What timing.

I finally took the plunge and bought an iPad last Friday and it’s due to arrive in a couple of days. I’ve been waiting for an iPad with a camera for videoconferencing, even though I never videoconference. Well, OK, I’ve used FaceTime with my sister a couple of times and once with my buddy Sean across a room but that’s about it. I waited and waited and never heard any rumors about a new iPad UNTIL THE DAY I ACTUALLY BOUGHT ONE. Sheesh. Now I even see the rumors about what cameras they’re using.

Oh, well, I can always get a new one and give the old one to my mom if I have to and it doesn’t look like the new one will be out soon anyway. Probably around WWDC-ish (June).

More calf sleeves.

My sister got me some compressions sleeves for my calves since I’ve been having trouble with them cramping up. They look rather silly, but they seem to work. That, and rolling my IT band, which is supposed to be tight but doesn’t really hurt when I actually try to roll it. Funny that, but it seems to help. My body remains a mystery to me sometimes.

Like why couldn’t I sleep last night? I was tossing and turning and I wonder if the dark beer I had with dinner was really just a coffee drink in disguise. Maybe I should give up drinking; my buddy Sean, a fellow burger connoisseur, is back to being a vegetarian. Actually, that sounds like a reason I need to drink more. Maybe I should follow up on that email that says it’s a job interview from Google Japan. If nobody will have a burger with me here, I can leave the country and have burgers on another continent. That’ll show ’em.

More calf sleeves.

My sister got me some compressions sleeves for my calves since I’ve been having trouble with them cramping up. They look rather silly, but they seem to work. That, and rolling my IT band, which is supposed to be tight but doesn’t really hurt when I actually try to roll it. Funny that, but it seems to help. My body remains a mystery to me sometimes.

Like why couldn’t I sleep last night? I was tossing and turning and I wonder if the dark beer I had with dinner was really just a coffee drink in disguise. Maybe I should give up drinking; my buddy Sean, a fellow burger connoisseur, is back to being a vegetarian. Actually, that sounds like a reason I need to drink more. Maybe I should follow up on that email that says it’s a job interview from Google Japan. If nobody will have a burger with me here, I can leave the country and have burgers on another continent. That’ll show ’em.

My sense of accomplishment.

Every time I stand at the bathroom sink now, I seem to feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s not because I spent 10 minutes scrubbing the toilet and wiping down the sink and shower, but just because I increased the temperature on the hot water heater. I’m not sure why that makes me feel like I did something. Heck, I spent four hours raking leaves and cleaning the gutters (of leaves) and made a huge pile that filled the recycling yard debris can and two compost piles with some left over and still the hot water heater is the only thing that makes me feel like I did anything. It’s probably because the bathroom will get dirty because I use it and dusty even if I don’t use it, and there are still leaves falling from the trees. Come on, it’s almost December. Plus, in the spring, more frigging leaves will grow on the stupid trees.

So far I think I have the OK from the family to get rid of yet another tree. My mom doesn’t like tall trees and my sister didn’t even know it was in the backyard, so the gingko tree that’s growing STRAIGHT UP is probably going to hit the wood chipper soon enough. Ahahahaha! Well, first I’ll have to get a wood chipper, but you know what I mean.

Vacation, sort of.

Woo! Long weekend and I’m finally sleeping in a bit. I also had an awful calf cramp that kept me out of the gym. Either way, lots of rest and I finally caught up with all the stuff on my DVR. Well, I suppose I didn’t start Rubicon or Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives but other than that it’s all done.

This weekend of gluttony lead me to several new places. Thanksgiving Dinner was take-out from Irving St kitchen. Half-a-turkey, stuffing, gravy, two types of winter greens and mashed potatoes and I think my sister told me it was only $60. It fed four of us and we had leftovers. I also finally went to Little Big Burger and I think the trick is to just get two sliders. That was quite tasty as well, and I think I’d rather go there than Violetta. Neither place beats Killer Burger.

The worst part about having vacation time, especially around Black Friday, is I have extra time to buy things I don’t need. I bought a set of DVDs with Frosty, Rudolph, and Santa (which I haven’t opened), a hard drive that didn’t arrive in the 2 days that Amazon promised, and new blades for my grandmother’s old barber clippers. The clippers work great, by the way, and Megan was in town trying them out.

So my calf feels better and I think that massage from Heather at the Body Bar helped. I made it to the gym today, but fortunately I didn’t participate in whatever this was:

because it looks like that one guy is going to be pretty sore.

Ma’s home!

So I’ve had this weird thing on my face (it’s not just the rest of my face) that I wanted the doctor to look at.

It’s not easy to see in the picture, but it’s a weird thing that was kind of freaking me out. So what did he do when I got there? He stuck his finger up my ass.

OK, so I’m leaving out the part where he looked at it and said, “something something” not skin cancer “something something” and then reminded me that I need a prostate exam because my dad had prostate cancer. Not what I was expecting, but better safe than sorry, I figure. I also asked about my calf cramps and he said, “You think it might be because you’re 46 and jumping around a lot at the gym?” It sucks being old.

Lazy weekend.

Yesterday I woke up incredibly tired and wanting just to go back to sleep. I did drag myself to the gym and wasn’t all that clear-headed afterwards. I had a short list of things I wanted to do and it seemed like I’d never get them done. The list wasn’t that long: laundry, haircut, rake the leaves, clean the gutters. I postponed the gutters but got everything else done, including getting a haircut that I’m really not that happy about. I just get my hair buzzed very short so it doesn’t take all that much skill, but there’s a stripe of longer hair that I can see. I mean really, it’s just clippers, guard, and five minutes. Sheesh.

Not much to say about today, either. Cleaned the gutters right before it started raining.

I remember when I was a kid, I’d watch the weather reports hoping that it would snow. Now I’m the opposite. I watch the weather report hoping that it WON’T snow. Snow makes it hard to get to work and also gets all the yahoos out on the road. I know I sound like a boring old man, but you are who you are.

Songs I can’t remember.

There are a few songs I try to sing along to in my car, and I really can’t remember all of the words to most of them. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to do this when anyone else is in the car. The songs I can’t completely remember (I get the verses mixed up most often) today are “The Humpty Dance”, “Blue Monday (New Order)”, and “Oh Sherrie (Steve Perry)”. But I did find a song where I knew almost all of the words: “Message in a Bottle (The Police).” I’m not sure why that is. I had some grand theory about the songs of my youth, but they’re all from when I was a lot younger. I suppose “Message in a Bottle” was from high school while everything else was from college on, after I was permanently mentally scarred by my institutionalization at MIT. Or I could just blame it on Differential Equations or Organic Chemistry. It’s just as well. The fewer songs I know well, the less likely I am to torture anyone at karaoke.

I also realized I’m intolerant of certain vegans eating certain vegan foods. I don’t care if they eat vegetables or whatever odd things that are their own thing, but when they start eating “fake meat” products like Boca Burgers, it pisses me off. I don’t care if other people eat them, so I tried to figure out why I felt this way. I think it’s because I don’t like anyone tricking me, and that includes religions and other cons, and most vegans have their own fake food religion and use their tofurkey and such to try to fool omnivores into their way of thinking. I honestly don’t give a crap that an animal had to die for my dinner, and I’m a Buddhist, not some pasty white boy who thinks it’s cool to have self-imposed limits on his diet. OK, so that’s not quite true, I do feel some guilt from time to time, but I’m still going to eat whatever it is that I’m eating. I don’t care how many Twinkies had to die to provide my dessert.

The other thing that pisses me off is vegetarians/vegans who hate tofu. Tofu is tasty and I’m not sure what’s wrong with them. So is lard and bacon. We’re all going to die and all life is suffering, so why not have some tasty pork products?

Is there a maximum RDA of french fries?

I’m sure fries aren’t good for you, and I think I ate more fries today than I should eat in an entire week. Lunch was at the Cruise In Country Diner with good burgers (Oregon Country Beef) and unlmited crispy fries. This kind of slowed me down at the gym later in the day. But I’ve been relieved of my gym cleaning duties on Mondays and Wednesdays so I went to Killer Burger for dinner with Sean and Jeff and had even more fries.

Before I say anything else, the peanut butter, pickle, and bacon burger is exquisite. The meat is well seasoned and well cooked but the sweet housemade peanut sauce, crisp bacon, and thin slices of sour pickle go together incredibly well. The whole time I was eating it I was telling Sean and Jeff how great it was. I’m definitely making the trip across town to 46th and Sandy to get another one, even though the place is run by god botherers. I don’t suppose there are many places that aren’t.

So there you have it. I found a great burger, and now I need a cleanse. Maybe not quite a cleanse, but if there’s some way to get organic Drano in my blood vessels, I’d probably be better off.

I’m definitely getting to bed early tonight.

This is the power of positive thinking. It’s past the time I’d need to get to sleep to get 8 hours, but not too much.

HAH! I cursed myself. My computer just locked up and I’m back after losing 20 minutes.

I’m also not really helping myself out by working so hard at the gym and then going to Jack in the box to get free tacos. I did eat a salad as well, and I’m not a big dressing user, so it might have been almost healthy. Still, two days in a row at Jack in the box.

Well, I better figure out what’s going on and actually get to sleep. Still behind schedule, as usual.

 

Can I blame the jet lag?

I’ve had a lack of concentration lately, which is actually untrue because I’m concentrating on things but not the things I should be thinking about. For example, I’m looking in my ears every day with my microscope. I’m not sure why; there really isn’t anything in there like magicians coins or anything. I’m reading more comics that I’ve found. It’s all very nonsensical.

And here it is, past midnight paying bills and I have to be up at 6AM. What am I thinking? Maybe I should hide all the distractions, but then I’d be stuck in a blank room. Possibly with padded walls. Huh.

Dazed and confused.

Yesterday I went to the gym and I felt quite beat up after that. It’s the second time I’ve been back since my 2 week hiatus (or vacation of gluttony and sloth) but yesterday was pretty darn hard. Besides actually redeeming a Groupon (the one from the Gap) I didn’t do much of anything else but catch up on more TV that I had on my DVR from the aforementioned vacation.

Well, I guess I was tired because I didn’t get up until 9:40, and I was pretty groggy. In fact, when I finally made it out to start cleaning the gutters, I found the neighbor’s keys, expired Timberline ski pass, and MP3 player in my recycling bin and I was so confused that I stood there staring at it for a while. I was thinking, do I call the cops? Do I try to find out what happened? I just got his dad (who is his landlord) and he took it all back home.

The excitement came later, when I actually did clean the gutters and even had to snake a downspout. Our trees, or at least the leaves on our trees, are very stubborn and most of them are still up in the tree. But the leaves and the rain don’t seem to coordinate their timing so I have to clean the gutters several times or we get a waterfall cascading out of odd places off of the roof. I did buy a gutter rake yesterday and I’m happy that I didn’t have to hang halfway off of the ladder in a precarious manner since the rake let me reach much farther. Or is it further?

In the afternoon I finally got my USB microscope working on Linux. I can’t get it working correctly on Windows or the Mac yet. It’s a silly gadget I bought a couple of years ago that even comes with a sharp plastic ear pick extension for cleaning your ears (cleaning your ears with a sharp ear spoon is a Japanese thing that lots of Japanese people do, I assure you). I spent a bunch of time looking in my ear and then poking around with a Q-Tip to try to clean out the canal. This microscope is probably not the best thing for me to have around unless I really want to permanently damage my hearing.