Last weekend I headed up to my parents weekend house in MA after a work retreat in upstate NY and there were the cutest little robin chicks in a nest built against their house. I missed the fox that I've heard so much about though. And though I succeeded to make it through a weekend in the country, in June, without any bug bites, I forgot to put on sunscreen on my arms before a bike ride with my parents. Needless to say, I'm wearing shirts with longish sleeves to cover up the ugly farmer's tanburn, though I think its almost faded.

Completely unrelated, but last night I went to dinner with Jenn to show her the glory that is Habana Outpost. The last thing we were expecting to see a 6'6" man in a see through blue bunny outfit, on clear plastic stiletto heels. Or a full on burlesque show. I don't have any particular feelings about burlesque either way, but it always strikes me as very odd how burlesque is so popular among the hipster crowd and is socially acceptable, but stripping is not. Because seriously, its almost the same thing. Just with a lot less silicon involved. Just what anyone would expect on a typical Monday evening on Fulton St.

And one last link about MIMS from New York magazine. I was under the impression that I was going to be part of this, but guess I didn't make the cut.

Here are my photos from the swim. I think my favorite is the one with the seaplane landing right in front of me, even if there is a hand smack in the middle of it.

+ The photos are also on Flickr and a few have notes

Photo from NY Daily News - the lead swimmer from my team is in the background and the person jumping in I swim with out at Brighton Beach

So I survived, though it seemed a lot harder than last year. I don't know if it was because a late start led to the currents being a bit slower up the East River, or if my muscles tightened up during the long weight during the lightning shower, or if it was just doing a fourth leg, vs only three legs last year, but boy did my muscles hurt at the end. Sometimes I think a two person would be fun, but I'm not so sure right now. And I'm fairly certain that I would never want to do a solo swim ever. But I had fun and that's what's important.

I have pics that I'll post eventually, but in the mean time, check out the photos at the Daily News. And the NY Times had a photo of the start in the back of the sports section on Sunday, though I don't see it online.

One of my team members swimming from last year's MIMS

The New York Times wrote an article about the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim yesterday, and it includes a video of some of the guys I've been swimming with out at Brighton Beach. I was there the day they NY Times was following Alan around so its nice to see what the end result was.

And if you want to check out the swimming action tomorrow, rough guidelines are around 10am on the Upper East Side (the promenade and the area around Asphalt Green have good views), late morning for the Harlem River (anywhere you can get near the water will get you pretty good views, especially on the Bronx side), and starting around 3pm down by the South Cove of the Battery, near the World Financial Center. And the start is at 8:30AM at the South Cove of the Battery, so if you're up early, hit lower Manhattan.

Last weekend was perfectly fulfilling in so many ways. I tasted my first Bistro Burger (as good as I'd imagined) after checking out the Richard Serra exhibit at MOMA. For free. I got a swim in on Saturday morning, but didn't have to wake up crazy early to do it. I shopped at the mayhem that is the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market after swimming, and picked up all sorts of yummy fresh fruits and veggies. I got inspired by beautiful and tasty strawberries to have lunch of vanilla yogurt w. strawberries on top, and made strawberry ice cream with the rest. I got inspired by the yellow squash and made my mother-in-law's vichysquash recipe (though I modified it to be half squash, half potatoes because I forgot to get enough squash) - one of these days I'll get around to adding it to my recipe book. We went to played some bocce while waiting for our movie to begin and won a few games in a row. And we completely emptied out our bottomless pit of a storage closet, cleaned it, threw out a ton of stuff, and put everything else back in. Its gorgeous now. I felt completely justified sitting on the couch reading the paper and catching up on some TV after accomplishing that. Oh, and we found the cat's catnip cigar under the couch. They won't leave its side now.

We won't have a weekend like that in a while. This weekend I have the swim. And the weekend after that is a company retreat. And then Sam is visiting MN, and I have another swim race. But I'm looking forward to July and some more weekends of cooking, cleanup and relaxation.

So, what have I been doing all the time if I'm not posting here? Well, a lot of time swimming. I'm swimming around Manhattan again in a bit over a week, so I've been trying to get a lot of yardage in. Last month, I was a total slacker - the trip to MN just threw me off and I only got in 14 miles (as opposed to 23 miles in April). However, I'm already at 7 miles for this month so it will probably be a record.

I'm pretty excited for the swim this year. I was out a Brighton Beach last weekend and my feet and hands weren't frozen during my swim (as opposed to the past few weeks when temps were under 60 degrees), so I don't think the temp will be a problem even though the swim is a week earlier than last year. And I've gotten a lot faster in swim practice, so I hope that means we have a good chance at keeping the 1st place title amongst 4 person relays that we won last year. (We is a relative term, though, since I'm the only person who's the same).

However, I've been very bad at fundraising this year - our team is supposed to be raising money for the Manhattan Island Foundation (clean up NY waters and teach NYC kids to swim!) and City Harvest, but its a fairly complicated donation process online, so a few people who have donated got their donations misdirected to other teams. So if you would like to support MY team, here's how you do it. 1) Go to this page. 2) Select "Manhattan Island Marathon Swim 2007" from the Event list. 3) Select "Support a relay". 4) Select "Brooklyn Dodgers Plus One". Also, tons of volunteers are needed to run this event, so if you want a free tour of Manhattan, go here. (There are things to do if you want to stay on dry land as well). Or if you want to cheer us on, let me know and I can give you an idea of where and when to watch. Thanks!

P.S. Why have I posted no photos of Minnesota? Because I accidentally over exposed all of them. Silly me. But the goslings at the Lake of the Isles still look pretty cute even if they're overexposed.