The Little Boat That Could

My two fans have been at me again. Although I might have three now. The Cereal Pimp apparently has become a reader as well.

I've been at an off-site this week. And by off-site, what I really mean is that my boss had his team meet in a building two blocks away from the building we normally work in. Off-site indeed. As a part of this off-site, we usually go out at night. One evening, we went out into the harbor and watched the yacht races. Twenty-two J-boats racing around Liberty and Governors Island. Now I know what you're thinking. Yacht races - Miami Vice size yacht, guys in pink, supermodels in bikinis. Let me tell you something. It was just like that. Wine, cheese, and nose candy for all. That and my two Diet Cokes. Miami Vice aside, this was a little too Hamptonish for me, but that's another story.

Well, to get out to the floating clubhouse, we had to take the yacht club's personal taxi, which is what you see here, Lil' Toot. Such a cute little guy. He's a little underpowered though. I wasn't sure we were going to make it back to the marina at one point. The Hudson's current is pretty strong. My faith was weak. Lil' Toot was strong. I made it back.

Borat

My brothers and my sister-in-law came to visit last week. One night, my brother who is married, went to the ballet. He had heard that some famous dancer was going to be performing in at the Metropolitan Opera House and he just had to go. So he dragged his wife there. My other brother and myself wanted no part of watching guys in tights with giant packages jumping around and twirling, so we went to see a movie.

Both of our events ended at roughly the same time and we decided to meet at Ellen's Stardust Diner, a couple of blocks north of Times Square. On a Saturday night. Now for those of you that haven't been to Ellen's, it's basically a diner where Broadway hopefuls are the servers. The servers practice their art, singing, in between orders. On Saturday nights, this place is packed. It took us an hour just to get our milkshakes and disco fries. They didn't know what disco fries were at first, that's a Tick Tock Diner specialty, but once I explained to them that disco fries are simply cheese fries with brown gravy on them, they made them for us. Brown gravy, cheese, and fries, mmmmmmmmm!

Well, while we were waiting for our food, we were of course subjected to the singing. Not only do these people sing, but they perform as well. My brother that went to the ballet's favorite was the guy singing, "I am Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha..." This particular server got up onto the booths and was singing while walking above everyone. For some reason, he would always stop directly behind me at the "Lord of La Mancha" part and give a couple of hip thrusts as he said La Mancha. Fortunately, my back was to him or my scalding hot gravy would have found a new home.

Now to the picture. This guy was sitting at the bar before we arrived and was there after we left. He loved Ellen's. He loved the singers. Every time someone started singing, he would get off of his stool and start tapping his foot and clapping. I kept looking for cameras because the guy looked like Borat from Da Ali G Show.

The Wasting of the Gluten

You see that ice cream cone sitting on top of the trash can? The very sad looking cone with chocolate around the edges, the one that is begging to fulfill its purpose of being eaten. Oh delicious sugar and wheat flour, how crunchy, how crisp. I wanted to eat you. I really did. It's not as though I haven't been partaking of the forbidden gluten all weekend with my brothers in town. Cheesecake, pasta, bread, pizza, etc, the gluten was mine. However, it was not to be. I made a promise. No more gluten. Next time I'll have Erin leave her book full of cancer and lesions at home.

A Nice Run

Accompanied by massive pain. Zane woke us all up at 5am this morning. Poor little guy had a cough. After Liz took care of him, we decided to make good use of the time and go for a quick run. Bad idea. The pain in my left knee came roaring back. Had to stop at one point. Maybe I should just go back to writing about the subway. Although if I did that, I'd be negative 90% of the time. (Last night I stood on the platform for 45 minutes.) Not sure what I'm going to do at this point about my running.