Author Archives: Hisashi T Fujinaka

The past two nights I’ve been going out to dinner after tearing out carpet for a few hours. I really shouldn’t be rehydrating with beer but, then again, there’s plenty of other things I shouldn’t be doing. Look at what I found tonight after cutting out carpet, pulling out carpet pad, and sweeping up sand-like remnants of the carpet glue: There’s wood flooring underneath the carpet but I didn’t think it was this cool.

I wish I could say things are just going peachy and I have good news and better news. I paid a THOUSAND DOLLARS to get my first set of progressives (i.e. OLD MAN GLASSES) and TWENTY DOLLARS for a haircut ($2 less than at Bishop’s and a hell of a lot better). I got a much better deal on the haircut, but glasses are glasses and I’d rather see than just stumble around hoping the fuzzy things in my vision are what I’m imagining them to be.   I’m home alone because my mom was in the hospital for a week and there’s one of two reasons for it. One … Continue reading →

I’ve been going to the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference for years. The last few years the ticket sales have been a bit quirky and many of us even had alerts that texted and emailed us when the announcement page changed. This year the page changed and announced that they’d start selling tickets at a predetermined time, 10AM PDT on 4/25. Everyone knew the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference would sell out quickly, but for me it was under a minute. Here’s how not to get tickets to go. Log into the site before the official sales start at 10AM PDT. This will serve to confuse things later Start hitting Command-R as … Continue reading →

Yet another reminder of how I’m getting old. It’s my birthday weekend and it’s not really the greatest confluence of events. I’ve mentioned several of the other events and today I found out that Joe’s Cellar, one of the last neighborhood dive bars, is closing tonight. The building was deemed unsafe and was condemned. I was told by the manager at Portland Brewing that this was my last chance to go and it was packed full of people. I guess the weekend there has been nuts, or so said the bartender who might just have been the closest thing to a zombie that I’m ever going to see. Most of … Continue reading →

Well, it is my birthday and I should’ve made a list of the things I wanted to do. I suppose I did make a short list and I nailed it: Take the day off work. I meant to do a couple more things, but whatever. I sat on my ass and went out to lunch with a buddy from work at a place that is run by an old grade-school classmate. The only things I did today were lame, like answering all the birthday wishes I got on Facebook (which weren’t that many) and trying to undo whatever my computer is doing to scramble the music in iTunes. But it … Continue reading →

I haven’t gone out to see a live band in a long time. It’s not really my thing because even when I was young I was old and crotchety and I generally think it’s too loud and crowded. The sound is bad and just distorts in my ears. I wonder if people who really like loud music aren’t deafened by it already. But my weird travels through old-timey music took me from banjo lessons to youtube to fiddle videos to thinking I should go see Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet. They’re a band I would really look forward to hearing on Prairie Home Companion, back when I listened to Prairie Home … Continue reading →

Daylight savings time is making me very tired indeed. Last week, after surviving the tower snookering, I noticed that my forearms seemed sore. The tower was wobbly after we took down the guy wires, so I must have been holding on for dear life and my death grip led to sore forearms. It’s a much better outcome than, say, falling off. The only other new thing is that I’m realizing how awful my violin playing sounds. It’s actually an improvement that I can hear what I should be playing and know when I’m getting it wrong. It’s also a good thing that we insulated a lot of our house and … Continue reading →

I suppose I was suckered several times this weekend. My buddy Greg is moving and he needed to take down his 70′ ham radio tower. He suggested cutting it down, which I first thought was a waste since that would mean it would end up as scrap, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it might actually be fun. By the time I got to his place, other old friends were there and they wanted to take the tower down carefully so they could re-use it. Taking it down carefully is a lot more work requiring lots of ropes and pulleys and one poor sucker who … Continue reading →

I think I quit writing much on my blog when I realized I didn’t care about writing that much any more. Part of it was just the practice of writing something down every day and that became less important. Plus, I didn’t have that much to talk about on a daily basis. Right now I have a lot to talk about but I’m not sure I’m the one who should be doing it. Let me just say that several of my friends have lost their mothers lately, and I hope they and their families are all doing well, or as well as can be expected. My own mom has been … Continue reading →

Not real sure why I’m feeling all that cranky right now. I’m finally getting over my cold. Yeah, I had a fever, then stomach problems, then a head cold with a 101.9°F fever, and now I’m feeling better. I’m also sucking ass at playing the banjo and the only New Year’s resolution I’ve kept is to stop watching Hawaii Five-O. Check it out, though, new glasses and a haircut. You know what that means? I can see my computer screen so I can DO MY TAXES and my head is cold. Check out that puss though. I’m not sure why the ladies aren’t crawling all over this guy. Tomorrow I … Continue reading →

101.2°F Much better now.

I’ve been a lazy lump of sloth this week. I finally remembered that some time ago I had this same sort of thing happen, a cold followed by odd lingering stomach problems and I even went to see a doctor about it all. The Asian doctor recognized that the aging Asian man in front of him probably had GERD and prescribed something or another that was replaced by Prilosec OTC. Everything was sort of OK until just recently and I finally remembered this. I started taking whatever-it-is I found at Costco (not Prilosec) and I was starting to get better but today I FELT LIKE I’M COMING DOWN WITH A … Continue reading →