All posts by Hisashi T Fujinaka

The woodworking equipment has left the building.

Yeah, a Japanese horror film that is an allegory for alienation and loneliness in society was NOT what I needed tonight. Do I need to go sorting through my DVD collection or do I watch Undercover Brother? I wish I still had Next Stop Wonderland.

The woodworking equipment is all out of my house now, but that still means the painters are coming as well as the electrician, plumber, and the tile guy to finish my counter. The carpet guy is coming tomorrow as well. I haven’t taken any pictures because it’s kind of half-done.

Ah, well, I still need to find some sort of antidote to this movie which, by the way, was Kairo (mistranslated Pulse in English).

Staying up late with YouTube.

I decided it was bad 80’s music night. I’m partial to British dancy music, so I listened to “Living on the Ceiling” by Blancmange, “Einstein A Go Go” by Landscape, “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17, and various songs by Bronski Beat, Duran Duran, and Spandau Ballet.

Watching music videos on YouTube is a serious timesink for me and I get really sucked in quite fast. I started out listening to Bhangra Knights vs Husan “Husan” and Snap “The Power of Bhangra” and it just devolved from there.

I should backtrack because I was watching a video even before all those that relates to the new goal I have at the gym. Most Crossfit gyms stick to very macho goals, like sub 3-minute Fran, or some other feats of strength and endurance that would make most people want to throw up. Our gym has people that do that, but also has people with other pursuits such as ice climbing, jiu jitsu, knitting, and burrito eating. So, in that spirit, I want to take the Cossack Lunges and other legwork and ab work and see if I can ever work up to any Cossack dancing. Check out this Basement Jaxx video and see if your quads or abs could put up with any of this.

I also decided I want a New Romantic costume like the one Simon Le Bon wears in the “Planet Earth” video and a desert uniform like the one the guys in Madness wear in “Night Boat to Cairo”. Yeah, I know, “Put the mouse down, and step away from the browser.”

I figured out a way to get even more tired.

One of the blogs I read is for “special deals.” Unfortunately, those special deals are always so popular that as soon as I see them they’re expired. Just what I need, something else I can’t have.

So, I found a way to get myself even more tired at night. First, have one of your co-workers “throw you under the bus.” (Like getting asked to find something for a key customer who needs that thing TONIGHT, being told that it will be easy to find, and then having to call various co-worker’s cell phones until you find something that may or may not be right. An hour-and-a-half of frantic phone calls in fact.) Then, get to the gym late, wanting to kill something. This can make you work harder, and make you much more tired.

I did, however, get another Xmas card today. The other one said, “If you had a girlfriend you’d have to so much more creative in your whining. would it be worth the effort?” I don’t know. It’s like my attempt to be a doctor. My friends who made it tell me it’s awful and I’d hate it, but how would I know when I never got the chance? Instead, I get to work with multinational corporations who take great pleasure in making all their problems into my problems. Sort of like how I imagine a hospital to be, but with individuals rather than corporate entities.

Well, at least I don’t have to listen to a lot of coughing if I work from home. I bet doctors don’t get to work from home much. I can even click on links that say “NSFW” and take naps and no one is in line to use the bathroom. Wait ’til the new bathroom is finished. Working from home will be glorious.

The bathroom floor is in!

I worked from home yet again and people were telling me I was a wimp for not driving. Then, of course, they’d tell me that the roads were still icy. On my way to the gym (the only time I left the house today) I had people ACCELERATE towards me when I was crossing the street. I also noticed that the freeways were packed solid with traffic and the news helicopters were capturing the event to show on TV. I think I made the right decision to stay off the streets.

I was about as productive as I could have been at work, though my internet downloads were fairly slow, thereby delaying my Linux experimentation. The weather reports indicate impending doom and I’m going to be home tomorrow as well.

Jason the Contractor came by in the afternoon and finished putting in the bathroom Marmoleum. It looks great. He also brought by the toilet and we totally geeked out on the assembly instructions. We were about to do the same for the Washlet when he realized he had to get home before his wife got mad. This is why we get along: he’s a gadget freak, too. Every piece added to the bathroom makes it look even better, but also reminds me how much I owe him. It also reminds me of how much work we need to do to the rest of the house. Oh, boy!

Ice day.

The streets outside are a sheet of ice. I guess you can drive on it (people made it to the gym OK) but I also saw a guy in a Jeep Cherokee doing 35MPH on a residential street while talking on his cell phone slide through an intersection when he couldn’t stop in time. Guys like that are the reason I don’t like going out in this weather.

It’s a lot colder than it usually gets here, and windy as well. There haven’t been as many people sledding because of that so I didn’t have to hear them all night. I did end up with a broken beer bottle in my driveway so the responsibility level hasn’t gone up much. In fact, the kids are getting more speed sledding down the icy street. Jay the Contractor tried to drive up the street and quickly honked at a kid and got flipped off by one of the parents. I mean, really, Jay is trying to get to work. Get the hell out of his way. The contractors next door were there all day as well. This is one of the reasons I never wanted to work for myself.

This lack of TV thing is changing EVERYTHING.

It was a ☆☆☆SNOW DAY☆☆☆ and you can just see the glee in some people’s eyes as they say it. I’m much more curmudgeonly about it because I live across from a sledding hill. The problem is SNOW DAYS change a lot of adults into idiot children with no thoughts of responsibility. 2AM and there are still people outside whooping it up and sledding.

Just coincidentally, snow days also seem to fall on garbage days and I’ve caught people stealing our garbage can lid for sledding (it doesn’t work for crap, by the way) and I even had to ask a guy to give us back our recycling crate because he wanted to use it for transporting snow. His answer was, “But dude, it’s a SNOW DAY.” Nice. Don’t be your kid, be the parent. I also have had to clean up all the cardboard people bring to slide on because they usually can’t be bothered to take it back home. That’s why I find snow days more work than they’re worth.

Today was kind of a special snow day in many respects. Usually it barely gets cold enough for the snow to stick but the local news channels start going nuts every time there’s the slightest chance it might snow, but nothing happens. This time I don’t have the luxury of watching TV and it’s actually in the 20’s and snowing. I was invited out to dinner with some friends and the old Todd would beg off because of football games on TV or something but this time I HAVE NO TV. Well, actually, I was able to watch a very jumpy version of Sunday night football over my intarweb but it really wasn’t worth it.

Look at me! I’m being social! And I was getting eyed by a redhead on the streetcar on the way out. She was too young for me and really looked like she wanted to carve me up like so much prosciutto, but I don’t have to mention that part, right?

Killing the TV.

Nothing good happens after 2AM, right? I just left a holiday party and everyone else is going out dancing. But they’re all in their 20’s and I’m not. I should probably get to sleep earlier than I did last night, but it’s already getting close to 1:15AM again. One of these days I should try to get a decent amount of sleep.

These holiday parties also mean lots of eating and drinking. I did a lot of work to get into better physical condition and I could blow it all this month. Sure I feel better and I look better but it’s not really getting me anywhere so why not offset it with some more holiday merriment?

I finally canceled my cable TV service. So much for my primary form of entertainment. I live in a neighborhood that is at the base of the hill where the TV antennas for the city are located, so we can’t get reception at the house unless we have cable. There’s a chance that we could get satellite TV, but we’re on the north side of the hill so we might be out of luck trying to get a satellite signal. In any case, I’ve been having trouble with the cable lately, mainly with ingress, where I see both the cable TV image and also the image from the local TV station. Basically, it looks like hell. I got tired of it and decided to try to live without TV altogether.

I’m surprised how little grief I got from Comcast for canceling my service. I keep hearing how they’ll give you great deals to keep you as a customer but I got bupkis. Which is fine by me, really, until the bowl games start. I may feel kind of odd tomorrow when the football games are going on and I can’t watch them. Oh, well.

I guess 6 hours of sleep every night isn’t enough.

Somehow it seems that running my narrow Asian ass off in the gym kind of wakes me up because I’m usually wide awake this time of night. I’m dragging today. It’s just as well since I should get some more sleep than I’m getting. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and the upstairs bathroom is yet to be finished and the slog downstairs is getting old. Last night my calves were incredibly tight, probably from the leg circuits and rowing at the gym.

I also need to learn how to read a calendar. Not only did I forget what day it was like I always do, but I thought I was invited to two holiday parties on Saturday. Not so: there’s one on Friday and one on Saturday. I always tend to make a resolution to go to everything I’m invited to because I tend to be lazy and sit at home with the TV.

Now I’m thinking of canceling my cable subscription. I’m guessing that’ll just mean that I’ll catch up with all the movies and books in my queue and then I’ll be bored. I may end up finding new expensive hobbies that make me look even nerdier than I am now. Oh, well, I still think the cable needs to go.

Destroying my blog.

I tried to update my blog today and I broke it for a while. I’m not quite sure how I accomplished that, but I was able to fix it somehow. This is different from my experiments computer at work which I have somehow turned into a futuristic space heater instead of what it’s supposed to be for. Ah, well. It seems like everyone is cramming in a crapload of meetings into this week in preparation for hiding from work until the end of the year. I may have to follow suit.

The painters were back and they stained some of the wood to prove to me that it’s OK. It doesn’t look that bad under the temporary lighting we have set up, but I’m not sure what it would look like in daylight. It might not be such a big deal, fortunately.

Tuesday isn’t Friday, either.

I’ve been having trouble getting to sleep, mainly just staying up too late fiddling with my computers, which is what I do at work as well (the fiddling with the computers and staying awake thing). I think the lack of sleep starting to catch up with me, which is good, since I’ve had a little trouble getting to sleep in the first place.

In house news, the painters have stripped the primer off the doors but it still looks like hell. There’s no way they’re getting all the TiO2 off of the wood and staining that mess is going to look like crap. I was upset about this earlier today, but what’s the point? Being angry takes up too much of my time as it is. Time I could be using to read Romantic Era poetry or just plain sleeping.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have continued on with graduate studies in English. One of my English professors thought I had the knack and I wrote three long papers on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner alone. I’m afraid my writing skills are atrophying at this time as I can’t seem to write up any reports at work. Perhaps the facts are getting in the way or maybe it’s my unease at having to use Powerpoint. In any case, I could have gone on to get some sort of degree in English or English Lit, but that only leads to two things I can think of: a job at Starbucks or a law degree. I think that working at Starbucks would keep me from sleeping altogether because of all the caffeine, and as I get older I can’t drink as much alcohol so the law degree probably wouldn’t be ideal either. Not that I think all lawyers drink a lot, but all the lawyers who are my friends sure do.

It’s certainly a Monday.

One of the first things I realized at work was that all of the audio was missing off of my iPhone. No music, no podcasts, not even any of my ringtones. My work environment is kind of loud (especially when the world’s loudest typer is in since he sits in the cube next to mine) and I usually have something playing in my headphones so I can drown that out. Fortunately, everything came back when I got home and fiddled with iTunes, but I now have 6GB of music and 6GB of “other” on my iPhone. It’s a good thing I bought the big one.

I found out that the ringtones were missing when Jay the Contractor called to tell me that the painters, who no one was expecting, decided to show up and slap primer on my bare wood doors and trim. Never mind that I’m paying extra for clear wood that can be stained (which is what I wanted). Now they’re having to strip off all the primer and maybe even replace some of the wood. It’s all kind of goofy if you ask me. I wasn’t mad and Jay even told me that the painters confessed to screwing up and that they’re paying to fix it all. Even less reason to not be mad. Sure it’ll take longer, but even without screwups it takes longer for contractors to finish things than you’d think.

So I’ve come up with another possible ideal age for a woman. I figure when I’m 45, I should go out with someone who is 33 1/3 (and not 78). So after some calculations, I figure that’s someone who is born around 1/3 of a year or 122 days beyond my birthday, or August 12, 1976. Coincidentally, my sister’s birthday is August 11, which kind of creeped me out even though she’s a lot older than 33. In any case, I’m never going to pull this off. Let’s see, 78 would be someone born in 1931, which is my mom’s birth year. I just can’t win.

Back to being boring.

I’ve found that my relationship with garlic is similar to most of my other relationships: I like it and it doesn’t like me. In fact, garlic does its best to let me know just how much it doesn’t like me, or at least my innards. It’s just as well, I spent $600 on lighting fixtures yesterday and I really didn’t have to do all that much more about the house renovations. They’re trying to finish up because Jason the Contractor, unlike many in his profession, seems to have a few jobs lined up. Once they’re finished with our house, they’re off onto something else.

So, while yesterday I had shopping and a birthday party to attend, today I just had to sit around and watch TV. I was all ready to go to sleep at 9PM since I’m not feeling that great and of course it’s close to midnight now. I’m such a master of planning.