Tag Archives: realitynewsonline

Well, Hello April!

I took March 2010 off to focus on personal matters.  HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Nah, I was just lazy and it wasn’t too filled with exciting adventures and stories.  The Winter Olympics obviously went well and now work is getting “interesting,” in that I’ve told them I plan to leave NYC at the end of the year.  They may or may not be able to hook me up with something in Los Angeles.  I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.

In the guitar front, I am like so much better than I used to be!  I know around eight chords and can actually strum in rhythm!  When I feel like I’m actually able to play something AND sing/mumble at the same time, I’ll post a YouTube video here.  For me the most dramatic part from Lesson 1 to Lesson 9 is the progression from being so uncomfortable with finding a chord and changing to another one to now having an innate sense and accuracy in finding the chords.  It’s kinda cool.  Now I’m in now way ready for my sidewalk debut begging for change, but I’m getting there.

If you didn’t hear via Facebook or such, I ran in the NYC Half-Marathon 2010 two weekends ago on March 21.  I initially started training fairly well, but then the Olympics and the snowy weather really put a damper on my motivation.  So effectively, I didn’t really train.  I was good with running 8 miles or so, which isn’t shabby, but still, it’s not 13.1 miles!  So on Sunday, March 21, a fantastically beautiful NYC day with gorgeous cool temperatures and beautiful sunny skies, Larry & I took part in the race.  He was in a much further-up corral than I was, so I didn’t run it with him.  The course loops you around Central Park one and a half times, then you turn down Seventh Avenue into Times Square!  It’s a great feeling to run through there and you are right in the middle of it.  You then turn on 42nd to the Hudson River, where you then run down the highway to the World Financial Center area.  It was a good run, but by the time it was time to run along the river, I was sooooo ready for it to be over.  There were professional photographers taking pics all along the route, and then they automatically can find out which ones you’re in and then they send you an email link to them and you can see how awful you look while running.  And I’m now sharing that with you:

http://www.brightroom.com/go.asp?73119946

Yeah, not my finest shots, that’s for sure.  The ones of me in Times Square aren’t so bad, where West Side Story can be seen in the background.  The others, not so much….

Here is a cool link to a “replay” of the race route using a Google Earth version of NYC – it’s fairly accurate of what you saw while running:

http://www.racemyrace.com/race.php?rid=54

One last little thing to share with you – I got one of my first real “unhappy” emails from someone who reads the recaps I do for Amazing Race on RealityNewsOnline.com.  You can see my links in the ARTICLES section – I got the email in response to my latest article recapping Episode 7’s extra scenes.  If you watch Amazing Race, you’ll know that there is a team of lesbians who haven’t been the best of friends with the dumb model couple.  Some of the teams are all harping on how mean the lesbians are to the models, and I took a moment in my recap to basically explain that I didn’t see where these teams were coming from as I didn’t think the lesbians were actually doing anything worthy of notice.  Well, I bring to you the following email I received this morning from “Joy” who definitely doesn’t live up to her name:

Subject:  how stupid you are
Your so biased with Caite and Brent all these lesbians do are mocking them and you say its only tiara comment ?Are we watching the same show?
Ifit someone who is dirty its the lesbians they are lesbians they should be ashamed of themselves they are hypocrite jjust like you.YOU ARE SO BIASED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Ah, this is even better than a dotante. No kidding.  I didn’t respond as it’s not worth it to, but wow.  I am almost tempted to think this is a fake-out, especially with that trailing 1 at the end of the exclamation points.  The many exclamation points.  But who doesn’t love dirty lesbians?   COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

November!

Okay, so here it is, almost no longer the middle of November.  Uh, why is my birthday almost a vague memory????? It probably has to do with a crappy last week.  Fortunately, this week has been a lot better.  I’m actually not ultra miserable at work.  Yay for that!  I’ve also been able to see Larry a lot, which is always a good thing.

We may be going to the Museum of Modern Art on Thursday night because they’re having a Tim Burton movie retrospective – the movie they’re playing on Thursday?  BEETLEJUICE.  How could I resist seeing that on the big screen again?  I just hope it’s not sold out.  But it is motherfuckin’ New York City.  Blargh.  Guess we’ll see what happens.

Have you been watching the Amazing Race this season?  It’s been a very entertaining season, but I am torn.  I find Sam (one half of the gay brothers team) to be incredibly cute.  Unfortunately, this past episode he got quite annoying this episode.  And I just can’t get excited much over his brother Dan – the body’s fantastic but the face, well, let’s just say it’s not really a surprise he’s gay.  Okay, it’s called GayFace.  I may or may not have it – but Dan definitely has it.  Anyway, one of the hilarious things that happened on the last episode was that the teams had to play mud volleyball in their underwear.  The mud was like 18 inches deep or so and you sank right into it, so it was hard to move around.  Anyway, Sam was in shorts but Dan was in boxer briefs…tight boxer briefs.  And so he had this giant blurred out area around his nether regions…but so did Sam.  And it didn’t make sense, unless his shorts were opening up at the fly. He had just remarked on the Estonian opponents’ hotness (I had to concur on that assessment) so perhaps he couldn’t control his privates?  Or was CBS just fucking around with Sam?  I mean, they were literal shorts!  With Dan, even the blur, you could tell if they hadn’t blurred it it would have bordered on Pornville.   Anyway, here’s the picture I’ve attached with my realitynewsonline article – I can’t imagine they wouldn’t use it, but then again, it is very male-centric.  Not much in the way of boobage.  I am interested to see what pic my article ends up with!

Sam is the one on the left – he has a bit of a sour look on his face as they’re in the midst of a spat with the Harlem Globetrotters after a little altercation on the path to the Pit Stop.  Nice to look at, nonetheless.  What the hell was I talking about?

(Thursday morning update: Realitynewsonline used the pic above.  Sweet.  I’ll get clicks just by that alone!!! – the link to my article can be found in the Articles section of this site).

I don’t know, but the Beatles rule.

So we picked up a Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake at work today for the November birthdays.  I LOVE COOKIE CAKE.  Here are the pics from this delicious day:

18-Nov-2009 13:37, Canon Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, 8.0, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200
18-Nov-2009 13:37, Canon Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, 2.8, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200
18-Nov-2009 13:40, Canon Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, 2.8, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200
 
18-Nov-2009 13:41, Canon Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, 2.8, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200
18-Nov-2009 13:41, Canon Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, 2.8, 6.2mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 200
 

Morning at the gym

I have made a life change – I am working out in the mornings again.  I will admit that one day does not a habit make, but it’s a start.  I finally had to admit to myself that my workout habits have been broken due to the fact that at work, I typically end up having to stay late for issues.  So when this happens, by the time the crisis is resolved, it’s late enough for me to say Eff that to working out.  Mornings though almost always are a slow start, and would guarantee that I can get some exercise in.  So I got up at 6:15 AM (!!!! – I haven’t done that since AF times, I swear), got ready and headed in to the gym at work.  I realized then that NYC is definitely a city that does sleep, it’s just not until 7am in the morning.  My commute was awesome!!!  The subways were not crowded and the sidewalks were almost…quiet.  I could get used to this.  It was great to be done and it is a good way to get awake, although I still grabbed a cup of coffee afterwards.  So Day 1 done – here’s hoping I can stick with it.

This weekend was Larry’s birthday weekend.  He got the first season of Star Trek on Blu-Ray and some awesome center orchestra tickets to see West Side Story on Broadway this week.  He’s got a great boyfriend.  We also went to see ‘Up’ (so good…and so emotional too!), went to the Whitney museum (not Whitney Houston, alas; it’s a very cool museum focused on American art); had BENIHANA for dinner (I LOVE that place); also saw Terminator Salvation on Sunday.  I enjoyed the movie and it does seem that it is keeping in step with events that have been told in the earlier movies.  I’m not sure it’s that great of a movie… I really enjoyed the first three a lot more (I watched T1 last night at home – damn that movie still is good).

So now back at work.  It should be a good week as we’ll get to see West Side Story on Wednesday and if all goes well, I’ll even get home every night at a decent hour as my workout will be done in the morning.  I’m also going to be writing for RealityNewsOnline the Thursday night recap of ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here!’  I enjoy writing for the webpage and it gives me something to do that has nothing to do with my job, although this time the show is on NBC….  🙂

Couldn’t resist

I had to re-post a comment I saw on the Huffington Post – of course I’m sure others will think this is all liberal spin… whatevs.  Prove it wrong.

For those of you trying to keep up at home:

$1.6 trillion tax cut = OK
$1 trillion+ spent in Iraq = OK
Annual $500 billion deficits = OK
Near-Doubling of the National Debt from $5.8 T to $10.7 T = OK
$85 billion to bail out AIG = OK
$700 billion to bail out the rest of Wall Street = OK
$700 billion in domestic infrastructure investment = Wasteful Pork
$75 billion to keep people from losing their homes = Socialism OMG

Scary.

Anyway, I wrote my first recap of the Amazing Race 14, episode 1 Insider videos but it hasn’t been posted yet.  Gotta say though that after that firsrt episode, I really really want to go to Switzerland!!!   Survivor has been entertaining so far and LOST was freakin’ glorious yesterday. 

Movin’ on up (movin on up!) to the Upper West Side!

Where the hell have I been?  Gosh, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?  Sorry ’bout that, y’all!

What’s the crazy exciting news going on right now, you ask?  I am moving to NEW YORK CITY!  I know, I know, didn’t I do that  over a year ago?  Kinda.  But I was still across the river in Jersey.  Close, but definitely no cigar.  But I knew back in November that I was ready to finally live on my own and most importantly, move into the city.  I’ve been checking listings a lot over the past 30 days.  Mostly through craigslist because hey, it’s free.  Of course, you get what you pay for.  But one listing I clicked through on had a link to the actual site.  The ad in craigslist was actually quite informative so I was impressed enough to follow the link to the real site.  Good move on my part.  The site belonged to this guy who not only puts great pictures of the properties up, he also puts up detailed floorplans (a huge rarity in the online world) and great descriptions.  Here’s the link to it while it’s up of the place I fell in love with online and once I saw it in person, I had to have it:

http://www.ccrny.com/?detail&rrecno=54495

Go ahead, be jealous.  Sure, it’s ‘only’ a studio.  But DAMN.  It’s a huge giant space with 12′ ceilings.  Those windows are awesome.  It’s in the Upper West Side on a fantastic street (72nd).  It’s a block and a half away from the Dakota (where John Lennon and Yoko Ono lived) and Central Park.  My commute to work, via two possible subway routes, is about 15 minutes.  It’s basically ridiculous.  The rent will probably appall anyone who doesn’t live in NYC and the immediate area around it.  I know it’s appalling to me when I really think about it.  But for the area and what I’m getting, it’s incredible.  Also, there’s a freakin’ attic over the kitchen for storage.  Plus, the closet is incredible in that over the two sides where the clothes hang, shelves go up like another 10-12 feet.  You think i’m exaggerating.  I am so not.  I will need a damn Lex Luthor library ladder to get up to the top shelf if I need to.

So that has been an exciting thing to do.  My lease will start Jan 1 but I will also have both places at the same time during January.  Hopefully that will make moving not so stressful.

Other than that – let’s see… it’s been a while but it’s mostly been busy at work or hanging out with Larry.  Thanksgiving I spent with him and his family in Fort Lee, which was a lot of fun.  I am headed home to LA for Christmas though, so look out California!  You’re lucky Prop 8 passed or I may have just got myself gay-married for kicks!

Of course plenty of fun things have happened in the meantime, but I really can’t detail them all.  I’ve been writing like crazy still for RealityNewsOnline but Amazing Race just ended!!! Booo….  They are asking me back to recap the new NBC show “Momma’s Boys.”  I would never watch something like this but if they want me back to write for them, who am I to complain?

I haven’t linked to my stories lately, so let me see if I can find the recent ones and link them here:

Episode 8’s Insider Video recap:
http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl?mode=1&article=article17367.art&page=1

Episode 9’s Insider Video recap:
http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl?mode=1&article=article8542.art&page=1

Episode 10’s Insider Video recap:
http://www.realitynewsonline.com/cgi-bin/ae.pl?mode=1&article=article8551.art&page=1

Hopefully my recap of the finale’s Insider videos will be up really soon.

Peace out!