Categories
personal

From the Archives: Thanksgiving 2013 and 2008

Being Thankful on Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow; the wife’s already left to see her family.

Her: What’d you have for dinner?
Me: The usual, chili and rum. Oh, and some pretzels.

One of these days, I’ll write something better for Thanksgiving than what I did in 2008. But I still think it’s one of my best, for whatever that’s worth. I read it myself every so often to remind myself for all there is to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving 2008
The world is ridiculously unfair, but if you can read this post, chances are high it’s ridiculously unfair in your favor.

Back on Monday.

Location: getting dressed for the gym
Mood: tired
Music: I like to reminisce about a time I’ve never had
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanks for letting me make cameos in your life

Wrote something long and drawn out but instead, as I do most years, I’m just gonna point you to an entry I wrote in 2008.

Wow, it’s Thanksgiving 2012. We’ve been together six years, my interwebs friends.

Thanks for letting me make a cameo in your life.

Bum leg notwithstanding, I’m so grateful for everything I have – my tiny pad, my family and friends, my awesome wife, and my stash of frozen chili and rum.

Life is good.

For those of you not in the US, have some turkey tomorrow.

As for you in the US, Happy Turkey Day!

Location: getting ready to see the fam
Mood: caffeinated
Music: Hello sunshine how are things going?
Subscribe!
Like this post? Tell someone about it by clicking a button below.

Categories
personal

In my life

Condiments at a diner

Had my second Thanksgiving dinner with my family; Heartgirl came along. After a ridiculous amount of food, we all settled down to play cards and Taboo. It felt like family.

That Saturday, saw my old college buddies for dinner; it was a potluck “Friendsgiving.” Brought some sweet potatoes that I made as well as a pie that I bought. Afterward, had some of his fine bourbon, which I enjoyed, but not as much as my usual rum. Per my usual clumsiness, managed to spill wax all over some furniture. That too felt like family.

The guy I’ve known the longest – since we were about 16 (21 years) – just had a kid. It’s weird seeing your friends as parents.

After that, went and saw Hazel, who happens to be his sister, and my buddy Paul with my brother and his new girl for karaoke. Didn’t do much singing but I did have some more drinks there although the drinks were so watery that it was like drinking nuthin.

Sunday, we all just got up and had diner food with my bro and the girls before he headed home to LA.

My lens wasn’t snapped in correctly for most of the stuff so no good pictures to show you of most of it. Figured that out when I took the above pic at the diner.

S’ok, there’s always next year. Hope you had a similar friend/family-filled holiday.

Man, gotta hit the gym.

Location: Brooklyn within the hour
Mood: fat
Music: places have their moments with lovers and friends, I still can recall
YASYCTAI: Make a stand, shake up the views of the common man. (10 mins/1 pt)
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Thanksgiving 2010

79th Street and Broadway, NYC

Me: 37. But in my head, I’m still 18.
Him: (laughing) We all are, Logan, we all are.

Hurt my neck wrestling the other day so I’ve been walking around with this ice pack around it. Man, after 35, nuthin heals the right way any more. Feel my age all of time now.

HG and I’ve been talking about my moving someday outta my pad. Moved lots in the last few years but it’s always been up or down in the same building. Been here for going on 12 years. A dozen years. Doesn’t seem possible and yet it is.

Once again, got nuthin better to say about the holiday than I said two years ago for Thanksgiving 2008.

Off to work and then to stuff my face like a fatty, fat, fat.

Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

Location: UES
Mood: in pain
Music: High time we made a stand & shook up the views of the common man
YASYCTAI: Make a stand, shake up the views of the common man. (10 mins/1 pt)
Subscribe!

Categories
business personal

Brian Regan, Thanksgiving part 1, Drama, and Cars on Demand

Tickets to Brian Regan in NYC

Me: Do you wanna fool around?
Her: No.
Me: (10 minutes later) Do you wanna fool around?
Her: How many times are you going to ask me that?
Me: Evidently twice.

Finished up 95% of that crazy batch of work. It’s a good feeling when you’ve finished up a large project.

On Friday, decided to buy my office some beers so I brought a half-case of small batch brews in. Turned out to be fortuitous cause our law clerk passed the bar and I got another major client. So the bosses picked up some Maker’s Mark and champagne and we pounded until it was time to go home. Sobered up with the girl in front of Iron Man 2.

Saturday, HG got us tix to catch Brian Regan at Lincoln Center. It was a perfect night and he was hilarious.

He’s onea the inspirations behind this blog. He doesn’t curse at all in his set but both HG and I were frequently in tears laughing. There’re 880,000 words in the English language, and it’s not the words you use but the manner in which you use them that makes you a good artist. It’s easy to toss around an expletive here and there and sometimes it’s funny.

Most times, it’s just lazy.

Sunday, went to see HG’s family for an early Thanksgiving – her bro’s in town and won’t be able to come for the actual date. We’re in the DriveMint program which’s like a NYC-centric ZipCar service; they had more garages near us so we picked them over Zip.

Anywho, the @#$@#$ who had our car before us left it BONE-DRY. Our car conked out in the middle of Broadway in front of Lincoln Center.

Me: Oh this can’t be good.

We managed to get it to the side of the road and called Mint. The guy we spoke to got told us to leave the car there, walk over to 59th and pick up the Mercedes sitting there, which we did. He went to go get gas and pick up the car to drive it back.

As for us, we hightailed it out to HG’s family place; we lost like an hour but gained a Mercedes. The stuffing was great – both the noun and the verb.

Afterward, we played some modified Trivial Pursuit 80s version. I did the best, which is understandable since I was the only one that could remember the 80s.

Me: I just wanted to call to say how much I appreciated how you handled the situation earlier. If it was done any differently, you would have lost a customer.
Him: Thanks for being so understanding.
Me: It wasn’t you that caused the problem but you took ownership of it and came up with a solution. I respect that. I’d like to send an email to your company to tell them that how you dealt with me and the situation professionally and quickly.
Him: (laughing) I’m actually a partner in the business. But thanks, I appreciate it.

Location: yest., driving down route nine
Mood: still full
Music: you too and stuff
YASYCTAI: Reward someone that does a good job. (10 mins/1 pt)
Subscribe!

Categories
personal

Don’t really know

What’s the point of it all?

Cloudy day in NYC

Her: What was that sound!?
Me: Was working on something and the live power cable hit the fan.
Her: Logan! You’re going to kill yourself some day. (laughing) And your fly’s open.
Me: (slowly) Yes.

If something did happen to me, someone’d find that I’m 20% peanut butter (by weight, not volume). The remainder being rum.

Did y’have a nice Turkey Day? This year was different. Paul and WM hung up their club shoes to play board games by mine. Very Waltons.

The Professor wasn’t in town but I did see Johnny. With the exception of the Devil, he’s the onea the most dangerous men I know. That says a lot. And he brought his daughter over.

Her: I like you. You’re funny.
Me: I’ll take that as a compliment. Listen, keep your dad from punching me. He scares me.
Her: He scares me too!

This 25 year-old kid named Luis Armando Pena Soltren hijacked this plane from NY to Puerto Rico on 19681124 and went to Cuba where he spent the next 40 years in working as a day labourer.

At some point, he musta thought, What the #$@# did I do with my life?

So he came back an old man and’s sitting at some jail cell knowing that he’s thrown his life away on yet another thing that had the air of truth to it, but no real truth to it.

Him: 10 Million.
Me: Just this year?
Him: Yeah. (pause) Woulda made more if it wasn’t for this economy. Gotta fly back to China in three weeks.
Me: Why dontcha just sell it all? The factories, the buildings, all of it? Y’can spend time with your family, hang out with me. Start up that school y’always say you wanna do.
Him: (shakes head)
Me: Why not? You make more money than the pope but you’re miserable. What’s the pointa all that green if y’don’t get to see your family and I’m the only person in the world y’trust?
Him: Don’t really know.


Nietzxche was right, your convictions’re dangerous things.
The choices remain the same: Change your map; Change your reality; or Keep crying.

Better work out. Next year, doubt I’ll have his daughter there to protect me.

Location: a grey, half-sofa
Mood: cheerful
Music: come with me we’ll travel to infinity
YASYCTAI: Have you considered fencing? (90 mins/2 pts)

Categories
personal

Thanksgiving 2009

Sunset on the Highline in NYC

Me: I’m gonna be 40 soon.
Her: (puzzled) You’re 36.
Me: Oh, it’s there. It’s there.

Don’t think I could write anything better than what I wrote last year for Thanksgiving 2008 so I’ll just direct you there.

My house still smells of fresh baked cookies from Heartgirl. Hope you have something similar.

Happy Turkey Day, people!

Location: 18:00 yest, baking cookies in the UWS
Mood: thankful
Music: Oh, I can cook too, on top of the rest (Spotify)

Categories
personal

Thanksgiving 2008/Your dumb luck

Colin: American girls would seriously dig me with my cute British accent.
Tony: You don’t have a cute British accent.
Colin: Yes I do! I’m going to America!
Tony: Colin, you’re a lonely, ugly, _____. You must accept it.

Love Actually

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’ve got running water. You might even have a water softener. And, despite the countless articles that note that tap water’s probably cleaner and better for the environment than bottled water, you’ve probably got somea that too. Little more than half the world has tap water.

While we’re on the topic of the world, the axiom’s that 1% of the world has a college education. Dunno if that’s true (in the US, it’s about 27%). And you probably got a mobile phone, a fridge, and a tv. Hold that thought.

On a distantly related note, I got ill, viscerally ill, hearing about the 13-year old girl in Somlia that was recently raped by five-men. And cause she reported the incident, she was buried alive up to her head in a stadium of 1,000 men per Islamic law. She screamed for her life as she was slowly stoned to death. They dug her up when they thought she was dead. But she lived. So they finished her with more rocks.

As if that wasn’t ______up enough, an eight year-old boy that tried to save her was shot to death. The kicker’s that the men that raped her were not arrested.

Lemme get to the point: the world is horribly, ridiculously unfair. You’d agree with me, yeah?

But – and hear me out – I submit that the world is ridiculously unfair in our favor. Can’t speak for you so lemme talk about me:

That’s all just in the last two years.

Someone wrote me once, how do you not be broken? After two months, I think the answer comes in two-steps:

  1. Be grateful. The kinda grateful you are if someone paid your tab just cause they could. Cause, that, in essence, is what you got. You got to live in a place where you got enough time to read the random musing of a nobody like me. And water’s a twist of a faucet away. Where life, most likely, has value.
  2. Pay it back. You owe the aether something for your largess. Something. What that is, I dunno. As for how? Dunno that either. Sorry. I’m not that bright and get by mostly on fading looks and charm. But I suspect God’s given you some gift. Start there, I guess.

Now you might think this is some sorta pinko commie, holiday post. It’s not. The first step above is so you’re not onea those miserable people that bitch about everything all of time. So annoying. The second step above is so you’re not onea those miserable people that are happy for nothing all of time. Almost as annoying.

This isn’t so you can save the world, though that’d be nice. Rather – and I know this sounds strange coming from a barely sober nobody holding a tumbler fulla rum as I write this – it’s to save yourself.

Cause I read/know some of you. And I hear how angry and sad some (not all) of you are and, just cause you read me, figured I’d pay some of it back this way.

The saying goes that Wisdom is seeing things as they are. I disagree. Wisdom is the seeing things for what they can be.

Don’t accept when people tell you that everything sucks. They’re lying to you. Things suck, yeah, but you don’t gotta accept it.

Andy Warhol once said that They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. That sounds about right.

And I’m not saying don’t stuff yourself silly over the holiday, and enjoy it. I know I will. Quite the opposite; enjoy it more knowing that you’re among the lucky. The blessed. Your dumb luck. Said it before, God gave me everything. The thing is that I know it. And that’s why I’m not broken.

After you’ve had your holiday, try and make it a little less unfair. Ideally, yeah, do it cause the world’s broken and you got a moral obligation to pay somea the extra you were given back. But if not for nothing else, if for no one else, do it for yourself – to make yourself a little less broken.

Cause, maybe if you do that, you can see things for what they can be.

Colin: Never. I am Colin. God of sex. I’m just on the wrong continent, that’s all.

Location: in my black chair, staring at this screen
Mood: hopeful
Music: I’ll give you anything you need
YASYCTAI: Somehow return of that luck you have to the aether. (Lifetime / 4 pts – 5 if you let us know what you did)

Categories
dating personal

Thanksgiving 2007

Went on a five hours date at the museum

After Thanksgiving dinner, I always meet up with my HS friend, the Professor, for coffee at his folks. It’s a nice tradition I look forward to each year.

After that, I meet up with Johnny; he’s a multimillionaire who owns 17 patents. Chances are pretty good you own something he made.

The interesting thing is that he’s also the guy that first truly taught me how to fight. A mugger once pulled a gun on him but he…well, Johnny did bad things to him. He and I have our own traditions:

Niece: Uncle Johnny and Logan are fighting again.
Someone: Don’t break anything!
Johnny: (to me) What rules do you want?
Me: No elbows, no knees – oh, and no closed fists to the face, I’ve got a date tomorrow morn…
Johnny: (punching me in gut) Don’t be such a baby.

Friday morning, I woke up, ate a ton of ibuprofen and met up with a pretty Italian attorney. Our date went from coffee around the way at 11:12, to pizza in Times Square at 14:00, to saying goodbye after the Butterfly Conservatory at 18:20. We laughed so much, I can’t even tell you.

But we’re both swamped with work and she’s off for business next weekend. I guess things’ll happen however they happen.

I stayed in Friday night and most of Saturday to work but did venture out for a bit on Saturday night. I met an almost pescatarian, blond, Jersey girl that spoke German to me and told me I looked 26 when I asked. I also met a cigarette-smoking, brunette, Brooklyn girl that spoke Chinese to me and told me she was single when I didn’t ask.

Sunday, more work.

And now (deep breath) it’s Monday.

Location: 16:00 yest, taking a walk with a friend around the hood
Mood: thoughtful
Music: the sirens sing so sweet and watched the sailors go down