Sleep Walking? How about sleep eating?

Any one out there sleep walk? How about eating in your sleep?

Late night eating has always been a thing with me. I've done it as long as I can remember. As a kid, I loved to polish off a bowl of cereal in the middle of the night. Usually it was a bowl of Rice Krispies with about 3 teaspoons of sugar on it. I'd let the cereal get all soggy and pound it down and go back to bed. Most of the time I was vaguely aware of my surroundings - but still almost asleep. And I HATED being interrupted while I was chowing down. Every now and then my father would get up at the same time or maybe I woke him up and he'd come downstairs into the kitchen and there I'd be eating my bowl of cereal and I'd have the most visceral angry reaction to it. Boiling over anger. All I wanted was to be left alone with my bowel of cereal in the middle of the night and here comes this intruder. I don't recall acting on it or saying anything during those times but it might be fair to say a "Go Away" or "Leave Me Alone" might have come out of my mouth.

I know, it's completely weird. Some sort of sleep walking snack fest.

Diet-wise, back then, it was no big deal. My metabolism was in high gear and I was super active with sports and just being a kid. We still played outside for the day back then. Remember that?

Anyhow, this late night eating / sleep walking chow fest is still around. It's not something that I do all the time, but is something that occurs when I am trying to restrict calories or am feeling a bit stressed out. I've woken up in the morning to find the strangest evidence of the late night raid that happened. It might be a cracked egg in a pot with a piece of cheese. It might be a cereal box with the bag ripped open and flakes all over the counter and Splenda scattered all over the place.

On the diet side, the progress I made during the day gets shot to hell when this happens.

On the life side I keep wondering if I'm ever going to try to start the oven or stove top and really cause some havoc.

On the psychological side of things it's disturbing because CK has caught me now and then during one of these raids and she says it's not me. Of course it's me, I'm right there, but it's not the me she knows. This guy is angry and even scares her a bit. It's the same deal as when I was a kid. Same anger, same inability to stop it while it's happening. I'll tell you what, it scares me too. I've managed to do this sleep-eating thing under sedation. The pull / trigger for the behavior is that powerful.

The thing is, I lost a ton of weight during WOCS and never took a sleep walking stroll to the vending machines. And that was a very stressful environment with a ton of activity and a calorie restricted diet. I also never did it during college.

It doesn't take Freud to figure out that this is stress related though. Here I am in the middle of a big life change and who knows how it's going to work out. Numerous life stressor calculators show I'm at serious risk to illness due to stress here with everything that's gone on / is going on. That of course, brings my ulcerative colitis into play. Is it due to stress? The short answer from my gastroenterologist, is "No.". Is it exacerbated by it? Sure.

So what's the plan? Well, I'm not so sure at this point. Some of the stressors will take care of themselves over time. We'll have jobs. I'll be taking classes towards my B.S. in Geomatics and things won't be so up in the air. In the meantime I'm going to concentrate on having fun and using this time off to my best advantage with a mix of activities, watch what I eat and remind myself to chill out.

Gusmao comes on RON Show - Wins IFL Championship for Pitbulls

The New York Pitbulls completed an unbeaten season, topping the two-time defending champion Quad Cities Silverbacks, 3-2, to claim their first International Fight League World Championship, before 3,470 at Hard Rock Live at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Fla.

AND THE RON SHOW WAS THERE THE WHOLE WAY FOR YOU!

Andre Gusmao (Rio de Janeiro) knocked out Mike Ciesnolevicz (Williamstown, Pa.) in the first round of the fifth and deciding match of the IFL World Championship in Hollywood Florida to give the title to the Renzo Gracie coached New York Pitbulls. Gusmao, btw was a recent guest on The RON SHOW.

Gusmao came in as the alternate light heavyweight in a team shuffle that started with Bryan Vetell injuring his hand and Jamal Patterson stepping aside and taking one for the team. The move paid off as Gusmao took out Mike C for the second time.

And nicely, there's going to be no long wait to see this great action for FREE:

The IFL World Championship can be seen on Fox Sports Net (Sunday, 5 p.m. in most markets, check local listings) and on MyNetworkTV (Monday, 8 p.m. ET/PT; 7 p.m. CT/MT).

Anyhoo - here's how the fights worked out:

No. 2 Pitbulls def. No. 4 Silverbacks, 3-2

• 170 lb.: Delson Heleno, Pitbulls, def. Jake Ellenberger, Silverbacks, via submission (armbar) 3:45, 2nd
• 155 lb.: Deividas Taurosevicius, Pitbulls, def. Bart Palaszewski, Silverbacks, via submission (armbar), 1:30, 2nd
• 265 lb.: Ben Rothwell, Silverbacks, def. Ricco Rodriguez, Pitbulls, via decision (unanimous), after three rounds
• 185 lb.: Ryan McGivern, Silverbacks, def. Fabio Leopoldo, Pitbulls, via TKO, 1:35, 2nd
• 205 lb: Andre Gusmao, Pitbulls, def. Mike Ciesnolevicz, Silverbacks, via knockout, 0:53, 1st

Preliminary Bouts

• 205 lbs: Jamal Patterson (Hoboken, N.J.) def. Chris Baten (Tampa, Fla.) via submission (choke), 0:56, 1st
• 265 lb.: Rolles Gracie (New York) vs. Sam Holloway via submission (rear naked choke), 1:49, 1st
• 170 lb.: Travis Cox (Naples, Fla.) no contest vs. Brad Blackburn (Olympia, Wash.) (unintentional knee to head of downed opponent), 2:32, 1st
• 155 lb.: Ryan Schultz (North Platte, Neb.) def. Aaron Riley (Port St. Lucie, Fla.) via decision (unanimous), after 3 round

Icky sweat

A lot of people don't like to work out. They find sweating icky. They get wiped out. They want to lie down and take a nap afterwards. Worse, they feel like collapsing. They don't get the endorphin rush. They don't get a sense of well being afterward. They feel they are different from everyone else and they aren't getting what they should out of working out.

Well, when you're out of shape working out is going to be unpleasant and it's not going to take too much to get there. Simply put, you're fighting inertia -- your body is not used to the activity and your brain is not used to dealing with the discomfort. So, in the beginning you are going to suffer if you push yourself at all, but if you keep a consistent effort you'll never suffer so much as at the beginning. Keep at it and the rewards will come, and quickly in the beginning. You're not different. You will feel better. Now, if you smoke yourself, you won't, but a consistent moderate effort will generate that sense of well being afterward. Combine the workout with a decent diet that controls your insulin levels like The Zone Diet and you'll find yourself feeling much more even keeled than you have. And as you progress you will learn to listen to your body and know the difference between a hard effort and one that will crush you for the next few days. At the outset, it's going to be sooo easy to crush yourself, which in turn will probably turn you off to working out. As for the sweat - it's not icky! It means you're working! Good for you!

My problem has always been trying to reign in my workouts. I tend to go all gung ho and burn myself out. Not so much physically, but mentally I tend to quit after a few months because I was giving it so much focus and my mind goes "Ugh, that again?".

So, for me the trick is trying to make workouts it just part of the everyday routine rather than training for an MMA match. In other words, dial down the effort, dial up the consistency.

So here's what I'm trying to do:

Weekly:
Bike an hour
Swim an hour
Run an hour

Five days a week:
Kettlebell swings, presses, get ups, clean and jerks for about 30 minutes with varying intensity. Stopping when I feel I'm done. Only one really hard day.

Future workouts:
Crossfit training

VJ is back.

Vanishing James was originally supposed to be a blog about what a pain in the ass it is for me to lose weight and share my successes, failures and joys and frustrations.

It didn't really work out that way. Well, I'm trying to reclaim that focus in the hopes of focusing myself on losing weight / getting in shape more and entertaining you all.

On the surface, weight loss is such an easy thing. The basic equation to solve the problem boils down to: Eat Less. Exercise More.

But there's a lot more to it than that though, eh? Well, starting tomorrow VJ is back with a focus on the weight loss struggle(s).

VJ is Dead, Long Live VJ

Bye Bye Vanishing James, Mister JimmyJam has a new blog.

http://itsthekitch.wordpress.com

See you there.

Random Thoughts + an announcement...

Thought 1 - This Jon Benet Confessor is a wack job. Dollars to donuts this is not the guy.

Thought 2 - How much worse can it get for Floyd Landis and his family? What a tragedy. Hopefully it's true that the main causes were not the doping scandal.

Thought 3 - I have been with Riz, or he has been with me for both the worst loss ever in Yankee history, the longest 9 inning game in Yankee and MLB history, not to mention a Jet playoff collapse. What's that mean? Absolutely nothing.

Announcement -- My friend and family and the very scant few of you out there that read this fairly neglected blog might know that we have been pursuing adoption. We announced it and started the process and you'll have noticed that the adoption conversation has fairly dried up until right now. Our thanks to all of you for not pressing the issue at all. As you might figure, we freaked out about it for a bit, and then CK was going to get a new job. The freakout combined with the timing of her new job put the kabosh on adoption for a bit. By the time we had our minds wrapped around and committed to it, life threw us a curveball. A nice fat one though that we can drive into the gap. It just makes sense to let CK get time in her position at work so when she goes back to work if she takes some time off that she can go back into the same position. So we have pushed things back about a year and are working with Spence Chapin to make that happen.

So, we will be adopting, just not as fast as we thought. Adella Jennifer Kitcher will be with us soon. :-)

Cheating Bastard or Victim?

Given the witch hunt that's pursued Lance Armtstrong in regards to cheating during the Tour De Lance, specifically the charges levied at him by L'Equipe, a French rag and Dick Pound, head of the WADA; I was not going to be surprised if allegations were made about Landis -- who rode with Lance, and is an American.

Another American winning the tour, worse, one with ties to ESPY winner and Tour De Lance record holder Lance Armstrong is an anathema to the French. Well, not all French, but definitely Dick Pound and his crew.

Is it possible Landis cheated? Yeah. Thing is, it's retarded cheating if it was, because a one time steroid use is going to be enough to wreck a test, but not increase performance. That's according to Dr. Gary Wadler in an AP article published on ESPN right here. All Landis' other samples were clean except for that one day. Further - he knows they test for EPO, one of the substances found in his urine sample.

So, Floyd, if you did cheat, you are as dumb as you are tough, because if you did, they did not do a thing for you and you still won the tour and pissed it away at the same time.

Is it possible someone at the WADA is gunning for Floyd in Lance's wake? Sure. Just Google the backstory on all of that. They were after Lance forever. However, barring someone coming forward and admitting tampering, the burden of proof is all on Floyd, and unless he had some other samples taken and notarized on that day, he's got an uphill battle ahead of him.

Bob Roll from OLNTV.com had some good questions though -- and they need to be answered by doctors from the cycling equivalent of Sweden. Here they are:

• Can one sample be nearly three times different in 24 hours than a previous sample?
• Can the body absorb, metabolize and convert any substance into a controllable sample that has been recorded to be a ratio of 11 to 1 of testosterone vs. epitestosterone -- almost three times the allowable ratio in one single day?
• Can any doctor explain the findings in a way regular people can understand?

You can read the rest of Roll's comments in this article on OLNtv.com. Here's my question, why only two samples - an A sample and a B sample? How about four samples? Two could be taken before the race by one anti doping agency two after the race taken by and  and two after the race and those samples mixed up and sent off to different labs for testing. For so serious a charge, one would think they could afford the extra control measures. Of course my suggestion lacks some detail, but I think the general gist of it has merit.

Sigh. The French hate us winning their tour. Often athlete's cheat.It's hard to say I have anything but doubts and reservations all around.

Tour de France - Floyd Landis: A$$ Kicker

Kudos to Landis for putting forth what every cycling expert has already called the greatest single day effort in Tour history.

I know I'd written him off after he bonked and lost 11 minutes to his main rivals along with the Yellow Jersey as well. To me, it seemed to say that he had not been riding conservatively so much as he had said and had finally hit a wall and put himself out of contention.

That's what everyone else thought. Except for Floyd. He destroyed the peloton and his main rivals today in an amazing display of guts, determination and focus. When the stage ended he looked in good shape and was waaay fired up for a bit after. The stage win put hims in position to reclaim the Yellow Jersey in the upcoming 56K time trial of Stage 19 -- a race event he excels at. Barring a crash or a super-human performance from Sastre, Landis should take the lead and win the Tour.

They (his competion) thought he was out of it and ignored his early, unconventional break-away early in the mountains of Stage 17. No one attacks in the lower portion of Col des Saisies, about 65 kilometers into the 200.5-kilometer stage. Away he went and they let him go.

Everyone wanted Landis to put the hammer down so to speak, a la Lance, and then just when it seemed he had no hammer at all, he pulled it out.

Way to go.

Tornado Hits North Of Elmsford.

An F1 sometimes F2 tornado hit towns just a bit north of our home in Elmsford on Wednesday afternoon this week.

We'd been in a vacation bubble and had no idea it had happened until our car service guy brought it up while he took us back on Thursday.

To say the least, we were shocked and surprised it had happened. Apparently, at around 3 PM or so, the tornado developed on the Rockland County side of the Hudson River and raced across just north of the Tappan Zee Bridge and touched down in Sleepy Hollow. It then cut a swath across the county all the way into Fairfield County in Connecticut.

• You can read about it here on MSNBC.
• Westchester Journal News coverage can be found here
  

Backtracking the timeline of things, we discovered that the tornado hit just as we were on the "Twister" ride at Universal Studios. Freaky. As part of the experience, they show clips from the movie, including the bit where Helen Hunt's character speaks about how a tornado can miss this house and that one but come right after yours. She's right.

I got to see the randomness and wildness of the destruction when I drove up to work out at the NYSC in Hawthorne. The tornado touched down just east of the Eastview exit on the Sawmill Parkway, shreded all the trees it touched, cut across the parkway and through the exit, demolished part of a gas station, crossed 9A and somehow cut in between an Applebees and the NYSC I go to and took out the north wall of a California Closets building. Totally random. Totally destructive. The trees look like the trees portrayed during the Ardennes scenes in Band of Brothers. Exploded. Each one sheared off and spintered at about 15 ft.

I took some pictures with my film camera and if I can find a lab to print them at I'll scan them and post some here.

Happy Birthday, Jenn

Happy 29th Birthday, Jenn.

Mom & Dad, Mary-Alice & Michael and a few other family friends are gathering in your memory today -- perhaps you know about it? There's a service with Father Rock, lunch at the Culinary Institute of America and then company over at the parentals. I know there will be fresh flowers on your grave from them and some other people that knew and loved you. As luck would have it, it's the first sunny day in these parts in something close to two weeks. I'll give you some credit for that. Thanks!

As for me -- I'm at work doing work things. I'm thinking about you of course, but that's not too different from any other day. I'm sad Jenn. We all are. God, we are so sad and miss you so much. Finally though, I seem to have worked past being devastated. The depression, the deeper depression and just when you thought you'd hit bottom and the bottom falls out depression have abated. Am I healed? No, I don't think so. Healing though. Getting better. Do I still have regrets about things between us? Yeah. I do. The difference is that I've learned to accept that. I try not to dwell on your untapped, unrealized potential or on how much pain you were in and how lonely you were or how frustrated you were. I know all those things were true and it hurts to know that but I cannot be consumed by it. I know you don't want me that way and I sure don't like being a wreck.

Anyway, I was laughing to myself back on the 26th of June, the day I spent most of my life thinking really was your birthday. I'm not sure why I thought that, but I did. Remember how I used to show up with a gift for you, on the 29th no less, with a belated birthday card attached? Or I'd be calling you and wishing you a happy birthday and you'd be wondering why? Speaking of which, I remember trying to enterain you and your gaggle of 1st/2nd grade friends in our back yard. Mom made me put on a clown wig leftover from your Halloween costume and I tried to be a clown with just the wig and perhaps some lipstick of Mom's I used as face paint.

You look really happy in the pictures from that day.

My one gift to you, if it is in my power to give at all -- is that you be happy just like you were then. No baggage, no crap. Just the happiness that goes with being 8 or so. Let the rest fall away.

Happy Birthday.

Love,

Jimbo

Not so big a confession

I love comics. LOVE them. What a great, compelling medium filled with great story lines, great art and great characters.

Of course -- it doesn't hurt that the female hero's are drawn like an Amazonian CK alight in something from the Madame Xavier's Midnight Lightning Collection. Gotta love Ms. Marvel -- pictured over to the right there. She's ex Air Force, CIA, and S.H.E.I.L.D Agent -- a New Avenger -- an ass kicker and a hottie. Yeah yeah - typical male attitude. Thing is, last I looked -- the male heroes' aren't exactly hiding much either. Lets go to the tape of CK reading the latest installement of Civil War and pause a moment while we let her reiterate what she said when she saw the second to last panel of the book -- which features Spider Man.

"Holy Crap! That's Hot!"

And there you have it.

I've been away for a while -- decades I think, but now I'm back and the love affair has started all over again...thanks mostly to working two blocks down from one of the best, if not the best, comic store in all the land - Mid-Town Comics. It took a year for the store to work its voodoo on me, but now I've got an account there and find myself looking forward to Wednesdays more than ever.

Right now, these are my top reads:

1. Civil War - The art is fantastic. Just compare Spider Man in it to the art in one of his titles, like Sensational Spider Man and you will see what I mean.
2. Annihilation - It's fun to watch the Super Skrull get betrayed and the Silver Surfer reborn and once again, very very vengeful and PO'd.
   
3. New Avengers - This is the best regular series book out there right now IMHO
   
4. Daredevil
   
5. Lucifer
   
6. The occasional dose of Ms. Marvel or her DC equivalent, (kinda-sorta) Power Girl. Ms Marvel started out well enough, but this last one with her fighting a wizard and hanging out with Dr. Strange annoyed me. Fight the space creature and the world threat, not the magical ones. Ms. Marvel does not come from that base. Stay on your base!
   

What was old is now new again (hockey, comics, guitar) What next?

06.06.06

Welcome to the apocalypse, the end of days, Armageddon...or maybe just Tuesday.

Random Omens from today: (All For YOU blog readers! All for you!!)

Grand Central Omens:

• A woman arrested outside the Duane Reade in Grand Central. I could not see her face.
• A man gave up his seat on the train.

Times Square Omens:

• There were naked men playing guitar in Times Square
• Some guy wanted cash donations for literacy for chickens.

"30 Rock" Omens.

• I saw the "Queer Eye" Guys dishing with fans in the Today show crowd whilst Roker did an interview with....someone.

Whatever. It's Tuesday. All this friggen extra security all over the city. For what? A friggen movie. It's a stretch to equate 6606 with 666 in the first place. Nimrods.

Pwned.

As in Matt Hughes pwned Royce Gracie.

Granted, MMA fights can end suddenly no matter what and that events in the octagon (and just about any sporting event) can and do turn on a dime. For example, it wouldn't be crazy to to see Hughes finish off Georges St. Pierre in a hurry or vice versa, but I think the chances of it happening are slimmer than I thought the chances were for a drawn out bloodfest between Hughes and Rocye.

I thought Hughes would win, and he did. It's a different UFC now. It does not diminish Royce Gracie at all. It's been a long time since his last UFC fight and he's older and isn't used to time limit fights. The fighters are much more well rounded and if not submission specialists, are pretty decent at defending against submissions. And lets not forget Hughes is one bad motor scooter. Pound for pound, I think he's the best the UFC has to offer right now.

Still Royce got pwned. And he wants to come back and try again? He better switch some shit up.

For an alternate reality ending, you can check out this version of the fight on Utube.

As for a fight I would like to see, I wish Wanderlei Silva could lose about 12 lbs and Huges put on about 10. That would be a fight I'd like to see.

On the Set of Saturday Night Live

For a few hours today I was in Studio 8H - the set of SNL for the past 30 years or so. Not in the audience seats, but on the floor and a bit left of center with the Grand Central backdrop with it's New Haven line off peak train leaving from Track 30. A co-worker joked that no matter how many times I came out of Grand Central, that he bet I never came out of that one. That was funny, but about an hour or so later I was on that same stage, right next to Track 30 eating some ice cream and wondering where this NBCUniversal ride might take me and the rest of my tiny IT department.

We were there for a town hall style meeting to discuss and learn about the digital media plans at NBCUniversal. Of course, they are aggressive and right off the bat you can see the executives leadership qualities and their embrace of ideas. It was great to hear them answer an audience question but follow up with "So it seems like you must have some ideas about that - lets hear them."

The thing is, ever since I left Texaco and the Strategic Management Group there - I've missed that type of thinking. It feels good to be back.

Martha Martha Martha

I managed to get out of work at 5:20PM yesterday -- and that's a major feat these days for those of you unfamiliar with the fun factory that is my work life. I stopped by Midtown Comics to indulge myself with copies of Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel and the latest Nova installation in the Anhilliation series and then headed off down 42nd St. toward Grand Central. Home sweet home bound and before 7pm.

Just as I get in front of the Grace building, I think I spy my Aunt Maureen cutting in front of me. It's not Aunt Cool, though -- it's freaking Martha Stewart right there in front of me and we make brief eye contact and I give here the universal "What's up" head nod and she smiles back in that made for TV smile of hers and raises her eybrows a bit.



In that brief moment I thought,

Holy Crap that's Martha Stewart! Should I go over to her? Nah what the hell would that be about? What do you say to her? There's nothing in common there, really. Why hassle her? Maybe I could ask her about jail?
Or just tell her she kicks ass, yeah tell her that.
Or ask her for a bag of money -- she'd hardly miss it. Just a garbage bag filled with hundreds...
Fuck! You should have some script or some shit to pitch to her. She's right there! Arrgh!

Give her the what's up nod. Ok. Yeah. Ok, we're cool. This is retarded.

And that was my moment with Martha. Yay.

That gets me thinking about all the other celebrities I've passed in the streets of NYC in the past year or so...

• Martha Stewart
• Spike Lee
• Jackie Mason
• David Brenner
• Kris Angel
• Chris Mullen
• Jalen Rose
• Giselle
• Joe Torre (2x in NYC and once at an ATM in Larchmont)
• The Donald
• Christina Aguilera

All of a sudden I'm Ken Griffey Jr.

Ok, not really.

I exaggerate to make a point. Mr. Griffey Jr., it seems to me - the casual baseball fan - that you are injured as much as Samuel L. Jackson in that piece of dreck, Unbreakable. You seem brittle and made of glass. Perhaps it's fairer to say that you are a fine but tempermental Italian racing car that is always in the shop for some odd reason. Nonethless - injured all the time. Seemingly.

These days, anything I try to do sport's wise and I get injured a la Griffey. I know that's part of the deal with sports, but I went through all my teens and college years with just minimal stuff like

• a concussion
• a broken wrist
• a torn knee ligament (medial something or other)
• a sprained neck
• a dislocated shoulder
• shin splints
• another knee injury
• cuts
• contusions
• abrasions
• a broken nose
• broken toes
• plantar fasciitis
• multiple sprained ankles

See? Hardly anything. :-P Of course, once I try BJJ, I get a dual torn biceps, a wickedly sprained foot (my toes actually touched the back of my heel on that one. Oy.) and a sprained neck. Time passes and I decide I need to do something to motivate me to stay in shape. So, I start playing hockey again. What do I do? I injure my right knee. I have no idea what part of the game it even was that did it, but it started to tighten up in the car, ached like hell over night and has been giving me some problems ever since. If it does not get better by next week it's MRI time. It does not hurt so much to walk as it does to move it sideways a bit or kneel on it. That really hurts.

Me and Griffey Jr. Bound together by pain. Separated by talent and money.

NBCUniversal

A year and a half ago or so I signed on with a small dot com called Healthology. Two acquisitions later and I'm an NBCUniversal employee. Wow. Life takes some odd turns.

Here's to an excellent future with the world's "employer of choice". I can only hope they don't over look little 'ol Healthology and that we get the resources, training, and management we need to get better or barring that -- that things open up elsewhere in the company. Right now it's too early to tell anything except that we are part of NBCUniversal. Witness that so far, in the form of "Welcome! We are not dismantling you!" gifts, I have received a tote bag, a $15 iPod gift card and DVD's of King Kong and the Constant Gardner. Zoom!

Plus, that trip to Universal Studios in July just got a bit cheaper. Nice!!

The Bachelor Life

Clarisa left on Tuesday night for Cottonwood, CA. She's out there visiting her aunt Melba and uncle Ted. Melba's sick (sick sick, not cold sick) and Ted's old as Methuselah, so she went out there to see them for a bit because she knows there's not a lot of time left. I'd have gone, but I don't have the vacation days she does and I want to take off when my brother in law, Matt comes out here and take another week in the late fall or something. So she's out there doing the family thing.

As for me, here I am, biding my time. Tick tock tick tock. Basically, life without CK has led me to work out after work and work later (and believe me, I already work late. When your express train pulls into White Plains and 8 people get off with you, it's late). As for the weekend - thus far I worked out and did a little shopping at Barnes and Noble and DSW. It was an amazing discovery. When you need to kill time, shopping like a chick works.

First I went to DSW to get some shoes and maybe pick up a shirt. While CK carries with her some of the same zeal and zest for shoes as Imelda Marcos and Carrie WhatsHerName from Sex and the City, I've got none of that. One pair of sneakers. One pair of black dress shoes. One pair brown less dressy shoes. Basically, that's the usual inventory. Probably not too uncommon. Still though, I've been getting sick of wearing the same old crap every other day. So what did I do, I picked up another pair of Diesel's that are pretty much the same style as the one's I have now but a different color and pattern.

While I was wandering the aisles in my socks trying on shoes, a couple was trailing me a bit and I could overhear them arguing. She'd brought him there to buy some shoes and the guy did NOT want to be there.

"This ain't no good shoe. Never heard of a Rockport shoe. What the hell is a Rockport Shoe?" he said.

"Rockport is the brand. A big brand." she said, exasperated.

Time passes...we are in the next aisle. I'm trying on the Diesel's I wind up buying and they are going around me, stepping over my shoes. I think, "don't trip"and "I hope my shoes don't smell" . They are still arguing. He is interested in nothing. There is no indication of a foul odor response.

"Are you telling me you want to leave? Is that what you are trying to say?" she said.

"Nah" he said, eyes downward.

I think, "Yes he is. You know that."

And so it went, aisle by aisle with the frustration and friction mounting. I felt for the guy. I'm not sure if they ever bought anything. I left them arguing about if Steve Madden was a good brand and whether or not John Madden had anything to do with it.

Anyways, I got my shoes and picked up a shirt as a reward for having dropped below the 200lb mark. The scale reads 199.5 lbs and 17.25% body fat. Finally! Just 17 lbs to go and it's new wardrobe time.

I picked up a few tech books at B&N even though my better judgment was screaming at me "No! What the hell are you doing?" After killing two hours skimming through a stack of books in the cafe and downing a some tasty lemonade chai tea concoction, I wound up with these books:

• PHP and MySQL by Larry Ulman
• Foundations of Ajax by Ryan Asleson
• MySQL Tutorial by Luke Welling

The reason being is that I've installed two applications (Flyspray and QATraq) at work that run on WAMPP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PhP) platforms and I figure it would be a good idea to know how to support them. Plus, open source stuff is free and available and given the good work of the people over at ApacheFriends and their XAMPP project it's pretty easy to install all that stuff versus the nightmare of configuring each one by itself. I'm into geekery, but hey, I like the easy road as well.

Truth be told, I am making one last ditch effort at work on a few different fronts to make things better and to enhance my reputation and my experience. As bad as it is there, I do not see how I can move on and upwards without doing a few key things first:

1. Empower the employees. We waste tons of time in IT implementing text changes to web pages. This takes hours and could be done by anyone, provided a content management system of some sort or an automated process. On the CMS side, I think we might be able to adapt Macromedia Contribute with DWT's or WordPress. On the automated process side, I think we could just create a Word document that represents the launched program and tie it to an XML schema, mark up the Word Document with XML tags and then just parse it when we need to do the update.
2. Get the whole company using Flyspray for work requests and bug reporting.
3. Implement and use QaTraq. It's an application to support a full testing team, so adapting it for Healthology is going to be difficult but at least I'd have something to point to that shows I can organize and execute tests.
4. Get better at database development and learn php.

I figure it's worth a shot. If I can't make it work despite my best efforts and I am really stymied by the organization I can chalk up some good experience and move on without reservation.

If you are interested - here are the books on Amazon.com:

Hockey Catchup. Hockey Frustration.

Lets go over some numbers.

• 4-2 -- WTF happened to the Red Wings? How does this happen? Frustration. Despair.
• 18-1 -- that is the total my adopted men's league hockey team has been outscored in two (count 'em) games. Futility. Hopelessness.
• 3 -- my total shots on goal.
• 2 -- my total shots completely wiffed like I was trying to hit a bee on meth.
• 2 -- my total questionable, but gratifying, checks in a no checking league. The first one happened in the first 3 minutes of my first game in 12 years. There was a shot on goal and a rebound and a bunch of hacking at my goalie's hand going on. That earns you a trip to the boards. The second was probably an unconscious effort to mar the game late in the third period with the score 9-1. Pleasure. Kasparitis. Tikkannen. Claude Lemeiux.
• 2 -- my total number of brawls due to said checks avoided. Touchy.
• 155 -- the estimated number of pounds of Swiss cheese it would take to replace my boss in goal with no ill effects on the outcome of a game. [Grin]

It's not a ton of fun to haul equipment down to NYC on the train and lug it across town and then take it on the subway and drive out past Amityville to play and just get creamed. Still though, it is fun to just play and occasionally lambaste someone. On the brightside there are just 6 games or so left in this league and then I can look forward to joining a league here in town. My boss, Mike will probably make the switch too. It's quicker for him to get up here than to drive all the way out there. Plus, his wife is backing that play. That makes it pretty golden. So, I'm willing to suffer for now.

Skating. Hockey Gear.

I just got back from an open skate at the Westchester Skating Academy. Basically I just tooled around and dodged people and broke in a new pair of skates. Well, dodged almost everyone. I managed to bump into a lady skating with/holding up her kid. She cut in front of me unexpectedly and I just clipped her shoulder. For a second she hung on and looked like she was going to make it but then her kid did a freakout move and out came both her legs and down she went, right on her butt. Thankfully, she was in once piece and not hurt and the kid was alright. On top of that she was not pissed. No harm no foul. No guilt.

When I was done for the session a Chinese guy sidled up to me and quizzed me on my skates. His kid had been taking lessons and he wanted to learn and was none too thrilled about the big blue molded cloddhopper figure skate rentals he had. They killed his feet. I told him I could sympathize - my skates had killed my feet for a long time. His English was decent, but in the back of my head I thought how great it would be if I could just talk to this guy in Chinese. It would be great to be able to do that. In 18 months or so, I might even have a real need to know a little Chinese.

The thing is, I feel a lot different - a lot better than I have in a long time after a skate. Specifically, my feet aren't killing me and my feet aren't killing me because I've got the new skates - a pair of Reebok 4K's. Not a top of the line skate, but an improvement over my old Bauers and most importantly, they are skates that fit. My old Bauer 1000's were just too narrow, even from the first and as I've gotten older my feet have gotten bigger and bit wider -- a recipe for foot problems and pain and a good excuse to not skate or play hockey. Anyways, these new skates are sooo much more comfortable even from this first break in session than any other skate I've ever had. Plus they are a lot lighter too.

My shoulder pads, elbow pads, pants, helmet, skates -- it's all a lot better than the stinky pile of pads my parents threw out. Hell, all the hockey equipment that's out these days is light years better than the gear that was available when I was playing in the 80's and early 90's. Generally it's all lighter and it all fits better. And the sticks -- sheesh, they are lighter than friggen pool cues. It makes my old Koho Silver Fibres look like warhammers compared to rapiers. Glad to see things have progressed!

Anyway, the plan is not to just sit home and admire the new gear, but to actually start playing again. On Monday I'm supposed to bail out of work early to go play in a pick up game out on Long Island. While I don't think I am going to be super winded, I do think it's going to be pretty awkward trying to stickhandle and shoot. I'll be lucky if I don't look like a complete n00b out there when it comes to any sort of stick work. But maybe not. Sometimes you can surprise yourself. And if there is one thing I can put down, even for over decade, and pick back up and look like I know what the hell I'm doing -- it's hockey. I figure I'll see how it goes and work my way into a league, maybe look into coaching at the youth level.