Sweaty, smelly, and feeling fine

I am very proud of myself tonight. I finally got my butt back to the gym. I haven’t been in quite some time. Getting sick, the holidays, being promoted, injuring myself while playing softball (Achilles bursitis – the limp was almost comical), all conspired to keep my away from the gym. But of the course, the biggest reason for staying away was pure laziness. But now that I have reminded myself about how good it feels to be wiped and exhausted after a good work out I will try my hardest to resume my 5 night a week work out habit.

The hardest part is always forcing your self to go. But once I am there – it is heaven. I hop on the treadmill at a good pace and a nice incline and just go. Throw a good CD into my CD player and rock out. (I don't have an MP3 player yet - hint hint Christmas is coming... I really like the 40Gb Dell in case anyone was at a loss for what to get me.) Then I do mild weight training. Hopefully I will get the same results that I did last year at this time when I lost 30 pounds over 2 ½ months with a good work out.

The best part is that I am tired and I know that I will sleep well.

Goals

Last night I was watching this horrible show on E! called Taradise. If you have been lucky not to have wasted a half hour of your time on this, it is basically Wild On with Tara Reid hosting and not nearly as intelligent. In this particular episode, Tara went to Pamplona for the running of the bulls and kept wavering back and forth about whether she should run with the bulls. So as I am watching this train wreck, I think to myself "I want to run with the bulls." The I just stopped. What did I just say? Um, am I crazy? Of course this is not something I would ever want to do. That's just plain crazy. But it did get me thinking...

Many people have given themselves goals they want to achieve before some important milestone, be it their 30th, 40th, 50th birthday or before they die. I don't have a list like that. As I child I set one goal for myself, to graduate from college, and once I accomplished it I never gave myself a new one. It's time I did that.

So here, in no particular order, is my list of things to accomplish/do/achieve before I die:

1. Write and publish a book
2. Backpack through Ireland
3. Have children
4. Share my life and my heart with a man I truly love who loves me back just as much
5. See and/or chase a real, live tornado
6. Visit the seven natural wonders of the world (I only have six left! Maybe one day I will tell you what happened to the pictures.)
7. See the world's most amazing sights - the Great Wall of China, Mount Rushmore, the Leaning Tower of Piza, etc.
8. Visit great historical landmarks, like Gettysburg and L'Arc de Triumphe, around the world.
9. Cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner all by myself for my loved ones and have everyone like it.
10. Drive cross country
11. Whistle just once

I don't care how long it takes me to do this. I don't care if I am not 100% successful, as long as I try each of them I will be happy.

I know, I know...

It's been a while. But then again there hasn't been anything too exciting going on lately - at least nothing blog worthy... The past two weeks I have not been motivated to work, much less write in a blog, but the slump is over. I am actually accomplishing something! Hell, I got home from work tonight at about 7, had dinner, and at about 8 I jumped on my computer and did some more work until about 11. And I feel good about it. Really good.

At my office, we recently took this, for lack of a better term, personality test in order to under stand how we all work and to make the teams work better together. This test basically divides how your brain thinks into four sections - notated by color. The colors are red, yellow, blue, and green. Every brain has all four colors - however everyone has a preference for which part of the brain they work best or easiest in. The average person has two preferences. (A preference being any color that shows up with 23% or more of your answers to the test they give you.) IT is rare (but not impossible) to have one, three, or four preferences.

The colors stand for the following:
BLUE: Analytical - this person thinks big picture, they enjoy math and science, they are looking more at the future. They are very cut and dried. They only want top line details. No fluff.
GREEN: Structural - this person who is very process oriented, they love checklists, they don't feel like they have accomplished anything until things can be crossed off their list, they are extremely detail oriented and need all the little bits of information.
RED: Social - this person needs to know that everyone is okay, they will get to the work once they know that everyone is happy, they will put everything aside if they sense any tension, etc.
YELLOW: Conceptual - this is the most creative of the four preferences, they also think big picture, however they are not decision makers, they also keep working on things because nothing is ever complete there is always room for improvement.

So the point of me explaining Emergenetics, in a very topline (dare I say Blue) way that doesn't give it complete justice, is so that you will understand that when I say I am very green, I don't mean new, inexperienced, or Irish - I mean that I am very anal, I need you to give me all the information and let me decide what is important to me. And, when I get to cross things off my to-do list (like the three things that I can cross off after working from home this evening) I am extremely happy. (For those of you that care I have the following preferences - green, followed closely by blue, red is also an almost preference coming in at 22%.)

Let me explain just how anal I am. When at work, I use a different highlighter every day of the week. (Monday is pink, Tuesday orange, Wednesday yellow, Thursday green, and Friday blue - a modified ROYGBIV if you will.) My highlighters are lined up in their little holder in order. Do not mess them up. I have 24 sharpie pens in all different colors. They are also lined up in color groups - again DO NOT TOUCH. Shall I go on? I don't think I need to.

But something to keep in mind - most people with OCD have a predominant green preference. Scary huh?

Lonesome

Sitting in the dark
Alone with a book, a movie, a song
or my thoughts.
This is the time that I think.
This is the time that I hate.
When all my fears and uncertainties
rise up and overpower me.
I stay here
curled up in a ball
missing what I've never had
Yearning for what may never come.
Expecting the worst.
Knowing I won't be disappointed.

Wonder

As I sit here
I wonder
Do you ever hate yourself
as I hate me?
Are you ever filled with
doubt and self loathing
the way I overflow?
Do you ever question
why you do what you do
like I do?
Do you ever wonder?
I do.

Technology Sucks

Before the advent of cell phones and pagers (or at least before I had one) I could go out, leave the house and try not to focus on the fact that a guy had not called. But now, no matter what I do or where I go, I am always "sitting by the phone". That sucks. It's not like I could go to a movie to distract myself; my phone is right at my side, on vibrate, taunting me. Saying "hahaha, he didn't call! You loser!" I hate technology.

For Morgan

I miss you and wish you had been with me when I took these pictures...





























What is the petrified poop without Morgan laughing at it? I'll explain since Morgan has yet to explain it in his blog (www.poopdypoopdypants.blogspot.com).

Morgan is about 11 years younger than me, but we have always been close. When I was in college, he would occasionally come up to Fordham and hang out with me for the weekend. On one such trip when he as about 11 0r 12, I took him to the newly renovated Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan. We spent the day walking around just enjoying the experience. Well on the bottom level of the planetarium is the magnificent meteor you see pictured above. As soon as Morgan, who can be VERY silly, saw the meteor he said it looked like petrified poop. So of course we made sure to take a picture of it with Morgan standing in front of it. Anytime I go back to New York I try to go back to the planetarium and I usually take Morgan with me. (Which usually works well because I convince our mom to let him skip a day of school since we are going to do something educational - if she only knew!) Unfortunately on my last trip back, Morgan was not in town and could not go with me. It wasn't quite as funny without Morgan posing in front of it.

More wild fire pictures...

I took these on July 20th on my way back to my apartment from the airport. Remember the night when I drove back to my apartment only to turn around and go back to the airport 4 hours later? Yup. That night. I didn't realize how cool they would turn out - I also didn't realize that there had been more wildfires until I smelled the thick smoke in the air.

And yes I was driving when I took these...

Did you know that I went to Harvard?

Yup I did. Granted I was just walking through Harvard Yard while visiting Vikki & Dennis in Boston, but it sounds much better when I don't explain all that.

There is a building at Harvard that had a quote on it that just stuck with me. It said
What is man that thou art mindful of him
It makes you want to stop and think.

Here is the list of my favorite things about my trip to Boston:
1. Seeing Vikki & Dennis and getting to spend a whole weekend with them.
2. The Coop (www.thecoop.com) - If you know me at all you know how much I would love a 5 story bookstore that is brimming with great books.
3. Walking through Boston Common and seeing a really bad, modernized version of Hamlet. (Or was it MacBeth? Who knows - it was just awful!)
4. Did I mention spending time with Vikki & Dennis?
5. Squirrelly Wrath - www.illwillpress.com
6. Taking my first solo road trip which even included driving over a bridge for the first time. (I didn't get my license until I moved to Vegas and there are no bridges there.)
7. Getting the hell out of there before I was lynched by the insane Red Sux fans.

Oh - and here is a picture of my friend Vikki, the professional photographer in training, taking a photo of a really cool fountain at Harvard. I love how passionate Vikki is about almost all forms of art...

The Old Neighborhood

So while I was back in New York, I had some time to kill, so since I had my mom's car, I decided to drive through my old neighborhood and check out some of my hangouts. This is a photo diary of that experience...

















This is the Westbury Children's Public Library. I used to love coming here. I would walk in and be completely enthralled in all the variety. I could spend hours here. For the most part I would walk the 3/4 of a mile from my house to the library just to enjoy all the different books that I could get lost in. I also used to sign myself up for any of the arts and crafts classes that looked good. Amazing how independent I was at a young age.

There was also the time that me, my older brother Sean, and his friend Louis Defino rode our bikes down to the library. They both had really cool ten speed bikes. I had my girlie pink banana seat bike. I LOVED that bike. When we got there, I suggested that we lock our bikes up. They said no, since we weren't going to be in there for long and if anyone's bike was going to get stolen it would be one of theirs. So would you believe that when we came out their bikes were still where we left them, but of course, mine was gone. That was a sad walk home...
















And there is this lovely place - St. Brigid's Catholic School. I attended this school from the 1st grade through the 6th grade. I had a lot of friends here. Until the new girl came in. Michelle Esposito. She started at St. Brigid's in the 3rd grade. I should have known when I, the model of a perfect student, actually got in trouble for talking during class. I was so ashamed when Miss Mooney, my red haired diabetic teacher, had to yell at me for talking during class.

Anyway, Michelle and I became good friends, and with her influence, I began to turn on all of the people I had been friends with since kindergarten. Even now, I look back and think about them - Patricia Pezzino, Arlayna Willis, John Barr, Thomas Maria, Connie Bove - and wonder how things may have been different. And if you are wondering, Michelle lost her place as my best friend shortly after I left St. Brigids and joined her at Holy Family. In the long run, I ended up with no one. It's amazing how much that whole situation affected me.

The other memory that I have of this school, also includes the wonderful Miss Mooney. For some reason, we didn't have enough reading text books, so Miss Mooney made every one read Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. What you need to understand is that up until this point I could have cared less about reading. It had always seemed like a chore. I read that book and fell in love with being able to escape into some one elses life. It was amazing. I couldn't get enough so I read the entire Little House series. After that I have not stopped reading. I will always be grateful to Miss Mooney for that. When I publish a book I will dedicate it to her for giving me that gift.

















You are probably wondering what the picture above is - it is hard to figure out. If you look closely you will notice a backstop. This is the field that I played softball on for a few seasons in grammar school. I always loved playing, until I heard my dad screaming at me. I still can't deal with it. I mean, I joined my office softball team and I told my dad that if he wanted to come to the games he would have to promise me that he would not open his mouth. Even at 27 I think "You run like a girl" would bother me.
















And this of course is the house that I grew up in. The house that was foreclosed on. The one that I didn't want to leave. The amazing thing is that the outside of the house has not changed, even though I know the inside has; the house was gutted after we left and converted into an (illegal) multi family home. But some things didn't change. Same white siding with blue trim. All the same windows. If you look on the left side, second floor, at the back of the house, you can see the window to what had been my room. It looks the same, but it was gutted.

This is the part of the tour that really made me sad. Even though there were some bad times in this house, there were good times too. Like playing Barbies with my little sister Meaghan in the basement. We were so funny - in the summer we would load our Barbie families into their cars, packed with all their camping or beach gear and drive them upstairs and out into the backyard, where they would get ship wrecked in the middle of our pool.

The Christmas when I knew that I was getting a purple and pink ten speed bike - just like my best friend Michelle's - since I had found it snooping a few days earlier. But when I got up at 4 am it was no where to be found. I searched every where, in the basement, in the kitchen, in the foyer, getting desparate, I looked out on the deck, bu it wasn't there. I was heart broken. And then I turned to walk back to the living room, and there it was! (If you are wondering - my brother and I, and later Meaghan, would get up as early as possible and open our gifts before our parents got up. This was good for two reasons - my parents got to sleep in whole occasionally being woken up to be shown what "Santa" had brought, and more importantly, if I got something that I didn't like I had time to work up an "Of course I like it" expression - I wasn't put on the spot.

It kind of made me sad to see how things were different in the old neighborhood, even though not much actually changes. It's probably a matter of perception. You can never go back...