So I’ve been doing this ham radio thing for years. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s annoying. At one point I tried to do as much volunteering as I could, mainly communications for special events (marathons, parades, etc) and sometimes disasters. Mostly volunteering means you get to stand around and do whatever they want you to do. For example, communications for one road race meant standing at an intersection trying to keep people from driving through the barricade. Another time communications mean stuffing flyers in envelopes. Some people take offense, but I do what I can.

One event where I actually get to do some communications is the Portland Marathon. The ham radio operators call in the sag wagons and the on-site ambulance teams. For the past few years, I’ve either been using an old radio I got in high school (back around 1981), or borrowing a newer radio. I finally bought a new one because I felt bad about borrowing yet another thing from my friend Greg.

I got it mail order because the local ham radio store, part of a chain, didn’t have it in stock. I went back two weeks in a row, but still nothing. Comparison shopping brought me back to the same chain. Their “free” shipping made it the best deal. They’re shipping me the radio from the store that didn’t have it for the past two weeks. I guess they must have gotten them in the past couple of days.

OK, so that was boring and geeky. Also boring and geeky is my gym schedule. I now notice that there is less interesting TV during my old schedule (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) than during my new schedule (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays). I may have to miss the start of Joey. Oh, the agony.

In the Go-Go’s song “Head Over Heels,” Belinda Carlisle sings:

Head over heels, where should I go?
Can’t stop myself, out of control.
Head over heels, no time to think
It’s like the whole world’s out of sync.

I used to think the last line was, “This microphone is out of sync.” Now, as an electrical engineer, I knew that microphones aren’t synchronized to anything and that couldn’t have been right.

In any case, I can no longer go to the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mondays I have to be home for Monday Night Football. I can’t believe how many people seem upset when I tell them I like watching football. First off, there’s no significant other demanding my time on Sundays or Monday nights. Second, I’m a godless heathen, so football is not keeping me from my scheduled religious duties. And third, I like watching football.

Oh, and for those of you who ride bikes, search the web for how crooks can open your Kryptonite locks with Bic pens. Those locks are useless now.

Didn’t do all that much. Hung out with my friend Greg and spent $100 on a flashlight which does seem a little excessive but I hate cheesy flashlights. $20 for a MagLight is fine, but they’re really crap compared to the Surefire. In the dark, it makes a difference, and if I’m stumbling around in the dark looking for whatever made a loud noise, I don’t want to have to guess what’s hiding in the shadows.

I already have the single-battery version but the two-cell version is much brighter. I could have bought the plastic body version for $35, but what fun is that?

Today I mostly just watched a few football games, something I enjoy doing, so I’m going to keep doing it. Had lunch with my friend Megan and her mom, and her mom said Megan and I should have kids together. OK, if the population of the nuthouse is decreasing, that would be a good idea; otherwise I think it would be better if we found sane people to have kids with to even the kids chances out a little.

Was that a gratuitous use of a semicolon?

I guess my postings have been a bit maudlin lately. Someone read my blog and cried? The approved (or at least likely) responses are:

• Sure are a lot of nonsense blogs on the intarweb. I thought they were all supposed to talk about candy and knitting.
• Mildred! What in Sam Hill is this nonsense? I clicked on the thing and this is supposed to be the minutes from the Cedar Rapids Snapdragon Appreciation Society meeting!
• man, i no u. i saw u <doing something> at <some place> + im gonna kick ur <there’s only one body part that you hear about getting kicked, and it isn’t the shins in this case>.
• WHERE ARE THE PICTURES? I’M LOOKING FOR PICTURES OF <some odd sexual fetish like getting excited looking at chewed on pencils with half-used erasers on the end, preferably Dixon-Ticonderoga, and no, I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT MYSELF HERE.>

So to those of you praying for me, I thank you (it can’t hurt) but I must warn you that I’m a godless heathen (i.e., not part of whatever organized religion you’re participating in.) And if you think my life is bad, you should probably donate your money or time to a local charity. (Or just sign up to get me a new iPod. 🙂 ) This is the world we live in and I’m sure it can be better.

Perhaps it’s just the ornithologists, but they seem very loath to write things down and back up their memories with their notes. They like pulling observations out of thin air and their populations counts are really unreproducible as well. I mentioned earlier that there are thousands of Vaux Swifts funnelling into the school chimney in front of my parents’ house, and those swifts seem to be randomly counted by the birders and ornithologists.

I helped a friend of mine, a graduate student in ornithology, count the birds in 2002 and the numbers were a lot more believable because he called out every 100 birds and I made tally marks on a piece of paper. He couldn’t fudge the count and we had a repeatable process. The birders said 15,000 birds; he estimated 10,000; we counted 2,000. Anyway, I guess just trusting them won’t hurt me in the long run.

Today was the first game of the NFL season and I saw most of the game. It was exciting and I almost got to see New England lose so it was well worth the price of admission. I really don’t like Tom Brady. I don’t know why. I just don’t. At least that makes for more interesting viewing. There’s hardly any point to watching a game when you don’t care about the teams.

I watched the last half hour of Hawaii today and it was horrible. Actually, there was something funny when “Milo” from 24 bounced a pool ball off a big Hawaiian guy’s forehead. Hawaiian guys are always swaggering about, trying to intimidate a Buddhahead, so that was a joy to watch.

OK, so who forgot to tell me that Bands Reunited started up again? I missed one of my all-time favorite bands, “Haircut 100,” but I’m watching “ABC,” right now and tomorrow there’s “The English Beat.” Wow. “The English Beat” has to be on the list of my favorite bands over time. The list also includes, “General Public,” “The Police,” “New Order,” and “The Pet Shop Boys,” but “ABC,” and “Haircut 100,” are both close.

So, of my newest (rich) neighbors, the wife happens to be my age. And I found out she went to my neighborhood high school. I didn’t go there, my sister did and I knew a lot of people there. I felt quite inadequate compared to them because they were the rich kids and I was the son of their gardener. Usually it doesn’t bother me and I think it’s funny. But when I looked up my neighbor’s picture in the Lincoln High School yearbook the paucity of my successes became quite evident to me. Seeing her 80’s preppie haircut was like a punch in my face.

Now there she is, with her PR job and her husband with his huge PR income, a newly remodeled house (that they’re just planning on selling after the remodelling is done), two kids, and two black BMW’s. Here I am living at home with my parents, making the same amount as the 20-year-old kids I work with. Less, if you count up the hours I work and divide.

So, my slight feeling of malaise is now tinged with sadness and awareness of failure. I think I’ll deal with it the way I did in high school, with my new box set of Duran Duran’s 12″ singles.

What the hell is up with that Hawaii show? I know I’ve complained about it before, but where the hell are all the Asians? And what the hell was up with that fake Japanese crapola? That “Japanese” ma and pa were incredibly off. Buddhaheads don’t have blue eyes. The way you get that stocky and very slightly Asian looking is when some white dude with yellow fever has kids with an Asian woman and that kid marries another white person because WHITEY RUNS THE COUNTRY and ain’t no Asian guys getting any action. And don’t go waving Norm Mineta in my face.

OK, maybe in California, where there are more than a few Asians, and maybe in in Hawaii, where I heard that there are a couple of Ornamentals UNLIKE THE DAMN HAWAII TV SHOW, and possibly with girls that are FOB¹.

My sister is on my list because she made me watch the end of the Hawaii show.

FYI I made it to the Slabs and had pizza last night and left just after midnight. They were just getting started. I went to Safeway to get some milk and the crew, while friendly and helpful, looked like something from an Okie movie. Except for the checker. She was cute.

Oh, and the silly Vaux swifts that go in the chimney at Chapman school DID NOT GO IN THE CHIMNEY TONIGHT. Stupid unpredictable nature.

¹Fresh Off the Boat.

Ah, good thing I just wrote that. I almost forgot to water the plants. I usually don’t do much at a place I’m house-sitting, making it home every day, so there’s not much to clean up. Brought my laptop, an alarm clock, and my toothbrush, but that’s about it.

I’m still tired from being out late Tuesday night, and didn’t get to bed that early last night, either. So I think tonight I’ll have a nice quiet night and try to turn in early.

I should have more interesting things to say, but when the most exciting thing in life is working late and seeing a cute girl on the bus, there really isn’t all that much to say.

Went to a car race yesterday, our yearly trek to Cottage Grove, Oregon to see the World of Outlaws sprint car race. The track was a little slick and all the races had several yellow flags after cars spun out in the turns. Because of all the racing mishaps, we didn’t get back until about 2:30AM.

I saw my first “Bush/Cheney” sign down in Cottage Grove. I only saw one mullet, a Billy Ray Cyrus kind of thing, and I was the only non-white guy I saw until I was leaving. There was a Hispanic guy working at the gate.

Anyway, I’m not able to say anything non-obvious until I get some more sleep. The racing was exciting, and always worth the trip.