So yeah, my wallet got stolen from the Boathouse.  I've had quite a streak of luck there lately.  First, I lost my digital camera... and to be honest, I'm not 100% sure where the heck it is, so I won't say it get stolen there.  But today, someone definately got my lock open at one of our locks and made off with my wallet.  To be honest, our locks are pretty crappy, so, in the future, its probably better to bring you own lock.  But still, I've never had a problem there before.  There are so many volunteers down there, that we notice sketchy characters right away.  Taino suggested that maybe someone else got the wrong locker and cracked open the lock thinking it was their locker.   Then, seeing a wallet just sitting there, they just made a spur of the moment grab.  Punks.

The funny thing is, they left my Treo 650 just sitting there.    They had no interest in a $600+ phone.  Instead, they took my wallet, which had $80 and all of my credit cards.  Well, you gotta assume I'm going to cancel the cards... and if you just want the cash, just take the cash and leave everything else.  Morons.

Everyone that I told was more concerned about my driver's license.  I guess, to most people, they'd rather incur a substantial monetary loss than have to go to the DMV.

Anyway, I just cancelled and reordered all my cards and stuff.  In the meantime, I have no cash, save for my change jar... so I'll be making a trip to Commerce Bank and using their little coin machine.  Maybe I'll have enough to feed myself, because I'm temporarily living in my friend's apartment until my closing on Thursday and she sure has hell doesn't have any food in the house.  If anyone else wants to bring me food, call my cell.

What really sucks, though, is the fact that I lost three items in my wallet that were really important to me.  One, I had one of those little plastic funeral cards from my grandfather.  Second, I had a 10 year old generic blue gum wrapper that my high school girlfriend gave me on the first day we ever met.  I know that's cheesy, and the girl hates me now, but I guess I'm just sentimental.  And third, I had a five pound note that was a momento from my trip to London a few years ago. 

Thieves.  They should be shot and then forced to tag for the rest of their lives with Yahoo MyWeb 2.0.   

Today was a major breakthrough in terms of my photography skills.  Jeff the Intern, put this photo in your pipe and smoke it:

The funny thing is, this butterfly wasn't even that impressive in person.  He (or she... I didn't check) wasn't even that big--maybe about an inch and a half across.  But, I got the camera right up in his grille and snapped one off.  I'd say it is probably the best photo I've ever taken.  I guess you just have to take a lot to get a good one.  I just bought a new memory card for the camera, so be prepared for a lot more.  I'm going to start posting all the originals on a site.  I've seen Ofoto.  Valarie Cooper suggested Snapfish.  Does anyone else have any suggestions?

So, yesterday, we basically tooled around the city.  I think it was just as much an excuse for me to take lots of new photos as it was to explore the city.  One thing I'm realizing about taking pictures...   it gives the best moments of your life a longer shelf life.  We all have boring or sad times in our lives, but when you flip back through the pictures you took of the best parts, it tends to dwarf the times you'd rather forget.

First stop of the day was the Haight-Ashbury district... SF's equivilent to the Village I suppose.  I only took this picture to show that I was there, but I didn't feel comfortable snapping off a lot of pics like a tourist in and around the tattoo shops and used clothing stores.  I felt like they could smell my recent vote cast for the red team and didn't want to get the scarlet "R" branded on me.  (Although, if I wanted an R branded on me, there's a shop there that would do it.)

These pictures are from Buena Vista park.  The church is St. Ignatius Church at USF.  Gotta get the Jesuit stuff in somehow.  The first pic was a close second I think for the pic of the day.

So, as we're leaving the park, I spot this random mound thing.  I was curious, so we went over there for a closer look.

There's a sign that labels this thing as the "Randall Museum."  I'm not sure I understand exactly how this is a museum, but it was fascinating nonetheless.

I took pictures from the top of the "Randall Museum".  These were difficult to take, because I'm pretty damn scared of heights.  The good thing is, I'm better with looking out  than I am with down.  This is where I took the butterfly pic.

This is the Palace of Fine Arts...  the architecture is impressive, but the turtles proved equally as interesting...  for 10 minutes, Carrie my patient tour guide and I watched one the closest turtle to us in this pic get a worm off his  back leg.  For you and I, a worm on our leg isn't a big issue, but imagine if you were a turtle.  You can't reach your leg with any other part of your body and you can't really shake it out too quickly to dislodge the little critter.  It took a while, but he finally kicked the worm off. 

I have more pics, but its taking too long to upload.  Note to Six Apart...    you should let people post multiple pictures at a time.  The interface is really good and it lets you cut and paste very quickly once its uploaded, so I wouldn't mind being able to just upload the whole group of pics I plan to post at once upfront.  For now, I'll finish with this one.  I don't know who these people are, but they were sitting by the water in Sausalito and I thought it made a good Hallmark moment--certainly picture worthy.  Sigh.

Man, I am starving...and I had a smoothie before I left.  It didn't really take.

The subway is really crowded.  Hopefully it won't be too long before I can start biking again.  Seems that we're having our February weather in March, though.

Onlt five or six weeks until softball.  I went to the cage at Chelsea Piers yesterday.  This is going to be a breakout softball year I think.  This is probably the first year that I've fully embraced the idea that I'm not a hardball player anymore and that, from here on in, its softball.  I even bought a new glove, which needs some working in.

There's a couple in front of me chatting... This has to be one of the most irratating pair of individuals I've ever seen.  They're trying to talk in some kind of code so not everyone can hear them, because he's standing and she's sitting.  Obviously, they haven't really practiced their code, because they're not getting it.

"...Do you mean the first thing or the second thing?"

"What second thing?  The thing from the other person involved?"

"No, your second thing...from before....you know..."

*Smacks hand on head.*

I'll bet you they're not even talking about anything remotely interesting.

No one seems to notice that I'm wearing two different sneakers.

It was an accident.  I had two pairs at work and grabbed a mismatching pair...  I'm just lucky I didn't get two lefts, or, even worse, two rights.

Last summer, my friend Anna and I went for a drive...aimlessly.  We wound up heading in the direction of Greenwood Lake, which is where my grandmother (mom's mom) had a house for like 35 years.  That house used to be the center of all our family stuff over the summer, particularly when my brothers were younger.  Well, after my grandfather passed away, she sold the house--probably too quickly--and hasn't been up since.  Its been about 7 years or so.  I wound up taking pictures of the house and she got very upset, but in a good way.  She wanted to go up to see it and I promised I'd take her.

So, on Saturday, me and my 87 year old grandmother--my favorite person in the whole world--trekked up Route 17 and spent the afternoon in Greenwood Lake, NY.  We went back to the house, whose address has been changed to 22 Julie Lane (it used to just be on HR1) and stopped out front.  There wasn't anybody home, but either way, Nana felt a little embarrassed ringing the bell, so she just sat out front.  Its really well taken care of, which she was happy to see. 

What was kind of disappointing, and I wrote about this last year, was that the beach/dock area by our little community clubhouse was in total disarray.  It seems to have been abandoned.  The dock is falling into the water and the stairs, which were all broken up last year, have now totally disappeared.  All that's left are these rocks which seem to have slid onto the dock.  Its a real shame.

Afterwards,  we went to Le Bistro II.   This place needs some better advertising, because I had a hard time finding it on the web.  The food is pretty good and the portion sizes were even better.  I hope they do better business than when we were in there.  I'd definitely go back there again, and if you're in the Greenwood Lake, NY area, stop by.  Have the seafood Fra Diavlo plate with the clams and mussels.  The mussels were HUGE.  I've never seen mussels that big (except on myself, of course...  ba dump bump.)  Nana took me out for dinner.  I snapped off a few pics when she wasn't looking. 

It was a great day, but also a little sad.  Our family doesn't get together anymore the way we used to up at the Lake.  I'm debating getting all the cousins I don't see together for something.  I have about 25 cousins and second cousins that I have near zero interaction with.  I think a few of them are living in the city, too.  Perhaps I can get them on linkedin.com

I spent the past weekend in Vermont with Zog Sports--skiing mostly, but I did take a snowboarding lesson yestersday morning.  I didn't have much time to take any pictures or  videos.  Plus, my battery died out before my friend got a chance to get my mildly successful snowboard run down the bunny hill.  However, I was able to pull a still from the video of my attire:

I didn't yell, "Coooobraaa!" don't the hill, but I was tempted.

We skiied at Okemo and Killington.  I liked Okemo's trails much better.  It was quieter and I felt like the trails were better insulated from the winds.  Killington was like skiing in the artic.  Being at the top of the mountain with the winds sweeping up made me feel like I was on some ill fated expidition where I'd have to figure out which one of the Zoggers I'd have to eat first.

Okemo had great powder on Saturday and if you get a chance, do the Rum Run.  Its dinky on the map, but its longer than it appears and the scenery is really fantastic.  Its not a hard trail at all, but its probably one of the nicest winter scenes I've been in.

Snowboarding was alright, but I'm a skiier.  Legs need to be free, and so after my lesson, I switched and went right back to skiing.

It was a great trip and I'll definitely be going on the ZogSports ski trips in the future. Here's a pic of the Zoggers on the bus:

So I'm home waiting for furniture to arrive from Levitz (aka Furniture.com).   They called yesterday with an automatic service to confirm delivery between 8AM and 12PM.

lalalalala...    waiting around...  *twiddles thumbs*

12:00 PM.

12:10 PM.

12:20 PM.

12:30 PM.

Time to call Customer Service.

They have no idea, but they e-mail the warehouse (why not just call?) to ask where the order is. 

The trucking company calls me back and says that the warehouse postponed the order.  Mind you, the furniture is in the warehouse, so I have no idea why they would do that.  Call Levitz back.

Levitz keeps me on hold for 25 minutes (I can't believe I held on that long, but I had nothing else to do).   Basically, for no apparent reason, someone along the chain--the warehouse, the trucking company, etc. decided I didn't really need my furniture today.  It just didn't go on the truck.  No rationale.   They offered me $100 gift certificate.  I just want my furniture.  I told them to just put the furniture on the truck.  No, trucks were out.  Well, when they come back, put my stuff on a truck.  Can't do that.  Yes you can.  You're just not willing to.  Customer lost.

With the company teetering on the edge of yet another bankruptcy, you'd think they would try and do a little better job on the customer service.   Screw the $100...  the right thing to do is to find the guy responsible, put him and his team on a truck, but my bedroom set on that truck, and get me my stuff.  Whoever eats the overtime, Levitz, the trucking company, whoever... I don't really care.  And, I shouldn't have to. 

Plus, everyone up and down that chain should be intent on fixing the problem.  Don't give me, "We'll reschedule."  It should be, "We'll get you that furniture today if the customer service guy on the other end of the phone has to march down to the warehouse himself and get it to you tied to his Jetta."

That's the kind of attitude that wins customers, creates word of mouth, buzz, etc.

You know what Jamba does when they screw up your order?  Even if they just give you the wrong size...  without hesitation, not only do they give you the thing you didn't order, they start all over again and get you your order.  Twice I've gone there and gotten my usual original AND a 16 b/c they accidently gave me the smaller size.  That creates such a positive experience for me.... makes me want to come back.

Bottom line, if they can't get me my furniture today, they're going to take off all the delivery charges and give me $100 off for my troubles.

Who to blame, though?

You know who the buck stops with?  Ward Dingmann, SVP of Logistics at Levitz.  If you leave your image to the guy at the warehouse, forget your company.  So, maybe Ward will Google himself or someone who know him.  He's on LinkedIn, but I'm not connected to him.  So, if anyone knows Ward, let him know there's a pissed off blogger who is without a bedroom set.

Yesterday, we celebrated both my dad's 66th birthday and my grandmother's (mom's mom) 88th birthday at, where else, Gino's. 

Watching how they treat my dad is like watching people visit the Godfather.  (And my dad isn't even Italian.)

The beginning of this video features Sayo the waiter trying to gather his troops for a little waitstaff in the round birthday song.   My maternal nana is sitting to my left, and my other nana is on my right.  My brother Steve is at the end of the table.

Don't my parents look pretty good for their age?

So, about a month ago, I took a personal dispute public.  Adrianna wanted to infultrate and conquer my pleated wardrobe and I was quite resistant.  In retaliation, instead of just opening up to her influence, I decided to create the first open source fashion recommendation system:  Coat Idol.

I needed a winter coat.

People nominated coats in del.icio.us.

And now, you can vote on which one I'll buy:  (Note, some of the coats didn't make it, b/c their permalinks weren't so permanent and I couldn't find them again.  Silly retailers.)

Voting ends Tuesday at 5PM.  At that point, I'll blindly place a rush order (its getting pretty cold here) for whatever coat has the most votes.  Please vote only once.

Here are the choices... vote at the bottom.

1) New University Coat (with Thinsolate)  - $198

2)  Columbia Men's Leather Bib Hipster Jacket - $180

3)   Kenneth Cole Reaction Wool Peacoat - $175

4)  Kenneth Cole REACTION  "Boxcar" Coat - $99

5)  Andrew Marc's Marc New York - $195

6) Leather Car Coat - $119

So, after a haircut yesterday, I came to terms a very difficult problem.  Its a problem that many people take a long time to confront.  No one wants it to happen to them, but when it does, I think the best thing to do is to be open and honest about it.

I'm losing my hair.

There.  I said it.  To be honest, I knew it was coming eventually.  It was only a matter of time.  It was thin to begin with, particularly upfront.  Now its creeping way up there in the corners and trying to circle back around, cutting off the supply lines to the beleaguered troops on the front lines.  By combing it back in my normal style, I only made it more difficult to hide.  People noticed and had been noticing the thinness for some time.  It would show up in a dimly restaurant if I was sitting directly under a light, which would throw back a bit too much shine for someone without a sparsity issue.  Hairspray and gel became a non-starter.  Can't have these guys clumping up on me...  Not enough to go around.  Spread out guys...  Make the place look crowded.  Can't tell people its a slow night.  Once you lose your customers, there's no bringing them back.
     Well, now that I've come to terms with it, pretty early, to my credit, if I might add, what do I do about it?  Without question, there will be no hats, comb arounds, unders, overs or throughs.  There will be no creams, shampoos, pills, or rinses.  No hair will be brought in from the outside, be it from other places on my body, other heads, animals, or from a lab or factory.  No, we built this franchise from inside and we're not going to get into the business of signing high priced free agents that might not pan out.  I will not have my head become the '93 Mets. 
     No, we're going with what we have, and actually even less than that.  Sometime before dodgeball on Sunday, I'm getting a buzzcut.  This way, I won't have to worry about it.  It will be my way of saying, "Hey, we weren't up to this full head of hair business.  We tried... gave it our best shot, but it just wasn't in the cards.  You know, maternal grandfather and all...  There was nothing to be done about it."
     I'm confident about this decision, too.  You never really see anyone with a buzz that anyone says looks bad.  Thinning hair and attempts to hide it, no matter how valiant, however, always look bad.  So that's it.  This is the way its going to be around here from now on, and there are a lot worse things I could be dealing with.  I'm happy, I'm healthy, and come sometime this week, I'm not going to have very much hair.  Problem?  Not at all.  I'm over it.

When I was in the 7th grade, I had a Valentine.  We dated for six months before we really made out...  lots of hand holding.

When it happened, we broke up soon after.  I really don't think the relationship was ready for that level of physical intimacy.

I had a Valentine in my freshman year of high school...  a sophomore.  She was cool.  She liked the Ramones and the Lunachicks, and she could makeout with gum in her mouth.  I could never find where she was hiding it, but I tried.  I bought her perfume and gave it to her at Mimi's pizzeria on the Upper East Side.  She told me, upon acceptance, that she didn't really wear perfume.  Why she couldn't just graciously accept, I have no idea...  that bothered me and we broke up soon after. 

I often wonder what happened to that perfume.

When I was a senior, I was in the middle of a serious two year high school romance.  Valentine's Day was the end of a long string of relationship capex.  November: Anniversary.  December: Christmas.  January: Birthday.  February: Valentine's Day.  Love was an expensive proposition.

She doesn't talk to me anymore, even though she lives about three blocks away from me now, but there's still something that persists from that relationship:  A black Pink Floyd t-shirt.  Its 10 years old now, and there's not a single hole in it.  I wear it to the gym and its been washed a million times.  Its faded, but like Keith Richards, it cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

As a junior in college, Valentine's Day got me back into a relationship with my best college friend.  I was smitten for two years and she was... well...  looking for a boyfriend.  That lasted until I realized that this wasn't the ultimate culmination of three years of emotional friendship...  but instead a boyfriend beartrap that I stumbled into in the hopes of a tuna sandwich.  Tigers are kind of stupid that way.  Growl.

She'll be getting married later this year.

The year after college, I dated a girl who wanted to change the world.  I made her some kind of fake meat tortilla for Valentine's Day, which she didn't really eat, because it still looked like meat.  I threw myself at her for six months, we dated for six months, got dumped, then tried unsuccessfully to prove to her that she'd regret dumped me by being the best guy on the face of the earth.  This included helping her move to Ohio, where she ultimately fell for her Americorps supervisor. 

I guess getting a girl like that to fall for a guy working for the General Motors Corporation was a bit of a longshot.  Perhaps if we oppressed the weak a little less and curbed some of the polluting, and if she hadn't seen Roger & Me things might have gone differently. 

Damn you Michael Moore.

Last year, I dated a girl who seemed to want to be everyone's Valentine...  like in bars and with guys that she had been with before.  Sketchy sketchy.  I did like her cat, though, and I don't even really like cats.

Her actual cat.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

And now?  And now after all that I've been through, I think I know less about love than I ever did before.  Sometimes, I really thought I knew what I want and other times, I really knew what I want and couldn't get my stupid male mind to accept it.  I go after what isn't good for me, and kick and scream when things seem just right.

I'm not real bright and I'm far from as in touch with this part of myself as I need to be.  Regrets?  I have the growing suspicion that I now have them.  Hope?  Yes, everyday.  I hope for clarity of vision...  to see into myself and understand who I want to be, and therefore, who I want to be with.  The search for others really is a search for self and I think things don't work out when you forget that its just as much about you as it is about the other person.  If you don't have all your ducks in a row, forget about the doves. 

Someone should write the "Art of Love" and model it after the "Art of War."  Know thyself.  I hope I figure it all out one day... and soon, before my ducks and doves start pecking away at each other.

Snowy Stang, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Hopefully, its in the 60's all week, b/c I don't feel like shoveling this out.

Never gonna stop me

Never gonna stop.

Scream if you want in, 'cause I want more.

Rob Zombie - Never Gonna Stop

So Fred doesn't want to live forever.  He finds a life span to be comforting and natural end to the story.  As for me, as long as I'm not feebly old and propped up in a chair or hooked up to anything helping me breathe/eat/use the bathroom, I'd be perfectly happy with it.  I love the life I've constructed for myself and I find death to be a completely inconvenient interruption of that.  Now, of course, if no one ever died, we'd have population overcrowding and disproportionate accumulation of wealth, but besides the societal problems it presents, I think living forever would give you fantastic perspective.  I'll bet you'd be less likely to get caught up in hysterias and fads, because you've seen so much of it before.  You'd also have a higher bar for the people around you, because, while most of us can probably only say we know of two or three really great people, if that many, we'd be able to say that the path of our lives has brought us encounters with dozens of great people, all of whom raise your expectation of the next person you'd meet.

Perhaps you'd also take some more time to do not so much of anything, because you wouldn't feel so rushed.  I think 80 or 85 years isn't really enough, considering you pretty much wasted the first 10-15 of them, and the last 5 probably isn't too productive either.  You sleep a third of it away and then you probably spend a good year of your life brushing your teeth or something ridiculous like that, which is important, but isn't terribly productive in the grand scheme of things.  Given all that, that doesn't leave you much time to get everything done you'd like to... you probably need at least twice that much... at least I do.

I wasn't born with the idea that dying is natural...  and I don't think that many of us think that the current lifespan is acceptable, because we never accept when people just make it.  I mean, how long does a person have to live before most people go, "Oh, well, he lived a full life."   At least 85, if not 90.  Who says someone had a full life when someone makes it to 78?  My Deathclock puts me almost making 86, but I'm going to try and stretch it to at least 90 if I can.  In fact, given that I don't smoke, don't drink, have a positive attitude and eat healthy, I'm going to be pretty pissed if I don't make it to 90. 

PS... I didn't know that Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order:SVU was Jayne Mansfield's daughter.  I was wondering who she was referring to during the Golden Globes and Sam brought it up on her new blog.  You learn something new everyday.

PLEASE READ WHY I POSTED THIS VIDEO

On January 14th, I went down to New Orleans with a bunch of other Fordham alumni as part of the school's Global Outreach Program.

We stayed and did most of our work at Project Lazarus. Project Lazarus is a home for people with AIDS in New Orleans.  It was the first residential home in New Orleans to address the need for homeless people living with AIDS.  Unfortunately, none of the residents are back yet, for several reasons:

• Project Lazarus usually puts on one of the most popular Halloween parties in New Orleans as an annual fundraiser.  Typically, they raise about $400,000.  This past year, they obviously couldn't have it.  That money is lost.
• Like many other buildings, they need a new roof.  Total cost: $96,000.  Plus, even if they had the money, its nearly impossible to get a roofer in New Orleans right now.
• 27 of the 30 personal care workers, the mostly minority women who attend to the residents day to day needs like feeding, changing, etc. had their homes completely destroyed. 

Over the next week or so, I'm going to be putting up some more posts about our trip and some videos that I took as well, but first I'd like to share a video about the devastation that still remains there.  While Project Lazarus was lucky enough not to be in an area heavily damaged by the flood, the areas in this video are where many of the homes of the healthcare attendents that worked there were.  I've really never seen anything like it.  Someone said during our trip, "I can't believe this is the United States."  Plus, its really eyeopening to see that its still like that, months later.

As I write these posts, should you be so inclined to help out Project Lazarus, I've added a little tip jar on the sidebar of my blog.  One thing I realized there was that the only way that NOLA gets rebuilt is one house at a time.  Most of the people I spoke to down there didn't see where all of the donations were going from these larger charities, and while I'm sure they will eventually do some good, sometimes, when you can identify an immediate need in a specific area, you can do a lot of good.

All donations will be sent to Project Lazarus to help get the house back in order and get enough funding to open their doors to the AIDS patients that either temporarily or permanently call it home.  This is especially important as at least one of the other similar residences in New Orleans will not be reopening after the hurricane.

If you'd like to give on your own, that's fine, too.  It doesn't need to go through me, of course, but I will be updating the totals each day.  I guess the nice thing about blogging is that a lot of you have been reading long enough, know me, or know enough people who know me that you have  reasonable trust that this isn't a scam.  In addition, they could use gift cards to such places as Home Depot.  They also need refrigerators, kitchenware, bedding, and furniture to replace those items destroyed by water from the roofs.   

Here's their site again.

Last Friday night, my Fordham Global Outreach team spent the night contributing to the local New Orleans economy on Bourbon Street.  It turned out that Anderson Cooper was broadcasting live from one of the balconies above.  After shouting to him for about a half hour, he came down after his show for a quick photo op.  Here's the video of the Fordham group calling out to him and him snapping a few pictures with us:

Repainted hallway, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

We just finished repainting this hallway...  These ceilings are like 20ft!

FEMA Trailers  Arrive, originally uploaded by ceonyc.

Now the personal care attendants have somewhere to stay, after months.