Not a headline from The Onion, but from the New York Times:

New Dietary Advice From Government: Just Eat Less

I have now been to two Duke basetball games this year:

The Duke v. Butler game in Rutherford. Kyrie Irving got hurt in that game. He has not played since and is unlikely to play this season.

Today's Duke v. St John's game at MSG. The worst Duke loss I've ever witnessed in person. We left with eight minutes remaining.

I am not going to attend any other games this year.

Last night, Irritable Bowl Syndrome had its biggest win ever with a shocking come-from-behind victory over Hebrew Hammers.

The league uses a handicap format this season, with a maximum of 60 pins allocated to each team per game based on team scoring average. For last night's match, IBS was allocated the maximum. Hebrew Hammers received 9 pins, meaning IBS got a net of 51 pins.

In game 1, IBS came out flat. The Hammers did not. The result was a 60 pin victory (even after the handicaps were added in) for the Hammers. But little did the Hammers know what was in store for them in game 2. Mark after mark after mark by Harmit, Kim, Gibbs, and myself. At one point early in game 2 we had ten straight marks. The streak was broken by an abominable [6 -] by myself. But we kept the heat on, and we entered the tenth frame with game 2 all but in the bag. The question was whether we could make up the game 1 deficit and take total pins.

Our tenth frame was a clinic. Kim went [9 / 9] for a strong 160. Harmit I think went [9 -] for a 120, but Gibbs made up for that with a crushing [X X X] for a 167. On the night, Gibbs actually had an amazing 5 combined strikes in the two tenth frames. I finished with a [9 / X] for a Zogsports personal best score of 206. We finished our tenth frame before the Hammers even got into their own tenth, as they got held up with some lane issues.

Clearly intimidated by our enthusiasm and high scores, the Hammers top two rollers, both building off of strikes in the 9th frame, were unable to come through. Two ringing 7 pins prevented the turkey and double they needed to make up the deficit. IBS took total pins by 16 or so, earning a big six points on a night that started out very poorly.

Victory shots followed at Shorty's.

Waking up this morning, slightly hungover, with a snowstorm unexpectedly raging outside, was not pleasant. But the memory of the big comeback win last night is doing its part to keep me functional.

Irritable! Irritable! Irritable Bowl Syndrome!!!!

I like efficiency in my travels around NYC.

When I take the subway home from work (which I do if its cold out), I know exactly where to stand on the platform to get on the train. Why does it matter? Because when the train stops at my station, I want it to let me off where I need to be. Its called "prewalking." Use the time you're waiting for the train to save time on your walk later.

I'm not crazy. It adds up.

Today I met someone for lunch who I used to work with at Dewey. He used to walk to work from his apartment, but since he got a new job that no longer is an option. But still, he used to walk to work. So that got me thinking about something that has annoyed me lately (not prewalking)...

I prefaced it with "You're either going to think I'm completely insane, or you'll agree with me 100%."

For the last year or so, I've taken a particular path to work. I would leave my apartment and wait on the NE corner of 2nd Avenue for the light to change. Given that starting point and the pace I walk at, I would basically be able to walk, without stopping at a traffic light (except at Park Avenue), all the way to my office. The path was constant. Straight for 3 avenues, hitting every light. Pause at Park, then cross. At Madison, cross to opposite corner. Light will then change, allowing me to cross Madison. Continue to 5th. Barely miss light (crossing is prohibited at the SE corner anyway), walk down 5th to 48th. Continue on 48th, and its easy enough from there. It avoided the terrible walk through the diamond district. I waited a minimal amount of time on corners. It was perfect.

But around a week ago, it stopped working.

At first I didn't know what was going on. I thought to myself, "Did I get caught behind some slow-walking tourist?" No, that's unpossible on the east side. Did I cross 2nd Avenue at the end of the light? No, I've done that before and it doesn't change much anyway. I eventually realized it was the City's doing. They changed the timing of the lights on 3rd and Lexington!!!!

This has discombobulated me more than I ever thought possible. I now am faced with the following options:

1) Wait at the corners on 3rd and Lexington, waiting for the light to change.

2) Walk down those avenues, but then end up on 47th way too early. This forces me to walk through the diamond district on my way to work (and also forces me to wait for other Avenue lights on the way).

Thus far I've chosen a combination of 1 and 2. It has led to unpredictable results. I don't like it. I feel like the walk each day is taking an extra couple minutes. Those minutes add up!

Maybe it will randomly change back?

On my walk to get some soup from the soup cart on 45th St., I had to weave my way through approximately ten million fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, and other vehicles that were parked on Sixth Avenue with their lights flashing. I had no idea what was going on. Did this have something to do with the President of China visiting? The sidewalks seemed more clear than usual too. I ignored all this, got my soup, and headed back to the office.

What was it? A "confirmed device" that forced evacuation of that building I walked past. Great.

1:15 PM update - it turned out to be an electronic greeting card. There must have been 30 vehicles called in for this.

In late November / early December I started dropping hints that I wanted an iPad for my birthday. There were essentially two different factors that triggered the "want." They were:

1) I wanted something lighter and easier to handle than a laptop to check email / check scores / surf the internet while I'm either sitting on the sofa or lying in bed.

2) I wanted to play Angry Birds.

Yes, not the best reasons to ask for something that is quite pricey. But I wanted it nonetheless. Kim, being fairly perceptive with these sorts of things, had the iPad waiting for me as the clock struck midnight on my birthday. I was pretty psyched.

The first thing I did was download Angry Birds. It is a pretty awesome game, well worth the... $4.99? I'm not even sure what it cost. But its sucked up a lot of hours of my life.

Ben and Kate then suggested that if I like Angry Birds, I should get Cut the Rope. Cut the Rope is another physics-based puzzle game. Instead of flinging birds at structures and green pigs, you try to drop candy into a little monster's mouth. It is very addicting. I'm probably done with it for the time being, though, as I finished 3-starring all of the levels last night. I doubt I'll ever be able to do that with Angry Birds.

In terms of reason #1, the iPad has largely fulfilled that purpose. If I'm sitting on the sofa watching tv, I can keep my somewhat bulky laptop on the table, instead of giving it its own seat on the sofa. Typing is pretty easy on the iPad too, although it takes some getting used to. The only issue is the lack of flash support - hopefully they'll do something about that in the future. If not, well its not the end of the world.

I haven't downloaded many other apps for it - just the weather channel app and a book one, with the former getting more use than the latter. I put some music and pictures on it as well. Some things are not entirely intuitive (like setting up bookmark folders in Safari), but there is a help guide that is somewhat useful.

For a protective case, I just bought the apple one. I would normally scoff at $40 for such a thing, but third party cases were still at least $30. I had a gift card too, so I didn't even use real money to buy it. Right?

Kim also got me an iPod shuffle for Christmas. That was to replace the old iPod nano that I inherited from Kim when I "earned" her a new one at the Borgata. So now I own two, non-second hand Apple items. I'm like a hippie.

Until this past Saturday, the current title holder for "Worst Movie That I can Remember" was Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I watched that monstrosity on a long-ass flight at some point last year. Even Kim, who loves King of Queens, couldn't believe how bad that movie was. It was pure nonsense.

But it was nothing compared to Dinner for Schmucks.

Why we rented it is not entirely clear. We don't like Steve Carell. We like The Office in spite of him. We haven't liked any movie where he had a leading role. But at some point Kim noticed it was available in the Blockbuster Express machine. And it has Paul Rudd, who she likes too. Zach Galfianakis even has a brief role. So we rented it.

Huge mistake.

The premise of the movie is that Paul Rudd has to bring a truly exceptional idiot to a work-dinner. His co-workers must do the same. The boss then picks a winner and that guy is on the fast-track to success in the company. This moronic plot is a remake of a French film, Le Diner de cons. Of course.

I don't know how much of it we watched before we turned it off. We didn't get to the actual dinner. I won't bore / infuriate you with the details.

In describing the new title holder, Kim just said that "[Paul Blart] was not even a quarter as bad as that piece of shit we watched yesterday."

Don't rent or watch it. You should watch, however, The Other Guys (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg). That movie exceeded expectations.

Other random thoughts from Europe:

*We saw a soccer match in London - West Ham United v. Everton (English Premier League). I initially wanted to see a match involving better teams, but the tickets were prohibitively expensive. So we saw a home match for West Ham, which currently sits last in the Premier League. This is especially significant in the EPL because the bottom 3 teams in the 20 team league are "relegated" at the end of the season. That means they are moved down to a lower league, sort of like the minor leagues. The financial ramifications of this are significant. So these teams that have no chance of winning the league still have a ton to play for.

The match was incredible. The crowd was really what made it so much fun. Around 4/5 of the stadium was full of enthusiastic West Ham fans, singing fight songs and cheering for solid but unspectacular plays. Considering that West Ham is in danger of being relegated, this was even more surprising to me. Can you imagine a packed house at a Carolina Panthers football game this year?

The other 1/5 of the stadium was packed with Everton fans, all sitting in one section. A heavy line of security separated them from the West Ham crowd. The Everton group sang fight songs, and went absolutely berserk when Everton tied it in the first half. It was a sight to see.

The game ended in a 1-1 tie. Still sweet. If I ever end up back in Europe, I want to see another match.

*Why do so many Parisians smell so bad? On approximately half of our metro rides we ended up next to someone who smelled like a homeless person. But they dressed normally and looked like they were on their way to work! Soap! Shampoo! Why don't you use it?!?!

*I don't know how anyone could function in Amsterdam. Coffeeshops are everywhere, bars are everywhere, there are multiple casinos, and the red light district... wow. Going in, we thought that the famous prostitutes in the windows would be of middling quality at best. But some of them were, as Kim pointed out, absolutely gorgeous. How on earth are these women prostitutes? Of course, some were old, and some were overweight and eating like sandwiches in the window, etc. I guess they would appeal to a particular demographic.

*There were no homeless people in tube stations in London, or on the tube itself. How do they do that?

*The Indian food in London - Wow! We had heard about how good it is over there, but words don't do it justice. We ate Indian food for two of our dinners and honestly I could have gone for a third.

The last two trips to Vegas that Kim and I took included a visit to the Chanel store in the Bellagio. Both times Kim looked at the same purse. Both times the same woman waited on us. Both times resulted in Kim saying it was her dream to own a purse like the one she was holding. Both times ended with us leaving the store sans purse.

Paris would be a different story.

But even the act of purchasing the purse, seemingly a straightforward affair, was a complete debacle.

On our last day in Paris we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. We then walked to the Arc de Triomphe. After seeing the Arc, we walked down Champs Elyssee, home of numerous expensive stores. We had to actually wait in line to get into the Louis Vuitton store. As we waited in line, we noticed a couple Asian guys inside the store already, packing suitcases full of Louis Vuitton merchandise they had purchased. We guessed they really liked Louis Vuitton stuff.

Kim found a pair of sunglasses inside Louis Vuitton. I said she may as well get them. But she eventually declined, and then asked a worker where the Chanel store is. He said something about down the road - neither of us could understand what he said - but he pointed in a general direction. And that set this whole debacle in motion.

We walked down Champs Elyssee looking for the store. I must say that it was BITTERLY cold and very windy, and we had already been walking for the better part of the day. My knees were killing me. All I wanted was to have a nice dinner and get ready for our 8:25 AM train to Amsterdam the next morning.

Unsurprisingly, given the vague pointing by the Louis Vuitton guy, we couldn't find the Chanel store. We had reached a metro stop and I wanted to go to the hotel. Kim was undeterred. She whipped out her Frommer's guide and found the address. It was on Rue Cambonne. And unfortunately for me, that was only two metro stops away from where we currently stood. So off to the store we went.

Upon entering the store I got the familiar nauseous feeling of "I don't belong here." Kim looked at various purses, zeroing in on the one she usually looks at. The saleswoman was fairly helpful, and also noted in passing that we of course would get the VAT (value added tax) refund on the purse.

Wait... what? What is a VAT refund?

Apparently, if the purchase is over a certain amount, you can get most of the VAT refunded to your credit card. Something to the tune of 13%. Combined with the somewhat lower price in euros of the purse, as well as not having to pay any NYC sales tax on the item, and the savings were significant.

Suddenly, the question shifted from "Should I get the purse?" to "How do I purchase this purse and reap the savings?"

The issue was that the store we were currently standing in did not have the particular version of the purse Kim wanted. But the saleswoman called the OTHER Chanel store in Paris, the one that we were unable to find before. THAT store had it! It did not seem like a big deal since we had to get our passports from the hotel anyway. Kim asked the woman how late the store is open. The woman said 10 PM. It was 6:30 PM or so. We walked back to the hotel to grab the passports.

At 7:15 PM we arrived at the other Chanel store. The security gates were halfway down. It closed at 7:00 PM. Kim was obviously livid. We looked at the store hours and, sure enough, it said it closes at 7:00 PM. The saleswoman at the other store apparently meant that the store we were standing in at the time was open to 10:00 PM. Not the one we needed to go to. Of course. The store would not open until 10:00 AM. Our train would leave at 8:25 AM. Things were not looking good.

Kim frantically thought through her options.

Can I buy the purse at the other store that is still open, and then exchange it for the one I want in NYC? This resulted in a call to the Chanel store in NYC. "No dice" they said.

Can we move our train tickets back to a later time? I looked up the Thaly's website for a customer service number. I found it. It was only available from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Out of luck.

I then brought up our actual train ticket email. That had a different, international number. It was available until 8:00 PM. Hooray.

We called and Kim asked how much to change our tickets to a later train. The man replied 218 euros. Umm... our tickets initially COST 218 euros! So Kim proposed we downgrade from Comfort 1 to Comfort 2. How much would it cost then? He said 80 euros. It was agreed. 40 euros was the last thing he said. Whatever, just do it.

Mind you, this entire process of arriving at the store, finding it closed, pleading with the people still inside to open up, calling Chanel NYC, calling Thaly's, going through my blackberry, etc. is taking like 45 minutes. And the entire time we are standing / pacing in the bitter cold outside the store.

So the plan was now to arrive at the store at 10 AM the next day, purchase the bag, rush back to the hotel to get our bags, and arrive at the train station in time for our 12:25 train. But even with the plan set, leaving the area was another issue. There was a huge line for the single ticket vending machine at the metro stop. Why is there only one machine???? I had no tickets on me. We walked around looking for a different entrance to the stop. This failed miserably, so we went back to the original entrance. The line was, of course, even longer at this point. I got in line and watched the moronic people in front of me struggle with the machine. The shape of the entrance funnelled all of the cold air in Paris directly to where I was standing. After 20 excruciating minutes, I had two subway tickets, and we were on our way to dinner.

Despite a few frantic moments the next morning where Kim could not find the bag in the store (it wasn't on display), things worked out well enough. We made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare. And Kim has now realized her dream of owning this particular Chanel bag.

I can only hope that the future fulfillment of dreams will not be quite as painstaking.

What day is today?
It's Evan's birthday
What a day for a birthday!
Let's all have some cake!

Some random thoughts (more to come over the next few days) from our trip to London, Paris, and Amsterdam:

*Why on earth are were the major train stations (Paddington and St. Pancras in London, Gare du Nord in Paris) ice cold? I mean, I know physically why they were so cold - no heat, giant open entrances for trains to leave, incredibly high ceilings, etc. But why? It was quite the shock for our system, as we're used to the warm confines of NY Penn or the Port Authority.

*As we landed in London at Heathrow, we learned that the subway workers were on strike. Just for that day. Apparently it was "Boxing Day", which is some sort of holiday that commemorates . . . something. Even after skimming the wikipedia entry I have no idea what it is. A cabbie told us it is a very big shopping day in London, so the workers decided to strike because they wanted something like triple pay. I love that European work ethic, although I usually would associate this sort of thing with France or Italy.

*London Walks / Paris Walks are pretty good values. 2 hour tours for around 10 euros a person, and you just show up at a tube stop at a certain time. We did one for Westminster Abbey. We planned to do others, but we ended up sleeping in a lot as our bodies had a real tough time getting used to the time change.

*I like one and two euro coins. First, it makes my wallet less full of small bills. Second, it makes me feel like I'm getting a good deal when I pay for something with only change. I only need to give you a couple coins for a beer? Sign me up!

*Heineken in Amsterdam did taste somewhat different / better than here in the US.

*Gambling was a bit weird. In London there were random slot machines set up in bars and some in a Dave and Buster's type establishment. We never really figured them out, and lost 13 pounds in trying to do so. In Amsterdam there were more established casino places. The one we went to was mostly roulette (single zero!) with some slot machines. We made back most of our earlier losses in the roulette machine, which had some shady goings on. It got kind of boring and we left after a half hour or so.