At age 14, I started working part-time for a furrier while I was going to school.
During that time, I started working more and more hours.

By the time I was 16 years old, I was working full-time and going to school.
Despite my father and mother making very little money, they made too much for me to get financial aid, so I knew I had to get a scholarship to go to college at all. We couldn’t afford school.

After graduating in the top 10% of my school, I did get that scholarship.

I took a summer job at Staples selling computers and fax machines.

While working full time at Staples, I started college.

I had to stop going to the school I was going to because I couldn’t afford the $6 a day to commute. I started going to a more local school.

After 3 years of college, I dropped out because my family needed the money to help pay the bills.

After leaving college, I took another minimum wage retail job with a cellular phone company.

I started working as a salesperson, and I worked really hard.

For my hard work, I moved to the main office of my company.

14 years later, I’m still there.

I’ve survived 3 recessions, an acquisition, and two mergers. I’ve watched many of my friends come and go, and I’m still there.

I’ve never taken a government hand-out in my life.

At age 35, I’m not rich, but when I get a tax refund, it’s because I withhold too much money weekly, not because I’m getting a handout. My tax refunds are a small portion of what I pay in taxes.

I don’t have a mortgage or a house.
I can’t afford one.

I don’t have a child.
I can’t afford one.

I don’t take vacations.
I can’t afford one.

And I’m not complaining. I’m happy with my life.

The reason I’m happy is that what I do have, I’ve earned through hard work, not handouts.

No one “gave” me what I have.

On a regular basis, I’m told I’m not giving enough to others.

I’m told “you can’t ask people to get a job; there are no jobs.”

I was told the same thing when I started going from retail job to retail job.

Well, there are jobs, you just have to be willing to accept that you’re not above them. I thought I was above a “retail job,” and I took one anyway. I haven’t worked retail since 1998.

You can’t move up if you don’t move in.

You hold up your signs telling people your debt should be forgiven because you can’t find a job.

You hold up signs saying people stole from you because you were stupid enough to get an education you couldn’t afford and now you can’t seem to find work you deem worthy of that education.

You chastise Wall Street’s greed, yet you can’t wait to get your own hands on it.

Instead of fighting the government so that everyone can keep more of what they earn, you want to take as much as possible and give it to people who didn’t earn it.

For you, me keeping what’s mine is greed. You stealing it to give to someone else is virtuous.

You fight for the right to redistribute wealth that you’ve done nothing to create.

You believe everyone is entitled to a “living wage” regardless of the work they do. You believe people should get paid more for doing the same work and you should be able to live on any job you happen to have.

At the same time, when people like me go to work every day, your hands go deeper and deeper into my pocket, and the company I work for, who has restrictions and regulations crushing its business, can’t even hire anyone else because they have to have a team of accountants to stay in compliance with government regulations.

You argue with people who think they’re entitled to what’s theirs, and tell them they need to give more to those who have less, yet you’re asking me to pay for things for them that I’m either paying for for myself and my family, or things I can’t afford.

Why should I give you what I can’t afford for myself?

Why should I work while you spend a month protesting the fact that you don’t believe I’m giving you enough of my money to live your dream that was fomented in the halls of a college you paid too much for?

Why do I have to pay to subsidize your mortgage because you bought a house you can’t afford?

Why do I have to buy your dinner and mine, when you refuse to work for your own?

Why do I have to support your children when I can’t afford to have my own?

Why am I paying for your life choices and decisions and then, on top of it, paying for my own?

Life would be a lot better if you left me alone.

53% of taxpaying units in this country pay 100% of the federal income taxes. 47% of you pay nothing, and you can bet that almost all of that 47% is in a park protesting how greedy the 53% are.

I pay enough in taxes.

It’s my money, not yours.

You’re not entitled to it, no matter how much you paid for your education.

I’m in the 53%, and I’d prefer it if you kept your greedy hands out of my pocket.

I’m in the 53%, and I’d prefer it if you left me alone.

I don’t know what it was, but I wasn’t feeling it today. I looked forward to doing this ride for two weeks and then at the end, I only got half way there. Oh well. I won’t beat myself up over it, but for some reason I felt slow and tired today, not like the last time I went out there.

C’est la vie. Tomorrow is another day.

After work, I headed there for a little geocaching.

First stop was a cache that lived under the Queensboro Bridge (the one New Yorkers call the 59th Street Bridge, but the one that’s now known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge). It was surrounded by a baseball field and plenty of people playing on it. Luckily for me, I always take my camera with me, so sitting in weird spots doesn’t even draw attention. This is a shot from where I sat…

The day was really cooperating. A stunning spring day with awesome sun and a good view of Manhattan and Queens made photography a real pleasure. After quickly bagging the first cache, I decided to walk the requisite mile to the opposite end of the island to try another one. Epic. Fail.

My iPhone and handheld GPS both put me in the same spot, but the cache was certainly gone. I’m pretty sure it’s the right spot as it matched up with some of the views from the location on the site, but after searching for half an hour, I had to move on and I left. I didn’t want to, but I had to.

I didn’t waste the opportunity, though. Roosevelt Island is very photogenic, as is the lighthouse that the park I was in was named after.

Then I turned around and a beautiful contrast of building on sun-setting sky was behind me.

It just seemed like there was beauty all around me today. Made me realize something…

I’m not going to get all religious on y’all because that’s not my style, but I have to say… God is one hell of an artist, no?

Gonna take a stab at that cache again some day; hopefully it’ll be half as nice as it was today.

Like I said Saturday, I did actually get a “real” handheld GPS, and it’s pretty awesome, so today I decided to rehit the park and find that damned cache and I wasn’t taking no for an answer.  I turned on the GPS a few blocks away and let it find the satellites.  When I pulled it out at the park, I was within about 150 feet of the cache, so my instincts were correct last time.  I put the GPS in my pocket and started looking and there it was.  It caught my eye.  I sat down next to where it was hidden and pulled it out, carefully.

So as not to arouse suspicion, which was much harder this time because it was a beautiful evening for a sit at the park and there were lots of folks there, I found myself palming the cannister quite often!

Absolutely spectacular.  I am very lucky to live in such a beautiful city.  So beautiful was it that I sat on the bench and just looked at it for awhile, soaking it all in.  It’s was so calming after the day I had.

I won’t give away the contents of the cache, but there wasn’t much there other than the log, which was fine with me.  I had already had my victorious moment.  In fact, I had another when someone walked by with their phone in hand looking down where I was sitting; my guess is they were looking for this particular cache.  Oh well.  Wait your turn, dude.

I walked out of that park smiling ear to ear.  It was a great find and one I looked forward to all weekend.  Finding it was the capper and the kind of little victory that really can make your day.  Lesson learned: take the small victories and enjoy them.  They’re important, and they’re fun, and they’ll uplift you.

Oh, and War is Yesterday.

And Harry is a douchebag.

I dropped her off at work in the morning and then thought about what I was going to do for the rest of the day. I decided I was going to make myself some breakfast and then watch Tron: Legacy, which I got from my good friends at RedBox. It was a great movie and an awesome tribute to the original and even though I’m hoping there will be a sequel, I don’t think they left room in the story for there to be one.

After the movie, I wanted to go outside. It was a stunningly beautiful spring day yesterday and I didn’t want to spend it in the house. I decided to go find a geocache that was near my house, mainly for two reasons. One: it was close. Two: I was worried that with the construction being done, it may have been destroyed. I grabbed my bag and headed out.

I knew roughly where the cache would be because I had looked it up on a map beforehand. Urban caches tend to be somewhat easier because they have streets to keep you on the right track. When I got to the location, I pulled out my phone and started searching. It had me hopping across Pelham Parkway over and over and over again. I knew I was in the general area, but my phone wasn’t giving me the kind of reliable lock I needed to find the cache. What should’ve taken me about 20 minutes ended up taking me 40 and I found the cache more through the use of common sense than GPS. I was so excited, though. This was only my second find and it was kinda cool. There were some goodies in the box, but since I didn’t have anything to leave, I just signed the log.

I headed home smiling. I had accomplished my mission. When I got home, I had a few Thin Mints and then went to pick up Beth from work. We made a quick stop and then headed up to Hurricane Wings, a place we had eaten dinner at on Friday also. The food was so good and we were so hungry that it seemed logical. As we were sitting there, I told her about finding the cache today and she was very interested. I had mentioned the one on the Bronx River Trail in Garth Woods before and I asked her if she wanted to go find it with me and she seemed interested, so after lunch we headed over to Garth Woods and began our hunt.

To say yesterday was beautiful was an understatement. Here’s Beth in the beautiful sun roughly halfway to the cache location.

The funny thing with this trail is that there’s part of it that goes under the parkway, and that part has a clearance of roughly 5 feet. It’s a tight squeeze even for short people (not that Beth is short, but even she had to duck)!

We wandered and wandered taking in the beautiful day and keeping an eye on the GPS on my phone and its distance to the site.

Finally we arrived at the general area and here’s where the trouble began. We wandered around the same general area for what seemed like an eternity. After awhile, we opened up the hint and it helped; at least we knew we were looking under a log, but there were so many logs in the area that there was no way we were going to work out which log was hiding the cache. The iPhone was practically no help as our flashing dot, the one that represented our location, moved all over the place back and forth round and round. We literally were going from 20 feet to target to 135 feet to target. Granted, this could’ve been due to the trees above us, but whatever it was, it rendered a big chunk of the art of finding a cache undoable. Then Beth said, “Can we just go buy a GPS then?”

You don’t have to tell me twice.

I was planning on not buying one. In fact, I was pretty much determined to make do with the GPS on my iPhone, but the reality is that wouldn’t have worked. 1 star caches were hard. 2 star caches were going to be impossible. Luckily I had been doing research to see what was out there and I found one I really liked, The Magellan Explorist GC

It had a good balance of features and it also got decent reviews and is integrated with Geocaching.com, so this was my winner. I wasn’t looking for much beyond “enter coordinates, find cache” and if it did anything more than that, it was a bonus. This little guy is quite capable but probably rocks a few features I’ll never bother with. They key feature was finding caches and as long as it could do that, I was happy.

We ran to Best Buy and then back to the trail. I popped the coordinates into the GPS and we were off, again. Wandering down the trail, we knew roughly where the cache would be, and as we got closer, I started calling off distances. Within a few minutes, we were standing within 60 feet away. Turns out the iPhone was close at times. I followed the GPS off the path and stood behind a tree. Beth came over and stood next to me. “We’re about 6 feet away at this spot,” I said, “Which means we’re anywhere from 6-15 feet. I have a full signal on the GPS.” We started looking at logs, rocks, anything that could hide a cache. I wandered off a little too far, then looked back at the GPS. 25 feet. It was definitely where I was standing originally.

I walked back over there, looked around some more, and then, out the corner of my eye, I saw something that didn’t look “right.” (Sorry, don’t want to give it away for other cachers). Sure enough, on closer inspection, I saw a corner of the container. We dug it out and walked over to a bench to open it and check out the cache.

It was a great find. A whole container full of plastic horses and a log book which had one other signature in it from the same day. I have a feeling that the family we saw in the area earlier were the ones that found it. Pretty cool that we went out for it on the same day!

We took a black horse and left behind a card for some free Parmesan Garlic fries at Hurricane, since Beth and I will likely never partake in that 1000+ calorie treat (although they are amazingly delicious). Whoever gets that is gonna really enjoy the fries!

After we were done, we went over to Starbucks to wind down. We were both fairly exhausted. We both ordered some Frappuccinos and two of our favorite barristas were on duty so we chatted with them a bit. I told one of them about my idea for a new frappuccino and he asked if I wanted him to try and make it, and when he did it was awesome. A completely new flavor invented by me and executed brilliantly by Jesse the barrista.

Overall yesterday was an awesome day. Beautiful spring weather, some geocaching and some fun at Starbucks afterward. That’s what spring is all about, isn’t it?

I hope your day was as awesome as mine!

And, from their more famous opposite side.

Anyway, it was lightly drizzling but nothing that would prevent an intrepid soul from walking around, so that’s what I did. I tried for about half an hour, but the GPS readings on my phone had me squarely in the middle of grass with nothing around me. In other words, there were no signs of anyplace a geocache could be hidden. I wandered the park a bit and took in the sights including some absolutely gigantic geese that I made sure to keep my distance from.

In fact, I was scared to take that photo because every time I went in my bag for my camera, they looked at me. Geese scare me. I have no idea why, but I think it’s because when they get on their tip-toes and spread their wings they’re quite intimidating. So I started walking to the subway and realized I had to pee. Bad. I knew my only hope was making it to Grand Central and using the men’s room on the lower level by the food court, so that’s where I headed. I swiped my Metrocard, walked onto the platform and looked up. “Main St. Flushing, All Times.” Sonofabitch; I swiped at the wrong side of the station. I got on that train, headed one station further, then got off, crossed over, and headed to Grand Central, all the while practically crossing my legs. I came seriously close to standing in a corner of the station. Not kidding.

As I got to the Hunters Point station, I heard the correct train leave, so I had to wait. Again. At least it wasn’t long, though. Maybe about 5 minutes. When I got to Grand Central, I immediately headed for the men’s room. To say it was a relief was an understatement.

I started debating whether or not to take Metro North home. Metro North is the commuter rail north out of the city. It’s fast, it’s clean, there are lots of seats, but if I take it, I have to grab a bus for a 10 minute ride to my neighborhood. I bought a ticket and thought about it as I hunted down some dinner, which I didn’t end up getting because everyplace in the food court was hopping busy. As I was walking around, I noticed a few people looking up, so I did as well. What I saw made me smile ear to ear and I had to grab a picture.

For those of you that have never been, the ceilings at Grand Central are really high, I believe between 50 and 60 feet. Some enterprising protestors managed to get that banner up there, probably knowing it would be there a really long time. And it was really getting everyone’s attention, which serves the purpose.

I decided against Metro North and ended up heading home on the subway. I wasn’t really in the mood for the bus ride anyway. When I got home, I spent some time with Sawyer, made myself some Polenta Parmigiana (using only organic polenta and all natural mozzarella, of course) and enjoyed dinner while watching American Pickers. All in all, a very relaxing evening.

Hope yours was, too.

It was probably motivated by the constant drone of people talking about their New Year’s resolutions and hearing about how they always fail for people because they set out about them the wrong way. Whatever it was, I was going to fix myself. Beth walked past me watching TV and was on her way into the kitchen and I said, “You know how you keep saying you want to go back to journaling again? I’m starting on Monday. I’d like you to join me.” She was overjoyed. She had been asking me to do it for a long time. She wanted to do it also, but it’s hard when the other person you live with isn’t doing it.

Beth and I had been through this together. In 2004, I had a medical issue in January. When the doctor saw me, the first thing he told me was “You have to lose some weight.” I said, “Okay, no problem.” Then, over the next 9 1/2 months, I dropped 87 pounds, took up cycling, and was down to the lowest weight I had been since mid-high-school. I wasn’t just doing well, I was doing exceptionally well. I promised myself I would never let me get to that size again. “That size,” was 357. That’s right. I was 6’1″, and 357 pounds. The problem with being 6’1″ is that you don’t have a point of reference for that much weight and you can really carry a lot of poundage.

I got down as low as 269 and hovered there for a few weeks, and then it happened. I got lazy and I stopped caring again. As much as I said I would never let myself get to that size again, I overachieved, but I had no idea. I knew I had gained back some of it or most of it, but I had no idea how much.

On January 3rd, I started journaling my food again using Lose It, a calorie-counting app that works with my beloved iPhone (so well, in fact, that it keeps me from switching to Android). I got on the scale that morning and it said 343. I was pretty happy about that. I wasn’t back at the dreaded 357. Surprisingly, being 14 pounds down from being huge was very motivating for me, and for the rest of the week I journaled. I weighed myself everyday, but the weights were all over the map. 351, 346, 348, 343. It wasn’t going well. Something in the back of my head said, “You know what the problem is; the scale can’t weigh you; you’re too fat.” I jumped onto the Amazon website and ordered a better scale.

A few days later, that scale arrived. I had been journaling a week and the first scale never got below 343 and was completely unpredictable. Having done the weight loss thing in the past, I knew that the first week was a weight-loss bonanza. Last time, I lost 15 in my first week without any kind of effort. This time, I essentially lost nothing. I brought the scale home, stepped on it butt naked and looked at the number. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was 388.

That number is burned into my eyes. I can still see it in front of me every time I look at that scale.

I had been journaling and eating right for a week and I was 388 when I was able to get my first accurate number. Where in God’s name did I start? 398? 408? Who knows. I felt terrible. I had overachieved my largest size ever by 31 pounds at the least. I sat at my desk, put my head in my hands, and basically wanted to give up. It’s not that I didn’t want to do better, but 357 was hard enough. 388 felt absolutely impossible. How in God’s name was I ever going to roll back that many pounds?

Beth came into the office and saw me sitting there. “How’s it work?” she said, pointing at the new scale. “Works fine,” I muttered. “And how’d you do?” I choked back a bit of a tear. “388. I’m fucking 388 pounds. I’m a mess. I fucking hate myself.”

I think that’s the first time I ever have even said anything close to that. It was sobering for me.

“Well, then you know what you have to do, don’t you?” She was right. I could do one of two things. I could sit there and die, or I could work my ass off, get myself back on the horse again, and take ownership of the situation I put myself in. For those of you who know me, that choice was an obvious one.

So I approached things with even more vigor.

It was hard getting back into calorie counting for me. I had gotten so used to eating whatever I wanted that I didn’t have the mentality of “No, you shouldn’t” for pretty much anything any more. It came back, though, and it got even stronger. We had stopped shopping at grocery stores a long time before this, shopping only at Stew Leonard’s, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. Occasionally a trip to Target or A&P if we really needed something we couldn’t get elsewhere, but we had strict requirements about reading ingredient labels. Late in 2010, I lost a few pounds just changing from eating everyday foods to eating better equivalents from the three stores I mentioned earlier. I had pants that didn’t need a belt suddenly needing a belt just to stay up, so this was a no-brainer.

I went back to calorie counting the way I used to. I had breakfasts that were light, lunches that were light, and enjoyed dinner, and if I had calories left over, I added a snack. I started dropping weight immediately. My last weigh-in for January was 372.8. I dropped almost 16 pounds in one month and people were starting to notice. February? 367.2. As of today, I hit 356.2. I am finally back under where I was when I embarked upon this journey the last time, a total of 31.8 lbs.

A lot of people have told me that I look great and the weight loss is very visible. That’s extremely motivating. I have no intention of screwing up this time. In fact, I’ve probably figured out a lot more since the last time so it’s going to be even better.

I was hiding the number out of sheer embarrassment, but I set a goal for myself. When I hit the number I started at last time, I would tell the story of how I started this time. There you have it. I’ll never be thin, but I can promise you this: I’m tired of and unwilling to be the fat guy for the rest of my life and I’ll be damned if I’m going to do anything but fight my ass off, whatever it takes, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

I did well once. I’m going to do better this time.

And there you have my story.

Not good.

In 2005, I had a simple formula for weight loss, and it worked. In fact, it didn’t just work. It worked so well that I was teaching it to other people on a regular basis. I never taught it to anyone who didn’t use it and have it work for them. Do you know why? Because it’s not a fad diet, a quick fix, or some wacky trendy thing. It’s the way your body works.

The problem with all these trendy silly diets is that they work around what actually makes you thinner; the idea is simple. Take in fewer calories than you burn and you lose weight. Even at rest, your body is burning calories. Knowing your level of activity and your resting calorie usage, you can adjust your calorie intake to a point where you can lose weight with doing zero exercise other than your daily activities and if you feel like the pounds aren’t coming off fast enough, you can jog, hop on a bike, rollerblade, or whatever you want to do and you’re still going to be golden.

No fads. No craziness. No sliding rule pieces of cardboard to calculate some number of “points” that some guy in an office somewhere invented via a formula that they can adjust to keep you coming back to weekly meetings.

Nothing.

Just good old-fashioned calorie management. Proof? Aside from quantities, I haven’t changed my diet at all. I don’t crave things because I have them when I want them; I just compensate by either hitting the stationary bike or going for a walk. In fact, last night Beth took me out for my birthday to Hurricane Wings. Wings are caloric nightmares, and I like the boneless wings served by most wing places and they’re even worse! My result today? I lost .6 lbs yesterday. Why? Because I knew my limit, ordered appropriately, and woke up this morning down 12.4 lbs, which I’ve done since January 3rd.

What I love about a calorie maintenance diet as opposed to a fad “this is the new bestest diet evar!!!1!” boils down to a few factors.

1. Cravings just don’t exist. I love nachos, eat two slices of pizza every day, and Beth makes dinners that are delicious and tasty. Nothing is off-limits to me, so I don’t “sneak” food. I don’t have to.

2. I don’t feel like I’m suffering because of point 1.

3. I don’t need a slide rule to figure out my nutritional limits. I just read labels and there’s my info. If a restaurant doesn’t have the info, I get it from my app (Loseit for the iPhone is my app of choice, but Calorie King is pretty amazing also; that’s what I used last time.). If I can’t, I’ll pass on that restaurant and hit one where I can get the info. In New York City, the calorie counts for most restaurants are on the menus or on the restaurant’s websites. I can even plan ahead for a night out (try that with Nutrisystem; I dare ya).

4. My intake is not subject to the whims of someone in an office who benefits from me staying overweight. On Weight Watchers, they have a “point” system, which is an amalgamation of this that and the other that comes up with a magic number for each item. Need to drum up business? Adjust the points! Give people more of ‘em! Thanks, but no thanks.

5. There’s no arguing that this works. Unlike strange diets like Atkins and South Beach where people become obsessed with avoiding bread and “carbs,” I have sustained this for long periods of time and had excellent results without taking whole food groups out of my diet.

6. Here’s the one that freaks people out: Exercise is optional. Of course it’s recommended, but let’s face it; it isn’t always possible to get meaningful exercise. It doesn’t matter, I lose weight anyway. Have you ever seen someone on a “strict weight watchers diet?” Think about it. When you see those people who are so overweight they’re bed-ridden, what do they do? Tell them to run? No! They tell them to cut back their calories to an extremely low level and people who lay in bed lose weight. I’m not suggesting you should do this (in fact, that’s pretty stupid) but the fact that you can lose weight without busting your ass makes it very appealing, easy, and usable for people who either don’t feel like exercising or for physical reasons can’t. You may not get into great shape, but you’ll lose a lot of excess weight.

7. When I did this last time, keeping calories down and making better choices brought other levels back into place. Sodium, Sugar, Carbohydrates, and Fiber were almost exactly where they needed to be, but all I was actively watching was calories. After almost a year, I learned that I didn’t have to worry about the other stuff because, for me, it fell into line. I have a feeling it would be pretty much the same for others. Not bad, right?

It pains me watching my friends doing these crazy diet plans. Atkins. South Beach. Nutrisystem. 4 Hour Body. The Grapefruit Diet. The Special K diet. Jenny Craig. I just don’t get it. In fact, I’d be willing to bet if those same people put as much of an effort into tracking calories, they would be happier, more satisfied with their choices in their diet, and the lifestyle change would be more sustainable.

I’m happy. I’m back doing what I should be doing and taking care of myself, and I guess that’s the most important thing, but if you’re thinking of a diet, contemplating what you should be doing, and struggling with points, frozen meals, or replacing two meals a day with cereal, maybe you need to rethink your plan and try something with a greater degree of common sense and a lesser degree of faddiness.

Art Supplies are a much more competitive business now, thanks to internet companies being able to compete with local art supply stores. I know this doesn’t sound like a good thing, but think about it… Are the items at the local guy priced to benefit you or him? Just as much as your “local guy” wants to make a buck, you have every right to save a buck or two, and with Jerry’s Artarama, you’ll probably save even more than that.

Jerry’s Artarama carries a full line of supplies for every type of art you want to indulge in, whether it’s sculpting, charcoals, or even gold leafing. In fact, since 1968, Jerry’s Artarama has been saving people bucketloads of money on their art supply needs, and in 2010, from their 80,000 square foot warehouse in Henderson, North Carolina, they service 200,000 customers world wide.

Now of course Jerry’s is a business just like others, but they also have no problem giving back to their customers. Every day they post a new art lesson on their site, in video form, for free. Take a look at the one that’s up there as I write this on how to put fallen logs in your landscapes. I think it’s pretty cool that they not only sell the supplies, but they’re willing to help you get the most out of them.

Does your local guy do that?

Cool. Does your local guy do that for free?

Probably not.

Oh, and one last thing. If you spend $175 on supplies, the shipping is on the house (for more details on shipping times, click here).

Bottom line: if you need Art Supplies, head to Jerry’s.

My first pair of Maui Jim sunglasses got busted when I left them sitting on an end table in my living room and Patches knocked a pile of picture frames over onto them. Buh bye! They shattered like nobody’s business. $180 sunglasses down the tubes.

My second pair was in my jacket pocket at the Audience Conference in November. I picked up my jacket along with my camera equipment when I was leaving and they must’ve fallen out. Guess what? I never recovered them. Another $180 down the drain.

Right now I’m wearing a pair of Bollé Anacondas. They were significantly cheaper, and if I do happen to smash them or leave them behind at a conference, at least I can take comfort in the fact that they weren’t $180!

In the future, I’m going to try and buy cheap wholesale sunglasses, though. It probably wouldn’t hurt to have a few dozen pairs knowing the invariably bad luck that follows me every time I buy a pair!

First up? The Final Destination. Beth and I are big fans of the Final Destination movies. They’re ridiculous, improbable, silly, and over the top, and they’re a hell of a lot of fun to watch. This one was no different. There’s constant tension as you wonder how and when the character on screen is going to die. You know it’s coming, you just don’t know how. Throughout the movie, you can tell that it was meant to be in 3D, but it was still pretty enjoyable as a plain old DVD.

Then we checked out Netflix Online to see what was available, and we settled on Cat’s Eye, a Stephen King movie I’d never heard of. It was originally made in 1985 and it’s basically a story of a cat that moves from one “scene” to another. There are three short stories in the movie, and the cat is involved, somehow, in all of them, on its trip to Wilmington North Carolina for the final story. The first two stories? Believable if not a little silly. The third? Way out there into Stephen King land. Either way? It’s a nice 90 minute diversion from the real world and I’m glad we settled down to check them both out.

Dumb. Effing. Idea.

I will NEVER do that again. My father, buddy Eric, and I did all the moving. First from my parents to my new apartment (Staten Island to the Bronx) and then from Beth’s parents’ apartment to our new apartment. Three men… No worries!

Never again.

Next time I’m going straight to Hire a Helper and hiring a team of New York movers to help me move from where I am to wherever I end up going (and, if I move to Texas like I always say I want to, they have Houston movers also). Why?

Well, for one thing you get a bunch of companies to choose from, and not only do they have names and contact info, but they have reviews from customers who have used them, and you can book your move and check out right on the site.

Or you could be dumb like me and say “Nah, I’ll do it myself.” Me? I’m saving my back, legs, and arms next time. When it’s this easy to find someone to lend a hand (or do all the work, depending on your level of laziness!) it’s silly to do it on your own.

Nearly 8 years later, I’m still asking that same question…

[tags]loren feldman, 1938 media[/tags]