More injuries

A while ago, I bemoaned the number of self-inflicted wounds I had. While I haven't injured myself in a manner that could be attributed to thoughtless, rash behavior on my part, I do seem to have developed shin splints in my legs (more so in my right one, though) after running for nearly 4 weeks. While it hasn't brought me to the level of limping or any other sort of visible impediment, my lower right leg becomes quite sore after my daily 3-mile journey around the nearby school track. I'll probably take a week or two off of pounding the pavement and instead turn to utilizing the elliptical machine in my room. I don't feel like I get the same kind of workout from it that I do from pure running, but it'll have to do.

Who is 'in the network'?

Now that I have my own cell phone plan (with my long-time carrier, AT&T), I discovered that I am able to view my usage online. One of the more disconcerting things I discovered was that calls to one of my roommates were no longer classified as a 'Mobile-to-Mobile' call - one that doesn't count towards your overall monthly minutes - even though it had been on my family's plan, which I had previously been on. I suppose it's no big deal in the end, but I do think it has probably cut 10-20 minutes off my 450 monthly minutes...which wouldn't be a big deal if I wasn't running up against the limit (thanks to all the calls I had to place to Manhattan real estate brokers). It'd be nice if cell phone companies could clarify who exactly falls under the umbrella of being in-network.

Roadkill

Driving my brother to and from Newark Airport via the Garden State Parkway, I noticed an inordinate amount of dead squirrels along the road. It's far more than I've ever seen in one drive - particularly on the vast sea of concrete that defines the GSP. I guess that squirrels usually make a run for it early in the morning, thinking there won't be many cars on the road.

I also had the misfortune of seeing another car hit a squirrel. That was sad.

Just like old times

Tonight, my family ordered from a local Italian eatery that we've had dinner from many a time over the past decade or so. It was the regular meal that we have had too many times to count: my mother had an eggplant rollatini appetizer, my stepfather had linguini pescatore (although, according to his taste buds, they tried to cheat and use old seafood this time), my brother had spaghetti with meatballs, and I had spaghetti with meat sauce.

The difference is that this will likely be the last dinner my family has together in the foreseeable future.

Gone too soon

Tim Russet died today. He was only 58 years old, and although he would often ask the most frustratingly blatant 'gotcha' questions to those who appeared on Meet The Press (or, as I would jokingly refer to the glad-handing nature of Washington insiders chatting on a Sunday morning, Press The Meat), Russert was clearly passionate about his love for politics in his role as the preeminent television journalist. Unlike his compatriot Chris Matthews, who followed a similar path - coming to politics after stints as an adviser to prominent Democratic Party politicians - Russert was more a practicioner of the political analysis that journalists are supposed to purvey, as opposed to the sensationalism that reeks from almost all so-called 'political' shows nowadays, most of all Hardball.

He will be missed.

No vacation for you

A new study shows that if oil prices remain at their current levels, all the major airlines in this country will be forced into bankruptcy. While they'll recover in some sort of fashion, it's become abundantly clear that the whole industry is very close to entering a death spiral of sorts. When airlines have to resort to charging people to check baggage on flights, the pinch is definitely hurting them. Their last gimmick, which was to overcharge for such delicacies as M&Ms and Pringles, probably didn't help them much.

All in all, the whole industry is a mess. Even if some mergers occur, such as the impending one between Delta and Northwest, it's not going to solve the overarching problem - namely, that oil costs too damn much and doesn't look to be getting cheaper anytime soon.

Embrace the future

One of the more tempting things to do as time passes, particularly in times that brings about drastic changes in one's life, is to look fondly to the past and recall those as the golden days. While that's what memories are for, there are times when we have to stop clinging to the past and recognize that time will always march on...it doesn't stop for anyone. You may want to crystallize a moment forever, but that's not how the world works.

As someone stepping out into the 'real world', as it may be colloquially referred to, life is going to be markedly different from any of my past experiences. While I still have my parents to fall back on, I am effectively on my own. I am in charge of my own finances, my own job, my living arrangements, and everything else that pertains to my existence. In short, I am the master of my own fate. It's a big change from 8 years ago, when I was just entering high school and was, for all intents and purposes, still heavily dependent on my parents and others to get around in society. We all have to come a long way in a short time, but that's what growing up is about...and I'm not talking about 'growing up' in the sense where there are easy demarcations to reference - getting your license at 16, being crowned an adult at 18, or finally hitting the bars legally at 21. I'm talking about the process of maturation and responsibility, which goes at different speeds for all of us. It can be daunting to face the transition from being wholly dependent on others to having none but yourself to fall back on.

The key, though, is not to fear change - change is inevitable. Instead, you have to face the future knowing that you will be making your own way...that there is no defined path for any of us hereon out. What we do - and where we go from here - are now our decisions to make. These are our destinies to craft. And in the face of the inevitable, one must have no other reaction but to embrace it. I may prefer the blissfulness of not having to pay my own bills or feed myself, but that's not a reality that many - if any - of us live in. Is it going to be a walk in the park? Of course not; life never is, no matters what any TV shows may try to tell us otherwise. But can we run away from it? No...and that's why we have to move on in our lives and grow up in every sense of the word. You may not know what tomorrow holds, but if you take each step forward with confidence, then there's nothing to worry about.

Another prediction gone awry

Not too long ago, I predicted that the Lakers would win the NBA finals in 5 games. But with the Celtics just having taken a 3-1 lead after tonight's comeback victory in Los Angeles, it might be safe to say that I picked the wrong team to win in the right number of games. Either it's a sign that the Zen Master lost his magic touch, or that Kobe Bryant may not yet have the transcendent leadership qualities that MJ had. I still believe the Lakers have the better team - and I think that if Andrew Bynum hadn't gotten injured, the Lakers would be nearly unstoppable - but it may just be that Boston wants it more.

Drained

For some reason, I'm feeling particularly lethargic today. I didn't wake up earlier than usual or work any harder (or less) than I have on previous days. I did go bowling, but last I checked, that wasn't a sport that required much physical movement. Hell, today's my rest day from my daily run as well...and yet I just want to flop on a bed and doze off indefinitely.

Yawn.

The joys of slackerhood

It's going on 3 PM in the afternoon, and I haven't showered yet. Yeah, it's kind of disgusting, but that's one of the bonuses of bumming around and doing very little. That's going to change soon enough - it's officially less than a month until I am due to report to work - but it will be long enough after that until I can get away with this kind of behavior...so I may as well take advantage of it.

Semi-deep thoughts

I was reading a friend's blog, and a good portion of their latest entry was devoted to musing about relationships and posed the question if one can be yourself while in a relationship. Simply put, the answer is: of course. If you can't be yourself when you are with someone, then there's something inherently wrong about that interaction that needs to be fixed.

My friend asks another question, which pertains to whether a relationship can be 'perfect'. The issue is that 'perfect' in the context of personal relationships is always a relative matter. If one abides by the literal definition of perfect, you're likely to be disappointed. Why? Because one's preconceived notion of what is 'perfect' is heavily influenced by one's biases, which are inherently imperfections in your own character.

That being said, I think the crux of the matter lies with acceptance and understanding. If you can accept the other person for who they are - and at the same time understand what makes them tick and why they act in a particular manner - then you'll end up being a lot happier than you might otherwise be. My girlfriend and I don't see eye to eye on a couple of things, but I think the important part is that I accept her viewpoint and can see why she views something the way she does. Therefore, we don't end up dwelling on our differences, and we still love each other for who we are. In the end, being 'perfect', I think, correlates highly in the minds of most people with having common interests and beliefs. If you only dated people who were exactly like you...well, you wouldn't have much of a love life. And if you did manage to find someone just like yourself, it would probably drive you nuts like it did to Jerry Seinfeld's character in the 7th season's finale of his eponymous show.

We're all different...that's how it goes. Ultimately, your happiness is the barometer by which you should measure how well a relationship is working.

Less is more?

I made guacamole again this afternoon, but I ran into something of a predicament: I didn't have a lot of cilantro. In the end, it tasted reasonable as usual, but it makes me wonder what the effect of the spice is. Last time, I used probably at least half a tablespoon more of cilantro than the recipe called for, but I don't remember any notable difference. Something that I'll observe next time I make guacamole...

My new (and hopefully last) pair of eyeglasses

Went to Lenscrafter and ended up settling on these frames...they're somewhat plain - similar to my first pair of glasses - but they have rounder lenses, which I think make them look markedly better. I had also been looking at these, and although I like the thicker sides that they provide, they didn't look quite right on me. I feel like it has something to do with the rimless features around the lenses.

Nevertheless, my plan is to have these glasses for 1-2 more years, followed by getting lasik surgery done to correct my eyes. The optometrist I saw said that my eyes would likely get worse despite the glasses over time, as my eyes are not equally bad - my right eye is far worse than my left eye. Basically, once I have a little spare cash lying around, I'll get it done.

Isn't that ironic

My girlfriend just called to let me know that Paramount Pictures is apparently on-campus in Philadelphia, filming scenes for the Transformers sequel. The funnier part is that Penn's (oh no, now you know where I went to school! However, based on my previous writings, it should have been easy to deduce - there's only one Ivy in Philadelphia) Upper Quadrangle is apparently a stand-in for Princeton University. That will only add to what I observed to be a weird inferiority complex that we had for our New Jersey Ivy League colleagues. We call Princeton our main rivals, but Princeton considers Harvard to be their nemesis.

Last thought on a late night

Looking ahead to the future, I find myself deeply pessimistic about Earth and civilization as a whole. Hopefully it's just a short-term blip, but the skyrocketing price of food and energy - with no real end in sight - doesn't portend well for humans on many fronts. I just have a vague gut feeling that we're going to hit some tipping point (not a good one) and then there will be no turning back.

Ironically enough, I'm optimistic about my personal future; this puts me at roughly the diametrically opposite position when I finished high school.

Reviewing 'Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace'

For an awful long time, The Offspring has been one of my favorite bands. I will freely admit that a good deal of the music they have put since Smash, their breakout album, has been subpar by their standards - especially in recent times. Their last two efforts, Conspiracy Of One and Splinter, are notable for the prevalence of goofy, poppy songs ('Original Prankster', 'One Fine Day', 'Hit That', 'The Worst Hangover Ever', 'When You're In Prison') and songs that, while brandishing the signature Offspring sound, lacked energy and passion ('Dammit, I Changed Again', 'Conspiracy Of One', 'The Noose', 'Never Gonna Find Me'). My comments on Splinter are particularly ironic, given that I reviewed the album favorably in an article I wrote for my high school newspaper (yes, it's been a long time since The Offspring came out with new music). In hindsight, though, Splinter was a lackluster effort that probably deserved to be the nail in the band's coffin.

Nevertheless, The Offspring decided to put out at least one more effort entitled Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, their first album in about 4.5 years. Even though it's to be released in the U.S. on June 17th, this website somehow has all of the songs available for streaming already. In short, there's a decent balance of typical Offspring fare - most of it in the first half of the album - along with a fair bit of experimentation on their part. The first single, 'Hammerhead', is a nice, hard-hitting song that departs from their previous lead singles ('Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)', 'Original Prankster', and 'Hit That'). Most of the experimentation works out - 'A Lot Like Me' is a slower song that incorporates piano, while 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid' works in some synth beats. Unfortunately, the second half of the album is less memorable. It's probably the source of the accusations floating around that The Offspring ripped off Green Day, most notably 'Rise and Fall' - a song that, if I didn't know any better, is a dead ringer from the title track of American Idiot.

All in all, it's a nice body of work from a group that was gone for too long. The songs are more inspired, and the experimentation here works much better than it did on past albums (who remembers epic hits such as 'Spare Me The Details' and 'Denial, Revisited'?). For punk purists who live and die by The Offspring's first three albums, the album is not another Smash by any means. But it's easily the best effort by the band since Americana, and some might say (at least online) that it's their best major-label record - although Ixnay will always be the standard there, at least in my eyes.

Awful selection

I went and got a new prescription for eyeglasses - all fine and good. I'm effectively useless for a few hours afterwards because of the dilation, but I was looking forward to hitting the mall and getting a new set of frames to go along with the lenses.

What a waste of my time. Both Lenscrafter and a local store had a generally crappy selection to choose from. I'd really like to find a shop that sells Gimme Glasses, the same brand that I used for my last pair of glasses, but I think I got a bit lucky and probably won't find this obscure Swiss brand anytime soon, or anywhere.

Complaining about the weather again

I thought it would be a bit cooler when I returned back to New York. Well, I was wrong - it's actually much warmer here than it was in Philadelphia. Right now, it's 103 degrees with a heat index of 111 at my current location in Westchester County; in Philadelphia, it's 91 with a heat index of 96 - and I thought that was way too warm for comfort. When schools are being closed early because it's too hot, something's a bit messed up.

Oh, and the stupid Weather Channel website still insists that today's high will 'only' be 95 degrees. Why is meteorology considered a real science again?

Common sense

While I'm reading today's Wall Street Journal online, I came across this front-page article on poor countries beginning to develop their own sustainable farming. Of course this is necessary, though; since the birth of civilization, being able to produce enough food has been the cornerstone of advancement. The notion that trade would step in to cover staple crops while Third World nations could simply focus on a quick-fix scheme of producing export crops has no real historical success story as its basis.

A wide-ranging film review

I had wanted to do a post a while back about some of the movies my girlfriend and I had seen in Hawaii - our condo had a bunch of VHS movies lying around, so we saw some once we returned at night - but I never got around to it. So I'll do a quick recap of those movies, along with some that I saw this weekend down in Philadelphia.

You've Got Mail: I remember the promotional ads for this when it first came out. I'm not really a big fan of romantic comedies (although I can be a sucker for some, like Blast From The Past), but the Internet-based theme of this film - which is extremely dated in present times - stuck in my head. All in all, it was okay, although it tried a bit too hard to draw parallels between the public and private lives of Tom Hanks' and Meg Ryan's characters. The denouement was a bit too rapid for my liking, and overall, it wasn't as good as it could have been.

There's Something About Mary: Another movie I remember the TV promos for quite well, it occurred to me after watching the film that this was probably the template for a lot of the over-the-top comedies that have become something of an overused genre as of late (think of failures such as Date Movie and Epic Movie). That being said, this film personified the late 1990s, and it was a nice little nostalgia trip.

Pan's Labyrinth: I'm not one who usually watches many movies to begin with, much less those that perform well at awards ceremonies. That being said, I can see why this movie earned its praise - it's an interesting movie that doesn't try too hard to make a pretense about its ultimate message, yet it delivers it in a very artistic manner (unlike, say, No Country For Old Men, which I thought was overdone). By no stretch is it a happy movie, and the main character frequently got on my nerves for her seeming lack of touch with reality (and common sense, at times), but it was well worth the time.

The Fountain: I've wanted to see this movie for a long time, in large part because Darren Arnofsky, the writer-director of said film, also worked on Requiem For A Dream and Pi, both of which are movies that I count amongst my favorites. Fountain was much different, stylistically, from those films, but it was still a movie that deserved a better fate than it got (a mediocre reception from critics and virtually ignored at the box office). The intertwining of stories from the past, the present, and the faraway future focus on death (my girlfriend wasn't such a big fan of watching two fairly depressing movies in successive nights), but it's a movie that, at least for me, has a high re-watchability factor.

Ice Age: The Meltdown: Well, there's really only so much you can say about an animated movie. There's not much to talk about in terms of subject matter - I thought Ray Romano and Queen Latifah as the main voices were somewhat miscast - but animated features have come a long way from my childhood days of The Lion King and Pocahontas.

Who's next?

Pointed to this blog entry about financial firms laying off incoming analysts (like myself) by a friend of mine, it makes me hope that the current economic downturn doesn't last too long. Banks are quick to hire - and fire - people that they do or don't need. While they do axe their fair share of upper-level employees, as they are the most costly, they also will lay off those who just put their hands on the ladder rungs as well.

Hopefully that won't be me anytime in the near future.

On the 'to-do again' list

For our six-month anniversary (how time does fly, it seems), my girlfriend and I had dinner at Alma de Cuba, a restaurant that bills itself as selling 'modern Cuban cuisine'. Aside from having a nice atmosphere (albeit somewhat dimly lit), the food was absolutely fantastic. An appetizer of Kobe beef meatballs, along with entrees of slices of skirt steak (me) and Chilean sea bass (my girlfriend) and a dessert of strawberry/guava sorbet made for a fantastic meal. The price was very reasonable for a restaurant of its caliber, and it's definitely a place I would not mind eating at again.

Weather from hell

I'm inclined to blame global warming, but the weather here in Philadelphia has been absolutely awful yesterday and today. It's been in the high 90s (with the heat index making it feel much warmer) and very, very humid. Effectively, I already work up a good sweat within 5 minutes of leaving an air-conditioned facility. Yikes.