Sitting down today to read through my endless RSS feeds – I have a bunch, don’t you? – with my trusty, always there wherever I may be, Google Reader, I thought about the time I invest in reading others words in relation to mine own.

I don’t write enough. I’ll attempt to rectify this with trying to convert the mind-numbing television viewing time with creative, semi-productive time.

Why only semi-productive, you ask? (See, I can read your thoughts already!) Well, if it was fully productive time, then there presumably would be some sort of end product, whereas all that ever gets produced is are 0′s and 1′s, that is some sort of combination make up bits and bytes, which then come together to form words and possibly express thoughts or whatnot.

So if all it is is a bunch of zeroes and ones, what really does it amount to?

Earlier tonight I had an experience I never thought about, and if asked, I’d probably have replied with, “That would be cool, but not on the top ten list.” That statement would be hard pressed to provide said list, as there isn’t one at the moment, and probably never will be, as I’m lazy that way. If there’s a list, and it has items that are on it that aren’t checked off, then there’s potential for them to never be checked off, and why not live up to your potential, as I was always taught – yet rarely practiced.

A vendor that my company works with – and pays well for their superb product and services – hosted a nice evening of after work drinks and snacks at the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, right here, a few blocks from my place, on Broad Street (the entrance is not on Wall Street, as common misconception would have it). This was in response to their being bestowed the honor of the following morning’s “Ringing of the Bell” – a 9:30am wak-up call for the market, which begins the trading. Once a mundane, boring aspect of some guy’s job, now an honorarium.

Security was tight, as it always is, and you have to be on the list to get through the front door, after which metal is unfairly discriminated against by means of gateways that will beep angrily if you have any on your person. Greeted by vendor representatives, and escorted along the way by ushers, you finally step out on to the trading floor.

Now we’re not talking about a nice little hall, that people mill around and chat, but the actual trading floor itself, where the combination of old-school methods and decor are mashed together with an abundance of new-school technology – from touch screens to ticker tape, this place is a sight to look at.

High ceilings, clocks and tickers everywhere, phones and computer consoles galore. A lot of them even had Playstation-like controllers hooked up to them – I have absolutely no idea why.

Open bar, so I got me a nice scotch on the rocks, and my colleagues and I spent some time walking around, tasting yummy-looking stuff, and spoke to some other visitors about companies and compared some stories.

We also had a chance to talk to some vendor representatives, where after we three voiced our appreciation and happiness with their product, I was emboldened by the knowledge that “an unhappy customer is a chance to improve the business via feedback” line of thinking, and voiced a couple of items that I believe they could do better on. This information was met with appreciation, and I am glad that I voiced my thoughts. I usually let the inner monologue go forth, but on those times when restraint is prudent, it’s good to know that some of the inner can be outer and do well as such.

In any case, it was pretty cool, and I got to stroll around a place that has unspeakable amounts of money pour through it daily, affecting millions of people’s lives, and it was quite pleasant.

There’s a picture behind here, for the skeptics.

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First off, let me open by thanking you all for writing back with your thoughts, comments and methods of weight loss and lifestyles.

It’s been very insightful, having people write here on the site, as well as comments on Facebook, as well as direct emails. I’ll look into all of these, and probably make up my own combination, as long as it makes sense to me.

In more exciting news, I took my New York State Department of Motor Vehicles Road Test, and guess what? I passed!

For the first time in my life, I am a licensed driver of a four-wheeled vehicle class, and the only thing I want to do isnow apply for a motorcycle license. It’s a little backwards here – you have to get the Class D (automobile) before you can add the Class M (vroom! vroom!) to it

As they say in Hebrew: Cow, Cow. (Laugh now if you get the joke.) I must say that my uncle is pretty awesome for taking the time to teach me how to drive, and let me drive him around when we could, and not shout in my ear, “What do you think you’re doing!?!?!?!” as I have heard from other’s experiences with driving instructors that are less-than-forgiving about anything at all. Also, a shout out goes to my extended cousins in CT – for always showing me a good time when I come up there, and letting me practice driving around more with their car as well, so while I am now fairly comfortable behind the wheel, I am also aware of the danger that lies ahead.

So now that I have that squared away, anyone need a driver?

If ever you’ve had to sit down with your inner self and debate matters, then you know that it always depressing to figure out that there’s something wrong and that you want to change it.

Recently during some odd contemplative time, I’ve figured out that I enjoy the taste of food much more than the food itself.

That probably confused some of you, so let me explain.

I find myself in a position where I am overweight, and eventually take steps to rectify this. Steps? Joining a gym, eating healthier, trying to lose weight and “look good” – you know, the kind of good that after you’ve walked by makes women pause and savor the moment, so they can reminisce it later with their friends.

That kind of good.

So you go to the gym twice a week and get worked on for an hour by a trainer. You do all the things you’re supposed to, and nothing helps.

Sure, you drop a few pounds, and tone up some muscle, but there’s still that cuddly cushioning that will damn any man, especially if you can’t touch your toes – not because of the girth, but because of some weird leg inflexibility you probably developed due to major inactivity.

You go to the doctor, hoping that it might be something physiological, but (sadly?) it’s not. You only find out that you’re in pretty good health – but you need to exercise more. Duh. Don’t need years of schooling to tell me that.

So you drop the expensive diet, as it’s not really doing anything, and you go back to eating “health conscious” – salads, and the occasional Chinese take-out of something with tofu.

Then, you sit back one day and realize:

I don’t eat all that much, and when I do, I usually eat pretty decently.

But when I don’t…

I have found that I love the way things taste. The mixing and matching of textures and flavors os something amazing, and I will overeat something that tastes good – just to have some more of the taste, far past the point of sustainment.
I suppose that’s what ancient Greeks had in mind – they wanted to eat more of these delicious items, so off to the vomitorium with you! (I know I’m mixing Greeks and Romans, but I don’t care. Oh, and the fact that the vom is no place for this kind of activity. But it sounds cool.)

So now that I’ve figured that out, what do I do about it? There’s the simple method – go back to a strict diet and deprive myself of all that is delicious – but that’s absolutely no fun, not to mention extremely hard in New York City -
or figure something else out.

Another idea is to try to go the path of “eat only when hungry”, but that’s not healthy, as I’m told that the body will figure that out and store even more fat cells as a result.

There’s not a whole lot of options for someone who doesn’t want to put in piles of effort into shopping for food, preparing for one, and cleaning up the mess.

I’m totally hoping that someone ot there has a good idea – so feel free to shout it, shout it, shout it out loud.

So today started like most days, and I woke up.

Nothing too spectacular about that particular aspect of the daily ritual, other than the fact that it seems to happen wth some regularity, and to a certain degree of predictability as well..

Lazily lounged around, watched some recorded American Chopper and laughed at the destructiveness of a couple of people that get fairly angry in each other’s proximity. Finally got up and did some morning things.

Went out and got a new mouse that I wanted – nice little thing, and it does the job.

Beat the lunch crowd by a few minutes to the local diner, and got my late brunch, and sat downa nd relaxed for a bit.

Tried to reach a friend on Skype, but I guess the wireless spot I was connected to crapped out on me. Oh well.

So now I’m off to find the Astor Place Hair place – I hear good things about it. I need a hair cut as well as a good shave, so I figure I’ll sit down, close my eyes and let them go to town.

Wish me luck.

First off, let me begin with thanking everyone who has emailed, messaged, called, or in other ways communicated a Happy Birthday to me. It really was great to hear from all of you, and I’m going to try to respond to everyone individually, but in case I don’t, please know that it was well appreciated.

To those of you who’ve been following, you might know that I’ve been going through a lot of changes as of recent, and I thought today would be a great time to jot down a whole lot of things that I’ve done for the first time, while giving some background to make it interesting.

I started my second decade in service to the Israeli Air Force, and have ended it living in Manhattan. Big jump, and wildly exciting.

These past few months of living in the USA have opened first-times for me all over again, and I thought that some of them might be of interest, or maybe even inspire you.

First time living completely on my own – no roommates. Not that there’s anything wrong with roommates (wink at YAP), but it’s something I’ve never done. Now I live on my own.

First gym sign-up and actual attendance. It’s going well, my trainer likes me to push myself harder than I would on my own. Isn’t that the point? Bah humbug.

First time visiting places like Boston, MA, Stanford, CT and Long Island. What can I say? Never been there. Now I have friends and family there. First time eating Hibachi-style!

First time skydiving. And sledding. First time to walk around in public without a shirt on in a place that’s not the beach.

First time watching Broadway – and then off-Broadway, and going back again and again. Needs major update.

First Mac. Ugh. Call me crazy, but I’m not liking it.

First large history post. I thought a lot about that one, and it’s good to re-read it. I never continued on my personal history, maybe another time.

So that’s a lot of the past year – not everything by a far stretch, but a lot of great and goodness.

Today marks another first for me – turning 30 (yes, I know the cat’s out of the bag now. I don’t care). On December 25, or the Fifteenth of Tevet, depending on which calendar you follow, I turned thirty years old. So to mark this occasion, I did another first – snowboarding. Yes, yours truly went out with some friends and headed up a mountain, to hurt himself in ways that have gone previously undiscovered by himself.

It’s not as easy as it looks, but I was in full cold weather gear, and needed it. My butt slammed into the snow so many times today that I think I might need a new pelvis. Same with my knees (and I don’t mean that I need a new pelvis for my knees…), and curiously enough – my big right toe.

Turns out that if you have feet larger than the board, you should try not to slam them into hard packed snow when trying to get up. So I slammed my big toe (while in a two-ton snow boot attached to a snowboard) int the ice, and now it’s scary black-and-blue. Ouch.

So I got to celebrate my birthday, for the first time in a long time, and to end it off, when I got home tonight, and got some dinner ready, I sat down to watch one of my favorite films – The Neverending Story. Don’t laugh at me – I love that movie. I get all teary-eyed and shivers run down my back and all. I guess I’m a big sap, but I love a story that meant a lot to me – the power of books, a good story, adventures and such. It’s probably really cheesy to today’s world and standards, but it’s awesome.

So there. Now I’m going to kick back and relax, and fall asleep to another of my favorite movies – Labyrinth – and wake up all sore in the morning.

If you celebrated the Channukah thing or the Xmas thing, hope you had a good one. Watch The Hebrew Hammer and rejoice!

So last night was the company’s annual Holiday Party. Call me crazy, but I like my company – they’ve held a few celebrations since I’ve been here, and all of them rocked my socks.

It was held at Pressure, which has this great top floor bar/pool hall/dance floor combo space, and we shared it with a party from NBC – but they were on the other side of the bar and didn’t really concern us at all.

Started off by grabbing a drink at the bar and moseying around, played a few games of pool, I even rocked a game of Guitar Hero! I didn’t do the whole buffet thing, I just wasn’t hungry I guess.

I think where I really had the best time was on the dance floor, where I’ve always tried to have a great time. It’s so awesome to see a bunch of crazy people, people I work with, break out their moves. Some of them more interesting than others, but all awesome. I guess it takes a certain type of personality to decide: “I can’t dance in the more conventional sense of the word – but I don’t care, I’m dancing anyways!” So watch out for that good old funky white boy dance – it can spring up at you at a moment’s notice

I had some nice salsa steps and merengue to base on, and then there was some group interpretive modern dance, that got some amazing response, and one more memorable one was Sir Mix-a-Lot’s memorable song, to which another dude and I totally rocked and cracked everyone up. I showed a bit of my groove to “Billy Jean”, a good song for footwork, and wished there was a little more step-worthy music, or at least clog-able, like “The Devil Went Down..” but hey, it was still awesome.

I got to meet a whole lot of people that I work with – some whom I’ve never met before – and some of their friends, spouses, SI’s etc. in a non-work environment. It was fun to see everyone relax and have a good time.

On the whole, it was one hell of a party, and I can’t wait for the next one. Big thanks to M, for making it happen!

So in the past couple of weeks it’s snowed a bit and covered the ground with enough that this past weekend I went sledding for the first time in a VERY long time.

I started the day visiting my uncle and cousin, having a light bite and tea, then driving around my uncle’s Chevy in a neighborhood in New Jersey, where we went to the top of a multi-level parking lot and intentionally sped up and slammed on the brakes on untouched ice to skid. Feels odd. Don’t do that.

Then drove all the way to his house, and then out again onto the highways and byways, dealing with weekend traffic.

I met other cousins at a halfway point between New Jersey and Conneticut, where I switched cars, and drove up further north to someone’s house on a hill where I then sledded down at breakneck (literally!) speed into brambles and bushes.

Ah, yes, it was a lot of fun. Cold, but it gets the heart pumping faster as you fly down the slope, and hope you don’t run into someone else or worse – a tree (that happened!). Also,word of advice that might seem obvious to the rest of you – if you’re going down head first, don’t try to brake using your shoulder against the ground – that only makes it angry. Retaliation was in the form of me flipping onto my head, doing a full 360, and landing on the hard snow. Ouch. Some more pictures are available beyond the cut.

Overall, it’s was pretty awesome.

After sledding, we went to have dinner at a Japanese Hibachi place – I’d never been to one of those, and that was quite the experience as well.

The next day, I had my first Costco’s visit – and let me tell you, I was impressed by the sheer size of everything. It’s all so huge!

Anyways, I hope you had as good a time as I did.

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A few weeks ago a coworker of mine decided that he wanted to celebrate his birthday with something big – and came up with the brilliant idea of going skydiving. He had been once before, and he’s a very thrill-seeking kind of guy, as well as a snowboarding instructor in the winter.When he sent out a general invitation to all to join in on the fun, I was initially excited, as this is something I’ve thought about doing, but never really pursued the subject at all. So my initial reactions were mixed – want to go, yes, really! But then the terror of jumping out of a plane? That’s insane!!

Lucky for me, the Saturday he had scheduled for was Yom Kippur, and I was already going to be with my uncle in the local synagogue, and then break the fast with some cousins in New Jersey.

Little did I know that Yom Kippur was going to have just enough rain to keep everyone from skydiving that day, and that everyone left and rescheduled for the following Saturday.

Back at work, hearing this, I immediately jumped on board for the next Saturday’s jump, and put it on my calendar and didn’t schedule anything else.

During the week, I kept on reconsidering, reflecting on whether or not I really wanted to do this. I mean, really, going up into the air, and dropping like a stone from a plane that’s turning right around and landing anyways! How crazy is that!

Turns out, my kind of crazy.

Saturday morning, I head over to Harrison, New Jersey and get picked up by Gavin (whose brilliant idea it was), along with Christophe and his friend Fernando. We meet up with Vincent, Olga, Alex and Marissa. We exchange directions, and head down to South Jersey, a place called Willamstown.

On the way, I call Freefall Adventures to inquire about the weather conditions impacting the day’s activities, and am informed that it’s going to be ok, just a major delay as the early morning was unsuitable for jumps, so everyone got pushed back a few hours. Once we arrived at the location, we met up with Mike S. and Veronica, more friends that live in the closer area and had a much shorter drive.

The we line up for forms and such, and get handed a pile of stuff to read and fill out, waivers and such, who to notify in case of accidents, and whether we have any physical distinguishing marks. The last was the source of many a joke. Much gallows humor had by all.

There were a large crowd of people hanging around, and not much jumping going on. There was some good music playing, and we eventually found a deck of cards, and had lunch, shot some hoops, chatted and had an all-around good time hanging out, with the eternal wait.

We also got called in for the orientation video, where we saw some other jumps and guidelines, as well as the president of the company repeating that this is a dangerous activity and that they will try to keep us safe at all times, but accidents happen. Nothing disillusioning about that.

So we hung out for longer and longer, until finally at around 4:30pm, we get called in to get into harness and get instructed. This goes on for about half an hour, where we learn what we’re going to do and how to react. We also perform some of the stances that we will be in. My pulse is racing.

At about 5:00pm, the sun is starting to drop low in the sky, and 24 of us – a large amount of experienced single jumpers and 6 of our crew and accompanying instructors – board the Otter and take off.

We rapidly climb to about 12,000-13,000 feet (around 2 miles or 4 kilometers, give or take a bit), all the while being checked and double checked for straps, connections and everything else. One instructor, a crazy Frenchman, kept screaming at random intervals, “We’re going streaking!” with no apparent relevance to anything else.

As we near jump height, they open the door, and the first three jump. I’m fourth, and I’m almost freaking out, I can only remember that on the ground they told us that when jumping, the instructor will use the “Ready, set, go!” method while rocking together. My instructor, a huge Brazilian dude named Jonei, dumped us out on “set”, which helped my adrenaline levels skyrocket.

In the 60 seconds of freefall that followed, all I can explain that the completely foreign feeling of falling at of a rate of over 120MPH (more like 200KPH) was so phenomenal and alien that I wish it had gone on much longer.

At about 6,000 feet, Jonei yanks my left arm in front of my face to show me the altimeter dropping fast, and I have about 5 seconds to pull my own ripcord before he does it for me at 5,200 or so. I slowly reach back to my right hip for the toggle, and find Jonei’s hand on it already. As soon as he feels my hand tap, he pulls the cord, and the chute deploys.

If you’ve never gone before, that rapid deployment seems like it’s going to yank you really hard, but it’s actually not that bad. A little unexpected, but not bad. I fold my arms to my chest as Jonei checks the straps and we begin slowly gliding downwards at a much more leisurely rate. I let out a battle whoop, releasing that pent up tension, and feel the blood pounding and rushing. Whoa.

He then proceeds to point out some of the landmarks that you can see from that high above, none of which I can recall right now. We do some crazy turns and spins, stalls and swoops, and he hands me the toggles to control, explaining what they do. I do a few simple maneuvers as he instructs me, hoping that this thing is resilient and won’t drop us to the ground.

He takes back the reins, and then proceeds to freak me out, doing a couple of 360′s almost parallel to the ground, some cool turns, and finally landing in turn after swooping over some trees nearby. We ride in and slide me on my butt, as described as the probable method of landing during the instruction phase.

I collapse and lay down to enjoy the feeling of all that coming to an end, and then Jonei pulls me up, and I head back to turn in my gear.

We all talk exuberantly about the experience, while waiting for our other 4 friends to go up and jump. While they do, we rehash our experiences and have some great laughs.

After our friends’ jump (the final one of the day), we hang out with the skydiving crew in their hangar – very laid back, fun-loving kind of crowd. They crack open some beers, we all joke around, and a few of us try our balance on an Indo Board – with varying degrees of success. Something like that is a pretty cool way to spend your time waiting for your jump.

So we then sat down and watched some of the videos that were taken during the final jump, and had some laughs and and then left to get some food and drinks.

After a delicious dinner at some place called “The Office” in New Jersey, I was dropped off at a PATH station and headed home for a good sleep.

All in all, an awesome way to spend a day. I’m definitely interested in doing this again.

So I sat down and realized that it’s been a long time since I wrote anything, and realized that I like writing, if for no other reason than to get some things out of my head. “Brain dump”, if you will. Then, a couple nights ago, I vocalized a resolution that “starting tomorrow, I’ll spend about 10 minutes a day writing”. Obviously, I didn’t do it – until today when I realized that I missed doing it yesterday. Oh well.

This past month has been a little crazy, with friends visiting from Israel, family events, holidays, and much much more.

So I’ve joined a gym and begun training a couple times a week, with the goal of ultimately losing 60 pounds. That’s like losing (more…)

So here it is.
The revelation.
You thought it would never happen.
It’s almost unbelievable.
I’m still unsure of it myself.
But this memorable event will go down in history, I’m sure.

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