Carolyn’s right. Why do I bother?

Well, my post just got eaten. Yeesh.

The post was something about how I probably shouldn’t bother checking out the singles sites or even trying anything online because I never get replies, or if I do it’s mostly from fake women or women who are being paid to pretend to be who they’re not. But how is that different than what I usually do?

At the gym today I talked to the woman with the broken phone (turns out Earthlink sent her the wrong hardware) and she was telling us that one of her friends at the gym wouldn’t talk to her any longer. Turns out they went on a date and it didn’t go the way he wanted it to go. Sounds stinky that he doesn’t talk to her any longer. But I told her that I don’t ask out anyone at work or anyone from places I go to all the time, so that just means I don’t ask anyone out at all.

Funny how I end up disappointed even when I try to avoid any risk.

Anyway, that’s just life as I know it.

My blog is so broken.

I like using beta software sometimes and it shows, doesn’t it?

And who turned on the traffic switch lately? I used to get home in 35-40 minutes, and one a car wreck only slowed me down for another five minutes. Lately there’s no accidents and it takes me an HOUR to get home. That’s an extra hour I could be using for TV or something. Oh, well.

Several of my quirks.

OK, so I’m spending way too much time at the gym. I’ll get there around 6 and leave around 8:30. Part of the problem is that Dave the Trainer says that I should pause several minutes between sets. So I can overdo a set, and then stand around for a while to “recharge.”

While I was busy sitting around resting between reps on the weight bench, a woman came over to ask me how I would fix her phone. I went into geek mode and asked questions and ended up telling her to call the internet phone company she’s using. Then, I though, did she want me to fix her phone or did she want me to FIX… HER… PHONE…? Man, I can not get the signals straight. Are there signals, ’cause I’m pretty sure I’m straight.

Here’s two odd sightings at the gym, a guy who works out in very nice wool slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a nice silk necktie! I think the guy probably is here on business or something and doesn’t have anything else to wear, but is is a bit different. One of Dave the Trainer’s friends was saying, “What if he goes in the locker room and changes into sweats to go home?”

And Dave the Trainer also pointed out a woman on his favorites list (i.e. attractive and healthy). The only thing I have against her is that she wears the shirt of the oppressor. Well, I’m not sure where that “shirt of the oppressor” thing came from (besides out of my mouth) but it said STANFORD. And one of the quirks I should mention is that I never want to go out with anyone from Reed College or Stanford University. I told my sister this and asked if I was just being weird. She told me, “No, Stanford is awful.” HAHAHA. (She also told me that I was gay, and that the gym was full of gay dudes. I told Dave the Trainer and he said, “Man, I feel sorry for all them straight dudes, sitting on the couch and getting fat.”)

Oh, and another one of my hangups is people or pets sitting on things with no pants on. I know pets don’t wear pants, but just getting butt on things kinda weirds me out. Not excessively, mind you, but I think about it sometimes. Like when my sister’s dog Dede sits on things all I can think of is “dog butt.” Well, I rode Mariko’s car with Dede and Dede likes standing on the passenger seat, pushing her butt against you for stability. I didn’t go into a cleaning ritual, so I guess I’m not that weird about dog butt.

I should quit keeping score, but I got one email from match.com (another Chinese woman, but at least this time she’s only 20-30 miles away) but no replies to the emails I sent out on fastcupid.

Another healthy outing to the gym.

So I think that recumbent cycling thing does nothing for my muscles, but at least it gets my heart rate up. And makes me sweat a lot too. Anyway, I was on the recumbent cycling thing after my session with Dave the Trainer and he started talking about getting pork chops at Joe’s Cellar. Well, three of us (and I can’t remember the other guy’s name but he’s Dave’s student as well) made an outing of it and all got pork chops. Probably negated all the healthy aspects of the workout, but it was good. We also sat in the bar area and got nice and smoky. Phooey on that.

I had something else to rail about but I forgot and you’re now spared the nonsense.

Oh, and as a scoreboard on the dating sites: four emails sent on OkCupid, no response. Four on fastcupid, no response. One on match.com, no response.

Poopmonster.

OK, so the poop is not all my fault. He does it all the time when my mom is around, too. I just cleaned his teeth-cleaning contraption that was all covered in red algae or some other nasty slime. And that’s it for my disgusting bodily goo talk for the day.

One of the women in the next row over at megacorp told me she had a profile on Match.com, so I was nosy and looked for it. Fortunately, she didn’t tell me it was creepy and even told me her profile name (the profile is “hidden” and I couldn’t see it anyway.)

In any case, I have 5200 points on fastcupid.com, a dating site with a horrible user interface, so I decided I was going to spend my points by writing stream-of-consciousness emails to whoever “matched” me. One per customer. Heck, I never get responses so it doesn’t matter how silly my emails are. At least I have a new hobby for the next week or so.

Lack of posting.

You really didn’t want to hear about, “I ran test case x against library y and then entered the data into tabular format,” so I didn’t post. Really. But there is worse stuff I could have posted. Like how you can do whatever the hell you want if you’re 89 years old but it’s only common courtesy to tell the guy doing the laundry if you’ve pooped on stuff. (The guy doing the laundry is also doing a poor job of cleaning up and needs his sister’s help for most of it.)

Or I could tell you that I went on the dating sites again and got absolutely nowhere.

Or that I spent THREE HOURS trying to get a new wireless router working after the old one stopped talking to my megacorp-issued company laptop.

All very uninteresting.

And when I ventured out it wasn’t much better. My dad has been complaining about the food I get him; he tells me to get him whatever I’m having and even says my ideas sound good, but later he complains unless I somehow guessed what he really wanted. So today I went driving around looking for Japanese take-out. The first place I went is usually empty, but was packed tonight and the owner apologized and told me that he was working alone and it would take a while. So I went to the other place I knew to be open on Sunday and ordered. This took an HOUR. The whole ordeal took an hour-and-forty minutes, but I think my dad liked the food. Later I went and got myself a hamburger.

And for my next trick – WORKING ON SATURDAY.

Well, I’ve worked on Saturday lots of times, so it’s not that unique an event. I didn’t quite finish my day’s tasks and I think an extra day will just about do it.

The gym appears to be back to normal. A couple of times tonight there were only two of us in the place. The whole “busy on Friday” thing was kind of freaking me out. It is a bit boring just moving the weights around without having the women shoot me dirty looks but, eh, what can you do? 

My popular blog.

Hey, my post of the fake myspace.com email is getting lots of traffic. Guess I must have gotten indexed by google or something.

So people at the gym were telling me that the balancing exercises I do at the gym weren’t just to make me look foolish. In fact EVERYONE looks foolish doing them and I wasn’t special.

Hey, they have their view of the world, and I have mine. In my world-view, EVERYTHING is meant to make me look foolish.

Lost 15 minutes at the gym.

Well, it’s my own fault. Earl the plumber (brother of Keeley, wife of my best friend Greg) came by to look at some rusted drain pipes we had. As long as he was here, he looked at the drain pipes that are clogging up from the bathtub. I think he figured it would be about $500 to fix the rusted pipes as well as the ones that are clogging every three years or so. Being as tribal as I am, I trust him and told him whenever he had the time, fix the pipes. Well, I know he does good work, too. Anyway, I couldn’t hustle him out, it’s Earl, after all. (Aapple Plumbing in Hillsboro if you need anyone in West Portland.)

Anyway, I got to the gym late, and Dave the trainer was telling me about breaking up with his girlfriend. He’s 11 years her junior, and her biological clock was ticking quite loudly, I think. (This is just what I infer.) Her best friend was in the slot after me, so it was all kind of stressful for him, I’m sure.

So, I left my contact info with a woman from the gym. After a year and a half, I finally have some sort of communication outside of the gym. She looks like my ex, but her arms are bigger than mine, and it looks like pure muscle. Guess why? (I’ll wait.)

(Still waiting.)

SO I CAN TEACH LOW-INCOME ELDERLY RESIDENTS ABOUT COMPUTERS! She said she could pay me, but I figure this is a volunteer thing. I’m kind of excited to see what they want help with. Email, ebay, wikipedia? Who knows? Just as long as they don’t fall for any spam scammers…

Getting guilted by my sister.

Well, it wasn’t so bad, actually. I was planning on watching the football game tonight and she wanted me to take my dad out to dinner. He didn’t want to go (though he hasn’t been out of the house for a week) so my sister and I just headed up to Skyline Hamburgers. I spent the rest of the night taking care of banking for the radio club and for myself.

The good news today is that I got a call back from the contractor looking at the front of the house. He said repairing the facade would be AT LEAST $30,000US. I figured I needed to enjoy some real debt so I told him to come and give me a more accurate bid. Hooray.

More nothing!

Yesterday, after I went out to my weekly breakfast with my buddy Greg, I got a doozy of a stomach ache. Fortunately, it was after I started the laundry, so I did get SOMETHING done, but every time I stood up I’d start getting shooting pains in my stomach. I really was expecting my knee to hurt, not my stomach. I basically spent the day sleeping.

Today wasn’t much better. Sunday during football season – you get the idea. I went to Joe’s Cellar for the Sunday special but they no longer have chicken and dumplings! It was Yankee pot roast that I enjoyed but my dad did not. It certainly was a disappointment after anticipating chicken and dumplings.

I have no sense.

So today at megacorp, we had our forced frivolity today including ice skating and broomball. Against my better judgement, I participated in all the activities. I say it was against my better judgement because I DON’T LIKE ICE. It’s hard and slippery. The ice skating went very well, but the broomball showed me that I really have no sense. At first I was playing a zone but when the other team scored on us twice, I started running around like a madman. I even took the ball away from the VP of our division. I was so tired that I couldn’t eat the dessert they provided afterwards and sweated through my shirt and sweatshirt. I also fell on my right knee THREE TIMES. So now I’m limping around.

I also won a drawing for a $100 gift certificate, but I’m not sure the knee pain was worth it. Probably, though.