This weekend is one of those that have many things happening at once. Father’s Day, Dixie Mountain Grange Strawberry Festival, ham radio convention at Seaside, and an end-of-term party at a friend’s house. When it rains, it pours, but most of the events are really quite geeky.

I drove my new car out to Seaside and had no problems. Well, I suppose I got a rock chip in my window when I was almost all the way home, but that’s not unexpected. The car accelerated going uphill, accelerated well while passing, drove to lunch in the city of Seaside with five passengers, and generally enjoyed the drive. I’m disappointed that the gas gauge didn’t stay up at “F” but I’ve put almost 300 miles on the car so that’s probably expected.

I suppose I need to get some rubber floor mats for my car. Other than that it seems to work fine. It needed a bit more gas up the steep part of the hill on the way to work, but it accelerated OK onto the freeway and everything else seems to work OK. I can’t see the front or the back of the car very well, so parallel parking will be tricky. The front of the car slopes down so fast that I’m going to just have to psychically feel where it is.

Also, I wonder how much it will cost to fill the tank. I think I’m getting better gas mileage (40ish MPG instead of 25ish MPG), and the car has a larger tank (13ish gallons rather than 10ish) so I should be able to go a lot longer without having to visit the gas station. We’ll see.

Oh, and the guys at work convinced me not to go to the gym today. I guess I was holding my back and walking all hunched over to one side yesterday. That’s not good.

I was thinking it was muscle pain, but my doctor called and said something about kidney function and blood tests and things I didn’t really want to hear. So maybe it’s something bad, maybe not. All I know is that going to the gym made it a little worse. It was worth it to see all the women at the gym, however. You know how that is.

I dropped off my old car today and I guess I’m a little sorry to see it go. I enjoyed it while I had it but I only put 22,000 miles on it in the six years that I owned it. Over two of those years I went to school downtown (within walking distance really) and probably two of those years I worked close enough to walk to work. And then there were the times I was unemployed and not driving anywhere.

So far, there isn’t that much I don’t like about my new car besides the new car smell. It’s a little noisy, but I can actually hear the radio! I was amazed at the sound quality of my iPod playing through the iPod link and unfortunately I can actually hear the poor reception on my local NPR station again. I don’t think I’m going to miss all the shifting, and it’s peppy enough to merge onto the freeway. The color isn’t so bad either. I’ll see how it does on the commute tomorrow, because that includes a steep hill and a sometimes nasty freeway merge.

I called the Honda dealer yesterday and today I got a call back from the salesman who reluctantly sold me my car. First he said, “Well, your car will come in anywhere from two days to two weeks. Well, wait a minute, the truck’s back there. Let me check to see if your car is here. I’ll call you back.”

So he calls me back and says, “OK, it’s here. You can pick it up tomorrow.”

I tell him that I wanted a couple of accessories, the iPod link and the steering wheel cover. He says, “I don’t have that written down. Wait, I remember now. I’ll have to find the parts guy. Let me call you back.”

He called back and I went by to give him photocopies of my license and registration. I saw my car and already I don’t like the color. I’m a guy, so I think it’s tan. The dealer says it’s something gray. My friends at the gym told me it’s called champagne. I’ll get used to it. In any case, tomorrow is the day that I trade in my sports car for my hybrid. It took some digging, but I did finally find the title to the car (and some shares of HP stock) buried in a pile of papers that I should have recycled a long time ago. Good thing I didn’t.

Oh, and my back hurt every time I sat for too long, but I still went to the gym. I should be asleep already, but I had to write a check for a friend’s walkathon. The things I get talked into because I can’t mind my own business at the gym.

My back still hurts, my palm still hurts, and I feel like a fat pig from sitting around for so long. I even got an email from fitness-singles.com where the subject was, “Someone wants to meet you” and the email itself said, “404 File not found.” Turns out nobody in particular wanted to meet me.

Yesterday, besides the acupuncture session, the graduation party for my next-door neighbor’s kid, and the dinner with an old co-worker, I also spent time in the basement with a soldering iron and a kit. But what was I making in the dungeon (or as my mom calls it, jigoku)? A USB-to-Morse-code adapter! Talk about geek.

So I have to admit that my back hurts worse now that I’ve been to the acupuncturist. This is not unexpected, but I also spent most of the day pruning the rhododendrons or as my gardener dad likes to call it, “chop-chop.” He did come out and tell me, “I still own this house, you know! I’m embarrassed to live in a house with such awful looking gardening!” Yeah, well, he’s been saying for fifteen years that he’ll get around to trimming the bushes and now that he’s 90 we’re just ignoring him and doing the maintenance ourselves.

Anyway, I ran the wood chipper again with less detrimental effect to my body (i.e. fewer major injuries) but my back hurt like hell. And the hay fever certainly didn’t help any. I should take some pictures of my butchery to document my work and to see if others think it’s as bad as my dad thinks. But I always forget to take the before pictures and I only think about doing things after it’s too dark anyway.

Today I had to take a trip to the acupuncturist because of a backache that started while I was in Boston. I think it was all the sitting that got it started, but it wasn’t going away. Anyway, the acupuncturist told me why he didn’t wear gloves. It’s mostly for control, but also because there’s a thin part that gets stuck into you and a thicker shaft and the thin part is never touched. If it gets rid of my backache, I’m all for it.

I also checked to see when my car was would be ready and it looks like it could be any time now. We’ll see how much of a pain in the rear that ends up being.

I’ve mentioned how little luck I have on match.com or anywhere else. My friend Megan who I am no longer listening to told me that she was mad at me because of my lame profile and how I should get on because she was dating every eligible man in the Bay area because of match.com. Well, I had three “new” emails waiting on match.com and so I paid the $30 to see what they were. (You can create a profile for free, but to read the email sent to you, you have to pay. It used to be you got to read them for free, but couldn’t send any replies without joining.)

The emails were:

1. A message from a woman who said she was from NC but in the email she says she’s from Rus_sia. The underscore is probably to get out of spam filters. Her profile appears to be deleted.
2. A message from a woman who said she was 24 and in MD, but who had her profile deleted. Probably for being a Nigerian dude looking for money.
3. A message from Megan.

So I told match.com to cancel my account and I just paid $30 to get an abusive email from Megan when I can get abuse from her for free. It costs LESS to call Paris from a hotel in Boston, by the way. I deleted my account, submitted the information to my state attorney general, and called AMEX who said I’m screwed and out $30. Maybe once I stop being mad, I’ll take Megan out of my blocked email list, but I wonder how much that’ll end up costing me.

Some stupid plant is busy having sex and it’s making my life miserable. I felt so bad this morning that I had to take a Loratadine tablet and I was falling asleep all day at work. So here I am with a sore back and a head full of cotton wondering what I’m really supposed to be doing. And why isn’t the stuff making me sleepy now that it’s 10PM?

Yesterday, at the gym, I found out that getting hit in the palm while using a wood chipper doesn’t do much for your bench press.

Anyway, I fixed the pictures from my Boston trip (made a panorama even) so scroll down if you want to see them. It’s time for me to examine the inside of my eyelids.

This morning I had a meeting notice where I was to meet with my old manager, and his boss. Seemed a bit scary, but it ended up being just a reorganization thing. Same project, different boss. Still have a job, which is good since I need to pay for those dinners in Boston.

My hay fever has been acting up and I’m really tired, so no fixed pictures yet again. All I can do is imagine more gardening taking place this weekend. What fun!

Things are back to normal. I’m sleepy but I had to balance some accounts and I think I submitted an expense report that is short. Well, I know it was short because I put “$25” for my dinners and I spent a lot more than that. I think my manager thought I was trying the larcenous trick of buying Mickey D’s and saying it cost $25 when it usually cost $65 and I didn’t want to try to expense that. On the weird end, I weighed myself and I lost 5 pounds. Probably just dehydration from the plane trip.

Anyway, bed time for me.

I meet some interesting people on the plane. Seems like there were quite a few people from Oregon visiting Boston over the weekend. I even was told that I need to go BACK to Wonderland and go to Kelly’s Roast Beef for the Lobster Roll. I don’t think I’m letting another 20 years go by without a lobster roll. I even scored a free ticket on the way back home by getting bumped off my original flight. The next flight was only an hour-and-a-half later.

I was going to edit the photos on the last post and even make a panorama, but I’m so tired that I barely remember my name. I had a hard time sleeping in the hotel. In fact, this morning the wake up call came when I was brushing my teeth.

Oh, and if anyone was waiting for the picture of my flipping off MIT: