HBS (Hipster Blog Syndrome)

I never realized that there are a bunch of hipsters out there trying to make their blogs more clever than they need to be. I’d think something like that would come across as overly slick and annoying to read, but then I remembered all the other hipsters would probably enjoy pointing out the cleverness in their own clever way. Ick. I suppose that’s why I have trouble reading the blogs of some professional writers, they’re too busy proving that they still have their writing chops and they’re still creative even though they have to write manuals for typewriters or specifications for rotary dial telephones in their day job. Me, I just let the man keep sucking my life away, eight hours at a time.

That’s why you’re guaranteed to see the opposite of clever here on most occasions. Guess who has digestive problems? ME! Guess who has been eating too much? ME! Guess who won’t give you great pictures of what he’s been eating too much of? Well, me, but here’s a picture of the fried chicken and spoon bread brunch at the Country Cat.

Country Cat fried chicken (brunch)

According to my sister, brunch is the way to go at the Country Cat as she’s been there for dinner as well. I’ve only been there the once (today) and I thought it was great. As long as I’m posting pictures, here’s one of Megan and Nadeem.

Megan and Nadeem

Megan’s been giving me grief about her pictures of me being all “squinty and Asian looking” because, as those of you who have met me in person know already, I’m kind of squinty and Asian looking. I think this picture shows Megan proving that she’s a “round-eye”. I don’t have any pictures of me unless I steal them from others because who gets pictures of themselves on their own cameras? OK, that would be me, as well, but only when I have my digital camera out and not when I’m using my iPhone.

So there you go. Your daily dose of “not all that clever”.

I ate too much.

It was a beautiful day yesterday but I sat inside and finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. It’s just as well, I think something weird is blooming again and I’m having weird sneezing fits. I’m guessing it’s cottonwood, but only because someone else mentioned it. It could be almost anything, I’ve never been tested for allergy specificity.

I’ve decided I’m bad at tanning. I’ve got a farmer’s tan and I try to offset it from time to time by sitting outside in a chair with my shirt off, but it’s not working. But like my sister said, tanning is bad for you and I should just get a spray-on tan and look like an Oompa Loompa like Tim Tubb of the Crazy 8’s. I’m afraid I’ll probably just be lazy and subject the people at the gym to my farmer’s tan.

In any case, it’s time for me to get outside and try poisoning some weeds. I ate too much at Megan’s barbecue last night (her boyfriend Nadeem has some skills on the grill). I should have stopped with the parts from the kebabs, but you know how it is when there’s too much food. I wanted a small piece of chicken, but I got a big one and even after I was full there was homemade pie. My stomach didn’t hurt for that long afterwards.

Family dating karma.

I was just at the Crazy 8’s concert at the zoo and while it was lots of fun, I’m old and it was a little loud for me. Afterwards we talked to the drummer, Ricky, who seemed to have a big crush on my sister. As our friend Megan pointed out, my sister is quite clueless about the dudes who like her and there were scads of dudes in the past. Because of this, Megan thinks, dating karma is causing me to not have any luck dating.

Whatever. In any case, Megan and Nadeem are back in town and that means fun!

Helen is not my friend.

I’ve been feeling a bit tired lately but the worst part is that I haven’t been sleeping all that well. I found out that I’m not the only one. I guess it’s because of the warmer weather but several of us have been waking up repeatedly in the middle of the night lately. I’ve also had a bit of a headache that Advil doesn’t seem to affect. It’s not that bad, though.

The workout of the day was “Helen” and I wanted to beat my time from a month ago. But, as I was saying at the gym, I was a full month younger then, and much faster. It was also 20°F warmer today, in the 80’s, and as a native Oregonian I just don’t function well in the heat. 70°F is about a hot as I like it. Fortunately, I was only off by 20 seconds and I felt like I did OK.

The best part is that there weren’t any new TV shows on tonight so I was able to finish Rain Storm by Barry Eisler. I’m still not going to get to bed early, but at least I finished the book that was keeping me up!

My plans are easily derailed.

I thought the workout at the gym was easy today, but I forgot to take a picture of the workout on the board (something I do to keep track of what we did) and I’m kind of sitting around in a daze right now. That tells me it wasn’t that easy.

I had a plan to go to bed early today, but that’s gone to hell. My Mac started acting up, and that usually only happens when I do something silly, like when I try to run a beta version of the OS. Things have cleared up after a reboot, but that’s usually something I never have to do with my Mac. I suppose it’s just conspiring against me along with the wireless mouse that keeps disappearing from my computer.

One of the reasons I’ve been staying up late (besides being just plain foolish) is that I’m reading another “John Rain” book by Barry Eisler. This time it’s Rain Storm. I really should get back to it because I’m not bright enough to avoid it to get a good night’s sleep. Reading addict. That’s me. And THMFIC at the gym just gave me a “Jack Reacher” book to read. He’s an addict, too.

Does google make me a stalker?

I’m about the worst stalker ever, because I’m too lazy to leave my house to actually see what other people are doing outside. I mean, I’m willing to type in someone’s name to google to see what they’re doing (or my own for that matter) but I’m not willing to actually do move myself further than from the keyboard to the mouse to do it. I mean, really, have you looked yourself up on google? I sure hope you’re more interesting than I am. Geez. Talk about hideously dull.

In any case, I’ve actually been trying to find a picture of my college girlfriend, to see what she looks like now. Quite voyeuristic of me, really, but she’s a lawyer and quite well connected in her neck of the woods, being the Chief of External Affairs for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and Director of Government Relations and Planning for Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services so you’d figure there’d be a picture of her on google somewhere. It took me a long time to find one, and I only succeeded because her husband, 17 years her senior, just retired as the County Manager of San Mateo County. Googling him got me not only her picture, but also that the guy pulled down $500,000/year plus overtime as County Manager and that he was caught in a prostitution sting in 1993 but the evidence mysteriously disappeared. In any case, if you look him up, you can find a picture of her. All that work and all I can say is, “Meh.”

Maybe I should try finding pictures of my Japanese ex-fiancée. I’m sure that would require even more work and the result would be another picture I look at a couple of times so I can say, “Meh,” or whatever meh is in Japanese. Probably, “Ah so.” It’s probably just easier to stay friends with my old girlfriends so I can read their twitter feeds instead of going to all this trouble.

Really, if you’ve been following any of this you’d realize not only am I the world’s worst/laziest/most ineffective stalker, I’m probably the most boring as well. In fact, I could probably post YouTube videos of myself playing Solitaire on the computer and that would be more exciting than what I do on a day-to-day basis. That’s life.

Fast women will kill me.

We had another partner workout today, and it really is Monday — the start of a week of workouts for me — but it still felt like a weekend workout. I was partnered with a fast college freshman (her dad is younger than me) so that meant very little rest between rounds and it was a killer today. I may have been pre-compromised as I slept like a log for 10 hours until someone woke me up, but after the workout I was completely pooped. I remember back when I started doing crossfit, I’d have to take a nap after every Saturday workout but I haven’t had to do that lately. Today I had to take TWO naps. I even got messages from other people who made similar comments.

But I did finally get to see Star Trek today and I’m glad I did. I’m a big fan of The Original Series (TOS) and not of whatever the heck they called that thing with that Picard dude who never did get the girl. Whatever. I wanted a big swashbuckling, over-the-top, space western, and I think I got it. I’m glad I was warned that the movie would have a completely different story line, because it sure does.

Wow. That makes two movies this year, and I really want to see some other cheesy ones like G.I. Joe. They might take my hermit license away.

Driving someone else’s car.

My sister and brother-in-law have new car fever and sold their Honda Fit for a Toyota Yaris. They’re Toyota people, and they weren’t happy with the Fit. Something about turning radius, and wanting a ride suitable for a grandma. In any case, they wanted me on the new car bandwagon, and wanted me to check out the new Honda Insight. What I found out was that the new S2000’s are on sale and I kind of miss my old car. Really, though, not enough to buy an S2000.

I test drove the Insight because it has rear seats that fold down and that’s really the only thing that I truly wish my Civic Hybrid had. That and possibly a darker colored interior. Turns out that it is a little tinny but still might be quieter than my current car and has better gas milage. Unfortunately, it has a darker and smaller interior and sort of looks like a cave inside. It also doesn’t look like it has any better carrying capacity than my Civic and besides, I like my Civic. The new Civic Hybrids have a leather seat option, which would be great, but I don’t know if I need to trade in my car for heated leather seats. They usually just make my ass sweat.

I think the fantasy of a new car is going to stay a fantasy and not become reality. Time to work on some other fantasies.

Getting lucky.

So I think I may be setting myself up for failure. I’m sticking my head out of my hole when I really know I should be hiding. The less notice I get, the better off I am. That’s about all I can say.

I guess the sad part of my life, which I probably shouldn’t even say anything about, is that getting lucky means I only spent $120 tonight. I’ve already been asked how you can spend $120 going to the movies, but there was sushi involved in all this. Really, the way things have been going, if things went the way I was thinking:

datecost

But really, that assumes a linear increase when we all know that it should be exponential. It’s too hard to extrapolate that sort of thing from two data points. Really, I should just stick to my strengths and just buy a bag of tacos ($0.99 for two deep fried tacos at Jack-in-the-Box) and rent all the Star Trek DVDs. Leaving the house is just too scary.

Too good to be true.

The class at the gym was oddly small today. Sometimes it’s like that. The weird part was that we had a partner workout on a Wednesday, which usually doesn’t happen. I knew I was in for it when the only other dude there was Daniel, a firefighter who is one full drinking adult younger than me (he’s only 24). During partner workouts, one partner is working while the other rests. When you’re paired with someone fast, you don’t get much rest. Daniel and I finished in incredible time, but I though we might have missed a round. I mean we were using 40lb dumbbells (5lbs more than most) and used the tall box with the riser for box jumps. But my counting is always bad and I usually do extra exercises when I don’t need to, so I should just trust his count.

I got home tonight and I found a credit card deal that seemed a bit too good to be true. 3% back for the top 3 categories you use and 1% for everything else. I wasn’t expecting a deal that good in this economic climate, especially since there are rumors of the end of credit card deals to “deadbeats” like me who pay the outstanding balance in full every month. Well, it turns out that the offer expired in October of 2008. It must have been sitting in my stack of junk mail for a while. Oh, well.

Keeping it short.

How odd, I kind of felt bummed earlier tonight and I had no idea why. I guess it might just be the weather. One of my friends told me a bunch of people had the same sentiment today.

It was an auspicious day, otherwise. Two of my friends who are about to have kids found out what sex their kids are going to be. I don’t know why I find that so exciting, but I do. Here’s to having more friends disappear for a few years until their kids get old enough to play little league.

Or maybe that was all yesterday. I can’t remember anything any more.

Go, Sean, go!

I’m always joking at the gym that I’m going to do 3 rounds of some exercise because, in general, I should be able to 6 of almost all of the things we count in that fashion. Today I barely did four. The reason, besides standard Monday fatigue, is that we did a 500m row for time. I’m sure we look like complete doofuses to anyone who really knows how to row, but we flail and pull and do whatever we can to finish as quickly as possible. The fastest guys at the gym are all over 6 feet tall. I finished in 1:35.7 which isn’t all that fast but still my personal best (I haven’t been able to beat my 1:39.2 for over a year now). Sean was right next to me and finished TEN SECONDS FASTER. I can barely get my instantaneous time under 1:20 pace on the meter and he finished in 1:25.7. Wow.

I’m not sure I have much more than that going on today. I did find out that my friends are useless in their suggestions of who I should ask out. I knew that before; they’re all married guys who met their wives a long time ago and have no memory of what dating is like. I also suspect they take some pleasure in seeing me fail. The latest woman they were trying to get me to ask out looked way too young for me and I confirmed that by finding her online profile. I also found out she’s married. I also found out her spouse is a woman. As my friends pointed out, at least now I have several reasons why I don’t need to bother asking her out.

At least no one has hacked me up with a hatchet (I should probably stop using Burn After Reading as a comparison to my dating life.)