I was picking on the 24YO nurse at the gym because, well, she’s 24. It only took me this long to figure out that she’s TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. I think I mentioned how I was shredding old phone records and I found calls to my college girlfriend from 1984, the year she was born. Yeesh.

Well, she should be worried because I’m trying to figure out how to become a youth vampire. She’ll just get all dowdy like a librarian and want to yell at the kids to get off her lawn and I’ll start wearing a goatee and a porkpie hat and riding a fixed-gear bicycle around. I already see the error in my current plan, because most of the librarians I know are kind of hipsters or in the counterculture as well. I think every librarian I know has more tattoos and ferrets than I’ve ever though of having. I’ll have to rethink this plan. Also, I’m not sure that vampirism really works in any sense other than to get a guy committed or put into prison.

I’m also in a secret race to get a muscle-up before some other people at the gym. These other people are rather competitive, and it’s much easier for me to try to do it without letting them know they’re in a competition. The initial goal was to get one before the Head Honcho’s birthday in August, but these goals are all kind of mutable. The downside to being in a competition that someone else doesn’t know about is that all I can really do is go up to them if I “win” and say, “Ha HA!” without really explaining to them what I’m talking about. Most people think I’m odd enough without going up to them and saying, “Ha HA!” but I guess at this point it probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

I’ve actually had three calls today on my phone. Plus one where I called myself but I’m sure that doesn’t count. All three calls were from our friend Jay the Contractor about the plumbing we’re having put in. He told me that my voice mail was broken the last time he called.

Voice mail is something AT&T/Cingular likes to screw up. I had troubles with my last phone once because Cingular CHANGED THE NUMBER you had to call and forgot to tell anyone about it. I called them several times before someone told me the new number.

Well, this time it was a mess. I called and the recorded message told me to hold down the “1” key on the cell phone. That works for every phone EXCEPT the iPhone. I finally got through to a barely comprehendible operator who told me to call Apple and gave me the wrong number. His number gave me an 1-800 number for “location services” whatever that is. I called back and got another operator who told me I had to call Apple but who then connected me with the Apple recording that told me I had to call back tomorrow during business hours.

My next try was the intarweb. AT&T’s site gave me a Flash animation that told me to hold down the “1” key (useless). Apple’s site gave me TWO documents that told me just to hit the “Voicemail” button in the phone application which did NOTHING. Apple’s site also gave me a doc that pointed me to a NON-EXISTENT settings menu to reset my password.

I finally went back to the AT&T site and found a way to RESET MY PASSWORD (it’s somewhere in my account under my phone options for the iPhone). That fixed things and got voicemail turned on. SHEESH.