July Update

So far so good with the running. Getting up early, running, then heading to work knowing I don't have to hop on the treadmill before eating some lunch. Of course, getting up is still a bitch.

Eating is going pretty good too. I'm fixing a lot of meals at home, then saving half for lunch the next day. The extra tupperware cleaning is annoying, but it saves a lot of money.

Just have to keep it up.

An Adult Moment

Recently, while at the grocery store, I thought:

You're an adult now. You can buy whatever you want. Remember how you always wanted some Chocolate Eclairs? Those delicious, chocolate ice cream treats that you could only buy from the Good Humor Man because your mother would never buy them when she went grocery shopping? As a child your freezer was empty and useless, and only the rapid chime of that blessed ice cream man's bell gave you hope during those hot summer months. That's the only time you saw an Eclair. Well, there they are Mr. Adult, behind the glass doors of the frozen food section. And your mother is not here to stop you. Go ahead, champ, ring that bell.

So I bought some.

I Wish Mr. Brooks Would Visit Mr. Happy Fun

That was a two day weekend, right? It felt like three. Come Sunday, it felt like I had been away from work for a long time. I guess that means I had a good weekend. It didn't start out good, it started out with over-priced, over-cooked fillet mignon.

My girlfriend and I had dinner in Little Italy Friday night. We stopped at the first place that served bread and appeared air conditioned. After being seated, the waiter asked us if we needed to see the wine list. I said no, since I wasn't in the mood and my girlfriend doesn't drink...usually. Looking down at the menu, I didn't see his reaction, but my girlfriend said he seemed pissed. Great, it's going to be one of those nights, I thought.

Don't get me wrong, I mean, I get it. Wine, appetizers - they all add up, which to a waiter usually means a bigger tip. Don't be visibly pissed though. It's not my duty to order over-priced wine. Okay, mister waiter? No hard feelings, right?

So, naturally, we received no bread. Other tables, that were seated after us? Oh they got bread. I, however, had to ask for it. So that's how it is, mister waiter? Mister happy fun? Got it.

My fillet mignon -- which I had never actually had before, I just enjoyed saying fillet mignon -- was decent. I may be a complete philistine, but I prefer steaks at Outback to what this restaurant was serving. And whoever fixed my girlfriend's spaghettia alla carbonara went nuts with the garlic and salt, pushing the limits of edible. We will not be going back there, despite the ringing endorsement from Time Out, circa 1999, quoted on their website.

After having missed one showing of "Mr. Brooks" downtown, we opted for a late showing at the 86th street Loews. The show was at 12:15, and they let us in the theater at...12:15. We waited in a, albeit short, line for about a half hour. For the first twenty minutes of that wait, the line was three people deep: me, my girlfriend, and a baseball-cap wearing, sweaty loner. "Mr. Brooks" was surprisingly good; Costner and Hurt had moments together that were very creepy. They should patent that joint laughter act and go on the road, creeping people out. Dane Cook was serviceable, and Demi Moore can now say she owns the most realistic portrayal of a millionaire cop ever filmed. Wil Smith in Bad Boys has nothing on her. So, a good ending that salvaged an otherwise horrible Friday night.

Saturday, things were much better. We went to Ooki, a Sushi/Japanese restaurant on the Upper East Side. Easily the best Japanese place I've been to in New York. The service was friendly and quick. The atmosphere was chill; the open-air dining room felt fantastic on a warm summer night. The drinks, especially the plum wine, were delicious. Ooki earns special praise for pacing the salads, appetizers, and entrees so we never felt rushed or neglected. The duck spring rolls, the shrimp tempura, and the best chicken teriyaki I've ever had make Ooki my new favorite dining spot. My girlfriend, not one to hand out praise, said the sushi was the best she'd ever had.

We went to see "Knocked Up", which -- thought not has laugh out loud hilarious as "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" -- was still hilarious and heartfelt. If you haven't seen it yet, well, too bad. People applauded at the end of the film, though these days I find that happening a lot more than I remember it. I mean, people applauded at the end of the third Pirates movie as well. And while, yes, I can appreciate some of the non-blockbuster sequences Verbinski sneaked into the movie -- the sand crabs, multiple Jack Sparrows were very surreal and effective -- I don't think the overloaded, under-plotted film deserved applause. A thoughtful "hmmm"? Sure.

Sunday was spent moving the rest of my stuff over to my new apartment, shopping, and then finally, relaxing.

Which is good, because it looks to be a long week.

He Must Be Anorexic

Before I write this, I want to say to people who know me: you are going to roll your eyes. Yes, I know I've never been fat. Yes, I know a lot of you will find it very hypocritical for me to complain about a skinny person(even though I am not that skinny anymore, I've done some damage in my late twenties). Your objections are noted. That said...

I've been trying to eat better. Usually this entails bringing my own, packed lunch to work. Today, however, I forgot to pack a lunch and I ended up at a nearby Subway restaurant(I say restaurant because they always add that in the commercials for fast food places, "participating McDonald's restaurants, your local Subway restaurant", etc. It's one of the industry's insecurities I guess, not being considered a real restaurant, so they constantly remind you that they are, technically, a restaurant. Maybe that's why fine restaurants have taken to referring to themselves as "fine dining establishments").

Um, anyway, usually I would buy a six-inch meatball sub when I forgot my packed lunch. A treat for being absent minded, which is kind of like rewarding an AA member who misses a meeting with a shot of Jack. Today I switched it to a Subway Club, also six inches, a much more sensible choice for someone watching what they eat.

Ahead of me in line was a tall, rail-thin gentleman. He orders a meatball sub. Not just a meatball sub, but a foot-long meatball sub. Which he then has drowned in extra Parmesan cheese by the friendly people behind the counter. It's a gloriously delicious, cheesy, marinara dripping, meat-filled, fat and calorie loaded bomb. It's a man's sandwich. This sub dunks my sub's head in the toilet after stealing it's lunch money. This sub goes home and fucks the prom queen.

Fine, no problem. When I was younger, I ate like that(worse, actually) and never gained a pound. Sure, this guy is actually older than I am, but who is to say whose metabolism stays super-revved at shrew-like levels for their entire lives? Maybe he has to eat his body weight in fatty, delicious foods just to keep from wasting away. Plus, he could be running marathons and power-lifting(probably not that, since his thin limbs would probably snap) and doing other strenuous exercise that burns off these calories. Or he's a chain-smoking heroin addict. Either way, who am I to judge?

What made me smirk and cough under my breath was when, after taking a minute to get exact change to pay for his lunch, he stopped in front of the chips and actually took time to decide between the "light" Doritos and the "baked" lays. What kind of person, after choosing to eat a foot-long meatball sub, actually struggles with what low-fat chips he should be eating?

An obvious needle-sharing heroin addict, that's who.

Here It Goes, Here It Goes Again

Above, you can see my running totals for 2006(or at least as far as I've been tracking it with Nike+ for my iPod, July through December).

76 runs since July, 311 miles, at a pace of about eight minutes a mile. That's the addictive part of Nike+, the raw numbers are right there in front of you. I almost look forward to updating my "stats" more than I do running the actual miles. This is the closest I will ever get to seeing my name in a box score.

About 50 miles a month, and I don't really plan on improving that in 2007. I'll be happy with just keeping up the pace, and adding some actual weight routines to the mix(I've been doing it slop-job and piecemeal, with no focus or purpose - I need to do some research, because personal trainers are way too expensive).

I do enjoy running, at least when I'm consistent about it. Three, four times a week - for me - is very good. When it drops to less than that, it becomes a chore instead of an accomplishment.

One thing I do want to change in 2007, though, is what I eat. I was doing pretty good for a while, but I collapsed under the weight(ha!) of the holidays. Now, I need to add more fruits, vegetables, and lean meats(I have almost eliminated read meat, though, from my daily diet, so that's something).

My girlfriend is back in New York, which makes me sad, but she left me some healthy things to fix for breakfast and dinner, which makes me less sad.

I just realized next week is restaurant week. Well, even when changing eating habits, there are always exceptions. Everything in moderation.

Ho Ho Ho...Holy Sh!t, the scale says what?!?!

The holidays have done their damage. This past year, through steady exercise and somewhat restrained eating habits, I lost about 15 pounds. The past month, I've gained about three, really three and a half, back. I wasn't running as much, and I ate well. Too well.

So it's back to my usual routine, which means more running, and hopefully some weight lifting. I was thinking of investing in a personal trainer, but instead I'll just do some research, buy the soundtrack to Rocky Balboa, and hit the weights more often.

I'll also have to get back to my better eating habits, which means more fruits, vegetables, fixed lunches, and less holiday sweets, California Tortilla, and fried chicken.

Head start on New Years, bitches.

Deep-Fried American Character

I'm back safely from New York, though I managed to get my face sunburned.

I burn quite easily. So, if I anticipate any extended time in the sun I make sure to use a little sunblock. Unfortunately, I didn't count on there being a street fair in Little Italy. Mulberry street is not really any narrower than any other street in New York, but if you fence off the sidewalks and then have giant vendor booths on both sides of the street, the little remaining space becomes a stagnant sludge of slowly moving people. It took a good half-hour to make what is usually a five minute walk to my favorite Italian place in the city, and by the end I could already feel my pale Irish skin tightening. Still, the trek left plenty of time to see what the local vendors where hacking.

The most interesting part of the street fair, to me at least, was the popularity of deep fried Oreos. I had no idea these even existed. Four for a dollar at most vendors, and they were selling very briskly. I've heard of deep-friend candy bars, but never cookies. Some of my coworkers had heard of the deep-fried Oreo, so it's not something that sprung up over night that I missed. It's something America has been doing for a while that I missed.

I'm not sure what it says about our country that we take something as delicious as an Oreo and deep fry it. Some would say it's just another symptom of our obesity epidemic; the product of a country with too much food and too many choices. A symbol of what is wrong with the United States. A deep-fried, artery clogging symbol of a country that just doesn't know when to stop. We will never stop in our pursuit of excess, or anything really. Once we get started in a direction, we run in that direction like the coyote chasing the white line into the tunnel painting on the side of the mountain. It's definitely great in a George W. Bush kind of way; admiring someone for there unabashed dedication to a cause. Kind of like watching a sprinter breaking the record for the fastest one-hundred meter dash even when they know the last meter is the air above a thousand foot chasm. And there are signs that say "1,000 Ft. Chasm Straight Ahead" every twenty meters. And the sprinter could run one-hundred meters in any other direction and not die.

"Don't go that way, there's a cliff!", you might say.

"Look, I started in this direction and I'll be damned and dead if I'm going to stop now!", they would reply.

It's really our unifying characteristic as a country at this point. Occasionally on the subway there will be a born-again christian preaching, trying to save all of us from a literal hell while we sit in a figurative one. Someone will always joke that this is "George Bush's America." And I guess it is, though I do remember this happening while Clinton was president too.

I don't remember deep-fried Oreos. Or the glut of reality television. Somehow, it seems to me if Gore had won the world would never have seen the 'Race Survivor' or 'Big Brother All Stars'. As a country, we would have had the good sense to stop.

I realize it's ridiculous to blame these things on the President. Even though I'm not directly blaming him and just comparing it to some hazy idea about a new, national paradigm of thinking, it's still ridiculous. Pundits say a country can take on the personality of it's President, and I'm sure during the late nineties pot use and oral sex among Americans went way up(along with a desire to find common ground for the common good), but no one besides Ann Coulter would have thought to blame it on Bill Clinton¹.

I still think I'm right though.

Joe Gibbs still believes in Mark Brunell and John Hall, despite horrid performances². American Idol keeps on going even though each winner becomes less and less relevant³. NASA refuses to moth-ball the shuttle program. The housing bubble in DC continues to grow and grow despite obvious signs of an impending burst. In a world where Al Gore or John Kerry were president, this would seem disturbing.

In George Bush's America, though, nothing about those things seems unusual. It's pretty much how everything feels like it should be. So enjoy the deep fried-Oreos. Until 2008 at least.

¹My apologies to Ms. Coulter if she actually did this.
²I would still follow Coach Gibbs into Hell.
³True story. My girlfriend really liked Kelly Clarkson, but I ruined Kelly for her when I told her off-hand that it was great at least one American Idol winner was doing well. She had no idea Clarkson was the first American Idol. So, kudos to you KC for doing a great job distancing yourself from the institution that both created you and could destroy you.