I just moved offices at Megacorp and there’s good things and bad things about it. The good thing is that it’s right by public transit. Bad things include it’s dark, it’s sticky, it’s loud, and the cafeteria is awful. I walked around and finally went with the default cheeseburger with onion rings and somehow they got both to taste like cleanser. They could have used that cleanser on my desk, because that thing is still sticky after repeated spritzes with desk cleaner and wipedowns with Clorox wipes.

Also, I have to figure out what I’m going to do with that 45 minutes I’m on the trolley. I figure I can read magazines, but what happens after I run out of those? I don’t really like reading books on public transportation because I get too nervous about missing my stop. Ah, well. I can figure something out. Also, I have to figure out what days I should drive so I can have my golf clubs with me. Heh.

I was told to stay out of the office I’m moving from and out of the office I’m moving to, so I checked my work email from home all day. I walked downtown to run some errands and my feet felt great. I guess those $100 shoes were worth it.

The bad news is that Good Dog, Bad Dog closed their original downtown store and now it’s an inkjet cartridge refilling store. Come on. How is an inkjet cartridge refilling store a suitable replacement for a place that sold homemade sausages? I really had a hankering for hot dogs, not fancy sausages. After I left to the Apple store (to buy iWork and iLife) I walked to the other end of downtown to Superdog and had a Nathan’s Famous. Fortunately I also went to GNC to get some nutritional supplements.

Good thing my next door neighbor knows I’m a big geek. He reminded me to go out and see the Space Shuttle/Space Station go overhead tonight. It was just a bright speck that crossed the sky, but it was fun to see.

As much as my iPod denies it (I heard Swing Out Sister and Scritti Politti on the way to REI to buy my shoes), I am a dude and I’m not used to spending a lot of money on a pair of shoes that are probably going to wear out in six months. At least that’s how long it used to take.

I used to walk about 2.2 miles to and from work, which took me about 45 minutes each way. I figure that’s about 2.25 miles. My shoes would wear out in about six months, so that’s:

So it makes sense that my shoes wore out in 6 months, but another new pair of shoes in 6 months is bad when you pay $100 for a pair of shoes.

I suppose it beats the wear and tear on the car and it also means I get some more exercise.

I suppose I’m happy to see that more of my back hurts from all of my exertion on Saturday. My lower back pain is mainly on the left side, but there are cramps higher up on the right side. This makes me think that a proper massage will be just the ticket, and I even have one scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

In any case, I figured two days in bed were all I should be allowed, and several sites on teh intarweb told me the same thing. After two days, get up and walk around. I don’t think I was supposed to get up and pack my office for the move this week, but I didn’t have much choice there. Fortunately, it got better as the day went on. Now if only other things would go so well.

I’ve spent the last two days in bed with a backache. I’m finally able to shuffle around the house like an old man but it’ll take some time to get back to normal. Good thing I have a massage scheduled for next Sunday.

I didn’t get all that much done while in bed. I read another book by Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead which I would recommend to mystery readers, watched Afterlife and North by Northwest and found out that Vicodin doesn’t do that much for me. I wasn’t expecting to do cartwheels, but being able to get up to go to the bathroom would have been nice. It might have made me a bit too maudlin to watch Afterlife which was a sweet movie but about dying. Worth seeing, but I think for now I’m going to stick to comedies and things like watching Matt Damon kick a lot of ass.

Before:

After:

The tree was too big and it was blocking the front of the house. I kind of think that’s why we weren’t getting the paper reliably. My preference was to just cut the top of the tree, but the branches were all in the top of the tree. The tree had pretty flowers in the springtime, but it was a little unkempt.

The tree fought back, though.

Not only does my back hurt so bad that I can’t pick anything up off the floor, but I have big gouge on my palm and a scrape on my neck. My shins are also banged up. (It hurts more than it looks.)

I was going to run some errands today but the tree took up all my time. And I’m not even finished. I clogged up the wood chipper and had to stop. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow, if my back is better.

Oh, and hey, it’s my sister’s birthday. Happy Birthday you stoopy.

My mom and my brother-in-law had dinner tonight. My sister is off running somewhere. He showed us the progress he’s making on his house remodeling project. He’s a high school teacher after all, so he has a whole summer to not go to work.

I worked from home today because I really just have some programming to do. I can honestly say I’m not a big fan of Ruby on Rails. I did have a chance to sleep in and even get a haircut during lunch.

The sleeping in was probably the best part. I even had a dream where I was setting up a computer in a classroom at MIT and they started the class. The first guy was analyzing some sort of electromagnetics with a Jacobian matrix. I don’t even remember what a Jacobian matrix is and I’m dreaming about it? What happened to dreaming about attractive women I can’t go out with?

So she’s complaining of getting seasick from being in the pool and she has no sympathy for my stomach problems. At least it’s not as bad as other people at the gym. I heard there was some sort of stomach ‘flu going around. As it is I had to head home early and be close to the bathroom. At least I could do some work in between.

So that meant I missed going to the gym. Dave also wanted to go to the driving range afterwards, and what’s wrong with that? I missed it all because of my silly stomach ache. Oh, well.

I had to chase off some kids last night. I closed the window, I put in earplugs, and still they woke me up hooting and hollering. And this was at 12:30AM! As I was out there talking to one group, another a newer black Volvo station wagon pulled up. I told them I was writing down their license plate as well, and the kid started yelling at me. “Hey Mr. Asian man! I have a tight asshole! I have a tight asshole! I have a tight asshole!”

I mean, really, to me he was just a rich kid who happened to be African-American, but doesn’t he know that people get SHOT for DWB in Portland? Maybe not so much recently, but our police department has some unfortunate incidents in their past. He might think twice about drawing attention to himself like that.

Still I feel better because my golf swing was better at the driving range. Still not perfect, but a lot more of them were going straight. Thank goodness! I don’t care if it doesn’t go far, just as long as I can find the ball!

I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping lately. Why, I don’t know. Possibly the weather, possibly my poor diet, possibly the caffeine I shouldn’t drink too late in the afternoon. I dunno. In any case, I haven’t been helping myself much either. Yesterday I was scanning my dad’s ice cream cone cut-out and it takes forever with the Frankenstein setup I have. My brand new MacBook Pro is running a very new copy of Mac OS X and my scanner is probably 10 years old. So, right now, I have to run Windows on the Mac to get the scanner to work. Then the blogging software I have is acting up I often have to start up several different browsers to upload pictures. Sheesh.

And tonight my sister told me her blog looked funny. It took me a long time to get it looking OK in Firefox and Safari and it still looks funny in Internet Explorer. Well phooey, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow I have to go to work and play my least favorite game of making web pages look pretty. Yay.

Sometimes I think I’m going to go home and find my dad puttering around the house, ready to do something that will drive me nuts. We’re going to have houseguests soon and while they’re relatives who’ll put up with the nonsense of the house, we do have to clear out a path to my dad’s bed so someone can sleep in there. We find all sorts of junk in there, like hundreds of wheat pennies and another Hello, Kitty clock. He collected all sorts of metal candy tins that went into the metal recycling. Today we even found a picture he cut out of a Qwest ad.

The ad is fairly recent, since the backside is advertising DirectTV and broadband DSL from Qwest. I thought he was just watching TV and eating but his old packrat/artsy-craftsy nature was still with him until the end.

Oh, and I still suck at golf. 

Today was our annual block party which was a little less attended than most years. Well, it is summer time and people do have other obligations. A couple of the neighbors were going downtown to attend the Hiroshima Day memorial peace rally. A Nichiren Buddhist priest gave a prayer and my neighbors asked me what I thought about it. Well, I was reminded of a joke I heard on Prairie Home Companion:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, 
about to jump off. So I ran over and said, "Stop! Don't do it!"

	"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

	He said, "Like what?"

I said, "Well, are you religious or atheist?"

	He said, "Religious."

I said, "Me too! Are your Christian or Buddhist?"

	He said, "Christian."

I said, "Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

	He said, "Protestant."

I said, Me too! Are your Episcopalian or Baptist?

	He said, "Baptist!"

I said, "Wow! Me too! Are your Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?

	He said, Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are your Original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed 
Baptist Church of God?"

	He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God!"

I said, "Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or 
Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

	He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915!"

I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.