My fun imaginary life.

So, according to my horoscope:

Today you could go a bit wild in your personal life, HISASHI! You might feel like making a bold move. If you have had your eye on somebody, it could be the perfect time to let them know that you find them attractive. You’ll be ready to flirt and to send out some passionate messages. You might have an exciting evening if you schedule a nice date. This could be the start of something special, so have fun!

But today I just went to work like usual and then went to a friend’s 40th birthday party. The birthday party was sedate, and the only single woman there is looking for other single women, if you catch my drift. Anyway, no flirting going on at all today.

Plus, my sister tried to kill me. She ran a red light that turned red before we even got to the intersection. I think she realized it when I said, “Well, um, it’s red.” She couldn’t stop without skidding through the intersection, so she kept going. Then she blamed the rain and me and my reluctance to purchase new wiper blades (I just bought these several months back). So I suggested we stop at the auto supply since we were early, anyway, but she refused. Maybe it’s more fun to live dangerously.

My mom came home today and she told me that she was going to bring me back a CD by Dreams Come True but it wasn’t out until this Friday. And she almost got me a tiny Sony MP3 player, but she figured I might not want it. So once again I got underwear. I don’t even want to think about what my sister got. Last time she got a digital camera, and I got a $8 pen. Come to think of it, the only birthday presents I got for my 40th birthday were ones I bought myself.

My turn to have the punes.

I found out that it’s my brother-in-law’s dad who came up with the term punes (pronounced pyoonz) which means being under the weather. My stomach felt funny all night and I could only sleep on my back. Usually when my stomach is bothering me, that’s the only position I can’t sleep in. I even had a weird dream that my friend Greg was giving up his 8 acres in Scappoose, selling it for a mint, to move to a very nice neighborhood in NE Portland where it was always sunny. To make it more surreal, Chandler from Friends lived there and I met Ross, who was telling me about all his girlfriends and the guy he couldn’t stand because his “relationship” with the guy didn’t end well. (Notice the quotes around “relationship.”) The guy was a friend of mine from grade school who I haven’t seen since high school! And after talking to Ross, I saw another guy I haven’t seen since grade school who used to be in my Boy Scout troop. He was just crossing the street waving at me.

I went to work feeling OK, but then felt worse and worse. I didn’t eat lunch and I came home a little early and took a nap. I feel better now, but almost everyone is coming down with something.

Well, got a large hard drive and I’m about to destroy things yet again. My sister’s web site is immune at the moment, fortunately.

Blogging Holiday.

Several people I know (and you know who you are) took a vacation from blogging this weekend. Several of them, if you can count TWO as several, are knit bloggers and one of them (since I host her web page) continued to get comments on her last post which was last Tuesday! However, they did not quit their knitting. I observed them while they were allegedly watching TV and I saw them knitting and using some sort of odd Trainspotting clickers and little things that looked like rubber bands from some teenager’s braces.

OK, so it was my sister and Carolyn. The sad part was that I was the only one watching the TV intently, and I was outvoted 2-to-1 on the movie choice. I wanted to see Love, Actually and they wanted to see The Bourne Supremacy.

Luckily, I only had to go to two yarn stores and I developed a little game to play while there: wondering if I could use any of the yarn to tie flies. I haven’t ever caught a fish on a fly (only went once) but I still daydream about it. But I have tied a bunch of flies.

Thanksgiving disappointments.

So we went out to the airport to get Carolyn and came back to make Thanksgiving dinner for her, my brother-in-law, my dad, my sis, and me. OK, so all I really did was mash the potatoes and my sister did the rest. What was the disappointment? Carolyn too quiet? The turkey too dry? (Just a little, since it was free range and not a Butterball.) The real disappointment was that I gave my brother-in-law Peter the sample Gilette razor that I got with the daily newspaper and it didn’t have a battery in it! It was just a simple disposable. Oh, the shame! I was hoping he could tell me about the new sensor and whatever it was it did with the AAA cell.

I ate too much and I didn’t have room for pie. I guess that was a disappointment as well.

Great, now Mariko is sick.

The big problem is that our dad likes to be the sickest person in the house. I had to go home early to run interference so she could get some rest. Actually, she thought she was OK in the middle of the day and came with my dad to rescue me from work. We were going to a bakery and then to lunch. She dropped me off at the crowded bakery and drove around looking for parking. When I got back to the car she was sleeping in the back. She wanted me to take my dad to a Slavic grocery while she waited, but she didn’t look too well. In fact, I drove straight home and she threw up as soon as she got out of the car. Fortunately, she seems better now. Pooped, but better.

Time to go get my brother-in-law at the airport. It’s a midnight flight.

Oh, and here are disclaimer labels for textbooks.

Hurricane Mariko has truly arrived.

So most of the time it’s all about George. Or at least we pretend it’s all him. After all, he’s 88-years-old. But when my sister is around, it’s often all about her. Every day she’s gone to visit some other knitter or some friend. Today, however, she took some time to flood the laundry room and throw away the bathroom rugs. She said they were, well, stained. As anyone who lives with men should know, everything on a bathroom floor gets stained. I don’t know how she’s avoided it unless Peter pees sitting down (doubtful), exclusively pees outside (also doubtful since they live in the city now), or she just follows him into the bathroom with a scrub brush (most likely since she’s kind of nutty).

So, at the gym today I was doing some stretching before I left and I noticed my legs looked funny. In fact, they looked a bit swollen above the socks. So I pushed on them and I noticed I had pitting edema. I called my doc and he wasn’t too worried. It’s a side effect of the Gleevec. I remember having the same sort of pitting edema when I running once, but it’s always a weird thing to see. And the only medical training I’ve actually had is for the EMT-1 certification so I can describe things, but I don’t know what to do about them.

Oh, well. I’ve had a stressful couple of days because of doctors. We were supposed to deliver some data to some doctors and I didn’t have the full story of what they needed. So we had to go through several iterations and every iteration they told me that my data was useless and incorrect. Good thing I’ve worked up at OHSU and know that’s just the way they are up there.

The benefits of having lazy friends.

My buddy Greg who is also very generous when paying for meals, is very lazy when it comes to rebate checks. And for some reason, his wife can’t be bothered to send them in either. So after watching them blow a few of them, I started telling him I’d mail them in for him. It costs 37 cents in postage and an envelope and I end up with his rebate checks. For some reason, he won’t take them back, either. I suppose he has his reasons. He hates the dumb rebate dance. I usually agree. Aladdin Systems stiffed me $50 for their Stuffit program and it’s always a pain to try to remember what you’re owed in rebates.

Anyway, maybe I can use the rebate money to buy the “The 10 Mistakes Most Men Make With Women” book that they keep advertising in my spam.

Why I hate the fall.

What I hate about the fall is the leaves. Raking the leaves and walking in the leaves. Most of the time, there are presents in the leaves, left by the nice neighborhood doggies. I went out to dinner with my sister tonight and on the way back I also found a nice cracked sidewalk underneath the leaves and twisted my ankle. It hurts like hell right now.


Listened to my voice recorder: a homeless woman told me something last week that I thought was, “Thirty-two wolkhammer.”

I didn’t take any notes on the dreams I had last night. I remember some James-Bondy thing, and then something to do with spaghetti in clear containers which seemed more interesting but I still can’t recall what it was.

My abject apologies.

I am very, very sorry that THE FOOD IN THE KANTO DISTRICT OF JAPAN IS ASS. It’s salty and if you say there’s no flavor they add more salt. They use subtle flavorings like salt mixed with the salt to make things more salty.

I really haven’t eaten in Tokyo for thirteen years, but Japan’s an old country so I don’t expect that things have changed much since I was last there.

OK, so this is a bit incendiary to the Tokyoites out there, but I’m sorry: to an Osaka dweller, the food in Tokyo is swill. I’m sure the Tokyoites have bad things to say about Osaka as well. It usually has something to do with gangsters.


So the past couple of days I’ve been getting repeated odd phone calls from a rather distraught woman asking, “What am I supposed to do?” The first phone call was rather garbled and only parts I could understand in were that her husband had recently passed away. I finally got ahold of her and she thought I was a pension plan. She didn’t know what to do, so I did some calling around and found the people she needed to call. She has mistaken a 9 for a 0 and a 6 for a 5. I hope things work out of her.

Say hello to the new embezzler treasurer.

So the new officers of the radio club were railroaded elected today and I’m the new treasurer-elect. So I think I’ll start sending out harassing email telling people to pay their dues. AHAHAHAHA.

So, yesterday we had to take my dad out for Japanese food and tonight my sister had to take him out for Japanese food. He’s quite particular about what he wants to eat. In fact, he never wants to go back for dinner to the place we went yesterday (Hakatamon) because we had to wait a whole three minutes for a table. The food there has it’s ups and downs; the udon is excellent, but the rest isn’t that great. He has to have Japanese food, though, and that means there’s only two places he can go. In fact, yesterday he said he wanted, “Meat,” and when we started thinking of places to go he started pouting and we just had to bundle him up and drive him to another Japanese restaurant. My sister wanted to KIIIILL HIIIM. Or at least that’s what she said.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on his odd food fixation since I have almost the opposite problem. I really am sick of Japanese food. When I was in Japan, I had a rotation of hamburger places I’d go to and some weeks I’d go to McDonald’s three or four times a week. The worst part is I lived in the Osaka area, which is known for good food. When I came back to Oregon, I refused to go out to the Japanese restaurants here because they were awful compared to the food I had in Japan. The food here is probably comparable to the swill they eat in Tokyo.

Oh, well, the food I’ve had lately hasn’t been so bad. I can always get unique things and lately I’ve had cold udon with grated Japanese radish, and seafood spaghetti with small clams and shrimp.

Got nothing.

My sister is supposed to be here to help with my pa, but she’s usually out gallivanting around. When I came home from the gym, she was gone and he wanted me to heat up some soup. Usually that means he leaves most of the soup for “later” (i.e. for the garbage when we finally take it away and toss it) but today he finished it all. Which means my sister was spending less time feeding my pa, and more time fooling around with her friends. Oh, well. It beats staying here all day and having him drive her nuts.

I suppose you’d think my pa could heat up his own soup, but he is 88, so he can do what he feels like. And if he feels like waiting and letting me do it, that’s OK too.

So Friday was International Desk Day.

And I finally downloaded the pictures from my little Olympus thingy.

I’m sure I’m in trouble for showing my work desk, since there’s probably some sort of violation of office policy or something. Notice that the screen is showing my sister’s blog.

If you think my home desk is messy, you haven’t seen the rest of the room.

That’s a 20th Anniversary Macintosh that is used only as a TV, and piles of stuff I probably ought to throw out.