In actuality, as a former sysadmin, my language is quite salty. But on other occasions, I use odd language. “Raining like the dickens,” “she was cute with a big caboose,” etc. Well, the caboose comment was a little mean, but it was about the person who drew my blood sample today, and that hurt like the dickens.

My blood pressure is a little high. I figured it would be a little high at the doctor’s office because I had a, “Tyra Banks,” today: Dutch Brothers — coffee, tall, black, and hot. Perhaps a little crazy as well because Dutch Brothers coffee, like Peets coffee, is quite strong and will make you twitch if you’re not used to it.

I checked my blood pressure after getting back from the gym and I’m still hypertensive in my left arm (the one where I was tortured by the cute, probably married, lab tech) but I’m pre-hypertensive in my right arm. I should probably start eating better and probably getting more sleep, but those aren’t too likely to happen (too stubborn).

Oh, and even though we’re having a huge windstorm that even blew a tree into the street across from the gym (when I arrived there were flares and a city truck and a running chainsaw in the street), Dave the Trainer still wanted to torture me. I wonder what my blood pressure would be if I didn’t exercise.

I’m supposed to go to Dave the Trainer’s Christmas Sweater party on Friday, and I may end up sleeping in my sister’s backyard. I wonder what they’d do if they found me passed out back there. Maybe I can show people my injury and get some sympathy. I slipped on a bench and I have this weird rug burn on my arm. No rugs were involved, but I can’t describe it any other way. “Friction injury,” just doesn’t sound right. Maybe I can say I was tortured by having kittens rubbed on my arm. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Having a bunch of Macs and iPods does not help with personal organization. Trying to keep them all synchronized somewhat is also a big pain in the neck. Lots of hand checking, etc. All so I can keep some music in the car to keep me from going nuts.

I survived the trip to the dentist and sadly that was the high point of my day. I did a bunch of “research” at work which was watching a bunch of videos that some perv at Megacorp downloaded and seeing how hard the computer was working. The answer is: not very hard. I was invited to even more Xmas parties and my sister handed over an “ugly” sweater for the ugly sweater party. It just looks like a grandma sweater and it’s scratchy. I should be able to come up with something better, I hope.

I suppose I feel much better afterwards, so it’s worth it, but I’m supposed to be up for a 7AM dentist appointment. Who the heck scheduled that? Of course I’m up late watching TV, because I can’t sleep right after getting home, and that isn’t going to help how I feel tomorrow.

And now I can’t think of anything except:

1. What happened to bakelite? How come nothing’s made of bakelite any more?
2. What’s the eighth reindeer’s name? I can only think of seven.

It must be bedtime.

I think now I’m supposed to build an ark. What’s a cubit?

It was raining like “the dickens” today. The wind blew so hard that it sucked the doors open in the cafeteria at Megacorp. It was pretty exciting. We had another descriptive meeting today where the big boss showed powerpoint slides of what we’re doing. Lots of clouds and arrows and the words, “customer,” and, “client.” They didn’t answer the two questions I wanted answered: who’s my boss and what are we doing. The big picture never shows the guy with the shovel.

I think I’m supposed to go to two parties this weekend. The first is an “ugly sweater” party and unfortunately the ugliest sweater we had in the house (or at least the most ridiculous) went away with Megan. I wonder what she did with it. I have a multicolored cardigan I used to like. I’m not much for wearing sweaters because they seem to wear out in the elbows and that bothers me.

The dude at the gun store was sick yesterday and two people at the birthday party I went to were sick as well. And the first part of the birthday party was at a video arcade and you know how those kids are just dirty, dirty, dirty. I even got a blister on my finger from shooting at zombies. Oh, and my ex (one of the people who was sick) told me that theres’ a lawsuit against Zicam because it could cause you to LOSE YOUR SENSE OF TASTE AND SMELL. (Or is that smell and taste?) I woke up this morning feeling like I was coming down with a cold and slept in until 10AM. After almost throwing out my Zicam yesterday, I USED IT TODAY! Living on the edge, as it were.

In other news, I think the birthday boy and his wife (who has bronchitis) really liked the megaphone I got them. I bet if she isn’t sick they’ll be using it throughout their house.

(Being almost sick did lead to weird dreams about being in a motel with Kate Beckinsale. Not the married mom, but the fantasy one in my dream world. Not that my dream world amounted to much because I think the most exciting thing we did was peek in the minibar. There was some weird thing at the end where she left but came back with two other women to give me a hug. My dream world is kind of dull, but more exciting than my real world.)

I have a weird accomplishment that isn’t nearly as impressive as Pat Robertson’s claimed leg press of 2000lbs. I did 17 45 lb plates on the leg press machine, and I’m thinking the carriage itself is probably another 45 lbs. That means I did 810 lbs on the leg press. Yeesh.

I went to a birthday party today and I got the birthday boy a couple of gifts from Harbor freight. One was a giant calculator that was about 12″ x 8″. The other was a megaphone. For some reason I think they’re going to get a lot of use of those items in that household.

Oh, and I found out that Zicam can cause you to lose your sense of smell and taste. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather have a cold than lose my sense of taste. What fun would that be? I suppose you might lose weight, but then what?

I think I figured out what I did wrong to my picture from yesterday, which made my STANDARD LEVIS 501s look purple.

So Dave the Trainer did the whole body measurement thing today and I WEIGH MORE THAN I EVER HAVE (I think I’ve said this before). 188lbs! I don’t remember eating that much, either. Good thing I’m not running any more. I’d hate to have to carry all that weight uphill.

I bought this adapter for my computer so I could get files off my old Syquest drives. I remember thinking how huge a 44MB disk was, and then how big 135MB was. I quickly filled them full of pr0n. But anyway, I finally got the adapter to work and one of the disks had only four pictures on it. One of them was me with three stuffed animals. My mom made the two panda bears (the smaller one is kind of hidden by the big white thing). The big white thing is a bear I made for my ex-fiancée. She asked for a teddy bear for Christmas, so I made her one. (This was back in 1991 before my sister stole my mom’s sewing machine, not that anyone was using the sewing machine for anything other than table space. Except for when I used it to make this bear, of course.) I miss that bear.

I’m not sure it was worth spending $120 on adapters to see that bear again, but I suppose buying weird doo-dads is what geeks do. Geez I look young in that picture. That was back in the last century.

I accidentally deleted a bunch of email today. It was just personal email but it’s GONE. And I was in the middle of looking up someone’s cousin’s email address so I could pick on her. Ah, well, best that I leave people alone.

Today I found out that my old manager from last year at Megacorp bailed out of our group. My old manager was most recently my second-level manager. The fact that he was above my current manager, a guy who doesn’t even want to manage, was the only reason that I had any faith in the chain of command. The group continues to lose people as fast as jobs open in other groups. I fear that everyone else will bail and I’ll be the only one left doing this stupid, stupid work.

Both ways on my daily commute was weird as well. I followed people who were doing 10 miles per hour BELOW the posted speed limit and for some reason that infuriated me.

Oh, and it was solo night at the gym. Dave the Trainer was up in Vancouver, B.C. and was late getting back.

Don’t worry, I did some abs and cardio too, though I lied and did some cable pullover extensions instead of the dumbbell ones I have written down. I also said hello to a couple of women I know enough to say hello to. I’m sure they find me suitably creepy. Good thing Timmy and his trainer weren’t there because she’s selling me a wreath and I forgot to bring any money.

When I got this job at Megacorp, I stopped being a sysadmin. You know, the guys who do all the IT stuff on the mail servers, etc. About that time I stopped swearing as much as I usually do. Lately, all I’ve been doing at work is fighting with Windows system installations and I’m back to swearing all the time. The thing I hated the most as a sysadmin was fighting with printers, and guess what’s acting up at home?

Today we had the first of our weekly phone conferences with the entire “group” of 100+ people and it was worthless. Basically we found out that the boss didn’t have any idea what’s going on either, but he’s the boss. I’m not making much progress on my work, but I don’t figure I’ll be doing the same thing much longer, so I just have to look busy.

Well, I better get my potty mouth to bed.

Pre-cooked grocery store quiche isn’t the best, but it had bacon in it so it wasn’t the worst either. After the egg pie, we had peach pie for dessert. Mmmm, pie.

Besides that I didn’t do all that much today. It’s Sunday during football season, after all, and there are priorities. Not having anything better to do means watching a lot of football.

I made a trip to the local running store where all of the kids working there were high schoolers. I must have freaked them out a bit when I told them about stalking people who use the Nike + iPod thing. According to Wired Magazine, the thingy that just needs to go from your shoe to your iPod link goes 60 feet. I’m figuring that a normal person wears the iPod on an arm band while running, and that’s like 2/3 of the way up your body. That means a 90-foot-tall person could use this thing effectively. Anyway, since people aren’t 90 feet tall, you can just be 60 feet away and listen for the signal. So, if you were a stalker and your stalkee used this thing, you could tell whenever the stalkee went by.

While I’d really like to take one of these things apart to see the innards, I bet I’d lose interest quickly and then I’d just have more pieces of some broken electronic thing in the house. Plus, I don’t have the patience to stalk anyone. Sure, I google the names of any cute girls I might know the names of, but that’s hardly stalking.

P.S. My sister is in imdb.

P.P.S. I don’t stalk my sister. (I do call her all the time because I’m her crazy brother. I tell her things like, “YOUR MOTHER IS WONDERING WHY YOU HAVEN’T CALLED HER RECENTLY. TOO BUSY FOOLING AROUND WITH YOUR KNITTING CABAL?”)

What kind of icky guy would stalk their own sister? Ewwwww.

There’s no reason that eating too much beef should be bad for me, but last night I had my usual Ringside overindulgence and I passed out afterwards. I had an Australian Kobe beef filet mignon along with a Caesar salad and crème brûlée. Perhaps I also had a Manhattan and a glass of wine. In any case I was passed out and even felt a little like doodie this morning. Maybe it was too much garlic. In any case, I was there for a friend’s birthday, and my sister even has pictures of my dinner. I actually spent 1/4 of the money at the table of 8 (which was only $120). Maybe I should have spent more on the birthday present.

Oh, Happy Birthday Taya!

I think I’ll go back to hanging out in front of my computer on this Saturday night.