looks like carmen and i will be moving next month. this will mark my second move in less than a year. A trend, i hope this does not make. Perhaps the crab set the moving curse upon me?

anyway, we’d have loved to stay here, but it turns out that the landlord has other plans for the apartment, so sorry to any kids out there looking to sweep this place up.

moving. again. in july. this is going to suck.

carmen was pretty upset about it. more than a few tears were shed over all the work she put into this place. And the curtains. oh, the curtains.I guess we shouldn’t have really unpacked all my stuff.

i’m trying to look at the bright side. there’s a possibility of moving into a building with fios! plus, who knows, maybe we luck out and find an even better apartment. maybe one that’s off of an avenue so the kids in snv no longer have to hear sirens blaring over the phone all the time.

so, i guess i should wrap this up by asking if anyone knows of an apartment in the east village area with fios. anyone?

Over the past two and a half weeks, i’ve gotten carmen running with me. Carmen’s friends are impressed. They tell me they’ve never seen her run before.

anyway, it’s been going pretty well. we’ve been running three times a week. started at 20 minute runs and have worked our way up to 25 minute runs. actually, i should say that we started out with two back-to-back ten minute pieces and have worked our way up to one consecutive 25 minute run. We’ve progressed decently.

Are we where I think we should be after two and a half weeks? not really. I’m impatient, i know. We haven’t quite gotten to doing core work, push-ups, and squats that i’d like to introduce. We haven’t gotten to the stuff that really hurts. I’d love to get there, but i can’t be her trainer.

I can’t be her trainer because trainers need the latitude to make you cry.

Maybe it’s the militant way I was brought up in sports, but the only way i know how to get results is by breaking down the walls of rational thought. Crying is a pretty effective mean to that end. It’s like breaking a horse . . . almost. It doesn’t sound nice, I know. And it’s not that everyone has to cry. It’s more about being able to push them to that point.

The thing is, I know if i do make her cry, i’m the one that’s going to be hurting in the end, and maybe even our relationship will suffer. how much can you love a guy who makes you cry all the time? well . . . i guess she could develop some sort of stockholm syndrome or something.

anyway, the other day, it sorta happened. we got into an argument right before our run and i sorta left her in the dust for a good half a mile as i ran off some anger. eventually i calmed down a bit and realized what i was really doing. suddenly, this image of what she was experiencing, what it was like to see me running further and further away from her, popped into my head and my better nature came through. It wasn’t the sort of crying that you want to see, though. it was the “my boyfriend is a dick” crying instead of the “i’m so tired i’m going to puke” cry.

It also wasn’t a pleasant experience. We usually chat about our day while we run. It was total silence yesterday other than the occasional “watch out for the dog shit” signals. We didn’t talk much the rest of the night either. All-in-all pretty uncomfortable for a while.

We did, however, run a whole lot faster. We got about a minute thirty past our usual halfway point landmark, which means we found three extra minutes in a 25 minute run.

Was it worth it? The irrational in me says yes–it would have taken multiple weeks to reach that pace otherwise. Imagine how fast we could have run if it was the puke-crying! The rational says no–look at the cost! Inner conflict is so lame. We smoothed things out eventually. I think the cornish game hens i cooked up for dinner helped a bit. cooked in bacon fat with pearl onions.

moral of the story: maybe there are other ways to get people to perform, but making them cry sure is effective. and, no, I can’t be your trainer.

sub-moral of the story: i can be a real dick.

I could spin a tale about how i was taken by surprise when a delivery man showed up at my front door with one of these bad boys. I could tell you that carmen really out did herself this time. I mean, wow, a new tv? for me? you shouldn’t have . . . thank you so much!

this post was brought to you by a sagging economy, the good people of capital one, and the phrase “0% APR”

samurai is so last season:

how embarrassing. first our only pro team falls to last place. next, we steal lance armstrong’s bike.

sactown is the place to be.

In case you missed it, yodel anecdotal, the y! corp blog, did a piece on the y! sports fantasy team.

For the record, that soda pyramid has been there since the olympics.

while the crab has opted for the hawk of late, i’ve been running with the samurai look lately. I’m sure it makes me look younger, but today while checking out at the supermarket, an older gentleman remarked to me:

how was the christmas haul this season? where you a good boy?

he said it in such a way that I was sure we wasn’t joking.

Once again, i find myself living in my aunt’s basement, if only for a couple days this time. It all feels vaguely familiar enough to coax a reminiscing blog post out of me and close the books on a season of change.

the basement:
is now a remodeled basement worthy of being called a guest house–52 inch flat panel tv, pool table, new bathroom. It’s pretty swank.

The coffee shop :
the korean girls have been replaced with a korean dude. He doesn’t seem to be as affected by my charms.

The house:
is now sporting some brand new landscaping. gone is the gopher hole ridden plot of dirt. in its place is some eco-friendly paving stones and low maintenance foliage.

Oh, and for those who are curious, no, i have not had another run in with the birds. Then again, it is winter time . . .

uh . . . i meant to post this a long time ago. photos will be forthcoming.

The trip east has concluded. Happy to report no major or minor accidents. We pretty much kept to schedule despite taking off seven hours late. note to budget truck renters in SF, a 2pm pickup time coincides with the 2pm closing of the rental place. It’s not a good idea to be ten minutes late.

I was planning on blogging more during the trip, but there was always something else to do/think about. Some notes:

• california is a beautiful state.
• nevada is a desolate wasteland
• wyoming has lots of interesting rock formations and windmills
• interesting tidbit about wyoming: carmen and i were the only non-white people in the town we visited
• nebraska: they don’t call them the corn huskers for nothing
• There is a great little coffee shop in gothenburg, nebraska called the locco espresso.
• all the women in the middle of this country seem to have blonde hair and blue eyes
• chicago seemed like a nice town. it was the first chance during the trip where carmen and i got to head out after the drive. There’s also a nice breakfast diner called the West Egg which has suprisingly good coffee. It was also nice not being the only non-white folk in a given city.

all in all, not a bad trip. ~700 miles a day. we finished in 4.5 days with a long last few hours trying to get through the lincoln tunnel. Managed to have only one real argument revolving around a dropped dib that got lost in the truck somewhere.

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately. There are many reasons: watching tv on a tiny 24″ lcd doesn’t quite give me that HD thrill; the pocket book it tight, so we don’t go out much; i need to get my fill of tasty food; cooking is like engineering lite–prepping food is akin to building libraries, devising the execution plan such that everything comes out hot at the same time is kinda like software engineering, and in the end you get yourself a nice little product. Sometimes i almost enjoy the execution more than the end food product (not that the food is bad, but i just like executing).

Anyway, I got ambitious this year and decided to cook thanksgiving dinner for carmen’s mom. The menu was as follows:

• Empanadas
• Butternut Squash Soup
• Roast Turkey
• Stuffing
• Cranberry Sauce

Many an astute reader will notice the menu is similar to our first annoual pre-thanksgiving warm-up dinner. That is not a coincidence. I opted to swap out the tart cranberry sauce for a more traditional one and one of carmen’s mom’s friends brought the mashed potatoes. I think this meal actually turned out better than the first. the turkey was a bit juicier, the stuffing had better taste–although not entirely better consistency, and the cranberry sauce was a major leap forward.

After eating two turkeys in as many weeks, i think i’m officially done with the bird for a while. time to move on to some red-meat.