Litany of Fire, Watery Weekends

Q: Why are your blog post titles so esoteric lately?
A: In simplicity lies beauty. In complexity lies the truth.

So, weekends use to be my sanctuary from the week. Then it got flipped around to where I needed a vacation from my weekends and week days got to be my sanctuary from the weekend. Now, I'm pretty sure there isn't anywhere to hide. Work has suddenly become very engaging, not in a bad way but it definitely takes up a lot more of my time that it had even earlier this year. And I write enough about weekends where you know about that already.

Then there's this video, which pretty well jives what I was saying in earlier posts about water, and is also a good trance track to boot.

I have another phone number for this week but the conversation was really brief and I don't remember what she looks like, so there might not be a trade for this one.

Revelations, part II

Almost like Usher's Confessions, but I didn't get anyone pregnant.

Friday night I was at Cain, which ended up being pretty much exactly what I thought it would be based on the models and bottles video (AJ wasn't there - he was replaced by a drag queen auctioning off people for dates on the central runway and a penthouse pet). The drinks were less than 10 each until 1, as my credit card unforunately found out. A friend at work tipped me off to the fact that there would be a pretty solid bridge and tunnel crowd (I didn't really know what that meant till about a month ago, honestly).

I'd like to sketch out another character archetype, the brunette long island girl who is average to slightly above average looking and who wears lots of makeup. These girls have serious bitch shields and have the attitude that a friend of mine constantly complains about, "For us it's all about how the girl looks, and she's not that good looking. These girls are a dime a dozen but each of them thinks she deserves Brad Pitt." I actually think that this attitude fades over time, since every time I go to a bar / lounge with an older crowd (like G2 for my co-worker's 30th birthday) the girls are a lot more friendly, maybe because they realize their prime time is fading. Reminds me of a slogan a friend who has a twin sister used for their 30th b-day party: "Joey's hitting his prime, Annie's running out of time."

Even with time on my side, I think the best way to go about things is to put yourself out there, meet new people, etc. Let's be honest, it's easy to stay at home and convince yourself that you're hot shit and if you actually felt like going out, you'd be the life of the party. It's a good way to preserve ego. But everyone needs reality checks (and not necessarily negative ones) to help them figure out what they're really made of. I'm not advocating validating your self-worth solely on the opinions / actions of others, but there's a difference between being confident in your own awesomeness and delusional / out of touch. And for anyone looking for long-term relationships, giving yourself perspective by dealing with lots of people is probably the most important thing you can do.

In other news, one of our co-workers is headed out in order to move from doing assistant type work to do hands-on finance at another company. I kind of saw it coming as she's ambitious like that, but it's going to be a lot quieter at the office and at events without our blonde fearless social playmaker. Finding a job in this market is clutch so congrats and godspeed.

I lost my digital camera that I bought around a month ago. I need to start spending around 50 - 60 bucks on these things. Or strap it to my forehead when I go out.

Brilliance of Osiris, Weekend Revelations

They say it's always darkest before the dawn, and I believe the opposite is true as well. It's always brightest before the plunge. I don't necessarily believe this guy, but I don't think we're turning the corner quite yet. The point of me posting this is - please keep your 401ks in cash.

I feel like I'm on an epiphany streak (not related to the above) here over the last couple of days.

1) I don't want roommates, and I don't want a studio. 1 BR all the way. I do want to save money, but some things have grown near sacred for me.

2) I don't have time for a girlfriend. I went from comfort zone to insanely productive to always being out to combining the last two. I need the two extremes, stress then release. I can't get caught in the middle.

3) I really like certain aspects of finance / economics and I could see myself in this field for the rest of my life.

4) If I don't do #3, I'm gonna take up music again. Playing jazz is like being in the water for me.

Drama SWAT Team

Last night at a little past midnight I woke up to the sound of the police pounding on the apartment door of my upstairs neighbor. To fill you in on some details, this guy is a selfish brat with literally, the mental maturity of a 5 year old.

After about 5 minutes of knocking, I hear the door open and a whiny, high-pitched voice ask, "What seems to be the problem officers?"

Apparently, the guy's roommate/boyfriend had gotten locked out (you can hear constant bickering coming from above through the not so-well insulated floorboards) after they had gotten in a fight and had called the police, telling them that the neighbor was drunk and suicidal. The guy, of course denied everything and the argument between him and the police continued for a good half hour with officers running up and down the stairs. Must have been a slow night in the slums / bus station.

Soon, the apartment hunt begins.

Restless, Insomnia Kicks In Again

1) Equity bulls squeezed me for over 2k yesterday. That of course inspired me to "Texas Hedge", otherwise known as doubling down. It's true what my co-worker said, I do feel a need to be in the game at all times. Also, until deflation kicks in, cash is still a crappy investment, despite what everyone will tell you.

2) Found an awesome apartment in the real estate section, a doorman building near Columbus Circle with an extra 130 sq ft. of space and all the amenities this building doesn't have. It's also cheaper than my place currently by about 150 / month (the price had been reduced around 30% over the last month). Unforunately when I called in to ask about it, I found out there were already some solid applications in. I'm hoping the deals get even better soon.

3) Actually, every girl who swims at equinox is training for a triathalon. They also all seem to be lawyers?

Hair of the dog

So I'm better again. I got lots of rest and drank plenty of water and took some "C" category vitamins.

Actually not. I'm better but I didn't really do any of the above, except for the drinking water part. Apparently, the way to cure yourself of a cold (and I share this with you enthusiastically) is to 1) keep working out twice a day no matter how brutal it feels 2) keep going out until 4 am and wake up no later than 8 am friday and saturday and in conjunction, 3) try and get to double digit drinks each night and eat greasy mediterranean food right before you go to sleep (you can think of this as your breakfast).

Seriously. It works. Either than or I got bitten by a radioactive Wolverine while in battle last week and accidentally obtained the healing factor.

Interesting story from the weekend: I think I got roofied last night. I was down the street eating a dinner at a bar, and asked for a vodka tonic with Stoli. Bartender says, hey we're out of Stoli what else do you want. Absolut is fine. Ok, off we go. Drink tastes funny but I figure it's just the brand difference. Go home (this is after one drink) with the intention of working on my taxes some before I head out. Huge memory gap, I wake up face down on the couch dehydrated and its 3 hours later. I go out anyway, drink 5 - 6 more drinks, feel totally fine.

I've had good luck music wise with with the following media player strategy: type in a random, general word and play all the songs that have that word in the title. "Summer, cool, love, water." All the things that make life complete.

Someone got me sick

I was thinking about list format for this post but decided to try and be a little less vague.

Actually, the #1 thing that annoys me about getting sick is messing up my workout schedule. I'd say it's a point of pride for me to be there every 12 hours. Things happen though when you're on an open desk and people feel compelled to come in unless they're missing limbs. I left at 5:45 PM and still got some glares from co-workers.

The other thing kind of bothering me lately (OK really bothering me) is this whole AIG / TARP bonus fiasco. In terms of basic justice I don't think there's any question that traders or firms who lose money and file chapter 11 shouldn't get /give out big bonuses. It's not quite that simple though.

You set a terrible precedent when you use the national legislative system to take away people's compensation after it has been received in accordance with legal and contractual guarantees (and with the original bailout plans). I would much rather see someone walk away with money they don't deserve then fall down that slippery slope head first. Firms have to pay their employees competitively or those employees pick up and leave. Spending large amounts of valuable congressional time and effort to hunt down a few people and take their legally obtained money, however seemingly undeserved, reeks of the most base form of populism (actually, more like a witch hunt) and belies a startling lack of vision. You can't even argue that it's for the greater good because the amount of money that might be recovered even if everything were given back isn't even a drop in the bucket when you consider our economic woes. There's guys on the CNN.com message boards calling on companies to willfully ignore contracts with their employees and "let them sue if they want to." Others are a less subtle, calling for revolution right now if these bonuses are paid. Speaking of revolution, there's definitely a tinge of class warfare to this whole dilemma, with bill proposals calling for 100% tax on bonuses for anyone at a firm that received TARP money and who made over 250k. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

I don't believe for a minute that the tax money I obligingly push towards the government each year won't be at least partially wasted, and my guess is that anyone who really thought this in the first place is either lying are willfully ignorant. I receive various forms of help from the government, as do most people and companies in this country. That help is funded by my fellow taxpayers. If I squander money should the government be able to come in and retroactively garnish my paycheck? Sounds scary to me.

Ebb and flow

It's back to the work week. Time for a coherent, non-schizophrenic post.

This weekend I had a really interesting conversation about one of my favorite things in the whole world: water. Food is also up there, but I spend plenty of posts ranting about restaurants, so here it is, the other pillar of my life.

I'm not talking about drinking water, I'm talking about being in the water. Any form of immersion, floating, swimming, diving. Ocean, pool, water park, whatever. During high school I used to blog about the hot tub on my deck, which I spent thousands of dollars on to get fixed and renovated. It wasn't, as people guessed, so I could host pool parties or have a place to bring girls (although both of those things did actually happen). It was more because I could spend hours lying in there, listening to the sound of bubbling water, jet stream currents erasing all traces of conscious thought.

Another place I spent a lot of time as a kid was in the bathtub, where I would let the water from the showerhead wash over me. I had a hard time relaxing and the time was meditative, my mind was always on the move, and just for a few minutes, I lost touch with reality and was able to zone out.

Then there's the vivid flash memories I have of specific moments, like the time I was lying under the vast nighttime sky with twinkling stars, floating in a pool somewhere in Florida right along the ocean, a dolphin statue sending a curving jet of water overhead, the sound of conversation from the few other people there a dim hum.

Or the time I was in Atlantic City at the Tropicana, in an upgraded suite room that had its own Jacuzzi tub, with multiple jets spraying water from all directions, and water from multiple shower heads raining in from above.

Or the time I was on the beach nearby, a thunderstorm approaching, the surf growing unruly and the tide crashing into the sandy shore as the sky darkened. I wanted to run out into the foamy currents and swim butterfly in between the waves. There was a feeling visceral and empowering, a feeling of being in motion with nature and part of something larger than life itself.

Even in the last example, the common thread for all these memories was a sense of inner peace, harmony, and emptiness, a feeling that's all but impossible to find in New York.

Get your priorities straight

1) Casellula wine bar > Flor del Sol tapas place in Tribecca. Both in quality and unforunately, in price. For a place featuring the "pig's ass sandwich" you'd think dishes would be cheaper, but not quite how it works.

2) Lenny's breakfast platter > Bread Factory breakfast platter. Price and quality of home fries.

3) Running > swimming. For calories burned per hour.

4) Swimming > running. For how long I'm willing to do each exercise.

5) Burritos > tacos. At Burrito Box. Yeah I'm still on that tear.

6) Fun > judgement. No regrets about last night, no strong desire to repeat. It's actually only half personal, half #7.

7) Having bed to yourself > Sharing bed with someone else. For queen sizes and below.

More scatter brained thoughts

I'm scatter-brained because I never sleep on weekends anymore.

Friday rush:

1) Marginalized revenge: After the last couple of days, I understand why it's so easy to go jihad. When you're pushed to the fringe, a cause is the closest thing to a soulmate you'll find. It's better than falling off the edge (or maybe it is falling off the edge) and you get to go fanatic, which is probably just as intense as sex.

2) Big sis / lil sis: The stereotype here is that the younger one is better looking and the older one is responsible and dateable. That being said, the easiest way to piss off the big sis is to hit on the little sister. And it's weird how diferent sisters tend to look from each other?

3) Hookah bars and lounges: Swimmer's lungs are handy for showing off.

4) 25 dollar bar tab minimums everywhere for credit cards. I thought it was just Soho where everyone is young and beautiful, but it turns out to be the case in the East Village too. I will go out on a limb and say that not everyone in the East Village is particularly attractive. But maybe if you're at a bar and you're the tallest one, it's an ego boost.

5) Plan is to stay in the neighborhood. Plans suck, but I do want to do some wine bar hopping. Not quite the same as doing it in the winding alleys of Rome or Florence but at least I know what the menu says.

Market Quick Takes

0.5) Burrito Box, 57th and 9th avenue. Because if you're not eating your burrito out of a box, you're a fucking chump. (Seriously, what else what you be eating it out of? You're on notice Cancun and Arriba Arriba). Burritoville on 9th is donzo and this is better anyway.

1) I always fall asleep with the lights on (not on purpose, just happens). Anybody else do this? If so I encourage you to get in touch with me, there's a good chance of a soul mate bond.

2) Ran into hardcore triathlete girl again. She looks really good with her clothes on as well, and I definitely spent a good amount of time on Wednesday morning considering that fact. Till next Wednesday.

3) I could post some negative stuff about natural gas short squeezes and having a grand and a half of pure profit that I was going to use to help finance the Bahamas erased in one day, but then I realized if you want to read some serious sob stories you should just go to fmylife.com for some hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking reads.

3.5) I wasn't kidding about the free steak dinner at Luger's, but it might have to wait.

4) I've had inquiries about new binary trades. The rule is, the girl has to be a totally random girl that I'll likely never see again (disqualifies girl from #2) that I meet in a random place like a bar or such . Which is where I'm headed right now.

Back to School Weekend

The last time I was in Hoboken, I actually got the exact same impression of it that I did when I was there yesterday. It's a college town, except there's no college. The school color was green and the song was anything you could get people to sing with you. St. Patty's day on Saturday is Jersey's Mardi Gras.

You had a pretty good idea of what was going to be going on when you got to the PATH station and waited in long, undulating, lines of green to board the trains, which were basically party buses, crowded and rowdy and drunk and singing and broken glass.

Moving from house party to party with a rapidly expanding / shrinking group is pretty much exactly the same thing as being in a band of roving freshmen, crashing in on parties, drinking all the alcohol and eating all the food, and moving on. It's like being in a locust swarm where all the locusts have cell phones to tell them where the next patch of delicious vegetables is.

The thing that really stuck out to me is the people who really seem like they didn't want to be there. I mean seriously if you that's not your type of thing, it was pretty easy to avoid, just stay out of that one square mile of Jersey (I still have a hard time believing that) for one afternoon. There was this one short brunette girl on the PATH train who was listening to her Ipod, flipping back and forth between different songs for the entire ride, oblivious to the soccer chants and shots being taken around her. Despite my best efforts to give her room, she kept nestling into me as if she expected me to project her from the Bacchanalia around her. When I asked her about being in her own little world, she was like "I'm ready to party, but just not now, not on this train." To be honest, a lot of times I actually enjoy partying with people I don't know at all even more.

Want a job in finance?

The answer to the above question may be "no" if you look at CNN.com at all.

But just in case:

WAS LOOKING AT A SUMMER ANALYST RESUME PACKET AND PICKED OUT THE TOP 10 INTERESTS ON PEOPLES RESUMES.........................
1. Mario Party 8 (Wii video game)
2. Dinosaurs
3. Bodybuilding
4. Taking calculated risks
5. Dragonboat Racing
6. Gardening Indian Vegetables
7. Family Guy & The Office
8. Cooking (omelettes)
9. Blogging
10. Rubik's Cube (2min)

If you've read some of my earlier posts you know how I feel about calculated risks. You can probably guess how i feel about gardening indian vegetables. Drgaonboat racing and dinosaurs are unequivocally awesome.

Binary was extended to tonight midnight at the request of one of the longs. Don't worry I already spent your money.

Vignettes from the last 72 hours

1) At the pool for a pre-work swim, I started talking to my lane mate, a skinny girl with an athletic build wearing a two-piece. Let me explain first; no girls that swim competitively really ever wear two-pieces, even ones made for lap swimming. This girl turned out to be very competitive, a tri-athlete who was just finishing her 2000 morning workout. What I didn't realize was that I had already met her and talked to her; midway through her conversation she spurts out "but we've already had this conversation! Don't you remember?"

"Sorry," I said. "My memory is fuzzy before 9 A.M. - that's the time when I start getting in trouble for not remembering things." To be honest I didn't remember her at all. "I have the memory of an elephant," she said. "But I don't know anything else but what we talked about."

2) Walking out of the Time Warner Center to work, I almost had by head caved in my a mini avalanche. A 15 lb block of ice fell from the top of the building onto the sidewalk, scattering shards 20 feet in every direction, sounding like a car backfiring. I was probably about 10 feet away. And I thought that place was all classy and safe and upscale. Reminds me of that time we convinced the girl from Florida visiting the dorms in Philadelphia that she needed to buy an icicle helmet.

3) After the swim, I was late to work. When I got there, my co-workers were standing around one of the analysts on our desk, shaking his hand. I knew immediately what was going on. This analyst was the first person I interviewed with during the hiring process for my current job. At another office it could have been that he was getting engaged, having a kid, or a number of things. At our office people come up to you one at a time and shake your hand when one of those things happens. He was leaving, and in the industry we worked in, switching jobs is a disappearing act. No one in the companyknows about it till you send out the terse, 3 sentence email to the everyone listserve. And then you're gone by the end of the same day. Just like that, people move in and out of your life.

4) Laughing uncontrollably while playing gamecube, I realized that it doesn't take much to entertain me. But it doesn't mean I don't have expensive taste (I like to think of it as supporting the economy). My next trip will be a real vacation - to the Atlantis on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas. It's tempting to take an "appetizer" trip to Vegas meanwhile, but I'm working hard on convincing someone to come with me to plow down Mayan temple slides and check out the aquarium, before retreating to the casino and overpriced hotel room.

5) Lazzara's Pizza, now my favorite pizza joint in the city. Especially after i got sick from Angelo's a couple of times.

Weekly update

Last last week: Not really that into her.

Last week:
30 - 40 mkt
No return call from the Mad River girl. Binary saturday trade settles at 0.

The girl: average height brunette wearing a striped white and blue blouse with pink glasses. definitely had the secretary look going on, very attractive. from connecticut, paralegal, recovering vegetarian, seemed shy, drinking a pinkish drink that looked like the cartoon version of love potion

Contact: Saw her walking by, made a comment about her shirt, and she's all "It's from H&M!"
Afterwards, I go over and tell her that my friends bet me I couldn't get her number (not true).

Topics of conversation: Buenos Aires, travelling, who did I know in the bar, her wanting to go to law school, sushi, was I single?, how her parents gave her sister a nicer trip than she got, italy, cruises, studying French instead of Spanish in high school, trickiness of unhooking a bra

Body language: weird cues. Took of her glasses when i first approached, then i told her she should keep them on, she puts them back on, also drawing attention to the stains on her blouse near her cleavage. Didn't really respond too well to lean-ins, didn't really turn to face me.

Negatives: Saying she had to leave the bar cause she had to work the next day (Saturday) on a project, constantly asking if i knew anyone around

Positives: When I first came over, her friend was leaving and asked if she wanted to go with her, but she stayed to talk. She asked me to call her right away after she gave me her number so she could have mine as well. When I asked, are you usually pretty busy Saturdays, she's "No just this once."

This week:
The girl: petite blonde from Jersey, went to Rutgers, worked in magazine publishing but recently got laid off, goes to the gym every day, harcore runner, wants to start lifting, politically very liberal, likes chardonnay, allergic to red wine. lives in the neighborhood.

Contact: at gossip bar (hell's kitchen). actually, she initiated with "excuse me, do you have a light?" which is weird because we were sitting at the bar and you definitely can't smoke inside (NYC rules). also it was freezing cold outside. I didn't notice her at all when i walked in, everyone in the bar was old, and she was hunched over so i figured she was old too

Topics of conversation: fitness, especially running and swimming and the "exercise high" feeling you get, her desire to start lifting, wine/favorite types of alcohol, job situation for both of us, her favorite chinese actors and movies, chinese language and why i can't speak it, my grandad being in the olympics, politics (i honestly tried to steer away from this one but she's passionately liberal, i.e. I'd be in Canada if McCain were president), travelling, bbq

Body language: neutral to slightly positive, couple of lean-ins, she turns to face me from the bar, some hair stroking, all very subdued, definitely no dead-giveaways

What she knows about me: i like red wine, i workout twice a day, i'm from Memphis, i buy my groceries on the cheap, i work long hours, i like bbq, i am gainfully employed in a profession somehow related to Wall Street, i went to penn, i live in the neighborhood

Negatives: she was fishing for compliments at the beginning of our conversation, trying to get me to say she was pretty (and in fact she was attractive), so it's definitely possible she needed an ego boost. also she's unemployed, so it's possible she's looking for money /help finding a job too (but really, finance isn't really that profitable anymore. seriously.) that probably would be an in for a date, but it'd be a dealbreaker for anything else. also, talking about politics. really? Can't tell if she's physically attracted or not.

Positives: She ordered another glass of wine to stay and talk. She was basically trying to convince me that she was super into asian culture. She turned and gave a bashful smile as she left. Good eye contact. Conversation never turned awkward or lulled. She definitely wanted to give me her number. Also brought up opportunities, i.e. "I need someone to workout with."

I'm 30 - 35 for meeting up with her again. Starts tuesday when i contact her. Expires thursday midnight.