Keeping with the routine, still exercising and keeping moderate during the week.   I did have a day of excess yesterday though.  Some friends of mine were headed to the NYC Autoshow and I ended up tagging along.  On the way over, we stopped for a couple drinks.  I had my maximum 2 drinks and we continued on.  I didn’t feel my usual “I wanna go home” feeling after drinking two, so the auto show was fine.  I am so over cars now that not even the Aston Martins or Bentleys did anything for me.  Just seems that everything looks the same now.  The only thing I liked in there was the Dodge Challenger.  I’m not sure if it was a concept or a production car though.   The new GT-R from Nissan sounded pretty cool, but looks similar to all the other cars that were there.  Unfortunately, that’s the only car I took a picture in front of, because I didn’t  think of taking pictures until the end of the show!
After the show we went to Hell’s Kitchen and introduced Be to all the appetizers.  She liked some, but not others.  We definitely built it up too much for her, but whatever,  I had 2 tuna tostadas which is all I care about!   I had 2 Jack & Diet Coke’s and then the waitress recognized me through a common friend, and we ended up with free tequila shots!
Unfortunately, it did not end there…  We got back to my place, and I opened up some of the old  tequila bottles I brought back from Mexico, but never tasted.  They weren’t all that great even though I spent a bundle on them :(  I had about 2 shots and decided that was all for the night.  I was waking up at all odd hours, drinking water, feeling dehydrated.  Never got nauseus, but I didn’t want to wake up for a while today.  It was a good day, but not one to repeat!

I haven’t been getting out much in the past few months and I saw KC maybe once since Thanksgiving.  I suppose I was just feeling self-conscious, but I know that’s nothing to worry about with this girl.  We went to this excellent italian wine bar in my neighborhood that’s only been open for a little while.  Bocca di Bacco had great food, great wine and great atmosphere.  They have several wines by the glass from all over Italy, not just Tuscany and Piedmont.  The open bottles are kept in those refrigerated nitrogen preservation systems.  I bought a tank of nitrogen a while back and used to keep the bottles preserved like that in my apartment in MA.  The phases I go through!  We got a couple appetizers and I got the pumpkin ravioli with butter/sage sauce.  This dish sounds familiar, and it might be one of the trendy dishes, but I don’t care!  It was something else!
About this girl..  The photo is a horrible, low light iPhone capture.  I forgot my camera yet again!  I tried to adjust the levels to get rid of the artifacts, and it ended up OK.  You can still tell from the horrible photo that she’s totally hot!  So I caught myself over-thinking today, which, when it comes to emotions, I’ve been trying to limit (I am my own worst enemy!).  I evaluated my feelings and came up with some weird observations.  I’m totally in love with this girl!! BUT, not in that way.  We don’t go out too often, but when we do, it really is a special occasion.  The conversation is fun, the food is perfect, the wine is just right, everything is the best, and in the euphoria of the evening, I catch myself repeating to myself with a smile “This is HAPPY!” and find myself cataloging everything accurately in my head.  Yet… that is the extent of it.  I don’t have those inclinations one might get when out with a girl like this!  What is that?!  I then caught myself “thinking” and stopped in my tracks!  Moving on….

I finished the Master Cleanse after being on it for 31 days. Exactly the same amount of time as last year. I just starting feeling weak and ache-y and decided it was time to come off. I should have gotten off a week and a half earlier, because all the weight I was going to lose was lost back then. I guess 25 pounds is the maximum I can lose on that thing. It’s been a few days, and I’m still losing weight. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’ve been keeping the food intake pretty light, and I continued exercising. I started with weights today, and I’m going to be really hurting over the next few days. I think my psychology will be a bit different now. I remember when I was trying to quit smoking, I would always say “Next Sunday will be my last day” The addict in me would then “load up” over the last few days of the week. I normally smoked a pack in about 2-3 days, but those “last days” I was smoking a pack a day, justifying it in my mind that they would be my last. A couple rationalizations later, and the Monday got pushed back to “that Friday”, or the Monday after that. Pretty soon I was smoking a pack a day for a whole month! The same thing happened to me this past holiday season with food. “As soon as I get back from Thanksgiving, I’ll start my regiment”, “just after Christmas”, etc. I was eating like a complete idiot during that time! and I gained the 25 pounds that I just lost in only a few months!. So now I’m back where I started a year ago deciding I needed to lose weight and maybe I’ll try this “Master Cleanse” thing. It was an educational year, and I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. I guess I’ll try this crazy “eat less and exercise” thing!
I noticed, during my “culinarily debaucherous” holiday, that most of the food I was eating wasn’t even all that good. Just a rut I fell into because I got lazy and wanted delivery all the time. I had all these plans when I moved to NY to try different things and there are more than enough places around me to do that. I just have to get over my hang-up about eating alone. I went to Mee’s the other day and ate by myself. I had an audiobook running in one ear, and I just lose myself in it. I think that will be my thing for the more casual places. Today though, I wasn’t by myself. Risa and I had been talking about hitting up a quality Ramen place for a while. I checked out eGullet and found some of their recommendations for the best ramen in the city. A name that kept coming up is in the area, so we hit it. Menchanko Tei was totally different than anything I’ve had before. I didn’t really associate the food in there with what I normally think of Japanese food. The noodles were extremely fresh, they had to have been made that day. The broth was excellent. I got the “Hakata Ramen” (A picture is in the link) I am NOT a fan of ginger, but it was rather subtle in my dish, and was actually good. They shaved up the mushrooms and ginger so that they were the same shape as the noodles. Ever time you chopstick’ed a bite of noodles, there was always some mushroom and ginger tangled up in there. Crafty! I definitely want to go back and try some of the other menu items. Maybe hit the other place “Sapporo” that looked like it had more variation of Ramen. Quite a step up from the little Top Ramen packages I grew up with! I only had my iPhone with me, so this was the best picture I could get. I gotta carry around the camera more!