MrMetropolitan

http://MrMetropolitan.blogsource.com/

due to the changes that were made on this blog, I am moving to a new site, and hopefully staying there for a while, at least. The new website is: http://MrMetropolitan.blogsou... I hope you will join me there, and read what I have to say. Why am I moving? First, I don't understand the new page, and it seems to be much differnet. Second, my template was pretty much destroyed, and I don't care for the current one. Third, I just feel like it. I hope to see you in my new home: http://MrMetropolitan.blogsou... Thank you!

There's a lot of people out there whining about their retirement. There's a lot of people out there whining about how the job market is. There are a lot of people out there whining about how they don't have enough money to do something although they have a huge cell phone bill and cable bills, etc.

There's a lot of people out there whining.

I have done my share of going without. At one time in my life, I wondered where my next meal would come from, where I would get it, and what it would be. Since then I realized that it was up to me, and only me. That's right, life is only up to the person living it. But there's so much whining.

People seem to think that the government or parents are responsible for their lives. There's always a big brother out there that's supposed to watch out for you, isn't there? The truth is, there is NOBODY out there that should be depended on except YOURSELF. I repeat: There is N O B O D Y out there that should be depended on except Y O U R S E L F!

This may come as a surprise to the person who thinks that the government should take care of you after you turn 50, or that if you have another baby your food stamps may go up! There's a simple plan to life that can change everything. Realize that you must rely on yourself, and only yourself to get what you want out of this sticky green world.

I see people whining about retirement, in the articles. Bush may privatize SSI. Personally, I don't give a rats donkey if he does. I know that I'm going to take care of my own retirement, and I'm going to do it my way. The rest of my life is up to myself, and I'm not going to let some old guys do it for me.

What about certain people who complain that money is tight, but own unneeded gadgets like cell phones or expensive cable packages. Being TV free for over a year has saved me a bundle. I don't think I could go back to owning one, I feel like a virgin, and don't want to be touched again. A cell phone to me is only a security blanket. I used to have one, a long time ago when they were newer, and saw no real need to spend buckets of cash on them. Some people pay well over $100 a month for both these necessities and wonder (whine) why they can't afford the luxuries of food, or clothes for their children. You reap what YOU sow.

What about those who are wondering why they can't find a job? I have seen people my own age who are so stressed that they will never find a job because the college grads are taking them. It's so easy to go to the local college and sign up to take some classes. Hell, they'll even pay you to do it sometimes. I guess whining is much easier on a person than doing some work. Personally, I can't imagine going through life in today's world without having a college education. And, why would a person not want to know things? Ignorance must be bliss, but I never was blissful when I was ignorant. No, I was pretty upset all the time and wanted something else.

But, one day everything changed. I came to the conclusion after reading a few books that the people in this world who make it do things for themselves. They don't depend on a bunch of old donkeys or elephants to live their lives for them. They don't wait for the next welfare check to come in, and they work their butts off to get where they want to go. And, the funny thing is, college is probably easier than most jobs. I used to work in some places where I was not happy at all, and would MUCH rather spend 12 hours a day doing college/studying/working at my school than being paid minimum wage to be miserable and not knowing if my life would ever go anywhere.

Part of the fun in life is the journey, and another part is knowing that you did it for yourself. Those who rely on uncle Sam or "mom and pa" to flip the food bills when the food stamps don't come in are going to find themselves in a bout of pain. Depend on yourself, or wallow in your own misery. Remember: you reap what YOU sow. Sow something worth reaping.

I was looking around on a forum that I visit and found this article, which I totally agree with. Basically, the writer states everything that I have thought about living in suburbs and moving from the city. I will elaborate on it more later, but I thought I would post it now for those to read.


By TERI KARUSH ROGERS
Published: January 8, 2006
NY Times

For many New York City families, January is the cruelest month. It is a time to get seriously claustrophobic in an apartment stocked with young children and the vast plastic undergrowth in which they thrive. It also a time for many to ponder the absurdity (or impossibility) of paying thousands upon thousands of dollars for private-school tuition, soon due for the coming semester.

But those plotting a hasty exit to the suburbs (the space! the schools! the space!) may want to consider the experience of others who went before them, only to double back within a year.

"I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city," said Anna Hillen, 42, summing up the prevailing sentiment among the repatriates interviewed for this article.

Ms. Hillen, her husband, Gerry McConnell, 42, and their son, Duncan, who was 1 at the time, vacated their TriBeCa loft in December 2001, shortly after 9/11. They bought a 6,000-square-foot newly built McMansion on three acres in the upscale, semirural Westchester enclave of Pound Ridge, N.Y., not far from the country homes they had rented before.

"It was just a giant, echoing space," Ms. Hillen said, adding, "It was great to have all that room, but we never used it," except to put up extended family on holidays.

Once settled, Ms. Hillen, a stay-at-home mother, embarked on a fruitless hunt for companionship. "Out there, you have to work at being with people," she said. "In a year, I got one play date for my kid. We joined the Newcomers Club, and the day we put our house on the market, they finally called. You'd go to the library for a reading and there would be no one there." She added, "You're a lonely, desperate housewife with nothing to do."

Even the playgrounds were desolate. "And on the rare occasions there was somebody there and you struck up a conversation," she said, "they would literally move away. And they didn't encourage the kids to play together. We were so shocked."

She spent every Wednesday in the city. At home, she busied herself with gardening. Still, she said, "you could only garden so many hours a day. And Duncan - I mean, you wouldn't think at one and three-quarters they're set in their ways but they are. He wouldn't go outside. In the summer I would stand outside with a Popsicle and go, 'Come on, honey, you can have a Popsicle if you come outside.' But he would just stand at the door."

After nine months, she persuaded her husband - who was enjoying his truncated commute to his financial services job in Greenwich, Conn. - to sell the house. "Summer had come and gone and I was looking at another winter of being completely alone," she said, citing frequent power failures as another concern, along with the so-so restaurants and lack of food delivery. "He was very supportive, the poor man."

By December 2002, the house was sold at a loss and the furniture stowed away, and the family was tucked back into their old 1,800-square-foot, two-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in TriBeCa, which they had never got around to selling.

It's worth noting that the suburbs are populated by plenty of satisfied former city dwellers harboring few, if any, regrets. Fully expecting to join the ranks of the contented, most of the couples interviewed here said their motivation for moving out was linked to a vague understanding that it was a prerequisite for raising children - a normal transition from one phase of life to the next, and one in which they would find plenty of company.

"Everybody says when you get the baby, you leave the city," said Ronn Torossian, 31, the president and chief executive of 5W Public Relations in Midtown Manhattan. In July, he and his wife, Zhana - who have a 1-year-old daughter - sold their large one-bedroom on West 68th Street and Broadway and moved into a 3,500-square-foot split-level house in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., near friends. With the help of Ilan Bracha, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, who had sold their apartment on West 68th, they moved back in December to a three-bedroom rental a block south from where they started.

"It's like death out there," said Mr. Torossian, a fast-talking Bronx native who resisted the comparatively tempered pace, like food delivery that stops at 9 p.m. and a newspaper delivered at 7:30 a.m.

"I can't wait 15 minutes in a bagel store to get two bagels," he said. "I can't have people looking at me like I'm crazy when I walk in and put a quarter on the table to get my paper and walk out. I go home and there's, like, people doing their lawn every five minutes. They seem like normal people but they spend, like, hours working on their lawn."

What pushed him over the edge, he said, was the "drama" of his commute by car into Midtown. At 5 a.m., when Mr. Torossian ordinarily made the trip to avoid traffic, it took as little as 17 minutes. But coming home took three or four times that (two hours or more in foul weather), partly because of the bottleneck at his Midtown garage. "Calling ahead doesn't work because everybody leaves at the same time," he said. "If you don't bribe the guys there, you wait 15 to 20 minutes for your car." He said he spent $100 a week in tips.

His miasma has evaporated since his return to the city last month. "I feel like I'm walking on water," he said. "It's just a whole level of stress eliminated from my life. I go out a lot more, it's allowed me a lot more time to spend with my daughter, it's less stressful at work. It's phenomenal."

Others who came back noted that beyond the city's borders, neighborhoods aren't exactly what they seem.

"You go to these little towns and they are very charming and sweet and have all these cute little shops," said Brian Lover, who put his West Orange, N.J., house back on the market just three months after moving there. "But I think when you live in these areas full time, those neighborhood shops aren't so cute. And those neighborhood restaurants that look so great, you know how bad they really are."

Mr. Lover, 42, a vice president at the Corcoran Group, and his wife, Kristina Rinaldi, 41, an interior decorator, decided to give up their one-bedroom rental on West 55th Street when they had a daughter, Tallulah. They wanted to live in Montclair, N.J., a popular magnet for exurbanites. Outmatched in bidding wars, they expanded their search to neighboring West Orange. There they became besotted by "an old English Tudor with a slate roof, character, an acre and a half of land," said Mr. Lover, who worked as a fashion advertising director for Esquire magazine at the time.

In July 2001 they bought the house for $480,000; it came with a tinge of unreality. "Every day when I came home, I would say to myself, 'I really am a king and this is a castle, and who do I think I am?' "

With their baby in tow, the couple stalked the parks and Gymboree classes in nearby Montclair, figuring "that's where we'll find the city people and the cool parents," Mr. Lover said. "But there wasn't anyone we could find a core to. It was all air." As for the city people they'd hoped to meet? "They were city people, not anymore," he said. "The suburbs have some way of sucking the city out of you."

The events of 9/11 provided the final shove eastward. "We felt an empty pit in our stomachs because it was our city and we weren't living there with our friends who lived there," he said. The couple rented a 1,500-square-foot loft (sans interior doors) on Nassau Street near ground zero.

"We lost a little bit of money," Mr. Lover said of the retreat back to familiar ground. "For a lot of people that would be kind of torturous. For us, I didn't care about the money. I wanted my life back."

A short drive from Montclair up the Garden State Parkway lies Ridgewood, N.J., considered by many to be among the most desirable of New Jersey's commuter towns.

"It's definitely someone's dream; it's just not our dream," said Andrew McCaul, a 37-year-old photographer who moved from Ridgewood back to Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in June - exactly one year after buying a $580,000 three-bedroom Dutch colonial, in walking distance of town, with his wife, Sarma Ozols, 36, and their son Aidan, now 2.

Their suburban sojourn started off promisingly in June 2004. "It was like a honeymoon period where it felt like we had a country house in the summer," Mr. McCaul said. But after three months, he said, "real life started setting in."

There was the commute, for one thing. "You kind of trick yourself into thinking the commute is going to be easier than it is," said Mr. McCaul, who only occasionally caught the express train for a 40-minute door-to-door commute. "I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken station," he added, waiting more than half an hour for a connection.

"If you go out for a drink with friends, you're always watching the clock," he said. Adding insult to tedium, Mr. McCaul suffered through the suburban version of the Freshman 15, putting 10 to 15 pounds on his normally thin frame, which he attributed to his mostly nonpedestrian lifestyle.

Though the couple liked their neighbors, Ms. Ozols, a photographer at home part time with her young son, recalled feeling cut off. "I didn't have a community of moms, and I guess that would have come in time if my child were older and going to school," she said. "It's not as easy as being in Brooklyn where you just start talking at the playground and there's always someone to talk to."

She also found that the unaccustomed space - the house was roomy compared with the 850-square-foot rental they had left behind - "weighed on me," she said. And she developed an unfamiliar, unwelcome compulsion toward domesticity. "On Thanksgiving, I kind of felt I had to be Martha Stewart, with all the right plates and everything," she said.

They listed the house last Mother's Day and sold it for $60,000 more than they had paid. The couple, who now also have a 4-month-old child, Julian, put the proceeds toward a 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bath condo loft in Carroll Gardens West. "The space is a lot smaller, but it's all we need," Ms. Ozols said.

Melanie Williams, 40, also determined that smaller can be better. In February 2004, she exchanged a $950-a-month, rent-stabilized two-bedroom apartment in a "decrepit" Hell's Kitchen building for a spacious $1,350-a-month four-room apartment in Riverdale, a suburban-feeling section of the Bronx, in part because of the good public schools available to her daughter, Dorothy, now 5.

"It was just like this land of no culture," said Ms. Williams, who owns Plain Jane, a children's home furnishings shop on the Upper West Side. "You never met anybody. There's one little street with a meat market on it. It was very bizarre but beautiful."

Petty crime troubled them. The family car was broken into several times while parked on the street - an unfortunate necessity, she said, because all the garages were full. And over the next nine months, she said, both she and her actor/carpenter husband, Andrew Finney, 44, came to realize that although they had moved, "our life was still in New York."

In November 2004, they rented a 900-square-foot loft in the financial district, in the well-regarded Public School 234 school district, which cost a third more than the Riverdale apartment. "It didn't matter," she said. "We had to get out of there."

Some couples beating hasty tracks back to the city allowed that things might have turned out differently if they had school age children to provide a firmer wedge into the community.

"It was a little premature for us, because we don't have kids," said Sara Mendelsohn, about the move she and her husband, Brian, made to a one-bedroom co-op in Great Neck on Long Island this past spring. The 27-year-old newlyweds bought and renovated the dwelling after deciding their money wouldn't go far enough in Manhattan.

Things went well at first. "We bought a car and really enjoyed having that kind of freedom," said Ms. Mendelsohn, who works as a business planner at Marc Jacobs. "And we always spend our summers out on the island at either one of our family's homes." But they failed to integrate into the community - in large part because they couldn't find it.

"When we come home and walk from the train to our apartment, there's no one on the street between 7 and 10 p.m.," she said. "It's just that feeling of being alone. You walk the dog and there's no one there." She and her husband, who works in media sales, listed their apartment for $299,000 in October; they have been working with Barbara Haynes at Bellmarc and Lauren Cangiano at Halstead to find a place to rent or buy in the city.

Learning the hard way, twice, Mary A. Sweeney, an Upper East Side registered nurse, moved back and forth - then back and forth again - to Poughkeepsie. (The first chapter, beginning in 2000, lasted almost two years; she blamed the second, three-month-long episode, occurring in 2003 when Ms. Sweeney was newly pregnant with her third child, on "lack of oxygen going to the brain.")

Ms. Sweeney, 36, recalled the many disconnects she discovered between fantasy and reality.

"We had this beautifully landscaped acre-and-a-half of land for the kids to play in, but we were terrified of Lyme disease," Ms. Sweeney said. "We lived in a cul-de-sac and it was lovely but if we biked off the cul-de-sac, we were on these beautiful country roads that were curved so that bike riding on them wasn't so safe. We realized we were far safer going to Central Park, really playing with the kids and having our picnic, especially in the summertime."

She mostly stayed at home while her husband, Azeddine Yachkouri, 43, commuted to his job as a banquet manager at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Manhattan. "It was lovely for him to drive home to me and the kids and the house and then drive back to the city the next day and work and socialize," she recalled. "But for me, when this retreat is my everyday life, it became monotonous and mundane."

In the city, "I can go out with the girls when my husband is late at work or I don't feel like cooking," she said. "We can go into family-style restaurants with great buzz, great atmosphere."

Though the Sweeneys' house was many times bigger than their old two-bedroom apartment, it exerted an unforeseen undertow. "All of a sudden you find all these projects to do in the house," she said. "It keeps you indoors more than you ever thought."

She added: "We looked at other communities - Scarsdale and so forth - and it was the same thing. It was beautiful houses on these beautiful streets and as soon as the children were in school you could hear a pin drop on the streets. The only life was the birds chirping. I prefer to interact with my doorman or the guy on the corner of the street where you get your paper or your coffee."

Those who have left and returned sometimes share their wisdom with friends who are considering the same move. "When people tell us that they're thinking about it, I'm like, don't do it," Ms. Ozols said. "But everybody has to get it out of their system. If we didn't do it, it would still be in the back of our heads. Maybe I would tell them to rent instead."

Last night I walked into Blockbuster and was going to rent a movie with some free rental coupons that I got. Walking through the aisles I felt a depression well up in me as I realized that I would not find a movie as thought provoking as Super Size Me. I was going to rent March of the Penguins, but still, it would not be the same as Super Size Me. I need a movie that makes me think about my life. That makes me sit back and contemplate what I can do to make myself better. I don't know if watching penguins would do that for me. I looked around and saw what looked like some of the stupidest films ever made. One titled "Must Love Dogs" made me cringe. Another one, about half moth half man, almost made me have to run to the bathroom to spew. My lips were foaming up as if I had the plague when I saw another sequel to "American Pie". Why can't any other movie be thought provoking?

I did come across Super Size Me and wanted to rent it. I wanted to see that one large guy being operated on again. I wanted to hear the Super Size Me guy prove my statement that living in a large city was better for losing weight and that suburbs were bad. I wanted to again see why I should have not stopped at Burger King on the way to Spokane. I wanted to...but could not.

Very few people seem to understand the brilliance of Super Size Me. There was even a woman that was a vegan chef in it! A vegan! If it wasn't for fish and cheese I would probably join her on her quest of veganism. Maybe one day I will.

And speaking of vegetarian, I was under some strange impression that most of Beverly's family was vegetarian. However, when at her house and when turkey appeared, Beverly and I were the only ones who did not eat it. I kind of felt funny for telling everyone how terrible meat was the night before. Now I look like one of those vegetarians who think that they are better than everyone else because they don't poison their bodies. I do eat fish, but fish is good for you. Even in the Bible, Jesus ate fish, but it never speaks of him eating any other kind of meat. Fish are truly our friends, and they must be eaten.

I have also comprised a list of who I found to be the most troublesome and troubled people of 2005. I hate to hurt anyone's feelings, but have had my run-ins with some truly toxic individuals. Krumthi (not his real name) got second place. I would like to congratulate him on the title. First place goes to J. (won't state the full name here) who continues to leave countless messages on our answering machine. And, in each of those messages she continues to say "you don't want to talk to me, I know". Duh, now just stop calling, please!

Wilbur, a.k.a. Bill, a.k.a. Shannon's ex-fiancé gets third place, as I did not have to deal with him directly at all during 2005. The good news is, he may be learning his lesson finally. He said he owns a house on the Oregon coast, but come to find out, he bums off his brother. Nothing like trying to look wealthy when one is not.

Life is hard when you have to deal with so many people who are toxic individuals. Perhaps this is why I have my guard up when it comes to putting myself out there. Then again, I realize that I analyze a lot when it comes to people and expect perfection out of everyone, as I do out of myself.

A Look At 2005

What did I accomplish in 2005, what should I change in 2005? Unlike some person who I know, who posts every A she gets in college every semester, but does not post that half her classes she pulls out of, I am not going to brag about grades here. However, I would like to say that I did better grade-wise in 2005 than before. And, I've still never dropped a class!

My travels in 2005 have taken me to Yosemite National Park, Monterey, CA and to Spokane, Washington. I hope that my travels this year take me internationally. Actually, I think I will set that as a goal of mine.

In 2005 we moved from the awful apartment we used to live in (which will be written about more later). We had a couple visitors from the Inland Northwest, Shannon/Michael & kids, and Beverly's mother. Beverly got a really bad sunburn.

I also paid $3500 in debt, which was a good decision. We got a CostCo Membership, and now feel as if we are part of the elite! Sweetie got her shots too, which was exciting. We got rid of her fleas too!

I also think I ate more fish in 2005 than in any other year. I did not get the flu, for the 5th year in a row, which also makes it over 5 years that I've been a vegetarian.

I'm sure there are more things that happened in 2005, but maybe I'll think of them later. Soon I will post what I hope to do in 2006, and what I hope to have changed from 2005. That's it for today.

A lot has happened since I left this blog, and a lot has happened in the last few weeks in general. I have not had much time to write at all, and tomorrow, with me starting work again, I won't have too much time either. Today I filled out my FAFSA so I can continue to go to college. I am still waiting for my grades to appear from last semester, and it's getting quite old, to be honest. They have until the 3rd to post them, and I have a funny feeling that they are going to post them a few minutes before they are due.

Spokane 2005

Beverly and I also got back from a trip we took to Spokane via car. We took I-5, even though I wanted to take the coast highway (101). Overall we had a very good time there. I was a little disappointed that Spokane did not change as much as I thought it would. We drove though the downtown, but it was pretty dead (the day after Christmas). We both had a very good Christmas there and had a very nice drive.

On the way back we drove through downtown Portland and I was quite amazed at all the construction going on there. It was a lot different than I remember it being. We made it from Spokane to Yreka California before having to stop for the night. The next day we returned to San Francisco right before I had a counseling appointment. After the day was over I was pretty tired, but sad in a way that the trip was over. I hope that we can take another one soon.

Super Size Me!

Last night Beverly and I got the movie Super Size Me in the mail from Blockbuster. I had been wanting to see it for quite a while. On our trip we stopped at Burger King a couple times and had pizza a couple times as well. After watching "Super Size Me" I felt bad that I eaten in such a way. The movie was very enlightening and made me want to eat healthier, so today I went through Beverly's nutrition textbook and wrote down many of the foods that contain certain vitamins. I figured that I would try to incorporate many of these foods in all of my meals. Then we wrote down how we can improve what we already eat. I found that we can improve our health greatly and spend less money than we do on food right now.

My grandparents bought us a "slicer dicer" for Christmas and we have used it on a couple dinners. We made curry a couple nights ago with it and tonight made one of the recipes included, which was a zucchini casserole. It's in the oven now and it seems far more healthy than many of the foods that I have ate while on the road. It is hard to get good food while driving. Right now one could say we are detoxing from the trip.

New Blog

So, why'd I move my old blog back here again? First I noticed that I get a lot more traffic here and people seem to reply. On Blogger I didn't get nearly the replies I get here and it's easier to view other people's blogs. There are a few other things I want to write about, but I will save those for later this week.