Weight Gain 4000

Yesterday, when I got home from they gym and not talking about Matt Gonzalez, I was so tired that I just wanted to take my dinner and put it in a blender so I wouldn’t have to chew. Pretty sad, since it was a salad and I bet it would have tasted like doodie. Today I deadlifted a personal record weight, I think, 345 lbs. Old target was to deadlift twice my body weight, which seems to be 165# in the morning and 170# in the evening, but my new target is four times my IQ which would be 4 x 90 or two-hundred something. Hahaha.

I’m about to ditch the bathroom scale and lend it to a buddy who’s cutting weight for a jiu jitsu tournament. Last time he cut way too much and got weak, so I figure this might stop him from being as foolish, but he’s a little like me and lacking in the common sense. His wife was saying it would be better if he just had a scale that said “OK” or “NOT OK”. Maybe that’s what we all need.

 

I am not writing about Matt Gonzalez.

I pulled out another box of my dad’s stuff and I’m supposed to be going through it. I wish I was energetic enough to put some of it on ebay but really I’m not. Who wants an old Casio CQ-1 calculator/watch/stopwatch anyway? How do I get rid of little trinkets? (Goodwill Industries, that’s how.) I usually just stare at them for a few months and then off they go. It’s just as well anyway.

Looks like our trip to Japan is getting planned. Fly into Tokyo, drive to Toyama where family friends are and stay for a few days, train to Osaka near where I used to work for a few days, train to Okayama near where my sister used to work for a couple of days, train to Tokyo for a couple of days, and then fly back. Since my sister is going, there’s going to be a lot of shopping going on and a lot of baggage coming back with us. Woo. And, unfortunately, the yen is quite strong right now. Whatever, it’ll be fun and I won’t be at work!

Keeping up with Arune.

There’s a partner workout we do at the gym where we row 200m, swing a kettlebell 20 times, and then run halfway around the building, five times. Usually I do it with Arune, so he goes, I go, etc. I think he’s carrying me and we usually get the best time on the board, but since most of the times are erased I can’t tell if it’s the best time of the day or not. Probably not. In any case, it was awfully humid today and I felt like throwing up before we even started (leg circuits of squats and lunges beforehand) but we still did pretty well. And by we I mean Arune carried me through another partner workout. I figured I wasn’t talking about the gym enough lately.

It’s funny the kind of relationship advice I get. Most of the guys tell me things like, “Move on.” In fact, I think that’s exactly what they told me. The women, however, range from, “You need to try harder,” to, “I think if you find someone who is willing to touch your d*ck, you should probably hold onto them.” I pointed out that I was willing to touch my d*ck but then was told that I’m also a bit needy so maybe I should find someone else.

Yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing.

Trapped!

Most of the month of September, and into October, the Vaux swift migration has a bunch of birds going into the chimney at the school across the street. The birds aren’t a big pain, but the huge crowds they attract are a big pain. It’s hard to park on the street in the neighborhood in the evenings, so if you leave you can’t come back until after dark. In addition, today was the Northwest Portland Portland Parkways and I thought they were going to block off the street all week. What a pain.

But I thought I’d make the best of it since there were businesses coming to pass out swag, and vendors coming to sell food. I’m not sure Dixon’s Barbecue Pit made any money, because here’s the size of the pulled pork sandwich they gave me.

That’s a large plate and the meat is spilling out because it’s piled as high as they could get it. And it was tasty. I also had some ice cream from Scoop Organic Ice Cream (the salted caramel and brown sugar & oatmeal were excellent). Even better, I got swag from my bank (the nice one), Kaiser Permanente, complained to the urban forestry people about the awful trees in the parking strip I’d like to get rid of, and got a free shoulder massage.

Portland has several massage schools, and I think every student needs to do some number of hours of massage before they get licensed, and you often see free chair massages at “wellness” events. I’ve finally realized that I should just get as many free massages as I can because it benefits everyone involved.

Anyway, I also saw a lot of neighbors and I think I’m getting rounded up by the precinct chairpersons to deliver voting materials to the people of the neighborhood. That’s what I get for being a supporter of the democratic system.

My nice bank cheeses me off.

I have several bank accounts and there’s nothing great I can say about my banks. Seriously, they keep my money and sometimes they charge me to get it back. Where’s the fairness in that? But still, I think I like the evil corporation that I use for banking better than the nice local credit union. I don’t expect all that much from the evil corporation, so I like it that I can access my accounts all the time and call customer service in the middle of the night. The nice credit union only answers the phones from 7AM to 7PM on weekdays and I do my banking at much odder hours than that. The web site for the evil bank works much better than the cheesetastic one from the credit union. I seem to forget the password at the credit union and their automatic password reset doesn’t work. I have to call them back DURING BUSINESS HOURS.

Today I called the credit union to ask why a money transfer hasn’t taken place and they just blamed the other bank. They didn’t offer to check, they didn’t tell me I should check later in the day. Useless. It was there later in the day, of course, but they still annoyed me. I was rude to them and ended my call, “Thanks for nothing,” and I feel a little bad about that but I’m not the best guy, either. Cranky is what I am.

Time for more TV.

I like candy.

I passed by the doughnut tray several times this morning but there were TWO with white frosting and sprinkles until very late. I had to eat one of them to stop them from taunting me. But what I was really referring to is watching Castle tonight. I also watched Warehouse 13 and Modern Family, but I still think Castle is my tv equivalent of candy or doughnuts.

I wonder how long I can keep this up, watching TV instead of sleeping.

Entranced by the TV.

The fall TV season has started and I think it’s time for me to it around and watch too much of it. The shows stack up deep enough that my DVR doesn’t catch them all. I still have more than a dozen books to read and some software to edit and programs to learn and RFID cards to read. Lots and lots of stuff. I’ve even given up reading my newsfeeds, Facebook, and twitter and I’m still not caught up on all my TV. But I think I might have to start putting more of a priority on sleep. Even though I still have to watch Hawaii Five-O, the show I’m currently most embarrassed about being excited about.

What to do, what to do?

Errands are silly.

I’m not too sure about what errands are supposed to be like, but I’m really not sure if it’s just supposed to be a guy making copies and scans and maybe transferring money back and forth between accounts so I can pay the contractor for his errands. It is a lot better to let Jason the Contractor to fix things; I can’t even get my mom’s shower extension attached without having it drip. I’m not sure what the secret is supposed to be other than lots of pipe tape, and I used lots of pipe tape. It must be practice, but someone did cross-thread the shower head and I had to fix it late one night.

I figure sooner or later it will all be fixed.

A class I hope I never have to use.

I’ve retaken my CPR class AGAIN and I just hope I never have to use it. I’m not a cowboy who needs to find himself in situations that prove his manliness. I leave that to firefighters and other people who don’t have back problems. I just want to be able to something to help if I have to. It’s the Boy Scout training. Plus, it was offered through the Portland Marathon.

I’m going to be back volunteering on the course again this year. I keep telling them, “If you don’t need me, great, but I’ve been at Mile 12 for the last several years.” They thank me for volunteering and there I am standing around for four or five hours again. Fortunately I’m there as a backup and they’re really never needed me for an emergency. Just to call for a van pickup for those who couldn’t make it any farther. Or is it further. I still don’t know.

Stupid NTFS anyway.

Boy, I forgot how hard it is to read and write NTFS on the Mac. And how character encodings can confuse file transfers from one to another. Oh, well. We’ll see how this all works out in the end. I’m trying to help a friend transfer a bunch of files from a Mac iPod to a PC iPod. No good deed goes unpunished.

I was feeling especially cranky today, but I don’t think I was all that cranktastic to anyone. I’m tired and the weather was kind of dreary. My sister claims that I said the weather doesn’t affect me, but I think I was probably overstating things if I sadi that. The rain doesn’t make me that depressed, but it does make me want to take a lot of naps. And really, why shouldn’t it?

OK, probably going to Tokyo on the way back.

Plans are firming up and I think I need my geek time in Akihabara. And maybe I need to buy some weird stuff at Tokyu Hands, which I know is in Shinjuku. OK, so there’s one in Osaka, and one in Kobe that I’ve been to, but I need an excuse to go to Tokyo. Which is odd because all I ever do is follow my usual path from the Nishishinjuku hotel to Akihabara to Mos Burger and back. I’m not exactly Mr. Exciting, but it makes me happy. It’s easier when it’s easy.