The Adventures of Cowboy Hazel

I’d love to be able to survive on like four hours of sleep a night. I have so many different things taking up my time lately that it is starting to become overwhelming. Granted, it’s a good sort of overwhelming and I really shouldn’t be complaining. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to complain about having too much work when you’re out on your own and not getting steady paychecks. I guess, though, that I’m not really complaining. Instead, I’m merely explaining the reason why it’s been over a week since I’ve written anything up here. (I actually did write something midweek, but then decided that I didn’t like it and deleted it, so that doesn’t count.) So, what is all this activity that’s taking up my time?  Well, if you’ve been paying attention, you probably already have a pretty good idea because it was nothing out of the norm.

I’ve put in another full week for Precision Prospects. Nathaniel and I launched a new blog and I wrapped up my real-time posting system, along with a creating a couple new dynamic reports. I’m just getting started now on a huge multivariate testing system. It’s a super cool project, but somewhat tough on the brain because the scope of it keeps it abstract in my thoughts.

I’ve been doing various fixes to my own sites as well. Nothing too exciting, just fixing some known bugs and implementing some new security measures. I was actually supposed to go downtown to listen to a presentation on PHP security tonight, but I just didn’t have the energy or time to make it. One of the cool things that I was hoping to do was to add a fade-in effect to my intro page on Lantenengo, but ran into compatibility issues with Internet Explorer. I’m not sure how to get around that one. I’ll probably tackle that in more depth in my web design blog later, though. I’ll try to keep this from getting too technical.

Of course, running was a big part of my week — I recorded over 25 miles. That’s the most miles in a week that I’ve had for at least a year. So, I guess that’s good. The bad part was that I failed twice to finish a 12 mile run. I tried last Sunday and then again this Saturday. I ended up with 6 miles on one and 8 on the other. I’m really starting to worry about these long distance runs… Can I get back into it? I feel like I just need to get one to prove to myself that I have it in me. I think this whole thing is mental and not physical. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll shoot for 12 again this weekend.

The rest of the weekend was quite unproductive but fun… I went to see Mieka Pauley sing at Rockwood Music Hall on Friday with Sareeka. Saturday afternoon I had lunch with my old neighbors, Victoria, Jason, and their son Sev, then that night I went to a barbecue at Andres’ house in Brooklyn. More on the lunch later… Then, last night Andres and I went down to Soho, shopped for a bit, ate dinner, then got drunk at Diva. I fell asleep on the train ride home and ended up in the Bronx. It was super late by the time I finally made it back to my apartment. Waking up this morning was tough.

On Friday, I decided to hard boil some eggs that I had in my fridge. I Googled “how to boil an egg” and a sponsored link to this video popped up. I followed it and watched a graphic depiction of the horrible way that chickens are treated at egg farms. I threw away the eggs, knowing that there was no way that I could eat them anymore. I mean, I knew that stuff like this happened, but seeing it just brought it back to the forefront of my mind. So, when I was hanging out with Sareeka, I mentioned to her that I was thinking of becoming vegan. Then, the next day, I’m outside on a bench waiting for my old neighbors to show up at Candle Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant on the UES, when a woman came up to me with her dog and asked if I’d watch him while she went inside to order food. I said sure and then sat with her dog for like five or ten minutes while she was inside getting food. It was a cool dog — a lab mix, I think. Anyway, she came back outside and my neighbors still hadn’t shown up (they called to say they had gotten on the wrong train) and the woman sat down on the bench next to me and started eating her food. She asked me if I was a vegan, and I said no, not really, but… and explained the whole situation. Turns out she’s been a vegan for ten years and told me all the cool places to get food here in the city, groups that offer support, good food ideas to try etc. We were talking for like twenty minutes before my friends finally showed up. She gave me her email address and said to contact her if I have any questions about the whole vegan thing. How crazy is that? I mean, what a bizarre coincidence for that to happen the day after my chat with Sareeka about this very same topic. I think it may have been fate telling me that I need to go through with this whole vegan thing after all. Of course, I went to a barbecue that night… not a great start to living vegan. So, here’s the thing — I don’t see why this has to be all or nothing. Instead of completely removing all animal products from my diet and wardrobe, I’m going to try to remove as many as I can while still leading a normal life. I already buy soy milk and never eat meat at home — I’ll continue to do that. And, from now on, I won’t buy eggs, yogurt, or cheese for my house (but I won’t freak out about eating something out at a restaurant that may have them in it.) And, I’ll continue to occasionally eat meat and fish at my friends’ houses as I do now, but just try to limit as much as possible. This probably seems like a half-assed lazy approach to the whole lifestyle and I’m sure that any true vegan will mock my lack of willpower, but I just don’t have the strength to live in a meat eating, leather wearing society as an outcast. This is all I can do.

I am exhausted. My body is completely and totally drained of energy. Maybe I’m getting sick. I don’t even know. Here’s the story: I stayed in last night and went to sleep early so that I’d be well rested for this morning’s run in Central Park with Antonio. We started running at ten o’clock and made it down to the bottom of the park with no troubles. Then, all of the sudden, my legs just completely quit on me and I realized that there was no way that I was going to be able to finish the run. I told Antonio to just finish his run without me. He’s running the Boston Marathon next weekend and I certainly didn’t want to mess up his training schedule. I still can’t figure out what happened to me. I can’t even remember the last time that I actually had to quit in the middle of a run. I’ve ran through some serious pains and aches, but today there was just nothing there. I couldn’t keep going. What’s weird is that I ran four days this week and didn’t have any troubles. In fact, I was running better than I have been in a long time. Why the crash today? The only thing that I can come up with is that maybe I was dehydrated. I’ve been trying to drink extra water all day, but I am still dragging. I’m going to sleep in as late as I can tomorrow and then go back to the park and at least run the loop, but hopefully go for two (a little over twelve miles.) I need to push myself through this. I am so upset at myself for quitting today.

So, I walked across the park and rode the subway back uptown. After taking a shower I decided to head back out to run some errands. That was a bad idea. I was, to say the least, disgruntled. All the annoying stuff that I see people doing everyday was absolutely infuriating today. Like, I’m crossing the street and I see this enormously fat woman holding two bags of McDonald’s in her hand. Are you kidding me? Are you really doing that to yourself? Then, as I’m riding on the subway, there’s these thirty-something nondescript office types talking about the movie Crash and instead of saying anything remotely resembling an original thought, they just regurgitated conversations they’d overheard at some coffee shop six months ago. (Of course, I have no evidence to support this, it was just a strong hunch.) I just couldn’t handle their little cliché conversation. I actually got up and switched cars because I felt like I was going to vomit if I heard them go on any further.

Okay, so I realize now as I read over that last paragraph that I sound insane. I’m not. I normally don’t get this bent out of shape over little things. I think it was just a combination of the fact that I was pissed off about abandoning the run this morning and the fact that I still felt like complete crap physically.

I’m not going to do a play by play of the errands because that’s really not that interesting for anyone. Instead, I’ll just say that I went to four different stores and ended up with only one out of the ten items on my list. (I also ended up with a new salad bowl and lemonade pitcher, neither of which were on the list or, for that matter, really needed.) I got home completely frustrated and feeling like I had wasted a perfectly good day.

It was then that I decided to just throw in the towel and relax the rest of the day. I watched the Yankees game on t.v., then a movie, and after that started reading Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. And that was pretty much it. Ah, this exciting life of mine…

I tried writing the last couple of nights, but it just hasn’t happened. I almost backed out of it yet again tonight, but decided to just plow my way through this case of writer’s block. I mean, how hard can it be to simply slap a few words together concerning the events of the past few days?

Well, as I mentioned, Josh flew up from Miami and was here Saturday and Sunday. We had a very random, but entertaining weekend. I was real glad that he didn’t want to do all the typical tourist crap. We went up to the Yankees game on Saturday and sat out in the bleachers which was fun except they don’t serve beer there and it was really hot. The left half of my face got completely sunburned.

We may have seen someone die too, which was alarming. Right after the game, we were taking photos of us in front of the field in our Jason Giambi t-shirt jerseys when Josh noticed a guy laying on the warning track in the corner who had fallen from the stands. We told a cop and they sent some people over to look at him but then we got shooed away. The guy wasn’t moving at all. I looked on the news for anything about it, but couldn’t find anything. Hopefully, he was alright. Scary.

After that, we headed down to a record store in the Village to pick up LPs for a Sleeveface inspired photo shoot, over to McSorley’s (which was already unbelievably packed at like 4:00) for a few beers, then to Whole Foods to get food for the Kansas game. The next day was just frisbee in the park, a quick tour of the history museum, and a trip to Staten Island to eat at Karl’s Klipper (best pastrami Reuben sandwich anywhere).

Josh left Monday morning and I was back to work. Monday and Tuesday were frustrating because I kept running into problems that I couldn’t solve, but I had some big breakthroughs this morning and am feeling much better about the project. Besides work, it’s just been laundry, cleaning, reading, etc. I finally finished up that marketing book I had gotten stuck on. It was actually a good book, I just had trouble sitting there for long periods of time reading about marketing.

I started up running again on Monday. I had, because of everything going on with work and people visiting, unexpectedly taken a week off of running. To my surprise, instead of that hurting my pace, it actually helped. I ran my best time ever on my daily stretch of the East River on Monday at 6:48 miles, then beat that time on Tuesday running 6:46 miles. I intentionally slowed down today because I’m going downtown to run with one of the guys from my running group tomorrow and didn’t want to be fatigued, but still finished with 6:52 miles. These are serious improvements over what I was running before. Who would have thought that taking a week off and binge drinking and eating junk food would actually help my running? I guess you just need a break sometimes.

But that break is over and this week is all about dedication.  I’ve been cleaning, reading, working, running, lifting wieghts, eating healthy, and not drinking all week.  And I plan on keeping it up for a while.

There’s a Garth Brooks with the chorus, “Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you’re standing outside the fire.” I find that to be very true. I was going to elaborate on those lyrics and their relation to my week, but I don’t have the mental strength required to do so. I put in a solid twenty minutes trying to write out my thoughts on the subject, but the words just aren’t there. So, instead of anything deep and philosophical, let me just do a quick rundown of what’s been happening lately…

I put in 40 hours of work for Precision Prospects this week. It was so good to have that big a chunk of my time so nicely structured and productive. I finished up a big project and started a new, even bigger project that is quite a bit more advanced than my typical work there. It’s really stretching my brain but, so far, I haven’t run into any insurmountable hurdles. And, I’ve pretty much wrapped up the technically difficult aspects of the project already. Now, it’s just going back and writing all the code to connect everything together so that people other than me can understand and make use of the system.

Of course, this week was also the start of baseball season. How is that possible? I am totally weirded out by the fact that it is already April. Seriously, when did this happen?

I went to the Yankees game with Sareeka on Wednesday. They lost to Toronto 5-2. That sucked. The game was fun though. I love going to games with people who have never seen a baseball game before. I don’t know why, but I enjoy explaining the rules and all that. Plus, games are always a good excuse to hang out with friends that you haven’t seen in a while. In retaliation for the fact that Sareeka always calls me Buttercup, I gave her the nickname Bobby Abreu (they kept playing salsa when he came up to bat and Sareeka is big on the salsa). We’ll see if it sticks.

Then, last night, Diana came down from Westchester and we went to the game. We started drinking right after I picked her up from the train station and continued drinking heavily all night. (More on this later.) We had a blast at the game. The Yankees came back late to win and everyone was in a good mood. The subway seemed too hectic when we got outside so we went across the street and hung out at a bar for a bit. I pulled out my crazy drunken white boy dance moves and brightened the lives of all those that were there. There was subway construction on the way home and I got super frustrated about the fact that I couldn’t figure out why the 6 was going express. Diana wisely suggested that we just take a cab when we ended up at 86th Street. We got back to my place and had a couple more cocktails. We were completely smashed by the time the evening was over.

I woke up today at 8:00 feeling alright. It was strange — I had expected a big brutal hangover and it wasn’t there. Unfortunately, it decided to show up in full force about an hour later. I signed on and got some work done, but it was slow going. My mind was fuzzy. Still, I got some really good progress made on my project while Diana showered, napped, and tried to recover from her own hangover. Despite the fact that we clearly drank too much, it was great having Diana around. My apartment always seems so quiet after she leaves. It’s crazy that we’ve known each other for almost ten years now. I have trouble wrapping my head around that.

And now, as I write this, Josh is in flight on his way here from Miami. He gets in at midnight. I haven’t seen him since last June when I went down there for a weekend. He’s going to be here until Monday and we’re going to have a good time – I can sense it. We’re going to the Yankees game tomorrow. It’ll be strange, though, because we’re sitting out in the bleachers instead of in my usual seats. I hope he doesn’t want to do too much touristy stuff because I really don’t feel up to that. My sister’s visit used up all my patience for wandering around the city. Don’t get me wrong — it’s fun every once in a while, but I really don’t feel the need to go do that again two weeks after I did it the last time.

The bad thing about having all this activity at once is that it’s going to make the rest of the month seem lame. I mean, I will have gone to three Yankees games this week with three good friends. Counting my dinner party on Sunday, I will have had six friends up here at my place this week. I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty good week for me. I love playing the host and being surrounded by the people that I care about. But then, after this exceptional week, going back to the monotony of my typical existence is going to be that much harder.

Why not just make every week as good as this week? Well, there’s a couple reasons. First, I haven’t gotten shit done. Sure, I got 40 hours for Precision in, but I did almost nothing to improve my own network, I haven’t been reading, and I only ran 8 miles all week. Second, my friends have their own shit to get done and don’t have the time to hang out more than they do. When did we all get so grown up and serious?

Okay, so let me end with a brief reflection on my March Resolutions. I achieved none of them. I only ran 83.2 miles — not 100. I’ve been drinking pretty much every day lately and got completely hammered last night. I’ve worked at least eight hours every Saturday and Sunday (this weekend will be the first that I’ve actually taken off). And, I stalled on reading. I’m in the middle of this web marketing book and it is taking me forever to finish because I can’t seem to make myself sit down and read it. So, what now? Do I just abandon the resolutions and move on? Or, should I try again in April?