stairwells and hallways

very busy day at work today, blew off the gym for some q.t. at home with a huge order of take out thai food.

another day working on the new issue... later in the evening though headed to michael's beautiful house for a small dinner party. after landing back home i almost feel ashamed of my small but comfortable space, the evening was so incredibly civilized...

after my day of shopping i headed out with the guys for a slightly more butch event in san jose. in short it was incredible, the shamrock vs cung le fight was legendary, i've never seen anything like it and afterwards i definitely needed a cocktail so we all headed back to the tenderloin for some drinks. one turned into two and two turned into three in the morning at a friend's restaurant. a good night was had by all if i do say so myself, all except frank shamrock's radial bone in his forearm that is... ouch.

really big day today. started out with a bit of personal shopping, really tried to go treat myself to something nice but my normal fashion frugalities kicked in and i wound up at h&m and my other secret discount shopping location. seriously, you're talking to the guy who formerly had a macy's card and was not afraid to use it but now a sweater beyond the price of about $40 seems like lunacy. after making my way through all of the usuals, g-star, french connection, urban outfitters and even dsw shoe warehouse nothing seemed worth the cost and i wound up in h&m with an arm load of button downs and plain white t-shirts.

as i waited in the long saturday afternoon line i realized that there is a great metaphor for this kind of shopping... h&m is the safeway brand pasta of the clothes shopping world and the slightly lower priced, less quality cousin, that i frequent is the equivilent of top ramen. you can dress both of them up to a different degree, the pasta is a great base with the right garnishes you can make a whole lot that resembles something gourmet, with the top ramen you may be able to disguise it here and there but the sheer inexpenisive nature of it makes it too easy to take advantage of and on occasion you can make this packet of noodles look like high end asian cuisine...

that being said i took my two packets of noodles and three bags of pasta home and dressed them up for the evening and for the coming week of work.

another day at the office, needed to get in some more good time at the gym but between leaving the office late and plans for dinner cancelled that idea. then dinner got got cancelled and i wound up in line at walgreen's again buying my dinner again. i would've started to feel bad about myself until the woman with the white castle microwave cheeseburgers and a pack of cigarettes was in front of me.

cielo came by the 'hood later and we popped in to cav for a glass of wine and some conversation. it was actually my first time there which is crazy considering it's about two blocks from my apartment... good atmosphere and service might head back there this weekend.

finally won a frickin' ebay auction for some good bike raw materials. seller said it should be here in five days so we'll see what i can do with it after it gets here. uneventful day but did the first really great run in a while, 40 minutes, 5 miles, 8 minute mile... definitely sweated out a decent amount of the weeks stress so far. slept like a rock.

nothing good about this monday, couldn't even rally to get into the gym... felt kind of cranky so i watched some yakuza films and then went to sleep... very seth cohen of me.

'christ rose from the dead and you decided to come over and work on a sunday, two easter miracles.' – mlv

went to work on the magazine most of the day, greta and mike made me a nice easter basket and after wrapping up some layouts for the magazine we had a nice dinner and watched the warriors/lakers game. al harrington has been rocking these crazy shoes lately that i would kill for. the closest pic i could find of them is here from someone's flickr that's the link to the hi res image so give it a minute to load, while you're waiting you can probably also see the close up of the disinterested look on mikael pietrus' face... might as well have a trade me sign around his neck. come to think of it i recognize that look, it's the one that women who are dating lame guys get on their faces that says 'break up with me already.'...

rallied from a semi-hangover to go work on the magazine for a bit, completed several layouts and listened to a lot of this american life. afterwards we all went into the city for dinner. original joe's was shut down for some reason so we decided to head out to the pig and whistle.

i have a slight confession at this point, for some reason over the last few years i have developed a very low tolerance to riding in cars, especially when it comes to city driving and i get carsick about as fast as a 10 year old trying to ready a comic book in the back seat of a station wagon...

needless to say i wasn't having much of my dinner and wound up walking home in hopes of some fresh air doing me some good. it did and by the time i hit the door to my building i was starving and inhaled the rest of my cold veggie burger and fries. i should see a doctor and get that sorted out because it is not fun and it makes me feel like a kid.

trained again after work, all kick boxing this time but as we finished up steve invited me to his jujitsu class but not really being in the physical or mental state to roll for another hour i passed on it. maybe next week. after chilling out i met up with jenni and some peeps at a show over at the knockout, ironically enough jeremy from red planet's new band was playing, they were called 'the parties'. after getting caught up with him and saying good night to the rest of the party i met back up with steve and we kept drinking until about 3am, i'm getting too old for this...

long day at the office, very tired, skipped the gym and had a bad junk food dinner purchased at walgreeens. not pretty. i've sworn that i will not be one of those people that starts working in a new position at their office, gives up on the gym and winds up with the ulcer and middle age belly, so tomorrow i've got to make up for it. big time.

usual day, headed to the gym for a really good long run and a nice work out, feel much better now.

spent the rest of the night glued to my television... and i will deny it if you ask me in person, but for some sick reason i can't stop watching real housewives of orange county.

monday's at the office aren't so bad when you've prepped most of sunday for them but unfortunately that means you have to be in the office on a sunday. skipped the gym and hid out at home doing laundry.

i know it sounds sad to be sitting in your office on a sunday but it was actually nice for a change, feel like i'm getting ahead for once. left and headed over to town hall to visit cielo at work. had an amazing meal, started with the shrimp, then moved to the asparagus risotto and finished off with the butterscotch and chocolate mousse dessert. i was going to originally take the train home but i was so incredibly full i decided to walk it off. proceeded to pass out once home.

woke up surprisingly early considering how late i was out all night last night, had my usual citizen cake pastry and coffee before heading to the east bay to go over to mike's. did less magazine layout and more talking about basketball and my new plan to try and secure us season tickets next year for the warriors.

headed home somewhat early so that l.a. and i could go to robin's for her st.patrick's day party. i have to hand it to robin she always has the best dinner parties, great assortment of guests, good food and not a minute goes by without you having a drink in your hand.

afterwards l.a. and i stopped by the lion's den to wish her friend a happy birthday before i was dropped off at a fairly early hour that i totally took advantage of and got some.

on my morning scan of boing-boing i came across ilkka halso's stunning series of photographs/montages called 'museum of nature'. while i'm not the biggest fan of digital compositions (i realize the hypocritical nature of that statement given my current career choice) the results here are pretty incredible.

even more incredible are the constructions involved in the 'restuarations' series, in which he actually constructed scaffolding around the subjects for his photographs. in both bodies of work there is an obvious awareness of the current plight of the environment but even more so with these, the thought of construction and development being used to preserve nature even though it is the prime reason behind nature's demise creates a nice juxtaposition that makes the work impactful. the lighting and sense of drama for some reason reminds me a lot of japanese photographer izima kaoru's work.



kauro's work has been a long time favorite of mine primarily for it's composition, color and grand cinematic quality. with all of the works living within a series rather than individually you get more of a sense of the subject's stillness, and by subject i mean the staging of the death of a beautiful woman wearing very expensive clothing.

it's funny, in this flickr/digital camera era, i spend so much time snapping pics with my digital camera, even more so lately my iphone, it's really easy to forget just how wonderful photography as art can be. 

pretty damn happy that it is friday, left work for my usual training session but for some reason i was just a bit off this week, no real reason why, just wasn't quite all there. learned a few new things, including some grappling stuff, even though i've been at this for a while and my steve out weighs me by a good 30 pounds, i'm still a bit afraid of hurting him at times.

after went home to relax and got a text from jenni so i cut across town to meet her and nathan at the ha-ra. it was the first time i'd actually been in there really and i was surprised that it wasn't crammed with hipsters. had a drink with them and then walked over to the hemlock to see if anyone was around. ran in to richard from the office and had one quick drink with him before i got a text from steve and hopped a cab to the mission. as i headed in to the 500 club i ran into nyssa and rachel and talked to them for a bit then eventually i spotted steve and sent a drink down the bar to him, then he sent one back, then i sent another and the drink buying went on until we both had a bit too much.

we all said our goodbyes a little after closing and hit the road, i grabbed some slices from cable car on the way home and enjoyed some greasy pizza before soundly falling asleep.

mellow sunday, met up with a friend from out of town and hit up some shopping downtown, considering how much i've been spending over the last few weeks had to keep myself in check and wound up not buying a single thing. after we all headed back to my 'hood for drinks at absinthe, nothing like a martini in the afternoon to kill any chance of productivity for the rest of the day...

spent most of the day in the east bay working on the magazine and finally getting a blog up for mike. i'm curious if he'll actually keep up with it since i've been bugging him for years about doing one, he has a lot of great stories to tell from back in the day and basically has an insane wealth of pop culture knowledge, i just hope he keeps up with it. by the time i got back in the city i decided to flake out on dinner plans with cathy, make some dinner and curl up on the couch with netflix for a change. when i finally wrapped up my movie marathon i checked my phone and it said it was 3:00am, once i figured out it ws because of the time change i was pretty happy because that means the days are finally going to get longer.

work was just plain chaos again today, especially since i had to run out of there in order to not be late for training. this week has just been the greatest of work weeks... it's as if every day i think of one new thing that i forgot to do the day before. plus, since there is the added pressure of me potentially taking on a new position, it makes for a bit of a stressful environment.

luckily training pretty much erased any thoughts of work and let me move on into friday night without work in mind. that is until i run in to my would be new boss and his partner walking into a restuarant, great impression i'm sure, drenched in sweat, gym clothes and a bloody lip... oh well.

rushed home in hopes of making it over to the east bay for mackay's birthday. didn't make it over until late but they were all still at dinner when i arrived. i think it was the first oakland dinner crowd i had seen in years and it's funny how different it is to the s.f. dinner crowd. can't put my finger on exactly what the difference was but the make up of the crowd was just different...

a few of us stuck around for a quick drink at radio bar then cathy, dan and i hit the last train back to the city. dan fell asleep and cathy and i kept talking about music and made tentative plans to go to pakwan tomorrow night for dinner. got a last minute text from cielo checking to see if i'd be interested in a drink before last call but by the time i got off of bart she had already headed home, so i did the same.

surprised it's taken this long but this evening's injury was a bit of a bloody lip, a punch that i should've blocked came from from out of nowhere and jammed the lower left of my bottom lip into my tooth... grossness ensued from there. wasn't too bad and it stopped bleeding pretty quick so it hopefully will be healed by monday morning so i don't look like a thug at the office.

another day swamped under mounds of work so i had my usual remedy of hitting the gym afterwards to sweat out my day. luckily, the days are getting longer so now that it's not dark out when i leave the office and it's a bit easier to motivate to get to the gym. afterwards had no real plans on going out but dan wanted to grab a drink so we met up at el toro so i could get a burrito and refuel first. we ran into caren and her friend (who is considering moving to s.f.) along the way and they sat down and grabbed burritos as well. el toro had been closed for a long time for remodeling, thankfully they are back open and nothing has changed except the paint.

they headed their own way while dan and i grabbed a drink at the 500 club, the basic topic of conversation was his recent run in with a car on his bike (he still had the remanants of a black eye) but the bar was full of college sports watching dudes and i was beat from my workout, so we called it an early night and i hopped back on my bike and sped home. thankfully i had enough to drink to put his accident out of my mind but not enough to impede my riding abilities and made it safely home... burrito+whiskey+riding=perfect night's sleep.

hope this isn't the start of a trend but i can pretty much sum up monday through wednesday very easily since they were basically carbon copies of each other: work, work, work, head to the gym to forget about work then fade in and out on the couch until crawling into bed to start over again. busy days at work are good for something, they have kept me steadily on the treadmill in the evenings averaging about 4-5 miles a day.

had planned to head to the east bay to do more magazine work but that got cancelled as i was on bart so i had to literally jump off of the train as to not wind up riding all the way through the tunnel just to come back. once free i took advantage of the nice day and walked home.

the lakers vs mavericks game was on and since i don't have cable i have to get in every network televised game i can. i hate the lakers and i want to continue that trend  but it was a great game and they looked really good, except for pau gasol's fugly beard....

after the game was finally over i headed out through the park on a bike ride, i've been slacking with the cardio as of late so it was a bit tougher to keep it going at my usual pace but i managed. after showering up and downing a ton of water i decided that march is now known as my cardio month and that i need to get back to my marathon form or at least somewhere close... back at it's peak it was around 5 miles at an 8 minute mile three to four days a week then one long 12-14 mile run at the end of the week that was the bay bridge to golden gate bridge and back.

unfazed and strangely without hangover i went into the office to put in a few hours of extra time just to be sure that all was good for next week. after took a leisurely walk around downtown window shopping.

in the evening i met up with some peeps at a korean restaurant/bar/karaoke box called 'playground' which was not as naughty as the name implies. it's essentially the same layout as every sports bar you ever been to only with a lot less televisions and all of the ones they did have were playing korean pop music videos. my favorite item of the night was 'hite pitcher' it's a korean beer that comes in a 2 liter screwtop plastic bottle (similar to american soda) but it is shaped like a beer bottle. beer basically tasted like any other generic lite beer but the presentation was the awesome. image is here.