I noticed my antenna is missing from my car! I always hated the dumb little stubby antenna I had, so it’s not that big a deal, but why steal something like that? They had to unscrew it from my car before they took it. Ah, well.

So I finally joined a sports club today. Had to sign up for two years to avoid an initiation fee. Boy, am I a sucker. We’ll see if I remember to go.

Also saw Austin Powers:Goldmember (finally) and had okonomiyaki for dinner. Anyone in Portland who wants to try it should make it to Kyofu. I never see many people in there (it’s in a bad spot on 40-something and Powell) and I hope they make it. How else am I going to get okonomiyaki?

I called my friend Greg to wish him a Happy Birthday and he told me what he usually tells me when I call every year. It’s not repeatable in polite company.

I finally saw the movie Phantasm. My sister has seen it a bunch of times and told me it was pretty funny. My friend Larry also saw it a few times and told me it was one of the scariest movies he’s seen. It was fairly amusing, but definitely a low-budget movie. Good, but low budget.

I rejoined GreenCine and my only complaint is that I had to change my username. Just like last summer, I plan to avoid the re-runs on TV and watch a few DVDs.

I didn’t sleep real well last night, knowing that I had to get up early for a 7AM appointment at the “sports club.” Too bad they didn’t know about the appointment on their end.

I had a 2 week free pass, and I realized early on that I had no idea what I was supposed to do at a gym. So I started calling to see if someone could show me around, etc. A week later, on the last day of my two weeks, I finally got an appointment with a trainer. The appointment was for 7AM, but they double booked the trainer so she wasn’t free until 7:40AM. Good thing I got up early.

Fortunately, she was very helpful, just like everyone else at Mavericks, at least once I could get them to call me back. Talk about low-pressure.

Did I mention I’m sore from lifting some 5 pound weights over my head?

It wasn’t like helping my ex-girlfriend move into her boyfriend’s place. Today we helped the boss move into his new digs in the Pearl District. Fortunately he just moved across the street from a fancy apartment to a fancier condo. Even more fortunate for those who were helping, he didn’t have much stuff and he treated us to dinner at an Italian restaurant that was full of Italians. I’m not sure of the official name, but I think the unofficial name is “Gino’s”. They strongly recommended the lasagna and that and the seafood pasta were the best of the bunch.

It sure beat the 18-minute-long cell phone call I got from a friend who told me in great detail how she had to blow me off to hang out with her ex-boyfriend. Some days it doesn’t pay to answer the phone.

And I forgot to post because I was searching for my the registration renewal letter for my mom’s Camry. I don’t remember that she gave it to me and I couldn’t find it. I did find a lot of old issues of Technology Review that I’m sure I’m not going to read. They all hit the recycle bin. That all kept me up late.

But this morning started out well. Going by Mio Gelato I noticed that Fox12 was broadcasting and the Mio Gelato guy was being interviewed holding a tray of gelato and panini. They were wrapping up when I went by and my friend Melanie (who is the manager there) told me to go get a free gelato. That’s being at the right place at the right time!

Aaaaigh. I just realized I forgot the Slabs again! They could have saved me!

Instead I was counting on my friend Jennifer to save me from climbing up a couple of trees and sawing like a maniac. She wasn’t around so then I counted on something genetic to keep me from falling out of the tree. What I noticed was that I had a hard time hauling my ass up the tree. I really need to pick a sports club and start going.

But other than that, I spent the whole weekend changing the ham radio club web site to use a database and to hide email addresses. Yay for geeky-ness.

Oh, and thanks to Chris from the Fink project who gave me a “geek” work shirt.

I should say, Happy 88th Birthday Dad!

My sister got him these cute, well, I don’t know how to describe them so here’s the picture:

I got him a caramel shake and two antenna balls from Jack-In-The-Box. See if you can see them on his desk:

Or in front of his desk:

I think that’s a cheesy weenie in his hand. Here’s a picture of him surveying his desk:

I went to a funeral for a family friend. The eldest son is my sister’s age and the funeral was for his mom. There were a lot of Asian-Americans there, a lot more than were even on the Hawaiian Cop show I saw on TV. I even think I saw a girl who kicked my ass when I was 12 or so. She still looked mean.

The funeral was in a church that was too small. I was in an overflow area in the basement. For those who couldn’t hear through the speakers, it was a long wait. They had a hard time getting the coffin down the stairs. But, in the end, we did get to say goodbye to a friend.

I still didn’t go to the sports club where I have the “free 2 weeks”, but I went to 24HR Fitness to see how much they cost. On the plus side, they’re a lot cheaper and they’re going to have a pool soon. On the minus side, the hotties were all at Mavericks. Also, the way to make 24HR Fitness cheap is to pay for a couple of years up front. It’s easier to pay monthly at Mavericks. Plus, Mavericks is closer to home.

Really, the biggie is that there were better looking women at Mavericks. All I ever do is look, so that makes it more important.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why MT-Blacklist was blacklisting someone on my sister’s blog. Turns out there was an errant entry in the default blacklist. Jay Allen was kind enough to help me track it down. Woo. A lot of time for one poster. I hope she appreciates it!

So I’m supposed to be on my two-week free pass to the sports club in the neighborhood, Mavericks and I’ve already blown off 3 days. Plus, I thought I’d lost the little thingy they gave me to let me in. Whee.

My sunburn is definitely lopsided, and my boss told me that if I didn’t like Kill Bill Vol. 2 that I was fired. I found out that a friend’s mom had passed away, and another friend from high school is getting railroaded into federal (hopefully white-collar) prison. An odd day, to say the least.

At least I found out that the CEO’s husband is a ham, so we can talk geek when I see him again.

I’m all crispy and pink from staying out in the sun for too long. I spent six hours talking to a visiting ham radio operator from Japan. He’s here for a month and he’s staying with a family that doesn’t speak Japanese, and no one there is a ham. So he spent 6 hours talking ham radio with me, and most of that time sitting out in the sun. Oh, well, he was an interesting guy.

Later (like after 9PM) my friend Aaron came by to pick up some old computer parts. And we talked for a while, keeping me up even later.

All I was planning to do today was:

• See if Jennifer wanted to get coffee.
• Get some php working.
• See if the Slabs were doing the pizza get-together-thing.

What I did was miss dinner altogether.

So much for planning.

Happy May Day.

I just saw Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and decided that Tarantino doesn’t have an original thought in his head. The two main reasons I didn’t like it are:

The bad Japanese dialog. A friend asked me, “And it bothered you that much? More than Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, or Antonio Banderas speaking English?” The answer is yes. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Antonio Banderas can speak English. They just do it with accents. Uma, on the other hand, probably can’t speak more Japanese than she needs to put in her order at the sushi bar.

The derivative sword fighting. It was just like every samurai TV show I watched while in Japan. I have a friend who really liked the movie and doesn’t like violent movies much. I think the problem with Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is that it’s like a summary of samurai movie sword fighting shows. If you’ve seen the “real thing,” you’ll see that the movie is just a watered down version. If you’ve never seen the real thing, it looks fine.

Anyway, enough about that. I went to DEQ to have my car checked and breezed through. It’s the start of the month and it should have been busy!