Sheep Guarding Llama

No sleeping in for me today.  I got up at seven and headed on down to the health club to get in my morning workout.  I did forty-five minutes and felt really good.  I would have done more but I don’t have enough time this morning because I need to get into Manhattan.  I got back and showered and got ready for work.  I said good-bye to Josh as he is flying back to Rochester this afternoon and then I walked out to hit the road.

Getting to work in Manhattan is so easy.  I had a nice walk down to Penn Station and was able to hop right onto the PATH.  I got into the WTC and met a friend who had flown in from Belfast for the week on his holiday.  He works with me almost every day and is in New York on his holiday and he wanted to see the New York office so I changed my schedule and came into Manhattan today.

We got some good exercise walking from the WTC up Greenwich to the office.  It takes probably twenty minutes to cover that distance.  It was a little warm this morning.  But it was good additional exercise.  That is one thing that I really enjoy about coming into Manhattan is that I get a chance to walk in Newark and then a chance to walk in New York and often chances to walk throughout the day.  It is much healthier doing things in cities than it is doing things in the country.  It is so much easier to get exercise.

Today was a slow “work” day but there was a lot of stuff going on that kept taking my time.  Because I was in Manhattan a lot of people wanted me to go to meetings and to meet people that I never get to see.  But it makes for some real variety in my day.

Weight Lost So Far: 11lbs

I got up and did some cleaning before hitting the gym this morning. I did over forty-five minutes today which was my target number for today. It felt really good.

I learned over the weekend that it is a common myth in the United States that burritos are from Mexico. In fact, burritos are an all-American food that the Mexicans are just now beginning to eat as they begin to flow south over the border. In Mexico, going out for burritos is going out for American.

While we are at it, French Fries are from Belgium, not France.

Dominica started her South Beach diet again over the weekend and is down over five pounds already. She has decided to go with me to the health club at night too which will make it easier for me to go everyday. Working out twice a day is a massive commitment!

I got home and Dominica, Josh and I all went out to Food for Life for dinner.  I did my best to stay close to my diet while eating delicious FFL.  After dinner we came back to the apartment and tried to figure out what to do for the evening.  Francesca ended up calling Dominica to talk about the new dog that they “got” – it wandered into their garage and just stayed.  So while Dominica was on the phone Josh and I decided to go out for a drink.

Our plan had been to walk over to the Theater Square Grill at NJPAC but the Key Club at 58 Park Place caught our eye and we decided to stop in there instead.  We stopped in there for about an hour and a half and enjoyed some very tasty martinis in a very nice setting.  I am excited to have a nice supper club right around the corner from the apartment.  Josh and I also ordered some catfish nuggets to try out their appetizer menu.

Weight Lost So Far: 9.5lbs

Today was mostly a relaxing day for me. Dominica had a bit of homework that she had to do so she did not get the opportunity to relax as much as I did. Today is my day off from the gym. I am only working out six days a week and giving my body Sunday to rest although we ended up doing some walking today that is a lot more than we would do on a normal day.

We decided today that we really need to get a love seat for the apartment. We don’t have much space but as it is we have almost no where to sit and there is no way for Dominica and I to use the living room at the same time without someone laying on the futon or something else awkward that becomes very uncomfortable after a very short time.

So we looked around and could not find anywhere to buy furniture in the area. Raymour and Flannigan do not deliver to Newark even though they have a store nearby so that did us no good. We couldn’t find anyone else in the region that was a major chain. We finally decided just to walk down to Market Street where there are a number of independent furniture stores and try our luck down there even though the area is scary.

We ended up at Newark Furniture which seemed very nice once we stepped inside.  It seemed quite strange stepping into a nice, pleasant furniture store after standing on Market Street which is totally out of control.  We had a nice shopping experience and got a not very expensive reclining love seat with microfiber cover that should be delivered later this week.  It ended up being just $499 which is a lot less than we had been planning on spending anywhere else.  It is an interesting design where it is a double seat love seat like normal but it is a single reclining mechanism where both sides are connected so you both recline or neither.  Kind of weird but it means that there is no separation in the middle which is nice.  Our sales person was born in Paris but his parents were from Cape Verde.  Very interesting guy.

We came home and relaxed for a while.  Then Dominica had to spend the evening working on her homework.  I went down and hung out in the lobby for a few hours just visiting with people.

We finished watching the second season of Arrested Development today.  We really like that show.  Then it was time for bed.

Josh is coming tomorrow and staying until Tuesday.  I am working in Manhattan on Tuesday so that I can meet with a coworker from Belfast who is in for the week.  Sometime later in the week I have to stay home to take delivery of the love seat – we hope.  And then either Friday night or Saturday morning Dominica and I are driving up to dad’s house where we will be spending the long Memorial Day weekend.  We will be returning to Newark on Monday night.

Weight Lost So Far: 11lbs

I had to get up this morning and work for an hour or so remotely for the office so I didn’t get to go to the gym absolutely first thing in the morning like I am supposed to do.

Dominica went with me to the gym this morning. This is her third time going this week! I did forty minutes today and then we came back to the apartment for our lunch of egg whites and broccoli that we ate while watching Arrested Development.

We went grocery shopping this afternoon to Whole Foods.  This was my first time at Whole Foods and I was really impressed.  The selection was awesome and they have a huge selection of organic produce and good fish and a lot of items that we have been unable to find in other places like clotted cream and quinoa.  The one thing that I don’t really like is that they are really big on organic foods which are often better than foods not-labeled organic but the entire organic labeling system is a scam as all plants are organic and all plants actually consume is inorganic (except for CO2 from the air or in water) and labeling things as organic or inorganic is incredibly misleading and designed to be so.  The purest, safest produce is made completely inorganically.  Organic processes are more likely to require pesticides and fertilizes and will attract more pests and diseases.  The entire system is design to fool the population who remember nothing from high school chemistry and understand nothing about botany or agriculture – which is almost everyone.  But high prices for organic food is where the money is.  (This isn’t to say that a lot of food labeled organic isn’t great – just that the labeling and marketing system is complete bunk.  Plants eat salt and nothing else.  Salt is not organic.  Period.)

We spent the evening relaxing.  Not much to report for today.

Weight Lost So Far: 8.5lbs.

I managed to do forty minutes on the elliptical machine in the gym this morning before heading off to the office. I am slowly getting there. I hope to be able to do forty-five minutes twice a day by Monday. That is my goal for this week.

In science news today, astronomers believe that they have discovered a plant with a high likelihood of being “earth like” in size, temperature and composition. The planet is only twenty light-years away from Earth which means that a journey of just forty to fifty years could get us there if modern engine technology pans out. This is the best opportunity yet for life as we know it to potentially exist in space besides ourselves or for us to put life onto. The planet is expected to be tidally locked with one side burnt and continuously facing the sun and one side frozen and always in darkness with a temperate zone existing along the band of continuous twilight. In a tidally locked planet of this nature it is also expected that the dynamics between the light and dark sides of the planet would cause high winds that would help to regulate the planet’s temperature.

Today was moderately busy at work.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Dad is pretty sure that he has managed to sell the leather couches that I have had since Josh and I got our first apartment in Greece back in the ’90s.  They were awesome Natuzzi leather couches.  They were $3,000 when I first bought them!  That was a fortune back then.  They were the first furniture that I owned and were a treasured possession.  They got a lot of use too.  The moved with me from Greece to Ithaca (three different apartments there) and then to Geneseo.  They were put into storage two months ago and we really don’t see much chance of Dominica and I needing them again any time soon.  It just makes more sense to sell them.  Dominica has never been all that thrilled with the fact that they are paprika anyway.  The colour was great – spicing up the drab apartment that Josh and I first had but now they are difficult to match to anything.  Those couches have been my primary furniture for a third of my life!  I can’t picture the apartment in Greece without imagining sinking into that comfortable leather and watching the awful 56″ rear-projection television that we used there.

It is Friday and as I often am I am stuck at the office quite late.  I am hoping to have a chance to leave by seven.  It is going to be a short night.  Dominica has promised to go to the health club again with me tonight.  She is currently finishing off the junk food that we have in the apartment and then, next week, she will start onto the South Beach Diet again.

Weight Lost So Far: 8lbs