So it’s three days until I leave for Japan and there’s a big question as to what the contractors are going to do to the house while we’re gone. Nothing bad, I’m sure, but everything always looks so much smaller after the walls start going up. The shower stall, for example, looks smaller now that the framing is going in. The contractor said, “You aren’t going to have any three-ways in here, that’s for sure.” That’s never happened before and I doubt it’ll ever happen to me. I like disappointing women one at a time, thank you very much.

It’s also a good thing that I made sure how much it would cost me to use my iPhone in “roaming mode.” I figure a month of minimal data use (email, some surfing, etc) would cost me about $9750. I’m glad I did the calculations before I decided to try it.

THMFIC at the gym always tells me my blog is getting boring. Unfortunately, even the embellished version of my life isn’t all that interesting. (The other thing he always tells me is to buy longer shorts. Mine are the “mid-thigh” ones, not the long basketball ruffian version that go all the way to the knee.) I mean, really, go to work, go to the gym, take things to Goodwill, what else is there? I could talk about the non-date that I had the other week, but I didn’t think it would amount to much even before it happened. Others were talking it up but when it kind of fizzled I wasn’t surprised. At least I wasn’t directly insulted at any time, just annoyed.

The difference between annoyance and insults are quite clear. Bringing along a friend to dinner at the last minute and then having that friend not able to eat anything because of dietary restrictions and personal preferences is annoying. That can be overcome by drinking several beers and gin and tonics. Insulting is when you ask someone out and they say, “Hah. With YOU?”

So, really, I haven’t heard that one for a couple of years, but I really haven’t asked anyone out, either. Oh, wait, I did have someone give me her phone number and then when I called she said, “Who is this? Todd? Todd who?” Like THMFIC at the gym says, over 40 means you’re invisible. Actually, MIT Engineer means you’re invisible, too, though my actual super-power is the ability to make a woman’s eyes glaze over in less than a second. Now if only that was a useful skill.

I’m sure we’ve donated a lot of fairly valuable stuff to Goodwill and the library, but I’m convinced that if I really want any of that stuff again, I can just buy it. I’ll probably have to pay a premium, but at least I won’t have to store it in my house. In the mean time, I hope it’s helping SOMEBODY and not going to the landfill.

Unfortunately, it turns out my sister wanted some of the stuff we just took to Goodwill. We had some Japanese prints and maybe some wood block prints that we ditched. Turns out she wanted one of them. We’re always telling her to come and take some of the stuff before it’s gone and she hardly ever comes over. So too bad for her. One of the things she didn’t want me to ditch is her old LPs. It’s just lucky for her that I haven’t gotten to the room that they’re in. Otherwise, they’re out the door.

So, if you’re in the market for Japanese pottery or art, try the Goodwill on 22nd and West Burnside in Portland. Books on Buddhism are at Title Wave books on NE MLK Jr and Knott. The stressed guy trying to jettison stuff while also wondering how he’s going to afford all his house renovations is in NW Portland.

Today I tackled another bookcase and one of the boxes of books I took to the used book store was full of coffee table books. This is always a bad idea because coffee table books are heavier than most and they’re also less likely to be taken by the used book store. I suppose if the coffee table books didn’t all say “National Geographic Society” or something else semi-pedestrian, they might be worth something, but really I was just adding to whatever workout I had at the gym by carrying these things around.

On the positive side, one of my dad’s lesser purchases (a bookcase that broke as soon as he started loading books onto it) is almost empty and just about ready to be taken to the dump. The cleaning of the house slowly progresses!

So getting up early at 5:30AM to catch a flight and then arriving back home due to travel complications at 1:15AM is probably a good reason to be tired. (You should also notice that I wrote yesterday’s post from my iPhone in line at the ticket counter. It’s very choppy as most iPhone postings are.) I went to the gym today after a nap and I knew I was tired during the warm-up. I slogged on, however, and didn’t end up DFL though I tried.

And now I would like to post a picture of the hideous yellow rental car I had yesterday, but I’m too tired to go through all the gyrations I usually do to scale the picture and copy it and paste it and etc. Alamo was really kind of strange and said, “You want a compact? Go to that row and just pick one out.” Since I’m always forgetting what the hell my rental car looks like, I just got one that was bright yellow so I could find it in a parking lot. It worked out pretty well, actually, though it was kind of smelly and gutless like a good rental car should be. You all will just have to wait for the picture.

I’m still in the midst of my business trip. I got to the customers site OK even though they didn’t have any customer parking or a clear way to get to the main entrance. I had to park across the street at the Carl’s Jr and wander around the building until I found a way in. The receptionist was loath to call the person I was visiting as well. It took some time but we did find a workaround for their problem and I was out of their office probably six hours before my flight. I thought it was safe to have dinner with my friend Megan. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side.

Megan and I had a nice dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant but we didn’t notice the time until too late. Traffic didn’t cooperate either and, even better, the plane left 13 minutes early. This is in sharp contrast to my morning flight which was delayed for 50 minutes.

So now I’m in a long line hoping to get on a later flight with another airline. It’s not my idea of fun, really.

Sometimes technology is a pain in my ass. I have a program I like to post my blogs with, MarsEdit, and it’s no longer agreeing with my blogging program, WordPress. So if you see weird characters in my postings, it’s because I had to go and fix things and feed aggregators sometimes grab the broken copy of the posting. Yeah, broken geekery.

So tomorrow I have another business trip to the Bay Area. The airlines have cut down on flights from here to there, so I have to get up extra-early. And since I don’t know when I’ll be done, I’ll be getting back into town after 10PM. I’d much rather sit around in the Bay Area than be late to a customer meeting. I know it’s kind of a waste of my time, but no customers means no job and no job means the contractors are coming after me with their hammers. (And there I go, talking about hammers again.)

If I’m lucky, I’ll have everything done early and I’ll be able to find some spectacular hamburger place in San Francisco. Or maybe the soul food restaurant on Clement. I mean, really, what’s a better excuse for eating poorly than travel?

Yep, I had to fix this post. Stupid computers.

We’ve had a lot of plumbing work done, so we thought it was odd but possibly normal that taking a shower caused the toilet to bubble. Actually to me it sounded like there was something wrong with the venting of the drains, something I never had thought of before. Maybe this had something to do with the slow-draining bathroom sink that I’d been fighting with for a couple of years. Well, yesterday the toilet almost overflowed after I took a shower and flushed the toilet. Today it actually did overflow. Not the kind of surprise you need in the morning. The contractor and the plumber were over, trying to figure out what was going on. They even had a drain specialist come out with his high tech cameras and the snaked all the vents. Turns out the sewer line was partially occluded and that may even have been the problem with the sink.

So you can guess what the drain was plugged with. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to deal with that. Maybe eat LESS fiber so my poo is small and marble-like and just rolls down the sewer line? I’d rather not think about it. In fact, I have three different snakes of my own and I know why I’d pay a guy hundreds of dollars to do it for me. A couple of weekends ago I had to snake out the drain from the gutters and that was bad enough. Snaking out the toilet drain is something I have to convince myself to do over a period of days, and then afterward there are times I have to wash my hands until they’re raw because they still smell funny.

Really, I like having a job and I like paying other people to do the things that I’m too lazy to do. That’s what keeps the economy going. I learned that in high school Social Studies and there’s even a stupid song that’s stuck in my head now that I said that. “The people who live on Market Stre-e-e-eet.” Ugh. Now I have to listen to something else to get that out of my head. ELO? Fleetwood Mac? Curse you VH1 and the ideas you put in my head!

A regular heat pump heat exchanger is probably the size of a half-sized file cabinet. Our furnace is finally finished and I went outside to see what our new heat exchanger looks like. Holy hell, it’s like the size of a refrigerator. OK, not as tall, so it’s like a refrigerator without the freezer. I stood in front of it and was pleasantly surprised to feel cold air blowing out of it, like it’s supposed to do. It moves the cold air outside and the hot air inside, at least now that it’s winter time.

I’ve been hungrier than usual lately, but I’ve still tried not to be the pig that I used to be. I’m failing right now, but earlier today I walked by a box of doughnuts repeatedly. I’d look in at the chocolate glazed doughnut and keep going back to my cube. Back and forth. I made five or six trips before work intruded on my little fantasy and I had to quit my shenanigans. The doughnuts were from Safeway or Albertson’s so I think THMFIC at the gym is right: I need better fantasies.

Really, the only thing worse than reading repetitive posts about taking books to the used book store is actually being the guy who is taking the used books to the used book store. Today, for example, I was so tired of it that I only took 2 boxes. I think I scored a bunch of cash out of the deal, more from 2 boxes than from the 9 boxes I took in last weekend. In any case, the biggest bookcase in my dad’s old room is just about empty. Hooray.

Really, other than that, I was just monkeying around with getting my computers all back online. The basement is probably a bit too dusty for a proper “server room” but who says I have proper servers? For some reason we’ve had power glitches every few weeks and I needed to get the “servers” back onto a UPS so I didn’t have to go through a 10-minute procedure of bringing them all online every time the lights blinked. It was easiest for me to put them back where they were before.

Yeah, that’s my interesting Sunday for you. I did get to watch some more football, and I do enjoy that. But I’m really looking forward to a weekend where I don’t have to put on a dust mask.

The gym is getting awfully popular and they’ve had to limit the number of people in the classes. You have to sign up beforehand and you also need to give 12 hours notice for a cancellation. Today I gave an hour. We were having odd problems with the plumbing where running the bathroom sink or the shower would cause the toilet to bubble and Jason the contractor said he’d be right over. An hour-and-a-half is very quick in contractor time, but it made me miss my workout. It’s just as well, since my back hurt and I had a lot of books to take to the used book dealer.

I can never predict what kind of books are valuable. I took nine boxes of books to Powell’s last Saturday and they bought about a box and a half and I got $188. Today I took three more boxes, sold about one box, and got $250. It’s all a mystery to me.

Oh, and I found another hamburger in the neighborhood that is good enough that it doesn’t require any ketchup, at Portland Brewing. Thank goodness. The Industrial Cafe started making thinner patties and the flavor of the meat kind of disappeared, thereby killing my last favorite neighborhood burger. Hooray for the little victories.

Not only do I got nothing, but I can’t remember where I put the paperwork from Powells. I have 9 boxes of books there, or maybe even more, and I can’t remember if I need to prove that I left them there. Oh, well, I’ll find out tomorrow. I’m STILL feeling kind of tired and my stomach has been feeling queasy for at least a couple of days and I still have a lot of crap to do around the house. Hooray.

So for those of you who are reading for some sort of humor, I’ve got nothing right now.

I did, however, make it to Harbor Freight today to buy a pair of aviation snips to work on the gutter, and also a framing hammer to go along with the finishing and bizarro hammers I have already. I wanted to pull a bunch of nails out of the wood from the wall I tore down. Now I have enough hammers that I can put them in a sack and I’ll have something to compare Sarah Palin to. Honestly, I think my sack of hammers, though rusty, are smarter than she is. At the very least, they’re nicer.

I couldn’t really tell how bad my mood was. My stomach is bothering me and I’m not sure if it’s the repeated trips to “King Torta” to get hard-shelled potato tacos, or if it’s the free fresh fruit they’re giving away at work. I only have a couple of pieces a day (you’re only supposed to take one but I figure not everyone is taking advantage) and too much fruit isn’t all that great for making your stomach feel good. I sort of tweaked my back at the gym, but I still feel OK. I suppose the heater being mostly done makes me feel all warm inside (and outside, too).

So really, I don’t know what my problem is, but I’m guessing I’m just forgetting what it is that I’m stressed out about right now. Hooray.