It is good that man should be alone

NOTE: Mom, don’t worry. I’m talking about my living situation, not my philosophy on marriage.

So for those of you (all three of you that read this blog, that is) who don’t know, I now live in Seattle. It’s a lovely place and I have enjoyed the month and three days that I have been here very much. People are generally nice and the weather is generally good, although I know that will soon change. The weather, not the people that is … hopefully.

And something else that is lovely - I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment on Queen Anne. Now, when I first decided to live alone, I was somewhat hesitant. I was concerned that my pure, uninhibited natural man would take over and I would spend my nights wallowing in dirty laundry and running around in my underpants eating Oreos sloppily dipped in curdled milk. That has not happened - not yet, at least.

In fact, I am much more productive and clean than I ever was living with previous roommates. Perhaps it is because I have no one to blame my mess on. Or maybe it is because I have to prove to myself that I am all growed up. Or, mst likely, it is just because my apartment seems so new to me, and it is always easier to take care of things when they are new. Like why we love babies and not 15-year-olds.

Another concern that I had moving into an apartment alone was that I would become (more) introverted and (more) asocial. It is almost impossible to avoid human interaction when you have roommates, hard as you may try. So without that interaction natively built into my living situation, how would I cope? Would I watch Friends reruns late at night to pretend they were my own?

Well, it may be too early to tell. However, what I will say is that I want what I don’t have. That is simply how I am wired. When I have a salad for lunch, I wish I had an avocado BLT; when I have an avocado BLT, I wish I had jalapeno poppers; when I have jalapeno poppers, I wish I had a glass of milk; etc. Not just for lunch, but for life.

So when I come home to an apartment full of roommates, I only want to escape them and have some time alone. I want to isolate myself so that I can have what I don’t have - a place to call my own. But now, when I come home to an empty apartment - just me and my Craigslist couch - I want to be with people. I want to reach out and touch someone. This is very good for me, and something that I have had a hard time doing at other times in my life.

Living alone, as I have experienced it thus far, is a good thing for me. It makes me want to be with people more. And it gives me time to do other things best done privately.

I'm Angry on the Inside

The list of reasons that I blog is extensive. To practice writing something other emails, to wake up the next morning to see if anyone has commented, to boost my sex appeal, etc. At the top of that list has to be the ability to passive-aggressively complain about the times that I have been abused.

I ride my bike to work. I enjoy it. Every morning that I get on my bike I am like a kid again. Often the only thing that drags me out of bed in the morning is knowing that after I shower and pretend to comb my hair, I get to ride my bicycle. Even if I dread every other part of my day, at least I as I ride for 25 minutes to and from work. It is faster than taking the subway, and I always get the best parking spot in the city - locked to the sign post directly in front of my building. I only have to take 7 steps before I am through our revolving doors and on my way to work. Life couldn't get better.

But today the building manager told me that I can't lock my bike in front of the building anymore. I threw the kind of fit that I throw - first by agreeing to do whatever I am told, and then nervously trying to stand up for myself and eventually walking away in the middle of a semi-coherent sentence.

The best answer that he gave me was that I'm not supposed to lock my bike there. I don't really know what that means. Here's what I do know:

• It is not illegal to lock your bike to street signs as long as you don't block the sidewalk or cover the sign itself.
• The sidewalk is public property, not owned by the building.
• The building owner does not allow bikes inside, so I cannot take my bike in with me.
• If I don't lock it up outside my building, I will just lock it up outside the building next door, then making it another building manager's problem. That's like picking up your dog's poop and throwing it over your fence into your neighbor's yard.
• The month of May is National Bike Month. Have a heart.
• I have been locking my bike there at that sign post for almost a year now. Doesn't that give me a legal right to continue to park there? Come on you lawyers, help me out.

Anybody who hates bikes hates childhood memories. And anybody who hates childhood memories has no soul. Why does my building manager hate childhood memories? I don't know. He is from the Bronx, so maybe he never rode a bike.

I heart New York, kind of

I haven't written much about New York. The city is fascinating, it really is. Perhaps even more fascinating, in fact, than Rexburg. I would like to list my ten favorite things about New York, so please indulge me.

I am not sure why I feel compelled to list these now, but maybe it is an attempt to convince myself that the Tony-NY romance is still alive. The honeymoon is definitely over, but maybe the flame of romance can yet be re-kindled.

1. 5pointz graffiti in Long Island City, Queens - Every day that I ride the 7 train, which is every day that I don't ride my bike to work, I ride past this place. It is a city block which is comprised of several warehouses, entirely covered in graffiti. It is right next to the MOMA PS1 contemporary art center and a fascinating urban art hub. I should go take a closer look, but graffiti and barbed wire scare me.
2. Softball in Central Park - I probably like this because it represents the warm summer evenings and because I enjoy kicking picnickers off the Great Lawn. Also, it is the kind of thing that you tourists just can't do. They can't come to New York for a weekend and be on a softball team.
3. Old Jewish guys - They are just delightful.
   
4. Williamsburg on Shabbat - It is like stepping into a different world. As you walk down the street, it is all a flash of payot and kolpik. (I don't really know those words, I just Wikipedia'd them.) Women and men walk on different sides of the streets, and I wonder if I am proud or ashamed to be a Gentile.
5. Street Meat - The best deal in town. With the recent Swine Flu "outbreak," perhaps I should steer clear of these vendors, but I can't help myself. The meat is undercooked, the utensils are flavored with the grease of chicken past, and the cooking surface is peppered with the same airborne particulate that makes the air unfit to breathe, but it is wonderful. Give me a falafel over penne ala Vodka (is that a fancy dish? I hope so ...) any day.
6. Girls that wear short skirts and stilettos on Friday nights regardless of the weather - They make the rest of us feel warm in the winter.
7. Bike messengers - I am biased because I love bicycles, but I'm not sure if the city would be the same with out bike messangers. They are dangerous and embody the "I live dangerous" attitude that everyone has to have to a certain degree to live in New York. Their disregard for crossing traffic and common sense is amusing.
8. Knicks fans - Just because the only thing they hate more than losing is winning, because they know that it won't last. The same can be said for Jets and Mets fans. It's such a bitter way to live life.
9. The guys who work on Wall Street - Proof that you can make a living out of being a frat boy.
10. Halloween - Adults dressing up like children. It's charming, really.
11. The F word - I found it highly offensive at first, and took it personally any time I heard it, but I now find it quite endearing and remarkably diverse. It is a word appropriate for work and play, for love and hate. I would totally start using it if I could do it without giggling and blushing.
12. Garbage, garbage everywhere - You have no idea how many times I have had to stop and get plastic bags untangled from the gears in my bike. The willingness to cope with the ubiquity of garbage is part of what it takes to live in New York. You don't care, you don't complain, you just step over it and keep on walking.
13. BET - Did you know that they actually have advertisements for shows on BET on the uptown and Bronx-bound trains? I always wonder if I am lost when I start to see more and more BET ads. Of course, I have never watched an episode of Harlem Heights, so maybe I should try it before passing judgment.
14. Exposed brick - New York loves its exposed brick. Not sure why, but we love it. Having an apartment with exposed brick is the holy grail of deliberately unfinished walls. You stare it for hours and call your mom to tell her about how bricky and exposed it is. Again, not sure why.

So 14, not 10. I guess you make me smile, New York. But I still hate you for charging me $900 in rent and for having so many potholes.

Longer than it looks

Last Saturday I ran the Salt Lake City marathon. Although I did not win - disappointing, I know - I did finish. Going in my goal was to come across in under four hours, which is a fairly common marathon goal. I missed that goal by just over a minute, at 4:01:15 according to my timing chip. I'm not complaining, though, because after 26.2 miles, turns out my time didn't matter that much to me. It probably means a lot to other people who were further from dying in a pool of tired sweat. But to me, all I wanted to do was cross the finish line and eat a Creamies. (That was one of the sponsors. Chocolate ice cream popsicle after a marathon. It seemed like a good idea to someone, I guess.)

The course was pleasant, and the weather almost ideal for marathoning. The first half was cooler, about 50 degrees, with no wind. After rounding the 13-mile marker - at about 1:57 for me - the clouds blew away and the air started to heat up, but nothing more than 60 or 65 degrees. It made for a beautiful, excuse-free day for a run.

I am a heart-rate runner. It is a more consistent measure than running on pace alone since pace highly varies depending on GPS accuracy, and since it is easy to over-exhert yourself trying to maintain a pace when other variables are in play - elevation, heat, hills, etc. For the first half of the marathon, I kept my heart rate at a fairly even 147-148. After that, I wanted to push myself up to about 155 and then, with 4 miles to go I planned on "throwing the hammer down" (as I referred to it in my head, amused) to about 165-170, depending on what was left in the tank. It was especially amusing since my last four miles felt like I was trying to tow a truck and "throwing the hammer down" in reality was just maintaining an 11-minute mile.

What amazes me about marathons are the people who run them. Mainly the ones who run faster than I do. Like the 60-year-old women who run it in three and a half hours. Or the 250-pound cleidsdales that cruise on by down the home stretch. They just blow my mind. Our bodies are just miraculous. That's what I told myself as my hamstrings started to seize and my vision started to blur.

When I burst (kind of) across the finish line, it was amazing. It was almost as surreal as the time I ran my mom's new Jetta into a Hastings signpost or as walking through the Boise airport when I got back from Brazil. I am so happy I decided to do it. I wish I would have won, though.

Montauk or Bust

This weekend I rode my bike to Montauk, which is the city at the end of Long Island. From my house to Montauk is a total of 136 miles, which I covered in a total of 7 hours and 15 minutes at an average speed of 18.25 MPH. I was pleasantly surprised with how well I held up to the distance and speed, especially considering last year I was averaging a max of about 15 MPH on my longer rides. (Boston, Poughkeepsie, Philadelphia, etc.) Granted, the ride to Montauk is almost perfectly flat, which obviously helps the pace, I was still pleasantly surprised.



I enjoyed most all of the ride. The weather left a little to be desired, but that comes with the territory of Long Island in the early spring I think. It didn't rain, but was gray and windy. I probably should do it again in May or June when the trees are blossoming and the family money is out and about. There's just something about getting nudged off the road by a Land Rover that makes me feel special.

The key learnings:

• Montauk is kind of nasty during the first week of April
• Life is better with a tail wind than with a head wind. It's the difference between 23.5 MPH and 15.5 MPH.
• I need a home in the Hamptons. It is the only way I will ever truly be happy.
• Any food tastes good after 136 miles.
• Riding in Manhattan after riding on the peaceful, uninhabited streets of Southampton is stressful. I enjoy riding in the city, but I am sure it is taking years off my life.
• I don't take pictures because when I do I regret having not taken better ones.
• Having the right equipment makes a world of difference.
• Being prepared doesn't always pay off.
• I think I'm a lot cooler than other people do. Really, I think I am like the coolest person in the world. Really. Like almost every mile, I thought to myself, "I'm riding to *Montauk*. How cool is that? Just me and 136 miles of coastal beauty. What a story am I to tell!" But no one really cares all that much. And I'm ok with that.
• Helmet hair looks a lot like homeless hair.

If you have any recommendations on where I should go on my next weekend warrior trip, I am open to suggestions. I am thinking Atlantic City or Scranton. Or maybe San Diego.

How Speed Dating Should Be, Part 3 - The Results

So I am not entirely sure what I was expecting in the results. Well, that’s not true. I knew exactly what I was expecting - 29-for-29. And that previous estimate of 16 to 18? That was obligatory modesty, like when rich people say, “There’s more to life than money.”

Having known myself for 24 years now, I can’t imagine why any reasonable, rational woman wouldn’t jump at a chance to go out with me. According to my daily affirmations, I am devilishly charming, fashionable, suave, unbearably handsome, etc. I sing in the mellifluous tenor of an angel, I am a high-powered public relations executive, I can juggle, I literally could go on for hours.

But I won’t. Instead, I will outline the results. To warn you, they are a bit unsettling:

Total number of girls with whom I met: 29
Total number of girls in whom I was interested: 7
Total number of girls who yesed me: 18
Total number of girls who yesed me that I was interested in: 3

So yes, I hit the modest estimate of 18 yeses. That leaves, however, 11 girls unaccounted for, and, more importantly, 4 girls that I was interested in that were mysteriously omitted from my list. As I said before, unsettling. “Maybe you just weren’t their type” is an empty excuse made for and by people who aren’t yet ready to face reality.

The truth is that most of these 11 girls were omitted from my list due to clerical and administrative errors. I mean the event was well organized, but off the top of my head I can think of three rudimentary organizational oversights.

1. The importance of writing legibly on our name tags was not made clear at the outset. When we wrote our names and numbers on our name tags, we were not told, “Please write in such a manner that people will be able to read them.” I was somewhat careless and let the 3 in my 63 spill over the edge, which meant that it was easily mistaken for a 65 or even a 68. Since my number was really the only way that my yeses were registered, I imagine 10% of my dates were lost to lucky numbers 65 and 68. You’re welcome. We’ll say this accounts for 3 of my non-yeses.
2. The boxes were not in the most-convenient locations. At the end of the event, we were instructed to help ourselves to food and drink, and to put our lists in the boxes. However, no specific instruction was given on the location of these boxes, nor if there were boy boxes and girl boxes. I did notice a considerable confusion as we left the dating arena as people tried to locate the proper receptacles. I would estimate that an additional 10% of all attendees were not able to find the ballot boxes, or threw their lists in the garbage by mistake. Garbage cans are, after all, just large boxes. Another 3 non-yeses accounted for.
3. How to mark “yes” on the lists was ambiguous. The lists that we received has a box above which was written “Yes/no.” I wrote in mine either C or D, which was a code I used to keep track without having to risk my dates seeing my actual number of yeses or nos. (The inside scoop: C was for cat, D was for dog. Before you pass judgment, D was “yes” because I like dogs better than cats.) I saw many people who were just making a check mark or slash in each box. However, a slash is neither a yes nor a no. It is just an annotation. So what if I put slashes through every person I was not interested in, but the organizers thought the opposite was true – that slashes were affirmative responses? An innocent mistake with disastrous results. I would say, in fact, that this confusion spread as far as an additional 10% of participants, accounting for 3 more non-yeses.

In sum, we can reasonably blame 9 of the 11 non-yeses on simple clerical and human error. The other two? Come to think of it, there was one “date” that had me sitting in front of an empty chair, which I did put on my list as “Empty Chair.” The empty chair could not say yes, clearly. And the last one? The last one may have been a girl with such egregiously poor taste in men that she consciously, deliberately marked “no.” Her loss, I assure you.

I look forward to many weekends rich with dates from my yes list. That is to say weekends starting in April after the conclusion of March Madness. I have to keep my priorities straight.

Orange Juice like it should be

Every once in a while I am blown away by developments in the packaging industry. Like 6 or seven years ago, someone decided that instead of selling 12-packs of Coke in boxes stacked on a 2x3 footprint, they would sell them on a 1/6 footprint. At the time, they were labeled "fridge packs," because the packaging fit better into conventional refrigerators, and, more importantly, you could easily access all the cans without tearing the box to pieces. Now all 12-packs are sold in this packaging.

I could go on and on, but I can just think of this one example in recent history. I will make the assertion that these kinds of developments are happening constantly, but I have no idea if it is true.

Yesterday I went to the store for my weekly health-food-and-junk-food shopping trip and picked up a carton of Tropicana orange juice. When I came home, I was giddy with excitement when I went to pour myself a glass.



I am not sure if you can tell what is going on here, but instead of the cap being flat on the top, it is a hemisphere shaped like an orange. How fun is that? Instead of twisting a boring cap, you are twisting diminutive plastic orange. It may seem just like wasted plastic, but I, for one, am now a Tropicana man for life.

The packaging also reads "squeeze, it's a natural" surrounding the cap. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I can't help but giggle at its sexual undertones.