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.