very quiet office day and split out just in time to meet for my usual friday training, no black eyes and no major bruises so i felt pretty good afterwards. fatigue and a giant four cheese calzone teamed up on me and any aspirations of a friday night on the town i may have once had were doused. that was until i got a call with a plea to go booze it up downtown at a bar called 83 proof, already having teeth brushed and pjs on i somehow bounced back and pedaled down to check it out... nice atmosphere, great bartenders who actually bought the bar an entire round of shots. ran into a few friendly faces and somehow managed to rally and stay until closing.
finally the meetings have been quelled... but i wound up at the office late watching recaps of the democratic debates on youtube then rushed straight home to relax in the quiet of my apartment for the first time in over a week.
another day of meeting on top of meeting which i am beginning to feel is some kind of cosmic corporate punishment, but nothing another good 40 minutes on a treadmill can't cure.
got a pop over visit while attempting to wind down and spent a good portion of the evening trying my best to lend a helpful ear to a friend with man troubles...
up early and thrown right back into work, the massage the i got while in austin is wearing off with every minute, especially because tuesdays just happen to include a meeting that runs from 5:00 to 6:30pm every week... that as you know is an hour and a half past the normal clock out time. luckily, it wound down early and i was able to punch the clock on some deserved gym time.
stupid, overly relaxed me made the tactical error of booking plans one on top of the other as well which really prevented any kind of prolonged relaxation. cathy called with a free ticket to a noise pop party, and cielo wanted to meet up for a drink and some grub. i managed to juggle both and crashed out later than i probably should have.
just getting up and about on my last day in austin. yesterday was a bit of a wash due to hangovers from saturday night but when i did venture out for coffee i stopped into whole foods for some random items. it might have been the hangover that was contributing to it but this was a pretty surreal moment if you ask me. i fully agree that austin is not like rest of texas but it definitely is a bit different than what i'm used too as well.. there were your average hipster/hippie employees but you also had the woman fresh from her workout who, real or not, was so top heavy it was beyond me how she actually could workout. then there was the couple that i was unsure if he was her slacker son or live in boy toy standing impatiently at the end of the produce aisle... there were countless more varieties of peole strolling about as well and it was as if i was at a form of carnivale that was being held in the land where suburbia and the metroploitan realms overlap... a bit shellshocked from the whole scene i gathered my items and got the hell out. i must've looked like a hungover mess by the time i mumbled out my order at the starbucks next door...
the rest of the day was mellow and at night we hit up my favorite suburban eatery, pf changs. another very interesting experience where the phrase 'is that his daughter..? no, wait, that's his wife', was used. don't get me wrong, i love it here, it's just that for some reason i am also drawn into the intrigues of suburbia.
side note: i got here the day after the debate and have been happy to see the amount of support obama gets here people are going nuts for him.
as i was having my coffee and struggling over my morning dilemma of what to wear to work i came across a site that i hadn't checked back in on for some time hint magazine and saw this inspired post on their blog:
"A rant from Cesar Padilla, owner of Cherry vintage store in New York...
In the thick of New York Fashion Week, I really got on the idea that humanity needs to stop wearing black. I looked around at the makers, shakers and patrons of tomorrow's fashion and realized they all look depressed, uninspired, tired, too skinny, sulky and lame as they judged yet another sad black sack.
I found myself fantasizing about creating a Black Clothes Burning Day, like the disco fires in Chicago stadium in the late 1970s. Imagine Giants stadium full of Japanese chicks working smurf blue, black girls in head-to-toe pink and me, all throwing mounds of black fabric into a massive bonfire. Poof! Gone! Wearing vintage Sprouse and Versace, Bonnie Cashin, Jeremy Scott and Kansai Yamamoto, we'd stare into the inferno and chant, "Burn! Burn!" The Olsens would dislodge those black quilted Chanel bags from their elbows and, finally cracking a smile, toss them in. Tom Ford, tears streaming down his face, would appear on the jumbo screen and vow never to make anything black again. He'd promise it to us."
thursday just flew by faster than i had expected, by the time i looked up it was already 3:45pm and it felt like i hadn't had the time to get anything done. the result of a day like that is that i wound up with a headache at the end of the day. i did however manage to watch a good portion of the debate online tonight, honestly i couldn't tell which way it actually went. i still want obama to win more than anything, so i'll remain optimistic. grabbed some take out for dinner and watched lost, am supposed to be packing for my trip to austin this weekend, but the stomach full of food and a jameson's has me on the verge of sleep and i think i'll put packing off until morning...
after a long day i leave the office well after 5:00 and somehow manage to motivate and make it to the gym. sure it sounds cliche, but for me the gym is my happy place, over the last few years i've gotten really into my time there and go about four days a week with the fifth day of the week/weekends, at my other gym doing mma (kickboxing/jujitsu) today i was at my normal day to day gym where i just look to get on a treadmill and stare out into the bay for 40 minutes. my gym is not equinox by far but it is a crunch which it's better than your average 24 hour fitness or ymca, plus it's just downstairs from gap headquarters so the clientele is mainly very fit blonde women and very fit gay men. all in all it makes for a nice workout environment... except today.
today i'm on the treadmill (no ipod because i forgot my headphones) and behind me on the stairmaster is some 'i-used-to-be' and by that i mean 'i used to be on my high school/college football team...' first of all he's wearing a baseball cap indoors at the gym and one of those faux practice jerseys that makes it look like you are, or once were, on a major sports team... however, he obviously is not because he is not in the shape of someone who has played a sport regularly in ages. still, it takes all kinds and none of these are my issue.
my issue is that he is on the stairmaster blowing snot rockets. if you're not familiar, or were never a 13 year old boy, a snot rocket is where you take one finger and cover a nostril and use the collective force to shoot the remaining congestion out of the other nostril. gross enough when some farm boy does it out in a field but in the closed environment of my gym, my happy place, it disgusting to the nth degree... what are people thinking?
for the rest of my evening i was tempted to rat him out to the staff but refrained and stayed within the confines of my workout... however, i did avoid any machine he may have put his snotty hands on...
this one snuck up on me. i was getting ready for work this morning and debating between two shirts and realized there was about a six inch circular area of black and blue on my rib cage around near my back, i could almost make out the shape of a foot print. it's funny i didn't notice it after training on friday, the people at my normal gym must wonder what i do to myself on the weekends when they see me walking around the locker room. (didn't include a picture this time, it was a bit too revealing for this little blog...)
locked myself in the house today and deep cleaned my apartment with the stereo at full blast. funny thing is that i found myself listening to bloc party over and over. i want to hate them so much but i can't stop listening to the remixes record. i saw them first being pushed at urban outfitters which i found annoying, then i saw them play a big venue to which they put on a lackluster performance and i want to say i heard them on some bad tv show as well... but they are damn infectious and i'm hooked, i guess there are less hip bands i could admit to listening to on a regular basis.
nursed my minor hangover early on and stumbled on bart to go work on the magazine. afterwards ate burritos with mike and watched the nba allstar game. ray allen is my new hero... and dwight howard (above) is amazing.
oh and the debate is over, the food you get when you go into the mexican restaurant is much better than the food they serve in the truck outside... duh...
met up with l.a. and did some shopping downtown with her before she split to go to her office. wound up spending a decent amount in hollister of all places. picked up a hoodie that i would probably not wear out in public due to the giant hollister logo on the front but it is so comfortable i'm going to be putting it on like mr. rogers' sweater every night when i come home from work.
also saw in nordstrom that there is a fuji/shepard fairey track bike. ugh. it's finally jumped the shark... while i'm glad more people are riding bicycles, i went through this with skateboarding in the 90's and it's frustrating to see something that you love get co-opted and marketed to the masses. i get what shepard is trying to do and more power to him, but it still hits close enough to home to bug me.
was supposed to meet some peeps to go to a skate video premiere but they flaked so i wound up hanging around the mission bars with some other peeps for drinks, hung out well past two and i know i had too much to drink because i committed to getting a neil young tattoo...
went running from the office and home to change for training, usual workout but this time we went back and worked on a jujitsu arm lock that we had done before but this time using it as conditioning so i had to do it from the ground repeatedly for three minutes. my neck, abs and back are killing me. went two rounds of sparring at the end, faired pretty well but did get clapped on the neck with a kick.
decided to have sushi at a new friend's restaurant, his wife was working and i think she paid for our drinks. dan came by with a friend and we talked mma and other junk. was going to rally and head out after but my body gave up on me after the workout and i was home and asleep on the couch by 10pm.
had to come into the office at 8am for a meeting so i was up by 6:00 and out the door fairly early, i love heading to work in the mornings when no one is around and it's still dark, the streets are super quiet. it's not quite the same as going home from somewhere (ie: walk of shame) there's a nice silence to the world and your brain when you're straight out of a good night's sleep.
after the gym bought myself a pack of candy hearts for a treat and rushed home for lost. that show is like crack and i love it.
not going to give away my source, but i found this amazing faux burberry military style jacket today for under $40. the plaid is super detailed with small patches of houndstooth where the lines cross over each other. added a pin from ralph lauren rugby just for a bit more detail.
went to my very first fight last night in san jose, was really expecting it to be kind of douchey but was pleasantly surprised. it wasn't a huge card, some guys were fighting for the first time professionally and the crowd was primarily made up of fighters from various gyms and their family and friends, to be honest it had more of the feel of a college wrestling match. three of the guys that were with our group were fighting and two of them won, darren actually won his fight by submission in 58 seconds into the first round. frank shamrock and cung le were there promoting their upcoming match as well. it was probably the most fun i've had in a long time.
after we headed back up to the city and headed to the tenderloin and spent the remainder of the night at whiskey thieves drinking. most of the crew stuck around including the owner of my trainer's gym and his trainer bunkerd faphimai a former thai national champion. after last call we all staggered over to a japanese restaurant owned by one of the guys and drank until around 4:30am, at that point i realized i couldn't hang with these guys and stumbled home.
