Recently I came upon a very interesting iPhone application that uses the phone’s built-in sensors to track sleeping patterns. In addition, it also uses the alarm clock function to wake you up at your lightest sleep phase so you can always feel refreshed when waking up in the morning. I was initially really skeptical about this thing that seemed like voodoo magic from the forces of the outer-worlds, but I couldn’t refuse a pleasant sleeping experience–especially at the tiny investment of ninety-nine pennies.

On the first night I activated the application and I rolled over in my bed, ready for a pleasant sleeping experience. I soon fell asleep and had a series of dreams that involved empty parking lots, squirrels and ice cream cones, and then I was ushered back into consciousness by a soothing heralding chime that seemed to announce, “a new day awaits you, Geremy-sire!” I woke up with a happy demeanor and a silly grin. This felt like I just visited a spa in my dream. It was only day-one the program was already worth every penny.

I then took a look at my sleeping graph for the night and was shocked at the results. It appeared that at times I came milliseconds from waking up from my dream, while at other times I might’ve actually woken up and walked around my room for a few minutes. What did I do during those minutes? Did I go to the kitchen to find an actual ice cream cone? Did I go looking for squirrels? Either way, I wouldn’t have known about my sleeping experiences if I didn’t have the app.

I’ve been excited to go to sleep each night so I can review my tosses and turns each morning. Maybe this program will be able to finally explain why I had a dream about swallowing a giant marshmallow and coincidentally the pillow was gone when I woke up! Here’s hoping…

In December I had the great opportunity to spend a half-day at a pre-school with about 20 amazing kids. I walked into the classroom while the kids were playing musical chairs and immediately all of the kids started to stare in my direction, thinking that I was the parent of one of their classmates. In fact, a bold kid yelled to the another kid, “look, it’s your daddy!!” Um, I’m pretty sure that I’m not your daddy, but I can be mistaken…

After an introduction where I was regarded as “Mister,” I sat amidst the children and read two books to them. They attentively sat and listened to every word of the story with a huge smile on their faces. As I read the stories the kids would interject random thoughts like, “I like fire trucks,” or “I’m strrrrronnngggg” or “I don’t know your name!!” As soon as I acknowledged any of the kids’ statements, all of the other kids would volunteer similar information, like “I am strong too” or “I like RED firetrucks!”

After reading time the kids had an appetizing lunch of rice and milk and then I played the fun game of “put the colored shaped into the tiny bowls” with a few of them while others ran in circles around the room at full speed. Certain kids were happy to show me their knowledge of colors and shapes by proudly declaring, “this is a YELLOW CIRCLE,” while others were timid to show their lack of shape knowledge, like “this is a orlue septangle?” I couldn’t help but laugh a bit.

It was one of the more rewarding experiences of my life and I can’t wait to do it again; however I’m sure that I’ll feel differently about visiting a kindergarten full of screaming children when I have 11 kids of my own and screaming children is a staple of my day.

I went to the gym and practiced for a while and then was recruited to play in a game. Since I was feeling like He-Man, I decided to guard the 6′5ish guy on the other team. The game was going amazingly–I scored 6 pts, had a few memorable assists, and was completely dominating my defender; however, the game took a turn for the worse when the score was 9-2 and my defender decided to play a lot tougher. As I attempted to reject yet another one of his shots, he pushed me while I was in the air, causing me to lose balance landing badly on the hard gym floor. I tried to stand back up to finish the game, but I looked at my foot and thought “oh snap….literally!”

My foot snapped into a very weird position and it refused to go back into place. I laid on the floor, quietly in pain and asked someone to get a medic. While waiting for help to come, 15 people from the gym sat around me and stared. It was a very awkward situation to say the least, so I decided to make light of the situation by telling jokes that no one laughed at because they were horrified at “the patient with an ankle deformity.” Thirty minutes later, the police arrived to make sure that I wasn’t the victim of a criminal case and after assuring the officers that I wasn’t a victim of a crime I asked them to pop my ankle back into place so I can complete the game. The gun-toting, badge-wearing, sorta-strong, burly officers began to squirm at the idea of touching my “deformed ankle” and adamantly refused to do any popping.

When I realized that I had to go to the hospital, I borrowed someone’s cellphone and called my mom:

Me: Hey..it’s Geremy, your son. Remember that ankle that I used to have? Yeah, it’s not working anymore, can you meet me at the hospital??
Her: What?
Me: I’m at the gym right now and got hurt playing basketball, but don’t worry…I was winning. They’re taking me to the hospital and you can meet me there if you want.
Her: Okay, see you there.

Thirty minutes later, the medics decided to arrive and strap me to a stretcher. As I laid in the back of the ambulance, I bombarded the ambulance squad with questions that were irrelevant to my “deformed ankle” situation. “What school do you guys go to? Are the emergency lights on the ambulance on? Can you take a picture of my foot so I can post it on my website?” They were extremely nice and answered all of my questions and even used their phone to snap a picture of my weird foot for all of “my internet friends” to see.

I was wheeled to the hospital’s triage department where they attempted to assess the severity of my medical condition. They asked, “on a scale of one to ten, how badly does it hurt?” My response: “…look at it!” They refused to accept a non-numerical response, so I had to answer again. “It hurts 10….no….4….no…6….6.5, yeah, 6.5!” The ER doctor said “okay, let’s put him in THE RED ZONE. In my mind, THE RED ZONE was the place where they put people whose hearts fell out of their chests and arms were completely dislodged from the arm sockets. Startled, I immediately said, “wait! The red zone?! Is that for people with gunshot wounds and stuff?!” They decided not to answer me–probably for my own good. As I was wheeled into THE RED ZONE my parents arrived and I began chronicling the experience with my mom’s cameraphone.

There was an abundance of doctors who quickly crowded me and stared at my ankle. They used insulting words like “surgery,” “fractures,” and “pain” when describing my injury. There was one particularly annoying doctor who incessantly made unfunny jokes at the wrong times. While they were strategizing a way to remove my sneaker from my foot, he says “well, maybe you’ll be able to play in the special olympics now!” This joke was followed-up by 4 equally unfunny jokes.

By the end of the long “night” at 4am, they popped my foot back into place, wrapped it in a splint and got me ready to leave the hospital. Before discharging me with my new crutches, the doctor asked if I had any questions. I said “yes, can you make me walk by 12pm?! I have a very important meeting that I have to attend!” He refused.

I’ve had a few follow-up appointments with my primary care physician and an orthopedic surgeon and the final diagnosis is that I badly tore a few ligaments and have a minor fracture. Now that it’s two weeks later and I can finally hang-up the annoying crutches and begin walking with my new walking boot that I’ve named “Optimus Prime.” It’s big, ugly, squeaks when I walk, and hurts at times but it’s much better than the crutches that I’ve clumsily handled for the last week. My hope and prayer is that I exceed all expectations and recover in 3 weeks instead of the 6-8 weeks that were originally forecasted because I have an unfinished basketball game that must be completed!

While in Los Angeles, I decided not to rent a car or use public transportation to get around–instead, I walked everywhere, like a 13th century colonizer. Even though the last 2 miles of the walk became painful because I wore “look at me, I’m cool” sneakers instead of walking sneakers, I persevered and had a wonderful experience.

A few of my encounters are pictured below:

The Bathing Apes Store

“The Indian Settler who Wandered too Far”

This man’s job is to stand there and guard the water. Easiest. Job. Ever.

Although we have this frozen yogurt chain in New York, I’ve never visited it until visiting California. I love it!

Pinkberry toppings

Miss Pinkberry.

Johnny Cupcakes Store
I visited the Johnny Cupcakes clothing store (fronted as a bakery) on Melrose Ave and immediately became amazed at the level of detail that was put into this store by the young owner, Johnny Earle.

The wall had a nice artistic display of over 25 ovens that randomly opened and shot steam into the air

There was artificial frosting spewing from actual pipes onto the clothing display refrigerators, and a giant replica of a stove int he back of the store that led to the clothing stockroom.

Also, the employees brought the t-shirts out on serving trays, as if they were serving cupcakes to their customers. Brilliant.

All photos can be located in the California ‘09 Flickr Photo Set

This year I’ve been working as hard as a chinook salmon swimming upstream, so to maintain motivation I avoided taking vacations. Now that the year is almost over I realized that it’s finally time to enjoy the fruits of my labor, so I booked a tier-one traveling experience to California. Right now I’m midway into my trip in Los Angeles, California at a wonderful boutique hotel. In three hours a vehicle will be picking me up to transport me back to the airport, where I will be flying to San Francisco to explore for one day. I will be sure to keep an eye out for Uncle Jessie, Kimmy Gibbler, DJ, and the rest of the Full House crew!

Note: All information listed is factual, with some company names omitted

Entrepreneurs and inventors tend to protect their ideas with security that can rival Fort Dix, but I tend to believe that if an idea is truly unique then you’d have to force it down people’s throat. Basically, my idea is for a “lifestyle brand” that will begin with t-shirts and then will expand across various other products. Though there are many other businesses with this intent, mine is special because it’s in extremely limited release…and it’s cooler.

The first potential venture capitalist who I approached was my mom because she has always been willing to put money behind all of my ideas. After pitching my idea to her, she immediately went into “Shark Tank” mode and asked about projected earnings for the first fiscal quarter of the business. My response, “are you kidding me?! I’m your son!” She wasn’t kidding me and I didn’t have the answer that she was looking for.

Later, I pitched the idea to one more person who later refused my proposal because told me he did not want to bear the risk involved investing in a male “fashion designer.” Fair enough.
So now I’m starting my new [currently unnamed] lifestyle brand with my own money and I’m kicking it off with a few designs which will be revealed here after they are produced. I’m extremely excited about this and will reveal the products as they become available. As a sneak peak, here is one t-shirt concept that may or may not make the final cut.

It’s coming!!