161.6

After a week of not exercising, I have been very lucky to have lost the weight that I have. Most of these past days I have spent my off time, converting my VHS tapes to DVD. Latest entry to the DVD was "The Notebook". It reminded me of a wild, yet short-lived wonderful moment in my storybook life. Opportunites not realized, still memorable all the same. I guess I'm a hopeless romantic. I believe that if one clings on to the past strong enough, it will all come back to life. But what does this old fool know anyway, right?

I'm going to be looking forward to seeing my father. In some ways, the advent of transportation in our civilization should be held in contempt. For without it, my family would all be within a stone's throw away. Instead, my daughter is 1300 miles away, and so are my father and sister too. My dad will be turning 68 this year. There's probably not a day that goes by where I don't stop to think of something memorable that happened while living with him. Now, as I look back to the present, it is almost implausible to see how quickly the sands of time have dropped to the bottom of my own personal egg timer. 25 years. 25 years since I moved out from my father's house in Hewlett. My parents only lived there for about two and a half-years, but to me, it is as fresh in my mind as the breeze which blew today through my hair as I walked down my street and into my home.

I have been seriously contemplating writing about my life, especially my last 25 years worth into a book someday. I’m not sure that anyone would care to read it. I mean, forasmuch as I may think I’ve had some real roller coasters, I probably have no better story to tell than the next “Alex”. But then again, if I write, it’s not going to be to win a popularity contest either. At the very least I would like to think of it more as a self-embracement of my valued life, and to the very most, perhaps a gift to my children for them to see who I really was.

I guess watching part of “The Notebook” gave me some added incentive to feel this way, but frankly, I’ve been feeling this way for some time now. I spent nearly 2 years writing, producing, directing and filming “Generations”. It was an 8-hour documentary mini-series about my great grandfather, my grandfather, and finally my dad. Well, perhaps now is finally the time to complete the circle by continuing with the story about me. There’s a lot of stories in me about me. Plenty good, and plenty not so good. I am sure that if I ever wrote an autobiography, that I will sound boastful, whiny, pensive, depressed, bitterly angry, and euphorically happy. In short, you’ll see all sides Alex.

Today, I ran for the first time in a week. I did about 5 miles on the “Nordic-Track” and ran 1 mile on the treadmill. I am not 100%, but I am getting there and feeling grateful for not having raced today, despite the lost entry fee, which they would not transfer to another race for me.

Not being able to run this week, made me fearful of gaining weight. I wound up eating a whole lot less than I wanted. When I got home from the gym, I weighed 161.6.

In celebration of this, I treated myself to a trip into Queens, to a restaurant well known in the Spanish community known as “Rincon Criollo”. It is a Cuban restaurant and it’s located on Junction Blvd. About a block south of Roosevelt Avenue, in Woodside. Despite it’s Cuban cuisine on the menu, the majority of those running the place were anything but. I would say that the waiters were probably Dominican, and the cooks are definitely Mexican (as it is everywhere it seems in NY), but the original Cuban owner was there, to show me to my seat. They were all splendid hosts.

I started off with a small cup of “Caldo Gallego”, which is really more a Spanish soup than Cuban, along with an order of “tostones” (fried & mashed slices of banana). Delicious. Then the main order came, a home-made Cuban sandwich, complete with pickle, along with a plate of white rice with frijoles negros (black beans). Absolutely delicious.

On my way back I hit Baskin Robbins and had a double scoop on a cone. First ice-cream in nearly 2 months.

Damage? It is 11:42pm right now. I just weighed myself and I am …… 164.6. I am always at my heaviest in the evening. Of course…the Cuban food did not help either.