I’m just going to post a link to the video and let everyone else figure it out. A couple more pieces of hardware (drawer pulls and towel rack, etc.) and it will really be finished. As it is, I can now use the sink along with the toilet and the shower, so it’s pretty much a bathroom to me. I’m not going to move all my stuff in until the contractor gives me the OK, though. I don’t want to get in his way.

I should have a more systematic fitness journal where I figure out things like how to progressively lift more weight. For example, it was a bad idea to go from front squatting 155lbs to 185lbs in one step, but I was on a bar with Sean who can do those sorts of things and thinks other people can as well. I still feel OK, but I think I should have been a bit smarter about it.

In any case, I’m still no closer to any of my New Year’s resolutions. I should just go buy the “Piso Mojado” sign for myself and declare victory.

I tried out my new shower today and it’s pretty darn nice. There are high windows around and the bright, sunny weather just added to the fun of actually being able to use the shower for the first time. My sister was running in the neighborhood, probably on Leif Erikson, and she tried it out as well. The sad part is that one of the guys who worked on it just suddenly died of liver cancer. He was only 29 years old and was one of the guys who was doing the carpentry, something I haven’t complained about at all.

Besides that, I was doing the Mark Football Season Workout, keeping a chair in the bar from hitting the ceiling and curling 16 ounces. This is what I figured I’d have to do when I canceled my cable TV. I had an chiliburger and a pulled pork sandwich to round it all off. Hey, it’s the playoffs. Also, after hearing about the carpenter, I didn’t feel like sitting around and ordering pizza.

My week of aches continues. It’s all because of a cold, or so I hope. I took a day off from the gym because my lower back hurt, my shoulders hurt, and my forearms hurt. It all got better but now my knees hurt. I’m hoping that this is all due to my cold, but it’s probably because I’m old and creaky.

Cognitive dissonance is an easy answer for lots of things. I don’t believe in astrology in any sense, but I read my horoscope hoping that anything hopeful in the predictions might actually occur. Today it was that, “You might be surprised by someone’s affection for you, HISASHI.” There are seventeen more minutes for this to happen. I’m not holding my breath.

Eventually, there ought to be some vague and happy prediction that comes true for me.

In any case, this is probably the reason I buy lottery tickets even though I know the math and how unlikely it is that I’ll win. I only do it once in a while and it gives me a chance to imagine what I’d do if I actually won.

I’m a very liberal guy, but in my own life I’m pretty darn boring. Just ask my ex-girlfriends. Boooring. So when I had weird cuts on my legs for the past two nights, I had no idea what they were. They’re rope burns from climbing the big ropes at the gym. The new gym has a ceiling that’s probably twenty-something feet high, and new manila ropes that go all the way up. As a novice rope climber, I try all sorts of weird things to try to climb on up and I have the rope burns to prove it.

The hard part of climbing up ropes or the poles they have in the gyms in Japan isn’t so much getting up to the top, but figuring out what to do once you get there. You have to find your way down, and that’s when you get the rope burn.

Like I said, boooring.

I’m about to pass out. I’d blame going too hard at the gym in a week when I’m recovering from some sort of cold, or having THMFIC design workouts where we’re running out side in the 38°F cold, or yet something else that didn’t have to do with my foolishly not sleeping enough, but we all know it’s probably a combination of everything. I thought I should finish my compulsive blithering before it got too late, but I remembered I had to check some work email before I hit the hay. It’s too bad I just didn’t forget that.

The workout at the gym today was pretty short, and afterwards I got to use the NEW GLORIOUS MOP BUCKET. Now if I could only get one of those yellow signs that say, “CUIDADO – PISO MOJADO,” life would be a bit more complete. Screw all the dating things on my resolutions, I NEED A MOPPING SIGN.

OK, that’s it. I have to get some sleep.

I’m lacking in strategic planning beyond, say, a couple of hours and sometimes it’s even shorter than that. Take, for example, a workout at the gym. If I’m just there on my own, I’ll be lazy and not push myself very hard. I probably won’t even breathe hard for more than a minute. But if there’s someone next to me who is just ahead of me, I’ll push myself hard enough to try to get ahead. Way too far ahead and I’m back to slacking. I do this even when my back hurts and I should be taking it easy. I suppose “easy” is relative, and there’s no reason not to try.

Or look at what I’ve been doing this evening. I was tired at work today, though I’m feeling much better. I should have just gone to sleep early. Instead, I was online looking for a work email from a customer (it never arrived) and messaging friends. One told me that the woman who he was trying to fix me up with was getting desperate, but not desperate enough to go out with me. So I decided to finish my bottle of “Nikka Whisky, Matured in wood and blended by our own experts in Tokyo, Osaka, Hokkaido, and Sendai, Japan.” Yeah, probably PLYwood.

In any case, I can’t remember my point. However, my new short-term goal of sleep is probably in keeping with a longer-term goal of keeping my job by staying awake during the day. I figure you just have to do whatever you think is right, and sometimes it works out in your favor. That’s the nature of life.

I’m obsessed enough that I went back to the gym today even though I wasn’t feeling completely well. My head hurt, I had a hard time bending over to change into my gym clothes, and I was really tired. Recounting, my forearms hurt, my upper back hurt, and my lower back hurt. Oddly enough, the worst part, my lower back, felt pretty good and the biggest problem was with my upper back, the area between my shoulder blades that always seems to hurt because I sit at my nerd job at my nerd desk typing on my nerd computer all day long.

The other odd thing about this cold is that it keeps me from sleeping well. Other people I talked to who are sick say they’re having the same sort of sleep issues as well, and the fastest way I know of feeling better is to sleep a lot. Funny how that all works out.

My back still hurts but is feeling a lot better, which is good because if it felt worse it would mean I’d have to go back to the see someone about it again. If I had cable, I would have probably spent all night watching TV, but instead I bought iWork ’09 for my Mac. It’s all very silly, since I hardly ever do any word processing or presentations on my Mac, but I got it anyway. Not very exciting in the least.

I guess I should have come up with some resolutions by now, but I usually give myself by the middle of January. Come to think of it, I probably did come up with some but I’ve forgotten them by now. Nurse Tiff thinks I should try to have a SECOND date this year, which would be two better than last year, but I’m going for the goal of making Carolyn eat her hat, which is more dates than her. The medium goal is one per month. Seeing as how NO ONE was interested in me after speed dating, this may be harder than it sounds.

Another goal is to see my bathroom finished, pay it off, and have the rest of the house examined. I think we’re planning on the downstairs bathroom, the living room walls/ceiling, the dining room walls/ceiling, the 2 downstairs bedrooms, the upstairs bedroom, parts of the kitchen, and then I should be so broke that I’ll need to keep working for at least a couple of years after I’m dead. I’m not sure, but I think my employer would probably not agree to those working conditions.

Another goal is to go to Japan again. My mom goes a couple of times a year but I’ll settle for once a year for now. I really like it there and I think it’s because I can actually afford to do things there now that I’m not trying to live there on a junior engineer’s salary.

Another goal is to go somewhere whiter, like England. Europe is a little far. I’m probably going to San Francisco but that is pretty Asian. What about Chicago? I guess I could go to most parts of Oregon or, hell, even 20 miles out to Scappoose, but we’re talking goals here, not things I could do in a half hour. Maybe I should go to Canaduh again.

Another should be work-related, but I can’t think of doing anything beyond doing my job.

Maybe I should also decide to take the bus more often, but where’s the fun in that?

I also resolve to get more sleep. HAH. Well, so much for that one.

Exercise is one of those things where I feel weird if I miss it. I’m probably going to take a day off from the gym because my back still hurts and I’m pretty sure it’s not from anything in particular because my shoulders also hurt and so do my forearms. I’m guessing (and hoping) it’s just general achiness.

My problem with taking days off probably stems from my running days, when you go out every day and slog though the run and feel bad if you miss a day. I’m sure it’s some sort of minor compulsion. I feel that way when I miss work, too. I can wake up feeling like absolute crap warmed over and as soon as I call in sick, I feel great. Then I feel guilty. Then I usually find out that taking a shower has made me so tired that I need to get back into bed, and confirm to myself that I really am sick. It really sounds like an inefficient way to live my life but, really, I don’t have all that much going on anyway and I can spare the wasted time.

The other waste of time I usually have is a distinct lack of organization when it comes to buying things. I need light bulbs. It’ll be days before I remember to go out and buy some. I have 100W light bulbs all over my bathroom and when I switched on the lights to show off the new work that’s been done, my sister was blinded. I figured, though, that it should be bright in there while the guys are working so they can see every little thing. Later, though, I have to tone it down a bit.

In any case, the guy who owns the painting company came by on Friday and agreed that everything looks like crap. He’s going to be here on Monday to try to fix things. The tile guy should be finished with my counter and backsplash, too. The plumbing fixtures may or may not be in. The bathroom is very, very close to being finished! The paint fumes, however, mean I may not be able to stay home even if I am sick. Oh, well. That’s what Advil and caffeine are for.

I’m sure it was stressful for the people working in the new gym because it was PACKED today and everyone, of course, had an opinion about the new space. People wanted to be there for “opening day.” I certainly was guilty of having issues with the space. Obviously, it’s bigger, but with more people, it’s more crowded.

I was especially cranky because I really should have been home in bed instead of at the gym, since I’m coming down with something. But, like I said, I had to be there for the transition. The gym is full of obsessive people and I’m not excluding myself from that category. I even pushed myself to have one my faster times in the gym. Unfortunately, I paid for this. I thought I was going to fall over when I took a shower because my back hurt so much. Thank goodness for Advil.

In any case, the new gym is really cool and the weird bits are going to be fixed, I’m sure. They got a new mop and I think I can mop the whole gym in the same time it took me to mop the old one. Mopping, surprisingly, is a great core exercise, and this new heavier mop is great for the shoulders.

I really ought to sleep more, too, instead of staying up listening to the directors comments from Love, Actually. I probably need a new hobby.

I was at the last workout at the gym today, which was the last workout at this location. After that we helped move the last little bit to the new location. A lot of the people from the gym showed up to help and it didn’t take long at all. It’s a good thing, too, because I think the Brains Behind the Gym overthinks things too much, and THMFIC doesn’t like change. It’s a big change, a big new location, and I said I was going to mop the whole floor. It’s huge.

I didn’t think I’d do that well tonight because I woke up with sore sinuses. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but I usually come down with something just in time to be sick for the weekend or a holiday, and then I”m well enough for Monday. I did well enough to beat the yoots on the workout, which included 3 laps around the block in 40°F weather.

Oh, boy, and it’s now 1 hour later than I planned to hit the hay. The tile guy is supposed to be in tomorrow at 8AM to finish the bathroom counter. I told Jay the Contractor I wanted to replace the wood and restain it, but I also told him that he could try talking me out of it because, well, he is my friend after all. I’m up too late because I bought a copy of Gregory’s Girl and I had to put it in my DVD player like an idiot. It’s a teen movie from Scotland that I saw when I was in my teens, back when things were important and the world was filled with possibilities. That’s what I got when I was watching Comfort and Joy while drinking on Xmas, two Amazon purchases of movies by the same writer/director, BIll Forsyth, Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero.

Both of those were movies from my teens, too. I suppose I should be glad that there is still hope in my life, but not so happy that the hope is that my bathroom is finished before the year is out, especially since it’s still January.

I was just looking at the gym’s blog from a year ago and I think I eased into things, but my first day was a year ago. I’m trying to quantify what’s changed in that time, but I can fairly say that the pants that were getting a little tight are now falling off of me at times. I wonder if that means I should moderate the number of cheeseburgers I eat to make my jeans fit. That would be a bit of an experiment.

Any day that starts with a trip to the dentist is usually not going to be the best. Sure, there’s that period of time where your teeth feel extremely clean, but who can avoid ruining the feeling with a nice piece of chocolate? Or even a nasty piece of chocolate like a mini-Milky Way that you find on a random counter at work? I brush and I floss and I floss and I brush, and they still find something to scrape at with their painful metal hooks.

When I got home, the house was once again full of fumes, and the stained wood looks awful. If you remember, the painters randomly came in and primed all the wood doors and trim that should have been stained. They stripped and sanded the wood, but the process wasn’t uniform and now there’s splotches in the stain. I got madder as I thought about it and figured I had two options:

1. Replace all the trim in the bedroom and hall, and also the three doors with their trim, and start the staining process over. Make the painter pay for this and the labor because it was their fault and they ruined the wood without instructions from anyone else.
2. Live with the awful stain. This would be quicker and we wouldn’t have the house smelling for too much longer. I would also take the effort to badmouth the painter and his stupidity and probably get an account on Angie’s List so I could let everyone know how incompetent he is.

The other option is to paint over the stain, but at this point I don’t trust the guy to paint properly. I figure the stain would bleed through and the clowns would also paint the wrong thing.

Ah well. I was in a bad mood and waited it out long enough that I just feel like going to sleep. Sometimes the nightmares clear and I can have a nice dream about being happy or something before I have to get up and have people tell me I’m stupid.