jogging rest

I need to give my body some time to fully heal before I go jogging some more. I've been living with this dull ache I've been experiencing in my hips for over a week now. Resting one or two days isn't making it go away, so I am going to rest until it goes away. I think I might not be able to resist walking a little bit at least. Being completely sedentary is making me a little crazy already and I know I've only started my running aspirations. I don't want to jog stupid and injure myself, preventing myself from being able to run longer distances. Must heal, must heal, must heal.

By the way, enjoy the picture I snapped with the cell phone earlier this week. The story starts like this ...

I'm about to go into Whole Foods to do some food shopping when I'm stopped by a Hispanic gentleman driving his car. He stopped me to ask for directions to the nearest liquor store. I told him that there was a Canal's Liquor store a mile or so down the road. I noticed that his passenger was a younger Hispanic female wearing orthodontic braces, and she definitely didn't look 21 yrs old. He asked me, "Is that the place with the big red sign?" Yes, I replied. "Well, I think something's a little wrong with their sign, mister. It says "anals" haha!" I laughed right along with him, but for some reason the first thing that came to my mind as we all were laughing was "daterape".



Weirdness. But that's why my blog is voted best of the best.

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Heh, how fucking cheesy is that banner ad?

Job meltdown, jog log

Ok so I guess I should have seen today coming.

I knew that an important person from my Board of Directors was coming to the office to review the cover and indexes of the publication that I have been managing ever since the beginning of February. I should also know that anybody who steps in zat the last minute and issues sweeping changes to the specifications of a document usually results in disaster, which it did. I could go into massive detail at this point, but I'll reserve it for another time. I still feel like I'm cooling off from almost having to quit today.

I also should have seen computer problems coming. I was expecting a repairman to arrive from Dell at my office to repair my laptop for the same issue I've been having since I got the thing. It seems that the integrated LAN port on my Inspiron 8500 laptop wants to short out after a few months of getting the motherboard replaced. The short results in my connection getting dropped intermittently or, in the case of my freshly replaced motherboard (this being the #6 replacement), permanently dropped. So I told the tech to forget about it, that I needed to call Dell and sort it out with them. The LAN port on this laptop dying repeatedly must because by some structual defect in the casing of the laptop that causes it to invariably put pressure on the back panel of the board and cause the connections to fray, eventually breaking completely.

I was able to escalate the problem enough that I am going to be getting a replacement system from Dell. I'm not exactly sure what components I'm going to be getting, but I know that at a minimum, this will be maintaining all the same specs that I currently have, and possibly upgrading in some areas. I'm still a big skeptical of the whole deal, as I took a lot of time to pick out my current system so that I knew it would be able to perform in the areas of multimedia / graphic design and audio production. Now, I have to do all that research all over again. More to come on this topic as well ...

So worked sucked, I came home and set a new milestone with jogging.

I jogged 35 minutes, the final 30 minutes of which was at 6mph. My total distance was 3.5 miles and I burned about 500 calories. I feel whooped! I think I'm going to be feeling this tomorrow and the next day. Probably the day after that as well. Goo told me I need to give my legs time for the muscles to heal and repair themselves. I love Goo.

Just when I thought my bad day was over, and I was ready to move on to pleasurable activities i.e. working on music with Janic, I plugged in a couple of my USB devices and had to reinstall a bunch of drivers, thanks to this new busted motherboard. Then, when I went to restart, I got this BIOS beep message that read "Physical memory has changed, press F1 to continue F2 for info." So naturally I go to look at my BIOS info, and sure enough it says I only have 256MB out of a full 512 that I should have. WTF? This guy who replaced my MOBO fried my freakin RAM! Luckily, Janic suggested I just open the laptop up and flip the RAM chips around from pot to pot and start it up again. Lucky for me, and Dell, that seemed to have fixed the problem. RAM is so damn fickle! I hope the shit isn't on the fritz too!

Enough! Time for bed.

Tonight's Run & Something Random

Tonight, I ran for 35 minutes. The treadmill reported 3.25 miles, 480 calories burned. My pace was as follows:

35:00 - 30:00, 6mph
30:00 - 25:00, 5.5mph
25:00 - 20:00, 6mph
20:00 - 06:00, 5.5mph
06:00 - 00:00, 6mph

I will probably rest tomorrow, although I am not as sore as I thought I'd feel.

Goo shared this with me. Make your own e-flipbook!

Here's mine.

A few videos from last weekend's gigs

It took me a few days to get around to dumping these videos from DV tape to .wmv. Sorry to all my Mac buddies who are Quicktime snobs, but right now .wmv saves me 2 steps in the process.

Anyway, onto the gig videos. Hit play to start streaming any video.

Video 1 - Leafblower with Mr. King at Grape St. Pub
March 10, 2006
Tune: Tripcop - Theme From Leafblower.

Leafblower started off Mr. King's set with one of our own tunes.



Video 2 - The Sidecar Allstars w/Korey Riker
The Sidecar Bar & Grille
Tune: Freedom Jazz Dance
March 11, 2006

It took me years to wrap my head around this song. Then I was tasked to learn how to play it with this band, and suddenly everything gelled for me. I love playing this tune with the band.



Video 3 - Same band, same evening
Tune: Nostalgia in Times Square



Comments?

Treadmill jogging

I wanted to use this blog to also document the progress of my endurance training for jogging. One of my life goals is to run either a marathon or half-marathon. A half-marathon is only 13.109 miles, so maybe I'll start out training for that.

Since it's cold outsite, and I can't ride a bike or jog outdoors, I go to the community gym in my apartment community. There are 3 treadmills there and a couple of cheesy stationary bikes along with some weights. I get on the treadmill and jog there for a while, then split.

One thing I've noticed is that treadmill jogging is a lot different than road/turf jogging. When it gets warmer, I definitely need to alternate my courses. I live right next to a soccer field right now (despite the fact I've been thinking about moving out of this place). Anyway ...

Currently, I can jog for 35 minutes, averaging between 2.8 - 3.5 miles. I have been alternating between starting and ending with a faster pace than my usual pace I can keep. I usually start at 6.0mph and run for 10 minutes before I cut it down to 5.5mph (my normal pace). I keep that up for as long as I can. I usually program the treadmill to stop after 35:00, so at that timelimit the belt usually slows down and eventually stops. I like to walk for a few minutes at 3.0mph after that run so I can give my body a chance to cool down. Exerting myself like this causes me to break a mad sweat.

After everything is said and done, I can run anywhere from 2.8 - 3.5 miles and burn 300-400 calories. Last year, I was only running outdoors, and only able to jog/walk 2.5 miles around my community and the mall right next to it. I have already been able to make progress with that achievement, and for me, that is immense. Considering the fact that I used to smoke a pack of Camel regular filtered cigs a day, the fact that I am running at all is an achievement.

On the way home from work last week, I got stuck behind this slow moving Ford Escort that was covered in bumper stickers. One of the bumper stickers on the car read "I'm a Druid". Another one read, "Create the world you want to live in." I take wisdom from wherever I can find it. I thought that was a fitting statement for me in so many things I do. I feel as though I truly give myself to my efforts, and in so doing, I can guarantee my success.

Next week, I am going to attempt to run for 40 minutes. Say a prayer for me!

My birthday gig(s)

My blogging seems to be running at least one week behind.



Jenn (Janic's gf) and I @ Janic's place before dinner.

My plan was to meet up with Janic, Jenn, and everyone else interested in joining us for our joint birthday dinner. Other people that were around/in town included my brother and Jenn's friends, Gerilyn and Jesse. We made a plan to just meet up and eat at The Sidecar itself, since it would save us time in travelling and setting up. I called up Adam beforehand, the owner of The Sidecar, and let him know that I was coming down with at least 6 other people, and that we needed to put an ice cream cake in his freezer until after dinner. :D I planned on sitting down to dinner at 7pm. That would give us at least 2 hours before I had to start setting up for the evening.

When my brother got there, he didn't tell me that he was bringing down our friend Rich of errortype.com, which was a total surprise for me. Rich lived with my brother in Williamsburg Brooklyn for a couple years in a fat apartment with a rooftop deck view of the Manhattan skyline.



Me and Rich Pasqua my buddy.

By the way, here's a 180deg panorama of the view from his rooftop back in the summer of 2001. Anyway, other guests that showed up at various parts of the night include T$ Tony Williams of Mid Atlantic Capital & freakin' Shane of Sub Zero Skate Shop in Philly, Brad Koffler & Rob Traczyk who I've known since I was a freshman in highschool, Mike & Pam Wessner + Keith Kelley of ABNA, 2 of my neighbors (one of which has been wanting to see me jam out for a long time), Dan O'Neill a long time musician friend of mine and fellow member of The Con Joltrane Collective (that was an avant garde jazz/poetry project I ran in 1999 that Phil Horwitz participated in), my friend & former roommate from The Synchouse ... Kyle Smith (another Con Joltrane Collective member) and a bunch of other friends and special guests throughout the night. The place was packed.

I wanted for Leafblower to sit in with The Sidecar Allstars for one track between Leafblower's set and The Allstars' set. To accomplish this, we would have needed to get the drums and bass set up first. Unfortunately, Phil wasn't able to show up until around 9:30pm, and at that point I had abandoned any hope of having that stuff set up since I didn't have any help moving drums. I was able to get the carpet down first, but to no avail. Leafblower went on at 10pm sharp without the drums or bass rig in place to have a sit-in jam between the 2 bands.

The first gank in the night happened when Ableton Live decided to quit as I was switching between song projects. Since Live uses Rewire to control Reason, Live unexpectedly quitting meant I had to basically restart my laptop. Situations like that in the past where I've tried to use task manager to kill the Rewire process, then kill Reason and restart everything have resulted in instability. Restarting is the only solution, so I immediately went to do that. My computer decided to be extra cute and pull one of its "I'm going to take my sweet time restarting" acts, which basically forced me to do the 5-second powerbutton salute on that badboy. In its defense, that's the first time I've had some serious audio software problems where my shit was basically locking up. Unfortunately, it was in a live performance setting. :( We were recovered in less that 5 mins, and ready to go. Leafblower pulled out the rest of the set nicely. Janic and I are becoming better at learning to improvise, basically because our gear is so fickle about working correctly. We have since discovered that Live 5 is much more stable and friendly to both our systems. Now, we just need to buy it!





Jammed into the corner.

After Leafblower played, Phil and Jason started to immediately move their stuff in. I took all my gear for Leafblower down and Janic remained hooked up to the PA, all the while we're still hoping we're going to be able to sit in with The Allstars. As Phil was setting up his drums, he asked Jason, "Hey where are my cymbals?" Jason responded with a total gas face, "I left them at my house in Germantown!" Round trip, it was at least 40 minutes. "Can you improvise without them?", he asked Phil. We laughed, and Phil responded, "Dude I'm pretty good at improvising, but I can't play without cymbals!" Jason took off immediately, and Janic hopped back on things. He and I messed around for a little while, me on guitar and him on his laptop, while Phil was attempting to replace the snares on his snare drum.

At about 11:50, Jason was back with the cymbals and parked Kojack style on the corner (The Sidecar is on the corner of 22nd + Christian, so he was basically parked right in front of the front door). We tossed the cymbals on the kit and got started with our usual fare of jazz blues like Blue Monk, All Blues, Nostalgia in Times Square ... and then Chuck hops on.

Moving along, we nervously launched into a reggae version of Freedom Jazz Dance, which I enjoy playing immensely and also sounds good as reggae. So after FJD, we went into Cissy Strut by The Meters. The Meters happen to be one of Adam's favorite bands, so it was about time we bust into a tune and throw the boss a bone. That funk tune was Allure's window of opportunity, and he hit it like a charm.

Allure has never been known to disappoint in the showmanship and entertainer department. He has always had a way of getting the band involved as he interacts with them frequently. Same with the crowd. Someone was quoted as having said, "Allure is great. He runs the show by just sitting back and telling everyone what to do." We did get a chance to play Sex Machine, and just like back in the days of Crushboy, Allure spaced the words ... so we just went into our usual medley of funk cliches by JB, Maceo, Parliament, and whatever felt funky at the time. Allure took some time during this jam to sass me a bit, before you know it, he was trying to give the drummer some. Phil took a nice drum solo, and the Allure gave Jason a solo. Jason ripped it up too. And then it was my turn. "I didn't come out here just to look sexy," he said to me. He had me cracking the fuck up the whole time. We closed it ... pass the peas like we used to do. Yes, Allure, like we used to do.



On the one.



Allure and I, all smiles.

I had one of the best times I can remember. Each and every one of my drunken friends had their drunken happy moment with me that night. Me, and the microphone, of course. Keith came up to the mic and was chanting "Mawkie Peepers!" over and over again amidst a sea of slurs and chuckles (he was, of course, referring to this photo). One guy who is friends with Dan O'Neill came up and wanted me to give him my guitar so he could play a tune. I'm not sure what gave him the impression that we were having an open mic/jam, or that the party was about anyone else but me, but he probably wasn't paying too much attention to all that. People who come out to see live music are sometimes psychotically energized by the live performance. Some people get a serious case of the jawbox, where they come up to you and feel the need to talk your ear off endlessly about this or that thing related to music. Most times, I'm a modest guy who just wants to get in and out of his gig unscathed and hopefully with no beer spilled on his shit. People feel the need to talk to me, and even though I don't always feel like inviting the conversation, sometimes I have to overcome that repulsion and socialize with people just for the sake of being nice. None of that stopped me from having an awesome time.

I think we played for over 90 minutes straight without coming up for air once or even taking a break whatsoever. It was pretty exhaustive, and after it was all through I felt as though I'd given birth. Come to think of it, I feel like that after most good sessions. Spent like you just finished having some long intense sex.

The bottom line is that I really have no agenda in my participation with this trio outside of having fun playing with musicians whom I respect and getting paid to have fun! Even though this seems like a relatively straightforward and attainable goal, the devil is always in the details. Because this place is so small (intimate is the word we euphemistically use), and people are so close to us in proximity to the bar and the rest of the place, people feel like they can just walk up into our space and start interacting with us in the middle of a performance. While I don't expect every last rube out there in the world to understand audience/performer etiquette, I think that people should at least be able to recognize when someone is working and at least attempt to stop themselves from harassing that person. Then again, in this age of a sense of supreme American entitlement, everything is permissible and nothing is taboo. So don't be offended when I curse you out and slap your hand away from the mic the next time you reach for it!

I'm 32 years old now. I'm a grown man!

My trip to Chicago

So I took this nice, long trip to Chicago AKA "The Windy City", and I'm finally getting around to blogging about it! I'm such a slacker.

Being out there for 10 days/9 nights, I knew I would have lots of time to just relax and do nothing with Goo. That was the most exciting part of this trip, to know that we would be able to just relax and be ourselves for a few days. We didn't need to have plans every night, and we mostly just did stuff that normal couples do, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

One thing that made the trip so much more convenient was the fact that we were able to rent a handicap-accessible van for Goo and I to cruise around town. We wanted to reserve the van for 4 days, but because they were nonconsecutive, the van rental company just let us keep the van for a full 8 days! Pretty much from the Saturday after I arrived (2/11) thru to the following Sunday when I left! I would like to definitely thank Wheelchair Getaways for being so kind and letting us keep the van for a full week. Convenience and freedom made the trip so much more enjoyable.

BECAUSE we had the van, we were able to do a whole bunch of things, both mundane and otherwise. The list includes:

- Food shopping. This may sound boring but I LOVE to foodshop, especially with Goo. We get to go to all the snobbish supermarkets like Whole Foods and buy all organic stuffs. Yum.
- Bookstores. I love Borders Books, in particular. It was helpful that both Whole Foods and Borders were right next to each other. I always enjoy browsing the music section in Borders, taking mental notes for downloads later that evening.
- Best Buy. I went to the electronic gadget nerd's bargain paradise and bought a Maxtor 100GB USB2 HDD + a Linksys Wireless 502.11b+g router for Goo (the latter, being for the both of us ;) ). Even though Goo doesn't have a USB2 port on her machine, I plugged the external drive into it and copied all her work over to it so that she has a backup snapshot. This will make her transition to her new computer (whenever that may be) much more efficient.
- Just out to eat or for a drink. It was nice to have the freedom to go out somewhere to eat that wasn't withing walking distance. Goo recommended Las Palmas Mexican restaurant. They make pretty decent guacamole! Now that Goo has made me into a total guacamole snob, I know the fresh from the bad!
- Blick Art Supply. Goo and I browsed the mattes and frames for the painting she made me for my birthday.



The original scan.



The framed photo above my beloved computer area. :)

That, by the way, is probably the best birthday present I've ever been given. Well, I did get one too many shots of tequila for my 30th birthday which made me puke. That was pretty special and memorable. Nah, I think this is better.

Some of the more special things we were able to do include:

- Trip into Chicago to meet my cousin Cathy and her husband Don. Cathy and Don just moved to the Chicago area within the past few months, having bought a multi story condo in Lincoln Park. Goo and I cruised into town on a Saturday evening and went to the famous Geno's East Pizzaria. LEGENDARY Deep Dish pizza! It was a trip to have my cousin Cathy and her man meet Goo! They got along wonderfully, as expected. Geno's East itself is a pretty interesting place; Just about everything in the place is covered with black marker or crayon. The staff actually encourage people to write all over the walls. I thought this was pretty cool, though I didn't try it. Apparently it's a touristy thing to do. Heh. Cruising around with Goo is awesome because we get preferential seating and service. For example, there is usually a line wrapped around the building at Geno's East ... people waiting to be seated. We were breezed right inside, a privelage for which I am grateful because the wind was so strong it was whipping right through my clothes.



Goo and I rolling into town.

I also discovered that I have a passion for photographing ridiculous tricked out hoopties and ghetto mobiles. Maybe it comes from my days (and nights) as a valet. I took a couple pictures of this guy's ghetto chariot.





- Valentines Day! The entire day was superb from beginning to end. After getting our day started, which usually involves having a bite to eat and perhaps having a winkety, we took a trip into The Morton Arboretum. Even though it wasn't exactly the season for it (much more beautiful in the Spring when everything is in bloom), the weather was unseasonably warm and the 30-minute drive through both loops of the Arboretum was quite enjoyable. Goo and I just dorked out in love, listening to mix CDs of love we made for one another on Valentine's Day and being schmoked up in nature. :) I took the time to video tape our entire journey thru the Arboretum ... video footage I ended up using as background filler for Leafblower's gig this past weekend.

Valentine's Day dinner was wonderful! Goo and I have a favorite romantic place we like to dine. It's a Spanish tapas style restaurant called Meson Sabika. For those of you who don't know what Tapas style cuisine is, it's a style where the food is served in smalled portions and designed to be shared amongst everyone at the table. Since the servings are smaller, the prices are generally lower and that allows you to order lots of different things. I love this because I can try several different things on the menu ... some things I want to try and some things that Goo wants to try. She feeds me the curried grapes out of her curried chicken salad dish which is soo freaking tasty! I usually get the portobello mushrooms stuffed with nuts and pesto along with the Quesa de Cabo, which is a goat cheese simmered in a tomato sauce served with pesto toast pieces. OMFG just typing this is making me hungry. And the sangria! Don't forget the sangria!!

- The trip we took to the Art Institute of Chicago was awesome as well. Having handicapped plates is always a nice thing because it usually means we get to park as close to my destination as possible. When travelling in Chicago, this is paramount because the wind will ruin your day, to say the least. We were pretty much right next to the elevator which brought us up to the ground level of the parking garage less than a block from the AIC.

I wish that I was able to take photos of some of the wonderful things we saw in the AIC, but I didn't want to be like the douchebag foreigner who was taking pictures of paintings with his cellphone camera. Not only is it illegal to reproduce/photograph those works w/o permission, I feel it to be blasphemous to be photographing them with such a shitty camera! I wanted to smack that spiky haired rube for sullying the entire vibe.

I did manage to download some images off the internet of some of the nicer, more memorable paintings we saw. Among some of the artists we browsed were Picasso and Monet.



Pablo Picasso - The Old Guitarist

Goo has a poster of this at her house! Note the "cut" lines at the top and the bottom. It's likely this painting has been damaged in least one World War.



Georges Seurat - La Grande Jatte

This piece was rendered using pointilism, a technique that utilized many small dots on the canvas that combine in texture and color to create a large image. This made Goo and I drool. The original size is 6 ft 9 in x 10 ft 8 in! Larger than life.



Claude Monet - Wheat Stacks

This painting is actually one of a series.

Other than all the beautiful Impressionist and Expressionist works we browsed, we also saw lots of Renaissance art that made our mouths water. It's amazing the degree to which artisans of years past strived to make every skin tone, every fold of fabric, every shadow and semitone as perfect and lifelike as possible. After looking at those virtually perfect paintings, it's easy to see how artists from subsequent years rejected the perfection attained in the Renaissance and embraced unconventional techniques of painting and chose non divine subjects for their work. Thus the rise of abstract and secular art!

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we did take a cruise thru the Arms and Armor section of the AIC. I'm truly a closet D&D nerd at heart, and I loved looking at the suits of armor and weaponry from the Medevial era. One thing in particular that stood out to me was a suit of armor made for a young boy. It's shocking to see such an object of warfare fashioned for such a young boy, but one must remember that these boys were knights in training! Go go conquest of the heathens!

- Dinner with Goo, Ashley, and Antoine. I managed to reconnect with an old childhood friend from my hometown via MySpace. Antoine is doing very well for himself living in Chicago, and has managed to buy himself a condo and car within the city limits. We met up with Ashley around the corner from her apartment in Lincoln Park, parked under the El tracks, and had a little sessh before going out to dinner. I called Antoine and told him to meet us at this one Italian restaruant. I was trying to remember the last time I saw Antoine before this, and if memory serves, it was 1999 at the earliest. It was great to see him again. He joined the 3 of us for dinner and we got caught up on many things. Antonie shared with us a story about his newborn baby girl and his estranged girlfriend. After dinner we enjoyed a Bailey's and coffee before leaving. I went with Antoine to get the van and we picked the girls up again, only to drive back to the parking spot under the El and schmoke up once more. Antoine told me something interesting about the El. Once, he put a DB (decibel) meter under the El tracks to measure exactly how loud the trains were. He reported to me that the express trains put out 110db! That's too freaking loud! 120db is the loudness of an engine off a 747, loud enough to make you lose your hearing permanently! Talk about noise pollution! Antoine told me that he usually covers his ears when the train passes. Being an audio engineer himself, I valued that perspective on the trains and living in Chicago. After telling Antoine I was in fact looking to move to Chicago to be closer to Goo, he offered for me to crash at his place until I was able to get on my feet. I just might take him up on that offer, especially if I happen to get an offer I can't refuse. That offer is very generous of him.



Antoine and I after dinner

When I move there, I know I will have access to people who are both working sound engineers as well as musiciand and electronic artists through Antoine. He's pretty heavily connected into the scene and even messes around with some circuitbending!

Aside from all the special and mundane things Goo and I did together, the most important thing of all is that we just got to *be* with one another. I really didn't care what we did as long as we were able to spend quality time together. Anything at all would be pleasurable, as long as she is there with me. I spent a lot of time scouring the internet, looking for job opportunities and signing up for Chicago-based headhunter agencies and job recruiters. I also did some research into some of the larger employers in the Chicagoland area. I am focused heavily on moving there, just so I can be closer to this woman for whom I have completely fallen head over heels.



Do I look happy? I don't ever remember being happier.

Next time, Spring! The Aboretum will be in full bloom, Chicago will be unburied from snow and back to life. The city is most beautiful during the warmer months. It reminds me a lot of New York City without the smell of urine and the elitist attitudes. I love it there.