I know why I wake up multiple times in the middle of the night to got o the bathroom and it isn’t just because I’m an old man. I usually drink a whole 32 oz water bottle after working out at the gym, and if I’m not paying attention that can be as late as 8:30 – 9PM. And other little things wake me up as well. I think the little things add up so if I’m sore the noises outside wake me up. Or the heater going off at 5:30AM seems to bother me as well. Who wants to get up a half-hour before the alarm goes off?

Today, though the 5:30 alarm woke me up in the middle of a dream that, of course, didn’t make that much sense but at least after walking around the neighborhood without my shirt on and hanging out with two hipsters who were checking out their 3-day-old beards, I sat on a couch while a woman flirted with me. I know, but it’s all the excitement I’ve gotten lately that didn’t involve a chainsaw or almost falling off of a ladder.

Yesterday was supposed to be one of the rainiest days I’ve seen in Portland. While it rains all the time, we usually only get a 1/4″ of rain in a day. Yesterday set a record with 1.3″, not a lot for some places but not normal for here of course, I was out in the rain cutting up wood because I wanted to have at least one day a week where I could actually rest and not do much of anything, unlike last Sunday where I cut down a tree in the backyard and fed everything I could into a wood chipper. The remains are below. Monday I was quite tired.

I did, however, make all three Saturday evening events that I had scheduled, something I rarely do. I was briefly at my next-door neighbor’s housewarming party, I went to Koi Fusion’s 2nd anniversary/Scion event were I scored a free bulgolgi burrito and some Scion swag, and I went to watch the UFC fight where GSP proved he was a dominant, cautious, and not altogether entertaining fighter. Plus I ran around the house trying to figure out what the hell was beeping like a fire alarm with it’s battery dying. It was a fire alarm with it’s battery dying, that my contractor had taken down and hidden in the basement.

I would have done nothing strenuous today, but I finally bought a tool cabinet at Harbor Freight. The display model worked a lot better (the drawer bearings are awful) and it was heavy. Plus I had to take it out of the packing to cram it into my Civic. I’ve asked my friend to drive his pickup into the city so we could go get it and every time I asked, he drove in his Smart car.

Oh, and I guess I cut my own hair Saturday as well. Heck, I’m not getting any dates paying real money for haircuts. I may as well do it myself.

So I bought a bunch of cheap video cameras, but they all have “video out” and not USB. So then I bought a cheap video-to-USB converter (less than $10) and I was sure I was going to have trouble with it. Sure enough, the disk it came with was defective and Amazon was willing to give me back my $10, but I wasn’t about to let the thing defeat me. So I searched on the net and got it cobbled together under Windows XP in a virtual machine on my Mac. Then I found a driver for Linux, which is where I wanted it anyway. And now I got it running, and I got qmotion (a motion detection program) running. Whenever something passes in front of the camera, it displays it.

I’m going to see if I can get it running from scratch on a lightweight version of Ubuntu and install it on my sister’s netbook. I’m not sure why I’ve decided to do all this, but there must be some reason to it all beyond simple neurotic geek obsession.

I got this really cheap video-to-usb thing and it only works with WindowsXP right now. It’s some progress, but what a mess.

It’s the end of the year, when everyone starts taking their vacations. So work can go two ways: the customers all go on vacation and it’s restful or (more likely) all hell breaks loose and there’s hardly anyone left to handle things. It looks like things are going towards #2 again.

It’s not that bad yet, so I really shouldn’t be predicting a disaster. But really, for me, getting lucky means someone has emailed me a coupon for free crispy burritos from Taco Time so it all balances out. I wonder if I should get a t-shirt made that says, “Mr. Excitement.”

My sister is looking for a way to watch her front porch from her office, and I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it. I happened to find a wireless camera and a spare LCD TV to plug it into, but the camera is really crappy and the picture isn’t that great. Honestly, she just wants to check for USPS packages during the day so it’s not that big a deal. An easier solution is to use a motion detector to set off a doorbell or something, rather than look out the window. Or both. Both might be nice.

So now here’s another project for me. This might be fun, or at least more fun than making my doorbell wireless. Crap, I have to do that too.

Sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking when I post stuff to my blog. I’m not talking about the stuff that most sane people would wonder about, I’m talking about when I can’t even figure out what the heck I was trying to get across. Like when I’m so tired that the sentences don’t appear to be in English. I suppose it could be because I’m distracted, like watching TV instead of paying attention to sentence structure.

Today was a banner day where I had meetings scheduled during all the hours that our remaining and distant cafeteria was open. I blew off two more meetings to go home and get something to eat. Eating that close to going to the gym was a bad idea, too. I’ve noticed that leaning hunched over like in a bear crawl or doing renegade rows makes me feel a little pukey. As long as they don’t combine the two, I should be OK.

Even worse, I didn’t sleep all that well last night. I wonder if it’s because of my elbow injury and possibly rolling onto it in the middle of the night and having that disturb my sleep. That’s my current theory. I’ve been dragging in the mornings, and usually Mondays I’m not so bad off.

Well, it is the holidays, the time for seasonal depression. I’m sure that affects sleep patterns as well, and cutting down trees isn’t exactly relaxing. If only I could find some nice hot springs like they have in Japan. Maybe I should just go back to Japan. If only I had that kind of vacation time.

I like sitting on my fat tuckus (tuches), especially on Sundays, but instead I made some progress in my fight against the gingko tree in the back yard. Well, the fight against many of the trees in the yard that my dad planted. I think he got some of the plants in our yard from actual projects for customers when he realized he’d ordered too many plants. So why didn’t he realize the same thing at home? In any case, some of the trees had to go, like the fruit bearing trees with fruit no one wanted to eat, or the one blocking the whole front of the house, or the ones that are planted too close to the exterior walls.

In any case, I did finish cutting down the tree and I did end up hurting myself. It was before I got out the 9HP wood chipper and even before I got out the chain saw. In fact, it was early on, before I even tried to push down the tree that was much bigger than I was thinking (I can’t lift the lower four feet by myself). I did it when I was first cutting some small branches when I smacked my elbow up against something.

An even bigger disaster was when my mom and I went out for dinner. The place we usually go was closed, and I was so tired I couldn’t think where to go next. We tried the Widmer Gasthaus but it was so crowded I couldn’t find parking. Then I drove to Belly and it was closed. We ended up having great food at Tasty and Sons (a burger for me and chicken strips for my mom) and I even had the excitement of getting carded for the first time in years. I mean, really, I’m a little old for that.

Not sure why I figured that attending a funeral would mean I would allow myself to get loaded, but I thought I might. But instead, I had some things to take care of at the gym and I ended up eating 3/4 of a pepperoni pizza instead. Sometimes being the one living in a city the longest means you know where to find odd things (like fire extinguisher brackets) and end up being the guy who has to go out and get them.

That’s pretty much my whole day. Gym, gym maintenance, funeral, gym movie, back at home wishing I had some single malt Scotch whiskey. Not very exciting but who says everyone has to be super-interesting?

I’ve been pretty tired this week and, of course, getting to bed late. And as soon as I get my tired ass into bed, I toss and turn for a while. Not really sure why. Stress? Not really. Wanting to play more Plants vs Zombies? Maybe.

Actually, I was almost late to the gym because I was in the middle of killing zombies. And like I said, this is the FOURTH TIME I’m going through adventure mode. Once on my sister’s iPad, twice on my iPhone, and now on my own iPad. Too bad this thing doesn’t sync with some server somewhere.

Oh, I went to my doctor today and he wants me to consider a clinical trial that would mean new drugs when the old drugs seem to work fine. New drugs mean new side-effects too. I’ve been up late researching that in my limited way, basically using google and chuckling about how one of the main side effects of the drug I’m on now is DEATH. Sheesh.

Oh, and the doctor today wanted me to see a dermatologist. The next available appointment, however, was on JANUARY 26th at 7:10AM! What’s that, 55 days from now? So nice to feel special in life, isn’t it?

I know where the day went and you know where the day went. If you need a hint, I’ll tell you: my iPad arrived a day early. This is the third time I’ve started Plants vs. Zombies from scratch. When I was at the gym my mom was playing Little Things non-stop. I don’t think it will be that much of a waste if I buy a second iPad since my mom can be mesmerized by the first one. Yow.

My sister sent along a picture of me after my last haircut. Megan used my grandmother’s old Oster Progenic and said it cut like buttah. I think it’s because the blades were new. Here’s Megan, me, and Nadeem. The reason for the short hair is that Megan’s still doing chemo and kicking ass, I’m listening to my gay friends for hair advice, and I’m not really sure why Nadeem got his hair cut so short. Just trying be cool, I guess.