I've been very bad

about keeping up with my blog lately.

Anyway, I haven't had a ton of stuff to say. I like my new job, it can be difficult and stressful, but no one can say it isn't challenging anyway. Now that I am settling down into a weekly routine, I am trying to carve out specific blocks of time during the week where I can get real, practical work done. There are so many meetings and conference calls and detailed emailing and otherwise conversations about the project and strategizing, etc. that I find these specified blocks of time essential for actually accomplishing some concrete work. Now that there seems to be a certain routine to the week, this has become a little easier. We have a weekly "working meeting" on Thursday afternoons where we meet with our "client" and with the business (our end users) to review what has been done that week, where the project is headed, action items, concerns, requirements, problems, etc. And the spotlight is really on me here because I have to drive a good portion of the meeting and also demo reporting changes and updates that I've done. Sometimes the meeting can be fun, if the users start to get excited and they kick off a round of brain storming that really gets my creative juices flowing. But sometimes the meeting is just painful. This past Thursday was one of those such meetings. The conference room was stuffed to the gills with something like 15-18 people (some of whom I didn't even know) and I was trying to demo a bunch of stuff, but I was dealing with a wireless keyboard and mouse, was logged onto my machine through the conference room PC and my screen kept getting frozen, so I was never able to really accomplish my demo. In the meantime, the natives were restless so I just talked through what was supposed to be my demo while becoming more and more nervous with every word. It was horrible. But I got through it somehow. My manager said to me afterwards, "good job" and I just laughed out loud. He's just so nice and always positive, but I knew it was a disaster. Oh well. It was a relief once it was over anyway.

So, I joined the company gym a week ago. For $190/year I can go to any gym location (they're all over Boston, and other locations, in addition to having a gym in each of the buildings here). I didn't go at all last week, but I finally did go for the first time yesterday. I actually blocked out the time on my calendar here, set the time as "busy" and worked out in the middle of the afternoon when the gym was pretty empty. I then stayed later at work in the evening to make up for it. I only did a half an hour on the elliptical, but it was surprisingly hard for me(or maybe not so surprisingly). It's been that long since I did any kind of consistent working out. Anyway, I'm thinking that if I can do this a few times a week, and then get myself walking more on the weekends, that this will at least be a start. I was thinking if I can continue to do the afternoon workouts, I can maybe do an additional workout after work, either at one of the gyms here, or at the apartment complex. Even just a half an hour a shot will add up quickly enough. And can I say how wonderful it is to have a gym actually in the building where your office is? Used to be I would run out to the gym on my lunch hour in NYC and it would be this harrowing sprint across Seventh Avenue, up the long, sleazy, urine-soaked block on 33rd street and across all the craziness of Herald Square. Now I can just walk downstairs without even putting a coat on, with my ipod and blackberry in hand (and can thus answer emails while I'm down there too -- gotta love technology).

Over this past weekend I got to see all my cousins for dinner. Two of my cousins live close to me here and my third cousin (who lives near Albany, NY) was down visiting his brothers. I first met two of my cousins at a local bike shop. One of them is thinking of getting into bicycling because he's having some knee trouble from running and his brother has a lot of experience and so was helping figure out what bike would be good for him and what equipment he would need. Of course, it's never a good idea for me to spend an afternoon in such as place as I start getting fancy ideas of what new toy I can buy for myself. (Must. Buy. A. Condo.) Afterwards we then drove on to the restaurant where we met both of their families and my other cousin and his family. It was a big, old, happy family reunion, the likes of which I haven't had since my mother passed away four years ago. All of my cousins wanted to know when my father plans to visit. In a way, they feel particularly connected to him because amongst us all, he is the one remaining parent. I hated to tell them that even when he lived one state away he never visited me. They shouldn't be holding their breath for a NH visit from him.

My cousins were all also very impressed with my decision to make this huge life change and move up here. All were completely amazed when I said that I don't miss NYC at all. I really don't (at least not yet), I miss the friends I have there, yes. I even miss my apartment a bit. And I miss my own furniture and my books, etc. But the city, not really. I will always have a deep love for NYC, but I sure as ass don't want to live there any more. I think the only way I could tolerate living in NYC is if I had A LOT of money, could afford a big and solid (i.e. not hearing your neighbors) apartment on the Upper Westside near Central Park and could also afford a weekend/vacation home AND still have enough money left over for traveling AND investing and for restaurants and toys and whatever. Those are the circumstances in which I could live in NYC again. Not bloody likely in my lifetime, but there it is.

Anyway, speaking of NYC, I've decided to drive down there this weekend. I'll see some people, retrieve some stuff, return my cable equipment, find some technical manuals that I need that are stashed in my apartment somewhere, etc. I'm looking forward to it.