Soon after her surgery back in October, Robyn started walking with me. We would usually go for about 30 minutes or so after the kids went to school. I sometimes ran for part of the time to keep up with my routine and after a while, Robyn would join me. This winter has been much colder than last so there were some days where it just wasn’t much fun to be out on a 22° day so in January, Robyn got a membership at Planet Fitness. Her membership allows her to bring a guest every day so that works out pretty well for me.
Robyn’s been going at least four times a week and I’ve been trying to get three in when I can. The big change for me has been using the weight machines and working on my arms and upper body strength. I’m actually seeing some results! I do miss running outdoors and I’m looking forward to getting back to it. As the weather warms up I’ll probably just work on strength at the gym and run on the “off” days.
I’m coming to realize that although cardio health and strength are important, it’s the ability to move freely that is probably the most important aspect of overall health.
For our 11th wedding anniversary, Robyn and I decided to head into NYC again this year. I made a dinner reservation at Bond 45 for 7:30 but we had Gram come watch the kids at 3 o’clock so we could leave early and walk around. Here’s Robyn showing off her hot little dress on her “new” body. Amazing!
All dressed up with somewhere to go!
The first thing we noticed right after we parked the car was that it was much more windy than we had expected. Robyn did wear smart shoes this time but she was also wearing a dress so she was freezing. The first place we went was a store so Robyn could get some pants. After trying on a few pair, she purchased one and put them on under her dress. She’s so ingenious! We headed back out and walked all over Times Square. For a place that gets so much attention from the world, there’s not a whole lot to do in Times Square unless you want to shop. We went into a bunch of different places and bough the kids some stuff from the M&M Store.
Dinner was pretty good – not great. There was no comparison to last year’s feast although we did have a delicious meringue cake for dessert and I had a tasty Malbec with our meal. After dinner we walked south to the Empire State Building where we looked up and saw the full Moon overhead. It was a beautiful sight that’s definitely not fully captured in the photo above. We headed back to the car since things were closing up for the night. All-in-all, we had a good time out on the town.
This was started right after we returned to our home but it took me a while to get it all together.
The wind continued to pick up throughout the day on Monday the 29th. Sometime around sunset, we began to hear the cracking of branches and deep thuds as trees fell outside. The power flickered a few times and finally went out at about 7:30pm. This happened just as Robyn and I were setting up our sleeping area downstairs. We all adjourned with our flashlights and snacks to the living room downstairs. The kids enjoyed themselves and finally fell asleep sometime after 10pm.
Settled in for the storm
There was lots of wind and we could hear the rain getting heavier but it didn’t seem as bad as I had thought it might. With nothing else to do, Robyn and I drifted off to sleep around 11:30 or so.
I woke up a couple times during the night and I was happy to hear that the wind and rain seemed to be abating a bit. As the sun came up we all began to stir and since it was getting cold, I got dressed and ready to get the generator set up and the heat going. Our cell phone service seemed to be completely down – no data and we weren’t able to make any calls. This wasn’t good…. Once the generator was running and we had heat and coffee, I took a look up and down the street. There was a tree down and blocking the road at the top of the hill on Harris Ave just beyond Conklin Ave and another down the street from us at the bottom of Harris Ave that was also completely blocking the road. Yikes!
Tree down at the top of the hill
Tree on wires down the street from our house. The tree that was completely blocking the road further down from here has been removed.
I decided I would drive around to check out the extent of the damage and look around for a place to fill up the gas cans. I unloaded the rest of the gas into the generator and hopped into the car. There were trees and branches down everywhere. It took me a while just to drive out of town due to all the power lines and trees blocking the road but I finally got out to Rt-46. Checking my cell phone, I finally had a signal so I pulled into the Wendy’s parking lot in Sucassunna to send a couple of “We’re okay” emails and update my Facebook status so that people knew we were okay but not able to get phone calls. On my way back to our house, I filled up the gas cans at a station that was running off a generator. At least we had enough fuel for another couple days.
The next two days are kind of a blur. After verifying that Robyn’s surgery was still scheduled for Thursday morning, we packed up and went to my mother-in-law’s on Wednesday evening since her power came back on earlier in the day. This would let Gram and Harvey stay with the kids while I was at the hospital with Robyn. Things went well with the surgery and Robyn was discharged from the on Sunday, November 4th.
Written to my boss on Monday, November 5th:We lost power on Monday evening and about 85% of my town is still without power. The most recent update was that we may not have power back for 2 weeks (http://hopatcong-sparta.patch.com/articles/power-may-not-be-back-on-for-two-weeks-oem-says) and our schools will remain closed until all power has been restored. I’m not sure why we got hit so bad but some parts of the town look like bombs went off, blowing trees across roads, onto houses and cars and taking power lines with them.
My wife’s surgery was still scheduled for Thursday so she decided to go ahead and have that done (at least she’d be in a warm, well-lit hospital for a few days!) and it went well. She came home on Saturday and is fine but will be pretty sore for a week or so.
My family has been staying at my mother-in-law’s apartment (about 30 miles from our house – most of her town has power) since Thursday and between the trips to the hospital and to check on and get supplies from our house I have seen my share of gas lines! I thought I was well prepared for the storm this time around but once again, Mother Nature and our dependencies on technology threw us a curveball. Already making a list of stuff to do for the next one. Maybe you’ll all see me on that Preppers show soon!
On top of this, we’re expecting another storm for Wednesday-Thursday.
Another few days spent hanging around my mother-in-law’s apartment….
Written Thursday, November 8th:Day 10 without power at our home. We’re still at my mother-in-law’s place. Yesterday, after a morning of feeling annoyed that my kids and I would be stuck indoors all day due to the weather, I was spurred to action. I spent a good portion of the afternoon playing Uno and contacting my town and county government representatives as well as our congressman about the lack of communication and clearly false restoration numbers provided by JCP&L. I didn’t get any clear updates from these people but at least I was doing something (and talking to people who are not related to me!). The latest official estimate for power restoration to my area was by Sunday at 11:59pm.
I’m not sure if my communications had anything to do with it but Hopatcong officials stated on Thursday morning that there were 47 work crews in town and the good news is, according to my neighbors who are still in their homes, JCP&L work crews were seen working on our street this evening. I believe they even cleared a large tree that has been toppled across the road since the night of the storm so at least we’re seeing some movement in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll get some good news tomorrow but I’m not holding my breath.
Today, we met up with some friends from our area who are also living with relatives in order to get out of the house and get some fresh air. My wife is getting back to normal but it’s taking a little longer than she had anticipated to be able to move around without pain and keep up with the kids (who are completely bored out of their minds by now) so I’m calling my days a complete wash for this week. I’ve been getting about 4 hours of work in each night after my kids go to bed. With any luck, we’ll be back in our home this weekend and I’ll be back to my regular work schedule for next week.
I’m not complaining – we’re very lucky not to have any serious damage to our home and to have a place to stay!
My mother-in-law went back to work today but my wife is not yet up to keeping pace with two bored 6-year olds running around so I am not sure what my work schedule is going to be for the next 2-3 days. I’m expecting that once my wife is feeling better, I’ll be able to find a relatively quiet spot to get real work done but I may have limited availability over the next few days.
The power finally came back on on Friday, November 9th. Robyn and I went back home to clean up and prepare the house while the kids stayed with Gram.
Woke up this morning to increased winds. Nothing crazy but it’s definitely picking up. As I write this, the first rain has begun spattering against the windows.
Hurrican Sandy is due to arrive full-force sometime in the next 24 hours or so. I’ve been watching the development of this storm for about a week – long before most of the local media were saying anything about it coming up to the northeast. Many meteorologists are calling this an historic storm like New Jersey has never seen. I’m pretty concerned by the wind – especially about the possibility of a tree falling onto or into our house and causing damage. Although the latest forecasts for our area are calling for 35 to 50 mph winds with gusts up to 70 mph. Those winds are certainly damaging but no where near the serious hurricane winds that are predicted for the oceanside locations. I’m also concerned about the potential for flooding in our yard and into our garage. I replace the gasket on the bottom of the garage door so hopefully that helps.
I think we’ve taken all the precautions and made all the preparations we could so all we can do now is to wait and see how it goes. We’ve stocked up on water, food and batteries. We’ve got the generator ready to go.
Here’s a look at the storm right now. Apparently, it’s set a record for the largest (in diameter) Atlantic hurrican of all time.
I was 7 years old in early 1979. I guess that would have put me in second grade. My interests were probably limited to Star Wars – drawing Star Wars spaceships, playing with Star Wars action figures, reading Star Wars books and listening to the “movie on tape” version of Star Wars. When not doing any of those things, I was probably reading about space exploration or drawing pictures of fighter planes and tanks. Although I can’t recall many details from that time, I am sure about the Star Wars stuff. I was obsessed. And from the sales figures, I wasn’t the only one. Action figures and toys from Lucasfilm were selling like crazy and Hollywood was trying to follow the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a spate of sci-fi films to be released within the year. Battlestar: Galactica, The Black Hole, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Moonraker were all soon to be relatively well-received in theaters.
For most kids my age, straight up science fiction films were one thing but most of my peers weren’t seeing horror movies yet. I guess I wasn’t most kids because I was pretty preoccupied by shit that scared me. I LOVED watching those black and white horror movies on Saturday’s Creature Double Feature even though they sometimes gave me nightmares. In the summer of 1979 my mother even took me to see Prophecy in the theater (more about that in a bit)!
So, into my world comes this trailer:
Spooky, right? Imagine me watching Diff’rent Strokes with my sister and that comes on…. I thought something was coming out of that egg and whatever it was, it was going to scare the crap out of me. Eventually, I was trained to just cover my eyes and yell “lalalalalalalalalalalala!” at the top of my lungs every time that commercial aired.
Fast forward to May or June of that year when my older-by-a-decade sister tells me that she went to see Alien. Now, this was a long time ago so I don’t remember her exact words but it was probably something like “scariest thing I’ve ever seen”. The sentence “I almost tossed my cookies” may have also been uttered. She assured me that there were spaceships in the story but it was nothing like Star Wars. After putting up with my repeated asking, my mother made the wise decision not to take me to see Alien. However, as I mentioned above, she did take me to see Prophecy. I think she thought the movie poster bore some resemblance to the egg in the trailer for Alien and as anyone who has kids knows, if you can’t get exactly what the kids want, you settle for the next best thing. I got about 4 sleepless nights out of that experience and my mom got several hours of sitting on my bed while I tried to fall asleep.
Sometime not long after, I ran across the novelization of Alien and I guess I figured, since I couldn’t see the movie, I could at least read the story.
You have to remember, these were the days before everyone had VCRs and if you missed a movie during its theatrical release, your next chance to see it was probably going to be the “television network premiere” about 5 years later. I couldn’t wait so I got the book. This was a serious undertaking and probably the longest book I had attempted. Somehow I managed to take the book with me to school so I could read it during quiet time or indoor recess when it was raining. Not wanting to dissuade a student from reading, my teacher glossed over the potentially inappropriate content. The story was slow and I’m sure I didn’t really understand most of what I was reading. I just kept wondering when the scary stuff was going to happen and I never did finish the novel.
During this time, I was also a big fan of the sci-fi and horror movie magazines that were out at the time – Starlog, Fangoria, Fantastic Films, Cinefantastique. I used to go to the comic book dealer who set up shop at the Auburn Flea Market and read through all of them to while away the time as my mother, grandmother and great-aunt tried to sell all our old stuff. These magazines all had advertisements for mail-order (remember, this was way before the Internet!) companies selling books and other movie memorabilia. At some point, I don’t recall whether it in one of these magazines or in person at our local Beacon pharmacy that sold comic books and magazines, I ran across this:
The comic adaptation of the movie looked amazing. Printed on heavy gloss paper, the art was pretty stunning for the time. Googling for this will turn up lots of pages to get an idea of the quality. The dialog was straight from the movie and I think it even included some scenes that were cut from the final release. Finally, the plot of the film was clear to me! On top of that, I got to see the artist’s rendition of the Nostromo and the refinery and all the technology that appeared in the background and added so mcuh realism to the whole movie. I read the graphic novel over and over until I took the next steps down the road to my Alien obsession.
I’m not sure if I got the Alien Film Novel from a book store or if I convinced my mom to order it for me from a mail order company but when I got it I was fascinated. With over 1,000 color frames from the movie, this really was almost as good as seeing it in the theater. Looking at the stills, I could see what the characters look like and really get a feel for the atmosphere of the film.
My next acquisition was the Book of Alien which is basically an “art of…” book by today’s standards. There is some background on the formulation of the story and the creation of the film but it doesn’t go into much detail. The coolest thing from my perspective was the conceptual art – especially Ron Cobb’s amazingly detailed and technical designs that I have already seen from books like The Star Wars Sketchbook. I can recall looking at the photos of the bridge of the Nostromo in this book and the film novel and being inspired by the level of detail.
There were other tie-ins too: alien action figures, trading cards, patches and hats, shirts, etc. Although not as heavily merchandised as the Star Wars franchise, Alien was a pretty big hit and it also struck a chord with me from many perspectives.
I don’t really remember when I finally did see Alien. It may have been on VHS in the mid 80s. I’m not even sure if I had seen Alien prior to seeing Aliens in the theater. It may have been when the Alien Collector’s Edition laserdisc set was released in the early 90s. I really can’t recall. Obviously, I was not let down by the film’s presentation since I have seen it many times since and I still enjoy that the first installment more than any of the others in the series. I even enjoy multiple viewings of the making-of and behind-the-scenes supplemental material on the DVD and recent Blu-ray sets and Dennis Lowe’s very cool Alien Makers series.
There was some unique magic that was created with this film that sparked something within me as a child and still remains as an adult. I’m still obsessed!
Since the stories about Ridley Scott’s return to the Alien series started coming out about two years ago, I’ve been looking forward to seeing whatever it was that he released. I’ve been a big fan of Alien since I was a kid so the wait for this movie has been long for me. I saw Prometheus in 3D this Tuesday afternoon (free movies for Optimum subscribers!). I went alone because Robyn and I had planned to go on Saturday night but her mom wasn’t able to babysit due to a fall she had taken at home – she’s fine but was sore.
Having been in theaters for a few days, I was seeing reviews about the film that didn’t seem to be very positive so I went in with high hopes but not expecting too much. Even though I tried to stay pretty much spoiler-free, I had seen a few reviews that hinted the movie was only distantly related to the existing Alien franchise and that it was much more of a philosophical debate than a full-on horror/action film that we had come to expect. I was cool with that since I had always favored Alien – the first film in the series over the others due to the dark tone and relatively slow pace.
I think the reviews were mostly right on. The overall theme of the story was great. I enjoyed the movie and I find myself still thinking about the questions that it poses. But there were some plot holes that needed patching and scenes that I could have lived without. My biggest annoyance was seeing an elderly Peter Weyland played by a young Guy Pearce – the makeup looked bad and completely broke me out of the movie. Why not just hire an older actor? There was also some bad dialogue and some unbelievable decision-making by the characters but these are mostly things I can live with. The visuals and aesthetics, especially in 3D, were amazing – as one would expect from Ridley Scott.
I ran (and walked…but mostly ran) my first 5k today! I’ve been using the Cyclemeter “5k Training Program” for several weeks and today was supposed to be a long run day (28 minutes). So, I figured I’d take a route that would get me over the 3.11 miles for my round-trip. Using Google Map Pedometer, I came up with this route. It’s mostly flat with some nice downward slopes toward the end (that’s always a reward!) and a little elevation gain in the middle so it turned out to be a good run. Here’s my time:
Run Time: 38:41
Distance: 3.45 miles
Average: 11:13 /mile
At the beginning of the new year I made a resolution to be more active. I’ve been pretty consistent over the last couple of years about starting off in January with some exercise regime like running on the treadmill or whatever but that usually tapers off after the first couple months. This year, I set my sights low and just determined that I would get outside just about every day for a 30 minute walk and breath of fresh air. The much warmer than average winter and my busy work load probably had something to do with this decision. In any case, I began on January 9th with a walk around the neighborhood. It was nice to break up the work day with some time outdoors and I enjoyed seeing parts of our neighborhood that I had never explored. The other plus was that I was getting a chance to catch up on the many podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis.
I wasn’t so completely out of shape that walking tired me out so I began thinking about adding some jogging into my walk. I started off slow with the idea that I would work up to a certain distance and then level off. In the past, acclimating to these faster paces didn’t take very long but this time was different – my 40 year old body wasn’t as accepting of the demands I was making on it so I had to take it slow. Five minutes of running was about the most I could do at a stretch and then I followed up with several minutes of walking. I’m still pretty slow but I’m getting faster and more comfortable with my workouts.
One of the great helpers has been the use of the Cyclemeter app for iOS. I’ve had this app for a long time (I originally got it to track my biking routes) but now that I’m walking/jogging outdoors it tracks where I go and how fast I go so I am able to track my progress on a day-to-day basis and over time. Here’s a look at my daily distance and average speeds since January.
Friday, February 24th was our 10th wedding anniversary and we had a fantastic night. We drove into New York City and had dinner at Del Frisco’s Restaurant. The food was really good, as it should be, since it’s the most expensive single meal we’ve ever ordered. But it was worth it! We never go out and this was a special occasion for us. At the beginning of our meal, we had two glasses of Moscato that was very sweet and quite tasty. I think mine was gone before we were finished ordering dinner! I ordered a delicious 16 ounce steak and Robyn got a steak trio that included a little foie grois which I thought was delicious. I’ll definitely have to try that again some time. In addition to the main courses, we ordered a cauliflower au gratin made with brie and an order of sweet potato casserole. I started with a crab cake and Robyn had shrimp cocktail.
I’m glad that I had mentioned it was our anniversary since, at the end of the meal, the waitress brought us some complimentary champagne and banana bread pudding with ice cream and a candle on top.
We walked around the Times Square area for a while after dinner since we had some time to kill before our comedy show at 10:30. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to Times Square – it’s really a pretty amazing place – so many people from all over the world taking photos and looking at the scenery.
Robyn in Times Square
After grabbing some coffees and a cab, we headed uptown to Comic Strip Live. The show was a lot of fun and they even invited the whole audience to stay for the late show for free. But it was getting late and we had stuff to do on Saturday so we opted out and took a cab back to get our car to drive out of the city. We got home after 1:00 a.m. and didn’t get to sleep until about 3:30 or 4:00.
