For all the bad things I say about Reed College, I have plenty of friends who went there. It was a long time before I could say I knew plenty of people who graduated from there. I guess in the 80’s it was more interesting to actually get in than to graduate, and the most successful people I knew from Reed were dropouts. Things change, though, and the kids nowadays are graduating. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Case in point is my friend Aaron who should have graduated ten years ago but finally got his one and a half general studies credits to finish up. And those credits were from classes he took BEFORE he went to Reed. It certainly makes for a better story this way.

I spent a couple of hours under a tree in his backyard, and I found out that the SPF rating of a tree must be very, very small. I’m quite sunburned now. On the way home I got to see that I’m not the only one doing renovations, another friend is redoing his basement. I don’t feel so bad now.

I get grief at the gym for being so pale. It doesn’t help when I take off my shirt because I’m a dumb sweaty old dude. Dumb because I wear a lot of cotton that doesn’t help much when it’s hot. There are a bunch of us who take our shirts off, so don’t think I’m some sort of exhibitionistic anomaly. Just, perhaps, an exhibitionist.

In any case, I decided I should get some sun because I’m tired of explaining to people that the whiteness is to blind my enemies. I also decided not to overdo it, so I just sat outside with my Kindle for 15 minutes. It didn’t seem to help any, but I did forget that I walked home from breakfast and my neck feels quite burnt. At least I finished the book (and started another).

I was supposed to go to a birthday party but I ended up watching some movies instead. I’m thinking Burn After Reading wasn’t the best choice because the level of desperation seemed to be close to what I’m feeling. Nothing, of course, is as interesting as in that movie, and I’m not going to get caught up with any federal agents, but otherwise the sentiment is the same. Fortunately I also watched Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist which was just the right amount of silliness for me. Just like Gregory’s Girl when I was in high school.

Sometimes I have painful stomachaches because of some medication I take and it’s bad enough that I just want to lie around to read a book. Honestly, just about anything makes me want to lie around and read books so there it is. In any case, it was a nice day I should have been out in, but what are you going to do? It’s not the first time this week I had a stomachache, after all.

My Friday night was eventful as well, watching TV shows from earlier in the week. It’s getting to be that time of year where all of the series finales are on, full of a special sort of ridiculousness. There’s nothing like a good cliff hanger to make you think, WHAT THE F*** WAS THAT ABOUT?

I didn’t do as well as I thought I would at the gym today, but I guess I didn’t think I’d do that well at all. Yesterday morning I was having some intestinal difficulties (a gurgling warning that told me to get home quick) and greater fatigue than I usually expect. I decided to go home early, after all my morning meetings, and take a quick nap. Well, I know for a fact that a seven-hour nap isn’t quick, and when I can sleep fairly normally after such a long nap, I know I was probably under the weather a bit.

In any case, I wanted to do seven rounds of seven 40lb medball cleans, seven burpees, and a lap around the building, but I only hit six and 2/3rds by the time the buzzer went off. I was really dragging my ass around the building during the runs. But like I said, I was on the mend.

In any case, I just want to sit around and read my Kindle so I don’t have much new to report. It’s just as well. Recuperation, while satisfying, tends to be quite boring. Andiamo.

Tuesdays haven’t really changed from a particular workout format at the gym and it’s usually a repeated sprint of sorts. You do something for 20 or 30 seconds, rest for 10 or 30 seconds, and then do it again. You can go until you want to throw up (like I usually do on the running) or you can go until you do something stupid like jam your finger when you miss catching a 20-pound medicine ball like I did today. My head also hurts. That’s enough whining for now.

I wish I had some interesting observations, but I really don’t. I thought someone had broken in and stolen my laptop today, because I couldn’t get to it over the internet. At first I called around trying to get someone to go check and make sure nothing had happened, and then I started thinking about what sort of laptop I should buy as a replacement. Turns out nothing was stolen, but my laptop had turned itself off for the first time in months. Ah the joys of setting up the system wrong.

I actually had to try to do some work today and it’s going to get worse. Not a lot of work to do, but I have to do one of those things where you go to another group and try to convince them to do the right thing. A lot of begging and schmoozing have to be done as well as well-timed threats. I’m not good at any of that, so it should be hideous. It’s high risk for low results, but it’s my job. I guess that’s why they pay me.

I often try to wait until the end of the day to post so I can report what has happened all day long. But what happens is that late in the day I forget what I was doing during my waking hours. That’s actually a lie, because I’m not really paying attention to what I’m doing in the first place, so there’s really no additional forgetting that’s going on. Late in the day is just a lot of computer geeking and thinking about peach pie. And really, it’s probably the season to be thinking about strawberry shortcake, anyway.

I used to hang out on Facebook a lot but now I have no idea what’s going on there. I just traded one addiction for another, though, and I’m on twitter a lot more. It’s kind of weird, after Facebook tried to be more twitter-like, I just gave up and went to twitter. And twitter doesn’t have all those “Are you a single loser in your forties?” ads like Facebook has on EVERY PAGE I FRIGGING GO TO. Rub it in, why don’t you? I’ll just quit using Facebook. Ha HA!

But really I don’t need Facebook singles, I get DIRECT EMAILS from HOT WOMEN who AREN’T JUST SPAM. OK, so I’m exaggerating and even my real live female friends don’t email me all that often, but I did get the following email today:

Hello the stranger I have seen your structure on fitness-singless.com and it has liked me Especially I liked your eyes and your sight. I think that at us many interests which can connect us. You can communicate with me through this ema il lonely3_2moon@yahoo.com and we can support our dialogue. I shall wait.

See? What did I tell you. Not only am I smoking hot (especially if you have seen my structure), but I get emails from women with poor grammar and punctuation. You know how that turns me on. (I’m the guy who broke up with a woman for poor spelling, or at least that’s what the “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” on Facebook says.)

So, if you wonder what’s happened to me, I’m either not paying attention to Facebook, or my network is down because of my new and flaky firewall, or I’m busy supporting my dialog with lonely3_2moon. Or I’m working on my structure; I spend a lot of time at the gym doing just that.

So it took me all weekend to cobble together a server that I’m running now. We’ll see if it’s working. If it’s not, you won’t see this.

The good part is that I can sit on my fat behind for most of the time I do all this. The bad part is that I’m sitting on my behind in front of a computer for most of the time I do this. All my computers are networked, so I can usually sit in a nice chair and watch videos on a second monitor (like the last episodes ever of Dollhouse, Life, Scrubs, and Pushing Daisies) that I missed seeing when they were actually broadcast.

And now I’m sitting here trying to figure out the last little bits of it. It always comes down to giving up because of time rather than finishing on time with this computer stuff.

So I was listening to a guy talk about how he liked being single. He’s out on the town being a DJ and going to basketball games. All I could think was that I’m glad I’m single too, because who else would let me sit at home setting up a new computer all weekend?

I was supposed to see my friend DJ tonight, but I decided to stay at home and be boring, which is a lot of what I did tonight. I didn’t sleep all that well last night, so I took it easy today. Isn’t that what the weekend is for anyway?

I went to a going away thing after work today. One of the managers is changing groups and I thought I’d wish him well. Unfortunately, I had two glasses of beer and that plus the lack of sleep made me quite tired on the way home. Of course that means I’m up now, trying to get a computer set up at 12:30 instead of sleeping like I should.

I could describe how I’m netbooting a Sun Netra T1 and installing across the network, but it’s really rather dull. I’ve done it plenty of times and it really consists of me failing repeatedly until it finally seems to work. There are lots of little bits to set up and there’s no really clear directions. Whatever. It’s working now.

So, in any case, that’s my Friday night. A nap, a headache, and setting up a really geeky old computer while watching some TV shows from earlier in the week. Just the way I like it (except for the headache part).

Here I am, up late again. I put aside my Kindle but I spent a lot of time trying to pare down the list of songs I have for my iPod. I have a 40GB iPod but I usually carry around a 4GB Nano as a backup for my iPhone. For some reason, I can’t limit my selection of awful dance music (that keeps me sane sitting next to the world’s loudest typer) to only 4GB. Choices, choices.

I’m also trying to replace my firewall and I keep running into problems. I don’t have all of the right cabling for a serial console or for a CD-ROM drive to install a new OS. I keep thinking about geeky computer stuff when I should be sleeping. I think I’ll rectify that right now.

The contractors made it back to the house today and they replaced the floor in record time. I thought they were going to screw the floor down but they used ring-shank nails. After dealing with those ring shank nails while tearing up the old floor, I’ve decided that they are the spawn of Satan. But if they work I shouldn’t complain. Now if I can figure out how to keep the shower door from leaking, I’ll be all set.

OK, so the title doesn’t make any sense. Ask for a refund.

I’ve been staying up late because I am a moron, and because I’ve been reading a book on my Kindle 2. I still really like the thing because (as I’ve said) I don’t really care what the words are on, I just really like reading. In any case, I figure I should probably get some sleep and not spend the extra hour reading, especially since I finished the book and I haven’t started the next one. And I’m kind of tired.

I’ve noticed that people from the gym aren’t blogging as much lately. I don’t have to do much work to find this out, since I use several programs that aggregate RSS feeds. This means I get headlines from all the blogs I follow in one program. The only time this doesn’t work out for me is when people don’t have RSS feeds (HELLO JAMIE, I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU AND YOUR CUPCAKES) or when I’m counting on someone to talk about the workout before I make some seriously poor choices for lunch. Today’s workout, for example, probably should not have been preceded by Huevos con Chorizo. Something chickeny would have been a better idea. Without prior warning, I eat things like fried chicken, hamburgers, and giant chimichangas.

The workout at the gym was tough. If you’ve been following along you’ll notice that they’re usually tough, and this one was particularly bad. Even during the warmup, my head was feeling a little achy and I thought I could have used some performance-enhancing drugs. The ones I often take, but didn’t today, are Advil and Claratin. I’m not seeing that many hay fever symptoms so I figured I could cut down on the antihistamines, but in the middle of the run around the block I kept passing through a cloud of musky pollen. I’m thinking drugs might have helped.

We did 5 rounds of 30 mountain climbers, 25 kettlebell swings, 20 medball slams, 15 medball cleans (and I’ve found a way to make them harder), 10 burpees, 5 knees-to-elbows, and a run around the block. I estimated it would take me 63 minutes and it only took me 33 1/2. It was pretty brutal and I even forgot to hit the “publish” button on this post. Nice, huh?

I felt like dogmeat at the gym today. There were sprints and my legs felt like I’d been doing heavy front squats yesterday. I can usually “lap” people on the jingle-jangles and there was no hope of that today. In any case, I’m surprised that I was very coherent afterwards.

Well, looks like they’re announcing a new Kindle tomorrow. The rumors say it’s going to have a bigger screen, which would be good for my sister because she wants that. Personally, I think my screen is fine, and I don’t want them to make it any bigger. At least not for me.

So today my iPhone decided it wanted to be an expensive 16GB paperweight. None of the 3rd party applications worked (no twitter for me) and the worst part is that it forgot it had any music. One of the ways I can survive in a cube next to the World’s Loudest Typer is because of the music on my iPhone. Today, I was reduced to listening to whatever I could find on the intarweb, which turned out to be a lot of Dr. Dre songs on Pandora for some reason. I had to leave early, though, and I even had people come and ask me how I could put up with all the noise today. At least he didn’t sound like he was coughing up the world’s largest hairball today, like he’s been doing for the past week.

My iPhone is back to normal, or so it seems. It’s hard to know when nobody regularly calls or texts me, but it does seem to access the intarweb just fine.