Apparently, everyone else in NYC smells something in the air.

See the NY1 and NYT stories...   The Path train has been shut down, too.  I'm hard of smelling...

We had a meeting with some outside folks here yesterday and we ordered some sandwiches from The Bread Factory.  I grabbed a chicken sandwich and it was terrible from bite one...  just, well... blah.  Just tasted really processed and artificial... that's the best way I can describe it.

By the end of the day, my stomach wasn't feeling well at all, so when my friend Susie told me she wanted to have some bar food after work, I was a little hesitant, but went along.  We went to Heartland Brewery in Union Square.

I ordered a salmon burger and mashed potatoes.  I didn't each two bites of the mashed potatoes before I realized that any further consumption would cause something bad to happen, so I stopped.  If you know me, you know that not only do I never get sick, but it takes a lot to get me to stop eating.... so things weren't good at all.  I asked our waitress for a ginger ale after I already had an iced tea still sitting full.

That should have been the first thing that tipped her off.

The whole time she keeps walking by us, glancing over, and I'm not eating at all.  Hint two.  Something's obviously wrong.   I got annoyed because I figured she thought there was something wrong with the food and wanted to avoid having to take something back.

When Susie was almost done with her food, she comes over to me, and completely oblvious of the fact that I hadn't eaten at all, she goes, "Are you done with that?"

Done?  I hadn't touched it!  So I asked her to wrap it up because I had eaten something bad for lunch and wasn't feeling well, but there was nothing wrong with the food (not that she cared).

She didn't ask if I was ok or felt sick.  If I were her, I might have casually mentioned where the restrooms were, just in case.  But, nothing.  She comes back with the food wrapped and the check.  No, "Feel better".

Susie thought I was being ridiculous, but I was really annoyed.  I think a good waitress would have been a little more sympathetic. 

In case you people care, I'm still not feeling too well...  That's the last time I get anything at the Bread Factory.

I don't really know what the new year holds for me...   I just know that whatever it is, it is going to be big.  :)

Voki will come out, and we'll know whether it is a success or failure by the end of the year.  What Voki does will largely determine what I do.  Hopefully, a year from now, I'll have the pleasure of leading a team putting out a fun and growing product--one that changes our notions of how we express ourselves and relate to advertisers online.  I'll also have three more semesters of teaching under my belt and I'd like to be able to say that I will have made a difference in the lives of those I stand in front of in the classroom.

I also think it is going to be a big year for me personally.  I have a feeling that I'll be in a significant relationship by the end of the year.  I can't say whether I rediscover or am rediscovered by someone in my past, recent or distant, or whether I'm with someone I don't even know at this moment, but something tells me that all the ways in which I've envisioned growing with and sharing time with another person will come to fruition by the end of the year. 

I'll also probably have some kind of surgery within the year...  either to yank some wisdom teeth or to repair a knee after softball season.  Neither major, but both appear to be coming to a head.  I'd bet on the knee over the teeth, b/c my teeth seem to be proving much more resilient.

At this point, I just want to do my best...  to be able to look back and say that I gave it my all... that I was the best person I could have been in my job, for my family, my friends, to another person, and to myself.

Here's to the road ahead... thanks for reading...

Alright folks... here's where you contribute content back to me.

Anyone been to Block Island?

Recommendations for restaurants, hotels, inns, things to do, etc?

If anyone wants to send me good stuff, they can e-mail me, or preferably tag things in del.icio.us by using the for:ceonyc tag.   Thanks!

Yesterday, Christmas broke for me.

I stood in the Staten Island Mall ready to check of my list of phones and sweatshirts and DVDs and scarves and I watched the mobs.  People shoving, kids demanding, crying, couples arguing.  I had just come from lunch at my grandmother's...  a sparsely attended lunch that was supposed to be about mending our family.  I sat with her afterwards, while she cried about what had happened to our family...   decade plus long grudges, death, distance... We're so much smaller than we used to be that the holidays are a downer for both of us.

And then I looked back at my list.  Phone, DVDs, scarf, sweatshirts, etc...    and stared into the masses who cared a lot more about Wii than "We".

I walked out.  Actually, I nearly ran out.  I couldn't get away from it fast enough.  I peeled out of the parking lot, went home, and just started calling friends to vent.

Somebody moved around their own plans last night to make time for me to just go to the movies and when I got home, I made a list of all of the charities that people in my life cared about and started clicking away.

So instead of giving gifts this year (except for the webcam thing, which was meant to bring together family anyway) I donated a thousand dollars among the following charities:

The ALS Association (in memory of my grandfather, Elisio Piro)
The Guild for Exceptional Children (in memory of my uncle, Arthur Piro)
St. Rose's Home (in memory of my other grandmother's husband, Louis Mello)
MS Society (because of parents of two close friends and a biker raising money)
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (friend's sybling)
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk (friend's charity of choice)
American Foundation for the Blind (friend works there, two friends' parents are blind)
Save Darfur (because the US doesn't seem to want to do much here)

So that's it...    I'm not giving anything, nor do I want anything.  This makes a lot more sense to me than buying people stuff the don't really need or can just buy themselves.

One day, I'll have kids and a family and Legos and a tree and all that stuff...   15, 20... 40 people at my house...  squeezed in, extra tables, kiddie tables, eating on the roof... wherever there's a spot... and still too much food...   and we'll all appreciate what it means and look forward to it for weeks.  For now, though, I'll just try to help someone else accomplish that.

So, two days before Jeff Pulver came up with the blog tag game, I posted some stuff you might not have known about me.  Of course, I didn't do tags, so it wasn't much of a game, so now I'll just repost some of that stuff and tag, b/c I've now been tagged twice.  Plus, I'd like to take the opportunity to link to some of my favorite bloggers.

1) I have no sweaters.

2) I bounce my right leg up and down when I'm sitting without even noticing it. 

3) I hate soccer. 

4) I do not trust the snooze button...  I reset the alarm even just five minutes from now just to be on the safe side. 

5) I have a fear of heights. 

Ok, I am tagging Eric Nehrlich, Scott Adams, danah boyd, Niki Scevak, and Brooklyn Met Fan.

Starting later on in the afternoon yesterday, I had an unprecendented streak of productivity around the apartment.

Remember the vacuum cleaner that Mom offered me?  (Even though Mom was virtual, the vacuum was indeed real.)  Well, it turned out that she had tossed it in the garbage before the offer and pulled it back from the curb when I said I wanted it.  When it was on the curb, someone cut the electric cord off of it, meaning some vacuum cleaner surgery was necessary.

I give you, Frankencord...

I also put up vertical blinds, too.  This should have been a lot easier, except for the fact that all of the window and door frames in my apartment are metal.  This makes putting anything up in a window a huge chore.  I have a cobalt tipped drill bit for this, but the frames are hollow on the other side, so there's nothing to catch the screws.  I came up with a clever way to hang the blinds despite the fact that the screws aren't really anchored at all... I'll spare you the details.

After the blinds were done, I put up Christmas lights, which came out great because, coincidently like my old apartment, I'm on a corner due to an adjoining garage.  That gives me windows on three sides actually, two which are visable from the street.

I even have them set on a timer, so from 6:30PM to 2AM, there are lights on 75th Street. 

I sort of want to just leave them up year 'round, like in my college dorm room, but I guess that's not really socially acceptable when you're an adult.

In addition to the cleaning and window dressing, I also did some cooking...  a new batch of tomato sauce.  Some of this is going to wind up on a pizza, because I was at Cangiano's over the weekend with my grandmother so I bought some pizza dough.  I have some great pizza pans for this, too. 

This is what happens on winter weekend days without kayaking.  Things actually get done.