At 3AM this morning, the NYC Transit system--the subways and buses--shut down, as thousands of MTA employees walked off their jobs.

So, I'll be biking in.  Unless it snows, you cannot stop me. 

You can't even hope to contain me.

Bike this.

On our way, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

All I can think of is...



Its 106 miles to Chicago...  We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.



Hit it.



New Orleans, here we come.

Someone very sweet sent me some going away popcorn today.  :)

This is obviously the before picture, and to be honest, it came out so good, I totally forgot to take a picture of it after it came out of the oven.

My grandparents and I used to make pizzas all the time when I was younger.  Both my and my grandfather both liked anchioves and we'd eat them straight out of the can.  We'd also eat a good deal of the cheese before it got to the pizza as well... you know, to test it.

Ingredients:

My homemade sauce with garlic, fresh basil, oregano

Grated locatelli romano (grated the block in a food processor)

lightly salted mozzerella

green peppers

olives

sundried tomatos

anchiovies

mushrooms

onions

hot red pepper

On Saturday, I'll be heading down to New Orleans for a week on a community service trip sponsored by the Fordham alumni office.

I could have probably just ended the post right then and there and you'd have a good sense of what that all means.

And actually, you'd have just as good of an idea of what that means as I do.  The reality of this trip is that contact with the place we're volunteering at has been understandably difficult, and the scope of the damage there is so great that its hard to say specifically what we'll be doing.  I mean, when a city nearly gets wiped off the map, where do you start?

Well, our group will be starting (and staying) at Project Lazarus, which is a home for people with AIDS--the first residential home in New Orleans to address the need for homeless people living with AIDS.   None of the residents have been able to move back in yet, so basically we will be restoring the home back to a livable condition to help them reopen in the next few weeks. 

I will definitely be using this blog as a fundraising mechanism for PL in the coming weeks, but I decided that I'd go down there first to be able to share the story firsthand before I do anything like that.  So, I'll be going down there with my cellphone and video camera.  I have no idea if I'll be able to e-mail any of the photos, but if I can, I'll be photoblogging while I'm down there.  Videos will come up after I've returned on the 21st, so stay tuned.  I'm sure it promises to be some really interesting and emotional footage.

Am I nervous?  Not really.  I decided to clear my head of any expectations, because I know I'm going down there with a great team and whatever we find down there, we'll do what we can to help and go through it together.

Wish us luck!

I'm standing on the subway again.  Rein Raus is blasting in my headphones.  There's something amusing to me about overlaying all of these Brooklyn bound commuters with their su doku, sneakers from under their desks, and their copies of the News or the Post with German industrial music. 

Bam was the word of the day today, by the way.  Whenever  something good happened, I'd turn to Kerri and day bam.  Bam!  I even texted her bam after a good lunch on the way back to the office.  I'm sure she thinks I'm nuts.

Evanecense is on now... Perhaps Rammstein could use some female vocals, too.

By the way, why isn't mining automated?  Its 2006, and yet we still send people deep into the earth to pull rocks out of it.  Seems like something that should be done with robots.  Build some robots and give all these guys jobs running the robots via remote control from the surface.

First impressions are tough because you always think of them as "only" impressions.  I see it with entrepreneurs.  Some entrepreneurs are confident that you've done your homework and that you'll  follow up with questions, but others try to squeeze every single tidbit of info into a meeting that its a little bit overwhelming.  I used to be that way on dates.  I thought that if I could just tell my whole story, they'd like me, but getting the whole story in is hard.  "Wait...did did I tell you I mentor students?  I play dodgeball, and marzapan...  I like marzapan, oh oh, and I go to the philharmonic, too.  Did I mention that?"   I'm sure going out with me must have been like drinking from a firehose.  You live and learn.

I'm really warm in this fleece, but with the iPod, its just too complicated to take off right now.  I bit my tongue yesterday and it still feels weird.  Its amazing that doesn't happen more often.

So in the last three days, I found out that two of my ex's are getting married.  Actually, one is already married.  This year is going to be my five year college reunion...  I guess that kind of thing is going to come up a lot in 2006.

They say you're not supposed to make this list too long, but I'd rather be ambitious, try a bunch, and then *hopefully* be able to say I accomplished at least a handful of them by the end.

So, here goes:

1. I will see my parents in person at least once a week.  This shouldn't be hard to do since they're in the neighborhood, but sometimes its easy to take that for granted.
2. I will try to organize my life around several small groups of friends.  Evites with 150 people on them do not constitute friendship and, too many times, I've tried to "merge the worlds" by inviting everybody to everything for the sake of my own convenience.  I want to pick out like three or four groups that I really want to see more regularly and try and plan something with a natural set of people that makes sense.
3. I will begin to code.  Its kind of frustrating to have all these ideas never be able to even begin attempt any of them, so I just bought myself "MySQL+PHP for Dummies."
4. I will go to church twice a month.  This is as much for my interest in participating in my local community as it is anything else.  Every Sunday not only isn't practical for me, its not something I feel like I want.  Its just that I'd like to have a stronger bond with my community and, to some extent, I do miss the whole idea of a spiritual community that I had when I was at Fordham.
5. I will learn about my local government.  I'm going to look up my Community Board, go to some meetings, maybe even blog about local Bay Ridge issues. 
6. I will be more empathetic.  Sometimes, I can be a bit of an emotional bull in a china shop, and so I think one thing I can work on this year is to try and think about others first in terms of my reaction and interaction with them.
7. I will go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.  New bedtime: 12:30AM.  Wakeup time: 7AM.
8. I will make more of an explicit effort to learn from those more experienced than me. I've been very lucky to work with some great people, and I've always preached a more active approach to one's network, but there are definitely a few people whose brains and experience I need to pick over a little more.
9. I will keep my inbox empty and better organize my contacts.  Last week, I spent two full days taking my inbox down from 3000 down to about 300.  Most of the 300 are organized by action items, like "deals" which get logged, reviewed and deleted (i.e. they go away) or "save" which means the info in that e-mail is supposed to go somewhere better than my inbox.
10. I will cook more and broaden my recipe base. I need to pick out like 30 recipes or so to put into a little bit of a rotation and have the ingredients always on hand.  I think I got a little lazy in the past year in terms of going out to eat, and spending more than I wanted to for food that isn't as good as I can make it. 

Link: In Pursuit of Unhappiness - New York Times.

"Sociologists like to point out that the percentage of those describing themselves as "happy" or "very happy" has remained virtually unchanged in Europe and the United States since such surveys were first conducted in the 1950's. And yet, this January, like last year and next, the self-help industry will pour forth books promising to make us happier than we are today. The very demand for such books is a strong indication that they aren't working."

Great article...   reminds me of Debi (Minnie Driver)'s quote from Grosse Pointe Blank,

"Everybody's coming back to take stock of their lives. You know what I say? Leave your livestock alone."

I'm usually a fantastic sleeper.

But, once in a while, I just have these odd nights where nothing works and I putz around my place unable to even begin to think about sleeping until way too late.

Its 3:47 AM.

I was going to bike to work tomorrow, but its going to rain.  Sucks, because that's kind of what I was up to in my workout cycle.  I guess I kind of need the sleep now.  Perhaps I'll go at lunch.

Checking AIM...   Tim's on... but he's ALWAYS on.  Guy never sleeps.  He's hilarious, though.  I almost don't want to start chatting with him because then I'll actually have a reason to stay awake.  Jarah's on, too...   but she's on the west coast, so its not so late there.  I don't honestly know what time zone Tim is in... he's on a farm in Saskachawan somewhere.

I had Starbucks with Ken this morning.  Nice guy...  I seem to get along well with Canadians. 

Damn, I don't have one single interesting thing to write about.

My leg is tapping...  it does that sometimes.  Annoys Kerri, I'm sure.

This whole sleep thing is kind of like how we need a leap year every four years.  Turns out it takes 365 and 1/4 days for the earth to go around the sun, so to catch up, we need to have this extra day in there.  Well, I guess I'm on some kind of weird 23 hour day thing where by the time the end of the month comes, I don't need a nights worth of sleep.

Why am I blogging?

This is lame.

Echo. Echo. Echo.

Alright...  I'm going to just lay in bed, even if I don't fall asleep.

You know, I didn't want to put up a Christmas tree this year, but my parents moved so they needed somewhere to put up theirs.  Admittedly, it kind of makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I see it.  Its the first thing I turn on when I get back home.  I may just keep it up all year.

If the human race dies out, I think we are all pretty sure that it will somehow be the result of our own undoing.

Pollution?  Global warming?  Nuclear war?  Perhaps...  But so many of these issues come down to one fundamental flaw.

Deep down, we all think we are right.

Its just not true.  It can't be.  Some of us are wrong, just like we're all not above average, too.  Oh, and many of us aren't  special either.  Your mom lied to you.  Sorry. 

What's even worse, though, is that our righteousness is killing our connections to other people.  Sociologists have seen a prolonged and steady decline in group participation in all forms.  We don't truly seek out groups of others because we don't feel like other people can offer us anything we don't already have or tell us anything we don't already know. 

Even in the blog world...  This isn't about community.  We like to say it is, but if it was, egalitarian message boards would have worked just fine.  No, we needed a medium whereby our own thoughts were big and monopolized the screen, and anything anyone else had to say got marginalized down at the bottom, requiring a click to view.  Why do we think most of the blogging platforms haven't integrated the "publish a comment as a post" thing that elevates our readers on par with ourselves? 

Probably because not enough people are asking for it.

Surely if they can find ways to stream 30 MB podcasts into an RSS feed, reblogging a comment can't be a huge technological hurdle.

Its bad enough that this problem of being right prevents us from being good listeners.  It causes us to carry around a lot of spite and animosity, too... for people that we should really be better to.

When I was in college, I thought my girlfriend had a crush on this kid out in Ohio that she met on a community service trip.  Everyone seemed to like this kid and, man, whenever I heard his name, it drove me up a wall.  I just to just hate the sound of his name, let alone the thought of this girlfriend stealing do-good dick. 

So when her connection to Ohio wound up becoming a job opportunity, and she took, it, this became an even bigger obsession.  I went out there for her birthday once and decided I was going to throw her a surprise party with her coworkers.  I decided the best way to "combat" this Ohio kid was to be the better guy and actually invite him to it, since they were actually friends.

Of course, I dreaded meeting him, but you wanna know something?

He was harmless.

Totally harmless.

In fact, he was so harmless that the two of us actually wound up kind of hanging out that night and I have to say I actually liked the guy.  He was a pretty cool guy.

Big bad Colin.  Ha!

All those mental and emotional cycles wasted over something that was all perception, not reality.

The point?  The point is that we need to stop dropping stuff like this.  We need to figure out our visceral reactions, our unwarrented animosities and start trying to figure out why.  Chances are, its not even the other person's fault... its your own internal issue.  So, you keep trying to duke it out with them, but, in the end, the problem isn't with them, its with you.  Go sit in room alone for a while and work it out by yourself.  Come back to us when you're done.

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead ... only try to realize the truth."

"What truth?"

"There is no spoon."

"There is no spoon?"

"Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."

1. You can drive down the block looking for a spot at 50 miles an hour, because the location of every fire hydrant and driveway in a 20 square block radius is hardwired into your brain.
2. You act like little nicks and dents in your bumper don't bother you, but they secretly tear at your soul.
3. You can hear the difference between the sound of a car door closing in an empty car versus one with people in it...from three blocks away.
4. Your car has an alarm, but you have no idea what it sounds like, because you are never parked on your own street.
5. You believe there are too many fire hydrants in your neighborhood, and you would gladly trade off the chance of getting out of your house alive in a fire for a few extra spots.
6. Empty parking spaces look suspicious to you, especially if you've been driving around for less than ten minutes.  You approach them with caution.
7. You tell out of town guests to stop at your house or apartment first, so you can come down and drive around with them looking for a spot.  After the third time they slow down for a hydrant, you reach across, open their door, push them out of the moving car, and take over.  You are parked 4 minutes and 3 miles later.
8. You look for jobs with hours that fit your alternate side of the street parking schedule.
9. You are not Jewish, but you know all the holidays.
10. You could park an Impala in a thimble if you really needed to.

Big news!  I put a bid on a co-op on Monday night that got accepted on Tuesday, and now we're going to contract on it!  This will be my first real estate purchase.  Its very exciting.  What's also exciting is that I got a good enough deal that a car also fits into my budge.  Mustang GT Convertable here we come!  So, apologies to Rubel for getting up and walking out during his blog conference panel, but I was getting the news of my bid's acceptence right then and there.  Six months ago, I thought I was going to stay with GM, go up with them to Connecticut, and go to Stanford in the fall.  Now, I'm working at Union Square Ventures, and moving to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.   Just goes to show you how much plans can change.  I guess its what keeps you on your toes.
Its kind of strange to imagine that I'm moving back close to home.  I grew up in Bensonhurst, which is right next to Bay Ridge.  Basically, its part of my home turf.  I played baseball in Bay Ridge, and I'm moving not too far away from Gino's.  My parents are excited because now they have someone to watch their new dog once they get it.  (Yes, they realized they couldn't live without a dog anymore after having Puba for almost 15 years.)  Check out my Google Map of where I'll be, assuming all the legal stuff works out and the co-op board approves me.  (How could they not like me?  Should I show them my blog so they can get to know me?)   Details to come on the housewarming party...

Link: NY1: NY 1 To Go.

In a definite sign of progress, mediators who met separately with the transit union and the MTA all morning, announced Thursday that both sides have agreed to resume talks while the union takes steps to return members to work, thereby ending the strike.

Representatives from the union and the MTA unexpectedly returned to the Midtown Grand Hyatt early Thursday morning, where they met separately with mediators from the state Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

No formal negotiations have been scheduled, but mediator Richard Curreri said the executive board of the TWU is expected to vote on the issue of sending members back to work as talks resume.

Do you ever bump into anyone on the street and have to go through that ackward moment where you're not sure whether or not your relationship is actually worthy of a stop?

Yesterday, I walked by somebody I went to Fordham with going in the opposite direction, and neither of us skipped a beat...  kept walking as we said hello and how are you.

This morning, I ran into another Ram in front of the gym, but this time both of us were on our bikes.  Not only did we both stop, but we both got off our bikes and chatted for a minute.

At least both times we were on the same wavelength.

No one wants to be caught on the short end of the stick of that, where you stop and its obvious the other person was going to keep going.

Its like a card game, where showing your hand can mean a lot of social awkwardness.

Anyway... so now I might have a biking buddy if this strike continues.  HM, if you want to bike back to Brooklyn later, drop me an e-mail.

So all these people were clogging up my bike route this morning, including Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.  What does a Borough President do anyway?

Link: Coat Idol.

Selection   Votes 1) New University Coat (with Thinsolate) 42% 20 2) Columbia Men's Leather Bib Hipster Jacket 8% 4 3) Kenneth Cole Reaction Wool Peacoat 17% 8 4) Kenneth Cole REACTION  "Boxcar" Coat 17% 8 5) Andrew Marc's Marc New York 8% 4 6) Leather Car Coat 8% 4 48 votes total Poll results are subject to error.  Pollhost.com does not pre-screen the content of polls created by Pollhost customers.

I just had an unsettling experience.

As I was leaving the our office to walk down to the train at Union Square, I spotted a man fall down as he was stepping onto the sidewalk.