Many of you have asked, so I thought I’d update you on Beerfast. I’ll be perfectly honest with you - the last 3.428571 weeks have been anything but easy.

Its a little unnerving to think of how much of a beer drinker I am (was?). I guess its true though - I’ve always been generally indifferent in my choice of liquor. I’ve had fad drinks here and there, drinks that I would order almost exclusively, but I currently have no preference in my non-beer beverages. I can drink a Merlot one minute, a Jack-and-coke the next, and a vodka-tonic after that. I don’t mind any of them, but I don’t care for them either. Most days, I’d rather have a beer.

The first few days of the bet went by pretty smoothly. We had made the bet on a Sunday, so it was easy to avoid beer - or any drink for that matter - during the weekdays that followed. But when Friday rolled around, things started to get tricky. We had a going away dinner for Briggs at Bobby Van’s, and were forced to alternate between wine and whiskey, neither really quenching our thirst. I can’t even remember what we did the rest of the night… likely because I had too much whiskey.

I knew Saturday would be tough, and a text message from Briggs that afternoon couldn’t be a more appropriate reaction to this entire bet.

“Wow, you are a total douche.”

Michigan was playing a night game that day, so I had decided to make use of the free day to run some errands for my new apartment. Responding to Briggs’ invitation to his apartment for daytime beer pong and college football with “Can’t drink beer for a month, heading to IKEA” was not smart. I’m still embarrassed I said something so lame.

But Michigan playing at night made going to a bar to watch the game easier. Drinking liquor in the middle of the afternoon would have felt really weird to me; the 8pm start time helped me adjust to the notion of not having a beer while watching Michigan Football. That’s not to say it made things super easy… after a few hours of only drinking Jack and Cokes, I hit a wall - that point in the night where one needs to slow things down. And let me tell you, there’s something to be said about ordering a glass of “whatever red wine you have” at 1am at a clubby Irish pub. That something is “Wow, I am a total douche.”

Luckily, I made it through the night, and Week One was over. The weekdays again went by without a hitch, but Thursday was when things got difficult again. I was headed to Chicago for an extended weekend and was worried what temptation I was going to encounter. My trips to Chicago are never tame - and I knew this one would be no different. Over the course of the weekend I was supposed to be attending a beer-only open bar before going to a club Friday night, stop by a half dozen Halloween parties on Saturday, and watch both Michigan and Chicago Bears football.

On my flight out to Chicago, I started seriously questioning my abilities to make it through the duration of the bet. I brainstormed ideas for cutting costs elsewhere in my life (like by not eating dinner for a week) to counter the financial impact of giving up. I thought about paying off my friends to lie on my behalf (up to a breakeven point of $100, obviously). I even thought about reverse engineering my previous offer to my friends. That is, instead of paying my friends to get Sachin or Rishi to drink a beer, I get my friends to pay me and subsidize my loss.

“Jay, I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this weekend.”
“Oh yeah, Sachin offered me the same deal if I got you to drink a beer.”
“Well how about this, I’ll drink a beer. You collect from Sachin and give me a cut.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Cause it would make me a more fun person to be around. Don’t you want that?”
“Here, have a scotch.”

Like Jay, none of my other friends really bought into the idea of paying me to lose a bet. Luckily, the open bar I attended also served wine, the Halloween parties I went to had plenty of liquor (except for one, which ran out, so we left), and the football games… well, I went to friends’ apartments to watch the Michigan and Bears/Lions games, and sat in the corner drinking Diet Cokes. Not one of my prouder moments.

I came back from Chicago on Monday, but the rest of the week was not as easy as the ones before. Halloween fell right in the middle, and even though I had a great time sans beer (and plus everything else), Thursday was just not fun. At all.

Last weekend was when this bet really started taking its toll. It may have been the exhaustion from the Chicago trip and Halloween, but I had no desire to be social. While watching the Michigan game at a bar, Sachin and I sat in the corner drinking Diet Cokes (though this time we were so insecure with ourselves that we told people they were Jack and Cokes). On both Friday and Saturday nights, I only went out for an hour or so, not having any desire to drink (I know, weird right?) nor hang out with those who were.

Perhaps the hardest thing about this bet has been explaining it to people. When we first started, it was exciting to talk about. I’d bring it up willingly.

“My friends and I challenged ourselves to go a whole month with beer! Crazy right? I think I can do it. It’s a great test of will power! Maybe I’ll lose some weight!”

In the second week, I stopped bringing it up voluntarily. It only came up when I had to decline someone buying me a beer, or explain it to someone who hadn’t yet heard the story. People kept bringing up how ridiculous of an idea it was, but I hadn’t quite admitted it to myself.

“Oh yeah, I forgot you can’t have beer.”
“Wait, why can’t you have any beer?”
“Cause I made a bet with some friends to give up beer for a month.”
“What happens if you lose?”
“I have to pay $100.”
“What if no one loses?”
“Then nothing happens.”
“Why do you care then?”
“Pride, I guess?”
“That’s lame. Why did you decide to do this?”
“Because we wanted to see if we actually could.”
“So you’re not doing this for any health reasons?”
“Kind of, but not really. At this point its more of a will power thing.”
“So you can’t drink during football Saturdays?”
“No.”
“Or play beer pong for a month.”
“No.”
“That’s so lame.”
“Not really… its kind of a cool challenge.”
“Yea, tell that to me in a week.”

(Other frequent discussions throughout this bet have been to clarify what we can and cannot drink. Cider, for example, is too beer-like and is also banned. Wine coolers / Bacardi Silvers / Hard Lemonades are legal, at the risk of looking like a wuss.)

But eventually, as the days went on and the cravings for beer spiked, the conversations turned more sour.

“Wait, so explain to me again why you’re doing this.”
“Cause I’m a fucking idiot. Don’t talk to me.”

Which brings me to now - an unusually territory not unlike (watch out, NYC current events reference coming up!) the last few miles of a marathon, where I’m ready to call it quits right now, but I’m also proud of how far I’ve made it and how close I am to the end so I can’t give up now! (No clue if I’m using that marathon reference correctly, cause let’s face it, I may be able to give up beer, but I sure as hell don’t run for pleasure.)

It has been good being away from beer for a while. I don’t feel bloated when I wake up on the weekends (did I really just say bloated?), and my Sundays aren’t spent dealing with beer BMs. I’ve furthered my affinity for scotch (shout outs to Jay and my roommate), and I feel like I’ve lost a few pounds (Actually, that is a blatant lie. I think cutting beer out of my diet has actually made me fatter.)

But I’m absolutely looking forward to this thing to be over. I’m looking forward to when people will stop asking me about the bet, stop questioning my intelligence for ever agreeing to it, stop picking bars like d.b.a. which serve like a bajillion kinds of beer, stop tempting and teasing and taunting me (Turner, if you say “Mmmmmmm, carbs” while holding your beer in front of me one more time, I might kill you). I’m looking forward to not having to listen to Sachin say “Come on, just drink a beer. If you want to have a beer, just have it. I’M JUST SAYING [hands waving and pointing in excitement], if YOU want a BEER, just DRINK A BEER. YOU, BEER. Just do it,” thinking that for some reason, after 24 days, I might just crack because he, the one who has to gain by me doing so, says its OK.

I’m looking forward to midnight on November 14th (15th?), when I can finally, finally, FINALLY drink a beer.

(I am not, however, looking forward to the rest of November 15th. My boss already has it down in his calendar - no joke - that I’m not allowed to call in sick that day. That day is not going to be fun.)

Those of you that have been around this blog for a while know that Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year. Over the last few years, I’ve had some pretty amazing costumes and pumpkins…

In 2004, I dressed up as a fireman, which, though not that unique of an idea, was amazing because the costume I wore was intended for wear by kids aged 4-8 (and was purchased from Duane Reade).

In 2005, I took the physical challenge and went out as a Double Dare Contestant. Put together completely from scratch after visits to Conway, Wal Mart, and Home Depot, this is my proudest costume to date. I also carved my first pumpkin that year. My carving - the Batman symbol - was simple, but not bad for a first attempt (in my opinion, which is all that matters).

Last year, I continued the Nickelodeon theme and went as Quailman (from the Doug cartoon). Not many people got it, but those that did LOVED it. I also intricately carved the Michigan Block M into a pumpkin - quite possibly the best work of art I’ve created in my entire life.

(Side note: In college, pre-blog, my greatest costume was right around the 2002 World Series, when I dressed as the Anaheim Angels’ Rally Monkey. What can I say? I’m a badass.)

This year was no exception. Last week, I got together with my usual crew to continue our annual pumpkin-carving tradition. Without further ado, my cannibalistic pumpkin:

While shopping for a pumpkin, I found a deli selling the little ones, and decided to roll with the idea. I had to buy a fairly large pumpkin to make sure I had enough room for such a big mouth, so scooping it out took FOREVER. On top of that I had to carve out the front and back of the little one too, so that light could shine through. All in all, a lot of effort, but the results were worth it.

When I got home that night, the doormen in my building were so impressed by it that they asked if they could keep it on their counter. Since I was leaving the next day for a long weekend in Chicago, I happily handed it over to get maximum exposure. Sadly, it was gone by the time I got back (one of the doormen said they eventually had to trash it because of flies), but apparently it was a pretty big hit while it was there. They took a picture of it and put it in the front of an album they had of residents’ costumes. I’ve never been so proud.

More pics: light and dark closeups of the scared little pumpkin being eaten, another angle of the whole thing.

I spent last weekend in Chicago, so I celebrated Halloween weekend there. This year, I went as part of a group costume - the Scooby Doo Gang. My costume, though not as ‘homemade’ as in previous years, was still a lot of fun to wear, and it attracted a lot of attention.

We didn’t have a Velma. The girl next to me played Angela from The Office. Sadly, the above is the only picture I have from that weekend, and it doesn’t show Bier, who played Shaggy (which was funny in its own way, because Bier is completely bald). I would have had more pictures, except Mike (Fred, above) very stupidly deleted all the pictures in his camera. And he claims to be a ‘professional photographer’ too. Ha! (You wanted a mention in the blog? You got it, pal!)

Since I was using a borrowed costume in Chicago, and didn’t have the rest of the gang with me here in New York anyway, I went with a different costume on Halloween night, paying homage to one of my favorite shows on television.

In case you can’t tell, the back of my shirt reads:

Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race For The Cure.

I also carried around a giant check for $340 made out to “SCIENCE”.

As always, a great halloween. Can’t wait for next year.

I went on quite the bender last weekend. Multiple 32-ounce styrofoam cupfuls (yes, that said multiple 32-ounce styrofoam cupfuls) of beer at a ridiculously-happy hour with coworkers Thursday night; two separate bar tabs at Gallery bar Friday night; Michigan football at Professor Thom’s on Saturday; one more bar tab at Gallery bar Saturday night (having left my credit card there on Friday); the Jets game on Sunday; And SIXTHLY, after taking the bus back from the Meadowlands, bowling at the Port Authority, where we ordered one of these things.

Sometime during our second game, I brought up how much beer I had been drinking lately. We began discussing the pros and cons of beer (pros: social drink acceptable for any occasion, delicious; cons: beer shits, almost not being able to see my toes), and our conversation eventually drifted into contemplating lowering our consumption. Like other recent bowling outings, this eventually became a wager.

Sachin, Rishi and I challenged ourselves to give up beer.

Not forever, mind you, because that would be freaking ridiculous. But we did give ourselves what I consider to be a pretty aggressive goal: one month without beer.

Not just any regular month, however, because we foolishly rushed to declare a deadline date and time (Midnight on November 14, 2007… or is it Midnight on November 15, 2007? Its the Midnight where the 14th becomes the 15th) before realizing that October has 31 days. Which, if you count the time between when the bet was made yesterday and midnight last night, means I will have to go without beer for like 31.3 days. And that three after the decimal is repeating, I just know it.

This is going to be hard. Much harder than the time last week when I tried to climb the 8 floors to the gym in my building (I got to the top and was like, “Good workout, Amish. Next week, we’ll take the elevator and maybe get some weights in.”)

So I will need your help. Not encouraging thoughts or moral support, because I’ve got my mom for emotional crap like that (I haven’t even told her about this challenge yet because she’ll probably start crying tears of joy, and that’s a conversation I don’t feel like sitting through). No, what I need more than anything is for you to get Rishi and Sachin to lose.

We’re on an honor system, but the penalty for drinking a beer before the deadline is $100, paid to the remaining contestant(s). Not a bank-breaking amount, but just enough to make one think twice about getting hopped up…on…hops (yup, went there). I’d rather not lose, but I wouldn’t mind being able to drink a beer sooner than the deadline. I think I’m allowed to do that if they both fail. Even if I’m not, I also wouldn’t mind the extra cash, so I am hereby offering 25% of my take to anyone who can get one of those two to drink a beer. That means $12.50 for the first to fall (out of my $50), and $25 for the second (out of my $100), rounded up to $40 if you nail them both. An extra $5 thrown in for each ‘winning’ beer.

All winnings will be paid out at Midnight on November 14th (15th?) with… you guessed it… beer.

At pre-party at my new apartment -

Turner: Sachin, why are you calling me?
Sachin: I don’t know… cause you’re sitting on my phone?
(Turner pulls Sachin’s phone out from under him)

While explaining our decision not to get bar stools-

Me: We’ll never end up sitting there. You can’t watch TV if you’re not facing…the TV. (Pause) Write that down.

Taco Bell, 3am-

Kumar (worker):- Hey man, where’s your other friend today?
Amish - Oh, Rishi? We got separated tonight. He didn’t make it.
Kumar - Haha…That guy loves to come in and ask for beer.

Taco Bell, 3:30am (retold to me later)-

Kumar: Hey man, I was just asking about you!

Tonight I’m participating in the Light The Night Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I was supposed to do some fundraising as part of my participation in this event, but with everything going on with my move this week, I kind of…forgot. I don’t mind meeting the minimum donation requirement myself - in fact, I’m planning on donating at least that amount - but since the spirit of this event (or any for that matter) is not to meet minimums, but actually raise as much as possible, I was hoping my readers would be also able to help.

If you’ve got a buck or two to spare, please consider contributing to the walk by visiting the following link before 5:00pm today:

Amish’s Light The Night Fundraising Page

I really appreciate all of your help.

UPDATE: Thanks for all of your donations so far. We’re at $60 and I haven’t even donated yet! Even though the website shows that the initial ‘goal’ of $50 has been reached, please don’t let that discourage you from contributing.

UPDATE: Didn’t get any more contributions since the last update, but no biggie. I threw in $40 to make it an even $100. Thanks again for your help and support!

I’m homeful!

Over the last 31 days, I have slept in an RV with no sheets, a seedy motel bed (no joke, we actually found porn under a mattress in Ann Arbor), and a variety of friends’ beds and couches. It was certainly fun - in the “Yay, I don’t have a rent payment” sense - but it was time for me to find an apartment and sleep in my own bed, using sheets whose integrity isn’t in question. Luckily, after a last minute search two weekends ago, I found an apartment with a buddy of mine. We got our paperwork in quick and were able to get in our place by October 1st.

It’s a little weird actually. He’s a close family friend that I grew up with back in Melbourne, someone I took tennis lessons and had sleepovers with. Now we’re moving in together, arranging furniture and discussing fake walls, like we’re about to build a fort. And we’ll probably have some old lady come in regularly and clean up after us. This is basically just another sleepover, albeit way more expensive and with stricter move-in rules.

Note to self: don’t destroy him

The new roommate and I share the same last name, which is more annoying than it is cool, because “Thou shalt not sully thy roommate’s online reputation” is like, I dunno, #76 on the list of rules for living with people (btw, sorry Sachin). So now I’ve got to come up with nickname for him, so this site doesn’t show up when someone Googles his full name. I’m having trouble coming up with a good one. So far all I’ve got is: Roomate #7, because he’s the seventh roommate I’ve had in New York (Roommate #15 if you include everyone I’ve stayed with while homeless), or GuyWhosePoolI’veProbablyPeedIn, because, well, its probably true.

(Side note: We had our first “roommate moment” on Monday, the day we moved in. As we were unpacking, my roommate asked me to tie his tie for him to wear the next day. I have no clue why I’m telling you this.)

MurraCurryGramerHill

We’re living on the east side now, somewhere in the intersection of Murray Hill, Curry Hill, and Gramercy. I believe this automatically qualifies me as a douchebag, but given the sheer number of attractive women I’ve seen in my building in the last 48 hours, I am not sure I care. And while I’m sure that’s an excuse that many guys douchebags of this area use, there’s also a lot of great restaurants and bars and…

(Side note 2: I live dangerously close to a Taco Bell now. Like walking distance close. Not that my previous place wasn’t, because it was certainly a walkable distance (one I did a few times…..hey-o nested parentheses!). But this one is MUCH, MUCH closer.)

I has a bucket

Anyway, I’m still in the process of moving in, which I’ve discovered is only slightly less of a pain in the ass than moving out. I’m finding things in boxes that I should never have packed in the first place. Remember the trash can dilemma from my moving out post? Well that (bigger) trash can was thrown out, but last night while searching for my iPod charger, I opened a box and realized I saved not one, not two, but THREE of these smaller IKEA trash cans. I have no clue why I saved them. They retail brand new for A DOLLAR NINETY-NINE, which makes me ever so glad I sprung for a larger storage unit. Wouldn’t want to have to replace those! The worst part of this is that my roommate brought kitchen and bathroom trash cans in with his move too, including one of the same model, meaning we have four of these fucking things sitting at our apartment. Anyone want one?

I’ve sang praise about How I Met Your Mother over and over again on this blog. Its my second favorite active running sitcom (behind The Office), important enough for me to plan my Mondays around (last night, for example, was a Taco Bell/HIMYM man-date with Rishi).

(Side note: Penn Station Taco Bell totally pissed me off last night, because they took my order, took my money, and gave me my (partially prepared) food BEFORE letting me know they were out of sour cream….. grrrrrr)

Anyway, last night’s season HIMYM premiere was hilarious. The celebrity cameos of Enrique Iglesias and Mandy Moore (by the way…Mandy Moore in biker gear and tattoos, saying things like “Do you ask your tailor to leave extra room in your crotch for your giant vagina?”…Totally hot), Ted’s awesome facial hair sculpting (an inspiration for me), Barney shouting something to the effect of “This is going in my blog!”, a ton of other quotable lines, and of course, the slap bet reference in the closer.

Fans of the show know that the Slap Bet episode is one of the best episodes in the show’s short history, and the subplot it created for future episodes is genius. In short, one of the characters, Marshall, won a bet against another character, Barney. Marshall won the right to slap Barney at five random, separate (and unpredictable) times throughout their life. To date, only two slaps have been delivered, both in amazing fashion (the second one came completely out of nowhere in the closer of an episode last season and I nearly fell off the couch laughing so hard).

At the end of last night’s episode, Marshall calls Barney and delivers a brief, cryptic message with the address to a website displaying a countdown clock. Naturally, I visited the website he mentioned, www.slapbetcountdown.com, to see if it actually existed.

It does. It counts down to the episode at 8:30pm on November 19th. I can’t wait.

Its going to be LEGEN -wait for it- DARY!

Hooray positive feelings and so on and so forth and things of that nature…

I could not be more unhappy / ugly right now.

This morning, I decided to clean up and trim my beard a little bit. I busted out my recently-purchased trimmer, flicked it on, and went to work. What I didn’t realize is that the little attachment that controls the length of the trim was not properly secured to the blade. As soon as I pressed the trimmer against my skin, the attachment popped off. The blade, however, kept going, and sheered off a patch of hair from the bottom of my face.

Not. Good.

I spent the next 20 minutes playing around with the trimmer and various attachments, trying to figure out a way to trim the rest of the hair to a length that would mask the error but still maintain a semblance of a beard. Back and forth, side to side, trimming a little here, evening out a little there. Going back to even out the right side. Damnit, now the left side’s off again! Crap, I missed a spot…and so on and so on.

Eventually I had whittled down my former man-beard of awesomeness into little more than a five o’clock shadow. And even though the front and sides of my face look OK (in the ‘my eyes don’t hurt to look at it’ sense), the bottom - the part where my first chin meets my second chin - looks like I handed a blind kid a lawnmower and said, “Hey you, aim that thing at my face!”

You know what’s NOT cool?

Food Emporium has Coinstar machines that let you turn in a pile of coins in exchange for cash or gift certificates. Redeeming for cash requires paying a surcharge, whereas taking a gift certificate (to one of many online retailers) costs you nothing.

After moving out last month, I stopped by to get rid of a cupful of change I had accumulated. I had recently heard that they added iTunes to their selection of surcharge-free choices, so I dumped in my cup, took my receipt, and went on my way.

Today I finally got around to entering my redemption code into my iTunes account when I realized something. iTunes songs cost 99 cents each. Ergo, the cost of a number of songs, x, would be calculated with the formula $0.99x. 16 songs, for example, cost $0.99 * 16 = $15.84. (For simplicity, ignore the prices of full albums, which mess with this formula and ruin this story.)

My certificate, worth $15.82, was off by

TWO

CENTS.

I was furious when I discovered this. True, iTunes has been out for a while without changing their pricing structure, and I should have had a little more foresight when heading into the store. But who the hell takes in a bunch of change with any idea of how much money is actually there? Isn’t that the one of the reasons for actually visiting those machines?! I had no clue if I had 15 dollars or 50. Why on earth couldn’t they just round up and give me $15.84, or an even $16? (I’d be less upset about have an extra 16 cents in my account rather than 97.)

Some of you are thinking, “Why didn’t you just go back with 2 cents?” Well guess what? I just tried that. And you know what I encountered? A $5 minimum. Walked all the way over to Food Emporium to find out that the bastards bested me again.

So now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I don’t think its possible to put 2 cents on my credit card, so it seems like my only real option is to save up exactly $5.96 in change and revisit the Coinstar (to meet the minimum requirement, include the 2 cents, and still have exactly the right amount to purchase songs with). Considering I don’t even have a home right now, trying to find a clean shirt to wear each day is hard enough. Keeping track of loose change is NOT going to be a priority anytime soon.

Since I have no idea what to do, I’ll just complain here on my blog. Because it seems like this is the one place where I can put my two cents in.