Anti-dentite?

I went to the dentist today and I couldn’t really describe what he was going to do. I was told he was adding something and I had no real idea until I got there.

 

Teeth

I guess my teeth are wearing because of some reason-or-another (most likely grinding my teeth while I’m asleep like my mom and my sister) and my canines were some weird shape. The red arrow points at a non-modified tooth. The green arrow points at a nice, pointy tooth that the dentist fixed.

Honestly, I’m not sure what to think of it. It’s easier to think about fixing the driveway.

I said I’d go to the gym, but I didn’t.

I got up this morning and I was a bit tired. I bet it was because I was trying to move dirt around all day yesterday. This dirt pile is smaller than it was when I started, but still pretty darn huge. I t used to go as far as the sign.

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The reason I had them leave the dirt pile was to fill in the backyard, which I am reconsidering at this time.

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Instead of doing either the digging or going to the gym, I ended up cleaning up some of the overgrown curb across the street. My neighbor Richard and I usually guilt each other into cleaning the curb but we haven’t done it for a couple of years. I was lazy and I believe he had a boyfriend for at least part of the time. Today was the day for me, though, and I had to clean up 250′ of curb.

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I didn’t take a before picture, so you can’t see how far the vegetation grew out into the street, but I do have a picture of how the turf grew over the curb, or a least some evidence of the sod after I threw it back into the grass.

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This is all part of the school yard, and the school district can’t be bothered to do this because the taxpayers can’t be bothered to pay for the schools.

Oh, and I should mention that I cut out several azaleas and a rhododendron (once again there’s no “before” picture) and that took a bit of work as well.

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And the star of the show is the new driveway. The fill dirt on both sides is something I also moved this weekend.

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Any question about why I’m tired?

More ditching of the gym.

This morning the alarm went off and I stretched my legs. Unfortunately, when I do that a certain way, I can almost always cause my calf to immediately and painfully cramp up. Not only did I do that, but I had my shin cramp up on my opposite leg. I didn’t have to get up right away because I had a dentist’s appointment so I tried unsuccessfully to sleep it off. At the dentist I got a cramp in my neck as I was holding my mouth open.

So, there was a slight chance after limping around all day that I wasn’t in any shape to go to the gym. Lucky for me, I felt even worse by the time the afternoon came by and I skipped it altogether. I did get to run some errands instead, delivering the correct graduation present, mailing a HUGE check for the repair of the driveway, and buying coffee beans for my mom before I got home and dug out some azaleas from the front yard (they were covered with moss and only looking half-alive). I thought the digging would be good exercise, but I felt just as awful afterwards and got a new cramp between my shoulder blades.

It’s time to call it, isn’t it?

I’m a home wrecker.

This past weekend was actually kind of busy for me. Usually when I have too much stuff going on I avoid all of it and end up doing nothing but sitting at home. This past weekend I did as much as I could. Saturday I went to the gym, tore down a room in my friend’s garage, went to an exercise seminar, then got cleaned up to go to a barbecue at an old friend’s house. Luckily, being an old friend he was also in the old neighborhood where I still live and all I had to do is walk a block to his house. His oldest son graduated from Portland State and is the one getting the kid’s safety scissors I mentioned previously.

Sunday I was beat. But that just meant I went to half of an exercise seminar with Chip Conrad and then went to a Celebration of Life for my buddy’s girlfriend who recently passed away way too young.

And then Monday I was beat. But that just meant it was a busy, busy day at work. Hooray for that.

Today I finally took a day off from the gym and scheduled some vacation time after Labor Day. Vacation just means I’m going to dig out the front yard and take a bunch of stuff to Goodwill before I leave on my big Japan adventure. Fun, huh?

Another day of excellent customer service.

I’ve wasted a bunch of time this evening trying to set up an old iPhone 4 because my new iPhone 4S has a beta OS and IT at work thought that meant it was a good time to erase all my work email and schedules from my phone. In about a month I’m on vacation, and I wouldn’t have cared, but right now I kind of like being able to check my email without starting up my laptop. I suppose it doesn’t really matter what I want.

Even better, I ordered a Cross gold pen from Amazon, who sent the order to Office Max. Office Max sent me a $2.99 pair of kid’s scissors that are, according to the label, are good for ages 4+.

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So far, this week is going GREAT.

Tuesday blues on schedule.

I keep thinking it’s probably some sort of blood sugar thing on Tuesdays after two consecutive evenings at the gym but I’m not completely sure. My friend pointed out again how cliquish the gym tends to be and that got me thinking. But I felt much better after flossing. I’m not sure if there’s any correlation there, but whatever.

Plus, I finally got my car back. I had another errand to run in the area of the Toyota dealer, so I didn’t want to go to work and have to come back in time to get my car. Especially since they promised me the car in the morning. I’m not sure how 3:30PM is “in the morning” but that’s not the worst of it. The person at the service desk was so surprised that Toyo was paying me for part of the tire that he seemed annoyed about the whole thing. And I guess my Extended Warranty doesn’t cover tire mounting. Whatever. I’m just happy to have my silly car back, though driving it after driving my mom’s peppy Camry makes me feel like I’m driving an underpowered wind-up toy.

Forms are up and concrete starts going in tomorrow. Things are coming up Milhouse!

Why are Mondays so Monday?

First off, here’s what happens when someone steals your driveway.

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We’ve wanted to “fix” the driveway since we moved in and that was 42 years ago. It’s a “Model A driveway” which means it was built for an old Model A Ford. Narrow and high clearance. The garage, for example, is small with barn doors that swing out. It’s only good for being a storage shed, and to hold up my antenna.

But back to Mondays, on the way to work on Highway 26 I heard a clicking sound. I knew it was my tire. It went away, but I got an indication that my tire was going flat. If you’ve ever been on Highway 26, you know there aren’t that many exits, and my car was handling just fine. Just fine until it wasn’t and so I pulled off at the next offramp when I realized I could barely control the car. So I got to change a tire on the breakdown lane of Highway 26. It was a fine morning for it, and went without incident.

My next stop was a parking lot where I started my phone calling. The tire was original Toyota equipment and only had 8,000 mi, but I understand how tires can fail. My Toyota dealer (Broadway) told me to call a dealer of Toyo tires (which were on my car) because they didn’t want to deal with it. So I called Les Schwab. They told me I’d have to call Toyo directly and were nice enough to give me the number. Toyo tires only transferred my call once before Candace told me to have the Toyota dealer call. So, It was back to calling the Toyota dealer, who said they’d have to see the tire.

It’s about 18 miles to work, on the highway. I can’t drive on the highway with a donut tire. I was halfway to work. So, I figured I’d just drive back to the dealer on surface streets and leave them my very expensive but useless-without-a-real-rear-right-wheel car until they could get a tire and make it un-useless again.  The dealer looked in their computer and told me it would take a day to get a tire in.

I guess I’m getting some discount on the tire because there’s some road hazard insurance, but I really just want my car back and I can afford to buy a new tire. But nothing is that easy on a Monday.

Happy Birthday Mariko!

It was my sister’s birthday today and we went out to dinner. The only picture I took was of my hamburger at Songbird. I was trying to find the menu on google last night but I found that googling for “seabird” didn’t give me the right results.

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I also figured out who sent me the postcard. It’s my buddy Greg and his daughter Bridget. I have to say it was both of them because Greg is the laziest man on the planet and probably came up with the idea but never would have gotten his typewriter off the shelf to send the postcard. I could tell it was him because the zero looked funny and he was the most likely to have a typewriter with a slashed zero. I called and asked him about it and he said, “I sent you a letter.” Mystery solved and much less interesting than when it was a mystery.

A mystery!

One thing that isn’t a mystery is whether I’m still feeling puny or not. I went to the gym, felt like throwing up, went hard anyway, and got lightheaded a couple of times. I know the Crossfit way is to push yourself until you do throw up but I’m not in a Crossfit gym any more and not throwing up is my own little victory. Not real sure why I’ve been tired all day, either.

But the new mystery is a postcard I got today. It’s a postoffice postcard with my addressed typed on the front and the back has the single letter “M”. The first person I told about it (my sister) wondered if it was a ham radio thing. Then she said it might be a secret admirer and probably peed herself laughing. The second person (a gym friend) asked if it was a ham radio thing and then wondered if it meant someone wanted to murder me. The next two people (also gym friends) wondered if I’d just get a series of post cards spelling something out. If that’s the case, I’m guess it’s going to be an abbreviated form of “m*th*rf*ck*r” because spelling it out completely will take too long.

Is this where I talk about being bored with the Olympics?

I’ve watched hours of the Olympics, and I think I’m ready to watch pre-season NFL football instead. That’s like saying I want an itchy rash on my ass or something but honestly, I have a hard time watching all those ads only to have events I’m interested in interspersed with things I couldn’t give a sh*t about. I’m stupid enough to see the news during the day so I already know who is going to win beach volleyball. I have absolutely no interest in rooting for the underdog who I know is going to lose. Unfortunately, the Olympics preempt a lot of the crummy TV shows I like to watch.

Enough complaining. Maybe I should read a book or do something constructive. What to do, what to do?

Am I becoming my father?

My sister and I are always accusing each other of becoming our father and my behavior as of late (and more importantly, the failings of my body as of late) make me think I’m headed down that path. I was sick this weekend with no severe symptoms but my head hurt and I felt “off” enough that I skipped going to the gym. After walking down to the dry cleaners and having lunch, I decided to take a short nap. Five and a half hours later, I figured I wasn’t completely well. Today I had other vague symptoms at work like light-headedness. If I could just have a fever or a runny nose (and no, I don’t want either) I would know that I had some ailment I was more used to. I even went to the gym and was closer to throwing up than I ever remember being since college when I had the bright idea to push hard on the bench press and squats in the same workout. Fortunately I had the sense to half-ass it the rest of the time I was there, though for me that means going heavy and going slow in a workout meant to be a lighter sprint. I like being contrary.

So in summary, weak, old, maybe a little sick, and it’s Monday. Need to step it up if I’m going Gangnam Style.

I’ll tell you what I need.

Well, I suppose the first thing I need is more common sense, but it’s probably much too late for that. More sleep would be nice as well, since I stayed up way too late after Il’s wedding. But moreover, I probably need lots more than what I think I need.

What I think I need is more music videos. Especially more dance music videos with funny dancing, silly suits, and  goofy looking Asian guys wouldn’t hurt either. I heard this music video is blowing up the intarwebs: Gangnam Style by Psy.

Surprisingly (for a Japanese dude) I have two very good Korean friends, Il (who got married yesterday! hooray!) and Sun. Both of them convinced me that I should NOT learn Korean because what was I going to use it for, to talk to their parents? Because of this I have no idea what the guy is singing. I’m just hoping he’s not talking about killing all the dirty, dirty Japanese or something like that. I hear he went to Boston University and Berklee College of Music, both places where the people were quite pleasant to me while I was attending a technical school across the river from them.

I should stop watching the YouTube video for Gangnam Style and hit the hay. I am, however, conspiring with my sister to get a suit like the one at 1:42 (better view at 3:45). The MC Hammer shorts were also something I thought about, but the suit is something I MUST have.