I stayed up late the last couple of nights instead of going to sleep early, lie I promised myself I’d do. I guess this is my self-destructive behavior, which is probably the best I could hope for. Work is still going pretty well, but it’s still a bit stressful, so watching Lie to Me, Castle, and NCIS probably beats drinking for my health. Either way I’d probably stay up too late and there are hardly any calories consumed in watching network TV.

Seriously, though, I wonder how Sean can live on Muscle Milk. I’ve been going through the box I had him get me and I think Lactaid and chocolate milk were much better. Eating salad for dinner hasn’t been so bad, except for the part where I have to avoid Food Network, but at least I splurge on my extended weekends so I can watch Diners Drive-Ins and Dives then. It’s really only three nights out of the week where I’m limiting my viewing pleasure, and sometimes only two.

Today was a red-letter day. First thing in the morning I read the death and disaster section of the newspaper, also known as the Metro section, and came across an obituary for a guy I knew in high school. I met Andy Letourneau in English class my freshman year. Three of us tested out of freshman English and started in the sophomore class in at Benson Polytechnic, which was mostly male at the time and freshmen were hazed. I guess the guy who actually burned me and lit me on fire wasn’t doing it because I was a freshman, but that kind of tells you a little about my high school. In any case, he was very nice and excited about poetry at the time. Later, when I went to a Boy Scout leadership camp called Brownsea, I saw him again. In fact, I changed to his troop in NE Portland and even was a counselor at Brownsea the following year. I think he was one of the reasons I went on for my Eagle scout and got into Order of the Arrow. Really, not a perfect guy, but a great guy nonetheless. Perfect would have made him boring.

After that auspicious start, I went to work where I did not have an ideal day. I’ll leave it at that, but when I get a message from someone at the Vice President level, I start to get a little nervous. Didn’t turn out poorly, but it did get me a bit jittery for most of the day. I also had three separate phone calls about the same issue. I even had to go off campus to buy obsolete hardware to help debug the problem. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get that paid back.

Then when I got to the gym after work, THMFIC was in a mood and started yelling at two of us. I can understand why, but it really wasn’t what I needed to end the day. Yelling back was involved, though it happened later in the hour.

So, fortunately, I have TV to watch to numb my brain. Not really a way to live up to all the things given to me in the past from Andy Letourneau, who possibly died diving with sharks (seriously), but it’s a life.

I made it through the workout at the gym through sheer stubbornness. It was a kettlebell workout that I like to call “stand and sweat”. 5 rounds of 5 swings, 5 high pulls, 5 snatches, 5 clean and press, 5 reverse lunges, 5 figure 8 to hold, and 10 around the body passes. That’s for one arm. I used a weight that was a bit heavy and also followed the instruction to not put the kettlebell down. It took me forever, but I finished. Unlike any of my previous relationships, I looked at that 45lb kettlebell and figured I was going down with this ship.

If I was talking about work, I’d say it was Monday. Also that computers hate me. But I try not to talk about work and the computers at home seem to be hating me as well.

I should also mention that I went to Home Depot again today, and that the electrician is supposed to come tomorrow to finish the west bedroom so there’s something else to check off my list. Hooray!

I went to three hardware stores today, one twice. My buddy Greg and I started at Harbor Freight and went to Home Depot afterwards. Later in the day I walked to Pearl Hardware and then realized what I’d forgotten at Home Depot and went back. I think I even bought the wrong thing and may have to go back yet again. What a mess.

In any case, I’m getting the pieces to finish the upstairs and I’m hoping it will be done soon. There are cosmetic defects here and there but what needs to be finished is getting short.

The east bedroom (where I’m sleeping) needs two attic doors, the closet to be trimmed out and then painted, and that’s about it. The extras are a couple more light fixtures. The room is full of boxes and furniture and that needs to be relocated throughout the upstairs.

The west bedroom needs carpet, outlets installed and connected to the breaker panel, closet light, two attic doors, and “window treatments” (or blackout shades in reality).

Oh, and then the stairs.

After that, I should have the upstairs back!

I wonder if the guy who “invented” USB is embarassed. I mean what a POS standard. It doesn’t come up early enough in the boot process to be useful in kernel debugging, it’s slow, and what about driver hell? Plus the asynchrononicity. Geez.

I did some awful work on the house. I’m waiting for the other upstairs bedroom to be finished and feel like going ahead and wiring up all the outlets and light fixtures. But the electrician is coming to finish all that and I don’t want to do a half-assed job that he’ll have to fix. I guess I’ll just have to be patient. In the mean time I went to Courtney’s house and replaced a GFCI to get the wiring out of my system. Luckily I had a spare.

Several of us from the gym went to Dove Vivi for pizza on Friday and I figured out how to get a good pizza there. They do a cornmeal crust which actually isn’t as tasty as it sounds when you get it by itself. I figured out if you load up on toppings, it’s pretty good. So I got the corn, onion, and pepper with additional sausage and pepperoni. I can recommend that combo. I can also recommend walking down the street to Staccato Gelato for dessert. I think I ate less than last week but I felt more full. Odd, huh?

We just went to Higgins where the burger was pretty darn good (probably on the level of Wildwood and Laurelhurst Market) but the experience was such crap that I don’t know if I ever want to go back. We waited about an hour for a table in the bar (we were the only ones waiting), our food took another hour to arrive, and the bartender was surly to me. I know I felt unwelcome at the Slow Bar, but I didn’t feel like I was being discriminated against there. I just felt like they didn’t want to be nice to ANYONE. At Higgins, however, I felt especially like crap.

It’s a shame, too, because the burger was so good. The dessert was better than average but didn’t measure up to Hopwork’s bread pudding or Laurelhurst Market’s cheesecake, or Wildwood’s Lemon Semifreddo. Really, I’m not sure what to think about Higgins, but I surely won’t suggest it to anyone who asks.

We have a few engineers at the gym and one of them was talking about this giant reservoir he was designing. I mentioned to him and his wife (who has a PhD in Civil Engineering, btw) that if I could get a site visit to see the giant hole, that I’d appreciate it. I like looking at giant excavations. His wife said that was because I’m a guy. I also told her that the furnace guy at Home Depot (made out of silvery ductwork and who waves around because of the air blowing in him) made me happy as well and she thought that was funny. Add that to the list, and include fried chicken and cheeseburgers.

So I was watching TV again and on NCIS, DiNozzo was torturing McGee by eating a pastrami sandwich without sharing any of it. That made me incredibly angry and I was worried that I was going nuts. I realized that my salad dinner was leaving me hungry once again and it was impairing my judgement. This is why I don’t watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives until the weekend when I’m not on my crazy dinner plan.

I’m staring at my stupid GPS trying to update the maps. It told me to update the maps. It charged me $119 to update the maps. But does the computer actually connect to the GPS? Not at all.

It’s just as well. I was going to use my computer to make myself a list. I figure one of the reasons I’m single is because I’m too darn picky. I’m picky about the usual things, but there must be some deal breakers. So here are some I thought of.

• Poor spelling or grammar.
• Republican or Libertarian politics.
• Religiousity.
• Unintelligent.
• Unwilling to put up with my cursing.
• San Diego Chargers fan.

So really, this isn’t the time for me to be making such a list. I really should get back to letting my GPS torture me and then get some sleep.

I figured out one of the reasons I didn’t want Sean to beat my time in the marathon: I’ve done it once and I don’t need to do it again. I found a way to justify my time, though. At San Francisco, a much hillier and twistier course (or so I tell myself) the fastest runner finished in 2:45. Portland was like 2:15. So that means I get an arbitrary scaling factor and I can tell myself my time was faster, relatively.

In any case, Sean is on my list for beating my time, and Jeff is on it for helping him do it. Not that my list means much of anything, as my more important list has things on it like, “remember to buy gas on the way to work tomorrow,” and, “go to sleep earlier.” Stuff that I forget until it’s too late. What was I talking about again?

I had something that I can’t remember the name of for lunch again, c-something de pollo which just turned out to be chicken soup. It was, as most things are at Super Taco Ochoa, delicious.

Much better than this frightening sight this morning at work.

Congratulations to Sean for beating my SF Marathon time from 1998. Geez.

This year there was almost NOTHING going on at mile 11 except they moved the aid station away from the commercial buildings into an area with some apartments and we had someone come to complain about the noise. I was at the wrong place two blocks away, the medical supplies were with me, the ambulance was at the wrong place, and it was all kind of a half-assed mess. But no one got hurt at our station, and we have anyone in the sag wagon. All I did all morning was flirt with some student nurses. For the most part they were older and married, but it beat talking on the radio all morning.

I just realized that I had a dessert on Friday that I probably forgot to mention: the bread pudding at Hopworks. It’s one thing to eat a doughnut on an empty stomach (the only way a Krispy Kreme is going to taste very good) but I was stuffed to the gills when I tried the bread pudding and I still thought it was good. In fact, I think I took a second bite. That’s the kind of thing you want for dessert.

On the other hand I had some of the Pyramid Brewing Apricot Ale today because my brother-in-law kept saying how good it was. It was pretty sweet, which isn’t what I like in a beer. The burger, however, was pretty darn good. It’s on a par with most bar burgers, and I’d post a picture, but my computer is acting up.

There was a study I heard of about where big friends were a big indicator of personal enbiggenning. Basically, if they said if you have obese friends you’re likely to get or be overweight as well. Unfortunately for me, I not only have large friends but i also have friends who consider themselves competitive eaters and can stuff themselves silly. I had dinner with Sean tonight, who isn’t too large but is definitely someone who likes to stuff himself silly. We, along with Jeff and Adrienne, went to Hopworks and I suggested splitting a steak sandwich and a pizza but Sean wanted to eat a whole sandwich and split the pizza. I was stupid enough to think that was a good idea. Turns out that the steak sandwich at Hopworks, while delicious, is also ginormous and half a pizza is what a sane person eats for his entire dinner. Half a pizza plus a ginormous steak sandwich and you’re going to be sitting propped up watching TV hoping that you don’t fall asleep and roll onto your engorged stomach in the middle of the night.

I’m afraid that I need to figure out some way of remembering what else happened during my day, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can talk about. That’s what happens when the day is filled with work and I can’t talk about that. I can mention my trip to Krispy Kreme, though, where I had one of the worst maple bars I’ve ever had with one of the worst cups of coffee I’ve ever had. Maybe I have to be white to appreciate Krispy Kreme, and the suburbs too.

Our usual Thursday night burger club was morphed tonight into a trip to a Thai Restaurant where I had an omelette. A Thai omelette, but an omelette nevertheless. It wasn’t the usual burger gang but the “regulars” are going out for pizza tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to fix THMFIC’s laptop for weeks now. Everything I’ve tried kind of said that Applecare was the only way to go. We decided to take the hard drive out to see if we could get some data off of it, and I think the drive itself is completely hosed.

I guess I’ll just have to keep my 13 rounds of mini-Cindy (5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats per round) as my big accomplishment for the day.