Lifestyle
- Two tofu “cubes” as mentioned (the off-white yellowish pieces with a bit of texture)
- 1 mini (Persian) cucumber
- 3 small radishes
- 1 small strip of Violife vegan feta cheese (other brands are also good), cut into cubes
- a handful of cherry tomatoes (yellow in this salad)
- a handful of mixed greens (spinach, arugula, possibly one more thing I forget right now)
- half a small lemon, for juice
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This is more of a recent “hack”. I don’t start with the oats; instead, I pick my frozen “fruits of the day” from the freezer. I have strawberries, cherries, and blueberries. Not a lot, about 1/5 of a cup is enough. Microwave for 30 seconds (full power), stir lightly, then microwave for 30 more seconds. They come out soft and a bit slushy, which works well here.
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Rolled oats (some are better than others; don’t use those small ‘meal size’ sealed packs, they usually come with additives that give them a weird saw-dust flavor). I’m currently enjoying Bob’s Red Mill “just oats” with apparently more protein. I usually use 3 to 4 tablespoons per cup. If I do fruits, like in the first step, I cover them completely with oats.
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My espresso machine dispenses hot water at a perfect temperature for tea (70 Celsius, more or less 150 F), which also works well for the oats. The trick here is to fill it just under the oats, so it doesn’t cover them completely (otherwise you end up having oats “soup”). I let it sit for a minute as I make my coffee in a separate cup. By the time I’m done with the coffee (about a minute, give or take), the oats will have absorbed the water, and I can stir them lightly.
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Throw in golden raisins (black ones are too sweet in my opinion) to taste, about two teaspoons (can always add more later). This gives it all the sweetness I need.
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Stir well again and add a handful of almonds (roasted but not salted) on top. Stir again.
Lazy Chopped Salad
One of the awesome things that came out of me becoming mostly vegan since August of last year is the farmer’s market.
The walk there, every weekend, takes me about 40 minutes. It’s through the quiet streets and city parks of Upper Manhattan that stand in contrast to its otherwise loud and grungy surroundings. It’s not a particularly big market, just one short street behind a school, but the smaller selection of food (especially since I don’t buy dairy or meat products) motivates me to explore different ways to make food.
One of my more recent discoveries was the extra-firm tofu, which they sell already cut into snack-size, water-free pieces. I sometimes just grab one right from the fridge and eat it “raw”.
Lazy Salad
I call it “lazy” because of how I mix it, and also because I was too lazy to make more food. The tofu makes this filling enough, at least for me.
What’s in it
The cucumber, tomatoes (both not in season yet), and the lemon are from the grocery store. The rest is from the farmer’s market. My local store tries different varieties of cherry tomatoes, but I find the ones I like the most seem to come from Canada. As for the mini cucumber, I grab whatever they have because they often don’t have any. It’s a shame because these cucumbers are tastier, and their size makes them perfect for a quick addition to any meal, or even as a snack on their own, cut into strips with a small dash of spicy salt.
The difference a good knife can make
You can cut all these veggies with whatever knife you have, but it’s the chef’s knife I got not too long ago that makes me want to chop. Vegetables! I mean vegetables, yeesh.
With this knife, it’s easy to cut softer things (like leaves or tomatoes) without a problem. I did watch a couple of YouTube videos explaining a few cutting techniques and how to hold the knife when I bought it. While I’m /far/ from being an expert, I recommend you also watch a couple if you get one. You don’t want any fingers in the salad; this is a vegan recipe after all.
You can see from the picture that I didn’t chop anything too fine. Big enough to stab individual pieces with a fork, small enough that it fits in the bowl you’re going to eat from. Fast and easy.
Middle Eastern salad seasoning
I think most if not all Middle Eastern salads use three main ingredients when it comes to making the salad “dressing,” or as I call it, juice, because that’s what it is. It’s just lemon, salt, and black pepper.
I recommend you find a place that sells black peppercorns that you can grind yourself. You can taste the difference immediately. I get my black pepper at the same place I get my coffee beans (along with the salt, pink Himalayan, which I grind also, but that’s not as important). As for the lemon, get a real one and squeeze it with your hand over a strainer, or get a lemon squeezer. I love my personal portion with half a lemon, but this might be too much for you, so just squeeze it into a spoon and use that if you want less.
Mixing
Add the salt, the pepper, and the lemon on top of the salad. If your bowl is full of salad to the point that pushing a spoon in to mix it means you’ll end up spilling stuff over (as the case was for me), just cover it with another bowl, upside down. Then, above a sink (because some juice will spill out), carefully turn the whole thing over, and back - do this 3 to 5 times, and… it’s ready.
You could make the salad in a bigger bowl and mix it. Actually, you can also use your hands (you washed them, right? And you use them anyway to chop the veggies, so you’ve already touched everything). It is sometimes easier to “massage” the salad gently.
Stuff to change around
You could easily substitute vegetables in the salad depending on what’s available. A red onion (I’d do half) instead of the radishes, or perhaps some Seitan-based meat instead of the feta cheese or the tofu. You could also add almonds or pine nuts to the mix if you feel fancy (want super fancy? throw the pine nuts into a frying pan and heat over low for a few minutes to toast them lightly). You can change the portion or how fine you cut also.
Re: Who Knows That You Blog?
David at Forking Mad + asked: “Do you tell people you blog?” which also made its way to Kai. I saved both posts in my Bookmarks (which is Micro.blog’s take on ‘Read it Later’/Pocket) and planned to answer at some point, but then David emailed me the other day and reminded me of this question.
David’s take is that if it shouldn’t be public, it wouldn’t end up on his blog. Kai is more or less of a similar opinion. For me though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced.
I don’t use my real name on my blog like Kai or Kev. JTR is totally made up. It wasn’t always JTR: it evolved over the last 15 years or so, give or take, and it stuck.
Back when I started writing, my posts used to be more R-rated, and the places I worked at weren’t the kind of organizations that wanted to associate with R-rated material. It wasn’t anything offensive (I don’t think), just… uncouth.
With time, both my workplace(s) and my posts changed to meet in the middle of that spectrum. I work for a big medical center in NYC, and most of my more mature-oriented posts are philosophical, not the dramatic angsty kind. Some of them can still raise eyebrows probably, but I imagine most people would just shrug and move on if they’re uncomfortable. There’s a lot of stuff on this blog, and these kinds of posts are just another dash of flavor to the overall theme, so I feel it’s not such a big deal.
At the same time, I don’t usually tell people I blog. My partners know, my sister knows (I send her a few links here and there for my thoughts), and while my parents know about my blog, both language barrier and lack of interest (I ramble about tech most of the time) mean that they don’t really read it. And if they do and find something, well, my lifestyle is already unorthodox enough for them to just sigh and shake their head and move on with their lives.
So yes, nuanced is a good way to put it. My relationships with different people and the topics I write about mean that some people know I blog, but most don’t. I don’t keep this blog a secret. If someone really wanted to find out my real name, they could find it easily enough. At the same time, it does require some work; it’s not exactly the kind of information you’d get straight out of Google (at least I don’t think so), but then again, if it happens, not the end of the world.
That’s the other thing I started realizing not too long ago: I stand behind who I am today in a way I haven’t in the past (and couldn’t). My about page says I’m non-monogamous for example, and I mention in a few places I see myself as a queer person simply because I don’t identify as a “straight” man (but I don’t see myself as gay, bi, or all the other fancy labels which I don’t care much for).
While this might sound like too much information for a simple question like “who knows that you blog,” I don’t think so - at least not in my case. That’s because I write about these things, which means I should at least be open to a conversation about them. Maybe not with every person (it is personal after all), but in general, it’s not a blocked off category. By the way, I don’t think this means every person who writes about personal things should be open to a conversation about them. It’s a choice.
While I am generally open about my life (at least what I write about here), it doesn’t mean the people I write about are. When I mention my partners, I have their permission to do so. I can be a bit absurd about how explicit I make it sometimes, because I want and need to be sure they’re OK to be mentioned.
And a final note, in line with my recent posts about emails to other bloggers: I’d like to think of myself as a ‘safe person’ to talk to about these things. If someone is reading this post somewhere and feels a bit alone and/or against the world being somewhat different, be it LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, non-binary, or whatever, and feels like they want to reach out, please do. You’re my people, people. Feel free.
Well, I think that was a rather long and complicated way to answer a simple question, but I do tend to do that. Be good, and have a good night!
Watching 'Her' in 2026: Your Next Relationship Could be With Computer Code
Today we can say Her is a movie of our time, but when it came out (2013), AI as we know it today did not exist. The movie made my mind work overtime, but not because it was an amazing piece of film (it was decent at best), it is more the way it drags in the elephant in the room: can AI replace a relationship with a human being? Well, at the state “AI” is presented in the movie, it’s a given. The concept of “dating an AI” and having an AI as a girlfriend or boyfriend is, for better or worse, a rather popular social phenomenon.
OK, so what about AI at its current state? Well, I guess it depends on who you’re asking. And since you’re asking me, you’d better strap in. I’m going to start with a few strong opinions, and If you want a movie review or a recap, this is not it. If you’re here for the opinions, you might want to watch the movie first, but you don’t have to.
I’m of the opinion that sex is an impulse, maybe even an instinct. It’s a biological need that we have as primates. We’re influenced by sex everywhere, all the time, even if it’s nuanced and unconscious. It acts as a social magnet: both as attraction and rejection, shaping much of what we do, how we act, and how we perceive each other. Sex is also mostly physical. It’s what we see, smell, touch, hear, but not much beyond that. And, importantly, as a need, it has quantity - it can be satisfied. In that aspect, sex is like having a meal: after we have had our fill we feel full, and we don’t usually need more.
Love, on the other hand, is complicated. And I mean it literally: love is a complication revolving around something. When we love someone or something, we are not talking about the immediate existing reality, but also, if not mostly, what we make up ourselves. As such, love is built and based on our memories: some real, some stretched, some completely made up. You know how you love someone for long enough and there’s a moment you ask yourself why you love that person? You realize it’s those little things they do, the same quirks that can drive someone else up a wall. But to you, for some reason, they’re endearing. That’s because you’ve built a meaning around their behavioral patterns (the “quirks”). The patterns exist in reality, but their meaning and interpretation - that’s all you. This is why you can also love each person differently, for different reasons. But, take away this interpretation, the meaning, and you take away the person stops being special: they are just a person. A stranger. This is why I believe Alzheimer’s is so devastating: when someone you love forgets who you are to them, they essentially lose the ability to love you. You alone carry the weight of those memories and, thus, the love for that person. However, you don’t stop loving them because you remember your memories and the meaning of that person is still there.
Indeed, this “finding little things charming complex” doesn’t need to be reciprocated for you to love someone. People have “fallen in love” with celebrities who in turn had no idea the person loving them (the fan) even exists (see for example Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction, a study on attraction toward celebrities, and the interesting case of the “Lonesome Girl” in the 1950s). This phenomenon has only grown stronger with video games (guilty) and sites like OnlyFans during COVID (I don’t have a solid and free study to link to here, but do look it up; these studies exist). The bottom line: you don’t need a reciprocating human being to love said human being. Or for that matter - and here’s where I’m finally getting to it - some thing. It can be anything. If you want to explore this in movie format, Tom Hanks plays it nicely in Cast Away with Wilson. This, in itself, leads to some interesting studies.
So can people be in love with AI for that matter? Absolutely. Is this the kind of relationship you can have with a reciprocating human partner? Of course not. But here we encounter two important limitations in the movie.
For one, the movie has an interesting (and for me, welcoming) take on monogamy and love. Spike Jonze (director and writer of Her) took monogamy as the default for most people when they think about love, and I agree that this is the default for most. As for me, I’m on Samantha’s side - she is capable of loving 641 people at once, and she explains how it’s possible nicely. Remember when I said you love each person differently? I believe that’s part of it. Sure, love comes with the same “butterfly effect” across different people (and objects), but details matter. You can love someone to bits, and it doesn’t change the fact that you can love another for different reasons.
You can disagree, but as a non-monogamous person, that was a “fuck yeah!” moment for me in the movie. I am gratefully experiencing loving connections with several different reciprocating humans (and only humans for now, though my espresso machine does come close sometimes) every day. The notion that love = one and only one person has been false for me for almost two decades, and I’m far from being the only one.
Still, as far as the movie goes, monogamy seems to be a requirement for the kind of love Theodor needs: love in the “traditional” sense, the love that doesn’t develop and move forward the way Samantha’s love does. Love is dynamic. It’s an experience, or rather, a collection of those (memories, remember?) which is similar to what Samantha feels, or I’d say, what Samantha evolved to understand she feels. And yes, since I feel this is going to be the next question, you can love someone and let them go at the same time. It happens all the time. Sometimes it’s even a requirement to keep loving someone, as odd as it may sound. I don’t have kids myself, but I think parents might experience this sort of struggle every day as their kids grow up (feel free to let me know).
Sex is the other limitation in Her. According to the movie, it seems that sex is a requirement for love, and Theodore and Samantha do have sex. Well, first: not true (you can argue it’s a requirement for a “romantic” kind of love, and I’d argue with you there too, but this is becoming an essay I already ran out of coffee for); and second… let’s talk about this for a minute. Adult hats on, please.
I said earlier that sex is mostly a physical need (answered by an orgasm), much like being hungry (answered by food), or tired (answered by sleep), and so on. Sex is a bit unique, since you could satisfy the need for it on your own (masturbation), but I think we can agree that for the most part it’s better with a reciprocating partner. We can probably also agree that a character in an erotic novel or a video game, while not reciprocating, is more rewarding than nothing. So, if we agree here, can we also agree on a spectrum, with masturbation on one end and “a fully reciprocating human being” on the other? And further, can we agree that on that spectrum, sexting is somewhere between masturbation and a reciprocating partner? Alright, so, sex with an AI can probably fit on it somewhere too, probably a bit beyond (“more satisfying” than) masturbation.
Now let’s take this further.
Imagine we have human androids, with silicon skin, soft tissues, and something resembling sexual organs to a sufficient degree to be, essentially, advanced sex toys. If we couple them with AI, which should be better at sexting than half of the humans (an over-simplified statistics: AI is built on samples of human text, including erotica, and it will choose what’s popular and use preferred vocabulary etc, making it a decent (but not great) basic writer), is it so hard to believe someone can be in love with such an Android based on what we said so far? An Android that can make them feel like their feelings and desires are reciprocated? I mean, if we’ve already agreed humans can love volleyballs and can have sex with their own hands, is this so far-fetched? Isn’t this possible?
OK JTR, calm down. Could doesn’t mean should, you say?
Really?
If you had sex androids, the kind that can provide even basic sexual services (glorified and expensive sex toys), which can satisfy the need for sex at least to a degree, isn’t that a good thing, like satisfying other needs? Think, for a moment, about the negativity that happens around the need - the hunger - for sex when it’s satisfied. Think of the suffering. The violence. This destructiveness is based on the fact that sex necessitates, at least to a degree, another human being - a human being who, too often, does not have the same need and wants nothing to do with it. So. Is it so bad to at least have this as an option? Is a sexual android so bad morally, next to, say, a vibrator? or a fleshlight? an erotic novel? a porn film? …Why?
And such sex androids would have additional benefits. No health concerns, for one. They could be used for training (kinks? BDSM?) and for guidance (sex education for adults). You could use them to alleviate depression and rejection issues. You could perhaps reduce human trafficking. Think of it. It could be a good tool, just like AI today could (and often is) a good tool. And like any tool, especially AI today, it can be abused, but that’s beyond the point I’m trying to make here.
The movie Her did not put these thoughts in my head. But it did give me a good reason to talk about these things, and a good medium to do so. You will probably not get the same experience from this movie, but hey, maybe you will. And if you want to talk about it, feel free to email me.
A proper weekend & birthday plans
Happy to have a proper weekend.
Last Saturday, around this time, I was working with my team on an important upgrade at work that included server and client upgrades, which in turn meant logging into individual workstations and performing a bunch of repetitive steps. It didn’t turn out as planned, and the process was (and still is) riddled with problems that are still affecting us.
A little later that same morning, I decided to take a break and walk over to the local Saturday farmer’s market. It’s about 40 minutes to 1.5 hours of walking, depending on how fast I want to go (there’s a park in the way, and I enjoy going through its paths).
I’m glad I ended up making myself take that walk. Work was pressing, but we got to a certain standstill, and I grabbed the chance and used the incoming blizzard as an excuse to get groceries. That walk, which was the shortest one I ever took to the market, made all the difference. I need my walks.
One of the things I determined to do after the weekend ended and our upgrade project started to derail into the following Monday morning was to pay more attention to my personal projects. It sounds so easy, written here in Emacs on a new Saturday morning, while water is boiling (duh!) coffee is brewing, but it’s not. I think that for some of us, work is just a different kind of drug.
What also came out of that decision was to plan my birthday as an event for the first time, I believe, in my entire life.
As a kid, my birthdays were taken care of by my parents or teachers to some extent. Growing up, this was always a headnod kind of event, maybe an excuse to take a day off for myself. This year, however, the number of friends and partners around me, combined with my family (who apparently enjoyed my grumpy company on our recent trip to Disneyland), who also wanted some JTR time, made me realize I need to organize the birthday as a thing. There were simply too many people.
To some of you, this is no big deal - but I assure you, this antisocial hermit who writes in front of you knows nothing of such things. At best, he goes to some small gathering at a friend’s event.
So I did what the cool kids do these days and downloaded Partyful (don’t worry, I planned the whole thing on Emacs as well). Finding a place to eat and a place to drink was easy, and my birthday this year falls on a weekend, which helped. A little bit of calling to these venues reminded me that, in a very normal New York manner, no one takes your reservations seriously so far in advance, and that I’m expected to call a week beforehand, if not just a day prior. What was left was to poke and ask, and I was surprised to see that so far everyone wants to show up, even those who need to travel a bit extra or even take a day off.
I’m humbled by this. I don’t understand how I got to this point of having such a number of caring people in my life, both friends and more intimate partners1. It’s not shocking in the sense of “what the hell happened,” because of course, I know these people and spent time with them, and we keep in touch, so the outcome is that they’d like to show up, logically speaking. But logically speaking is one thing, and emotionally understanding (is there such a thing?) is another.
More than just a birthday or a social event though, to me it’s yet another hallmark of my personal life. I’ve built myself up and improved to the point where I can do this: invite people to an event I’m planning and have enough people to do it with. Some are born with this ability, others gather it naturally in their teen years, but for me, this wasn’t even a struggle in the past: it was just nothing before. An empty space without a definition.
A bit of this has to do with accepting who I am and what people I want to have around me as a result. Again, this sounds simple, but it’s not. A recent self-recording of myself venting and then analyzing just that took about a week of self-reflection, and apparently I still am largely clueless. It’s a work in progress that never stops.
Well then. Here’s to some fun to be had? Hmm.
Footnotes
1 : I don’t really separate those. On a spectrum of friendship, when someone becomes close, they can also become intimate. There’s no line in the sand drawn to define where the “friendship zone” ends and that of a more intimate partnership begins; each relationship is different because each person is different.
About living in Madhattan
Reading through my journal, last year today was when we were officially cleared to move into our apartment. Most of you who read this probably wouldn’t understand what the big deal is, but if you’ve been accepted into a co-op in Manhattan before, you’d be saying, “Why in hell would you put yourself in such a situation?” The answer is even more of the “huh??” kind: I didn’t know what I was getting us into.
Moving is always crazy, but in NYC, it’s pushed to another level. You can’t even look for apartments until about a month before you move, because no one would take you seriously. Apartments are sold within a month to 10-day period, anything older than that means something’s wrong, and then no one wants the place.
So while we eyed this apartment about three months before the move, nothing really moved until about a month before the move itself. And then it was time to get approved. I won’t get into the whole process, but I will say it involved all kinds of bank statements (all must be notarized by a third party), credit statements, official notice of employment, saving accounts, and a bunch of forms to sign that include weird things like the notion that you must have rugs at the place and that you are not allowed into certain part of the building. Everything revolving around these agreements means you also pay more money to have the board look over the papers, and if the move happens to be on a weekend, you’d pay a fine, so you must take off from work. There was even an interview, the kind I’d expect to have when I look for a job, though that part was fun.
This would maybe be normal if we were buying the place, but we were just looking to rent. And the biggest kick in the nuts was the fact that in NYC you can’t rent (sublet, legally speaking, though it would be rent anywhere else) an apartment in a co-op building for more than two years unless special arrangements are made. Why? I don’t know. I still didn’t fully get a satisfactory answer to this, but it seems to be more like a city-wide custom than anything else. So one more year in this place, and then (supposedly) we will be looking for a new place.
I like living in the city, and I love this apartment. I love the neighborhood. We managed to find a place in Manhattan that is quiet enough to recognize the birds by sound and neighbors who are kind and quiet and don’t smoke right outside of your kitchen door when you cook.
If you haven’t caught on yet, you have to be a little nuts and adopt a lifestyle to live here.
To start with the obvious, I don’t think you can have kids and live here unless you make more than a 6-digit salary. Way more. Then, you don’t really have a good quality of life unless you lucked out somehow (as we did). There’s always the constant noise of sirens, helicopters, horns, and people yelling (at each other, their phones, other cars, you, whatever). The filth is everywhere: on the streets, rolling in the wind, in the subways (causing fires on tracks and delays), on the sidewalks when you zig-zag your way around dog-made mines left by their generous owners. Homelessness is a constant problem, especially in the winter, and some of these folks are dangerously mentally unstable (the kind that scream at you at the top of their lungs about Jesus and the devil when you take a subway ride). You can’t live here and not be affected by something, somehow. And I’ve been here for over a decade.
Still, or perhaps because of this, somehow it all works out. The commute to work is impossibly good and lets me not worry about taking a quick power nap throughout the day. I find and go out with awesome people who are all around me, who would require me to drive far and long anywhere else. The contrast between having the city available to you on one hand and the beauty of the parks on the other is unmatched. You learn to appreciate the quiet moments and the nice people here so much more because they are few and far between. It’s an experience that, I think, would be good for everyone to go through, at least for a limited time.
I don’t know that I’ll stay in the city forever. Perhaps I’ll find myself at a bigger house in the suburbs sometime soon, perhaps also behind a steering wheel (I haven’t owned a car in a very long time). For now though… I’m still here.
Took the bus to NJ today to see a new location for work. GW Bridge Terminal. 📷
Things I want to do this year
I’m not big into New Year’s resolutions, but there are a few things I want to start doing again. The first things I’m going to list won’t surprise anyone: I want to work less and spend more time on things I enjoy, and I want to be more physically active.
Over my life, especially the last 10 years or so, I stopped and then picked up jogging time and time again. The last time I picked it up was after I saw a cardiologist half a year ago. It’s nothing too bad; actually, it was better than I expected. But for me, a person who used to be more active, it was a reminder to work on my body and stay in shape.
I achieved my goal back then (running up the street without stopping), but I stopped soon after, for no particular reason. Winter came, and with it, the lack of motivation to be outside in sub-freezing temperatures. I used to run in this weather fine, and folks like Eric (who seemed to moved his blog? Hmm…) make me jealous, but in a good way. There’s also my partner River, who I affectionately call Gastone at times (they can eat six eggs in one breakfast, and it all seems to go directly to their biceps), who makes me feel guilty for not using my bedroom gym more often, again - in a good way.h
The other challenge I have is sleep. I’m a self-diagnosed chronic insomniac. I usually don’t sleep more than 6 hours, and I have two bad nights a week, averaging about 4 hours. While sleep hygiene and a consistent sleeping schedule are not as helpful to me as they would be to other folk, they do help. My goal is to be asleep on the same day I woke up - that is, not after midnight. I can sometimes fix sleep deprivation with naps, but work pressure keeps my brain occupied, even if they don’t message me with some new emergency. I think that if I manage to hold on for a week with the above condition, things will get back to normal-ish. Hopefully.
Another thing I want to do is to get more into music. I got a keyboard last month, and I want to learn how to use a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, aka the software musicians use to edit and create tracks) to start playing with things. I’m basically brand new to all of this, so I’m learning to read music sheets from scratch, and it’s slow, but it’s going.
Then finally - and this might sound weird - I want to see if I can reach out to younger folks and get them interested in non-cloud technology. This is vague, I know. I see how everyone is dependent on their phones and big tech companies, especially during the AI age we live in, and get lost in it, often spending an arm and a leg on services they don’t really need. I used to teach at some point in my life, and helping out with tech is something I enjoy, so there’s that. Again, not sure how to do that. It’s a big project, and I get a mad rash whenever I touch TikTok or whatever, so it’s challenging.
One thing I managed not to compromise on recently is cooking at home and watching my diet a bit more. Maybe it’s easier for me to do because I already enjoy vegetables, but I took it to the next level after I got my Vitemix. Here’s breakfast with some homemade hummus:
My morning oats recipe and the carrot conspiracy
I’ve been enjoying oats for breakfast for the last week or so. It’s an old habit I’m picking up again. I’m not a big eater, and I usually skip breakfast altogether (just coffee, then I eat a snack and go straight for lunch), but as I’m starting to exercise again (very slowly), I’m getting hungry again, and this is good and quick.
First, I want to share how I make my oats; then further down you can read my grumbles about what went wrong this morning and why. There’s a hidden tip in there..! So hit click and sub… err.. sorry, I’ve been watching too many YouTube flicks. Anyway! Oats!
Here’s how I make my oats in the morning:
So, what went wrong this morning?
Today specifically, I wanted to try Mango in my oats. I had a pack of frozen mango for a while. Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t really Mango, it was a Mango mix, which is basically more like “there’s a lot of crap in here, but you may find a piece of mango here and there”. I wouldn’t have gotten a mix if I’d known it was a mix, but my brain saw the bag’s yellowish mango color and the word Mango in bold, and that was it. Take a look, wouldn’t you miss it if you don’t read it carefully? Marketing people: 1, JTR: 0. Well played, guys…
What they don’t tell you is how much of the other crap is in there versus the actual thing you want, in this case, mango. Of course they added carrots. Carrots are everywhere. It’s the main ingredient in my stir fry mix, it finds its way to my trail mix, and when I get frozen vegetables to add to a soup or a quick salad, they take over the whole thing; I might as well make a carrot soup. There are so many carrots everywhere, which is why I started hating carrots years ago. I’m trying to slowly recover, but boy, these mixes make it difficult. I guess carrots are much cheaper than mangoes.
Also, since I’m giving you my recipe for quick oats: pumpkin seeds, or any seeds or nuts for that matter, you need to add on the top of the oats. You don’t want them to absorb water; they get mushy and lose their crunch and some of the flavor with it.
Enjoy your oats! And be careful of the carrots conspiracy.
Breakfast from earlier. Oats, strawberries, almonds, and some golden raisins for sweetnes. Trying out somw new-old photo apps I haven’t used it a while.
You know what, I like that I’m bald. I can always joke with other folks at work (“Are you sure you want to make this a regular meeting? You’ll end up like me!” - at which point I point my head and get a laugh or two).
If there was any period in my life when someone judged me for being bald (say, a potential date) then screw it, I didn’t need them anyway. It’s a low-level “no shitty people” filter in that regard, kind of like being short (which is another thing).
It’s easy to take care of and it’s cheap. It’s cooler in the summer, but easy enough to warm up in the winter (I love beanies and hoodies). My nieces love petting my head after I shave it, a way of saying hello to Uncle JTR. I think it makes the beard and mustache stand out more, and when I wear my leather jacket, it makes me a bit more of a badass on the outside (on the inside I’m always nice of course)
I think I started balding in my 20s, after the army. My mom was worried and took me to a “hair doctor,” who showed me diagrams of how I would look in a year, 3 years, 5 years… I looked, and I remember I just didn’t care, something I guess he wasn’t really used to. Just a part of me that I always accepted.
Coffee, sex, and weirdos
I had a dream that I was opening up a coffee store in the morning. There were a lot of customers already inside the cafe, which had very white walls, two floors, and plenty of light. They were all waiting (very patiently) for me to open the bar. One of the women noted that I work alone and dictated a large order of six drinks for her and her friends. I still remember one of those was a Mocchiato.
This dream doesn’t surprise me. While for many people college highlighted an exotic time in their lives, for me it was working at Starbucks in New Jersey in my 20s.
I was back in the US after finishing serving in the Israeli army with a fresh Green Card. I was living at home, and my mom was a dedicated coffee drinker who fell in love with Starbucks, and we had a neighborhood store within walking distance from us. She was a regular and she knew how to push things, and the manager was one of those folks with a natural warm smile on his face. That and the fact that Starbucks provided health insurance for part-timers meant it didn’t take much time for me to start working there.
Back then, Starbucks was still that “third place,” especially in those neighborhood stores. We had our regulars, especially during closing shifts, which were calmer. It was also when I worked with the more interesting people I remember, and, to be frank, attractive ones. I developed a series of mini-crushes toward some of our shift supervisors, especially the ones that turned out to be weird, as if by a magnet. There was a tall beatiful one who had a natural punk-goth look who ended up being a mortician (she went to a school and everything). There was another that actually had a side gig working as a model for a beer company, doing a couple of commercials in a magazine.
My favorite was a scrawny, quiet, skinny girl who was prone to what I know today were panic attacks. She always took the closing shift, and always worked with her best friend, who was also the first transwoman I’ve met. As I learned after a couple of weeks working with them, she was also her roommate. That skinny weird girl, whom I’m going to call Alice here, was what you can maybe call my first “girlfriend.” I’ve dated girls before, but it was because I was supposed to and because I was worried I’m going to die a virgin, as many guys do once they reach their 20s without having sex. Alice and I clicked and became friends first, and somehow I got accepted into her weird anxious lifestyle, enough for her to trust me to touch her one evening, offering a massage.
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I really didn’t think about having sex with her at the time. We worked a hard shift together, she was in a bad mood, and her body was aching all over. She had several surgeries, and there was a part of her skeleton that was metal (I forget which). Since she was kind to me all that time, I just offered it once she got a chance to sit in the back, sighing in agony and straightening her neck. I don’t think she thought much about it back then either; she just accepted the offer while her tall roommate/friend and apparently guardian was watching us (OK - me) suspiciously, occupying the bar in case someone came in.
Things came naturally after that, and we became affectionate. She had me follow her home after one of our shifts, and I’m going to end the story here in case your kids are watching over your shoulder, but you can keep your imaginations going.
The point I think I’m trying to make here is that she was the first person I remember mutually clicking with mentally and later physically1. In my 40s, I can nod and say “of course,” having only been able to maintain relationships with alternative folks from different walks of life (and failing measurably at whatever normal bf/gf relationships dared sneaking into my world). The bond between these “alternative” folks, as I call them here, sex, and coffeeshops (and books, but that’s a different story) is something that still exists strongly to this day, even though I’m sure I’m far from being the only person who is attracted to their barista.
For a long time, my ideal workplace has been working in a coffee shop behind the bar, even owning one. I had the idea of opening a place called “Insomnia Cafe”, where I and like-minded folks (the “alternatives”) would operate a coffee shop from dusk till dawn, minus the death and the crosses (vampires welcome, of course). A place that will always allow people to work on their laptops, which was one of my favorite things to do. I went as far as thinking of offering “membership” and even a crashpad - a place for people to crash and sleep for a few hours if they need to - and talked to my sister about it. I don’t know that I’m still up for those late-night/early-morning shifts, but the idea of having a cafe like that is still something that comes up now and then.
Well.
It’s time for me to take my empty coffee mug to the kitchen and chisel away at some work projects. But before I go, I want to say that if you’re one of these people I mentioned and you want to get in touch, please do. I’d love to hear from you. Some folks reached out by email after I wrote similar posts, and it’s always been great to write back. I know some of you are on the fence, or not sure what to say, or you’re not sure you want to, and that’s OK also. I’d like to think this corner of the web is a nice safe place for us weirdos.
Have a good day, and enjoy your coffee or beverage of choice.
Footnotes
1 : to be honest, she wasn’t the first weird person that liked me, but she was the first one where things were mutual. There was another person in highschool, an outcast who stood out, but I was too dumb and naaive to let myself just be myself. Years and years alter I’m still kicking myself for this.
Let's talk Soap
So, soap. No, I’m not talking about an Emacs package (though, of course, it exists) or some fancy IT tool, but actual soap - the kind you use in the shower.
I’ve been on a search for a good soap for years. I’ve found a couple that I like more and a few like less, but so far I don’t have one. Maybe it’s because different soaps are good for different things: in my case, I use one soap for my face and scalp (I’m a bald dude) and another for everything else.
I prefer gentler soaps that smell “manly.” I usually stay away from all the man-woman branding stuff as much as I can, but generally speaking, I prefer the “manly” scents over the feminine ones. If I had to point toward a scent I like, I’d point to lavender (which I also like in my Earl Grey, which makes it in a London Fog latte, one of my favorites, but I digress).
My current go-to is Everyone (for everybody) soap, but it’s mostly autopilot. At the moment I’m actually using some of the generic Dove men’s soaps, before I try something else. My neighborhood pharmacy carries a few different brands, so I have more experimentation to do.
I mentioned earlier that I use a different soap for my face and scalp, and for that, I usually use CeraVe stuff. At some point in the past, I got their face lotion, liked it, and stayed with it - and from there I continued with their soaps. I’ve read in a couple of places that shampoos are good for the scalp (that’s what they’re meant for), and I use them now and then, but nothing really sticks.
Another word about body soaps: I’m not sure if I prefer liquid in one of those plastic bottles or a bar. The liquid is convenient, but I have to keep getting more. A bar is usually more concentrated (and can have a stronger scent), and I like that I can keep it in one hand, or just scrape some against a body brush for rough skin, like on the feet - but then you have one hand, and besides it always slides away and fall as if it has it obays its own gravity rules. Weird.
So that’s where I am with soap. What about you? Would you mind sharing?
Overinformation
I wanted to try the fake eggs (Just Eggs), so I did, and well… They taste like putty. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. There are so many ingredients with weird chemicals in them! What the hell am I eating anyway? I started to freak out; I mean, I can’t even have scrambled eggs anymore!
Of course this is nonsense. Egg whites are a thing, and one egg here and there won’t kill me, and there are also so many other things I can make for breakfast. But tell it to my overwhelmed head that watched an hour worth of vegan YouTube videos yesterday. They all look so quick and easy if you know what to buy, where to buy, and have a blender, and have a big kitchen with all the equipment you know you need and know how to operate. Yes yes, as I told myself just yesterday, Rome was not built in one day. I know, I know! And everyone has advice, because everyone wants to help (at least I’m surrounded by caring people, that’s a plus, I know for many vegans the start is a big “wtf is wrong with you” from family and friends), and it’s just so much.
I know this is how I roll. I always get everything into my head, it just loves sponging all the information. So now I’m like a kid with a big Lego set spilled on the carpet in front of him, trying to build a spaceship, ya know? It’s just a lot.
Today there’s a farmer’s market. I’m going to get myself veggies which I’m familiar with and focus on a salad (which I’m familiar with), and all I’m going to do is to spill beans into it. See how this works out. Then, since I have that soft tofu, I will substitute the Just Eggs (more like, just plastic) for tofu scrambles with some more veggies (tomatos should be good enough) and spices. Start with stuff I know. Another protein shake here, another hummus snack there, breath… breath… you’ll be fine.
One thing I’m realizing as I transition to vegan foods is the need to cook more often. 🥗
Most restaurants don’t have a lot of vegan options (even here in NYC, it’s kind of an “add-on” section on the menu, and dedicated vegan restaurants close down all the time), and vegan groceries are usually super-duper processed.
Looks like I’ll need to get over my fear of food processors and blenders. But at the same time, a mental note for myself that everything takes time, and I won’t just “learn kung fu”. It’s a life thing, not a week thing.
I'm 70 percent vegan already...
Note: what I’m making below are tacos made of seitan meat replacement and soy-based “cheese.”
The cardiologist explained the test results to me. The stress test was excellent, no surprise there. With low blood pressure and a healthy heart, I can keep running and exercising.
My Carotid Artery Doppler Exam though (ultrasound scan for the arteries in the neck) was a different story. If I didn’t have a family history, I can imagine he’d maybe say that we’ll watch it before we start with medication.
But I do have a family history, and the plaque is there. I was expecting this with my last blood test results. So medicine it is.
My feelings are mixed. There’s worry and some sadness, but I prefer it over stupid (and dangerous) ignorance. A sense of commitment and responsibility toward my exercise routine. There’s also a sense of purpose I need to explore, to see where it leads and from where.
I’ve already given up cheese, and I can’t remember how many years ago I gave up milk. Chicken and fish are probably next (I have given up other meat a long time ago).
The real challenge, I think, is to find something to eat in restaurants and in social settings. But this NYC, home to many vegans. One more won’t make much of a difference.
Yesterday we finished watching season two of Severance, and it got me so angry. I was fuming. I had to go for a walk and leave poor Nat with the takeout containers to clean (I did apologize and say he can just put it in a bag, but the shock I gave him was a different story)
Why was I so angry? To explain that I need to explain more than a decade of my lifestyle and the impact it had on my life in light of what is considered to be normal or usual, which is what I suspect the show’s target audience is.
Don’t get me wrong, the show itself is great, the story is good, and my anger wasn’t really directed at the story or the characters in it; it was mostly directed at its creators and the mindset. And from there it escalated to the whole “what’s wrong with the world,” and me barking at clouds again.
The good thing that came out of it, besides the nice walk, was to start a new lifestyle category on my blog and see how it goes. The trick is to know what not to include under “lifestyle,” because I have a tendency to use “life” as an overall category for everything that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
So while I’m not 100% sure what it will be yet, it’s there, with its own dedicated RSS feed and all (I need to explain the feeds of my blogs a bit better for you RSS folks out there).
Just another day
In a rather genius moment, I scheduled a meeting to review an intake form with the crew at 13:00 today, when I had a doctor’s appointment at 14:45 (travel time is approximately 40 minutes) that I had forgotten about.
The meeting, of course, took longer than planned, which meant I had to rush and take a Lyft instead of the subway. I got there on time, even though we got stuck behind a truck that was backing into a construction site. I love me some car horn symphony and yelling.
I did manage to get to the doctor on time, and decided to walk back to West Side through Central Park, which was nice, besides the heat. Heavy and humid, it was especially punishing when I couldn’t find shade.
On the train back home, I realized the ride was a bit longer than it should have been, and the station numbers seemed off. Turns out I forgot I was on the D train and kept riding it into the Bronx instead of getting off on time and switching.
Got some time to chill at home with a cool shower and a nap, and now I’m about to watch X-Files with NK. So, you know, not everything is annoying; some things are still nice.
I need to make some changes
Yesterday I went to the cardiologist for a physical stress test. That’s the kind of test where they have you run on a treadmill on an incline with a bunch of wires attached to you to check how your heart and your circulatory system work. I asked for this exam because of hereditary high cholesterol levels that are raging in both my mom and dad, and going back to my grandparents.
I’m usually an active guy who tries to exercise every single day on my gym equipment here at home. I’m far from being “jacked” or anything like that, but I’ve never been overweight, and all in all, I’ve kept an almost vegetarian diet for most of my life (chicken breast twice a week or so). I cut out cheese and dairy from my diet completely about two months ago. This will only help somewhat; it will probably only buy me a couple of years before I have to take medications, probably.
I was happy with the quality stress check they did on me yesterday. It was long and thorough. They took the time (about half an hour) to check everything before they put me on the treadmill. The test itself started fine, I walk every day (even on short days, I try always to take the stairs), and I was comfortable even at high walking speeds with an incline. But when they had me start running, I was out of breath within minutes.
This is a test that is designed to push my comfort levels. To get to that point, they had to include higher speeds and additional incline, but still, I didn’t like how fast I was uncomfortable with jogging. I used to have the ability to switch to what I call “running breaths,” where I breathe through my nose and exhale through my mouth and maintain this for a pretty long time. At my best, I would go for more than an hour at a low speed before I stopped, still comfortable. I was never a fast runner, but I was in decent shape. Yesterday, I had to ask them to stop. I was lying on the bed after the run so that they could check my heart rate, and I was breathing hard and couldn’t hold my breath too long when they asked me so that they could check me.
This annoys me. To this point, I’ve been fairly flexible with my exercise routine, and to be fair, I got around to it most days of the week sooner or later (sometimes after a nap, as I still have my sleeping issues). But these are strength exercises with weights, and they are usually short, around 20-30 minutes or so. I tried to pick up running a few months ago, but I let my daily workload at my job and the rising temperature convince me to give up on it.
These days, a week doesn’t go by where people close to me are telling me that I work too much, probably because that’s all I talk about. I can make adjustments to my sleep hygiene, but I know it will only go so far. I’ve been sleeping too little and making up for it later in the day for some five or six years, and I’m able to adjust to a degree.
The problem with running is that it needs to be a morning habit. I need to wake up early and have enough energy to go outside. I can start by walking and go on from there - this is my usual Jedi mind trick - but the time of day must be the morning because there is no later time for running. That’s a problem because of my sleep, which is a problem because of work, and the little time I already have for myself as is.
About Dunbar and (not having) Relationship Circles
I have an indirect problem with the Dunbar number and measuring relationships in circles. It’s not Dunbar; the limit is how many close (or best) friends I can have. That number (the Dunbar number) makes sense to me. It’s more that I don’t really have these circles people talk about.
While I have some form of a hierarchy in my relationships, I probably don’t separate them the same way most people would. For one thing, I’m non-monogamous, which means I don’t have just one “life” partner. I gave up on trying to make this monogamous model work for me a long time ago. For another, intimacy does not automatically mean sex to me, which I feel is heavily indicated when people say “intimate.”
So now that I look at these charts, what are my circles? If I’m comfortable with someone and feel close enough to them (good friend? best friend?), an intimate connection is possible, at least for me. There’s no separation. You could argue with me that an intimate relationship could maybe “promote” someone from a “good” friend to a “best” friend, but that’s not true for me either, especially if you mean sex.
Now add to that the fact that I’m child-free to this confusion (I don’t want to have kids, and neither do my partners), and the whole family unit model goes out the window.
OK, so where do I draw the circles?
That’s the thing. I don’t think I have circles. Maybe one circle, which is more like a cloud of “good friends” (which includes close friends, best friends, whatever friends) and just people I know. These folks can move closer to me and further apart, as they have over the years. Beyond the cloud, there’s another level of acquaintances, people I have a routine with (like co-workers) that are something Nick calls recurring strangers. And beyond that..? I don’t think I have much of anything. It’s just people.
So, I don’t know. I never quite fit into these norms, and I still don’t. For me, it’s just how I live.