I noticed that my most popular entries, the ones that have thousands upon thousands of hits and are constantly recommended, are always the ones regarding bad relationships and breakups. Interestingly, my "happy relationship" entries get no love. Why is that? Do people just love drama?

Every year, my friends and I gather at a bar and we do a live draft for fantasy football. During the first couple of seasons, what winds up happening is that the teams who are not in the running for a playoff spot, sort of give up and do not bother playing, sometimes giving their opponents unfair advantages by essentially allowing them to win. In order to prevent that, a new rule was created--the winner of the league will have to buy a costume for the owner of the last placed team, to be worn fort the entirety of the next season's draft. Since the draft is in public, everyone walking around at the bar will see it. Unfortunately this season, I came in last.

I actually had a pretty good draft--my first two picks were Mendenhall and Turner. Mendenhall was a complete flop and pretty much cost me many of my games. I also led the league in Points Against, meaning whoever I play, they go on beast mode and score a ton of points. For those of you who do not understand FF, what basically happens is that points are assigned to stats and as the player accumulate these stats in real life, they gain points for your team. For example, if 1 yard gained is .1 point and a touchdown is 6 points--if a running back runs 10 yards and scores a touchdown, he will gain 7pts for you (10 yards x .1pts plus 1 td x 6pts).

One thing I noticed is that I don't like making trades. I seem to have this hope (more like pride) in the team I drafted and I think they will come around. At one point, I was offered in hindsight to be a great trade (Welker for Javid Best), but I declined, thinking that I already had one Pats receiver (Branch), I didn't want another and I would do well with 3 RBs. Unfortunately Best gets a concussion and Welker goes on to score a ton of points. I definitely would not have lost this season if I made that trade.

Anyway, as much as FF is luck, it's much more about skill as decisions you make can be the difference between a win and a loss. I'm excited for next year, and really curious as to what kind of costume I will have to wear. During this year's draft, last years loser had to wear a penis costume. I just want to get it over with. If it's not too embarrassing, maybe I'll post pics. We'll see.

If this happened to you, would you post pictures?

One thing I have always wanted to do was travel the world. Many people I know also want the same thing, but only 1 or 2 of them actually tried to make it come true. A few years ago when I was single, I thought I had to see and travel as much as possible. What if my future wife isn’t the perfect travel companion? It’s possible that people have different interests and anyone who has traveled with others know that there are often conflicts of interests.  (Read the rest at geekinheels.com by clicking this link)  

I've had some pretty serious injuries in my life. Broken bones, torn muscles and other tissues, getting beaten up by pipes, bad knee, etc. I always thought I had a high tolerance for pain. Maybe a bit masochist, but I would wonder from time to time if I could survive torture.

A few weeks ago, something happened to me and I realized that I wouldn't be able to. While pouring boiling water from the kettle to another container, I accidentally poured some (a lot) on my other hand. It caught the first two fingers and thumb. It didn't hurt too much right away, so I quickly let cold water run over it while I finished pouring the water. Usually, after any kind of burn, I would put toothpaste over it. The mint would keep it cool and sort of sooth the pain away. I usually use the Crest Mint toothpastes, but we ran out so I had to use the Sensodyne that was there. Not only was there no cooling affect, it hurt like hell, so I rinsed it off with the running cold water and asked Mrs. jigg to look up remedies online.

It felt great with the cold water, but within 30 seconds of stopping this treatment, my fingers felt like they were on fire. I didn't shower yet, so that was a real struggle. I knew any drop of hot water on it would shoot pain down my arm, so I had to be careful. After what felt like the longest shower I have ever taken, I put some aloe on it, as Mrs. jigg read off WebMD. Aloe worked only if I blew on it to cool it. After about 5 mind when it sort of dried, the burning pain came back.

We had to catch our flight to San Francisco early in the morning, which meant we would only have a few hours of sleep. The pain was just too great. I began looking up home remedies. It suggested everything from toothpaste to honey, to sliced vegetables, to dripping hot wax! I took some Motrin and tried to sleep. After laying in pain for an hour, I took Mrs. jigg's suggestion and made an ice water pack. I read somewhere not to use ice, so I filled up a ziplock bag with a combination of ice and water, put some Aquafor ointment (the medicated ointment I used for my tattoos) on it to keep it moist and just let the ice water pack sit on top of my hand as I tried to sleep. It worked and I knocked out--only to wake up about an hour later when the ice melted and the water was warming up.  I just tried to ignore it as much as possible and was thankful that the pain was now tolerable--almost like how a fresh tattoo feels like.

Throughout the weekend, I just kept on putting on Aquafor and by the end of the trip, there was virtually no pain left.  The skin turned black and after a week or two, began peeling off.  It pretty much looks as good as new now.  I have been burned so many times cooking, but nothing can prepare you for this.  I wondered if there was going to be scarring or something.

Anyway, have you ever had a serious burn?  If so, was there anything else that happened in your life that hurt more?

When we first moved to Staten Island, Mrs. jigg has often complained to me that people rarely hold the doors for her--especially at the ferry station which has heavy exit doors. I thought that was preposterous since I almost never experience it. People hold doors for me and I hold the doors for the people behind me. We began to pay extra close attention to her exiting, just to see what happens.

The first couple of times, I kept on saying, "See, the door was held for you!" further proving that I was right and New Yorkers are not as rude as people say we are. And of course, came the very first time that the door wasn't held and it swung back in force. I felt her eyes dart back to me, making sure I had witnessed this lack of common courtesy. There are always exceptions of course and I knew that every now and then, there are bitches and douchebags who just don't have a care about the people around them. I was sure the vast majority were people that weren't like that and my wife was just remembering the actions of the few.

For the past three months, I have been mentally noting who has held the door and who hasn't. After the first month, we both noticed men would hold the door almost all the time, regardless of race, age, or apparent social class. Women on the otherhand were the culprits and interestingly enough, usually white of the middle class or black of the working class.  Age plays a significant role too as young women (30's and below) were extremely likely to hold doors while older women were very likely to NOT hold the doors.  Even this morning as I was typing up this post on my phone, the women in front of Mrs. jigg did not hold the door as she exited, resulting in the door swinging back.

Most of the culprits would just zoom through doors, sticking out their hand just long enough to keep the door open for themselves and then continue on their way without looking back. What's even more interesting is that even if doors were often held for them, they felt no obligation to pay such a courtesy forward to the next person.  Mrs. jigg entertained the idea that maybe this was just how people were from Staten Island.  However, she also noted that almost all the women in her building at work (on Park Ave), do not hold doors as well.

In hindsight, I wished I had documented the amount of times I witnessed these things so that I would have actual stats.  Mrs. jigg even suggested that she might just want to sit down and observe this behavior one day and try to document this.  While it's a strange idea because we're not sociologists or anything, it's interesting to see such a clear divide in gender and age.

Any idea as to why older women are less likely to hold doors?

I think writer's bloc is finally over. Or maybe I've been away long enough to finally have things to say.

Waking up in darkness the past month made me realize how much I love waking up to sunlight. Day light savings time has got to be the greatest modern invention. It really sucked to go to work in the dark and then go home in the dark. I'm just glad I have a nice view from my office:

One of the best new changes in my life is joining Verizon and getting away from AT&T. I got a call from a survey rep last week asking about why I left them. Without going to too many details, I basically told them that their service was terrible and I didn't want to continue paying for services I couldn't use. I remember calling their customer service a few weeks ago and it took the 4th call to get through---the first 3 calls dropped. It's nice to know I can now make calls where everyone else can as well.

Switching to Verizon means new iPhone. Maybe I'm just kind of outdated, but this phone is about 10x faster than the one I had and it made me wonder how much time I've wasted just waiting for it to load apps.

Mrs jigg and I have also realized one thing: travel as much as we can before we have children. After coming back from our honeymoon to Europe (I'll post the details with pics in a future post), we don't really want to put off traveling till our kids are older. All the walking we did required so much effort. It would be much harder to do 15-20 years from now (not to mention more expensive since we would probably decide to bring the kids along).

Which brings me to the next point of me not wanting or not willing to bring babies on the plane. I can't stand crying babies on the plane, so I'm not going to be a hypocrite and bring a baby on the plane.

Anyway, I am back to blogging 2x a week again. How's everything with you?

This past weekend, Mrs. jigg and I celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary with a long over-due wedding reception.  After months and months of planning, the only thing I was worried about was the weather, as there was a 30% chance of shower.  The weather turned out to be great and everything went according to plan, which is crazy because if there is anything my 30 years on earth has taught me, nothing really ever goes according to plan.

Just five years ago, I couldn't have imagined that I would have a BBQ wedding.  In fact, I didn't even think I would be married.  Going to many different weddings, I learned that the formula for a great wedding consisted of three things, awesome people, quality music and open bar.  I also noticed things like comfort--the guys usually wished they didn't have to wear their ties and although the ladies love dressing up, most would complain about the heels. I wanted to eliminate that and sold it to my wife that if everyone was comfortable, they would automatically feel better. So on our wedding invite, we put down "Casual" next to dress code.

For the past three weeks, everyone was calling and texting me, asking me what they should wear.  I never thought "casual" was so difficult to understand!  My response was usually something along the lines of, "casual--whatever you want as long as it's not sloppy.  Just keep in mind you'll be in pictures."

Along with comfort, I didn't want people to be bored.  I told of my friends to bring beer pong tables and even one friend to bring a volleyball net.  He thought I was kidding.  Within 5 minutes of setting up, a game started.  People were playing touch football and flip cup.  No dull moment.

For food, I had to hire a caterer.  Aside from hot dogs and burgers, we had ribs, chicken, pulled pork,  sausages and all kinds of salads and rice dishes.  Overall, food wasn't bad, but I didn't really get to eat much of it.  For drinks, only wine and beer was allowed in the park, so I picked all different kinds of beer and spent a good part of Friday picking different kinds of wine.

Instead of a wedding cake, we ordered cupcakes--4 different flavors.  I don't eat sweets because they make me sick, but I did have half of a vanilla one and it was delicious.

We also got a photobooth where they green-screened the diner robbery scene from Pulp Fiction. They brought in a diner booth as props, as well as an Afro wig, guns, the mysterious suitcase and even Jules's Bad Motherfucker wallet.  This was a tribute to one of our favorite movies of all time.

In hindsight, I would not have changed anything about it.  My only regret was not having enough time to chat and hang out with each and every single one of the guests.  I didn't think 270 was such a large number, but as a host, it was impossible to spend more than a couple of mins with everyone before moving onto other guests or posing for pictures.

I will go on record to say that this was the best wedding I've ever been to.  A lot of people told me the same thing.  Makes me wonder how many people will follow in suit.  It would be awesome to know that I started a trend amongst my friends.

I will update this post with pics when there are some available.  And to all my friends who came to celebrate my special day with me, thank you!  It wouldn't have been the same without you.

A shoutout to my groomsmen. Thank you for all the support and friendship that you have given me. Thank you for planning such an awesome bachelor's party. And a very notable mention to my "wannabe Best Man" who has given the best wedding speech I have heard to date.

A special shoutout to mt wife, Mrs. jigg--for being an awesome wife and completely trusting me with all the planning. I always tell you that I was the best decision you have ever made, but you make me the luckiest man I know. Happy anniversary Honey Bunny!

Every now and then, I go through a phase of writer's bloc. It's been a month since I've posted anything and some readers fear that I have stopped blogging. While I don't miss blogging, I do miss writing. So don't worry folks, after my wedding this weekend and my honeymoon at the end of the month, I should have some new things to write about.

A quick update with what I've been busy with--Lately, I've just been swamped with wedding stuff. Planning our honeymoon has actually been pretty easy. We're going to London, Paris and Rome, for a total of 2 weeks. I'm also planning a trip to go snowboarding out west, my first time. Overall, I think I'm pretty good with this planning stuff. What have you been up to?

"Earn this... Earn it..."  These were the last words of Captain James H. Miller to Private Ryan in the movie, Saving Private Ryan (If you haven't seen this movie already, you should be ashamed of yourself.  Please note that there may be spoilers in this entry).  That scene always strikes a chord with me not because of how sad it is, but the realization that from that moment on, James Ryan will have live life to the fullest to make up for the deaths of the men who went out to save him from the war.  Each time I watch that scene, which is probably around 15-20 times by now, it always makes me question whether I am "earning it."  Am I living the life that I will be proud of when I die?  

Ultimately, what matters is happiness.  How happy are you?  A friend of mine is reading this booked called "Happier," basically about what steps you can take to be "happier" than you are now.  While another friend of mine didn't really believe that there's a systematic way of becoming happier, I had to chime in that ultimately, happiness is something that can be achieved.  While what makes someone happy is different for everyone, whatever it is, doesn't come served on a silver platter.  You have to go and get it, whether it's sitting around playing games or traveling the world there has to be action.

What gets the best of us is laziness and/or procrastination.  Circumstances always come up where we may not have the time to do those things we like, but much of time, as I see amongst my friends is that a lot of time is wasted doing things that may not produce the most happiness, but things done to fill voids.  "I had a tough week, let's go grab some drinks," is something I hear a lot.  Don't get me wrong, I love drinking.  I love the taste of alcohol and I love socializing with my friends while drinking.  Is it necessary to do it every week?  If I had to guess, one hour a day is all we need to improve ourselves so we can gain more happiness.  If we spent that hour trying to better ourselves by either exercising, analyzing our finances, or learning something new by reading books or taking classes, we would be significantly better a year later.

And that's my answer to being happier--self improvement.  For example, let's use one of my favorite things to do, hiking.  By exercising just a little bit everyday, I get in shape.  Being in shape, I can do the hikes I want.  By doing more research and reading about different experiences, I can better understand which hikes to do and how to get the most out of them.  Now that I have a bunch of friends who are also into hiking, we are planning trips across the country and onto other places in other parts of the world.  

A lot of people think money can buy happiness, but it really doesn't.  I spoke to someone last week who works for a billionaire.  Apparently, the wife of the billionaire doesn't need to work so she's pretty much home all the time.  She routinely goes out for lunches with her other rich friends.  Since she doesn't have any chores, she's constantly trying to find something to do.  She can hop on her private jet and go somewhere, but chances are, she's been there already and it doesn't interest her.  I would never be a billionaire and I would never be able to have all the opportunities she can have.  I personally don't know her either, but from what was described, I am significantly happier because I am constantly earning it.

I also think, much of the time, the little things make me happy as well.  When my wife bakes me cookies, it makes me happy.  When I wake up feeling refreshed, it makes me happy.  I think for some people who seem to have everything, they forget about the little things.

What makes you happy and how do you try and attain it?

This past weekend was my "Bachelor" Party.  When my groomsmen asked me what I wanted to do, I told them something fun, in the outdoors.  I didn't tell them "no-strippers" per se, but I reminded them how I felt about them.  A few weeks before, several of the groomsmen and I were already planning on hiking Mount Washington in New Hampshire.  Unfortunately, because that weekend was the only weekend we were all free for my bachelor party, we had to postpone to another date.

What I really wanted to do was to go on some kind of hiking or camping trip.  Maybe even go as far as signing up for a weekend survival course.  While some people were really into this idea, some would rather do other things.  I just left it up my groomsmen to decide and left all the planning and inviting up to them.  I found out a few weeks ago that the plan was to hike Mount Washington and I got really excited.  For those of you who don't know, Mt. Washington is the highest peak in the East Coast (6,288 feet).  What makes it difficult besides the steep ascent in the final mile is the erratic weather conditions at the top.  While the weather is gorgeous through most of the way, the final mile is usually extremely foggy with little visibility and extreme wind conditions.  On our hike, it was 40-50mph (strength of a tropical storm).

Most of us took off on Friday.  It's about a 7 hour drive depending on traffic.  I left around 10 and got there at 5pm.  My friends rented a really nice get-away home, with a pool.  All 14 of us were able to sleep comfortably throughout the house.  When we go there, we started the grill and began eating and drinking.  Some went for a swim while others played pool or air hockey in the basement level.  Eventually, we played cards and drank the rest of the night, while some people were still arriving.  Around 2:30, we all went to bed, hoping to get just enough sleep for the hike the following day.

Just after 6AM, everyone had to wake up and get ready.  Everyone had to pack their water and snacks, get their gear on, etc.  Afterwards, we went out to grab a quick breakfast and some sandwiches for lunch.  Our hike began at 9AM.

 

Rather funny that this picture was taken next to the Avalanche information.

 

The first couple of miles of the hike was pretty leisurely.  What surprised me most was the amount of people that were hiking.  I've been on many hikes, but this hike had swarms of people everywhere!  The visiting center was huge and there was a lot of parking.  I have only heard of this mountain last year from a friend who did it in the winter.  Interestingly, much of the people are from Canada.  You can tell from all the QUEBEC license plates on the cars and all the French being spoken on the trails.

Once we got past the 2 mile mark, the trail became narrower and steeper.  No longer were we able to walk side-by-side going up.  Everything was single-file and there wasn't really any room for you to stop and rest.  Everyone behind you is waiting for you to move so there was pressure to move as quickly as possible.  About another mile up, you come out of the forest and out in the open where the views are beautiful.

Single-file.

 

Once out of the forest and out in the open.

 

Out in the open area, there's just a lot of rocks in front of you and you have to walk and climb.  The summit looked pretty close, almost a stone throw away.  The reality was that there was it was a lot higher than what we were able to see.  The fog did a great job of concealing that.

 

We thought that was the top.  It's actually much further and higher than that.

 

Up in the clouds!

 

Hiking to Mordor.

 

It got to point where the hike was getting insanely steep.  We had to practically scramble through all types of rocks, trying to keep balance.  Since we couldn't see the top, all we could do was keep going.  Along the way, many people who were making their descent would tell us that we're close.  All we kept on hearing was "15 more mins!"  Who knows, maybe it was 15, but it felt like an hour.

It's getting REALLY steep!

 

When we finally made it to the top of the rocks, there was a road and a parking lot!  We didn't even know there was a road to drive up there.  People were getting out of their cars and the first thing that came to mind were "cheaters!"  We had to cross the road, climb a flight of stairs before we got to the summit.

A piece of cake.

 

As you can see from the picture above, only 5 of us made it to the top.  It was pretty evident 20 minutes into the hike, who was fast and who was slow.  We got here a little past noon, so it took us roughly 3 hours.  We decided to go into the visitor center up top, relax and eat lunch.  We knew there were at least 3 other people who were going to make it so we waited for them.  After about 35 mins, two of my friends came into the place and were congratulated them on a job well done.  It was the first time hiking for the both of them and I was really impressed by their determination.  They told us that they were going to take the shuttle down ($30!) because they were just not physically capable to hike back down.

On our way down, we bumped into another two friends, one of which I thought had given up and turned back.  He wanted to hike down with us so we waited for him while he made it to the top and back down.  The biggest surprise was as the 6 of us were going down, we bumped into another 4 who were almost there.  They were cramping and hurting, but they kept with it.  All-in-all, only 1 person didn't make it to the top.  The other 7 got to the top and took the shuttle down while the 6 of us were destroying our knees.  It got to the point where I felt the ligament on my left knee was sore and I limped the last two miles.  I couldn't even lift up my left leg without wincing in pain so it was quite the struggle.  We got to the bottom at 5pm, so the whole hike took us 9 hours, including the hour up top where we waited around and ate.

When we got back to the house, some people were swimming.  Others were BBQing and drinking beer and a few were sleeping.  We had dinner reservations at 8 so we had to get ready for that not too long later.  We went to this "high class" restaurant that had a dress code of collared shirts and pants.  When we walked in, it was pretty full, but there was no sound at all.  I guess no one talks during dinner in New Hampshire.  We had our own private room, which was good since we would have definitely bothered the other patrons.

Upon opening the menu, everything on it was cheap!  They had burgers and fish and chips on the menu.  Even with drinks and a couple of bottles of wine, it only came out to be about $60 a person with tax and tip.  Wasn't bad at all.

 

We drove right back to the house and I was suffering food coma.  I really wanted to sleep, but these guys came all the way to celebrate with me so I stayed up.  We drank and played cards until everyone was either too tired or too drunk to stay up.  I don't think I drank so much Scotch in one weekend.

We woke up the next morning, packed and cleaned up the place.  Then we went to this family restaurant in the neighborhood that had phenomenal food.  I had Lobster Benedict and it was delicious.  I'm not even a fan of lobster!  After brunch, it was a 7-8 hour drive back home.  The weather was gorgeous and I was surrounded by my closest friends.  Can't ask for more.  

What an awesome weekend.  We're planning on coming back again to do it in the winter.  It's going to be EPIC!