Enough Said (2013)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Joel

Enough Said (2013) stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in a romantic comedy about two people, probably in their forties, and both with daughters about to leave for college, who meet randomly at a party. Although not initially attracted to each other, they sort of like each other. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a massage therapist, while James Gandolfini plays Albert, a somewhat shlubby fellow who works at a library for classic television — must be a California thing.

The wrinkle in the story is that at the same original party, Eva has also met Marianne, played by Catherine Keener. Marianne and Eve becomes both a friend and a client of Eva. In time, Marianne will tell a lot of stories about her terrible, shlubby ex-husband. Who Eva eventually learns is Albert, but she doesn’t let either Albert or Marianne know. Over a short period of time, all of Marianne’s criticisms began to color the relationship between Eva and Albert, and that’s all I will say about it,

It’s not a bad film. The plot unfortunately does not have much meat to it. The acting skills of both Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini (one of his last film roles) carry the movie, because they are both good performers. It’s an innocent rental, and it’s worth spending your time if you’re a fan of either actor. The film also features Toni Collette, FYI.

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Enough Said (2013)

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Before Sunset (2004)

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Joel

Last year, I watched for the first time Before Sunrise (1995), an interesting, intimate film by Richard Linklater from the 90’s. A lot of talking, mind you, but I was amazed by how intimate and real the film was. A simple film about two people without manufactured melodrama, a contrived plot, or what I would describe as a Hollywood ending. Starring only Ethan Hawks and Julie Delpy, I thought it was a really good film, but you wanted to know what happened next.

Nine years later (in 2004), Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke, reunited to jointly write the screenplay and put together a sequel, Before Sunset (2004). And I have to say that I liked this film better than the original. Taking place nine years later, much like the actual film, Hawke and Delpy are older and more mature, and they meet by happenstance in Paris. They spend a brief afternoon walking the streets of Paris trying to catch up. You learn about the truth of the past nine years for both of them. These two are nine years older, but you can still feel the love, the attraction, the connection. You can see that longing for each other, and for that happiness steaming from that one night in Vienna, right behind their eyes when they look at each other.

I liked that. That earnestness of it all. Life is not this carefree love affair. It is real and immediate. And they had lost each other for nine years. And all of a sudden, they were back in each other’s lives again. For that brief afternoon, what would happen?

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Before Sunset (2004)

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American Hustle (2013)

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Joel

While everyone else was watching Frozen for the umpteenth time, I went to see American Hustle. This is the 2013 film directed by David O. Russell. I’ve only seen three of this prior films, with mixed opinions:

  1. Three Kings [1999] – Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze, I barely remember the film, but I thought it was so-so, whenever I watched it between 2000 and 2002.
  2. I Heart Huckabees [2004] – I watched this as a rental back in July 2005. My brief review: “This movie sucked. It was quirky, and I don’t actually mind quirky. However, I found it to be a pointless 105 minutes, and frankly, a bit weird for the sake of being weird.”
  3. Silver Linings Playbook [2012] – The single film of his that I do remember, because we watched it last March. Now, this film, I did like. Quirky in a way, because of Bradley Cooper’s bipolar character, but we thought it was an interesting and engaging film.

Which brings us to the present day. The film takes place in New York 1978, and primarily about two con artists (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) who meet and start a partnership to con people out of money by agreeing to supply loans to desperate shmucks. They eventually get rolled up in an FBI sting led by Bradley Cooper’s character. Jeremy Renner and Jennifer Lawrence play supporting characters, but I won’t reveal too many details. The events of the film are loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. They don’t reveal this little tidbit until about halfway through the film, which honestly blew my mind, because I had heard about ABSCAM, but didn’t remember the particular details. I wonder if this came up in my 11th grade American History AP class one day, and I had been out that day?

Strong performances throughout the film, including Jennifer Lawrence. There was a pretty good soundtrack of 1970s-era disco music, so if you’re interested in a little retro music, go see the film. It’s not a deep or life-changing film, but it’s not a bad way to pass the time.

American Hustle (2013)

American Hustle (2013)

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Weekend road trip to Virginia

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Joel

My wife’s cousin Elizabeth was celebrating her 50th birthday this year, although she certainly doesn’t look more than 30. One side of the family hosted a party about two weeks ago, and the Kanianthra (Indian) side held a surprise birthday party this past weekend. We elected to pack on Thursday night, drive down on Friday evening after we all got back from work / school, and eaten a quick dinner. Originally planning to stay at a Westin in the area, we decided to stay with one of my wife’s cousins.

We, of course, didn’t get to pack the night before. I personally had a bit of a fire drill at work on Friday afternoon, and didn’t leave until 6pm. I eventually got home around 7pm, quickly packed my clothes (Nums took care of the rest of the packing for us while I was on the way.) We all scarfed down some leftovers, loaded up the car, and we were off. We reached our destination in 3 hours a little after 11pm.

On Saturday morning after some homemade breakfast, we got ready and made our way to the Wildfire steakhouse restaurant at Tysons Galleria. We were meeting Nums’ friend and former coworker Josh here for lunch. Nice place with delicious cornbread as appetizers. I would have gotten a larger dish, but we just had breakfast. I opted for a basic burger, nothing fancy. Everyone raved about their food, and both the service and decor were top notch. Next time, I want to come back for a nice steak dinner.

Nums and (DC) Joshua
Views of the Tyson Galleria
This mall is fancy

Afterwards, we walked around the mall briefly, and I went to check out the suits at Sarar. I’ve been on the hunt for new business suits to update my wardrobe for trips, without spending an arm and a leg. The Sarar store had some reasonably priced suits with what appeared to be good quality. I purchased two new suits, so that was a nice bonus on this trip.

We made our way back to the house, since suit shopping took up more time than expected. We got everyone cleaned up for the surprise birthday dinner. They held it at Elizabeth’s parents’ community clubhouse. It was good to see many of my wife’s relatives, but I didn’t know a majority of the attendees.  There was good food, some performances by the kids, and a lot of conversation. The party wrapped up by 10 pm, and we made our exit.

Sofia, Josh, Lily
The Chackos
Rami and son Naveen jamming on guitar
All of the cousins together

Sunday morning, we were on the road heading north, with a few pit stops:

  1. We attempted a quick 20 min drive by of a few specific D.C. landmarks that Josh wanted to see. We saw the back of the Lincoln Memorial, the side of the Jefferson Memorial, and we saw the Capitol Building from a distance. The White House was blocked off, and we had no idea where the Supreme Court building was. I’ll admit the drive by tour was less than satisfying, so we promised the boy that we would schedule another trip to D.C. later this year, and would make it more of a walking tour.
  2. We drove next to Arlington, Virginia, to meet up with Anthony, another friend / former coworker of my wife’s now living in the area. Because of the limited time for breakfast, we selected Bob & Edith’s Diner, a “greasy spoon” type diner. While it has garnered some good reviews from the locals, I found it to be nothing special, especially after they got my omelet order wrong. Next!
  3. We were on the road to Baltimore, Maryland, to meet up with my sister-sister-in-law and niece so the two of them (and my wife and kids) could watch Frozen for the umpteenth time. This time, it was the Sing a Long version. Hey, whatever makes you happy. Once was enough for me. Since I already found two suits the day before, my afternoon was free. So, I went to see American Hustle directed by David O. Russell. Not a great movie, but not a bad way to spend your Sunday afternoon either.

 

Nums and Anthony
Big poster for Captain America 2
The kids love Captain America — who doesn’t?

By 4 pm, everyone was done with their respective movie watching experiences, and we were back on the road for the final stretch to NJ and home. No time for lunch, so the kids snacked and relaxed. We arrived home around 5:30 pm, and as usual, the cats were somehow happy and disinterested to see us.

I picked up Domino’s for dinner, and it was good to be home again.

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Our MLK weekend trip to Michigan

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Joel

What’s not to love about a family road trip? Our two friends Paul & Biji had a son Daniel two years ago. Unfortunately, we never made the stars align properly to make it out to see them since Daniel’s birth. Correct. In two years. Chalk it up to a very busy two years where we were awfully busy, they were busy, a joint trip to the Outer Banks was cancelled, etc. The stars never aligned.

Going on more than two years, the need to rectify the situation became more important as time passed. We finally decided to spend some time over the MLK 3-day weekend in January. We would leave on Friday night, see a few friends, and come back Monday. We considered flying out there to maximize our free time and minimize the travel time, but four airfare tickets turned out to be a pricey affair.

We then planned to pack our suitcases Thursday night, work a regular full day on Friday, then drive all night long to Michigan starting at 8pm. Crazy, but we’re crazy people. By the time Friday afternoon rolled around, we were both exhausted, and not feeling the long all night drive. We had no plans Saturday morning or afternoon, so we made the call to simply leave early Saturday morning. We left a little later than planned (around 7:30 pm) and there were flurries all along the drive through PA and OH, but we lucked out as the roads were clear of traffic. The last two times that we drove in 2008 and 2010, there was a hundred miles of construction and traffic congestion that just killed us. With clear roads, it was smooth sailing with minimal breaks along the way. We pulled into their home a little after 6 pm.

This all actually worked out for everyone, as they had prior plans Fri night and most of Saturday. See? We didn’t have to kill ourselves to get there. We spent our Saturday evening eating Michigan pizza and chatting. Sunday was mainly tooling around their home, and then taking all the kids to Jeepers! at the Auburn Hills mall. We also met up with friends Paul and Tom (and kids) there as well. FYI, if you thought Chucky Cheese was scary, Jeepers! is worse. After Jeepers!, we went to a Japanese hibachi restaurant in the mall. Joining us were Paul & Paula’s parents. Nice dinner. After dinner, we all drove over to Paula and Tom’s place for dessert and hanging out. So that was our Friday evening and entire Saturday — lots of worthwhile downtime.

In the morning, we were up early, repacked out suitcases, the kids had breakfast, then we were out the door around 8:30 am. We had to stop for gas again, but we kept rolling along until we stopped in Pittsburgh around 1 pm for lunch with some of my wife’s distant Midwest cousins, supposedly a two hour pit stop. Three hours later, we were back on the road by 4 pm. Doh!

The snow began to fall, but we drove a few more hours until we decided to stop around 8:30 pm just outside the Philadelphia area for dinner at a rest stop. The roads were still clear, so we were making good time. We eventually arrived home by 10 pm. After dropping the other Ipes, I drove to ShopRite to pick up some groceries my wife ordered on the drive.

Yup, we did it. A 60-hour weekend road trip, with about 22 hours total drive time, and 1,295 miles round trip.

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Brand new (and almost finished) hall closet

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Joel

Our main hallway closet has been bothering us for a long while — it’s never been quite well organized. I’m sharing this tidbit, because I’m certain that many other families have encountered the same lack of organization issue. We’ve recently taken a number of steps to reorganize our lives, including our closets. Step 37 involved finding a solution to this particular closet. We contacted Closet Factory, who helped us redo the kids’ bedroom closet a few years ago, and we had them design some shelving for our particular hallway needs. It’s currently a work in progress, so don’t start judging. Last weekend, we emptied out the junk, and I ripped out the prior closet doors, shelving, and brackets. I spackled, sanded, and painted the interior. Today, we had the Closet Factory installer come in and install the new shelving per our design instructions, and now it’s mostly done. What’s left is to select and install some closet doors, and we’ll soon be done.

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Pinewood Derby

Posted on January 26, 2014 by Joel

This year’s Pinewood Derby was coming up soon, but with a confluence of events, we were left with minimal free time. What with my unplanned business trip to Seattle and all, school work, regular work,, and our recent trip to Michigan,  we didn’t have the time to make to all of those sessions to borrow time on someone else’s band saw. Or to sand. Or paint. We ended up in crunch time the final week before the Derby. We wanted to participate, but there’s a lot of work to do. Joshua and I spent a lot of time going over designs, and while in Seattle, he and I decided on going with Optimus Prime from Transformers, since that would be an easier design for me to carve out with a hand saw.

We spent the five days before the race buying the necessary saws, paints, and we were still installing the wheels about two hours before the race. By hook and by crook, “Optimus Primewood Derby” made it to the race in one piece. I think we did a good job, considering this was all done in a week.

Also, I’m now the proud owner of a few hand saws. Let me know if you want to borrow one sometime.

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Josh’s entry this year: Optimus Primewood Derby

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Den 4 at the races

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Business trip to Seattle, Washington

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Joel

For a guy who started out his career traveling every week domestically in public accounting, and added international travel after performing various internal audit roles, I haven’t traveled for work in a long time. Looking back, my last business trip (outside of New Jersey & Pennsylvania) was a trip to Dallas in June 2010. Big change.

As a function of my new role, I’m expecting to be on the road more often. That’s both good and bad, but it should be interesting nonetheless. I just returned from my first trip, which was also my first visit to Seattle, Washington, out on the West Coast. Never been, and promised to be interesting. I brought my suitcase on the train to the office that Monday morning, and worked until about 1 PM, then took the trains back to Newark Airport. Our team’s flight was delayed, so we ended up working at the airport gate until the plane showed up. Although I had middle seats on both legs of the round-trip journey, I ended up lucking out on the way to Seattle. A mother asked me to switch to her aisle seat so she could sit with her young daughter.

The flight was six hours, and we arrived late into Seattle. We were staying at the W Hotel Seattle, which is in the downtown area, which was a decent enough hotel. First time at a W Hotel property, actually. I would have been more excited, except my internal clock was at 3 AM, so I was barely awake. We spent the next two days working until nearly 9 PM each night. We did get to see some of the sights midday on Wednesday as we traveled to another facility. After the facility review, we had lunch at the Space Needle. Color me surprised, but I had not heard about the SkyCity restaurant at the top. Before we left, I grabbed some souvenirs to bring home to the Ipes, and then we were quickly back to work.

Experience Music Project Museum
Views from the SkyCity Restaurant
The Cascades

Thursday morning, we were up early to check out of the hotel, return the rental car, and catch our 6:51 AM flight home. Funny anecdote — I got delayed getting a morning coffee, and was hustling along the last moving walkway to my gate. Almost all of the passengers had boarded, so I was way behind. As I pulled out my boarding pass, I dropped it in the narrow space between the two moving walkways parallel to each other. Now picture me with a laptop bag on my right shoulder, my coat hanging off my left arm, and a medium vanilla latte in my left hand. And I’m running backwards on the walkway, stopping, bending over between walkways, and trying to catch my boarding pass as I zoom by it. And I had to do this three times. Way too early for this romantic comedy sketch. I did catch it on my third pass, but also spilled some of my coffee on my hand. Oh well, I had a boarding pass and went through the gate.

Unfortunately, I was last on the plane, still had a middle seat at the back of the plane, and all of overheard compartments were full. And I was sitting next to a large Southern man who snored the entire flight. And the flight was so stuffy and warm, that I sweated the entire five hour flight. And I had my bag in front of my feet on the floor. Ah well, just got to roll with it.

That’s it. Seattle is one and done. It was overcast and a little gloomy, but supposedly unseasonably warm for January. It was very green (lots of pine trees), still very grey and gloomy, but very scenic. I wouldn’t mind going back sometime on a personal trip to actually explore the city.

View of Mt. Ranier from our early morning flight home
These phone pics don’t do the view justice

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My first circuit training session at Orangetheory Fitness

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Joel

So……. you know I’ve been back to working out regularly. This once a month or even once a week thing was never going to work. You know that. I know that. It’s almost a waste of time, but a combination of a lack of time plus sheer lack of inertia was preventing me from making progress in losing the weight. Now back at Gold’s Gym at almost 3x a week, I’m unfortunately not finding a lot of time (or excitement?) in doing a lot of strength training. From a priority perspective, I need to lose the flab. ASAP.

So for the past month, I’m doing what I think is a decent job watching what I eat (with minor cheating) and either running or using the stationary bike for 30 – 40 mins. It’s okay.

I decided I want to speed things up. Time to kick it up a notch. I am back to tracking my diet through my MyFitnessPal app once again, and am trying to keep it at around a net 1200 calories a day. I say “net”, because if I work out, I’m eating slightly more to regain lost nutrients or eat extra protein. No crazy high calorie Gator ads here – just energy bars.

Question – are my workouts as efficient as they need to be? Should I renew my Gold’s Gym membership next month, or try to save some money at the new Retro Fitness that opened in town? Or how about the new Orange Theory Fitness place I spotted opening up last November on the way to the train station? I drove over to check out Orange Theory Saturday afternoon with Joshua in tow, after we all went shopping in Princeton earlier in the afternoon.

Turns out, Orange Theory is not your traditional gym. You don’t just walk in at 10pm and start working out. It’s only classes led by an instructor. And not just Zumba or something. It’s circuit training – that thing I’ve heard other people more serious than me do on their own. Quick rotations through strength training and cardio. Uh…. not what I expected.

I got the requisite tour of the small facility, but it seemed decent. Their gig is that it’s kinda advanced. During each class, each participant is assigned a heart monitor that you strap to your chest over your heart. For the entire duration of the class, your heart rate, level of exertion, and estimated calorie burn is posted with a bar graph.

I was offered a free session to try out, and since there is no time like the present, I signed up for Sunday’s 7 am class session. Figured I could knock out a workout before church. Somehow I woke up on my own around 6:30 am, dressed quickly, and showed up 10 mins before class. It was an interesting workout with intervals of jogging, running, rowing, weights, pushups, and other exercises.

I liked it so much, I signed up for one of their month-to-month contracts. My plan is to use them for the next few months, and really kick the exercise regimen into high gear. I can let my Gold”s membership run out next month, then switch over to Retro Fitness only after I hit my goals.

This should be an interesting (and wearing) few months for me.
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My first week at the new job

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Joel

Back to work!

Although it was nice to be on vacation, I had been waiting to get back to work. And not just any work. My new job. In my first non-audit role since 2000 when I had switched over from external auditing at PwC to their brand new Siteminder security implementation consulting group. That only lasted for a year or so, but it was new and interesting and different. I’ve been working in the Internal audit space from 2002 until now, and I was ready for a change.

The new role is in Newport, one of the nicer neighborhoods in Jersey City by the water. Newport and Exchange Place are the two big areas in JC across the Hudson River from Manhattan where a large number of financial firms have back office functions, especially IT. My new commute is a little longer these days, but it’s not bad. Just a little more complicated.

I’m now up by 5 am (ish), and out the door after I prepare kids’ lunches for the day. I try to catch the 6:30am train from Princeton Junction, which is 15 mins from my house. This is the station that is closest, but I’ve been on the wait list for two years now. If you remmeber, I started using it last month after they recently expanded one of the existing lots.

It’s a 36 minute ride up to Newark Penn, where I jump on the WTC PATH train, transfer at Journal Square, then ride that train to Newport. 5 mins walking to the office, and I’m there. Not bad, and the mornings are like clockwork. Minimal traffic on the way, and trains are plentiful.

The commute home is, unfortunately, not like clockwork. I have a commitment to pick up the kids by 6pm every day from school. I spent most of the week plotting what times I need to leave and routes that I need to take to get me to the school on time. I leave around 4pm, but the evening rush hour PATH trains don’t come regularly at Newport or Journal Square, and when they do, they are stuffed. So stuffed, sometimes I need to wait another 10 mins and hope the next train has some room to squeeze onto.

After some trial and error, I’ve come to the sad conclusion that there is one train at 4:52pm that I actually have a shot at catching to get me back on time. Just one, that’s it. I can’t catch the earlier one. If I miss it, my goose is cooked.

Once I do catch the train, that portion is okay. Unfortunately, the traffic out of the parking lot is slow and congested. Somehow I still make it to the school by 5:55pm. Not a lot of margin for error. I’m not generally an early morning riser, but I’m doing my best to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and my wife is generous with the sharp elbows at 5 am when the alarm goes off. 😉

One other note, I got moved on my first day, and now I have a “corner office.” I have this odd unused space between my cubicle and the windows – I wonder if I could make this a small waiting room with furniture. 😉

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Besides all that, I spent most of the week acclimating myself to the company, and the group. There’s a lot of work — I had four meetings on my first day. I spent the rest of the week getting my remote access set up, admin application access, phone working, and working on things to help out.

And I’m heading to Seattle on Monday.

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