Tag: #lifestyle

  • ODDS and ENDS: Friday, Saturday and Sunday

    (Thursday I don’t care about you…)

    Friday is just okay in my book. When I was working full time, and had a career and everything, I did look forward to Fridays. When I was performing, Friday was always a show, which usually led to a late night with the cast – either at the theatre or at a bar. Now, Friday is the final day of chores for the family. If I do have time for myself, it’s at the end of the day. Friday night to Saturday morning is my chance to catch up on bad movies and tv. There’s no rest on a Friday.

    This coming Saturday we are heading out to get our pumpkin for Halloween. We have given up on carving a pumpkin, as no one in our house really likes doing it. Well… no one likes cleaning out the pumpkin of its guts. Two years ago, we painted a pumpkin, and last year, we just had one that we left on the bookshelf… Not the most exciting, I will admit. This year, we are getting more than one pumpkin – maybe even a fancy pumpkin that is a different color than orange. Could even have those weird pimple bumps on it. What I can tell, and even feel, is that we are in the middle of a transition when it comes to Halloween in our home. It’s not so much kid and trick or treating centric anymore. We are moving towards more of an Autumnal celebration. I’m not sad about it, the kid is getting older, and at some point everything does change.

    Sunday is the night for disappointment! Talking about the Dallas Cowboys here. Yeah… I know they aren’t out of it, as the NFC East is just a dumping ground. No, I’m not looking forward to sitting through three hours of them sucking. And it is the defense that sucks, which will make the whole time just painful. Good thing the Knicks are about to start playing.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Walking to Success, Sprung Spring, and Jeans

    ODDS and ENDS: Walking to Success, Sprung Spring, and Jeans

    (Make you come home early…)

    So… I’m back to the gym. I have been off of it since October, and my body is showing it. I have a little belly now, which is really wanting to become a bigger belly. No real surprise, I have let myself go for the past five months. But not any longer. Back to the gym, and my plan is to follow the same pattern as before; a pattern that garnered positive results for me. Thirty minutes a day for five days a week, aiming to get two miles in on the treadmill. And since I am a middle aged man, I know that I have to work my way up to running the whole thirty minutes. So, I do a brisk walk for now, then I will start running for a few minutes, and alternate back to walking. Slowly, I’ll start running more than walking, getting to the point where I walk the first three minutes, jog the next twenty-four, and do a cool down walk of three minutes. I’m on week two of being back to the gym, and I’m still walking for the time being (Next week we start jogging for a few minutes) but is there a way to just walk my way to losing ten pounds? Better yet, is there a way I can just lay on the couch and… well… just lay on the couch because I hate going to the gym, and none of it is fun for me. But… I want to be healthy, so I have to suck it up…

    No one cares about the second Spring day, which is effectively what yesterday was. It was 72 out in the City. It was great out, but it was the second day of Spring and no one cared. See, that first day of Spring, when it gets to the upper 60’s for the first time, everyone and their dog is out. I love how there are the super ambitious people who are dying for Spring and Summer to show up, to the point that they are running around in shorts, t-shirt and sandals as if it was a Summer day. More importantly, that first day of Spring has a feeling of relief and joy that Winter is finally coming to an end; that we have made it through the darkness and better times are ahead. The second Day of Spring is more about people complaining that they out on the wrong coat in the morning.

    There is one sure fire way to acknowledge that I am getting older, and that has to do with decreased amount of time that I wear jeans. There was a time, say from the age of ten to twenty-five, when I would have worn a pair of jeans everyday. Even in Summer, and I used to live in Texas. I lived in jeans. And over this time frame, I did own other pants, like khakis and such, and for shits and giggles I might wear them out, but on the whole, jeans as far as the eye can see. Then I graduated college, and had to go get a job, and the dominance of jeans began to wane in my life, well, at least between the hours of 8am to 6pm, Monday through Friday. Nothing but jeans, in different colors (Blue, dark blue, light blue, and black) and styles (Baggy and Straight) and brands (Levi’s and Old Navy). Now that I am older, sensible slacks seem sensible, and wearing pants that seem appropriate for the season I’m in also is a very logical proposition.

    (P.S. – The AI Image Creator is an RFK Jr. Fan, as It Thinks I Work Out in Jeans)

  • Halloweens of the Past

    The other day, as we were putting together the kid’s costume for Halloween, she asked me, what did I dress up as for Halloween? At first this seemed like such an easy question to answer, and I started to respond that I went as a pirate, a cowboy, a California Raisin, Indiana Jones… and… and then I couldn’t remember. I drew a blank.

    I could remember being a pirate when my family lived in Alabama, which would have made me five. Then I remembered the first Halloween in Texas, a cowboy – real shock there. I know that I did the California Raisin thing in 6th grade because there was a girl I liked and she thought it would be cute if I went as that, which I think shows you how desperate I was to get any female attention. And then Indiana Jones I did in 7th grade to coincide with Last Crusade which had come out that Summer, but it was also my last Halloween because I did feel too old to be out Trick or Treating.

    That leaves a gap in my memory from 1st to 5th grade.

    Now, I remember going Trick or Treating with my friends over those years. I remember the old guy who gave out pennies, and the house that gave out toothbrushes. There was the could that gave apples, and the family that wrapped Bible verses around mini Snickers bars. And there was the family that turned their home into a Haunted House that you could go through. I remember the junior high boys that would throw eggs, toilet paper, and water balloons at people. I remember families being out, and the police driving slowly through our neighborhood, keeping an eye out, making sure it was safe, and trying to catch those boys on their bikes. I remember the years my mom took me and my friends out, and the times my dad took us.

    But nothing when it comes to my costumes from those years. It’s a blank, while also it feels like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but still won’t materialize.

    It’s a very strange feeling to not be able to remember this. Like, I know it was a big deal dressing up, and taking time to figure out my costume. I know my mom would help me put it together… but I just can’t remember.

    Odd…

  • Visiting a Farmer’s Market

    We’ve been going a little stir-crazy in the City of late. Due to an awful illness that ran through the family over consecutive weekends, school soccer matches, and unbreakable playdate commitments, we haven’t left New York City in close to two months. We were all getting the itch to leave the confines of the Five Boroughs. Finally, this past weekend, we put our collective foot down, and decided that this Sunday, we were getting in the car and driving out of town.

    So, we went to the Farmer’s Market in downtown Beacon, NY.

    I like visiting Beacon, for many reasons. First of all, it’s just far enough away from the City to make the drive feel like you are getting out. The town is beautiful along the Hudson River, and about twenty years ago, when I first visited the place with my soon to be wife, we both thought that this would be a great place to live. (Until we found out that homes there go for like $500k to million. And that was back in 2008!) Though living there really isn’t an option anymore, it is a place that we still enjoy visiting. Oh, and they have a rather cool disc golf course in town.

    I should have taken pictures, but I didn’t think of it.

    There is a very simple pleasure of going to one of these farmer’s markets. We’ve done the ones in Tarrytown, and Cold Springs, not to mention the big one in Union Square, as well as a smaller one in Harlem. I’m never sure what I am expecting when we go to these, but I have it in my head that I will find something that will inspire me to cook a huge meal. And that sometimes happens, but the wife is way better at looking at produce, and then thinking up all the things she will be able to make.

    What ends up happening is that the kid buys some little piece of jewelry, and I buy mushrooms, while the wife goes and finds stuff for us to eat, like risotto balls, and homemade doughnuts.

    It took us about an hour to dive up there. We walked around and shopped for an hour, and then took an hour to drive back to the City. We take the lazy way home, driving down 9D, which takes along the Hudson the whole way, but also cuts through forests, and goes up and down the steeper hills of the valley.

    This was the day trip that we all needed. We weren’t gone too long, and we didn’t go too far way. Just enough to feel like we got away for a bit.

  • Local Middle-Aged Man Buys Shoes from His Youth

    Local Middle-Aged Man Buys Shoes from His Youth

    This is a long story, but follow me here…

    So, back in 1992, I was a sophomore in high school, and the way my town ran their schools, 10th grade sophomore year was your first year in high school. As such, we sophomores were the new kids in class, and as such, we were all figuring out how high school worked.

    I had come into high school with this idea that theatre was going to be one of my things, as my high school not only had a proscenium theatre, but also a theatre classroom and a blackbox theatre as well. Now, let’s not get crazy here, this was still Texas, so the entire focus of the school was on football, and that got all the money and attention. Yet, for some reason, there was this little pocket of theatre in the high school, and I wanted to be a part of it.

    And as I navigated this new world of high school theatre, with all of the pretension and promise, one of the upper classmen, a senior whose name I no longer remember, told me as he looked at my Reebok high-tops, that theatre people wear black high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars. I was gullible and desperate for approval, so clearly I had to go out and get a pair of All-Stars. To my mother’s dismay, as she had just bought me a new pair of Reebok high-tops for school, I had her take me to Dillard’s so I could spend my own money ($20) to buy a pair of black high-top Chick Taylor All-Stars.

    From 1992 to this day, I have always owned at least one pair of All-Stars.

    Now, the only change that has occurred with my owning a pair of All-Stars came in 2000, when I went to buy some, but the store was sold out of high-tops, so I bought a pair of the low-tops.

    And Thus! From 2001 to 2025, I have owned only black low top Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

    Except when I went shoe shopping with the kid the other day. As she was looking at a pair of pink All-Star high-tops, I was drawn to the black high-tops. More for a lark than anything, I tried on a pair just to see. The kid encouraged me to get them, as she hasn’t seen me in anything but low-tops her whole life. I had to make sure she wasn’t messing with me, like telling me to do something to make me look silly. But, my kid isn’t vindictive like that, so she must have meant it, that the shoes looked good on me.

    Funny how that guys comment from high school has stuck with me; He was probably messing with me when he said it.