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.