I forgot to post anything last night because after a day full of meetings and a trip to the gym to try to exorcise the meetings from my system, I started watching some recorded TV shows and underestimated the time it would take. Genius forgot that Monk and Psych were hour-long shows.

I’ve been hating life at megacorp lately. My manager told me to do one thing, the project lead told me another. My co-worker suggested that I listen to what the manager was saying, and what the manager was saying was misleading. It was frustrating the heck out of me. Fortunately, I’m still a pain in the ass (my manager told me I was the biggest problem and better watch it) but at least I’m not as inclined to give them the finger and walk out the door. I’m supposed to, “take initiative,” and I think that means, “look like I’m leading,” while I’m doing whatever the project needs.

Now that I have that off my chest I can say I work because I have this THING that I look forward to and is my reason for living. That would be nice and poetic. Unfortunately, all I can say is that I work because I need HEALTH INSURANCE and it’s nice that I also get a PAYCHECK. I probably need a new hobby.

I now have the picture of Dave the trainer on my hard disk, but the stupid blogging software appears to be slightly broken and won’t automatically generate a thumbnail. I’m too lazy to fix it myself right now.

It rained on my car today, and the waxing made the water bead up nicely, proving to those who looked closely enough that I am a person who cares enough to wax his car. (Phooey.) Other than that, I have a day full of meetings tomorrow, so I better get some sleep. Can’t start snoring while a Vice-President of Megacorp is telling you about the “bottom line.”

Dave the trainer is a buff but shorter Jewish guy. Well, I don’t know how Jewish, since his dad wears a yarmluke but Dave like pork chops. My sister imagined he was a tall blonde guy. Funny thing is, most of the male trainers at my gym have shaved heads. A co-worker who is a friend of Dave’s emailed me the picture with the subject line, “Dorks.” Or was it, “Geeks?” In any case it’s on my work laptop and not anywhere I can get to without booting up Windows, and I don’t want to do that this late at night.

I was so tired after work that I had to take an hour-long nap. I’m had a series of nightmarish dreams, but after I got through the post-nap fog all memory of the dreams vanished. Weird.

I knew it was time to stop talking to the guy when I recognized that he was trying to push my buttons. But he’s quite persistent, and he’s also the project lead. At one point today he asked me why I even worked on his project. I asked him if he wanted me to show him the web link to “My Paystub.” Sheesh. It’s not that I hate my job, it’s just that this guy is a real pain in my neck sometimes.

Dave the trainer scheduled us for today, since tomorrow he’s meeting his girlfriend’s dad for the first time! That’ll be a workout for him!

Nothing good comes from washing a car. I can see all the dings and dents in crystal clarity. I find out all sorts of dents. And if I go onto waxing, it can take forever. I spent most of the afternoon washing and waxing my new car. I figure one good wax and then I’m going to let someone else do it from now on. Or I’ll use something easier than that rock-hard crap I used today. I found some dings and dents (on a car with 800 miles) and how thin they made the roof! Holy crud.

Well, tomorrow I’m going to spend another day at work with little sleep. I had to drive my friend to an all-night pharmacy because his dog was attacked by a pit bull. He got some bites to show for that and couldn’t bend his knee to drive in and pick up some antibiotics. I got back at a decent time, but of course I had to finish watching the show I was mostly finished with, and get a rebate ready to send in, etc. If I don’t shut up now, I’ll get even less than the six hours I’m planning on now. I hope my friend can make it to the 24H vet to pick up his dog. I can’t believe that the vet is taking longer than his trip to the ER.

Something that no one wants to know, but everyone is going to hear about. I’m back on the torturous weight-lifting schedule and the squats yesterday make my butt hurt. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything this heavy. I’ve dropped in the true measure of my manliness, the bench press, from being able to do several reps at 175lbs to less than 135lbs. Working back to the higher weight won’t be easy. I feel old and creaky already.

And other than that, everything is about the same. I think I’m only getting about 39MPG, but I’m still enjoying my car and its weird noises. Now the engine sounds a little off, probably because it’s tiny and not the race engine I had in my last car. I suppose I just need to turn my radio up.

I decided to try to move all my iTunes onto an external hard disk. Big mistake. Lots of duplicate files everywhere and a big mess overall. Plus, somehow my “K” key quit working on my new MacBook Pro. Of course I had to pry the keycap off to see what it was, and there was some lump of something down there messing things up. Kinda looked like a booger, made of plastic.

Dave the trainer appears to have his entire schedule scrambled this week. He blew me off on Monday and told me to come in today (Wednesday). Well, I guess some of his usual Wednesday clients didn’t show, so I went to the gym early. No skin off my nose.

Megacorp was a joy today. I was told my my project leader not to talk to certain outside people. I warned my manager that I’d get this sort of nonsense when my manager told me to “take initiative” and “own my project.” I think I actually told the project leader, “Do you want me to sit on my ass doing nothing until I get canned?” I’m guessing what he wanted to say in reply was, “I don’t care as long as I don’t get canned.”

Oh, well. At least I have the gym and almost 40G of songs to sort through. I have way too many bad CDs on my iPod. I really ought to get rid of things like, “Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam,” but my sister sent it to me when I was in Japan and insisted that it was a good CD. And she calls ME crazy.

I don’t know why they don’t have the day AFTER 4th of July off. Living next to a schoolyard, you don’t get much sleep on the 4th of July. Kids are still setting off loud fireworks at quarter to midnight.

I was planning on spending the day doing the usual “holiday” things, reading books, fooling with my computer, thinking about everything but work. Unfortunately a “friend” of mine decided I needed to hang out with him and his daughter and his French exchange student and go to a painful picnic where nobody knew anyone else. They were SF geeks at the picnic, and I spent some time telling one of the guys to move the flock back to Chicago if he was that dead set on having ketchup anywhere near his hot dog. The French exchange student spent a half hour staring at a wall. I decided my friend is an ass. I did, however, have fun with a 3-year-old putting Post-it notes all over a car window, but that only was fun for a few minutes.

I just spent most of Sunday trying to learn how to program in Mackinese. I guess that was part of Saturday, too. I just finished reading another “Spenser” mystery, though there’s usually not much mystery and it’s just about how he blew up some more people. Nevertheless, quite distracting. I did attend a friend’s graduation party, since he finally finished gradual school and had a nice pulled pork sandwich at the Humdinger, but mostly it’s been quite calm.

I did, however, find out that what one of my female friends would describe as a “positive amorous adventure” sounds a lot more to me like something that should get a guy put in jail and listed on a sexual predator web site. It takes all kinds, I suppose.

I, for example, spent a pile of dough at Burgerville because it’s now raspberry milkshakes and Walla Walla onion ring season. The only way they could make it better is if it were huckleberry milkshake season.