Month: February 2014

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personal

My nephew and a video

When I met my nephew and made a video

My sister had a kid recently. Was in her hood recently seeing yet another doctor when my mom and I popped over to meet the little guy.

There’s something weird about holding your sibling’s kid for the first time. I recalled holding my sister as a kid and now I was holding her kid. Found that so interesting.

He however, found the whole matter of meeting me less interesting, as he merely yawned after meeting me and closed his eyes to sleep.

Can’t blame him much. I rarely say anything that can hold a candle to a midday nap.

Speaking of saying anything, shot a quick video promoting the book. You can take a look at it above and let me know what you think. Perhaps you’ll find it more interesting.

Spent the day traveling around New York City and Long Island yesterday. Tomorrow it’ll be New York City and New Jersey. Moving around a lot these days.

Dunno if I’m actually getting anywhere though.

Location: yesterday, two different doctor’s offices
Mood: hard to say
Music: looking for means to pave the way, for brighter days
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Grateful for my adversaries

The Cartoon with Ralph and Sam, the Coyote and Sheepdog

A Great First Date is finally out on Amazon!

It came out Friday and I was going to write a post on it, but work got in the way. In any case, now it’s available on all platforms including Barnes & Noble Nook, and Apple iBooks.

If you like this blog, you’ll probably like the book as it’s essentially one long entry about one narrow topic. More on this later.

Me: You just elbowed me in the head!
Him: You just slapped me.

Was telling someone recently about this Warner Brothers cartoon I used to watch as a kid where there was this sheepdog named Sam and a coyote named Ralph.

Evidently, they’re not just friends and roommates but also co-workers. What makes the cartoon interesting is that between the hours of 9 to 5, they are mortal enemies – each trying to outwit, and even kill the other. But once the bell rings to signal the end of the day, they put their differences aside and go home.

I have a regular training partner when I wrassle and we’re pretty good friends. But the moment we hit the mat, we each expect the other to bring his best, which means a lot of relatively controlled violence.

Then the bell rings and we go home.

I’m grateful for my adversaries in life; the ones I count as friends and the ones that I don’t.

They make me anti-fragile.

And these days, I find that I need that more and more.

Him: Oh man, what have you been eating, you weigh a ton.
Me: Chili, what else?

Location: at the end of several deadlines
Mood: hopeful
Music: be brave with what you want to say
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President’s Day 2014

The book is (mostly) out

My book on dating, A Great First Date, was released on iTunes and Nook this past Friday, which was exciting.

I was surprised how many purchases were made early on so I’m assuming you guys had a lot to do with that, so thanks!

Was also pretty happy that so many of my friends and family helped get the word out about it.

On a slightly disappointing note, it turns out that Kindle doesn’t release books immediately – they only update their databases on Thursday. Bit of a downer because I know that most people buy ebooks on Kindle.

Still, it’s scheduled to be out by next Friday on Kindle, so that’s a plus. And you could always buy the Kindle version it directly from the publisher Smashwords and use this coupon code for 10% off: PY72Z.

All-in-all, though, pretty happy with how it went, and there are a few more marketing ideas that I’m working on but more on that later.

One thing that I did do was to write a blog entry about dating spots in the Upper West Side – my nabe – for a popular local blog called the West Side Rag.

Besides that, not much else to announce except that work is piling up, as is the snow. Evidently, there’s more coming overnight. Can’t wait for it to stop.

And I’m talking about both work and snow.

Finally, that photo above was taken when we went over to the New York Historical Society in honor of President’s Day today.

Evidently Groupon thought that Alexander Hamilton was a US president, which is a whole blog entry for another time.

Thanks again for the support!

Location: dentist’s office
Mood: tired
Music: Smile for the while and let’s be jolly
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Still wishing for the other side

A lot of life is waiting to get over there, where ever that is

Another doctor’s appointment yesterday. If there was some sort of medical frequent flyer miles program, I’d be able to take a world-trip by now.

Maybe two.

On that note, I still kind of daydream from time-to-time about being on the other side, which is usually just someplace that’s not here. Bruges, Paris, Taipei… someplace else.

We’re supposed to get another storm so maybe someplace warm.

But lately, been wishing to be on the other side of these things I’m dealing with at the moment. Suppose it’ll all come when it comes.

Life is a lotta wait and see.

On the plus side, got some sleep last night. Things look radically different after a good night’s sleep.

Few more of those and the other side won’t be quite so far away.

———-

On another  positive note, I actually have a ridiculous 3,000 fans on my Facebook page for A Great First Date.

And the book is being released on Friday, hopefully on Amazon as well – it’s already available for pre-order on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

I’ll probably be posting on Friday when it’s out. Oh, and I fixed up the web page too.

Consider buying a copy, or 12.

Location: in front of two screens again, waiting
Mood: hopeful
Music: I’ll lie, cheat, I’ll beg, and bribe, to make you well
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Winning a Bronze makes you happier than winning a Silver

How you look at your life depends on how you look at others

Took a moment to watch the Olympics this past weekend and it reminded me of a story from NPR.

If you look at the picture carefully, you’ll see that the gold medalist in the middle is beaming, the bronze medalist on the left is slightly smiling, and the silver medalist on the right is barely smiling at all.

Researchers went through picture after picture after picture of other Olympic winners and saw the same thing.

It’s obvious why the gold winner is so psyched – she won. But the other two?

Well, it turns out that the silver winner is almost always unhappy because she compares herself to the gold winner.

If only I …ran faster, longer, better, that would have been me up there with the gold.

In other words, she compares upward, ignoring all below her and only seeing the one person above her. But the bronze winner always compares downward.

I made it! I can’t believe I beat all those other people and just made it.

Two scenarios, again.

On that note, I try to remind myself regularly that I’ve won the lottery in life. Some days are easier than others. But I keep hoping.

As for you, when you watch the Olympics this week, watch the winners faces and you’ll see the above repeatedly.

After all, you can’t un-notice something you’ve noticed.

And I’ve noticed I’m late to start my work week.

Hope it’s better than last.
Image (c)Julian Finney/Getty Images

Location: 6AM, in front of yet more @#$@#$ snow
Mood: anxious
Music: alright, the nights settling, settling in your bones
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The broken and the baked

A tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, broken things, and deep fried foods


Headed out to Queens yesterday to see another doctor.

Ended up grabbing lunch with my brother, who’s in town for the week. The thing about the two of us, and my sister, is that we have pretty strong stomachs, which I think is direct result of us growing up poor. My parents tried their best to give us a rounded diet but we essentially ate anything we could get our hands on.

Him: (picking at fish) This is terrible. Do you want to try it?
Me: No! (thinking) On second thought…

There’re all these dishes that are the result of poor people taking scraps and making something amazing out of them: oxtail soup, collard greens, liverwurst, broiled bone marrow, and fried rotten tofu (as seen above).

People are no different from the food they make.

In Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister says, I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards and broken things.

I think I’m similar, for similar reasons.

Some of the most broken things in the world aren’t easily seen as such. A good tailored suit can cover up almost anything.

But I suppose that if you had some device that could look and see what we look like on the inside, I’d be a patchwork of duct tape, splints, and glue. All baked in steady childhood of beans, canned tuna, caned ham, white rice, and slightly stale bread.

I have a tender spot for those of people patched together and baked in a similar way.

My brother’s a doctor and I’m a lawyer, but there are few things that give us as much simple pleasure as eating at a local dive.

If I meet people like us in the world, I’ll ask if they want to grab a $5 meal at the local dive around the way.

And if they’re members of my tribe, they’ll have no problem sitting down to a meal complete with plastic forks and sticky condiment bottles.

Me: We probably shouldn’t have eaten all that.
Him: Yep. (standing up) I’m going to get some caffeine.
Me: Good call.

Location: snowed in again
Mood: full
Music: I can’t be free from all of the things that I used to be
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We’re titanium

Riddle me this


A riddle from Good Riddles Now:

Something all men have,
but all men deny.
Man created it,
but no man can hold it.

What is it? – the answer here.

On that note, last week was quite possibly one of the worst weeks of my life. And I’ve had some bad weeks. Got two separate calls for two separate issues; one was horrible, the other merely terrible.

Call 1
Her: It’s the doctor.
Me: S___t.

Call 2
Him: So it’s not good, it’s not any worse than we thought, but it’s still not good.
Me: Let me sit down.

But at some point, you just get tired of being sad/anxious.

So my brother went out to drink, and my wife and I went out to dinner around the way. We sat next to an actress we’d seen a few times on television who was very friendly (good) and very loud (bad).

Afterward, my wife and I took a short walk around our neighborhood.

She also made me some oatmeal cookies, so that’s a plus.

Finally got to have some rum again, too.

Me: We’ll be ok.
Her: We’re titanium, Logan. We’re frick’n titanium.

Location: -3 hrs, shoveling the walk
Mood: deflated
Music: Shoot me down, but I get up
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