Instead of sending my tax forms in, I’ve been reading about how to enter in some of my stock transactions. It’s kind of a mess, if you ask me. I suppose tax accountants are paid well for a reason.

I found out why my Blackberry wasn’t working right. Turns out even though I have a receipt telling me that I’ve signed up for a new data plan, I WASN’T SIGNED UP FOR A DATA PLAN. Does that make sense? Ah, well, it seems to be working now. I don’t hate it as much as I did yesterday.

I think I overdid the mini-bananas this morning. I only had 3 and a Mandarin orange but I felt kind of bad all day. So of course I went to the gym. Oddly enough, after all the sweating I felt a lot better.

What I don’t feel better about is my stupid purchase of last week. I got my Crackberry today and it’s a worthless lump of excrement. Especially since Blackberry service is broken today. Kind of silly to get something that can do mobile email only to find out it CAN’T DO MOBILE EMAIL.

I live across from a school yard, and kids often come there to hang out. And by kids I mean rich high school kids who drive their parents’ cars here and make noise while they’re drinking and smoking and carrying on. What usually happens is if they’re too annoying I call the police non-emergency number, take the 3 minutes to wade through their voice mail system, and report the kids. Noisy kids are a low priority, so they dispatch a squad car if they’re not busy. The squad car shows up and the kids just get in their cars and drive away. I’ve been told not to warn them off on my own, in case the kids aren’t the docile neighbor kids who are usually out there.

Well, last night something went wrong. About 45 minutes after I called, my doorbell rang. I stumbled to the door and two officers asked me for my contact information and date of birth. Turns out that the cops showed up and the kids ran off, dropping beer bottles and abandoning three cars that had booze inside. The cops didn’t want to have a drunk driving situation, so they towed the cars.

I hope the kids realize that it’s not a good idea to drink and make noise in a residential neighborhood.

We had a neighborhood gathering today welcoming our newest neighbor. I wish we’d see the neighbors more often, but everybody hides in winter. Other than that I had the joy of starting my taxes. Looks like I owe some money. At least that means I made some more than the government first thought I’d make.

Several times a year I get to go to Ringside steak restaurant for birthday dinners. It started out with my buddy Il and me going for my birthday. Then we added his birthday. Then some other friends of my sister got in on the deal (15% discount for birthdays and anniversaries if you get on their mailing list) and I was invited to their group birthday celebrations. Anyway, it was Il’s birthday dinner tonight and we pigged out. Not only did we have a bottle of wine between us, we also had some Scotch afterwards.

The sad part was that we both realized we were probably going to make it to the Scappoose strawberry festival because neither of us had anything going on for Father’s day. (For those not paying attention, both our fathers passed away last year.) We both talked about the new things we were going to do this year. I didn’t have anything spectacular, but I think Il’s going to Korea for the first time in 30 years.

I did get a discount coupon from eHarmony. I wonder if I should use it.

My friend Kim and her husband welcomed a new person to this world! No more details from me, you creepy internet stalkers, but congratulations to them! It’s funny how long I’ve known Kim now. I met her when I started taking MCAT prep classes at Kaplan downtown. That was 11 or 12 years ago. I kicked ass on the MCAT, but screwed up enough of the rest of my medical school applications to avoid being admitted.

It’s probably just as well that I didn’t get into medical school. There are so many levels of bureaucratic nonsense in the typical doctor’s office that I’d probably go nuts. For example, my mom’s eye appointment was really screwed up by the office procedures. I called on Tuesday and by some lucky coincidence I got her an appointment for Thursday. I told them I’d have her primary care physician write a referral by the time of the appointment. They’ve never had any problems with that and they told me that if it wasn’t there when my mom got to her appointment, they’d just have her sign a form saying she might have to pay the whole bill.

Today, Wednesday, a receptionist called my mom and cancelled the appointment because there was no referral. She had no idea that I’d just made the appointment yesterday. I called around, and had the referral to the ophthalmologist’s FAX machine an hour after the cancellation phone call, about 11AM, around 24 hours from the time I made the appointment. I had to reschedule the cancelled appointment with the dingbat receptionist.

I told the dingbat that this was all unacceptable, changing the rules day-by-day. Yesterday they were willing to give my mom some slack for the paperwork, but today they wanted my mom to bring in cash if the paperwork wasn’t complete to their approval. I told the dingbat I wanted to complain to the office manager about their broken processes. Guess what? The office manager is out of the office this week and has no voice mail. I said that was ridiculous, and she countered that the office manager had a family emergency. I replied that I didn’t care if the office manager was dead, they should still have voice mail for someone who was responsible for running this circus.

Now if I was a doctor I think I would have throttled a couple of people today. Oh, and my mom’s primary care physician has a broken phone system. You listen to all the options and no matter what you hit you get put in a hold queue for five minutes with awful music and advertisements. Then the receptionist transfers you to someone who wasn’t busy the whole time and could have just answered the phone if you had their number. It’s truly a joy.

I think that if I ever needed to raise my blood pressure, I’d just call a doctor’s office and ask for something they weren’t expecting. I’m sure they’d just screw me around until I had a proper headache.

So I’m feeling OK this week after going to the gym two days in a row. Last week I think I was ready to pass out. Today, so far, I feel OK even after rowing and bouncing a weighted ball 7 times for a minute each. I’m either getting better or I’m just learning to take it a little easy so I don’t throw up. Or both. Actually, I think it’s a little of both, plus I didn’t start out this week by calling in sick from eating too much seafood. I suppose if I just keep going I’ll probably get better times. Or not. I think I’m happy to be doing more pullups, though I was able to do 8-10 earlier this summer when I was really working at it.

Oh, and I found that standing on my head makes me dizzy. Funny how that works.

We used to have a small local Honda dealer that wasn’t the cheapest place, but they were local and they just gave you a price on the cars with no haggling required. I bought my Civic Hybrid from them. Unfortunately they were bought out and they renamed and moved the business. Now they’re much closer to work, but they’re much more like a regular car dealer. I got my oil changed by them today, and it was kind of disappointing to see the changes. Plus, it took two hours to change my oil. They seemed to be thorough about checking things so I’m no longer upset, but I liked the old place. That’s progress.

I spent Superbowl Sunday at my buddy Il’s place where everyone else was halfheartedly rooting for the Patriots. The only one who was really rooting for one side over the other was Il’s oldest nephew Riley (who is in grade school), and unfortunately his team lost. But it was a good time, hanging out with Il and his brother and his brother’s kids. Riley is an incredible sports fan, and it’s fun to watch the game with a kid who is so into sports.

Did you expect me to do much else on Superbowl Sunday?

An old friend of my dad’s passed away in January, and her funeral was today, almost a month later. I was planning on hitting the gym, having lunch with my buddy Greg, and then going to the funeral. Well, I woke up with my sinuses all clogged and decided to punt on the gym. And then mid-morning, it started to snow! I looked out the window and it seemed to be sticking.

I called my friend Greg but he’s no help at all because he lives on top of a hill outside of town and always has snow. He basically told me I was lame because he had several FEET of snow today. I cancelled lunch and was wondering if we could even make it to the funeral when my sister sent me a picture from her house.

She lives at a higher elevation as well, but she’s very close to the Oregon Buddhist Temple where the funeral was to be held.

Fortunately it started to rain and the snow in my neighborhood started to melt. My mom and I decided to take our chances with the weather. Rather than put on a suit, though, I put on a dress shirt and jeans just in case I had to deal with the snow. Well, it turns out that there was NO SNOW in the rest of town.

I just felt foolish about my worries, and felt bad that I didn’t dress up for Ruth Tateishi’s funeral. She was a very nice person and, honestly, was loved by all. I knew it would be a longer funeral because she has a huge family, and everyone remembered how friendly she was and all her artsy craftsy stuff. I had no idea she had an origami booth at the state fair! She will be missed.