Monthly Archives: September 2008

I usually check my email first thing in the morning because I work for a large multinational corporation. It woudl be much more convenient if the multiple nations were in my time zone, but as far as I know the only countries in my time zone are the US and Canada. In any case, I checked my email this morning and I saw a message asking me to visit a customer in Santa Clara in the afternoon. I booked a flight and went down on short notice. Short notice also meant I got a funny looking, funny smelling, funny driving rental car. I saw one guy drive off with a … Continue reading →

After all that effort, nobody showed up to do any work today. It’s not that big a deal, since I never would have been able to do anything today anyway, and I had to get everything done during the weekend. It’s especially not a big deal since everything has been properly rescheduled and the furnace is still supposed to go in at the same time. The worst part of it is how tired I was today. It was a combination of the poor sleep the night before and staying up later than I should. Today was a constant balance between drinking enough coffee to stay awake without drinking so much … Continue reading →

So all the remaining crap in the basement is now in the corners and there’s a space around the chimney upstairs so the demolition can begin. I probably lost a couple of hours to being a little hung over, but I got a lot moved out. There are chairs and tables in the backyard (not especially good chairs or tables, mind you) and a lot more stuff is going to Goodwill. Thank goodness my brother-in-law has a pickup truck I can use. Tomorrow is asbestos abatement and Tuesday the furnace chimney comes down. I’m kind of excited. Best of all, I didn’t seem to hurt my back that much. I … Continue reading →

So I got a lot of grief for skipping a benchmark workout at the gym today, but I’m almost finished cleaning out the basement. I even had my sister come over to “help” which just meant she came over to have me tell her she was useless. It actually made me feel better and got me to work harder, and she did go through some boxes of books I found stashed downstairs. And I found out that wearing a dust mask made me feel a lot better. Genius. It’s funny the things you find. When I was in high school, I went into the basement looking for my dad’s old … Continue reading →

I’ve been moving crap around for a week now, and I still haven’t gotten very far. I cleared out enough space in the upstairs bedroom for the chimney removal people and the basement is starting to look better, but at the rate I’m going I still have a full weekend’s worth of work to do to get things ready for all the mayhem happening next week. I’m supposed to be at the gym for a benchmark workout, “Fight Gone Bad,” tomorrow, but I’m going to skip it. That should give me back at least two hours and I’ll have more energy for the incredibly enjoyable task of packing up the … Continue reading →

I spent all day moving things around and I did get some things accomplished. I moved the “server” out of the basement so it wouldn’t be down for a week-and-a-half and the people who look at my sister’s silly blog that doesn’t even update all that often won’t get their panties in a bunch. I sorted out several more boxes of books. I cut some holes in the wall to see exactly where the old chimney was. And I discovered that I didn’t get all that much done and that I probably have a lot more to move than I thought. There’s a benchmark workout at the gym on Saturday … Continue reading →

Tomorrow (and the next day) I have the days off of works because I’ll be moving things around the house for the furnace replacement. Usually I stay up until close to midnight on school nights, but I may have to go to bed early tonight. Is it the weather? Is it the workouts at the gym? I dunno. I did win another race at the gym. It was me against a trainer two decades younger than me, pulling tires down the driveway and back. I suppose it was kind of an uneven race: I was at the end of my workout and tired. But a fourth of the way into … Continue reading →

I wish I were slacking at a much higher pace because I had a bunch more work show up in my inbox. However I didn’t do any packing today. My back kind of hurts and I’m fairly sure it’s because I have to drag boxes out of a crowded room and that requires me to pick up heavy things while standing in strange positions. I’m still scheduled to take off Thursday and Friday so I can pack up more crap, and I hope I can still do that. The email I just got makes it sound unlikely, but I suppose I could work every day of the week if I … Continue reading →

After I go to the gym I’d rather just sit around. But, because of the impending demolition, I had to do some more moving around of boxes. Tired at night is not the way to get me to do the sort of sorting and heavy lifting that moving requires. And now I’ve breathed in enough dust that I can’t think of whatever else it was I was supposed to be doing. That is besides sneezing.

I didn’t get all that far on packing up my bedroom because there’s A LOT OF SHIT packed in there. I can’t believe some of the crap my dad was saving in there. Old sleeping pads, three Boy Scout Handbooks, old copies of a magazine called, California Bonsai, congressional transcripts of the Japanese internment, books on Asian religions, books on gardening, and books on prejudice. I’m recycling a lot of paper, including old paintings my dad did for a correspondence art course. I’m not halfway done at this point. My sister was here but is very little help. She was going through stuff to take, but she didn’t take much … Continue reading →

I went and bought some boxes for packing up my crap, moving it out of the way for the chimney demolition. I really need to get a move on, because not only do I have to empty out a bedroom that was used as a storage space but most of my basement as well. I should have gotten started earlier. Today I walked a mile-and-a-half to buy some cardboard boxes under the mistaken theory that I’d be helping to save the environment, etc, etc, when really it was all about not trying to find a parking space in the Pearl District. After I walked the 15 boxes all the way … Continue reading →

Because of the birds, I’ve had to leave work on the early side to get a parking spot in front of the house. It’s the weekend now, so I got home around 4:30 and I almost was too late. I just have to hope it all ends soon. I think I have my tickets for Japan now. I have to figure out what to do about being in cell phone range again. Last year we rented a cell phone because what kind of Neanderthal doesn’t have a cell phone? We even had a US number you could call that would ring through to Japan. As I recall, the only real … Continue reading →