Tuesday, January 31, 2006

I’ve noticed something, and don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining or anything… but I have REALLY thick hair! Both my parents have really thick hair, and it’s slightly wavy although slightly different in texture than mine… Interestingly, it’s also different in color. Mom = Brunette – Dad = Blonde – Me = Auburn… It’s a CRAZY CRAZY world!! But when I think about it, I’m really a perfect amalgamation of both my parents. I can’t really say I look like either one more than the other. I am going to conclude that this makes me a highly desirable genetic specimen…

I feel like writing a bunch of random crap today:

Here’s an interesting tidbit I learned recently. I knew this already but someone had to point out that it is socially unacceptable for men to use exclamation points when engaging in social, written communication… Who knew?

Moving on, I think I have decided to break down and buy a
Mac Ibook. I already have a laptop but it’s a pretty powerful and cumbersome machine. Not something I can take with me around the city… I find I’m often inspired while on the subway or out and about lollygagging around the city. I believe this is wasted potential creativity that could easily be channeled onto this blog… or in November perhaps THIS. Being an educator, I also get a 10% discount on all Apple products! Go Mozo! It’s your birthday!

So, I have joined a group of women at work that are starting a fat-off 2006 tomorrow. It’s a 2 month long process and whoever loses the most weight (percentage to their starting weight) wins the pool. Mama needs a new pair of shoes and already the pool is up to $600! I’m thinking a wardrobe overhaul as I will be a picture of thinness… I’ve already displayed my competitive edge, explaining that I’m ready to go all out with whatever ammunition necessary. I’m talking eating disorder, caffeine pills, and laxatives, whatever it takes*. I got my eyes on the prize and the prize is a lollipop-head version of me and at least $600. I can not eat for 2 months… think of all the $$ I’ll save! On the bright side though, I DID quit smoking (officially for about the 11th time in my life) again.

I started running again… I’ve been very sore and have actually been walking around NYC like a woman who just had two hip replacements and 4 shots of tequila. However, it feels invigorating and good. I forgot how much I enjoyed it. I actually wanted to run the
NYC Marathon last year but didn’t have it in me… Maybe the year of the Dog will be different.


*for all you folks that are seriously concerned, I’m not REALLY going to take laxatives or caffeine pills

Monday, January 30, 2006

Hash House Harriers

You know... the Idiotarod event kind of reminds me of this organization. I used to run with these guys in Indonesia back when I was a wee-Moze... They like to say they are a beer drinking club with a running problem. Frankly, I can't think of anything I'd rather do. Go for a run and then down a few brewskis. Granted, I was downing soda at that point. The beer drinking didn't start till later...

Similar to the Dog Sled Race… but different

As some of you already know, I participated in a little known but ever growing event called the NYC IDIOTAROD 2006. Now, this may well be the coolest/funnest/craziest things I have ever done. Similar to the well-known Iditarod Dog Sled Race but slightly modified as New Yorker City dwellers asked themselves the following questions: Who needs malamutes and huskies when you have yuppies? Who needs sleds when you have elaborately decorated (might I add – STOLEN) shopping carts? And finally, who needs parkas and hoodies when you have crazy costumes ranging to the tune of Andy Warhol to Oompa Loompas… Hailed as the 2nd successful year in NYC, this surprisingly well organized event originated in San Francisco. Similar in spirit to the previously covered Santa Con, this event required slightly more athletic prowess and agility as you were legitimately RUNNING (and sidestepping urban mines: potholes, pedestrians, other shopping carts, etc.) through the streets of New York. This 5 mile race boasted approx 500 crazy people who started in Park Slope, Brooklyn, attached to their shopping carts across the Manhattan Bridge and throughout lower Manhattan. I deem this event a grand success and I for one, am counting down the days till IDIOTAROD 2007! Please enjoy pics below: And for additional pics, please click *THIS LINK* and check out the Gothamist's gallery coverage of this event.






Saturday, January 28, 2006


There Is Something Wrong With All Of The Following Statements

I’m running a race today… Attached to a shopping cart…While consuming lots and lots of beer…

My thoughts on the matter - if there is something wrong with these things, then I don't wanna be right!

Show Your Tits!

So I’m up again on this excessively sunny Saturday morning… It’s nice out at least. It’s 50 degrees in January which is unheard of… Ok, so there’s construction going on again outside my bedroom window and I’ve once again relocated to the couch… Unfortunately, a combination of traffic sounds, construction noise, me sweating b/c it’s hotter than normal, and an impending doom for what I’m about to do this afternoon has my heart racing and me chomping at the bit to sweat out this wine and beer consumed last night… I feel like ass but there’s not a whole lot that can be done about it… I think perhaps I’m still a little drunk because I’m sort of inspired with a bit of a New Orleans feel and I was thinking about bartering for more sleep by showing the construction workers my boobs. If I shouted down to them and said, “yooo hoo! Hey, if I show you my boobs, will you guys shut up for 30 minutes?” But then, what would I have to do if I wanted to sleep for 2 more hours? Something tells me that this line of thinking will have me falling down a slippery slope faster than one can fall down a manhole.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

I have started this new thing where I try not to eat after 6pm. It’s working out pretty well as I’m starting to fit back into all my clothes… However, I find that in the mornings, I wake up with this voracious appetite. I’m up ready to eat everything in sight. Well, this morning I was particularly hungry, so I bought a ham and chz croissant at ABP and a blueberry muffin. Not sure if it was the sugar, fat, salt, meat combination… but I have been relatively unwell since about 9:30 this morning. My guess, is that it was this strange combination of foods and the fact that they were eaten in SUCH rapid succession that I might as well have eaten a blueberry croissant with cheese and ham (kind of like a McGriddle but different). Just writing these words makes me nauseated… What’s MORE – is someone sent cupcakes to one of my co-workers so now I have to walk by these cupcakes and curb the urge to throw up each time I want to leave my desk. They’re just SITTING there – all greasy and sugary. Who puts cupcakes out at 9:50am??? A little part of me wants to die.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Seen But Not Seated

So I had an amazing night last night. And considering that I'm unable to sleep, I thought I would blog about it. A perfect lower east side evening that included steak frites @ Cafe Charbon- Epicerie. While standing outside having a cigarette, Catherine and I saw Julia Stiles and her crowd of friends attempt to walk in. Now, Julia and I must have the same taste in haunts b/c this isn't the first times that I've ended up @ the same place as her. Anyway, Epicerie was HOPPIN' and Cat and I were lucky enough to walk in and get a table just before the big rush. So, we watch Julia and her entourage walk in, thinking - she's a celeb, she'll get a seat. Nope, apparently the staff @ Epecerie don't cater to celebs and treated Julia just like any other New Yorker. Well, exercising her right like any other New Yorker, Julia opted to grab her grub elsewhere, as waiting an hour and a half for a bite on a Friday night just doesn't work.

Are You Fucking Kidding Me!?

No No No! It's NOT ok to start doing construction outside my window on a Saturday at 7am... I don't think I need to launch into everything that's wrong with this scenario. But, just for starters, let's not discount the fact that I'm hungover and tired and was really looking forward to sleeping for most of the day. Worst. Oh, I'm not hearing the excuse: It's New York. I don't care if this is Jupiter! Sleep is sleep - Maslow and Mozo say this is a basic necessity. See pics of construction below.

Friday, January 20, 2006

The Snow Leopard


Someone very important to me recently gave this to me as a Christmas gift. I'm only part way in, but I can see why this book has made such a striking and radical impression on all those who read it. The Snow Leopard chronicles the physical and spiritual travels of Peter Matthiessen and George Schaller through the Himalayas. This book will change all who experience it. The following excerpt this morning on the subway gave me chills and I re-read it several times before moving forward:

Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterrupted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. And this debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the ear and air and water from which we came.

Compare the wild, free painting of the child with the stiff, pinched "pictures" these become as the painter notices the painting and tries to portray "reality" as others see it; self-conscious now, he steps out of his own painting and, finding himself apart from things, notices the silence all around and becomes alarmed by the vast significations of Creation. The armor of the "I" begins to form, the construction and desperate assertion of separate identity, the loneliness: "Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern."





MOZO'S MOANS:

I’m in the mood to complain, and who doesn't love a complainer? So, in a revival of my old high school column, I bring you some of the following moans:

- Hangovers – why? I mean, really… we do ENOUGH idiotic things to ourselves while being drunk, there is NO reason we need to feel awful after the fact. It’s like we have to pay double duty for our drunken transgressions- Once during and then again the morning after. THREE times if you consider RELIVING the idiotic things you did the night before WHILE you’re hung over…
- Unflattering photographs – why? Why is it that you can look at yourself in the mirror and appear COMPLETELY 100% normal-looking. But then, in a friend’s photograph – you’re sporting a double-chin that you didn’t know you had, and a look on your face like you just ate something incredibly bitter.
- Hangnails – I don’t know anyone that is immune to these annoying little shits.
- Right along with hangnails are paper cuts. I would rather be dismembered than get a paper cut. These suckers HURT!
- Stupid People – now, I don’t want to generalize here so I’m going to give you a VERY specific example of being bombed by a stupid person recently: I was finishing up that wonderful book Message In A Bottle, when this sitting next to me on the subway asked how I liked it. I told her I thought it was schmaltzy but alright. She proceeds to tell me the ending – SPOILING all I’d been working towards! Basically making my embarrassing efforts completely moot. BIATCH!
- Those dark Samsonite suitcases that take up residence under your eyes after consuming too much coffee.
- The SMELL on the downtown yellow-line platform at 34th Street. I mean, C’mon!!!
- Bank of America – I’m very mad at you right now. You have made it excessively difficult to access my online banking… For the longest time, all I had to do was enter my social and my password and I was in my own personal banking universe. NOW, I have to enter like 8,000 different numbers, letters, passwords, keywords, pincodes, take three steps forward, two steps back, rub my tummy while patting my head… and then, if I do all these things correctly, and in the right order, I get access to my bank account. Yeah yeah, I understand it’s for security reasons… but security schmecurity…

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Message to Mozo! Drop the book immediately!

Alright Alright... I have something rather embarressing to admit. Granted, what could be worse than talking about loosley hanging ear-skin but what I'm about to disclose is FAR worse. I need to preface by saying that I didn't MEAN to do this. It just sort of... happened. Similar to waking up one morning in a shack alongside a bunch of chickens in Tijuana.

Ok, here goes: I am currently reading (gasp!) Message In A Bottle by Nicholas Sparks. He's the same guy who brought us: A Walk To Remember - a movie starring the lovely Mandy Moore and The Notebook which stars the delicious Ryan Gosling and the beautiful Rachel McAdams. If you've read or seen any of this schlock, you'll realize that it's dripping with schmaltzy badness. So, let me explain how I ended up on this destructive path. I was teaching my class one evening and I finished the book I was reading and the WSJ from cover to cover. My students were not 1/2 way thru their final and I needed something to read. The library was closed but there is a little book exhange area where for a sum of $2 you can buy yourself a used book. Being somewhat familiar with the author, I picked up this piece of horridness. Well, similar to herion or cheese puffs, once you start - you can't stop. Without thought for the consequences, I committed to this book - paying the two dollars and started down a road I never wanted to go down. I read it on the subway and find that certain paragraphs in the book make me want to vomit on my fellow subway riding patrons. See nauseating excerpt below*:

He opened his arms, his eyes pleading with her to come to his side. She hesitated for a second, then finally leaned into him, myriad conflicing feelings rushing through her. She lowered her face onto his chest, not wanting to see his expression. He kissed her hair, speaking softly as his lips fluttered over her.
'I do care. I care so much that it scares me. I haven't felt like this in so long, it's almost like I've forgotten how important another person could be to me. I don't think I could just let you goan forget you, and I don't want to. And I definitely don't want tuse to end right now.'
For a moment there was only the soft, even sound of his breathing. Finally he whispered, 'I promise to do everything I can to see you. And we'll try to make this work.'
The tenderness in his voice made her tears begin to fall. He went on, almost to quietly for her to hear.
"Theresa, I think I'm in love with you."
I think I'm in love with you, she heard again. I think...
I think...
Not wanting to respond, she simply whispered: 'Just hold me, ok. Let's not talk anymore.'

* I entered excerpt in puke-green color to heighten pukey effect.

I may need to start going to bad-book readers anonymous or something. I'm sure they must have meetings or support groups for people like us. Because, and I admit this to you all now... I CAN'T STOP!! I must get to the end. Never in my life have I so badly wanted to get to the end...

Moze Update

I haven’t really written a real update in a while. There isn’t a whole lot going on w/me at the moment so I’m going to write about random things.

First, I would like to talk about IPOD earbuds. There have two different kinds. They have the inner-ear kind and they have the
flat-round kind that come with the Ipod device. I used to like the flat-round kind until I got the inner ear kind. I was instantly converted. Now I find that the flat round kind irritate the sensitive skin in my ear. Which is not only painful but leaves me with excess ear skin hanging out of my ear which is kind of gross. Sort of like ear dandruff, but obviously different.

Next topic on the agenda – I have decided to start running again. Why? Who knows… Really, I think I just need a venue to channel my excess energy. Back in high school, I was a cross-country running star! I had crazy endurance and could go for HOURS!!! Ah, but how things have changed. I tried running again about 6 months ago and ended up with the following ailments after just 15 minutes of light jogging: shin splints, side cramps, and a mildly sprained ankle… Enough time has passed to allow my injuries to heal and my memory to grow hazy. So it’s back up on the horse I git. Wish me luck as I strap on my Nike’s and attempt to re-live my cross-country glory days.

Third, I would like you to enjoy these pics from my office
.



My Lunch Today

This may well be the height of inane blog posts ever... But please forgive me, it's raining and miserable out. My muse has obviously decided to stay and hide under the covers while I went in to work.


This is my co-workers lunch, it doesn't look NEAR as appetizing as mine (see below).



Mmmmmmm, yummy and cheesy! This baked ziti is from Tuscany. No, not the country, the restaurant on 55th.


Mozo is clearly happy. See, she's smiling. The diet coke negates all the cheesy calories about to be consumed.


Good stuff! I ate the whole thing... All the more reason to go for a run this evening.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Revolving Doors

Before I moved to New York City, I had a weird (slight) phobia of revolving doors. I would do stupid things like get in with another person and then have to shuffle quickly behind them while feeling like a total @$$hole. Then, sometimes people ahead or behind you are stronger than you so they push the door really hard and fast and then you have to basically JUMP out before the back door smacks you or dismembers you. You are at the mercy of this odd device. I don't mind the REALLY big ones that turn slowly. I've found these are more common in Holland than the US. But I digress. So, I've gotten pretty used to revolving doors. However, I noticed one thing that still irritates me. Does anyone else think that they should rotate CLOCKWISE and not COUNTER clockwise??? Maybe it's just b/c I'm left handed and want the world to adapt to me and not the other way around....

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Bringing Down The House


I got this book as a gift recently. All I can say is - Wow! While it's a quick, fascinating read - the best part is - it's all true! This is the first book I've read by Ben Mezrich - but after finishing this, I may have to check out some of his other work.

THESE DREAMS

I had the WEIRDEST dreams last night! First I was dreaming about watching this plane fly without a tail. It was one of those cheaper airlines, like AirTran (aka "TrashCan") and the entire back half of the fuselage was just MISSING. Anyway, it was flying for a while but of course, as planes w/out their back half tend to do - it crashed (similar to dreams Richie Valens would have but in black and white a la La Bamba. He would watch these planes explode in mid air and then would have to scamper quickly to dodge the falling debris). It was really more of a helicopter looking thing than a plane and it kind of bounced instead of crashed... What made this dream even weirder is that I was standing in a pasture full of bulls. Now, even though I lived in Texas for a substantial amount of time, I actually knew nothing about bulls until this summer (but that’s another story and it was mechanical). I realized that these beasts are much more intimidating than I had previously imagined. And even though I have SUPERHUMANSTRENGTH, I was no match for all of these bulls. So, here I was, trying to get away from the fiery rubble of a plane crash and then, trying to move away from all these bulls on the other end. I could have climbed over the barbed wire fence to get away but that would be equally painful. I was trapped. Needless to say, I woke up with a racing heart and a sense that all was not 100% kosher in dreamland. I had a bear of a time falling back asleep.

But I did fall asleep– and here’s what happened NEXT! So, I’m at work, and I’m speaking with one of my co-workers. All of a sudden, the entire floor starts filling up with water. And I’m not talking 2 little inches of water that get your shoes wet. I’m talking a waterfall of water that crashed over all of us and went up over your head. So, we’re swimming in a sea of computers…That was actually quite fun. It was sort of like being at Wet & Wild but at the office.


When all was said and done, I think I was happy to wake up and see that it was 7am. While physically restful, last night's sleep proved to be fitful and frightful at best.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Have started the year off right! See pics below ~ Happy 2006 to all of you! XXO - MOZO

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!


New Years!!





HAPPY NEW YEARS!!






These pics are a bit delayed but better late than never!