The long-awaited first post of 2006!

Well, it certainly has been awhile since I actually wrote something for this blog o' mine. I just noticed that the previous three posts were all done from my mobile phone...man, that is REALLY lazy.

However, I don't really have a lot to say right now so I'll just update everybody on the suspected heart disease I mentioned in this Dec. 16 post.

I have seen a cardiologist and have undergone some tests...my blood pressure is fine and the EKG was normal. I had an echogram done and they didn't send me right to the hospital, so I take that as a positive sign. Next up is a chest X-ray and a stress test on Monday. After that, I see the cardiologist again on Jan. 20, at which time I guess he'll tell me what's going on based on all the information he will have collected.

The cardiologist put me at ease a bit when I first saw him when he said that he doubts I have heart disease. He didn't rule it out...but he doubted that was the case.

Actually, I haven't really felt the intermittent chest pain I had been experiencing for a couple of weeks. I still don't feel my heart is beating quite like it did before all this began, but I'm not getting that pain so I guess that's good.

OK...onto more upbeat news...I was happy to see my long-time friend Jason, who was visiting NJ from Colorado, during the holiday week. We took a ride out to Philly on Dec. 26 and went out to dinner in Center City (see the previous post for a picture I took of Philly's illuminated City Hall with my cell phone's camera).

The next day, we took a ridiculously overcrowded train into New York City and went to the Museum of Modern Art -- or MoMA -- for the Pixar: 20 years of Animation exhibit. That was really cool stuff and we went on a day the museum theater was showing the very first Pixar animated short, "The Adventures of André and Wally B." from 1984. In fact, the company wasn't even known as Pixar then...it was still a part of Lucasfilm Ltd., and known simply as the "Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project."

After spending a couple of hours in the Pixar exhibit, we took a walk around the rest of MoMA. I consider myself open-minded when it comes to art and I actually like music and art many would consider avant garde. However, I must say that a lot of what I saw on display at MoMA just didn't do anything for me (well, except for the blonde in the "furry" boots Jason and I noticed somewhere around the fifth floor).

Following MoMA, Jason and I took a walk to Rockefeller Center because I wanted to see the famous Christmas tree (or should that be Generic Winter Holiday tree?). Before we got there, though, Jason found a restaurant nearby that he enjoyed when he interviewed for a job at NBC a couple of years ago so we decided to get a bite to eat.

After dinner, we went to Rockefeller Center. I took some pictures of "the tree" and a little bit of video of the "musical snowflake" display on the side of the Saks Fifth Avenue building (check back for links to those photos and the video...I haven't had time to get that stuff online yet).

And call me a Scrooge if you want, but I couldn't wait to get the Hell away from all those freakin' people at Rockefeller Center. People with strollers, here's some advice: "Your kids are probably too young to remember what you are taking them to see. And even if your kids could remember, they're probably sleeping anyway. So, please...stop causing pedestrian gridlock and keep the freakin' strollers at home! Thank you."

Other than hanging out with Jason in Philly and NYC, the highlight of my holiday break was watching "The Christmas Invasion," the Doctor Who special aired by the BBC on Christmas Day. Of course, it took me about five days to download it via BitTorrent (I was on a slow connection that was cutting out from time to time), but it was very much worth the wait. I can't wait for the 2006 season to start!

OK...I think this post shall suffice. Oh, one more thing...

Happy New Year!