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So one week of the MLB season is officially out of the way and the Mets are off to an inspiring 2 - 4 start.  On the plus side the pitching hasn't been that disastrous yet they've picked up where they were the past two seasons with being completely incapable of scoring runs.  However, I remain optimistic because what else can you do this early in the season?  Daniel Murphy is hurt, Mike Jacobs sucks and Fernando Tatis is 234,453 years old so they better call Ike Davis up soon.  Give us something to root for.  I don't care if it's too soon.  If you're Omar Minaya or Jerry Manuel you have nothing to lose.  You're going to be fired anyway by the All Star break if things keep going the way they are.

Liz surprised me this afternoon with a pretty awesome and pretty generous gift.  The back story is this... when we joined our gym back in January, we each received 3 sessions with a Personal Trainer to get off on the right start.  The guy I worked out with was pretty cool and he really kicked my ass.  I seem to recall driving home one morning from the gym and fighting back the urge to vomit.  The experts tell me that's how you know it's working.  I liked that this guy was old school and not a big fan of all the fancy machines.  He's more of a, "Let's go outside and see if we can life up small cars in the parking lot", type which is pretty cool.  Anyway because we've both made it to April and are still going strong, Liz bought me a package of sessions with him (she may use a few) which is quite awesome.  Before we joined the gym I would have thought working with a personal trainer was a little weird but the last couple of months have changed my mind.  You can easily spend an hour at the gym and accomplish nothing if you're not sure what to do in the first place.  I wasn't really ready to work with a trainer when I started but I'm down 23 pounds now and feeling the difference.  I'm looking forward to upping the ante now.

Add this to the list of things I like: Reading the recall notices in Consumer Reports.  With every new issue, I can't wait to get to the recall section to see if anything I own or have ever owned is being recalled.  Fortunately nothing we own has been in there and I'm actually depressed each time.  I don't know why that is but I think I blame my father.  It's like I'm being deprived of the opportunity to scream, "See! I told you this thing was a piece of shit!"  Anyway, I like the recall section of Consumer Reports and if that's wrong I don't want to be right.

In other news I finally finished scraping the wallpaper off my bathroom walls.  I need to do some touch up work to the walls in some of those places where I scraped more vigorously than others but I'm pleased with the progress.  We can paint this week, put in the new hardware and be ready to go.  One more thing done.  We also had the living room and upstairs carpets replaced last week so things are shaping up.  Our calendar is blocked off this weekend for house stuff so I hope to make some serious progress.

Lastly, I have some brain candy recommendations on a couple of new books that are coming out or have just been released.  The first is called Rules for New York Sports Fans by Joe Benigno.  If you have ever listened to WFAN then you likely know Joe.  Way back in the day he was a caller who actually won a contest to host a show.  He hosted the overnights for many years (misty water colored late night college memories) and now hosts the mid-day show with Evan Roberts.

The second is by Sid Rosenberg who is a WFAN alum and it's called You're Wrong and You're Ugly.  Sid hosted the mid-day with Joe at one point and did sports for Imus before drug and alcohol addiction got him fired from the station.  He's recovered nicely for himself on sports radio down in Miami and his book supposedly has some great stories from his storied past at WFAN.