And the verdict is....

...we're fine. No damage, no downed trees or broken windows. There wasn't even any thunder or lightening! (Is there usually thunder and lightening with hurricanes?) I woke up this morning at 10 to a bright, albiet cloudy sky, no rain, steady breeze. Brady and I went out to investigate and I was a little surprised by how normal everything was, just a few extra leaves on the ground and some backed up storm drains (which happens every time we get a heavy rain.) The only thing that made it feel any different than normal was that its COMPLETELY dead outside. The bodega is closed, not a single other person was outside. It was really nice actually. It feels really cool and breezy right now, made me think of October weather (which is my favorite, so I was digging it.) No power outages the whole night (thanks to the underground power lines in NY!).


Here's some flooding in Queens on the LIE (photo credit to Milo P)

They're actually saying that NJ ended up doing worse than us, they're dealing with some heavy flooding and power loss. Here are some pics that some of my facebook friends posted (photo credit to Emma C, Sara S, Adrienne R, Danielle A and someone posting for the Vernon PD-in that order):





So what to do with a whole day ahead of me and city that's effectively closed... post hurricane BBQ perhaps?

Okay, now she's here for real.

I had to shut the windows because the winds starting to whip around out there. I just heard something get dragged across the back patio but I couldn't tell what it was (hopefully just a chair and not my grill!) The rain is coming down much heavier now, the patio lights are rocking back and forth. The wind is the biggest change, I can hear it howling which concerns me since its only about 25mph right now. It's supposed to get up to 75+. I doubt I'll be sleeping much until morning...
My video updates are done after this one. Its getting too wet to open the back door.

Brady's been successfully walked for the final time tonight (he's so damn dainty. He refused to step anywhere thats muddy so we had to find a lamp post for him to use). Now I'm in for the night, going to drink beer and enjoy the electricity while I still have it! Hope everyone is faring well!

This is more to keep myself occupied at this point...

Irene update! It's still raining. It's kind of heavy but nothing noteworthy. It's creeping up the coast towards us though, should hit in a few short hours...
Here's what it's looking like as of 11p:

She's here.....

7pm. Heavy rain is starting now. Still no thunder or lightening yet. Its actually really pleasant right now, I'm sad I'll have to close the windows soon.

Southern Irene photos/NY prepares

Here are some photos from MSNBC.com. The first few are from areas currently being hit, North Carolina and Virginia. Imagine being the folks in those houses that are now in the ocean. That's why you evacuate when they tell you to :/






Here are some pics of folks in NY getting ready. Naturally all of the stores have sold out of everything useful at this point. They've evacuated a few neighborhoods to emergency shelters. Due to the ASPCA pointing out that a lot of animals are going tobe stranded for days without food/water, the city has agreed to open the shelters to pets too. Here's a family bringing their birds along to safety.




Things here are super quiet right now. The sky's gray but not oppressively so. Its a little breezy and drizzly, nothing scary yet. I just made a batch of brownies and finished Project Runway. So far everything is going spectacularly :)

Irene approaches

Well this is a super exciting weekend, but not necessarily in a good way. NY is slated to get hit by its first hurricane in a long time and it sounds like it's going to be a doozy. They've closed down the entire MTA system which they've NEVER done in preparation of a storm before. There's a huge likelihood of flooding, especially since this is the wettest August we've had in years, so all low lying areas of the city had to be evacuated. 600,000 people from Coney Island, the Rockaways, LES, East Village and Battery Park all had to go to shelters or move to higher ground. Luckily my apartment is dead in the center of Brooklyn so I should be far enough away from the oceans to keep my stuff safe (damn, why did I keep procrastinating on that renter's insurance?!). My biggest concern is for Xavier's stuff in the basement. Last year we had some flooding issues down there that were never really fixed, they kind of just stopped on their own. Twice during heavy rains we had about an inch of water on the floor. Xavier is away in Seattle right now so I went down there and took all of his stuff off of the floor. I'm going to go down there periodically to check on the situation, I just REALLY hope tomorrow isn't spent carrying buckets of water up the stairs :/
I was a good boy and set out the flashlights and candles, plus I filled pots of water in case the power goes out. Someone told me a cool trick to fill Ziplock bags full of water and freeze them, that way if the power goes out it'll help your food last longer, plus you have extra drinking water! I'm just hoping the electricity stays on. I would be quite happy to spend the rest of today and tomorrow playing World of Warcraft...
Here are some pre-storm photos! My car is parked a few blocks away next to a completely treeless chain link fence, so hopefully it'll still have it's windows intact come Monday. The storm is supposed to hit in a few hours, last throughout tonight and tomorrow and finally wrap up sometime tomorrow night. They're saying possible 100mph winds and up to 15 inches of rain. I'm already worried about how I'm supposed to walk Brady tomorrow. Maybe I can spend tonight training him how to pee in the shower, otherwise I'll be doing my best Mary Poppins impression tomorrow.

Garden fun at mom's

So with my unemployment comes lots of free time to see my family (as my mom keeps gently reminding me). I went to hang out with her and Jeff for a few days which was lovely. I really love going up there, especially when I bring Brady. He loves being off leash and hanging out in the woods, its really cute to see how excited he gets. While I was chilling up there I got some weeding done to help out. Here are the pups chilling with me and Brady enjoying his time up there.

SEA MONKEYS!!! Wait a minute...

Yeah, this story is a little gross, just a heads up. So I'm sitting at my computer (as usual), looking out my bedroom window admiring the gorgeous day when I see movement from the vase on my windowsill. I look down in the water and there are all these little sea-monkey-esque things swimming around. My inner six year old was extremely excited, but after quickly realizing that a) amoebas don't get that big and b) sea monkeys wouldn't spontaneously generate in my bamboo water, I started to get a little concerned. And then it hit me. They were mosquito larvae! In my friggen bedroom! Some asshole mosquito not ONLY bit me while I slept, but also decided to lay her evil blood-sucking children here so that they could feast on me too! Check out these nasty things:



So despite the neglected look of my bamboo plants, I actually do want to keep them alive. I would've emptied the whole thing out and cleaned it but I was running late for a training. I needed a quick fix, and thanks to my best friend the internet, I found out that a quick fix for mosquitos is vegetable oil! It forms a layer on top of the water which makes it impossible for the larvae to breath; they suffocate within minutes (yes, I know. I just started eating meat and now I'm actively murdering creatures). Luckily I didn't have to watch them meet their doom, though I did see them freaking out.



When I came home from training, boom, all dead. Total success.

The end of an era

Ten years ago, during a time where I was very focused on my spirituality, I decided to become a vegetarian. Everyone thought I was crazy (my mom, especially) but I stuck with it. I was really committed to the animal rights aspect of it, and since my general code of conduct is "harm none", I realized that should carry over into my diet as well. There was no good reason to eat meat if I could get all my nutritional needs met through plant sources. I did have my share of struggles through the years, not necessarily due to food cravings (though my mom's been close to breaking my resolve on several occasions), but because of being a fat guy who was veg. There were times when I was embarrassed to tell people that I was vegetarian, simply because I could see the gears turning as they processed that. The follow up statement was frequently "You don't look like a vegetarian." Then they'd proceed to ask me how long I'd been veg, as if my heaviness was just due to the fact that I hadn't been following it long enough yet. People tend to pictures vegetarians as tall and lean, and I certainly don't fit that stereotype. It would bring up some body shame issues that were at times hard to deal with, particularly since I dont frequently have issues with being a big dude.
It took me a long time to realize that having a meatless diet and eating healthy were very different concepts. I think I ate mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese for a full week before I realized I needed to expand my options a bit (or eventually die of scurvy). My diet's been a lot better the last year or two. I still eat a ridiculous amount of pasta and bread, but every meal I cook now involves a vegetable of some kind (usually two or three). I have to give credit to my friend Tania for this, she got me used to eating well and when she moved out all I had to do was keep the ball rolling.
Which brings us to today. My biggest issue with eating meat was the fact that the animals were treated so shitty leading up to their slaughter. I won't get preachy here, but it's beyond tragic what these creatures go through. Most countries don't have the same factory farm productions in place that we do in the US. I always said that if I had the opportunity to eat meat abroad, I'd go for it. Let's be real here, food is a huge part of getting to know a culture, and I'll be damned if I'm going to rob myself from that kind of experience. Being a vegetarian is also something that reeks of privilege; families that can't afford food aren't about to turn their nose up at meat. Walking into this new placement and asking them to exclude meat from my dishes is not only impractical, it's offensive. I knew I'd have to reintroduce meat into my diet prior to my trip, and I wanted to do it as soon as possible to give my body time to adjust. Now let me tell you something, I was giving my body time to adjust mostly to appease other people, my body's tough, I'm not a vegan so it's been exposed to certain animal products fairly often throughout the years. I really didn't expect any issues with eating meat again, but I wanted to do it now to avoid vomiting all over the sweet children.
I went to a new southern restaurant named SoCo with my AirBnB roommate Kensey. I'd gone up there two weeks ago with my friend Alana and it was really good food, plus I read online that they served creme brulee sometimes for dessert, and nothing makes my tummy happier than creme brulee. I had to put lots of thought into what my first dish would be and I ended up going for the Brooklyn staple of fried chicken and waffles. I was in the middle of a pretty serious conversation with Kensey when the food came out so I didn't draw out the first bite and make a big deal of it, but I was still super trepidacious. The skin (eww I dont want to call it that!), ok, the breading was delicious, perfectly crunchy and oily. The chicken itself was incredibly juicy and tender. And it didn't make me vomit at all ;) It was weird, it came back to me like an old memory, I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh yeah, I remember how you taste..." I actually found myself disappointed when I was done with it, I wanted more (and if I wasn't with someone I may have actually gone to KFC on the way home to take a piece for the road). So yes, i survived my first introduction of meat. Here are some before and after pics. The waffle is a weird color because it was red velvet cake flavored (um, delicious).


I then got home and proceeded to get extremely nauseous. I spent two hours sitting in my room feeling like I was going to throw up, all the while I was in absolute disbelief that my body was truly going to reject this meat. I watched a few movies and chilled out and it eventually passed. I'm not feeling great but I dont think I'm going to hurl anytime soon. By the way, Tangled is the best Disney movie I've seen in a long time, the music was decent and it was actually pretty funny (then again, I was watching it at 4am so my judgement may be a little skewed).

Making progress :)

So just a little update. As I mentioned before, I contacted the Volunteer Coordinator from Guatemala earlier this week and asked her some questions regarding the program. She emailed me back with the following information:
There are a total of four nurses working in the clinic right now, I'd be the fifth. Three of the nurses work a schedule of 24 hours on, 48 hours off (the nurses sleep in the clinic when they're on shift, they dont have to stay awake for 24 hours). The other nurse works regular business hours, she's in charge of scheduling the clinic visits and accompanying the kids to external appointments (the very thing I was trying to avoid in Honduras!) So that leaves my position. I'd basically be doing preventative education and shadowing the doctor through the internal and external clinics, two things that I've done in the past and feel relatively confident in. I'm really psyched at this news, it means I'll be exposed to everything I had hoped but I'll have the guidance of a fulltime MD at my disposal, really an ideal situation. Of course the possible downside to that scenario is if the doctor is a jerk and then I'm stuck with him for the next 13 months. I've been really lucky in the past, I worked semi-closely to an MD when I was at WGA and she was very nice. When I was at NAC I worked hand-in-hand with the MD there and he was amazing, we became good friends and I walked away with a ton of experience. I'm hoping that this doctor will turn out to be a great person too. They can't be that bad if they're volunteering a year of their time, right??
The other good news I got was that each volunteer gets a locker in their bedrooms to store valuables so i can keep my meds with me. This has been a major concern of mine since i dont want to have to keep my injections in the clinic and then deal with curious co-workers. I didn't want to sneak them into my room if it meant kids might get to them, but now I've gotten their blessing to keep them locked up in my room. Very good news indeed :)
She also told me that the entire campus is set up with wifi (woohoo!!) so most volunteers bring laptops and use them in their rooms to contact home. At first i was slightly bummed because I only have a desktop computer (and there's no way I'm lugging THAT to Guatemala) but then I remembered that I had an old laptop that I hadn't used in a few years. There's something wrong with the battery, it doesn't hold a charge at all so the comp only works if its plugged in. I'm going to pull it out and see how it's doing, maybe i can get someone to clean it up a bit so it'll work enough for me to run skype on it. It'd be great to be able to contact my family (and update my blog!) from the comfort of my own bed. I'll add that to my list of things to do.
So after I got that information I went ahead and accepted the position :) Goal 1 from last week completed! The next step is for them to send out a welcome packet and some additional information (hopefully a packing list as well!). I should get that in a week or two, so I'll let you know about the goodies they send me then. I've been doing good with my other goals too. I havent set up a budget yet, though i can now that i know for certain where I'll be going. I've been doing good with my list making, and I'm hosting a going away BBQ/silent auction for all my crap on Sept 17th. (I'll probably try to sell a lot of stuff before then, the thought of leaving it to two weeks before i move makes me really anxious). I've been doing good with my cross-stitch project :) Check out my progress, hopefully I'll actually finish it and get it framed before i have to pack it away into a box :/

Family Fun Time

Tonight I completed my yearly tradition of heading back to Jersey for the Sussex County Farm and Horse Show. I had a great time, as always, even more so this year because I went with mom, Flo and Jamie (we also bumped into Kayla there but technically she didn't go with us). The fair served as a lovely reminder as to why I ran away from Sussex County in the first place; throughout the night I was approached by the NRA, the Tea Party AND the Republican Party. Barking up the wrong tree, buddies.
As usual, my favorite part was seeing the animals. Check out all these awesome guys, I totally want to get chickens now (an old desire that is now resurfacing...)



I love these fuzzy looking ones.



There were so many chicks this year!! I dont think I saw any last year so i was really excited. Here's a mom with her three little ones.



While we're talking about cute babies, here's an adorable little pygmy goat.



My favorite animal of the night was this insanely adorable bunny. I miss having something furry to pet, Brady just doesn't cut it. He's cute to look at but doesn't like to cuddle. I'm sure this bunny would LOVE to cuddle (I could easily overpower it if not):



This was the first time I got to see the fireworks there. At this point in the night we were already heading out of the fairgrounds so we only caught them in passing, but still very pretty:



Naturally I also ate funnel cake and fried oreos but alas, they were eaten before I had time to pull out my camera. So delicious!! After the fair I stayed at mom's for two days chilling with her, Flo and the kids (J is away for business). It was great to hang with everyone, especially mom and Jamie, neither of whom I get a lot of alone time with. I also got to do dinner with my friend Tracey who I havent seen in months (years??). It was great :) I definitely look forward to reconnecting with her when I get back to NJ in a few months. For now its back to NY and back to my planning! (and occasional video game playing ;)

Perfectly lazy day

Today is exactly the type of day I was trying to avoid! I slept until 2p, then watched Pricilla Queen of the Desert in my boxers while eating ice cream. It was absolutely delightful ;) I just know that it'd be far too easy to make that my routine and I dont want to do that. I have so much that needs to get done!! So in order to keep myself on track I'm setting goals.

Goal 1) Choose my volunteer country by Monday (ahhh!)
Goal 2) Set up a budget outlying all the costs needed for said country by Wednesday
Goal 3) Make a list of all the home items I'll be selling and take pics of them by next Friday
Goal 4) Finish my bear cross stitch that I've been working on for months by next Sunday

I did use some of my afternoon to do research, so I dont feel like my day was a total waste. Here's what I found out:
Honduras is a really big program. They have over 600 children, two clinics (one for the kids, one for the surrounding community), a surgical center and over 400 staff members (25 of whom are international volunteers). Some really cool points about Honduras:
-The external clinic would expose me to things that I've never seen before. Car accidents, delivering babies, general emergency situations would all fall into my lap.
-I can assist in surgeries! How awesome!!
-They have an enormous parcel of land (2200 acres or something crazy like that). It butts up against a cloud forest!! And its in the jungle! There's so much hiking to be done there, it looks so amazingly beautiful
-On top of my clinic responsibilities I would be assigned a group of children to be in charge of come dinner time/play time. The volunteer coordinator told me I would likely be placed with the babies and toddlers since they wouldn't question why I wasn't as dinner if I was called away to an emergency. I LOVE BABIES!!! The idea of playing with them every night before I go to bed is amazing!
-Honduras has two really great programs. One program allows for abandoned senior citizens to come live at the orphanage and be "grandparents" to the children. That means that i would be giving medical oversite to the seniors as well which I feel totally comfortable doing seeing as how that's been my job for the last two years. And old people and kids are my favorite demographic groups, how great to have them both there!
-The other amazing program that they started there is a hospice home for parents in the last stages of AIDS. Basically the parents come to the orphanage with their kids, the kids get integrated into the community there but still see their parents daily. The parents receive medical care from us and the reassurance that their kids will remain at the orphanage after they pass away. Its really a touching program.

Here are the down sides to Honduras:
-Dude, 600 kids is a lot.
-I don't know nothing about birthing no babies! Dear lord, what if I'm the only nurse on?! It's not like the USA where I can just Web MD it real quick!
-The kids with developmental disabilities (my big passion!) aren't housed here, they're housed in the capital so I wont have any interaction with them. They have their own group of care givers/medical staff
-Its a small country, only 7 million people. (For reference, NYC has 8.5 million people in it). I feel like the larger the country, the better my chances are for some diversity
-A large part of my job would be going to the capital Tegucigalpa to bring kids to the hospitals there. I've heard from a few people now that its HORRIBLE there. A kid who lived in Burma and Bangladesh for two years each (and loved them) said that its really depressing and the level of poverty is overwhelming. I dont know if I'm quite ready to deal with that yet.

Here are the pros of Guatemala:
-I know two people who lived/volunteered in Guatemala, both loved it
-Guatemala has a super rich culture, its still very tied to its Mayan roots and has benefited more from the tourist industry, helping to keep the country from some of the immense poverty issues in the region. Not to say that its not a poor country, its just not QUITE as poor as the others
-The home has 300 kids in it (so I might actually know their names!) including a group home specifically for DD kids that i would assist with (yay!)
-This is stalkerish, but in my research I saw that they just had a new volunteer start in the clinic as a CNA, and he's totally gay!! (well, from what I can tell. But I'm usually pretty good at these things. Safety in numbers!
-Guatemala seems sliiiightly more progressive than Honduras (Guatemala has its own Pride parade!)

Down sides:
-There's a chance that I might be the only nurse there, which means if shit goes down, its all me. Awesome and horrifying at the same time.
- It doesnt have the amazing hiking that Honduras does, but hey, I'm not really going there for the hiking anyway, right? Oh! And Guatemala has volcanos!!!! That's obviously supposed to go on the pros list, but I'll keep it here since it's kind of relevant to the hiking comment ;)

I feel like I'm leaning towards Guatemala at this point. I sent an email to the volunteer coordinator for the country asking her some specifics on the number of staff in the clinic and on my ability to bring meds into the country (I kept this kind of vague but I'm a bit nervous about getting my needles and hormones through customs without major incident.) We'll see what she has to say.
On an unrelated note, Xavier got attacked by a Cicada last night which promptly followed him into the house and continued to terrorize him. I brought it outside (which was actually scary, those monsters are HUGE). Its now singing a nice little song outside my window which is bringing back memories of sleeping in the Vernon house as a kid with all my windows open. It's a huge part of summer for me, listening to the cicadas and the tree frogs, and when I think about wanting to live back out in the country one day, its usually the first memory that comes to mind. Too bad its only 8p, I would love to listen to him as I fall asleep! But since I just woke up 6 hours ago... yeah, that would be bad ;)

My neighborhood

Today was sad in terms of the impending need to say goodbye to my great neighborhood. I've been here for three years and have struggled to find a place for myself here. I feel like I've finally established myself as a member of the community and not just another young white kid rolling through. When I first moved here it, the whole don't-make-eye-contact thing was really hard for me to get used it. It seemed rude not to say hi to my neighbors. There was this older man who lived two doors down. Everyday when I got home from work he would be sitting on his stoop. I would say hi and smile, he would ignore me. Everyday, same thing. I ended up getting totally frustrated and embarrassed by this (I'm really sensitive to looking foolish in public) but kept it up anyway. To be honest, my motivations changed half way through. At first I just wanted to be a nice neighbor, then he seemed kind of sick to me so I wanted to befriend him to let him know that I was a nurse in case he ever needed anything. Anyways, after about two months of being ignored, he finally nodded hello to me. That was HUGE! I was so excited. Of course he then proceeded to ignore for another week after that, lol. But we're good now! He actually verbally says hello to me! And tonight when I went to the bodega to buy Draino, he was there and smiled a GIGANTIC smile, clapped me on the back and said hello. I was so happy :) And then as I was leaving this beautiful woman who walks her dogs past my apartment all the time stopped to say hello too. I just really felt like I was part of the neighborhood. I hate to leave here after waiting so long to get to this point, it just feels like its been years since I've been established anywhere. I still know leaving is the right decision, I just like to vent on here.
Oh and another successful day at the gym! Half hour on the treadmill and another half hour on the elliptical. AND I found out where they keep the wet cloths to wipe down the machines so I dont have to look like a jerk anymore for running away without disinfecting them ;)

Title

In case you're wondering where the name of this blog comes from, it's from a book that I recently read called The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It's part two of a trilogy (part three hasn't come out yet) and it's a decent read (a bit slow, but entertaining). Here's the quote that really spoke to me: "No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection."
Seemed rather fitting :)

Major news!

Well, the time for procrastination has come to an end. I've been wanting to start up a blog for a while but laziness has prevailed. No longer! My life is setting itself up for some major changes in the very near future, and I know if I dont document it I'll kick myself later. So let me get you all up to speed...
Last week I quit my horrible job! I shouldn't really say it was horrible, there were great parts of the job too. I loved going into people's homes and doing health education with them, and I truly loved getting to know the patients i was working with. I'd been having problems with management for a while though and everything came to a head last week. I felt like I was close to getting fired (and I've NEVER been fired before, I dont think I've ever even been written up before!) so I decided to jump ship and keep my resume intact. In an amazing moment of self-confirmation, I was contacted by the company's HR director to let me know that they had decided to fire my boss and would like me to come back to the company (it was like the end of a movie, I couldn't believe what a lovely resolution it was.) At that point I had already come to terms with the fact that it was time for me to move on from NYC though, so I said no. So here I am! Unemployed for the first time in 15 years! I have two months left on my lease for my Brooklyn apartment, after that its off to new adventures. Right now I'm focusing on using my free time to enjoy all of NY's offerings (while maintaining a VERY strict budget).
I'm also trying to get my ass in shape! With no job to eat up my time, I have no excuses not to be in the gym every day. I'm hoping this blog will serve as my daily log of my progress. I'm a big dude and have tried losing weight in the past with mixed results. The time has come to crack down though. I'm currently on three different blood pressure medications and have a family history of early strokes. The sooner I lessen my risk factors, the better. Another important reason to lose weight is the fact that in a few short months I'll be chasing 600 kids through the hills of Honduras! I've been accepted into a volunteer position starting in January. I'll be working as a nurse/health educator for kids in a group home (similar to a gigantic orphanage) out in the middle of Honduras (or Guatemala. I have to pick which placement I want!). So big, big changes in the life of Shawn. Hopefully I'll keep up with this blog (unlike so many of my poor blogs floating out there with one or two entries...) and be able to document all of the amazing things that are happening right now. I'm so excited for all of these changes and I'm feeling truly blessed right now!!