Just BE

"Happiness is a journey, not a destination; happiness is to be found along the way not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it's too late. The time for happiness is today not tomorrow." - Paul H Dunn

  A Home

The year is flying by and so much seems to be happening in such a small period of time.  I can't believe it is February already.  My brother Abram and his wife Ashley just closed on their first home.  It is about 10 miles from my house and I am so very happy for them.  The place looks great and I really like what they are doing with it.

Cousins

My cousin Adam from Ft. Worth came to visit Austin for business.  It was great to see him.  Us cousin's got together and had dinner.  Rino, Abram, Adam and I all grew up together as kids and have a lot of memories from those times.  It probably explains why we are so close.  Rino's wife Jessica and Abram's wife Ashley, joined us for dinner too.  Aside from the usual ill advised straying to in politics, we all still get along so very well. I have so many great stories I could share.  Talking about the good old days is great, but it is also great to catch up on all the great things happening in their lives right now.  They are all grown up and married now.  The next night I had drinks with my cousin Adam and some of his co-workers downtown. We had a good time and got to catch up more.  I'm going to stay with him when I go up to Dallas for half marathon in March.  I'm really proud of him and all that he has accomplished.  There are a lot of things i could learn from him.

We all spent a lot of time together as kids at my grandparents' house. We each had our own way, but we functioned well as a team.  Cousins are truly your first real friends.  Below is a photo of all of us as kids. that I recently got from my Tia.  I wonder if you can tell who is who.  Look at me and my brotherly shoulder hold, I looked very godfather like. By the way, grandparents, awesome. 

And here we are now after having had dinner in Austin. when Adam came to visit. My how we have grown.

Allergies

 

I have had horrible allergies. How about that for a segue? I always have since I was little. I've learned to deal with them with medicine, staying indoors often and hoping the people around me just get used to me sneezing often.  The funny part is that they have gotten much much better the past 3 years.  To the point where I'm not taking medicine daily like I used to and can go outside and do stuff like hike and run.  I attribute that to factors that probably qualify as mostly placebo, but is some green stuff I take every morning.  Then for some reason, in the middle of Cedar Fever season, I just had a terrible allergy week.  I could not figure it out.  Was it some environmental factor in my house, my work, just the cedar?  It was enough to get me to finally go and see an allergy specialist.  So I made an appointment with an allergist and had my first allergy test.  The best part was I couldn't take meds for a week, so after being so bad that I wanted to see a doctor, the next week was worse.

I had never had an allergy test before, but I was pretty sure what they entailed.  They pretty much just pricked my back over 100 times with various allergens and then pricked my arm with some they were not sure of.  The back ones were not great feeling, but not too bad.  The arm ones hurt I must say.  Then I got my results.  I was not surprised, they were really bad, even impressed the doctor.  I was allergic to 42 of 44, pollens, trees, and weeds for example.  There is not a season where I get a break.  I wasn't allergic to many foods, but had a lot of positives for environmental factors. 

Now the best part, I am allergic to cats.  I did get a false negative the first time, but showed up as allergic on the second try on my arm.   That is probably not good considering that I have cats.  Not that it makes a difference, I mean I don't care how allergic I am to my cat Koki, it does not change much and I'll just do as I have always done, just deal with it.  I'm now starting allergy shots, which is not exciting due to my dislike of needles, particularly when pushed inside me.  Only 5 more years of shots to go and maybe I'll be a little better. I do look forward to some relief though.

Cornell Memories

Life has an interesting way of working out.  My freshman year in college I met a girl from NYC who was the Resident Adviser for our dorm.  She embodied the classic NYC girl to me, which I had no understanding of at the time. I thought she was cute, but I was taken, but I did think we would probably be good friends if she was not our RA. Considering I was a freshman with a rowdy bunch of friends, we probably had our dorm run ins, though my memory isn't very good.  We lost touch after freshman year and never really became close friends, although we were acquaintances since we had many mutual friends.

Over a decade later we became Facebook friends as people often do with acquaintances and it was nice to see how an old college friend was doing.  At some point in the fall she had a trip to Texas to visit a potential job opportunity and we started to chat as I explained all the wonderful selling points of Austin.  When she was in town we met for a drink and I enjoyed catching up on where her life had taken her over all these years.  People always have such impressive stories.  I must say, even though everyone's journey is different, it is interesting how much everyone's path has in common.

We continued to be Facebook friends and old college acquaintances. Months later, we reconnected again to discuss her questions about the the city now that she was having to make a decision.  I shared my opinions and must see places if she were to come back to check it out again.  Then I guess we just strayed into life and how things were going.  It was really nice to chat with someone who approached things in a similar way to me, who understood why I thought certain things.  We quickly became friends and it was nice having a friend who you didn't have to worry about liking each other since you live so far apart, so you feel like you can be more honest. I had a new pen pal.

I have a complicated (although still very positive) track record with being close friends with girls and the word complicated is an understatement.  This was not complicated and that was nice.  I was later excited to find out that she was going to visit Austin again for a few days to check out some job opportunities and I volunteered to show her around this time. 

The trip was great and probably something that I really needed. It has been a long time since I have had a week of such fun.  It was like being a tourist in my own city and it also allowed me to check out things I have never had the occasion to check out before.  We went to Zilker park and I finally got to ride the little kids train, which has been a goal of mine for way too long.  Most people would be let down with a slow moving train geared towards little kids, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  We got to visit the botanical gardens, eat at some of my favorite places and the weather was mostly perfect.  We did the usual downtown outings like Rainey St and I was happy to have a friend to go and see the Lion King Musical with.  Great musical by the way, I regret not having seen it sooner.   We even capped the trip off with VIP concert tickets to see one of her favorite musicians, Matisyahu.  He was impressive and the concert was an experience. Here is a photo of us at the concert since I didn't really take many photos that week.

The week went by very fast, but I was glad that I got to confirm that we really were friends that got along well in person as well.  It is always too bad to have such a good friend that lives so far away, but since most of my college and law school buddies are spread out, I know the feeling.  I was sad that she had to go back to NY, but am glad to have been a decent host and to have a good friend in my life.  Sometimes people can only be in your life for a short period of time, but they have a very positive impact.  I was impressed with her ability to not go crazy from hearing all my running stories and thoughts on the subject, but who knows, maybe I'll make her a convert too.

Coming Races

Speaking of running, coming up this February is the Austin Marathon and Half Marathon. The one I'm running with my niece and brother.  It is going to be his first one.  I'll probably talk more about it in my next entry I'm sure, but for now I must say that I'm really looking forward to it.  I really want to push myself this time and see how I can do.  I love the signs people hold up like "Go Random Stranger!", "Your feet are hurting because you are kicking so much ass," and "why do all the cute ones run away."  When I finally do my full marathon in June, I hope to have someone there holding this sign for me:

 

don't mess with happy