34

The cast of 34 spent the past (long-) weekend in Fort Lauderdale, courtesy of Sheryl's folks, who live right on the beach . While falling asleep to the sound of the ocean has long lost its novelty for me, it was a wonderfully relaxing time in general, and I even coaxed Sheryl into taking a dip in the ocean with me ( sans water wings!). Most of the photos were taken on a boat tour of Fort Lauderdale's intercoastal waterway . The tour guide had a major hard-on for Wayne Huizenga , who has several houses (I hesitate to call them homes, as one is dedicated purely to entertaining while another house is being redone) on the shore. As anyone who knows us would expect, the highlights of the trip were culinary. One night we dined with Sheryl's aunt and uncle on (what I'd assume to be authentic) Cuban food; another night was fresh, and theoretically healthy, modern bistro fare. Our last meal in Florida was at the Aruba Beach Café . I can't find a menu online anywhere so yo...

Overheard at the playground by the Brooklyn Height Promenade, where a local kindergarten class was lining up: Kid A: There was this episode of Sine-feeld ... Kid B (Amnesiac): It's Sine-fehld ! I can't believe you made that mistake.

Yesterday, I gave a big F-you to my weak, weak body, which has tried to tell me at least three times now that training for a long, organized race is not in its best interests. My first half-marathon is complete. I can’t really walk (Jeff has to help me down the stairs) and I am SO VERY TIRED (still), but I don’t care. Simply, yay! In 2004, after tearing my calf muscle while sprinting to first base during a kickball game (And the ball was foul! Blast.), I dropped out of NYC marathon training. I was halfway through my program in 2005, when my shins said “nope,” and intense pain prevented me from running for about 3 months. Grr. So I decided to aim smaller – the Brooklyn Half, with my two roommates and friend from DC. I ran a lot. I ran a lot more on weekends. Brooklyn was mine. 13 miles? Piece of cake. Bring it on. And then, after a 10-11-miler 2 weeks ago…OW. Goddamnit!! Some weird muscle in my upper leg was making it hard to, oh, WALK. Ow. Shit. Are you kidding me? But I wouldn’t take ...

We saw Dave Chapelle's Block Party last night. I am convinced that it's about as much fun as you could possibly have at the movies. There was nothing particularly distinctive about the film to suggest that Michele Gondry directed it rather than some random concert documentarian, but the material stood on its own. In the coming attractions department, did you know that Spike Lee has a bank heist movie coming out? That's odd.

Reminiscent of the time someone back in Sophomore year tried to convince me over IM that I was Jake Gyllenhaal (" Do you go to Columbia? Yes. You're Jake Gyllenhaal. No. Yes you are! ") but more productive is this account of social engineering used to rattle the USC point guard. The scary part is that this sort of thing would probably work again and again (hopefully not on the same players); guys are like that. How long until Mark Cuban starts handing out Sidekicks instead of ThunderStix and encourages fans to IM the next opponent's best shooter?

Here's a simple fact about corporate life: a good percentage (off the top of my head I'd say 34%) of emails you read have been composed via a Blackberry from a bathroom stall. I don't do this, but the clickity-tappity-click of the Blackberry keyboard echoes throughout my office's bathrooms. You'll hear people check their voicemail too, but apparently some take it a bit further .

Problem ? Solution !

Not to make excuses for the lack of bloggage, but recently I've been having a hard time correctly entering in the CAPTCHA needed to comment and post on Blogger. I usually get it on my second try, but sometimes it's the third. And I swear that I'm entering them exactly as I see them. I haven't been doing that much coding at work in the past few weeks and I think I'm trying to compensate for that by becoming a computer. (True postscipt: whilst trying to post this for the first time, I got the CAPTCHA wrong. I am pretty sure I entered 'i' instead of 'j', but still...)

One could only imagine how much it cost (payable in trail mix) for Trader Joe's to run this ad .

Parts one and two of Bill Simmon's interview with Malcolm Gladwell are up and, as one would imagine, are terribly interesting. Also falling into the interesting bucket is Gladwell's new blog . I haven't read either of his books yet, mainly because I've read most of what he's written for the New Yorker over the years (it's all available online for those who missed) and made a split second assumption that it's all a rehash. Does anyone who's actually read the book and his past articles know if that's the case?