9.30.2008

Trophy Hangers by Phil Cuttance






I saw these in last weekend's NY Times Sunday magazine. They are brilliant I think. Phil Cuttance, the designer, took the ridiculous motion of trophy hunting and turned it on it's head. And they are actually affordable-- $50 per animal (you get the head and bum) from the very cool website Charles & Marie .

9.16.2008

Birthday Resolutions

I think New Year's Resolutions are way too overdone and therefore, meaningless. Instead, I'm initiating a big birthday resolution this year: focus on my wellness.

I need to get adequate sleep, eat better, get to the gym more and find ways to relax. I have a few solid steps I'm going to try to take to get there.

• In bed by 10:30 every night, which after talking (and whatever…) will hopefully get me to sleep by 11:00. That should give me 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night.

• Stay on W*eight W*atchers until I've lost this freakin' extra weight. But I am going to let myself have one and only one treat a day, be it wine, sorbet, etc.

• I'm aiming for 5 days at the gym-- 4 during the week and one weekend day. When I can I'll try to add an outside run on the other weekend day. I'm not even going to try for 7 days and won't pressure myself for the 6 unless I want to do it. No more making myself feel guilty.

• The relaxation thing I still have to think about. I'm not really sure how to relax, especially when there's absolutely no spare time. Any ideas?

6.20.2008

Top 10 things to avoid

10. $3 for a can of Diet Coke.
9. The god awful sun of Southern Spain (I know, that doesn´t sound horrid to many, but to me it is)
8. 2 hours on an un-airconditioned bus.
7. Sleeping in the same bedroom as my father
6. A hot internet cafe sitting next to people with BO.
5. Restaurants that serve only seafood or toast.
4. Seven days of unending bickering between my parents.
3. The horrid exchange rate between Euros and dollars.
2. A week without baby Beck
1. A week without my beautiful wife.

6.03.2008

Fishs Eddy's new "Floorplan" plates & platters




Last night I walked by Fishs Eddy on my way to the subway after leaving the gym on 19th Street. I spotted these very amusing plates and platters in the window. They come in every apartment style from a tiny studio to a luxurious penthouse. My favorite is the duplex apartment.

5.29.2008

There's only so long a guy can go around feeling unappreciated in every part of his life before it makes him feel like shit. And there's only so long he can spend 8 to 10 hours a day doing something he's completely disinterested in before he feels like he's going to implode.

And that's where I am now.

5.15.2008

I'm back-- well, I'm trying to be.
Life has been crazier than ever. My dieting attempts have been as bad or worse than ever.
But today Beck turns 9 months old and I think we're at the place where change can start being made since he actually sleeps now.
Went to the gym for the first time in a week. It was good to be back. Let's hope it's a good start to new habits.

1.15.2008

Never enough time to blog

I'm resorting to bullet-point-blogging because I simply don't have time to really blog. So, I will present my main themes in a Power Po*nt-like format.

• My eating and exercise has been crap, crap, crap ever since Dec 20th. It has not been a good start to a new year at all and it makes me so angry with myself. And the angrier I am, the worse I seem to do. I got a cold, which meant I couldn't work out, which meant I just started eating junk. The cold has lasted three weeks now. I think I am now better enough to go to the gym tomorrow.

• Last night Bri said to me that a friend and fellow blogger was having a difficult food/body time and so she wasn't going to read my blog in case I was doing better than she is. And then Bri said, "I'm happy I don't have the food and body weirdness issue you two have." I wish I didn't have these issues.

• Sometimes I sneak eat. I just bought 3 oatmeal-raisin cookies when I bought my lunch (a low-fat mango smoothie-- I know, it's not a real lunch) at my office cafeteria. I quickly ate the cookies in my office before people saw me eating them. Why did I buy the cookies? Because I don't feel well enough to go to the gym and somewhere in my fucked-up logic that means I shouldn't even try to be healthy and lose weight. Why don't I want anyone to know I'm eating crap? Part of it is because I can't digest the stuff in the cookies (oil and dairy) and people know that. And so I don't want to explain why I'm eating something that will make me feel ill. But part of it is because I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed I'm not sticking to my diet and I'm ashamed that I don't always eat "perfectly". Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up and eat junk food. Several years ago I "sleep ate". I was taking a medication to help me sleep and it made me really out of it. It turned out that I actually ate ice cream in my sleep. Really not a good thing since I'm lactose-intolerant! But now I have no excuse. If I've had a crappy food day I sometimes just find myself eating junk at 4am when the dog wakes me up. But I would never eat it if Bri was in the kitchen with me or if other people were around. And it's not even stuff I really love. It's almost like I'm thinking, "tomorrow's another day and I need to eat perfectly starting then. But until then I'm going to cram as much crap into myself as possible because I don't know when I'll ever get another chance."

• How can I stop this rollercoaster? How can I get myself to actually not go completely down hill if I miss the gym one day or I over eat a little one day?