Perhaps I need a new hobby. Looking at dating sites is probably not a great idea. I sit around and read little things into everyone’s profile, showing me why I really ought to not date them. Too religious, too superstitious, too crunchy, or just too particular and that’s why they’re single and close to my age.

That’s why I’m thinking of going back to my old hobby of eating as many cheeseburgers as I want. Which isn’t quite the case yet because I’m back in delayed gratification mode, though I’m not sure where the gratification is going to come from if I delay it. Today, for example, I was staring at some free doughnuts and trying to get other people to eat them so I wouldn’t. I suppose if I ate everything I wanted, I could start looking into master’s level sumo wrestling.

I am, however, thinking of going on another run of hamburgers because Koi Fusion, the Korean taco truck, is making a special hamburger this week. And Thursday we’re supposed to go to Laurelhurst Market. Well, I’ve convinced one person to try the hamburger tomorrow, though Sean (who has fallen under the spell of cheeseburgers after listening to me talk about them) is wary. Really, “Korean taco truck” sounds a bit shady if you think about it, but my sister swears it’s good.

So, if you see my picture on, say Match.com or something and think it looks good, you should probably ask me how I look NOW after I start on my new cheeseburger diet that I abandoned about a year ago. Or not. I’ve been on a few dating sites for fifteen years now and I’ve really gotten nowhere. Like they tell me on the intarwebs, “You’re doing it wrong.”

I had a great start to this Monday. My stupid alarm clock has this weird feature. If you turn the power off, it stops counting the time like it was an old-school mechanical electric clock. BUT IT’S A DIGITAL ALARM CLOCK. Fortunately, the power was only out for about half-an-hour yesterday so I wasn’t that late, plus my mom was yelling at me wondering what I was doing.

One of our family friends passed away today and I think he was only in his 60’s. I think it was the big CA. R.I.P. Chuck Miyake.

And on the flip side of that, many of my friends are having kids lately. Not only that, but my co-worker’s expecting twins, and an online buddy went in with his wife for their 11-week ultrasound and, at the moment, they’re having triplets.

I’m not quite clear on what I’m doing because today’s workout at the gym was pretty simple but awful. Row 250 meters and then run around the building. The whole thing only takes under two minutes, but it’s one of those things where you end up lying on the ground between rounds. We only did it three times, which was enough for me. Afterwards, I was stumbling around and knocking into things, proving to myself that I worked hard enough. In fact, after the last round my stomach and calves started cramping up which was a little more than I wanted from the workout. Fortunately, I feel OK now.

Let’s hope the rest of the week isn’t as exciting as today.

I started out the day with breakfast with my buddy Greg. They tell you the way to stay skinny is to have skinny friends so I’m doomed. I wanted to go to Dockside for Eggs Benedict but Greg wanted to try somewhere different and we went to Besaws. Just like Yakuza, the basic materials were better than we were used to but the final product was not. The Hollandaise sauce was bland and the potatoes were underdone and crunchy. I’m not sure why there are those hour-long lines to get in there for weekend brunch. Yuppies must place atmosphere over food.

Most of the day I waited for the electrician. He was due to come at 3PM on a Sunday which seems odd but he was there by 3:30. He finished up everything I wanted and suggested to me that we run a line through the attic space and you can guess what I had to do after dinner.

So now we have wire in the upstairs west bedroom and the question is what we do next. Insulate, sheetrock, paint, and carpet, right?

I’m not even sure what I ate for lunch today and I’m not even sure of the name of the restaurant. I’m pretty sure it’s Super Tacos Ochoa, but there are several establishments in Hillsboro named Ochoa. I’ve never had a taco there, but the egg dishes are great. I’m embarrassed to say that the Huevos Rancheros is only $4 so while I’d like to have the eggs sunny-side up instead of scrambled, it’s tasty and there’s more food than I should eat in one sitting. Today, I had something new. They don’t really speak English at Super Tacos Ochoa and I really had trouble reading the label under the picture on the wall, which is also quite faded and looked a little liked grilled octopus. They said it was beef so I ordered it.

What I got was something like beef stew. Fresh tomatoes, onions, and green peppers cooked with slices of grilled beef served with rice, beans, guacamole, and fresh tortillas. I was full halfway through the plate, but I generally eat everything on my plate. I was in a bit of discomfort afterwards, but it was quite tasty.

Now if I could only remember what it was called.

We tried going to the Filipino restaurant, but they’re at the Grand Ronde Pow-Wow. Kind of a weird match, if you ask me.

And I’m sitting around this Friday night, muscles sore from yesterday’s workout. 12 rounds means I did 60 ugly pullups, 120 pushups, and 180 squats. No wonder I’m sore.

What happens on the day after a hard workout at the gym? ANOTHER HARD WORKOUT AT THE GYM. Sheesh. Fortunately, we planned to cheat on our non-existent diets today and start up a weekly trip to a burger joint. Turns out my love for cheeseburgers is spreading and we’re going to try the best high-end burgers in town. Sean and I went to “Lovely Hula Hands” and the “Slow Bar” and I have to say those are two of the best burgers I’ve had. For cheap burgers, “Five Guys Burger and Fries” is pretty good but that still isn’t matching “In-N-Out”.

Back to today’s trip, we went to Yakuza. I must admit that as a real Asian, I’m not a huge fan of pan-Asian food. Heck, I usually have problems when I go to a Japanese restaurant and the chefs are not Japanese. It can be good, but it’s not Japanese food. I texted my sister when I got there and she said, “What are you, white?” But we went to judge the burger on its own merits and not on the service, the atmosphere, or the clientele.

The burger, with very fresh and quality ingredients was possibly innovative, but was disappointing. Check out the review on Portland Monthly and you can see the self-indulgent review. A Kobe beef burger with chevre and shoestring onion rings infused with togarashi and yuzu with probably homemade ketchup on a creamy bun. Everyone else liked it but I wasn’t impressed. Why not? Well, the first thing I like on a burger is to taste the meat. The meat was well cooked and of high quality but IT DIDN’T TASTE LIKE ANYTHING. It’s the same complaint I have with poorly done filet mignon: it can be exquisitely tender but lack flavor. That’s how this burger was. The tasteless meat was doctored up with the spicy fried onions, but I think what it really needed was some aging and someone with a salt shaker.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid the Yakuza burger, but I surely wouldn’t go out of my way to get one either. I’m very wary of the rest of their menu, as it had “creative sushi” as well. I have my own suggestions for creative sushi and they lead you directly to Gaya Gaya on West Burnside.

But people watching at Yakuza was pretty funny as well. Not only was there a mismatched couple next to us (a guy my age with a woman who could be his daughter if he was pushing it) and a tipsy cougar who knocked her fancy Yakuza plates to the floor while dining with her boytoy. So really, go for the fun if not for the food.

I was stuck in a training at work all day which meant I had a salad for lunch. Salad for dinner, salad for lunch, and I don’t really think there’s enough calories there to keep going at the gym. Plus it made my stomach feel funny, enough that any exercise that required abdominal strength was hard to do. At least that’s my excuse. Plus I’m old. I almost beat Sean, but he came tearing around the corner on the last lap and I couldn’t keep up with him. Heck, I had to mop the floor afterwards and all he had to do is lie there and not move for a while. 🙂

Tomorrow we’re planning on getting hamburgers. My sister suggested the new Laurelhurst Market, and Sean has some other ideas as well. We’ll see how well that works into my plans.

I’m not even sure I’m losing any weight from this salad kick. I started it because I was eating dinner rather late in the evening and I was wondering if that was what caused my massive FIVE POUND weight gain. Or more. I dunno. So in true delayed gratification form, I decided to eat like a rabbit for dinner which just caused me to fantasize about cheeseburgers and fried chicken. Plus, I’ve been having more stomach troubles than usual. I’m not sure this is worth it, but why give up the experiment after only a few weeks? Next up, though, may just be an ice cream diet to see if that helps things out at all including my weight and my performance at the gym.

It’s my sister’s birthday and it’s also time for me to be ridiculous and start screwing with the database that is behind my blog. I could be melodramatic and say it’s like playing with plutonium, but really this is only my own blog and not something people are paying me for. I suppose I should back some of the stuff up, but like I said, my own blog.

But I digress. It’s my sister’s birthday and I asked her what she wanted. We go through this every year. My brother-in-law has a rule, you only get a couple days of leeway after your birthday and if you haven’t picked anything out then you get NOTHING. Well, we Fujinaka’s aren’t real good at celebrating birthdays or any other sort of occasions, so my rule is she gets to pick whatever she wants any time after I ask. I usually ask a couple of weeks before her birthday and she usually tells me what she wants in October sometime. Her Xmas presents come in February, too, which really doesn’t matter either since we’re not Xtian.

My stomach still felt odd, but at least it didn’t hurt today. I did an experiment and drank some more chocolate milk and now I’m wondering if the real problem is chugging an ice-cold Gatorade. It would make more sense. I do have an appointment to see my doctor. I figure it’s about time for a checkup anyway. I asked if at my age I should be coming in for some routine maintenance, changing the oil, rotating the tires. My doctor is probably going to stare blankly at me and ask why the hell I came in if nothing was bothering me. I’m not sure he gets the whole preventative maintenance thing.

I wonder if i’ve gotten so old that I can’t afford to eat any spicy at all. I woke up in the middle of the night with a stomachache and it didn’t get any better all day long. All because I had a Buffalo Chicken sandwich? I wonder if it’s a creamed cauliflower diet for me now. I suppose I’m really old. My little sister’s birthday is tomorrow and she’s really old too.

I have very little else going on because I had to come home early and take a nap because my stomach hurt. Then I paid some bills because I’m so exciting, and now it’s time to sleep some more. Whew, that’s life in the fast lane.

I never can get to sleep right after I get home, even when I get home at 1:40AM. So last night I made a list of things I should do. Some of the things were pretty simple, like “move the pedal wrenches back downstairs” and others just sounded simple like “mail in the Greencine DVDs”. I’ve had the Greencine CDs for five months, though, so that could be harder than it sounds. In any case, I did a bunch of little errands, several hours of yardwork, pulling more nails and cutting out old pipe out of the attic space, and just more than I’d really expect from myself today.

I also took apart one of the antennas I had sitting in the backyard. It used to be up on the roof but it’s been down for years because of the poor radio conditions. Being a good ham would mean I should keep all the bits that I could reuse and store them forever, especially if it looked like it could save me some money even though in reality it cost me more. Instead I took all the metal bits and put them in the recycling bin. My friend Greg pointed out this is because I’m a horrible socialist and I know what’s best for other people, and what’s best is that they don’t put this used antenna way up on a tower and have it fail. I also think that since I’m a lefty liberal I actually practice trickle-down economics and don’t think of it like the right-wing does, as an abstract thing like the Easter bunny. I’ll just buy a new one when I need it.

I keep thinking about buying a new car and I keep talking myself out of it. I had a 2000 Honda S2000, and now that it’s 2009 and they’re not going to be making them any longer, I was thinking I should get another. Pretty foolish idea, though. My buddy Il reminded me that I got hit a bunch of times in the S2000. Not while I was in the car, but it’s pretty tiny and people would run into it all the time. They do it to my Civic from time to time as well, but not nearly as often. I also realized that the only reason the cool kids from the gym hang out with me is because they don’t have cars right now and I do. Yet another reason to keep a car that seats 5.

So there you go. I may not have sat on my ass all day, but you can bet that’s what I really wanted to do.

It’s funny when I go to a Portland event and I don’t recognize anyone. Usually I know someone that I didn’t know would be there. In this case I didn’t, because I don’t know that many hipsters and I want to keep it that way. I stayed off the dance floor because it didn’t take long in that room make my ears ring, and I also was just hanging out with the people I went with. Since I was driving, I tried to keep my drinking on the boring side. I had a glass of water and had to steal a bottle of ginger ale that was supposed to go in the mojito mix. I’ve never heard of ginger ale in a mojito, so I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about stealing it.

In any case, I’ve now proved to myself that I’m good and old and shouldn’t be at late night parties, though a good percentage of the people at the party probably were my age. Driving this late at night is pretty easy as well. I’m sure I’m going to pay for this tomorrow.

I kept talking about going home early today, but I was there until 5PM. Made a quick and boring trip to Costco on the way home, but after I got there my sister delivered something I’d been waiting for: a Nail Hunter. I saw it at my brother-in-law’s and I wanted to try it out to see if I could pry out some problem nails from the old wood in the basement. It’s better than I expected, really, and can pull out nails and staples that my pry bars and cat’s paws were not working on. I pulled out all the insulation staples and sheetrock nails from the bedroom that’s torn apart right now, and even got out a bunch of problem nails from the basement rafters. I still ended up with busted knuckles and blisters, but the nails that weren’t budging are now gone.

Pretty exciting Friday evening, huh? I can’t believe how interesting my life is.

I don’t suppose all the John Hughes movies were from my high school days, though it really seems like it to me. They were from when I was in college, hating life, thinking that even though high school sucked, it might have been better than the hell I went through at M.I.T. In any case, the movies were from when I was young, the future looked bright, and a midlife crisis wasn’t even imaginable. Look at me now, a midlife crisis is something I’m scheduling for next Tuesday. Thank you Mr. Hughes for reminding me of my youth.

Speaking of aging, we did “Helen” at the gym today. Run 2 laps, 21 24kg kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups. It was fairly awful. I did it in 10:05 after sucking at a push press, dropping 145lbs. I’m never getting over 135lbs for the push press, am I? I could blame the time, which really isn’t so bad, on things like the fumes in the house — we just got icynene insulation sprayed in — but it’s probably my best “Helen” time so far. Not bad for an old man.

The only other excitement today was buying new tires at Les Schwab. Any more exciting and I’m going to need one my friends in the medical field to make sure I still have a pulse.