New York Update

The city is fucking busy. I always thought that, as the weather warmed up, more people would choose to walk. As such, the subway would then be less crowded. Nope. That's not the cae, whether it be tourists (at 8:30?!), families (damn strollers), or the usually commuters (damn newspapers), something or someone is jabbing something into you. Thankfully, my commute is two stops. At times, it feels like two stops too many.

The Park. This time, the Park does not refer the the bar/lounge that's awesome. The Park is now the park that everyone knows and loves: Central Park. It's freaking great. It's like another world inside the city. Went for a run. Nice calm area (when you finally get to said park). Our run that was supposed to be harder than it was. Nevertheless, I am depressingly out of shape, so this will be required.

Plus, there are a lot of people. We all know, people watching is the new rage in a big city. Especially in New York. Everyone is running the park, young, old, men, women, big, small, smelly, etc. It's nice. Will this be the beginning of the New York City Marathon training? It's one thing on my bucket list...

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Song Of The Moment: None.
Comment: Stupid computer crashed. Listening to boring old music.

Pretty Kind of Sure They Took All Of It

These past few weeks have been a rude awakening in the global world.

This time last year, I found myself seeing only red and white Canadian. Since then, my travels have included Europe and settling in New York. Now, I have since completed my US Federal taxes, NY State taxes, New York City taxes (really?!).

In trolling for information to find what very select, painful group I fit into, I stumbled upon a number of blogs and such of people extolling their own financial goals, dreams and aspirations.

There were many that had their savings goals, debt goals and other financial indicators proudly posted to track progress. If this many people had surely taken the time to plot their financial arc, why is North America (the United States in particular) so vulnerable. Yes, North Americans are tempted by shiny things, but all in all, do we buy that many of them? If so, how are there so many blogs tracking their finances? I'm not even entirely sure of my point here.

Personally, I'm very scared as to what camp I fall into. Am I a big spender or not? It terrifies me to run an expense report on the last 3 months of my life to see, in fact, where all the money has gone.

After doing my taxes, I can't be sure that it hasn't just all gone to the governments of Uncle Sam and Joe Canuck.

I swear, the next one will make more sense

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Song Of The Moment: John Mayer - Say
Comment: New York Metro recently called John Mayer the artist you'd love to hate, but can't. On a personal level, I remember when Continuum came out and I didn't want to like it. But I did, and I enjoy it probably the most outside of his acoustic album. The same applies for this song: I don't like it now. I'll probably end up loving it. The story of my John Mayer fandom. Always late.

NYC Night

Tonight was interesting.

It's almost 4 AM, so it's going to be short and sweet. No bar type story. At least not as I plan this entry in my head. If my fingers end up typing out the full story, so be it.

To lead off: Kill me now. Vince Carter a leader? Really? (Channeling his reaction to the MVP chants of Chris Bosh in last year's playoffs)

Second hole: We went to a bar called Fat Black Pussy Cat. I thought it was funny. More interestingly, the McDonald's at the corner has 6 McNuggets for $1. You read that correctly. After the bar, I prompted bought 12 nuggets. The deal was so good, I had to double check by asking the poor wait staff serving the many drunkards.

Third spot: Skinny jeans + men = something not right. While enjpying the tasy morsels of 'chicken', I was people watching. There was a disturbing number of New York males who are on the whole skinny jean fashion trend. First, not a fan. To make matters worse, some wanted to maintain their street cred by wearing the jeans low. So, in summary, we have these men, wearing tight jeans low. This results in the tightness showing off the lower body while the lowered jean position allows them to show their underwear choice. Which is fine, if it didn't look so weird, boxers all bunched out of the pants, since they had no place to go, given the tightness of the area below.

Cleanup: West 4th is an awesome area. It truly is one of the areas where the city never sleeps. Irony: Walking two blocks east to try and catch a cab, we hit an area that was absolutely quiet. The city changes dramatically in a number of blocks.

5th spot: NCAA tournament is not as fun without a bracket.

6th: Leafs suck. Again, I am not a hater of the Blue and White, but rather the team as it is currently constructed. As usual, I will bring up the glory days of Pat Quinn and their 'defense' consisted of CuJo with no help. Those were funs games to watch.

7,8,9: Fuck it, I'm sleeping

Tal

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Song Of The Moment: Augustana - Sweet and Low
Comment: I can't wait for the album. And when they come to NYC. This time, I will not miss the concert.

Work On The Weekends...

... pretty much equals a 16 day week.
The problem is not:

• the disappearance of all physical activity


• the lack of proper nutrition


• the propensity to drink


• the now mythical social life


• the unhealthy dependence on caffeine

Instead, it's the never ending stench of work that is around you. You can't carry on a real conversation without drifting your thought back to work. I was making a todo list in the shower. I woke up this morning thinking of different ways to improve what I currently have.

I am not bitching about work. In fact, I quite like it. What I had never expected to experience was the college/university phenomenon known as "bringing work home". Hopefully, this project will have shed a lot of light on work/life balance that I once laughed at.

On a more amusing note, I love New York weather. First, any snow that might fall will melt in less than 4 hours. No matter the severity of the storm. Essentially New York is a giant heater with all the buildings, subways and vehicles. This means that snow is reduced to a rumor. Sure, there is still falling from the sky; but the evidence is largely gone. Unfortunately, this negates one huge advantage of living in an apartment: no shoveling. There is nothing to brag about when the infrastructure takes care of all the snow.

On an unrelated note, I have yet to board this season.

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Song Of The Moment: Michael Stipe - In the Sun Feat. Chris Martin
Comment: I stumbled upon this while on the interweb. It's so different from the original (which is still awesome), but I find myself playing this a lot more.

Work

Work is a funny thing. It's like the saying about women: "Can't live with them, can't live without them"

Work might well be a woman. You don't have a job, you are a bum and it sucks. You have a decent job and it sucks your essence. Maybe it's just me. I think about my job constantly. Is that even healthy? Personally, I'd rather have a job than no job; too much work then no work. Of course, I'm also crazy.

Within work, there are the lulls. The days that never end. The days that don't have enough minutes. The days with too many minutes. The deadlines that come too soon. The projects that go nowhere through no fault of your own. The projects that go nowhere because of you.

That's what makes life, and your career, interesting.

If you like it.

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Song Of The Moment: The Postal Service - Such Great Heights
Comment: Damn UPS commercials. Your music and whiteboard have me rapt at attention. Too bad I don't ship anything.

That CD

Happy Chinese New Year.

This post is about that CD. Or those CDs. Or, those songs.

This is about that set of music in your collection that doesn't get airplay because you played them out once in your lifetime. Maybe twice. You can't bear to get rid of them because, well, they brought back an entire era of your life back. Yet, for that very reason, it doesn't not rank high on the playlist. Who wants to always look back. Live moves forward after all.

This morning, as I was late for work again, I randomly picked a song to set the mood for the day as well as the 'getting ready' stage of my day. Ironically, I was humming some Dashboard Confessional, and I thought, "Hey! I recently got my hands on Remember To Breathe." So I played it.

Simply by loading Dashboard, the entire theory came into focus. There are too many songs. They fit in several categories:

1) All Time Greats - songs that should be at the fingertips. There should be like maybe 10-20 songs here. Among my songs, Wonderwall always stands up.

2) Dominant In An Era - Songs that you thought would be an all time great, but didn't stand the test of time. These are also the songs that bring you back to said era. - Dru Hill's How Deep Is Your Love For Me.

3) Situational - The Gym Song (D12 - Fight Music). The Running Song (Real McCoy - Runaway). The Basketball Song (The Game - This Is How We Do). The First Date Song (John Mayer - My Stupid Mouth). Etc etc. My favourite situational song: my Van Wilder song: Michelle Branch's You Got Me.

4) Current - The current hits that you hope make it to all time great, but you'd settle for dominant in the era. Right now, that song is Fat Joe's I Won't Tell

There are other categories. It's 1 AM. I only think of the theory. Fleshing it out and putting is on paper is hard. Let's call this The Song Categorization Theory.

I wonder why this happens. Some songs end up being timeless (U2's With Or Without you), others speak of a very specific time (Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby). The same song might mean different things to different people. Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape is my happy-go-lucky song while I know of very specific people who would gladly pay money, real money, to punch me in the face when they hear this song.

I KNOW this is why I have a song of the moment at the bottom of my blog. Going through the archives of previous generations of posts, I see that my musical tastes have changed, ebbed and flowed. Maybe it's a reflection of my personality. Maybe it's a reflection of my mood. Maybe I'm just too tired to comprehend what music means to me.

Hi-Tek has a great song called "Music For Life" (with an insane beat.. it has a flute!), where the artists try to express what music is to them.

Unbelievable. A post about songs that you love but don't listen to any more because a whole speech about what music means to me. Next post, I want to fine tune this whole music categorization.

Just because I can.

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Song Of The Moment: Chris Brown - With You
Comments: BET recently crowned him as music's #4 best dancer. And named James Brown 1 and MJ 2. And Janet #5. What kind of list is this. No list of this nature can have Michael Jackson at anything but #1. He brought us the moonwalk.

Busted!

I've been found!

I can't believe someone found this. Heck, I can't believe I'm still being linked to by anyone. Nevertheless, when reminded, I realize that I used to really enjoy posting on here. As mentioned earlier, everything here will be drama free so nothing about anyone will be posted. Yes, it's boring. Too bad. You all know who you are that ruined it.

So, I see that I lasted posted in August. This corresponds to the exact time that work took over my life:

August - October: Training. i.e. boot camp i.e. crazy work that took years off my life. Oh, and the excessive drinking while getting to know the city.

October - December: Work. Work. Party. Work.

January: Detox. Work. Work.

I think I need a work detox.

The best part about my job is the cultural benefits. I get to go to all these museums. The little kid in me has begged to go to the dino-museum time and time again. It's awesome.

Wow. That was a boring post.

Too bad.

A bad post is better than no post at all! (I wonder if that's true)

T

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Song Of The Moment: Fat Joe Feat. J. Holiday - I Won't Tell
Comment: I swear, I won't tell.