I’ve been wanting to participate in an athletic event that would challenge me and get me back into running.  I’ve struggled the last few months to have the energy and positive attitude to work out and keep up with the regimen I used to find so easy.  I’ve decided to take the plunge and just registered for my first Sprint Triathlon.

I am really excited to train and struggle and push myself.  I’ll be racing with my friend and colleague Katy from work and her sister.  It’s going to be a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. 

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In the past, almost month, since my last entry a lot has happened.  This is not my first attempt to post the relevant news, however on the past two attempts I’ve logged into the site I’ve found updates that have taken the time reserved for the blog entry.  Oh well, such is life.

The last two posts were written on Sunday, October the 12th after I had driven Kate to the airport for a business trip in San Francisco.  We had hoped that I would be able to go out with her and we could extend the trip and celebrate our anniversary in San Francisco but we just didn’t think it was financially possible.

Kate was there for barely 24 hours before she decided that the city was too nice for me not to come out and spend time there.  She worked it all out and found a hotel rate we could afford and even got me on a flight with frequent flyer miles.  So on Wednesday at 8AM I learned I needed to be out of the house at 9AM in order to make my flight.  Amazingly, I managed to get to the airport, park in long term parking, get to the terminal, through security and board the plane with minimal effort!

The first night there I got to interact with a lot of Kate’s co-workers, see a bit of what the entire medical conference was about and then spend the evening kicking back at the hotel bar with a bunch of her friends from work.  By the time I got to bed it was about 3AM Eastern time and I was dead to the world.  How I managed to wake up in time to be responding to work emails and on calls by 9AM Eastern time, I’ll never know!

I can’t recall what days we did what, but overall we had an amazing time in San Francisco.  We did almost all of the touristy things except for Alcatraz as we couldn’t get tickets.  There are some amazing photos here.

Since San Francisco we’ve not had a weekend at home.  One weekend with friends in Maryland, one with Kate’s parents in CT.  We’re both kind of looking forward to a weekend at home.

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Kate gave me a wonderful gift on our anniversary trip to the city.  While we were at dinner we were discussing the iPhone and how much I like it and can’t wait to get one.  We spoke about it for a little while and then she told me that we should just go to the Chelsea Apple Store again and pick one up.  It would be a fun thing to do while in the city and after some back and fourth I agreed and we did just that.

The iPhone is great!  It has its flaws, sure, but I love it overall.  The major things it doesn’t have and or has weak implementations of are:

• It does not have a physical button to turn speakerphone on; this means you have to look at the screen and find the speaker phone button
• There is no hands-free dialing, most often used on blue tooth headsets while driving
• The SMS (text messages for the mainstream) does not show the time of all received / sent messages
• The “reminder” beep for missed calls, SMS’s, email, voicemail etc is not configurable and doesn’t go off at all after 15 minutes
• There is no “notification” light outside of the screen; so if the screen is not on you don’t know you’ve missed a call, received an email, etc

However, the interface is outstanding.  The keyboard is, after getting used to it, easy to use and then disappears allowing the device to be all screen.  The phone is very clear and the speaker phone is amazingly clear.  Visual voicemail is very cool and the email and SMS clients are great.  Add in the third party applications like Facebook, AIM etc and it’s just a really powerful and simple to use device.  Loving it so far!

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Kate and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary in New York City on Friday.  Originally we were going to spend a night in a New York City hotel and spend the two days exploring the city trying to hit museums and other artsy things.  However, money and time allowances did not make staying over a logical plan.

While researching what we could do in the city Kate stumbled accross a tour of the Chelsea Market and Meat Packing District given by Foods of New York.  She has always wanted to go to Chelsea Market since hearing about it on many Food Network shows and we both thought it sounded like a fun enough way to spend a few hours.

From the moment we arrived in Chelsea we had a good feeling.  The area of the city seemed calm, slowed down and cleaner than most of the other touristy areas of Manhattan.  We walked into the Chelsea Market and were immediately impressed by the decorations and design of the building.

We met up with our tour-guide and began the tour.  I knew it was a food tasting tour but I was not expecting much out of the tour.  I figured we might get like a small bite of this, a shot sized cup of that and told about products we should buy.  I could not have been more wrong.  The tour was amazing!  Our guide was very informed about each and every one of the businesses in the market, about the market itself and the people and companies that made it possible.  We were given large samples of food products including an entire bowl of fresh seafood, a smorgasbord from an Italian grocer.

I had my camera with me and tried to get a lot of photos throughout the market, however the indoor conditions mixed with every store having it’s own level of lighting and what not made it very hard.  I never had time to adjust modes on the camera and or balance my white levels for the current rooms light.  We went into the Manhattan Produce Exchange and I got some nifty pictures in macro mode of some produce.

We got to tour Morimoto Masaharu’s restaurant, Morimoto, which is connected directly to the Chelsea Market and we also got to visit Mario Batali’s restaurant Del Posto.  I took pictures in Morimoto’s restauarant as I loved the decor and it allowed me to try different technques to try and get some cool pictures.

After the tour was over Kate and I wandered about on our own and found the Chelsea Apple Store (by found I mean it was right in front of us).  I love Apple’s design aesthetic, especially their grand stair cases and I took a few snaps of that.

All of the photos can be viewed on our photo site.  A direct link here.

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This very day three years ago Kate and I exchanged our wedding vows.  So much has happened with us since we got married.  Our relationship has been tested with some very huge challenges and we’re going very strong.  Some of the things we’ve overcome since our wedding day:

• We purchased our first house and turned it into our first home.
• Between the two of us we’ve started changed jobs three times and have both begone down the path of having a real career instead of just a full time job.
• With Kate’s help I survived eight months of being very ill.
• I had a major surgery.
• Kate taught me how to drive.
• We’ve made some great new friends and said goodbye to some old ones.
• Kate has made excellent progress on earning her MBA.
• We’ve adopted a second cat.

Tonight Kate and I are going to relax, make some dinner and drink a bottle of wine.

Tomorrow Kate and I both have the day off to celebrate our anniversary and we’ll be going into New York City and taking a tour of Chelsea Market and the meat packing district which includes sampling of food.  Then we’ll probably wander around the city and eventually find a place for dinner.

Time to charge up the camera!

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Yesterday Kate and I went to Norz Hill Farm, our local pumpkin picking paradise, to get our Halloween pumpkins.  We’ve done this the last two years and really have a good time each year.  This year I was feeling more energetic and we opted to do the farm tour as well.

They have a ton of your usual farm animals including cows, chickens, ducks and roosters however they had two very unique animals that I really enjoyed.  I’ve always thought emus were funny.  Something about their appearance and name that just made it fun for me to say and laugh about.  Norz Hill had an emu and I had even more fun telling it that it had a funny name.  To which the emu responded quite vocally … if you can call what it does vocal.  When they “speak” it is by making a noise like a drum!

The even more interesting one was a hybrid donkey and zebra mix.  This animal known as a zonkey was purchased from an Amish farm that bread the animal because donkeys are protective of their land and zebras are natural hearders.  They used the animal to keep their sheep hearded and scare off predators.  Here is a picture of the zonkey stealing corn from somebody who thinks thumb rings are acceptable fashion.

Zonkey!

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Monday mornings are usually the worst.  They symbolize the end of the weekend and the beginning of a full week of work.  On a three day weekend like last Tuesday morning is five times as bad as your usual Monday.  This is especially true when you’ve had as good of holiday weekend as Kate and I had and as bad of a morning experience as I had this morning!

In reverse chronological order, mainly to get the bad out of the way and leave you hopefully feeling warm and fuzzy, the weekend in review goes something like this:  Good food, good times, and very relaxing.

On Monday Kate and I enjoyed a relaxing day with a few errands.  The day was dedicated to sitting around the house/deck and Kate getting some quality time to make some recipes she’s been wishing to make.  She made a peach and blueberry upside down cake and a summertime potato salad (no mayo) to go with our dinner.  For dinner we treated ourselves and made lobster!  Since people are being so cost conscious lately the price of lobsters has been reduced as people associate them with being expensive luxury items.  We picked up three Maine lobsters each of over 1LB but less than 1.5LB for $23.00.  Not a bad deal.  We boiled the lobsters in salted water with some pepper and bay leaves and then served it with a butter sauce made with fresh dill.

Sunday we spent the day again relaxing and running a few small errands.  Off to Target to get some required household supplies, went out to get our propane tank refilled for the grill, and his up a local farm that has an outdoor market.  The Hillsborough Farm Market on Hillsborough Road was fantastic.  Such amazing deals on Jersey tomatoes, spaghetti squash, fresh corn etc.  We picked up a decent amount of produce and returned home to relax for the day. We decided to have our own Labor Day BBQ and I grilled up lots of vegetables to go with our burgers and hot dogs.  I made myself a Colby Jack and Cheddar burger with grilled vidalia onions and some grilled scallion for bight.  That’s two fun and yummy dinners in a row, can we go for three?

Surely we can!  On Saturday Kate and I went to visit my friend Mark S and his fiance Kerry, whom we got to meet for the first time, down in Southern Jersey.  We met at their beautiful condo and lounged around their kitchen drinking wine and eating cheese. This alone could make for a wonderful evening.  We then decided to wander out to eat in Center City Philadelphia, they knew of a restaurant “Audrey Claire” which they like and is a BYOB so we were quite excited.  Kate and I know very little pf Philly but they know it quite well as Kerry lived there for multiple years while in school.  Kate and I split a grilled octopus salad and a flat bread with Jersey tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and pancetta.  Both appetizers were phenomenal. For main courses I had a lemon sole with crusted shallots and Kate enjoyed the Fresh Marlin special over risotto.  Kate’s fish was a bit overdone, but the inside was wonderful.

Friday after work we just relaxed at home and had a nice spaghetti and chicken meatballs.  Very relaxing as well.

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I realized that it’s been quite a while since there has been a meaningful update here.  I’ve come to realize that I really do suck at this blogging thing and I am going to make an effort to get better and blog more often.  Any tips and ideas are welcome.

Since beginning with the driving I’ve started to work in the field office a lot more; now two to three times a week.  It really has given me some of my sanity back and I am able to more easily separate the work and home lives.  I still let the stress of my job consume me but I think that’s something I’ll be dealing with for a long time.

Kate loves her new job.  The people seem really cool and professional while not being drab and stiff suits.  She’s doing fun things, involved in interesting projects, and as typical for Kate constantly impressing people and earning compliments.

This summer has been pretty eventful, especially as Kate didn’t take classes this summer so we could have more time to do things.  We’ve gone to friends houses, enjoyed multiple BBQ events, went to two concerts and even saw some family.

The summer is soon to wind down, which depresses me.  Kate begins class next week, the sun is starting to set earlier and work peak periods are beginning.  My evenings of reading on the deck are getting shorter and shorter …. although that could also be because I use the beginning of the sun setting as a cue to go sit in front of the new HD TV service we finally upgraded to.

With the downfall of summer also may have come the downfall of our Macintosh Mini which was used as a home server and multimedia appliance.  While after a few repair attempts including a complete reformat I’m not seeing the errors filling my logs I am not ready to retract the warranty claim I have in with American Express.  AMex was very good about it all.

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A good friend Mike O had invited me to join him and some of his friends for poker a while back however due to a lack of mobility I had never taken him up on the offer.  Two weeks ago I was invited again and since I now have the means to get to and from as well as the experience to feel confident enough to do it at night I accepted.  I’ve now played poker twice in their weekly Thursday night game and I had a great time on each occasion.

It’s nice to have a guys night out on a regular basis and it’s especially nice whenever everybody is just chill and relaxed.  We’re all playing poker, for money, and nobody is overly serious about it which keeps the games very friendly and fun.  I’ve played in some poker games that are so serious and stressful that making a joke, thinking, or god forbid needing to get up and urinate is not allowed.  Those kinds of games I am not interested in.  Making fun of each other, playing a game for fun, knowing that if I screw up royally nobody will care is a great way to wash the stress of the week away.

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We don’t get to see the Fink’s very often, but every time we do it’s an awesome weekend.  We try to have events planned for our visits and the last few have been pretty exciting.  The Big Apple BBQ, an awesome party in the Fink’s backyard and this past weekend Billy Joel’s Last Play at Shea which is the last musical performance before the tearing down of Shea stadium before the opening of the NY Mets new ball park.

The weekend for me began Thursday evening when I went to play poker with a good friend that Kate and I used to work with.  I had a great time playing and even was re-introduced to somebody I used to hang out with in High School.  I took Friday off to finish straightening up the mess that was our house before the Fink’s arrived.  They arrived shortly before 1 PM and Kate was able to leave work shortly after.  We all relaxed on the deck for about an hour before heading into the city to for our evening.

The entire weekend was absolutely amazing and the concert was the best I’ve ever seen.  A lot of details for those who want to read more below.

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