I’ve always wondered about all the different chicken seasonings that exist out there, and one of the ones I’ve always been intrigued about, yet a little bit intimidated by, was jerk chicken. It seems weird that I would be intimidated by this given that my Indian and Middle Eastern spice collection would very likely cover a lot of spices needed for jerk chicken, but I’d always shied away from it. A colleague actually made her family’s version of jerk chicken for culture day yesterday, and she told me how simple her spice blend was — only about 6-8 ingredients, plus some fresh peppers, and that was it. Other than the specific chili pepper she mentioned, I pretty much had all of the spices already. Now, I need to add this to my list of things to make (and potentially film and add to my food channel, and call her out!).

For culture day, we either had to dress up in our culture’s dress, and/or bring in food that is from our culture. I brought in Vietnamese coconut cassava cake to share. Well, that almost never happened because last night when I was pre-heating the oven, I made a massive mistake and forgot to take out one plastic container that had fallen to the back of the oven, and a lot of plastic started burning and leaking.

Yes, I’m very Asian. I use my oven to store things, whether it’s baking pans, skillets, and even spare glass and plastic containers I use for storage. I’m usually very diligent about removing things from the oven, but this time, this single plastic container fell out of my roasting pan, and I totally missed it until I started smelling the burning smell. I was successfully able to remove the dripped plastic after it dried on the oven racks, but was unable to get it off in the undersides of the oven that I could not reach. So I asked for the handyman to come take care of it today. I hope they don’t hate me and think I’m really that careless. This has never happened before!

It’s been spirit week in our office this week, with a different theme every day. Monday was pajamas day, Tuesday was Hippie Day, today is celebrity day, tomorrow is culture day, and Friday is sports day. Today, I dressed up as Julia Child. Okay, that’s hard to do because she’s about a foot taller than me, is white, and also looks absolutely nothing like me, but I put on a collared button-up shirt as she normally wears under an apron, a strand of pearls (she usually wore a choker/pearl necklace in her cooking shows), and also brought a large wooden spoon to add to my apron pocket, also indicating I am a cook.

I never participated in Spirit Week in high school, but as an adult, it seems more fun for some reason, and I’ve taken more ownership over it. Plus, it’s just fun to see people dress up in ways they normally do not at work.

Sometimes, I forget what it is like to work at a company headquarters where there is constantly a buzz, people coming in and out, constant new things happening. Being in a remote office usually means things are a bit quieter, conference rooms are easier to book, and we have more quiet periods to actually get things done. So it’s been a bit different this week to see so many visitors come in other offices. It’s as though the office as a new life to it in some way. Then, after the visitor rush is gone, we go back to the same quietness as is now normal for us.

It also means I need to use the phone booths more so I can get actual work done.

After seeing how good it felt to wake up early for my 8am Swerve cycling class on Monday, I’ve decided that I need to stop being lazy and wake up earlier. I used to do this all the time from age 27 through 30; I don’t know how my laziness took over me again. I would wake up at 5:50-6am every weekday from Monday through Thursday to make it in time to my gym near Herald Square for an hour-long workout class, followed by another half hour of working out solo. Some days, I even woke up at 5:30 to make it in time for my 6:30am Bikram yoga classes. That took some massive grit on my end.

I only managed to make it down for the gym at 7:40 this morning. My goal is to continue my 7am workouts again. Let’s see how I fare, especially with these dark mornings and shorter days becoming a thing with autumn settling in and winter around the corner.

While walking the streets of New York and taking the subway here and there to see as many sites for Open House New York this weekend, we went into and transited through a few subway stations that had notable subway art in the form of mosaics and tilings on the walls. Along the yellow lines at Prince Street, if you look at the walls, you can see details of silhouettes of different people, some carrying shopping bags, purses, pushing baby strollers, even hauling Christmas trees. At 8th street along the yellow lines, you also see many multicolored mosaic art, from flowers to faces, and it’s clear that a lot of thought and creativity went into these designs. The only sad thing is that given the daily hustle and bustle of New Yorkers, so few of us actually stop to truly appreciate all this notable art, self included. I usually notice them in the evenings when I’m on my way to and from meeting a friend for dinner or drinks, or on the weekends when I’m less in a rush. There’s actually a free walking tour you can do of the subway art that is still on my list of touristy things I’d like to eventually do one day. Too bad Chris doesn’t want to come with me because he doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of tourists.

My company held a customer marketing event with Swerve Fitness recently, so as a “gift” back to us, they offered a free Swerve fitness class for any employee who has never done a class with them. I’m not a big cycling fan. I don’t really care for biking, nor did I ever love any of the spinning/cycling classes I’ve taken, whether they were at Crunch or at Soul Cycle. I just did them to vary up my routine. But I figured that since it was free, it would be good to take advantage of this (especially since rides cost anywhere from $21-40 each, and there was no way I’d pay for this given I have a gym in my building, plus I pay for my Aaptiv fitness app, which I love). So I took the 8am class this morning before work at the Flatiron location just a few blocks away from my office.

The first thing I will say about my experience is that I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would, and I like the concept of Swerve so, so much more than Soul Cycle. It didn’t feel like a cult. It didn’t feel overly pretentious or like people were judging each other based on what brand leggings or sports bra she was wearing. I like the competitive team element and how the instructor calls out the top performing bike number in each class. I also like that the volume is not deafeningly loud like at Soul Cycle and that the lights do not flash constantly like a club throughout the entire 45 minutes. It’s also a given that at any cycling class that within that 45-60 minute time frame that Beyonce will eventually come on. I like that about 10 minutes of the class is devoted to upper body with light weights and that there’s an assistant on standby in the beginning of class who ensures everyone is set up properly and safely on their bikes.

I don’t love spinning shoes. I hate that there are actually “spinning shoes” that you wear that “clip in” to the bike pedals. That is just so weird to me. I took plenty of spinning classes at Crunch where you could just wear your sneakers, and you’d be completely fine. Yes, it does feel different, but unless I am a die-hard spinner, I cannot fathom buying spinning-specific shoes. You could not wear these shoes for any other activity on earth; they are a hazard to wear even on flat flooring given the buckle on the bottom of them.

I also did not like the facilities. There were only three showers and limited bathroom counter space to get ready. Plus, some of the lockers in the locker room didn’t work, so I had to drag my stuff from the lockers outside in the entrance area into the locker room to get ready for work. Granted, most of the people taking these classes would live in the neighborhood and likely go home to shower and get ready for work, but I took class near my office, which meant I had to take my change of clothes, makeup, laptop, etc., with me. And then I remembered how much stuff I used to carry with me before I had a building gym, and I feel very grateful that I don’t have to lug all my dirty gym clothes, sneakers, and all my stuff around with me all day during a weekday.

I understand why people like Swerve and why they like spinning. But I do not like spinning or Swerve enough to justify paying these class packages or drop-in costs when I have my own gym and app I enjoy using for daily exercise. I’m a bit spoiled now, and if I were to pay for fitness classes, I would likely do Bikram yoga because I really enjoyed it when I did it, plus there’s value I get out of the class that I could not get in my building gym (there’s no hot room like that in my building).

I popped into Trader Joe’s today to see if they had the German grapefruit beer from Schofferhofer that Chris and I like, but unfortunately, it looks like the entire beer shelf was cleared out in favor of all things “autumn ale” and “pumpkin ale” related. Even a lot of the regular beers they typically carry were no longer there except for a small handful.

I’ve tried to give a few different pumpkin ale beers a chance quite a number of times, and I really just do not understand them. They may have pumpkin in them, but you’d really be stretching it or lying if you told me that you could immediately get that flavor out of a sip of that. The pumpkin spiced-everything is definitely on overdrive once autumn rolls around, but the pumpkin ale bandwagon is just pointless to me.