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Hello and welcome to the first official entry in The International Journal of Sport and Leisure. This must be pretty spectacularly exciting for you all, I realize, but please try not to explode with enthusiasm just yet. The trip has yet to begin, the odyssey of sport and leisure (and exotic parasitic infestation) will have to wait just a short while longer. So relax. Really. It'll all happen soon enough.

This first entry is really just a trial run. Now that I have figured out which end of my digital camera has the lens on it and what most of those annoying little buttons do, I am using this introductory post as a means of learning how to operate this "blog" before I depart (and while I greatly appreciate the free use of this page, courtesy of bootsnall.com, I will in the future refer to this site as a "journal" -- solely to be pedantic and pretentious, of course). Which means that you are really just reading a bunch of vapid, fluffy filler. But then again, I suppose you may as well get used to that now.

A brief update and background for those of you catching up with me (or who stumbled on to this site, have no idea as to who I am, and yet continue to scroll through this for some strange reason): As of the moment, I am unemployed and live with my parents. Those of you who know me probably already know that after considerable planning, I left my job and gave up my apartment in Hoboken at the end of August. However, before kicking off my travels with a flight to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the city I was born in (i.e., the best city ever), I decided to move in with my folks in their house View image View image in Saratoga View image View image so as to be able to spend some greatly missed QT with them and generally drive them insane (FYI, it appears to be working). All of this means that while I might claim to be busy running pre-departure errands, walking the perpetually sulking family poodle View image, and being brutally assaulted by 3 newborn kittens View image who are in the process of perfecting their clawing and biting skills on yours truly View image, not to mention each other View image (also, they hog the damned tv View image), the fact of the matter is that by the harsh standards of society, I do nothing -- precisely nothing.

Having worked my share of 50, 60 and 70+ hour weeks, in Manhattan, it was admittedly something of a shock to transition suddenly to life in rural upstate New York View image as a late-sleeping, dog-walking, mall-shopping, pseudo-scratching/biting post. My non-travel related responsibilities are currently few and vague and they generally involve eating cookies (because for all I know, the rest of the world may not have any cookies), showering occasionally and trying to brush up on Spanish by watching the Spanish Channel soap operas. However, I can hardly complain that the lifestyle I am living does not agree with me. We all are born with our own special talents and I may have just found mine. And I am doing my best to exercise and perfect my do-nothing talents to the utmost, as I have only a few blissfully sloth-like days (another shot of the author: View image) in which to do it, before the trip finally begins.

So how do I feel about the fact that there are only 5 days remaining before my departure? Like drinking another beer and maybe eating some more of the cheese cake in the fridge with my bare hands. Were you expecting something more introspective? Come on... Anyway, something small and furry View image is lustily biting into my toe at the moment and squeaking, so I will call it quits for now and hope you will be back for what will hopefully be regular posts with substance (or more egotistical fluff posing as substance, at any rate). IMS&L out.