Two out of three ain’t bad.

I finished all my donations and I noticed some of the charities send all way too many requests ever year. Oregon Public Broadcasting sent more than 5, the ACLU sent more than 4, and so did Doctors Without Borders. Well, I was going to use the number of envelopes as a negative indicator, but I ended up just looking at www.charitywatch.org.
I also deposited the checks for the ham radio club but decided not to go downtown to the shoe store because it was POURING down rain outside.

Oh, and I got my new toy today:

My new phone.

I spent a lot of time trying to get some PC software to work with it and finally gave up and synchronized the address book with my Mac. Hahaha. I’ve had no luck with PCs this week.

My poor list keeping skills.

So today I had two things I wanted to do:

  1. Renew my Concealed Handgun permit.
  2. Find out what size Blundstones I really wear.

Of course I only barely completed the first task. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office is only open for Concealed Handgun permit renewals on Thursdays from 7:30AM to 10AM and 2:30PM until 4PM. I thought it said 10:30AM and I squeaked in there at 10AM.

I suppose this leads to another question: why do I even have a concealed handgun permit? Well, sometimes I borrow trucks from rednecks (you ever try hauling anything large in a two-seat convertible?) and those trucks can have handguns in the glove box or under the seat, etc. Rather than find out the hard way how that’s prosecuted, I just go and renew my concealed handgun permit every four years.

About task #2, instead of finding out what size Blundstones I wear (and Blundstone uses weird Australian sizes) I went to my sister’s house and found out how bad I can screw up a perfectly working computer. I was trying to get two computers to use the same printer, but after five hours I found out that having different default user names makes that impossible.

My brother-in-law had a list of things to complete and he finished his. His had harder tasks mixed in with easier tasks like, “Eat,” and “Walk Dede,” so he could feel better about his completion ratio.
Tomorrow my tasks include:

  1. Depositing the checks from the radio club (postage from mailings and yearly dues.)
  2. Finding out what size shoes I wear.
  3. Writing checks to charities.

I have to sort through this stack of donation requests.

Stack of donation requests.

I already gave twofifty to the American Red Cross this year. I thought they meant $2.50, imagine my surprise when my Visa bill came back with a charge for $250! Oh, and a recipe for Red Velvet cake. (Don’t worry, I meant to give $250.) Now I have to figure out who else I want to contribute to this year. Wish me luck.

Oh, I did get some great news today that has nothing to do with my car insurance. My latest blood sample has undetectable levels of the Philadelphia chromosome using standard PCR. That means the expensive medicine is working! Hooray!

Getting stuck with pins.

Turns out the guy I went to see today wasn’t a chiropractor/acupunturist, but just an acupuncturist. Fortunately, it’s worked for me so far. I still have aches in my back, but I don’t have shooting pains that keep me from bending, etc.

There were some weird things I noticed. They use disposable needles now to avoid contamination. His office was in an “old” hotel that wasn’t so old. The offices have card-lock doors, newer carpet, and non-operating bathtubs. The sink for the bathroom is outside in the main room. And it’s hard to get in unless you go to the “lobby.” Plus, he may not have been wearing gloves when he poked me with the pins. I’m not sure, since my back was to him while he was doing the poking.

But right now my back is feeling much better than it has felt all this past week. I’d recommend seeing him. Shinichi Moriyama in Portland.

Getting hit with the lazy stick.

Since I’m supposed to be on vacation this week, I’ve been entirely lazy about doing much of anything. That, plus my back still hurts. Well, the least lazy thing I’ve done (besides stuffing my fat face) is to get an appointment with an acupuncturist/chiropractor so maybe I’ll have one less excuse. Of course, I don’t think I need an excuse to be lazy. Just a bunch of repeated James Bond movies on cable is enough.

Merry Xmas

It’s the time of year to post the exact same picture I post every year:

Other than that, I have almost nothing. My back still hurts and it wakes me up at night. Mariko called and she’s coughing now, so I’m guessing she’s not sleeping much either. I’m just watching whatever is on TV and you know there’s going to be a lot of James Bond and, “A Christmas Story.” I watched the communist tract, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and I’m waiting for, “Scrooge,” with Alastair Sims.

Happy Holidays.

Wish Mariko well!

So I’ve been working late all week because we’re not supposed to work next week. According to my boss at Megacorp, whether we work next week or not, we’ll be working a lot next year. For that reason he wanted us all to take next week off. I was also going to take Friday off since I’m supposed to be watching my sister’s dog while she and my brother-in-law go back to California for Xmas.

My sister developed a sinus infection that makes her head feel like it’s going to explode and that’s not exactly how you want to feel when you’re flying. My brother-in-law is flying down by himself and I don’t have to watch the doggie. Looks like I can go to work tomorrow.

And my Megacorp-issued laptop has some serious problems and I have to bring it in next week for some servicing. So I have to go in sometime next week.

Ah, well. I was at work at a little before 8 this morning and left a little before 8 this evening. The only surprising thing is how many different people keep telling me to ask out the admin in the next row over. THE NEXT ROW OVER. When things go badly that isn’t very far away.

Back still hurts.

Since my back still hurts, I’m still not going to the gym. Figured I’d spend some extra time at work since I’m not supposed to be going in next week. Let me tell you, I’m pretty tired of work. Plus, my megacorp-issued laptop has slowed to a crawl today. Somehow I’ve also filled up the 40GB hard drive with SOMETHING. I’m not sure what, though.

Anyway, staying at work late watching an hourglass icon on a computer isn’t my idea of fun. It may, however, be megacorp’s idea of fun. I’m doing my best not to limp around because of my back, but I’m afraid I’m walking around like I have a stick up my ass. It’s not improving my reputation with the single women (and I think there’s two.) One is the lunch lady who was rounding up the dirty dishes that made their way out of the cafeteria while saying, “THESE DISHES ARE COMIN’ BACK TO MAMA!”

And you thought megacorp was megadull. (Well, it is pretty much.)

Unfixed window.

The window guy came by today and found nothing wrong with the installation. I called the company and they’re willing to keep working with me on trying to fix the problem. They have some odd ideas regarding the weather stripping, etc, but the seem quite willing to work with me on trying to figure out what is wrong with the window. Unfortunately, that also means I may be losing some more sleep if it’s windy in the middle of the night.

I also bought a program for my Mac that’s supposed to start recording when the sound gets loud enough. I set it up in case the window started to make noise, so I could have some proof that it wasn’t just me being nutty. Unfortunately I set it up wrong and there’s 7 1/2 hours of my rustling around in bed and the fan of the Mac laptop going on an doff.

Oh, and my back still hurts and I had to skip my trip to the gym. I also screwed up and worked until almost 7PM. Yar.

Jury doody.

OK, first the promised picture from yesterday:

Snowy day.

Today it mostly melted and while I was hoping that it would mean that my jury duty was cancelled, we were supposed to show up 2 hours late instead.

In Multnomah County we currently serve one day every couple of years. You sit in a huge jury room with a giant TV and a lot of strange looking people until you randomly get selected for a jury. Previously, jury duty had been much longer and I’ve spent a whole week in that jury room before. I finally was called up to a courtroom for a DUII case and they asked us questions for an hour-and-a-half before they sent us off for lunch. Of course, I wasn’t selected to be on that jury (or any other). For some reason, this rejection doesn’t feel that bad.

And now my back hurts. I don’t remember lifting anything besides my fat ass out of a chair, so I may be coming down with something. I rode the bus twice today, so it’s likely to be the plague.

Computer frustration day.

Actually, every day is computer frustration day. One of the most frustrating things is that I tried to record my window noises today and I know that someone out there has written a program for the computer that only records when it hears something rather than recording hours and hours of silence. Which, apparently, is what I did today. The problem with my window noise is that it’s so erratic that I can’t count on recording it while I’m waiting. I’m sure it’ll start up tomorrow morning at 5 or 6AM and I actually got up and put some batteries in my voice recorder, but I never did record anything.

We’re in the middle of an ice storm right now (more snow than ice if you ask me) and I have a picture that I’ll have to insert tomorrow. My boss at megacorp even emailed the group and suggested we all work from home because driving on ice is a bad idea. I’m supposed to be off at jury duty tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m too old to stay up so late.

I was at a birthday party and I was close to the last one out again. Instead of getting thrown to the curb at 11:30PM, I left at around 1:30AM. I was a little too tired today because I stayed up too late and also because MY WORTHLESS PELLA WINDOW WAS BUZZING IN THE WIND AGAIN. They’re supposed to come fix it on Tuesday morning. We’ll see if it does any good. They say they’ve never seen the problem so I hope it’s just something loose.

To tell you how tired I was today: I went to Peet’s coffee and bought a pound of coffee beans. Afterwards I went to the ATM to get some money. It was in the low 30°F’s and windy and I was trying to get out of the weather and back to my friend’s truck. I had to set down the beans to operate the ATM, and I think the beans are probably still at the ATM. I didn’t realize I was missing anything until about 15 minutes later and I had to think very carefully about what I had done. At first I couldn’t remember if I’d even taken the beans out of Peets. Yeesh.

OK, I’m going to try to get some sleep tonight. I’ll sleep with earplugs in because it’s supposed to be windy and that means LOUD MOANING from my window. Oh, hey, maybe it’s not broken but just HAUNTED!

Jeni’s last day at the gym.

Going to the gym late is kind of boring. My night was thrown off after I was allowed to work late. (Hah. I’m always allowed to work late, I just thought it sounded funnier than I was stuck working late and I’m still behind.)

It’s Jeni’s last day working the front desk at the gym. She’s moving to Colorado to attend some sort of university there. She’s always cheerful and chats when she’s not busy. The only other problem tonight was that everything I’ve eaten recently is helping me create a fog of noxious gas and holding it in while lifting weights was kind of counterproductive. I was, however, semi-successful in keeping the gas contained.