mental/fitness

I need to go to the gym, so I am taking my time getting there. it closes at 8...sometimes I sniggle enough and successfully manage to not make it before it closes.
I guess I do kind of have a new year's resolution...I have been talking about doing a duathalon (running and biking) for like a year and a half. It had become a joke because it is this thing that i talk about and say i am TOTALLY committed to..and then it doesn't happen. Last fall I was going to do one, and then last spring, and then this past fall...But, this time I'm committed for real. There are two in April, one in Prospect Park and one in Central Park, so I want to be ready to do one of those. It's about 3 miles running, 10 miles biking and then another 3 miles running. Right now I could probably do half of that, slowly. While crying the entire time. But I'm working up to it.
Also, my mom and I are doing a bike new york thing in May where you ride through the 4 boroughs and it's 42 miles. It's not a race really and apparently you can take the whole day to do it if you want to, so it's not the tour de france over here...but it's a lot more than biking 10 miles at the gym while watching Jeopardy.

I watched Jeopardy twice this week while on the bike. On the first day the champion's interesting anecdote was that one time a female friend of his was in the hospital and he had to go buy a dress for her and announced to the whole store that it was for a friend. On day two his anecdote was that he had a dog who liked halloween....and by halloween he apparently meant that the dog liked it when kids came to the door and he would get all up in their shit. When he first said it I was kind of hopeful, like maybe the dog went and picked out his own costumes or could hand out candy to kids. But no. He liked to be obnoxious at the door and slobber all over children.
I hope that if I am ever on Jeopardy I have something more interesting to talk about than that once I bought an outfit for the opposite gender as an act of kindness and that I had an animal that acted like an animal. In reality I probably will just tell Lucy and Linus stories the whole time. Or talk about the Duggars or something.
Alex Trebec will be like "Caitlin, a social worker from Brooklyn New York...I hear you have a hidden talent? Tell us about that"
And then I would kind of giggle awkwardly and say "Well Alex I can name all 18 of the Duggar children in order of their birth."
And then I would start off all "Josh, Jana, John-David, Jill" and then he would have to cut me off and it would be embarrassing. And then I would lose because the whole time I would be replaying my interesting anecdote in my head and wouldn't be able to focus on European history.
What a disaster.
BUT if I do my duathalon I can say that I am a duathlete or a multi-sport athlete or that I have biked through all 5 boroughs in one day. It will show that I am well rounded. Anyway I better get to the gym or I will end up, well, rounded. HA!

sunny days sweeipin' the clouds away

It was a beautiful fall day yesterday and I was walking around Brooklyn with my friend and he remarked that the day reminded him of Sesame Street. Now, the day did not remind me of Sesame Street, although walking around in Brooklyn often does. But, what it really made me think about was how much most things remind me of tv shows that I watched growing up. Perennial favorites for references are Punky Brewster and The Cosby Show. As in: Oh, I see that person took the door off the fridge when they put it out for garbage. You're supposed to do that I learned from the episode of Punky Brewster where Cherie gets trapped in the fridge and Punky and Margo have to give her CPR and Allen is no help because he was fucking around when they learned how to do it in class. Or: Oh, I love to sew but I don't think I would ever make shirts...they would end up looking like the faux designer shirt Denise made for Theo with one sleeve to long and all kinds of messed up.
As a matter of fact, if I could compare everything in my life to a tv show from the 80's I probably would.
As I get older, my other TV favorite reference is Friends. As in a recent discussion with my friend about having to go out to lunch for a goodbye party for a co-worker and ordering the second cheapest thing on the menu only to learn the tab was divided equally among the entire group so now I got spaghetti marinara and I have to pay for your shrimp alfredo. Both of us were reminded of the episode of Friends where the 3 poorest friends: Rachel, Joey and Phoebe (at the time -this was while Rachel was still a waitress and Joey wasn't yet Dr. Drake Ramore) are lamenting that they have to go out to fancy dinners with the other three when they can't afford it.
Although the ubiquitous NYC reference show in recent years is Sex and the City, I find that I can in no way relate and it rarely enters my discussions.
But here is my secret confession. The show I think about almost every day, but don't have the guts to bring up in polite conversation: Ghostwriter.
Here are instances where I think about it:
1. Ghostwriter was set in Brooklyn, I live in Brooklyn.
2: Alex's family owns a bodega which I had only ever heard of from the show. Now I go to a bodega several times a week.
3: Community gardens. I pass at least one, and sometimes two, community gardens when I walk to the gym. And every time. Every goddamn time I walk past I think of the Ghostwriter story arc in which the neighborhood is getting sick from vegetables grown in the community garden because some company had buried toxic waste barrels in the garden.
4: There are countless other instances in which Ghostwriter is brought to mind and I am too ashamed to write about them here.

So what tv shows do you find yourself referring to frequently?

Daily functioning Fail.

When I was in 6th grade (see left) I had a locker in school for the first time. I could not get the lock to open on my locker and it was a major source of stress. I had a lot of anxiety in the 6th grade. My mom even came into school after school to help me on more than one occasion, and still I couldn't manage on my own.
We may have even made up a rhyme to help me remember. We made up a rhyme to help me remember my bus, after I got on the wrong bus once in 1st grade. SE-23, in case you are wondering. it wasn't a rhyme so much as just the name of my bus set to a little tune.
Anyway the point of this, besides the opportunity to post this awesome picture of me that I love, is to tell this little story. I went to the 99cent store today to get stickers. They did not have any besides these jumbo Dora stickers that I did not want. But they had some other stuff I wanted, including a padlock. I have misplaced my other locks, I think when I moved, and have been using a little luggage lock when I go to the gym. It's not convenient, so I got this little lock for a dollar.
Well, you get what you pay for and I can't get the son of a bitch open. It's 6th grade all over again! Where's my clip-on tie and my Mary Englebret lunch bag (I didn't start carrying the Sailor Moon lunch box until 8th grade I think).
My mom said I looked like Annie Hall in that outfit, btw, which I think had a coordinating skirt. And my Grandma Sugar loved my glasses so much she was inspired to get blue ones for herself.
Also, I never did learn to open my locker. I began to share a locker with Marissa (who reads and comments!) and Ember (who is probably too busy being a grown up to read my blog)...thus setting the stage for my middle school career. What a happy ending.

Nerding out

I need to be doing some work, so I was reading boingboing.net, which is nerdy enough to start. And I read this post about fish who can supposedly count because they will go with groups of 4 fish versus 3 fish. And I was like, what, no, that does not mean they can count, that just means they can see that a group of fish is bigger. So then I'm like, what kind of a nerd cares if fish can count or just perceive size? Turns out, me and about 30 other boingboing readers who commented echoing my sentiments.
And that is your daily nerd alert.