Move It or Lose It

For some time I’ve been working on loosing weight. This is not a new battle but a life long battle that for most of my life I have lost (not the good kind). The start of the year always brings out the secret dieters and the super dieter out from the wood works. It’s as if everyone around me is trying to come up with the magic formula to lose the bulge "this year." Many start exercising overfilling gyms that had been ghost towns the month prior. They start to buy frozen foods or bringing in their own lunch to work and the office fridge has a bulge of its own. Every year this fad starts hard and slowly it starts to fade away sometimes as early as that first Friday.

But knowing that I’m not alone in this battle does not help at all; knowing that for some people a chubby bear is a sexy thing does give me some solace. So this year I’m going to work on eating healthier and be more active. I don’t want to make myself insane or depressed because I didn’t loose 10 lbs this week; or because I decided to have a second serving. Or if I skip the day at the gym or don’t go for my scheduled walk in the morning because I decided to sleep in. Sometime sleeping in is much more necessary.

Therefore I’ve decided to get my fingers moving and get all my profiles updated. Seems I have quite a few profiles out there but for the last year I’ve neglected them. Some I have not logged in or updated since 2009, just like this blog sat dormant so has many other aspects of my life. This weekend I’ll be updating many things in these profiles. And many of you are coming this way because you saw my profile first. Maybe you can give me some feedback as to what is and isn’t working on the profile.

I’d like you guys to feel free to comment as much as you want on these entries. Be honest and remember that you are allowed to leave Anonymous comments if you don’t want to reveal yourself. But also feel free to use your handle from you profile so I can know who you are too. There is plenty of chance for interaction via this blog and I truly welcome it. This interaction is what will keep me going through out the year. Remember that I still have 358 entries to go and as time passes I expect it to get easier but it will also feel longer without some feed back.

Design In The City: Smaller Is Better.

As an “eco-urbanite,” conscious living (or as it’s come to be known “green living”) has always been a big part of my life. This is a big part of how I look at the re-design of my 735sqft-piece-of-MIAmi and probably major reason why things have taken longer to complete because I want to make the least impact on the environment along the way and make choices that are going to be better for the environment as well (I’ll write more about that later). For some time now I’ve been working on trying to devise a doable plan to remodel my home. Since I bought my condo it’s been a non-stop project marathon for many reasons, lack of money, time, energies, and/or ideas. Mostly because of the abundance of things wrong with the unit which were never apparent. Slowly I’ve gotten some of it updated here and there. But still there are so many little things that continue to come up and it is all beginning to overwhelm me with thoughts of what I really should do is to get it all done at once. At this moment I still feel that the best option is to gut it and go with a bare-minimalist-industrial look city-loft-style. The lack of funding has gotten me brainstorming for creative options and there is a chance some of the latest ideas could work. I’ll write more about these later when things are a little more solidified.

During all of my research for ideas and options of getting things done within budget (but abundance of style), I’ve come across many cool sites and images that have inspired me along this journey. This may become one of the weekly segments I write entries about and posting some of the images I’ve collected along the way. Sort of my visual/virtual “style book” for what I want to do with the space and features I want to incorporate into the design. Of course they are all very URBAN designs with a little eclecticism wrapped into it for good warm taste.

With that said I begin for now by sharing six links (& short descriptions of each) for some of my favorite sites out there for Urban Living Style. Hope you enjoy and they help you get inspired with everything that is Living In The City.

Urban Oasis (http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv-urban-oasis-2010-tour/package/index.html) - This HGTV show focuses on the “Urban Oasis” and starts with the “BigBear” of city living –NYC. The apartment featured is something of an AMAZING inspiration to me. I’ve been dreaming about a place like this most of my adult life. Small yet so well designed that it makes use of every single inch of space. Of course it was designed and decorated by the now world-famous Vern Yip, one of my favorite Interior Designers, for those how were living under the undecorated rock he became famous on Trading Spaces for creating amazing spaces.

Apartment Therapy Media’s Network of Blogs - This one is actually a few things rolled into one. In their own words: "Since (they) started posting in 2004, Apartment Therapy Media’s blog network has become a must-read resource for inspiration, intelligent discussion, and product reviews for people passionate about their homes. (Their) readers are a savvy bunch— young couples looking to wallpaper a nursery over the weekend, homeowners wondering how to strip the paint off their fireplace, bachelors seeking advice on the best copper cookware, and apartment dwellers looking to maximize the storage in their new 500-square foot apartment. Influential designers, editors, architects and store owners read (their) site as well."

Apartment Therapy (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/) – Actually the main section/blog of this network, its focus is information on “home design” and there is plenty of inspiration when going through what seems endless numbers of “house tours” found on their site. There are six major US cities represented at the moment – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, DC and Boston. Albeit you do get images and features from around the globe. “Saving the world, one room at a time” is their motto, visit and let them save your world.

Unplggd (http://www.unplggd.com/) – “Smarter homes, fewer wires” is how this technology section describes itself. Covering all the tech side of modern home living but not letting it ruin the décor they feature “people-friendly, design-forward technology and ways it can be incorporated into homes without spoiling the décor.” And they give you "house tours" as well showing how this is accomplished.

Re-nest (http://www.re-nest.com/) – “Abundant design for green homes,” really does not do justice to this blog. There is plenty of information here to “help readers made earth-friendly decisions as they furnish, accessorize and refresh their homes (because) a green home is a healthy, happy home. By managing our consumption, we can bring more life and vitality into our homes. (They) show readers how to live green in city studios, lakeside cottages and newly built homes, and keep them up to date on green news, sustainable design, great energy-efficient products, and green DIY tips.”

The Kitchn (http://www.thekitchn.com/) – Since my kitchen is the worst of all the spaces in my unit as far as I’m concerned “kitchen tours” has been a great resource to find ideas to fix it a bit. Their posts are “inspiring cooks. nourishing homes. Cooking at home is an essential part of a nurturing and healthy home environment. The Kitchn publishes over 15 posts a day on recipes, product and cookbook reviews, food storage and preparation tips, and unique kitchen tours. (They) also run seasonal cooking contests, such as the Best Lick! Ice Cream Contest and The Best Pie Bakeoff,” which for sure have some recipes to keep a “chubby bear” plump.

Ohdeedoh (http://www.ohdeedoh.com/) – Since I’m not a “Papa Bear” yet I visit this site the least because their focus is on “home. design. children.” But on occasion I will venture into their postings because there are come great images and design. For those who are parents this is perfect because “good design and children's furnishings do not have to be contradictory terms. Ohdeedoh is a site for people who care about good design, but happen to have children. It was created to help parents shape comfortable, safe and beautiful homes for their families. Featuring nursery tours, toy and product reviews, and playful and inspirational color and design tips, Ohdeedoh helps (their) readers create spaces that are kid-friendly and adult-approved.”

Happy New Years…Miami’s Melting Pot Style (Part 3)

I’ve told you about the amount of cultural mixes before midnight (see Part 1). Gave you short taste of how dependent to ATMs city life has become (Part 2), more about this in this entry. As I mentioned yesterday I thought that I didn’t want to continue writing about NYE when there are so many other things that I could write about. But there are a few things I’d like to write about; why the Matinée Party didn’t live up to expectations and what was the response from Chase as to why my card wasn’t working that evening.

So after hitting all the ATMs at two different Chase locations I decided to go to the 24 hour Walgreen’s next door to Chase on Alton Road. I know they have Chase ATMs inside and for sure this one should have cash. Besides worst case I can do cash back from the register and at the very least have a few extra bucks, yet no luck in either case. My card was once again DECINED. But when I called the automated system told me there was plenty of money available in the account according to their phone system and online. (More about their response to the issue below…and what great response it was?)

With no luck getting cash we decided to make the best of it and just head to the party. Hoping they will accept credit cards at the bar which would be great. So we are driving around looking for a street parking spot to avoid giving up our little cash, just in case. After about 10 minutes, we got a spot right on Washington Avenue just south of 5th Street, a few steps away from China Grille, and walked to the Paris Theater. Arriving a little after 1:30am we thought we would still have 3.5 hours of great time. As soon as we walked in the door I didn’t get the feeling of a Matinée event, but surely once I enter the dance area it will change. No such luck. It was quit disappointing to find that everything was so bare. I expected the Paris Theater to look like I walked into Tron Legacy because that was the theme of the promoting flyer and that’s been the case with the parties that I attended in Spain. This was something I could over see being that it was their first event in SoBe and I understand you can’t go all out on the first event because you risk too large a lose. But if you are selling the Matinée experience then that is expected. It’s like if you are buying a Mercedes you expect leather interior to be included because it’s part of what the brand represents.

So what did I find, the place was all over light everywhere, nothing special on stage either just a DJ setup (no décor or anything else). Finally about an hour later there was about 6-8 lame male dancers that came out for about 15 minutes or so. What happened to the great dancers and choreography that Matinée is known for?!? There was no feeling that I was at a Matinée party or event in the least bit, except for the few small posters on a wall or by the bar or on the flyer both which had the logo. I don’t even recall seeing anyone wearing any Matinée gear, except for Hector on stage (because even Javier was in regular cloth). If this would have been my first experience with Matinée Group I would have never gone to any other of their events because it felt like a poorly put together event. Maybe we just got there too late? Maybe the whole Matinée thing happened before we arrived and decided to leave. But in fairness after looking at the photos of the event on Miami Gay News (Thanks Jon for the great job you do… click here if you want to see more… http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51828&id=180221448661430) the photos do look like at some point in the night the lights were much darker and some sort of show was put on (the single guy hanging from the ceiling). I wonder what happened that they ended up leaving those lights on so much brighter.

After being there a little over an hour we decided to just leave since we weren’t having a good time. The sound system was poor (and I don’t blame Matinée for that as that’s more of a venue issue), my nephew didn’t care too much for the music albeit I thought Hector was doing a good job. The fact we had no cash for drinks thanks to Chase was also partly to blame. And to top things off my back was still acting up quite a bit but I was trying to be a trooper. But just couldn’t deal with all the bad stuff and we headed back to the main land. I dropped my nephew off and headed home for the night which did help a bit with the back pain.

The following day I tried to call Chase to find out what the deal was and why I was unable to get my cash; the call center was still closed. On Sunday morning I decided to try speaking with them and got someone on the phone. I asked them to please explain why my card had been declined everywhere. The guy tells me he couldn’t “understand why (the) system was reading the card as not having the funds because the system shows the funds were available the whole time. But (he) could see that I tried in six different locations multiple times at some.” At this point I wanted to know what I could do to prevent something like this from happening again; or what to do if it did happen again. He couldn’t tell me and I asked then to speak to a supervisor that could explain it.

A few minutes later I’m on the phone with the supervisor and he tells me that “what did I not understand? The system just read (my) card wrong.” Apparently he thought this was an acceptable situation. I should not be upset that I was unable to access my money when the funds were available and I needed it. The situation was getting to me and I could hear the word vomit creepy its nasty head up & out my throat but was able to hold it off long enough to ask “so what do you recommend I do to prevent this from happening to me again?” He replies in the most matter of fact condescending tone, “Sir if you are going to be going out for the night then you should go into a branch prior to that and get your cash before going out instead of waiting to use the ATM.”

“WHAT?!?! You are telling me the solution is for me to have cash I need to access to MY MONEY is to preplan for the event that your ATM system will not be working?” I replied. “That I need to go out of my way to make sure that I can get MY MONEY before you close your location because I should not expect that the ATM to be working 24 hours like you advertise?”

“Sir I’ve explained to you how you can avoid this in the future. Is there anything else that I can help you with today?” he replied, with the most diva of tones. “Nope, thanks for making me understand that the solution is for me to close my accounts with you guys and place my money with a bank that actually has working ATMs. You have a great day.” CLICK!

He could not tell me why the issue happened or what I could do about it if I found myself in that situation again. Was I being irrational? Am I expecting too much from Chase? I would have understood if he had told me, “we had a glitch in the system that night and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you.” Then it’s an isolated situation and there is no big issue. It would be great to get some feedback on this.

omg! it’s only day 4… and i have no ideas for today's entry!

I was going to continue writing about the whole NYE but running late from work didn’t give me much time. Barely got to the Publix to get something to eat tonight. What if Publix would have been closed? I just drive down a few blocks and there all four of the top fast food places (BK, MickeyDs, TheBell & Wendy) are available and open until the wee hours of the night (one doesn’t even close). If the mood is more for something a little more refine the next 20 blocks have 12 options for me to choose from. If it’s closer to midnight then the numbers drop down to three. So is this part of the whole city living? When people run late at work out in the suburbs what do they eat? Is this a sign of big city living having enough choices for dinning late in the evening? Actually there is a lot more open that I could do, for example there’s laundry, hit the pharmacy to pick up my refill, and there’s even a place open where I can go and workout.

Is this too short of an entry? Do all my entries need to be long? Are these going to be sad short little blubbers that no one will care to read of follow? Anyone want to give me feedback about the entries this year? Does anyone have any suggestions on topics I should write about?

Happy New Years…Miami’s Melting Pot Style (Part 2)

My 2011 started with family and friends but after midnight the game plan was to hit Spain’s biggest party in the world, Matinée Group came to Miami Beach for the first time ever. What could be a better start to the New Year? SoBe with “The Boys” to get some of that Spanish energy, from our December 2009 trip to Madrid, back into our lives to start the year. We would all go and dance our asses off to the wicked beats of NewYo-rican Hector Fonseca and be surrounded by the magic that is a Matinée party, or so I thought.
For some time now Miami has been getting this great reputation for being a great party town. But I’ve always been completely confused as to why or maybe I’m just missing the spots truly earning this title. Aside from a few major weekends (i.e. Winter Music Conference, White Party, and Winter Party), there are the occasional weekends that some random venue gets a truly great DJ to mix things up. But that happens few and far apart.

I expected the Matinée party to live up to what I experienced in Ibiza (or even in Barcelona) during my summer 2009 in Spain. But how wrong was I to think that this could even be a minor reflection. Besides having to avoid the road blocks into the beach from the first two causeways which lead me to enter the beach from the 79 Street Causeway which took an extra hour. Then I get to the Chase ATM to pull some cash and low and behold the card gets declined. After trying at a 2nd bank location and then the Walgreen on Alton Road next to the 2nd Chase and the same thing. There was cash because I did the transfer myself online hours earlier and confirmed the cash was there on the phone system. So now I’m stuck on the beach with only $25 cash on me. Why did I wait to pull the cash? Why would I wait to pull cash on such a night? Well for the most part every where on SoBe accepts credit cards so why would I have to worry?

At this point my nephew and I decide to just find a street parking spot and save the parking fees. We are stuck with no cash as neither of us has been successful to pull cash. This makes me think of how in the city we do not carry cash anymore. Today at the office when I spoke with people about it most people agreed. The majority do not carry cash when they go out. In the city you do not feel the need to carry cash because it makes most feel unsafe and/or as if it were a burden to some. I thought this was interesting and something worth looking into for a future entry.

Happy New Years…MIAmi’s Melting Pot Style (Part 1)

I started to think about how different the New Year starts in a melting pot city. Albeit MIAmi is not as big a cultural melting pot as I would like, it does bring a lot of different cultures into your life. On Friday while at Publix (the local market chain) picking-up a few things for the night it started to dawn on me and found myself really noticing because of the diverse/eclectic mix of customs/traditions intertwined into my own end of year.

All is going well before midnight; gave myself my “Walter Mercada” cleansing bath and done some of the spiritual cleaning of the house, or more commonly know in Miami as “Un baño y un despojo de casa,”and was ready to head over to my sisters’ place in Little Havana to wait for the stroke of midnight. I arrive with gifts in hand. For my sister a bottle of Agua Florida and a bouquet of yellow & white flowers, she needed to give her house a “despojo” but had not been able to get to the store before it closed. For my brother-in-law a nice big bottle of “Ponche de Creme” (or Trinidad’s version of Egg Nog) which was so good during Noche Buena we had to order more. For my niece a new pair of sunglasses she had been wanting. For the little one the presents that uncle Santa had left under his imaginary non-existing (this year) X-mas tree along with the reinforcing of the myth. And for the rest of the people, mostly family friends, sitting around in the living room a bottle of Moët Imperial to toast the New Year.

Done with handing out the presents, it’s time to eat. I get a serving of some of the best Cheviche as a quick starter and followed by the main course of “Lechon asado con morros y yuca” and of course I top it all of with some “mojo criollo” and some hot sauce which comes from Central American influences I received growing up. As I’m finishing up, niece-in-law begins to prep the glasses with 12 grapes for each person in the house. As the time draws closer my sister starts running around looking for the bottles of “sidra” to pop and begins to call everyone into the living room again to watch on Spanish TV the Ball Drops in Time Square. I grab the bottle of Moët and prepare to pop it as the clock strikes midnight… “¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” That’s when the crazy amounts of firework begin to fly, along side of the stupid bullets idiots have also shot into the air. This is one tradition I find completely stupid since we live in the city and this is not conducive of city living. (Luckily this year there were no deaths by stray bullets but there was news report of a home hit by one in Sunrise. But that will be a subject for another entry.) Once everyone was sitting again my sister walks up to each one with a bowl of water, fragrant with Agua Florida and white flower petals so each person can dip their hands and cleanse themselves off.

No way I’m staying put on the first night of the year, but I’ll tell more in tomorrow’s entry since I need to get this posted for today.

I’M BACK!...and have a lot to say. (aka Entry 1 of 365)

WOW! Three years and this BLOG has just been dead/boring (zzzzz)! In 2010 there wasn’t even a single entry because I’d been over thinking the concept, topics and what this whole thing should be about way too much because it’s how I present myself to the world. In an age where people just put themselves (along with all their business) out there of the whole world to read/see them without ever really thinking about the fact that in the future they might not exactly find it was such a great idea (http://www.freewebs.com/andersoncooper/thomas/idiot.html). But for some reason I’m starting to feel a little more optimistic about my chances of writing here. It’s all going to be just about writing & creativity for me this NEW YEAR 2011.

The topics will just jump around as I’ve made it a goal to make an entry everyday about something related to, well, “living in the city” with a focus on being/coming from the point of view of a Bear/Chub. Topics will just be about random shit that happens, is going on, just pain sucks, is the best thing, and much more “…in the city.” Some days I’ll write a review of a place in the city I’m in, spotlight some site of interest about urban dwelling, praise/worship or rant/rave about something, someone or someplace. Bottom line… ANYTHING is game this year as long as I can get some words out there because I’ve not been journaling as much as I’d like/need and too often have much to get off my chest but without a place to put it all.

The last few weeks all that I’ve been thinking about are creative projects/ideas that need my attention, and I’m sure some days I’ll just feature them here for you guys to enjoy/hate. What I need the most is some feedback as to what is working and what is just plain not working for you guys. There was very little feedback during my previous attempts at writing and the interest just faded away. Now that I’m not afraid about touching upon more topics then maybe I’ll be able to get more written. I’ve even planned for those days I’ll be under the weather or have too much to do. It’s going to be difficult but I’m going to stick to it this time. One entry about “…in the city” everyday for the next 364 days… I’m letting this one count as my first entry.