OK, so the NYC reservoirs must be at, like, 1000 percent capacity with all the rain we've been having. In the words of Donna and Barbra, enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough....is ENOUGH! I was all set to go running in Prospect Park, and now this...

My adjustment this morning was somewhat like a WWE match, with me on the losing end. I'm afraid I'm getting a subscapular tear from hyperextending my right arm. Dr. A leaned into the marbley area between my scapular and my spine and pressed really hard. I thought I was going to pass out, but she worked some of it out. What I need is a really good massage.

Had a kickass weight workout Thursday night. I feel like I'm getting my body into peak shape. I decided to lay off the shoulder until Monday so it can get some rest. Now I'm going to dance around in my basement to disco. I've decided that my two favorite disco songs are Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" and Dan Hartman's "Vertigo/Relight My Fire."

Last night Andrea and Arlene, my two longest-term friends, came over. I made guacamole again, which turned out well. The highlight of the evening was when Arlene read my first diary...from 1976, when we were both 13...out loud. No one had ever read the entries aloud before. I was rolling on the floor laughing at some of the entries. It made me realize how limited a world teenagers inhabit and how inflated our sense of reality was. But what was more poignant, perhaps, was that when I wrote those journals I was afraid that someone else would find and read them. I focused on very superficial things, like the weather, what records I bought, what I ate, and what marks I got in school. There was little mention of my family, particularly my father. At the time my father was seriously alcoholic and was about to be admitted to rehab for the first time, but there's nothing in the journal about it. Later, as I started to mature, I began to write about my interior life. When I was struggling with being gay, I started keeping a private journal that I kept hidden away, and at the same time I kept a public journal where I could write safely without fear of anyone's finding it. Only when I came out and realized I didn't care what people thought did the two journals become one. I've been thinking about how I could adapt this concept into a book. Maybe it would help other budding homosexuals identify.

I just wanna...I just wanna hear a good beat, yeah.

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Someone etched into the stall of the men's room at work the following message: "THERE IS MORE INCOMPETANCE [sic] HERE THAN ANY WHERE ELSE." Another muse wrote beside it, "I think he means incontinence. He needs diapers." And another bard inscribed, "Do you mean impotence? You need Viagra." And finally, underneath it all, "Prunes may help." I had no idea my company had such deep thinkers and wordsmiths. Such a witty interplay of semantics--and in my own office. But going back to the original thought expressed by the first writer, it had never occurred to me that my firm has more incompetence than say, the post office or the department of motor vehicles...I mean, THAT'S saying a lot.

However, what excites me even more is the idea that there may be not one, not two, not even three...but FOUR brilliant but shy scribes in my midst. The subtle yet increasingly invaluable assistance proffered by each author to the others to try to express precisely the right thought while evacuating their bowels has created an oeuvre in the men's room reminiscent of...oh, I don't know...The Hours. Each man, building on the thought of the man before him, searching...struggling for meaning in a lavatory...perhaps all written at different times by different men. I can't talk about it anymore because...well, because I just can't.

Had a terrific workout at Waterfront tonight: 2.5 miles on the treadmill (8.8-minute mile), 15 rounds of boxing, 10 sets of weights, and ab work. I'm down to 158 from 169 just 8 weeks ago. Martin is probably going to match up me and Rob for the June smoker on the 19th. Should be fun.

Wanted to stop by Battery Park to see the free James Brown concert, but I was starving and saw swarms of people in the park. Ow!

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I caught Muriel's Wedding on TV today. It's sweet, funny, shocking, and disturbing all at the same time. Of course, being that I'm an insane ABBA fan, I've always though it would be cool if suddenly an ABBA song were played to an important event in my life. Like when I broke up with Harry, I wish "Our Last Summer" had been playing in the background. All my family and friends know that "Dancing Queen" is my theme song. I'm not sure if I'm flattered or mortified that they know that. My three closest cousins and one of my brothers specifically asked the DJs at their wedding receptions to play "Dancing Queen" for me, and I always ending up doing The Hustle with someone. Muriel has a big epiphany in the movie where she says, "my life is as good as an ABBA song. It's as good as 'Dancing Queen.'" I identify with that.

Another ABBA moment: I attended a career development workshop in January. The instructor asked who had a favorite artist. My hand shot up like the girl who snitches on Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble. I said, "ABBA." Snickers from the class. Imagine, she said, that space aliens have come to my door and informed me that they need ABBA music to save their planet. (It could happen!) They must take all of my ABBA CDs, but I can keep two. Which two would I keep? I immediately said, The Visitors and Arrival, unintentionally (and totally missing the irony of withholding those two particular albums from the arriving visitors). OK, she said, now they come back and say that I can keep only one. "Arrival," I said, like the 13-year-old girl I really am at heart. What that had to do with my career development I don't remember.

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Some 80 cars were involved in a big chain-reaction crash on I-68 in Maryland today. I know where that is, having traveled that route with ex Harry to Ohio about 10 years ago. It was around Thanksgiving, and we had to sit in stopped traffic for 3 or 4 hours because an avalanche had shut down the road. I remember thinking it was all about timing, because we had just missed the avalanche by about 10 minutes. We were perched high on a mountain ridge, fog shrouding everything, and I took out my video camera and started filming people hanging out by their cars.

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I was reading an article in Elements magazine called "The Truth About Laughter." Research now shows conclusively that laughter really is the best medicine for getting and staying well, something I've always inherently believed. For centuries people believed that the mind and the body were inseparable, but then Rene Descartes came along and said they were distinct entities, and medicine followed suit, treating the body but leaving the mind and soul to the church. Hence, the term ghost in the machine refers to this dualism of mind (ghost) and body (machine).

I do find that when I start taking life too seriously I'm prone to sickness. I had five colds this winter, despite keeping up my regular workouts and taking my vitamins. I realize that I didn't laugh all that much. Last week, after seeing the comedy show with Glenn, where I laughed pretty hard, I was in a great mood and had one of the best workouts of late. The Brady Bunch is on right now, but it's not making me laugh so much. I think I need something stronger, like maybe What's Up, Doc?--still my favorite movie of all time.

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It turns out that the gunshots last night were, in fact, real. A cop was shot by a man who thought he was about to be robbed. Thankfully the officer's life was saved by his bulletproof vest. The incident happened a block from where I live. It's not all that surprising, even though the neighborhood is relatively quiet and well patrolled. I can only imagine how the neighbors, many of whom are refugees from the Upper West Side, will deal with it. This is the third dramatic incident in the neighborhood, after the burning down of the building across the street and the swarm of bees that forced a nearby building to be evacuated just the other day. If I see locusts asking for directions, I'll know we're really in trouble. I suppose I've already endured stigma, having lived in Reston, VA, sometimes known as "Home of Ebola."

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As I was sitting at my desk at home just now, I heard two guys talking outside. One asked if the other had heard any gunshots. I guess the other guy answered yes. The first guy said that dozens of police cars were surrounding a building down the block. Indeed, when I looked out the window, the two streets flanking our building had been blocked off, and several police cars guarded them. I don't have a clue what happened, but it doesn't sound good. Even though I've gotten used to the idea that Brooklyn has become relatively safe, it doesn't surprise me that crime would happen around here.

I've decided to work from home today. All the distractions and interruptions prohibit me from getting my work done, so I requested to work at home. So far this week I've had two bad workouts, which is a sign to me that I might be overtraining. I'm going to try to do some light workouts over the next few days.

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I walked home tonight over the Brooklyn Bridge, defying the raising of the terror threat to orange. All I could think of was how during the last terrorist warning, authorities discovered plans to knock down the Golden Gate Bridge by cutting the suspension cables. Hello? What, is it like in prison where an inmate uses a nail file to whittle away a window bar until 20 years it finally comes off? How would anyone do that undetected?

It took me about 90 minutes to walk home from work. The temperature on the Watchtower read 75 degrees.

It's always so strange walking through downtown Brooklyn nowadays, without the tension I used to feel when I worked part-time at the now defunct New York City Board of Ed in 1980. Downtown Brooklyn was such a hellhole then, and there were few streets I felt safe walking along. Now I make it a point to walk down State Street, which was voted Greenest Block in Brooklyn a few years back. I remember in the early 1990s, when Aunt Eileen told us that her boss had bought a house on State Street, everyone in the room collectively gasped...in horror. Now I'm sure he's laughing all the way to the bank, in the bank, and out of the bank.

Read in New York magazine about a new French bistro in Boerum Hill called Bacchus, so Boo Boo, Summer Poole (I am not making this up, nor is she a drag queen), and I ate there tonight. The food was delicious. I had a beet salad with almonds, hanger steak with potatoes au gratin, and spinach. The restaurant was BYOB, so I went down the block to the liquor store, expecting to find only Night Train, but was pleasantly surprised to find a $20 bottle of a Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Tonight made up for my incredibly foul mood yesterday.

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"There is no spoon." Boo Boo and I watched The Matrix last night; it was his first time and my....oh, who knows? It's much more enlightening (though still profoundly disturbing) after repeated viewings. I've always been drawn to the whole "What is real?" debate. As a teenager, long before The Truman Show came out, Ted and I used to have long talks about whether everyone in our lives was paid to be there and we were all on some big movie set. For a while, I actually believed this because so many coincidences kept happening to me. It was only after I read Jung's treatise on synchronicity that things made sense to me--at least in my world. Although skeptics abound, I have found too many seemingly random events in my life too uncoincidental to believe that no relationship exists between them. A case in point is meeting Luis. I met Luis through our mutual friend Scott, whom I met through Scott's and my mutual friend Bill, whom I met through Bill's and my mutual friend Frank. Frank was the first gay boxer I met in the mid-1980s, when I was discovering my affinity for boxing. Frank has been my spiritual mentor in many ways through the years. Sure, it could all be coincidence, but it's meaningful to me. Science and logic can't explain everything.

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Went with Glenn to The Marquee on Thursday night to see a comedy troupe called Unitard. His friend Mike was one of the comedians, and I thought his skits in particular were hilarious, especially one in which he plays a sign-language interpreter freely interpreting for Richard Simmons' Deaf Poetry Jam. The other skit I thought was very funny was by Nora Burns, the female troupe member; she played Julianne Moore in a TV variety show called The Hour, in which she continuously teetered on the edge of tears. Despite having seen The Hours, I completely missed the jokes until yesterday and today. I've been having flashes where I'll suddenly remember why she was kissing female audience members on the lips and referring to giving Toni Collette a makeover. Sometimes I feel like I'm a contestant on the SCTV game show Half Wits.

We went to hear Gina spin at Joya last night. She always plays an interesting mix of tunes, from Style Council to AC/DC to Squeeze to Elton John and Kiki Dee. It's perfect eating music.

Had a really intense workout last night. Ran for 20 minutes between 6.5 and 7.0, which is about 8.5 minutes a mile. Boxed 8 rounds and then sparred 2 with Angel and finished up with a full weight workout and stability ball work. Felt so great.

I bought a bunch of DVDs at J&R Music World today: All About Eve, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, For Pete's Sake, The Matrix, and The Usual Suspects. They ought to keep me busy for a while.

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Last night at sprint class in Battery Park Mike and I did plyometrics and agility drills. I find these drills highly effective in improving my footwork and my explosive power in the ring. The exercises seem simple but fatiguing. After doing a series of alternating one-legged hops forward, laterally, and backwards, we went over to the statue The Immigrants, which has a raised granite base, and did some explosive jumps up and down on either leg. While we were jumping, a woman taking a photo of the statue passed by and said, "We're taking you home to Wisconsin!" We next did a series of diagonal jumps pushing off the front leg and then the back leg and finished with planks--which is essentially the top position of a pushup--for one minute. It may not sound like much, but after about 40 seconds my quads and shoulders burned. Joe is a master of performance training. He's made all the difference in helping me psychologically and physically make the leap from being someone who works out to being an athlete. I've finally undone all those years of negative conditioning from high school, when I thought gay boys were not supposed to identify themselves as athletic. I am a boxer.

My favorite store name continues to be Funny Cry Happy Gift on 14th Street and 6th Ave. in Manhattan. Apparently others share my fascination.

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Will the world end tomorrow? Only Tama-chan, the bearded seal, can save us!

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Had a deluxe workout tonight: a mile on the elliptical, followed by 10 rounds of boxing, and a weight workout. Tomorrow it's off to Battery Park for sprinting and plyometrics. My trainer, Joe, is supposed to bring parachutes and ladders (no, not the board game). The ladder is used for agility drills, like hopping and cornering, and the parachute adds resistance to our runs, which makes our muscles more efficient. Last summer my training partners Michele and Mike and I used them, and people stopped to watch, thinking we were some kind of performance artists or Cirque du Soleil.

In the ever-growing Lack of Personal Responsibility Department, the latest development is a British lawyer who is suing Kraft Foods because it markets Oreos to young kids. He's even started a nonprofit corporation in California (where else?), BanTransFats.com, aimed at eventually eliminating trans fats from all foods. Whatever happened to just not eating the damn foods and eating a balanced diet? And isn't anyone concerned about eliminating high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)? We should be. According to a recent article in Men's Fitness, HFCS, a common ingredient in products ranging from soda to ketchup, is not processed in your body the same way that sucrose is processed. Unlike sucrose, fructose doesn't produce insulin in the pancreas, which in turn doesn't produce the hormones leptin and ghrelin, which effectively tell us when we've had enough to eat. That's why Luis and I tore our way through a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints and scavenged for more. Scary stuff. I fear that one day I'll drink a whole six-pack of Mountain Dew without giving it a second thought.

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Tonight I boxed four rounds with Fabrice, one of the Frenchies who come to the gym and bassist for the group bi-phonic. Like me, he is a southpaw, and it's been about 10 years since I sparred with another lefty. He is an excellent sparring partner, and we sparred at a fairly brisk pace. He's about 175 to my 160 and about 3 inches taller. I was trying to work the inside, being the shorter guy, and I kept landing some good shots to the body, but I couldn't get inside long enough to pivot and hook. I usually spar with orthodox fighters, so I'm used to moving to my left when I should have been moving to my right. Something to remember next time. I'd like to spar with him on Mondays from now on. My nose is fairly sore but that's about all that hurts. I left the gym flying high.

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I got a message today from Edy, my former boss and colleague at Nathan Associates announcing that her son Jason got engaged. I am still grateful to the Universal Life Force for bestowing on me such a great mentor as she. I worked with her for almost 12 years and learned not only how to be a great editor, but also how to deal with people professionally. She brought a level of dignity and style to every situation and gave me countless opportunities to develop myself. I wish everyone could have an Edy in their lives. We'd all be better off.

I'm looking forward to my workout at Waterfront tonight. I want to box in the June show, but I told my trainer Martin that I don't want to go in there against someone under 35. Even though I've been boxing for almost 16 years, my ring age is starting to show. I work out like a fiend, but I just don't have the same recovery time from sparring I used to have.

One of the guys I see at the gym is an elevator mechanic named Bobby. He's a nice guy, even if a bit of a guido. Every time I see him he says the same thing, "I wish I could drop this gut." I told him that he could work out until he was blue in the face, but he'd have to change his diet so he could change his metabolism. He said he had trouble laying off the veal cutlets. I asked him if he'd seen Saturday Night Fever--the scene in which Tony's father, Frank Sr., bangs his fist on the table and yells, "ONE pork chop!" It's like that, I told him.

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Welcome to my blog! I've been keeping a journal of some kind since I was 13 years old, which is about the time that The Hustle became a dance craze. That'll tell you roughly how old I am--almost 6 in dog years.

As most weekends go, this one went pretty quick. But I did do a lot of fun things. My best friend Andrea, whom I've known since junior year of high school (we went to brother and sister high schools in Brooklyn), and I went to the Prospect Park Zoo. We wanted to go in case Bloomberg decides to close it soon and let it go back to the way it was when I was a kid--abandoned and overgrown. In fact, Andrea and I halfheartedly went, expecting dank, dark, stinky caves with moribund creatures trying to put on a good show for the observers. Instead, we found a vibrant, lush idyll smack in the center of Kings County. Who knew? When we were kids, our classes went on field trips to the Prospect Park Zoo, and my memories were tainted by the smell and disarray of the grounds. We had no idea that within a 15-minute walk from our respective houses, we would find a little bit of paradise among the red panda, wallaby, and alpaca (yes, the alpaca of the should-be-a-parody commercial of ilovealpacas.com). I guess because I had low expectations I enjoyed myself tremendously. Baboons really are people (and some people really are baboons).

After the zoo, I went to visit my sister-in-law Kim at Methodist, where she had just given birth to my second nephew (their first son), Tyler Anthony. The first nephew also has a last name (not one of ours) that is a first name now--Brandon. I saw on a Web site that Tyler was the 13th most popular name of 2001, and Brandon was 18th. My name (Kieran) was actually on the list too, down in the 500s somewhere, sandwiched between Wayne and Davon.

I made my first guacamole last night, which was a big hit. Simplicity really is the key. In the past I had to endure false guacamole ingredients such as mayonnaise and garlic. I made this recipe from a Mexican cookbook, and it rocked!

Today I saw Mom for Mother's Day. I wanted to take her to lunch, but she wasn't interested. She said that she didn't like going out on Mother's Day because once we all went out as a family on that day and the restaurant ran out of food, so we had to wait "four hours" for the chef to get food for us. I asked her when this happened, and she said 1972. I think the food industry is a little more prepared now, but whatever. Instead I visited her and gave her an onyx and gold cross I'd bought for her.

My new friend, Glenn, came over and we had dinner. I'm going to teach him to box. I'm very excited about that, since boxing is probably the closest thing I have to a religion and I'm always happy to initiate converts.

Luis, my Honey Bunches Of Oats, came home tired from another grueling day of real estate rentals, empty-handed. Poor baby. Another night of HomoGayTV for us.

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