Fuck I’m old. Sort of. And technically it’s 11:52PM on the 22nd but who cares. I’m 28 now. FUCK. I know I been slacking on the blog but you know what? I have a career to attend to and of course my gym routines. I’m down 20 lbs from the last time I weighed myself (like 1.5 weeks ago). I’m stonger…. My body is shaping up fairly well. My chest is rock solid and I’m up to 80lb dumbbells. Back to the matter at hand… I don’t want a shitload of happy birthday emails/messages and shit so let’s keep the comments on this one blog post.

“Birthdays was the worst days…” - Biggie

And when I get some more time, I’ll blog about more shit. Until then, Cheerio motherfucker. Bye.

It’s been pretty crazy these past few weeks. Everything from work to working out to just enjoying outdoor activities. Its been 3 weeks that I been working out with my friends at the BSC and wow… what a phenomenal change. The past month my schedule has been like this… Go to work, leave work, head to the gym, work out for 2-3.5 hours depending on what my psycho drill sergeant best friend has in mind. I would get home by 10:45PM-11PM then try to catch up on other work. But I’m down 13 lbs and I see a big difference in the mirror. My chest and arms are firming up pretty damn well. I been poking at my biceps a lot lately because they’re hard as a rock. ROFL. I feel much more energy now. Just the other day, I was limping from the leg/abs workout but things are paying off. I’m moving up on dumbbell weights and I was able to do a few 1 handed push ups again.

I actually got into a heated argument with my psycho drill sergeant friend the other day because he was getting annoyed with my bitching on some of the workouts. So it was like listening to him bitching about my bitching. It’s been a long time since I worked out. I lost a lot of strength, energy, stamina due to my personal issues that I was dealing with (which involved many restrictions). But my strength and energy are starting to come back. Problem with him is… he is impatient and has a bit of an anger problem. ROFL. I use to work out with him in the past and he didn’t complain like this. I remember going at my own pace. I remember one time when I was going up in weights and he even asked me if I were sure. I know the limitations of my body and what I can or cannot do - and right now, it’s playing catchup. But now it’s not just him and I working out. We also got another person with us so things are a bit different. The routine is different, more things are involved and to be honest, my stamina is not where it use to be. But we worked it out after arguing a bit in my cubicle. I am trying, I haven’t skipped out on any of the workout days… we been going 5 of 7 days per week.

So what else has been happening? Manny hit #500 and the Boston Celtics are in the NBA finals. I’m also getting some good results from my new trial contact lenses. Oh and work… Things are starting to slow down finally. I swear my head was going to explode there with all the things that were going on. I scheduled vacation time between June 9th - 13th so hopefully I can get my sanity back.

Another personal dilemma was about my career path… recently there was another opening in my company for a database analyst. Was I interested? Somewhat - It was a bit tempting and I can do database work. Why was it so tempting? Most likely the pay. I did some homework on salary.com and saw the pay difference. But hey… what’s an extra $20,000 anyways? haha. I had a chat with my friend lani about it and she agreed on my decision to not apply for it. Why? Well, I look at it like this… I like what I currently do (it’s challenging and i learn new stuff frequently especially with all this web 2.0/3.0 movement), I like my boss, my boss speaks highly of me (to the CEO and other big shots), he knows my potential, he knows I bust my ass, he got me what I asked for (in terms what how much I’m worth - let’s just say another 30% hehehe), he lets me leave early sometimes, I can wear anything I want to work, people don’t invade my space, i can listen to headphones while I work, and there are many other reasons. But mainly, I’m happy at the moment. If I switch to become a database analyst - I would get paid more but I would have a different boss, I would sit there and do more monotonous tasks, and things probably wouldn’t be the same. Yes the money would be nice but I’m sure I can reach that salary range in due time. I’ve only been with this company for a year and a half now and my work speaks for itself. It was quite a ride though, my brother’s best friend works for another dot com and wanted me to apply with his company. Then my friend introduced me to his co-worker who works for Channel 2 (WGBH Boston) who was looking for someone who does my kind of work. But you know what? I’m not ready to leave my company yet - maybe when I realize that I can’t go any higher, I might go elsewhere but for now… Thanh is pretty content. And do you wanna know why I’m so good at what I do? It’s because I know a little bit about everything - not only you get a marketing guy but you also get a developer, a good researcher, and someone who is business oriented. Those are a powerful mix. So I conclude this blog entry with…. I rather be happy and get paid less than unhappy being paid more. If you feel different… you can talk to D… (Who’s D?) Deeeeeeeez nuts!

Oh it’s been so long… since I’ve felt like this. My friend finally got back from Honduras. He’s the one that I use to go to the gym with. He got me up to 70lbs on the dumbbells (3 sets). God I felt so strong back then. Today we went to work out at the Boston Sports Club. Talk about high end gym - this place has so much shit pack into one place. No wonder why it cost 115$ per month (That might be an outdated price). Oh man… Yesterday I thought I tweaked my shoulder but wasn’t sure. Today, I got confirmation that I did tweak it. We did chest (flat, incline, and decline), biceps, and triceps. Basically, I lifted weights till I couldn’t push up the bar. I was a bit disappointed because of how much strength I lost from the ’stay at home’ ordeal. Fuck… I’m going to be sore tomorrow. While driving home, I stopped at a GNC to buy some stuff that I use to take. After spending like 86$ on pre-workout stuff, glutamine for post workout, and some whey protein - I got a phone call from my boy who was in the car with his boy who is a personal trainer. So he told me not to take that shit yet. I saw him at the gym too. He asked me a few questions about my routine and he told me to change my 3 meals a day into 5 small meals a day first. Protein in the morning (egg whites only), good carbs at lunch, and for dinner to eat vegetables. And the in between snacking, eat like carrots, fruits, or whatever. Just no bad carbs. Then after shedding some more pounds, start taking the whey protein for working out. He also recommended me not to take the glutamine to help my body recover from the soreness because our bodies produces glutamine and by taking a supplement, it will slow the body’s glutamine production and make the body dependent on the supplement. So I hesitated taking any of it. I also bought this juggernaut stuff that is like NO-Explode (the stuff that I use to take) to give you a pre-workout boost. Man that stuff use to get me PUMPED! But he told me to not take anything and to not rush it because i will get to where I was because of “muscle memory” - He warned me that people who take all that stuff and stop working out will crash hard. But I dunno, Im going to try the 5 times a day thing but I’m going to take my juggernaut powder stuff because that shit cost me $41. I know I might be rushing it but whatever, this has been the worst that I’ve ever been. I want to be benching 70lb dumbbells again. Oh my god… I’m taking performance enhancers. Uh oh. ROFLMAO. Fuck off.

While trying to rest my already sore arms, I get a call from my boy T who of course wanted me to make him a last minute flyer to promote his little club event for Saturday. He invited me to go and said that I don’t need to follow dress codes (ROFL). I should just show up in a leotard and see if it’s OK. LOL. I am not sure if I want to go because Lynn is ghetto and I have a feeling that this place isn’t the biggest place on earth. But did I mention that I hate reggaeton? Although the live performance by Miggie will be reggaeton, he assured me that they will play Hip Hop.  I dunno… I’m more of a bluegrass cello guy hahaha. So I’m really not sure if I will be attending. Oh yeah… And being the awesome person that I am, I created the flyer… it looks like this:

So I just got home and my brother asked me if I wanted to hit the gym. I said yes and then decided to weigh myself. Holy crap, I lost 5 lbs this past week. I think it had to do something with the fact that I gave up soda and started eating only greek salad with grilled chicken everyday during lunch at work for the past 4 business days. It’s either that or my body retains a shit load of water. But when I think back to my days in the military, I lost 5lbs every week but from exercise. Dare I combine the two? Muahhahahaha. OK hopefully I get back in shape for the summer. This is the part where I depart my blog and hit up some cardio!

Edit: I just got back from doing some cardio, some weights, and abs. Then, I hopped in the sauna for about 5 minutes. Weighed myself again, lost another 1 lb. HAHAHA. I am awesome.

It’s been a pretty decent past couple of days. I am able to go out to wherever, whenever. I joined my friend’s family the other night for a going away dinner. He’s being deployed to Honduras for a couple of weeks to train for the Army. After work on Friday, we met at his house and then headed to Chinatown where we ate at Jumbo Seafood. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there but I’ll tell you… the food is still awesome. It’s definitely one of Boston’s best authentic Chinese restaurants. Although I don’t like the “new look,” the service and food is great. We use to be regulars there, and they gave us the red carpet treatment. But what did I eat? I’ll list them below. Lani is going to drool after reading this. And Lanmeister, we are definitely going there when your down here. - Homegirl aint afraid of authentic Chinese. Did I mention that she tried the hanging Peking ducks that you see in the windows of Chinese BBQ joints. Dude, we’re gonna be so fat.

1. Chicken Wings (It was for the kids)

2. Spicy Salted Pork Chops

3. Lobster (2) with Ginger and Scallion

4. Deep fried Flounder

5. Clams with black bean sauce x 2

6. Watercress (You gotta eat your veggies) x 2

7. Rice (Who eats Chinese food without rice?!)

I think that was it. But I could be wrong. There was so much food. I was stuffed. It totally fucked up my week of eatting healthy. (LOL) - I told my friend that I’m going to eat salads for lunch while he was gone in Honduras. So far, so good. For the past two days, I been going to this nice place where I order Greek Salad w/ Grilled Chicken. Let’s see if I lose any fatness. And I’m going to start hitting the gym again. My brother’s friend works out at the one close by me 4 days a week so hopefully I can get back into shape.

Wow. It’s been a quite the 6 months of detaining my ass at home but today… as of 8:30AM, I was told that I could ‘cut it off’ (some of you guys will understand and some will be like WTF did he cut off?!) - FREEDOM! When I was told that, I didn’t immediately do it. I waited till 4:30PM before I actually detached myself. I video taped the ceremonious event. Time to actually live life again. NORMALLY. Back to the gym. Back to normalcy. FREE AT LAST. Time to put on those dancing shoes and of course… my jabawockeez mask.

It was actually tough to cut into the rubber. Inside the middle center area of the rubber ring, there was a thin metal wire. I guess that’s the tamper protection mechanism. FREEEEEEEE.

Today I was woken up at 6:25AM by a knock at my door from my brother telling me it was 6:30AM and well… I slept the 5 minutes off. Took a shower, felt tired as hell, brushed my teeth, and all that other good stuff. Since I’ve been carpooling (with my brother) for awhile now… I have to wake up earlier now. I miss those days where I woke up an hour later. Prior to leaving for work, I forgot to bring my Lotemax eyedrops for my eye inflammation (from my contact lenses) so I headed back inside but I couldn’t find it so I won’t be applying any eyedrops till tonight. Plus getting out of shape doesn’t help either. I actually weighed myself last night and I actually told myself “Holy sh*t, You’re a fat ass!” So the obvious thing to tell myself is to hit the gym right? Well, not really. Due to some personal issues for the past few months (let’s call it an ankle injury for now), My out-of-shape-ness has been getting out of control. Once my personal issue is over with, I’m hitting the gym again. And did I mention that I have a really painful ingrown toe nail?! After my “ankle injury” - I think I’m going to see the doctor to have it fixed (yikes! I’m going to have only half a nail left). It’s been like this for awhile, I just been withstanding the pain. Jesus, I just realized how many things are wrong in my life in that last paragraph… Not to mention the stuff that I left out.

But work wise, it’s been rather OK i guess… Work load is finally starting to ease up a bit. Thank god the spring break season is over. I’m starting to feel burnt out. I can’t remember the last time I even had a real vacation… I been with this company for over a year now. Last year, I took 1 week of vacation time and it was not for vacation purposes. Plus the job before that (8 months), I only took 1 day off. I’m seriously in dire need of a vacation. I just finished this google maps page for my company. It’s funny how it came about… my boss gave me 30 minutes to research the functionality and I ended up learning the API in that short amount of time. But the result was very satisfactory and alot of the head honchos at the company liked it. I learn things fairly quickly when I apply myself. I guess it’s my gift and my curse. And yesterday I sent out a newsletter email to 594,000+ subscribers and traffic to the company website tripled plus sales were up 50% over last year. Ah, how sweet does that sound. I remember last year, we had like low 400k subscribers. I guess I am pretty good at what I do. My job also requires a lot of research, I have so many webpages opened that I tend to run out of memory (2GB @ 800mhz) fairly quickly. Let’s see I have IE7 with 15 tabs opened and Firefox with 97 tabs opened. Not including all the other apps I have to use. Can we say MULTITASKER? Oh another thing, I sort of closed my myspace page last night. I’m not going into details so “no comment.”

I had about 3 meetings today. I found out that our information systems guy is leaving the company so we’re trying to make sure we’re ready for any kind of impact. So it’s been quite the busy day. And one of our CTO’s (Chief Technical Officer) had me help him write up (or update rather) some document on logging website metrics. It was very last minute and he wanted it done very quickly. I did it in 10 minutes. Not too shabby. Plus he gave me props in the email to everyone. Finally, recognition. But overall, it was a semi-exhausting day. Then I came home to watch the Celtics beat the Suns by a huge margin. Let’s bring home a NBA championship!

I’m going to get ready for bed, goodnight and godspeed. (whatever that means)