Did I have plans?

I thought I was going to be lazy and sleep in until 8:30. I don’t seem to get to bed early enough during the week and I make up for it on the weekends. When I got up it was almost 10. That meant I wasn’t early enough to see all the trash on the hill, but I heard it was pretty bad.

I went and had my fourth golf lesson today. Fortunately it wasn’t so painful. What was painful was my third Structural Integration session: the lateral line. Apparently working on my lats shortened them up and loosening the fascia was quite painful. As were the muscles around my knee, where I had all my trouble when I used to run a lot. This is all supposed to be more gentle than Rolfing, so I can’t imagine what that’s like. All I could think during the thing was, “What did I ever do to you?”

Ah well. Somebody backed into my car and bent my front license plate but that’s bound to happen anyway. Maybe the weather will be cold enough that the birds will go away. That’ll be one less annoyance anyway.

Lots and lots of people.

I have an example how how I’m not the only one who is having trouble with all of the people coming to see the birds going into the chimney. First, let me show a picture of the hill before it got really crowded:

A few people on the hill.

We’re figuring there were about 2000-2500 people here tonight. If you look very carefully, you’ll see kids running up and down the hill with cardboard. They slide down the grass on the cardboard. While most of the cardboard is taken home by the parents for recycling, a lot ends up being a present for the neighborhood.

This morning I walked around the hill to see how much crap was left by the huge crowd that came yesterday. It was the night that the grade school encourages their kids to come out. Turns out the thing I saw the most of was little straws and little straw wrappers. I don’t have kids, so I don’t know, but are juice boxes still hugely popular?

My next-door-neighbor had some trouble, too. Most bicyclists just lean their bikes up against trees or the fire hydrant. Dangerous, but I haven’t heard of anyone having trouble yet. Tonight a couple of clowns decided they should walk onto my neighbor’s yard and lock their bikes to their fence.

Bad bike parking.

The worst part is that some neighbor kids took offense (not kids of the next-door-neighbor, but other kids) and put mulch on the seat of the bikes. This caused much yelling by the bicyclists. Heck, my suggestion was for me to go get my Harbor Freight imitation Sawzall and cut the lock. We could set the bikes out in the street, and the clowns would be out $50 for their lock. Actually, maybe I should get a pneumatic grinder with a cutting wheel just for such emergencies. Probably not worth it.

I remember what else was lucky.

Well, it wasn’t talking to the women at the gym. I noticed I was almost out of contacts and checked my prescription. My ophthalmologist said he wanted to see me every year because of medical concerns but I hadn’t heard from them for over a year. Also, I think the mail-order contact place wants prescriptions that are less than a year old.

So I scheduled an appointment with the ophthalmologist and as soon as I was done I ordered some contacts online. They came the day I was wearing my very last pair from my previous order. Pretty lucky for me.

Small luck.

There was a gas leak downtown today and the light rail was delayed on my way home. They even stopped the train at the edge of downtown Portland, but the stop they went to was where I usually get off the train.

I’ve been reading a translation of Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko on the way to work. Reading time is one of the best things about taking mass transit and not driving. It’s a sequel to Night Watch, which was also made into a interesting and fairly weird Russian movie of the same name with witches, magicians, vampires, and the like. Unfortunately, I have to drive sometimes, even though it’s cheaper to ride the train. It’s hard to get to the golf course without driving, for example.

Oh, and I went to Burgerville today and tried their new hot dog basket. Hot dogs with the Burgerville “spread” were odd because it sort of tasted like hot dogs with mayonnaise on them. Not bad, but not great. I should have stuck with the Ethiopian restaurant.

Goff or no goff.

I still suck at golf, but I’m doing better I think. I drove my car to work thinking that four of us were going to play golf but two bailed. We were stuck with two other guys who turned out to be really pleasant to golf with.

Driving also meant I could unload some of my dad’s stuff. I saw a guy smoking a pipe on my way into work and I asked him if he could use some old pipes and pipe stands. Turns out he does some refinishing of old pipes so he was happy to take them. I was thinking of keeping some of my dad’s smoking paraphernalia — like taking his old pipe box and making some other sort of fountain pen case or something out of it — but I realized it all smelled awful and we really didn’t like it when he smoked. So off it went. The guy turned out to be a little odd, but I hope he’ll get to use the stuff. Better than just throwing it away.

Oh, I do have some smoking paraphernalia that I did keep: his lighters. They don’t smell as bad and I can be a good Boy Scout pyromaniac again (if only they had lighter fluid in them.)

Yet another 9/11.

It’s 9/11/2007. That means six years since the event. On a selfish note, it also means six years since I last had a girlfriend. Well, I did go on one date last year and two this year so I may be making progress. Not really, but that’s what I tell myself.

I’m not a big fan of crowds but I don’t hate them as much as my friends who live out in the sticks. I’m only slightly annoyed, for example, by all the yoots who are out on the streets because it’s 90+°F out today, eating at the sidewalk cafes and just generally getting in my way during the walking part of my commute. But I do mind when people invade my street. That’s why the annual watching of the swifts (going into the chimney on the left of the school) is such an annoyance at times.

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Last year, for example, I saw an old neighbor who I hadn’t seen since grade school! But you’ll forgive me for being annoyed. Tomorrow, for example, I’m going to play golf and that means I can’t come home until after 8:15 or so because there won’t be any parking until then. Fortunately it’s only for a few weeks every year.

My timing is off.

I woke up several times last night and I overslept my alarm. My alarm is a bit too complicated for my own good. 5:50AM I start listening to NPR. 6:00AM the buzzing starts. I stop that and put it back on the NPR. When they get to local news I finally get up. Like I said, too complicated.

The way to work was filled with my worst nightmare: drivers who don’t stop at stop signs. Oddly enough, I made it to the light rail early and I made it to work early.

The Audubon bird person who was here today is a guy I see every year and we were talking about his girlfriends for some reason. He doesn’t look that old but was telling me he had a girlfriend who was 21 years younger than him. I was worried until he told me he was in his 50’s. At least I don’t have to call the police.

Another reason to quit playing golf.

I had another golf lesson today and there’s too much to remember. Stand like this, hold your head like that. It’s all fun still, fortunately. On the way out, a guy parked his golf cart behind my car, across the way so it was hard for me to get out. I was going back and forth, like you’d do while parallel parking, when the guy started yelling at me. I can’t remember exactly what he said first, but he did say, “something something fucking ass something I told you to stop.” I got out of my car and told him I hadn’t heard him. He yelled some more. I asked if I’d actually hit the cart. He said no and yelled some more. So I told him to quit acting like a fuckhead and drove off. The only thing I can think of is that his wife outplayed him today. I’m not sure why else you’d park so a guy can’t leave the parking lot and then start yelling at him.

More “Structural Integration” for me today and boy did it hurt like hell. This isn’t supposed to be as bad as old-school Rolfing, and I can’t imagine what that would be like.

Stupid birds are back.

Every year the Vaux’s Swifts come back and roost in the chimney of the school across the street. The birds are only a little annoying. You can’t wash your car for a month, for example. The real annoyance is the people who come to watch the birds. There usually aren’t huge crowds until the middle of the month but there sure are a lot of people this year. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was able to just either stay away from 6-8PM or hide during that time, but I get dragged outside every weekend by a friend.

Not much else has been going on lately. I got a Network Accessed Storage device from a friend and filled it full of 500GB hard drives. That means I spent $500 on computer crap that doesn’t work quite right. The joys of technology.

Odd day for the gym.

Dave the Trainer was away at Burning Ham for a week and now that he’s back, he needs to make some money. He already has my money, but he won’t get any more until he works the time I paid for. Well, “works” means makes me do stuff, but you know how the personal trainer thing is.

Somehow I seem to have scheduled several doctors appointments for this week so I’m ditching work on a short week. This still isn’t making me feel guilty.

Is that really what I want to do?

I meet people from time to time who love their jobs. I find them to be a curiosity, mostly. But after I had a meeting with my boss’s boss today (who seems to be kind of wondering what to make of us), a co-worker asked, “Is Windows programming what you really want to do?”

She has pointed out that she has the out of having kids and taking care of them instead of playing nice with Megacorp and taking whatever they dish out. I don’t have that option. And, honestly, Windows programming is NOT what I want to do, but it beats not having a job.

I think I have to find some different reading for the commute to work. I subscribe to a couple of magazines and I figured I could work on the unread stack while riding on the light rail. But I only really have ham radio magazines that I go through quickly and Men’s Health. Men’s Health does have a lot of articles on, well, men’s health, but it also has a lot of articles on boobies and such. I find it rude to be reading such things on the light rail next to other people. Perhaps I am uptight. Anyway, I suppose if I read a novel on mass transit it could very likely be text about boobies and such. At least I will look more studious from far away.

Our trip to the airport.

My aunt and her sister-in-law went back to Japan today. They’re incredibly goofy and easy house guests but now I get my “office” back. My mom must have felt a little relief because she wanted a Jack-in-the-Box breakfast croissant for dinner. Easy, inexpensive, and no clean up.I’m not sure I did anything today. I thought about doing some more yard work or some plumbing, but none of that happened. My excuse is that I’m waiting for my back to get better. Plus, I want to see how my structural integration is going to take. So far, my back feels good, but why push things?