Mild Amusement

Following the fun-filled day of walking , it would be a fun-filled day of riding the subway (we'll get to that in a second). Seeing as how it was vacation, though, I slept in until something like 11AM. I'm normally not much of a fan of oversleeping, but man, it felt good to be lazy. Anyhow, we were going to try to meet up with one of my friend's friends for lunch, so we headed into Chinatown to meet up with them (Canal St. subway station again). Our timing was a bit off, so we caught the tail end of the meal. We did sit down for a bit & I actually met this mythical friend (I was starting to have second thoughts up until that point). Though we didn't really hang out, she did graciously offer us to join her, and some friends, for dinner. At this point, we still hadn't eaten. So, we jumped on the subway, headed uptown, and found A Salt & Battery . A friend had recommended it, and this seemed as good a time as any to check it out, so there we were. I...

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...

Somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, I accrued a bunch of vacation time that I need to use by the end of the year. So, I decided to take a trip to New York City to help remedy that situation. The catch is that I still have a project that I'm busily working on, so I can't take a full-blown vacation. Instead, I get to take shorter trips until the end of the year, when my project will be finished. So, New York City for 5 days and 4 nights. I left Thursday night on a red-eye flight, so that I could maximize my vacation time (if I'm going to use vacation time, I might as well get the most out of that time). Also, I tend to get bored on airplanes, so I usually remedy that problem by falling asleep. All in all, it seemed like a reasonable plan - if I slept for the entire flight, that would have given me about 7 hours of sleep. I usually like to work off of more sleep than that, but that's more than enough to function properly. Of course, things don't always ...

I tend to make bets with friends to keep things interesting. It's not like I'm doing it all the time, and it's not like I'm throwing down wads of cash on these bets. Instead, I usually wager punishments or actions. It makes things far more interesting that way, in my mind. Actually, I remember my high school Econ teacher telling me that this is a logical thing to do. See, he had made a bet about Y2K, for the same reason (yes, that should tell you how old I am). The guy actually bet 10 dollars that the world would end. On the surface, that's a lose-lose proposition: either the world ends and he's out of luck, or the world doesn't blow up, and he's out of 10 dollars. However, my teacher now had a story to tell "at cocktail parties." To him, that was easily worth the 10 dollars, so he was actually coming out ahead (there's an econ lesson about utility in there, which is why it was the topic of that day's class). Basically, he was ...

After all of the excitement of the day before the race , I was thinking that the run itself would be pretty mundane. Sure, I expected to be tired at the end, but it was just a run. How much amusement could there possibly in that? Well, they group the runners by expected finish time. If you think about it, that makes sense, because it helps to avoid bottlenecks, and overly large crowds. However, they call those groups "corrals." Yup, they use the same word that is usually used when discussing livestock. Funnily enough, the word is actually fitting. Everyone in the same corral stands in a designated area, crowded around an entrance to the actual course. As soon as that door opens, everyone rushes towards it to start their run. Picture feeding time at the barn, and you'll have a rough idea of how the process goes down. Anyhow, when I signed up a few months ago, I was still planning on running a 12-minute mile. What's more, I added a cushion to account for p...

(Yes, I technically only ran a half-marathon, but I like the alliteration, so I left it off) This weekend was my half-marathon down in San Jose, and it led to all sorts of hi jinx. I actually had to drive down to San Jose twice, once to pick up my race packet, and once to actually run the race. They put on an expo from 9AM to 5PM on Saturday, and I was supposed to pick up my packet between those hours. Yes, you read that correctly: "supposed to." I planned on picking up my packet sometime mid-morning, then driving to Mountain View to meet up with my friend for lunch. The first wrinkle to my plan was that I had some family obligations to deal with that morning. I didn't finish up with that until about 12:30PM, so I decided to switch up the plan. Instead, I drove to Mountain View first, and I'd pick up my packet after that. It's about a 30 minute drive to the convention center from Mountain View, so I figured I still had plenty of time to make it work. Lunch ...