My trainer has given me a new diet and it's pretty strict. Given that my diet has always been my Achilles heel, I'm actually looking forward to going on a relatively restrictive diet to see what will happen.

I've just gotten sick for the third time this winter. It's time for a change to the diet. At this point last year I was still on my high from India and was not eating any meat. And I didn't get sick once last year!

QR codes have slowly been gaining popularity in the past year. I had often seen QR codes on signs that had a creative element to them such as a logo in the middle and I wondered how they did it. Very easily, actually.

Well, it's time to get in shape. I've been kind of half-assed about it for several months, but the weather is good and there's no reason I shouldn't be outside being active.

John Hodgman's words on fighting procrastination really strike a chord with me. Sometimes you just have to force your fingers to start typing.

Last weekend I went to see "Baby Wants Candy" - a fully improvised full-band musical. The show was a blast and I'll definitely be going back. But what stuck with me is that most modern musicals have a lot to learn about structure from the improvers.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to stay up and watch Ken Russell's The Devils by myself. I'm sure it gave me some pretty crazy dreams and I'm pretty sure they were disturbing enough for me to block them from my memory. Was it a good movie? Um ... I think so.

I often get asked what's currently running in the NYC theater scene, so I decided to put it in a blog post for anyone else that may be interested.

Perhaps it was all the news footage of Chelsea Clinton's wedding, but I have become obsessed with the notion of getting a mini pre-fab home in the country. Sara had shown me this site a while ago and I can't stop looking at the images.

The big hurdle in Oz’s recovery has been getting him to eat. The doctors initially warned us about not trying to feed him too much too quickly. In hindsight, that seems laughable that we were concerned about him eating too much.

I'm putting together an exit strategy for Facebook. I love the fact that I'm contact with smart, fun people that I rarely get to see. Unfortunately, the constant privacy concerns are...concerning me. I tried Twitter for many months, but the 140 character limit really gets to me sometimes. And I have been unable to get TweetDeck truly integrated into my weekly routine, so Twitter has fallen by the wayside. I tried Tumblr, which I ay still fall back on, but it updates Facebook in an odd way.  So now I'm trying Posterous.

...and it's a really great movie. Maybe it's just because I'm so bogged down with Oz's recovery or bogged down by the mugginess of NYC right now, but I immediately thought "I want to move to California and raise kids". I've had moments in my life where those two thoughts came and went pretty quickly - usually separately. But this was the first time in my life that the idea of having kids actually felt like a good idea. I could see it all and play it out roughly in my head and it felt...doable. It felt right. It resonated with me.

After Oz's pancreatitis, I've decided that it's not enough that I'm buying healthy, raw dog food. I thought I was making good choices for him, but it comes down to the fact that when it's made by someone else, you don't really know what goes into it. I want to know and be responsible for absolutely everything he eats. I read through the section of Dr. Pitcairn's book on pancreatitis and he listed some foods that aid digestion and the pancreas. So I'm going back to making the dogs' food from scratch.

I'm at a wedding at the Palace Hotel of Gossip Girl fame. A string quartet played "The Rainbow Connection."

I took a new fitness class today. It was recommended to me by a friend. It's a gym that is only a block or two from my house called AeroSpace NYC (http://aerospacenyc.com). To be honest, I've been meaning to go for months. And this week I finally put my foot down with myself and said I had to go. And even then, I chickened out twice when I got to the front doors. Looking back on it, I have no idea why I was so stressed out about attending.

I just said goodbye to Sis and Lorenz. David was kind enough to use his miles to purchase tickets for Sis and Lorenz for a little winter visit. Looking back on it, it's hard to believe that it was just over two days. I'm surprised Lorenz' head didn't burst after all the activities we threw his way.

For David's 50th, our good friends Maria & Michael sent us some quince branches. I had never heard of keeping quince branches as a cut flower, but they have turned out to be beautiful. At first I was a bit intimidated by the size. There were about 5-6 branches and they were 6 feet tall. We didn't have a vase big enough to hold them. I went to our local high-end florist who got us a vase and cut the ends for us - both cutting off the tips and splitting the bottoms to help them absorb water.

I just finished reading a book called "Pomodoro Technique Illustrated" by Staffan Nöteberg (http://www.amazon.com/Pomodoro-Technique-Illustrated-Really-Minutes/dp/1934356506). I guess it's a little premature to say that it's changed my life, but in my first week of truly implementing the method, I find myself on Thursday and have already accomplished more than I had mentally apportioned to get done for the whole week. A couple of months ago, I had read the free PDF by the original author and decided to test it out, but in typical fashion I sort of did it half-ass.

If you skipped my other CD mixes, fine. This is the one to download. One night I dragged Benji to see Coffy at the Film Forum - not really knowing what to expect. I was transfixed. It was hard-core, it was sexy, it was righteous revenge, it was ... Pam Grier. She's a better vigilante than Batman. If you haven't seen Coffy or Foxy Brown, you really should. I can honestly say that my sense of entertainment was altered when I saw Coffy.

This was my second attempt at making a CD mix. I really felt like I hit my stride on this one. I borrowed lots of film clips "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and "Blood Sucking Freaks". And the music is a bit more focused - clearly hitting more of the late 60's and 70's psychedelia.