, it's whole reason for existence. Why do we even need expletives if they fail to convey the power of what we are feeling at the time? My thought is, if you can save the f-word for when you really need it, it gives you more dynamic range to express your feelings. So someday, when I'm really riled up, I'll whip out the f-bomb and people will take notice. That is, unless they've gotten so used to hearing it that they think everyone just talks that way.

Beach weekend

First off, happy belated midsummer to everyone - the solstice was last Thursday, and we were thinking of going to the Met on Friday to celebrate as we did last year, but in the end decided to mark the occasion differently.

Wednesday night my friend Agnieszka and I went out to dinner with one of her new friends, Carol, at a sushi restaurant in Caldwell, NJ. Carol works at one of the many large pharmaceutical companies in this state, and she's newly single (two months) after ending a 10-year relationship. Coincidentally, my last relationship also lasted 10 years (officially) although the breakup was a lot less painful than Carol's obviously was, with a lot more anger than sadness on my part. But I've pretty much let it go since it wasn't much of a relationship except in appearances by mid to late 2004, which is almost three years ago.

Friday night I created a Porcupine Tree mix CD for Bee that I had previewed for her on my iPod last week on the way down to Sneddon's. I had to make some adjustments to fit on a music CD, so the final track lineup goes like this:

Fear of a Blank Planet
Trains
Halo
Arriving Somewhere But Not Here
Open Car
Prodigal
Lazarus
Blackest Eyes
Sentimental
Anesthetize
Collapse The Light Into Earth

Saturday Bug went to the hospital to visit her ailing grandmother, while I went out shopping during the day for some essentials and to find a new backpack-style purse. I went to Willowbrook Mall to look, stopping at Sephora to pick up some Stila eyeshadow for a case I thought I still had (but later found out that I'd forgotten it had been discarded after the 2007 fire), plus some of my Clinque mosturizer and a new scent by Vera Wang in a roll-on applicator. I think I prefer this method to keep the spray from irritating my sinuses, which have been giving me trouble lately. I also found some lavender massage oil at The Body Shop for Bee, her favorite scent. No luck on the purse though, and I was getting a major case of shopping fatigue, so I went home for a while to cool off.

I went out again and stopped by TJ Maxx on my way to my family's house and found a suitable purse - it's tan leather and has zippered compartments. I would have preferred magnetic clasps, but zippers are more secure, so that's okay. Back at home, we took advantage of the cool, dry weather to have a backyard barbecue, grilling hot dogs and veggie burgers as we watched the sun go down and the fireflies come out. In the evening I gave Bee a massage using her new oil while Bug went to Blockbuster to get a copy of Dogma, which we decided we could all sit together and watch. There seems to be a bit of a Kevin Smith vibe here lately that carried into Sunday.



Sunday Bee, Tara and I went out to Sandy Hook beach while Bug stayed home to get some writing done. This time I took extra-special care to protect my face from the sun, wearing contact lenses so I could wear sunglasses all day, and borrowing hats and visors from Bee to shade my face. Luckily it worked, and I suffered no ill effects from being out in the sun all day long.

Our first stop upon reaching central Jersey was to pay a visit to the Quick Stop where Kevin Smith filmed Clerks. There was a poster of Clerks 2 in the window that he had autographed for the store owners. We went inside to buy some food and drinks, and it looks pretty much the same as it does in the movie, except in color. All the time I'm in there, the classic lines "salsa shark" and "cancer merchant" are floating through my head. The clientele of the current store are of a similar bent as in the movie - one guy came in without a shirt and with his pants slung low around his hips, and a young woman came out with a miniskirt and cropped top that left little to the imagination.



Next we visited the Twin Lights Lighthouse, which has a commanding view of Sandy Hook and the New York skyline in the distance. We climbed up the steps of one of the lighthouses, and it reminded me on the climatic scene in The Rock - I think it's the first time I've ever been inside a lighthouse. On the way down, we indulged in a little freegan-ism by picking up an antique telephone chair that someone had left on the side of the road with their other discards, intending to clean it up and reuse it.






We eventually made our way to the beach, where Bee and I took a dip in the surf, which was cold but not as cold as we expected. We all took a walk along the beach to look at shells and rocks, and watch the seagulls drag dead fish onto the beach and fight over them. Afterwards we had hot dogs and fries at the snack bar and strolled over to the bay side of Sandy Hook to look at tidal pools and saltwater marshes. We saw horseshoe crabs and even a little bunny rabbit running among the shrubs and reeds. After all the walking in the sand, we were pretty exhausted by the time we got back into Yoshi for the trip home.






We stopped at Stewart's for dinner, and while we were waiting at the counter for our food, our public displays of affection among the three of us evoked mixed responses from other patrons - some positive, some not so much. In the end, it made us all realize how much we love our lives and our family, and what a rare thing such happiness is in a world of close-mindedness and conformity, and how important it is for us to continue to build on it each day.

Subway story

While I work on my big post with photos from this weekend, here's a piece on the op-ed page in the New York Times that caught my eye today. I love this kind of compact, evocative writing that captures so eloquently what we all feel in our day-to-day lives.

The City Life
The Subway Beat
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

It’s nearly always a mistake to think of the subway as a public conveyance. This is a mistake that out-of-towners often make. They overlook the essential privacy of the subway, and by that I don’t mean the young woman at my end of the car who has made up her face in a compact mirror between 86th Street and Times Square. I mean the very fact that this is my end of the car at my end of the train. It’s 7:30 in the morning, and this isn’t just a subway ride. This is going to work. Nearly all the people on this train are in their usual spots, within a few minutes of their usual time, and the ride is not separable from the larger and more complicated rhythms of our private lives. It is possible to be on this train and not yet be in public.

“Please watch the closing doors,” comes the announcement. The doors close. Everyone here knows just how long the delay should last before the train begins to slide forward. We could count it off: the doors close, then comes a single beat, and then we feel that horizontal gravity as the train picks up speed. But on this one train the one beat passes, then another and another before we finally start to slide out of the station. It happens at every stop. Three beats, four beats too many. Perhaps the driver adds these extra beats to allow riders to find a seat. I like to think it’s a tiny, intentional perversity.

This has happened many times before. After the one beat, the whole train leans forward mentally. We are urging ourselves on our way. If the train ran by some kind of synchronous psychological impulsion, we would be moving by now.

We know how to be stoic when stuck between stations. But there is something heartbreaking in this added pause. It interrupts the privacy of our thoughts and shows us what the other passengers are thinking. It holds us back from flinging ourselves headlong into the morning. It shows us, if just for an instant, how deeply we have internalized the pulses of this city.

Sneddon's and skin rashes

It was a pretty up and down weekend with some very pleasant parts in it, especially Saturday night when Tara and I stayed up late and brought back memories of 2005 when I used to visit here from Houston.

On Sunday we drove down to Lambertville on the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border to eat at a favorite luncheonette called Sneddon's, which was like stepping back in time to the 1950s with its open grill counter, short bar stools and genuinely homey service (plus Bazooka bubble gum at the counter). I had blueberry pancakes, a sausage omlette and hash browns, hot chocolate and a Diet Coke.

Afterwards we ran some errands that were mildly unpleasant but necessary and drove back home. Unfortunately, being out in the sun for the full day triggered another skin rash on my face like I had two weeks ago, which seems to happen when I use anything other than my usual Clinique Superdefense SPF 25 moisturizer and get too much sun. So Sunday night was a bit of a downer for me.

I did get to listen to two new Sheffield Lab CDs that I found on this site. One of these two titles, Harry James' "Still Harry After All These Years," was a replacement for the limited edition vinyl direct-to-disc recording I used to have, and the other, Tower of Power's "Direct Plus!" I got because of a family connection with that group, so I thought I'd give them a fresh listen. While I will miss the incredible analog sound from those original vinyl records (which were recorded live to disc without using a tape recorder, a big deal in the old days) it's nice to hear songs like "Caravan" and "Moonglow" through Harry James' trumpet once again.

Photos and putt-putt

Here's some pictures of the weekend trip to the American Museum of Natural History:






I had a fun time with my family last night playing miniature golf at a new course that was recently remodeled. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty darn good at mini golf - in fact, I can't remember the last time anyone beat me, although I know I have been beat before. The final score last night was me in first place (48), then Tara (54) and Bee and Bug tied for third (56) on a par-54 course. Bee had the highlight of the night with an amazing hole-in-one, but she also hit a ball into the water once that we had to fish out with our putters. It was a great way to enjoy the recent cool weather we've been having this week until it gets warm again.

A Sunday at the Museum

I've been remiss in posting because I've been waiting for an opportunity to post some pictures I took this weekend with my new camera. But as it's Wednesday already, and I'm expecting the next two days to be very busy at work, it's now or never, and maybe I'll post photos later as a separate entry.

So I did buy a new camera, a Sony DSC-N2, which is a pocket-sized 10.1 megapixel snapshot camera with a large 3-inch touchscreen on the back. It's a cool little toy, and should provide an easy way to document some of activities I write about in this space. I'm still undecided on whether I want a full-blown digital SLR as well, but we'll see how I feel after using this camera for a while.

I took last Friday off, the first voluntary day off I've had since coming back to work in February after my surgery. I ran some errands in the morning, and then met up with Agnieszka at Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus to do some shopping. We walked around for a bit, but didn't find much to buy (she bought a pair of shoes) so we went back to her place to look at her photos from her recent trip to Prague. I came home for dinner and my family surprised me with a visit, and we went through a little lingering drama stemming from the previous night's events having to do with the dark period in our lives between Thanksgiving and Memorial Day weekend. Eventually we worked our way through it, and hopefully it will not continue to be a dark cloud over our current happiness.

Saturday morning was mostly spent in bed but we eventually gathered around the television (or radio) for Roger Clemens' second debut as a New York Yankee and enjoyed the win with seven strikeouts. Afterwards I went home to clean my apartment, which seems to get messier on its own because I really don't spend a lot of time there. I also received in the mail my new Gund Snuffles bear, a replacement for one of the two such Gund bears I lost in the fire of 2005. The other one, a giant-sized, three-foot tall version named Uncle Bob, has been discontinued by Gund so I can't replace him until they decide to make more of them. The new one is named Oz (because of all the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-related names in my family) and here's what he looks like:

To celebrate his birthday, please consider signing this petition to help stop polar bear hunting in Alaska.

Some of you reading this may know I have quite a history with this particular model of Gund bear, which was introduced more than 25 years ago. The first time I saw a photo of him was on a bulletin board in the bedroom of one of my first crushes when I was in high school. I didn't actually own one until many years later, when I found a platinum edition Snuffles at a toy store in the Galleria. Since then, I've given different versions as gifts to many people, including my brother, Pearl and my cousin Linda. I got Uncle Bob in 1995 and lost both bears (along with many other stuffed animals) ten years later. In hindsight, I feel fortunate that I sold most of my oldest stuffed friends to a collector at a garage sale about a year before the fire, so I like to think they are patched up and in a museum somewhere (like Woody was going to be in Toy Story 2).

Anyway, Sunday we took a trip to the American Museum of Natural History where I bought a contributing membership, which gives us all free admission for an entire year, so anyone who wants to visit the museum for free only needs to have me along :) We had a productive discussion about money on the way in, which I felt was more positive than those we've had on the subject in the past. Once there, we saw all three special exhibits on Frogs, Gold and Mythical Creatures, and the IMAX movie on dinosaurs, plus our favorite rooms (many of which are seen in the movie A Night at the Museum). We all had a great time, and we are looking forward to making this a regular field trip stop during our future visits to the city, which currently includes the Met and the Cloisters. Sunday night was hard for me after such a wonderful weekend, and I really couldn't bear to see it end, which resulted in our last bit of drama before being put to rest with a goodnight call on the phone, and further soothed by some private time Monday night (i.e. sex).

One test to rule them all

So here's an interesting personality test, taken from my friend Aleks' LiveJournal. I'd have to agree with most of the findings, although I'm working on some aspects I'd consider negative, and a lot of the sex findings are skewed from my personal history.

The Everything Test

There are many different types of tests on the internet today. Personality tests, purity tests, stereotype tests, political tests. But now, there is one test to rule them all.

Traditionally, online tests would ask certain questions about your musical tastes or clothing for a stereotype, your experiences for a purity test, or deep questions for a personality test.We're turning that upside down - all the questions affect all the results, and we've got some innovative results too! Enjoy :-)

Personality You are more emotional than logical, more concerned about self than concerned about others, more atheist than religious, more dependent than loner, more lazy than workaholic, more traditional than rebel, more engineering mind than artistic mind, more cynical than idealist, more follower than leader, and more introverted than extroverted. As for specific personality traits, you are romantic (71%), intellectual (56%), greedy (55%).

Stereotypes Prep 92% Old Geezer 67% Young Professional 50%

Life Experience Sex 42% Substances 3% Travel 53%

Politics Your political views would best be described as Libertarian, whom you agree with around 32% of the time.

Socioeconomic Your attitude toward life best associates you with Upper Class. You make more than 95% of those who have taken this test, and 46% more than the U.S. average.

If your life was a movie, it would be rated PG-13. By the way, your hottness rank is 55%, hotter than 29% of other test takers.

TAKE THE TEST
brought to you by thatsurveysite

Princeton

It was an all-too-short weekend for me, after a short work week that felt longer, and my four-day weekend over Memorial Day. I'm really beginning to feel the effects of not having any vacation time this year, having blown it all in January and February. Plus, all the recent happiness and love that has infused my life lately has made it difficult to focus on work because I'm enjoying my home time ever so much more than I did a month ago. When things weren't going as well at home, I threw myself into work and was probably heading down a path that got me into trouble earlier in my life. Fortunately, things turned out differently this time.

The weekend started out pretty miserably because Friday during the workday, I started coming down with some inexplicable rash on my face, perhaps from getting too much sun during my lunch break. By the time I went home, my face was covered with pink welts that itched and burned, and it was all I could do to keep from clawing my skin off. I had planned to see my friend Agnieszka (the one from the Polish Film Festival, not the girl of the same name I knew in college) that night but had to cancel. I spent the rest of the evening on my couch watching videos and putting cold compresses and itch medicine on my face.

Saturday morning most of the swelling and itching had subsided, and I was starting to look normal again. I used some foundation to cover the residual blemishes and went out to run my errands with Tara. We went to Borders, where I picked up Day of Vengeance and Copying Beethoven on DVD. I've been on a Beethoven kick lately if you haven't noticed: I picked up a copy of Immortal Beloved at a Duane Reade drugstore in the city last week as well. At Costco, Tara spotted all the Star Wars movies in the limited editions with both the old and remastered versions in the same case for only $9.99 each. I bought Episodes I-III for myself, and she resolved to come back later to get Episodes IV-VI to complete her collection.

Afterwards we went back to my apartment to amuse ourselves until Bee got off work and joined us for a dip in the pool, our first use of it since I moved here last July. We got cleaned up and came home where Bug showed us her work for the day, a collection of short writings she had bound into a small book. We took turns reading it and talked about it over dinner, and it showed me a side of Bug that I hadn't really seen before, which was enlightening and led to a wonderful discussion about creativity, love, religion and art while Tara and Bee went out for a walk.

Sunday was hot and muggy, so we decided to take a drive down to Princeton to see the campus art museum and visit my family's old haunts. We specifically went to see Frederick Church's exhibition of Hudson River School paintings, but it was a wee bit disappointing compared to the outstanding Asher Durand exhibit we saw at the Brooklyn Museum back in March. On the way home we stopped at one of our favorite diners, the Omega, for dinner, and drove through the leading edge of Tropical Storm Barry, which made the ride home rather harrowing. But we arrived safely and settled in to watch an exciting Yankees-Red Sox game which lasted a little longer than I'd have liked it to, but A-Rod hit a game-winning homer with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to win it, so it's all good. After a bit more quiet family time, I dragged myself home in the pouring rain to get ready for another week of drudgery.

Not much to write about during the week unless something interesting happens, so look for my next weekend entry for more news.

Porcupine Tree

It's been a pretty eventful six days since my last post, starting with last night when I had sex for the first time since about August 2005 (depending on how you define "sex"). Of course, details are personal since there are other people involved, but suffice it to say that it was a long time in the making - last night was the culmination of a courtship that started in November 2005, but had been complicated up to now by other factors that were finally resolved this past weekend.

Of course everything else kinda pales in importance to that news, but this weekend I did get to see one of my favorite bands Porcupine Tree at the Nokia Theater in Times Square with two of my loved ones. It wasn't a perfect concert from a set list standpoint, as they left out some of their big hits like "Lazarus" and "Arriving Somewhere," but it was still a rockin' show. The big downside was all the people in the audience smoking pot and tobacco, and this crazy Peruvian guitarist who was standing next to me and kept bumping into me while doing his air guitar dance. Plus it was a little taxing standing up for three hours, but it was also the closest I've ever been to the stage of a rock concert, so that was pretty cool. The inflated condoms bouncing around the audience also made me chuckle - fortunately they didn't land on me.

The rest of the weekend was a wash - I had to come in Saturday to the office to work. Fortunately it's much easier to drive into the city and park nearby than take the train, and it worked out well for me because I was going to be in the city anyway for the concert Saturday night. Plus, I got to bill the parking fee, mileage and bridge toll to my client. I even got a free lunch out of the deal since the client ordered takeout Mediterranean cuisine, which I love and was appropriate since they were from Saudi Arabia. I met up with my family at the Met museum and we drove down to Times Square for a bite to eat at McDonald's, then staked out a space on the floor of the concert hall. After the concert I got a souvenir black hoodie and we took a cab back up to my office so I could take some stuff home, like my kneeling chair that I don't use in the office anymore, but I can use at home now.

Sunday was nice and restful, with my usual trip to the library and then we had a backyard barbecue as the clouds rolled in over the golf course. As it got dark we went inside and watched the Yankees play the Mets and come out with a rare win, while at the same time finishing the groundwork that led to yesterday's events.

I might also mention that Friday night I watched one of my favorite movies, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with my (strictly platonic) movie buddy from the Polish Film Festival, and we ended up talking about it for several hours afterwards. She was so inspired by the movie that she's already booked a trip to Prague for this upcoming holiday weekend to meet up with her sister there, who is going to school in Poland.

So lots of good stuff happening here, and I feel better in my heart and spirit than I have for a long time. I'm looking forward to better times ahead, and hopefully at a bit slower pace than the past week.

Home Entertainment Expo

I had a big turn of events with my family this week. I'm not going to discuss it here because it's personal and there's a lot of pain involved right now, but eventually I'm confident things will be better than they were because of it.

On Saturday I came into the city to visit the Home Entertainment Expo 2007 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel near Grand Central Station. As many of you know, I am somewhat of an audiophile and although I've read countless reports from the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and similar events, it was the first time I'd ever been to this kind of show in person. It was kind of fun, but in a way, it also revealed that I am definitely in the wrong demographic for this hobby. It was about 95 percent men at the show, and some of them smelled a little ripe, to be honest. They tend to pack people in pretty tightly in audience chairs to audition gear, so you wind up sitting pretty close to people at these things. On the positive side, it was rather easy to bat a few eyelashes and get free stuff that other people weren't getting, like a logo cap and CD zipper case.

One good thing about the show was that I found some audiophile CDs in the marketplace that I wanted to replace, such as Dick Hyman's From the Age of Swing (check out "Topsy" track 3 my favorite) and Amanda McBroom's Growing Up in Hollywood Town (she wrote Bette Midler's song "The Rose" and does a better job singing it, I think). Also picked up a Chesky demonstration disc with songs from artists such as Rebecca Pidgeon and Sara K.

The best demo at the show was a clip from the movie Vertical Limit in a "home" theater set up in one of the larger conference rooms at the hotel. It was a demonstration of Outlaw subwoofers (I own two that survived the fire) and four were used in the room. I have one hooked up at home, and it is already way too much bass for my neighbors, so I have to use it carefully. The demo at the show was quite awesome in a testosterone-fueled kind of way - it was literally shaking the excess fabric on the legs of my jeans. Plus the picture was a pristine 1080p (that's 1,080 lines of progressively scanned resolution) on a 12-foot wide screen. I also saw a wonderful performance by Omar Hakim on drums playing in 7.1 surround on the new high-definition DTS standard in another demo room by Aperion Audio (I own their rear channel speakers at home).

After the show I went to Tall Girl and bought a new jacket, intending to use it for a new business presentation on Tuesday. However, it needs to be altered, so I ended up wearing my old standby black blazer (which must be good luck, because we won the pitch). Monday was rather busy preparing for the pitch – our team rehearsed it until about 6 pm then walked across the street for dinner. It was one of the most expensive dinners I've ever had, partly because of a $60 bottle of wine – it came out to $100 a person! I got home about 9:45 pm and rehearsed a couple more times in front of my three stuffed animals as an audience just to make sure I was comfortable. This was really my first presentation since taking this job, so I wanted to be extra-prepared, and it paid off. The new client is one of the world's largest industrial companies, and the deal will probably be for about $500K for the remaining half of the year.

No rest for the weary though - now another client is moving up the timetable on a major acquisition, which they might announce on Friday (which means I might have to work this weekend). So with that, I'd better get back to work now.

Adam Pascal

It's been a busy week, and it's not over yet so I'll keep this short. The highlight so far was going to see Adam Pascal in concert on Wednesday at B.B. King's in Times Square with a new friend. He plays Roger in the original Broadway play and movie versions of Rent, and he has a blossoming solo music career as well with his latest album Civilian. He played bass and acoustic guitar and had a piano accompanist. He's really a very funny guy and let his personality show through in his performance. It was just weird seeing him in a buzz-cut since I'm used to seeing him on screen with long hair.

While the music and the company were nice, I didn't much care for the venue, which could best be compared to a comedy club in both layout and operation. There was a $10 minimum food purchase per person, per set, and the 15 percent gratuity was added automatically, which in my book is pretty cheesy. At least the service was good, so I wasn't as peeved about it as I could have been. My companion noted that they lost money on her, since she normally tips between 18 and 20 percent, but wasn't going to add any extra tip beyond what was required since she feels the same way I do about the practice. At least they didn't have a two-drink minimum, as some comedy clubs do (although they did try to push bottled water instead of tap water).

Acting class was cancelled last night, which was fine with me because I'm going out tonight to see a movie called Copying Beethoven at the Polish Film Festival, and I don't think I'd do well being out late three nights in a row. I'm going tonight with a couple more new friends - this will be our first meeting. It seems like it's been ages since I've been to a movie (the last one was 300) so this will be a nice change of pace for me. Also, it's nice to meet new people socially and continue emerging from my self-imposed cocoon a bit and see what the world has to offer.

I was walking down the sidewalk last week and a woman was walking the other way toward me. She stopped me and introduced herself as a spiritual reader and gave me a card. She said she could "read" that one of my chakras was blocked, and it's true that I had been dealing with some pent-up anger last week (but fortunately had a chance to expunge it last Saturday). I'm still a bit amazed that she could read that on me just from a quick glance on a busy sidewalk. I guess I have one of those auras that stands out like a beacon to people attuned to it.

Smells in the City

I've been devouring Bill Willingham's comic Fables in the trade paperback format (I'm up to Volume Five of eight that are currently published), which depicts a world where the characters of classic children's fables are immortal beings living in New York City. Snow White is the deputy mayor, Little Boy Blue is her assistant, Cinderella runs a shoe store, and the Big Bad Wolf has been transformed into a human named Bigby Wolf, the town sheriff who has to smoke tobacco continuously to dull his senses to over-stimulation in the non-Fable world (referred to as the mundane, or "mundy" world).

One thing I really don't care for in this city are the smells. Scents in New York assault you like muggers used to, lurking around every corner, in subway cars, on sidewalks - everywhere. There's a section of Penn Station that I pass every evening that smells like cheeseburgers that have been left on the grill too long, then wrapped in brown paper bags and left out in the rain for the afternoon. I wish I didn't have to walk past that spot every day, but it's the most direct path from the subway to the New Jersey train gates, and usually I'm in too much of a hurry to take an alternate route.

The worst example of this is when homeless people commandeer a subway car and use it as their personal toilet. This has the effect of emptying the entire car into adjacent cars, which become terribly crowded. It's almost comical when you see a train where one car is nearly empty and both cars on either side are stuffed like cans of sardines. The same thing happened several months back on a NJ Transit train when the woman sitting in front of me vomited all over the floor.

Just walking on the streets you encounter less than pleasant scents, like the incessant cigarette smoking, the garbage piles on sidewalks, charcoal fires from street vending carts, even the heavy cologne and cheap perfumes people wear can be annoying. It all almost makes me wish I could turn off my sense of smell as easily as I can block my hearing with my noise-canceling earbuds connected to my iPod.

Return from hiatus

So, it's been a month since I took off from this space, and I think it's time to start talking again. My time off has had some ups and downs. In some ways I feel better, and other ways I feel worse, but at least I feel like writing again.

Most of April was dominated by fire clean-up and replacing what I lost as best I could. That's not to say that I didn't have any fun, because I did. But I devoted at least half of every weekend to doing stuff related to the fire, like bringing my messed-up cable box in, unpacking the last of my boxes, cleaning files, organizing my closet, shopping for little things like cleaning supplies and bathroom products, etc. etc. I would say last weekend was the end of that as a major activity in my life when I finally bought a receiver and tested my damaged speakers to find that most of them still worked and set up my makeshift home theater, using a DVD player I had previously loaned my family and hence was not destroyed in the fire. I also found a table and chair by my apartment dumpster that now serves as my computer desk. I haven't replaced the brand-new Dell desktop I'd bought just a week before the fire, so I'm just using my old laptop for now, along with a new printer/scanner. But I still don't have cable or Internet at home, simply because I've spent so much money on recovery I have to cut down on my bills wherever I can.

On the fun side, I went to Lincoln Center to see La Traviata by the New York City Opera, and made my first trip to Shea Stadium to see a Mets game (my company has a box there and I managed to score some tickets from a co-worker who couldn't use them). We also took another fun trip out to Connecticut for a band gig. I've also been taking my weekly acting classes, which have been fun and challenging at the same time. Right now I'm doing a scene with another girl playing two women at a gym talking about relationships.

Work has been extremely busy for a number of reasons, and I've been having to stay a little later on some nights to cover things. One of our vice presidents left and I've had to pick up some additional work and responsibilities from her absence, plus one of our entry-level girls left this week, leaving us a bit short-handed until they can hire someone else. Then I have a large pharmaceutical client in New Jersey that is ramping up an internal GLBT program, so I've been involved in helping them with that, which involves taking a car out to New Jersey and back a couple times a week (a real time-sucker). At least it's work that interests me.

Speaking of busy-ness, I'd better get back to work now or I'll be stuck here late on a Friday. If anyone is still reading, I wish you a happy weekend!