Well, I made it down to SF with no problems, but somehow I ended up driving 180 miles to get to a barbecue and back. So far, so good, though. I met a bunch of Apple people and they don’t seem much different than any other group of geeks I’ve met in the past. I heard some disparaging remarks about the google-ites who keep repeating “best and brightest” to prove something to themselves. I can’t say much because Megacorp is neither.

Tomorrow I’m supposed to get up early to hear Steve Jobs and his amazing keynote address. I’ve also heard that if you step on Steve’s shadow as an Apple employee, you get shown the door. Yeesh. Well, enough of that. Time for sleep.

I’m off to the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference where I’m going to pretend to be a developer for a week. It’s like a geek fantasy camp for me. I’m staying with my friend Megan, so I won’t be able to live the total geek life. She won’t let me. I’ll give it a good try, though.

Friday was another stellar day at Megacorp. My world-class manager told me twice that my bad attitude would no longer be tolerated. I asked (as anyone with a bad attitude would) how that compares to the guys with good attitudes who do nothing. Phooey. Fortunately, I got to play golf after work. I made a par on a par 3 but the next hole, a par 5, I got an 18 including penalties. Fortunately, I don’t care and it didn’t bother me that much. I’m in the sun, away from work, on a lawn I don’t have to mow, and I get to hit things. What could be better?

I had nothing to say yesterday and I have nothing to say today except I suck at golf. I’ve only been playing a week, so it’s not a big surprise. Monday I played nine holes (and sucked). Wednesday I went to a driving range, practiced putting, driving, and my chip shot, and I sucked. Today I played 9 holes at an “executive course” and I sucked. Tomorrow I may suck at another nine holes of golf.

Enough about golf. I got a new cell phone because my mom needed an easy-to-use cell phone and I figured my Razr would be good. I got a different phone for myself and she got the Razr. I got my first two phone calls on the thing today (two days after I got it) and I didn’t recognize the ring. I was in the doctor’s waiting room wondering whose annoying phone was ringing and it was mine. Sheesh.

Dave the trainer is off in NYC this week so I decided that a nap was more important than going to the gym. Yesterday I was tired but my co-workers convinced me to play 9-holes of golf. Today I was falling asleep while I was talking. The weird part of my nap was that I was dreaming about walking around a golf course, looking for my ball.

I stayed up too late yesterday reading the new Jack Reacher novel. I really ought to figure out how to force myself to go to sleep on time.

Friday ended up well because I left work a little early and played 18 holes at an “Executive-Par 3” golf course. Par 3 meant it wasn’t a death march like Heron Lakes. That’s not a place for a new golfer to go.

Saturday was the yearly Seaside ham radio convention, but we punted this year. I had to leave for Seattle for my golf class for beginners. It was a good deal to begin with: they give you golf clubs that are worth more than the tuition you pay. Now that I’ve taken the class I’d recommend the class as well. The instruction was great, the course I went to was beautiful, and I know I’ll probably never play golf there. The only way I know of getting to play there is to buy a $800+ weekend package at Salish Lodge. I think it works out to $250 in greens fees. We only used the driving range but we did drive around the course as they described different aspects of the golf course, and it looks like fun. Not $250 of fun, but I’m still a beginner.

In any case, there was six hours of driving to and from Snoqualmie, the golf school, and the stay at a Holiday Inn that all tired me out. Injudicious application of sunscreen means I’m sunburned in odd places (like my calves), my back hurts from my corrected stance, and my hands are sore from gripping the club. Time for sleep.

Well, today I received my fourth rejection email from an internal Megacorp transfer. I went home early right after that because, well, I haven’t had much to do lately. In fact, the choices are either to spend weeks learning British double-entry accounting procedures for a five-second test, or to spend all day looking online for cell phone deals. You can guess which one I picked.

My friends and my sister think I should just sit around and collect a paycheck for as long as I can. This sounds like a clear path to career suicide, but since I’ve proved I can’t legitimately get a job it’s probably not a big deal. I get bored, though, and I’ve put up with crap there much longer than I ever have in the past. I predict I will be out on the streets soon.

I spent most of the day looking for cell phones on the intarweb. I also had several meetings, and more of my time was probably spent in different meetings, but the one thing I did the most of is looking for cell phones. I’ve been told I need to get my mom a new cell phone, and that means we’re getting me a new phone and she can have my old Razr. I think I’ve decided on the Samsung Sync, but we’ll see how that ends up. I think I better do it soon before it impacts my job any more.

Speaking of impacting my job, I just met with my new manager’s manager and we’re supposed to carry on as normal right now. Unfortunately I’m kind of in a lull and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing, besides waiting for outside vendors to get back to me. Oh, well, I suppose waiting is part of working.

I stood around at work today wondering what I was doing there. All this due to a three-day weekend and a reorganization of our group. Nothing is different, but it’s not the same, either.

It’s hot today and I made it to the gym, like I always do. Nobody called me names, but there was this guy who smelled like pickles. Actually, Dave the trainer thought he smelled sour, like rotting garbage, but I’m sticking with pickles. Once again I was impeding the serious people there, but there’s this one woman who does the cable chop like she was doing the robot. It’s interesting to watch. Too bad she didn’t do it tonight.

I had a list of things I was going to do today but I woke up with a headache. I think I inhaled too much dust running the chipper yesterday and stuffed up my sinuses. I ended up taking a couple of nice naps. It’s a holiday, after all. I did end up buying some weed killer but couldn’t use it because there are rambunctious young boys visiting next door. And I looked up the tree my backyard neighbor had planted (and that I cut down) and it’s supposed to be a monster. I’ll probably want to cut down the replacement, too, but it’ll ruin his fence before it does anything else.

I did go golfing again, and this time at a course that wasn’t so hard. I was still the worst but it was a lot more fun. We only played the front 9 or the Eastmoreland course and I heard from several people that the back 9 is a lot harder. There were 3 of us and a kid showed up to fill out the foursome. He was only a junior in high school but he was hitting it 300 yards (like 5-6 times further than I hit it).

It’s supposed to be in the 90’s this week and as a native Oregonian I’m not all that happy. Heck, as a native Oregonian I’m not happy when it gets above the 60’s. Ain’t no way I’m playing golf in that sort of heat.

Yesterday I played golf for the second time ever. It was also the fourth time I ever held a golf club. So, where do my “buddies” take me but to the Heron Lakes golf course to the Great Blue course which I saw somewhere was rated one of the hardest courses in the state. Well, it didn’t look that hard but there was plenty of grass and wetlands and I just have lost 30 balls. If I hit it further than 20 feet, it was most likely going to sail into a pond.

I finally got to spend some quality time with the wood chipper today, and my neighbor behind me wasn’t happy. I went to look for them to ask if they had any objections to my cutting down a cedar that my dad planted in no-man’s-land. I’m kind of sure it’s their property, but my dad was planting things there, so that makes the property line murky. Anyway, I also cut down what I thought was a volunteer which happened to be an American Redwood he planted. I told him I’d pay for the replacement and he wasn’t too upset. I don’t think he wanted me to cut down the cedar, either, but it was leaning into our “airspace” so it had to go.

My mom’s crazy Japanese auto mechanic, who lent me the wood chipper, came by to give me a “new” lawn mower. I think it’s lighter than my current mower, and he’s going to sell the metal of the heavier one. In any case, he was impressed by how much progress I made in the backyard. I’m pretty tired, but I have lots more gardening to do. Or maybe I should sort through my dad’s stuff some more. It’s all a big question mark for me. I might just sit around and do nothing since it is a holiday.

I have some stories from today but they’re not really mine. Like how I got an angry phone call from a friend who happened to be a little lost in Olympia, WA. He’s moving to Hawaii, and was driving his car to Seattle where they were going to ship it to Maui for him. I guess they don’t allow cars with cracked windshields into Hawaii so he had to get it fixed before he left, and then driving up to Seattle a truck threw a rock into his brand new windshield. He got off the freeway in the first big town he found (Olympia) and called his dad for directions. Well, his dad is a physician and directions aren’t his strong point. Fortunately for me, I went out with someone from Olympia YEARS ago and I remember the three blocks that make up the town. That, and I can read a map off the intarweb and give semi-coherent directions.

I also heard that Chicago has the most expensive gas in the country, which makes some sense because it also has the highest paid person that I actually know. If I actually thought about it, I probably know some highly paid surgeons or something but I don’t think of them very often and I can’t even think of who they’d be right now. Come to think of it, my friend who is moving to Hawaii has a dad who probably makes a boatload of money, so I take it back, it’s not fair that Chicago has the most expensive gas in the country. Lake Oswego, Oregon should have the most expensive gas in the country. Actually, we should just force them to secede from the Union and put a fence around them. (I have issues with rich people.)

So I have been going to the gym and this week I was called a weirdo by one guy, and another guy kind of implied I’m a geek. Geez, and with all the fancy gym clothes I wear, like the Jelly Belly World Tour shirt I wore on Tuesday or the Intel vPro/Microsoft Management Conference shirt I wore today, how would anyone think I was a geek?

When I think of the word “eco-turrist” I think of someone committing turrist acts on nature. I’ve been accused of such acts because I cut down two Japanese pear trees in the backyard. They were convicted of the crime of dropping uneaten fruit all over the place. I suppose I could have harvested the fruit and taken them to the shelter, but I’m not sure that the woody fruit would have been very nutritious. Anyway, it’s too late.

It’s springtime and my fantasies are interfering with my work. What fantasies, you might think, and are they going to be TMI? Are they about the young woman at work with the big backyard who keeps giving you the stink-eye? Are they about golf? Today I kept imagining going home and digging up the remnants of the awful crabapple tree that’s in the middle of the backyard, shooting up suckers square in the middle of everything. And I thought about digging up my prized (and ignored) rosebush that had the graft die and went back to being a wild rose.

But it wasn’t to be. When I finally changed into my work clothes, it started to rain and I watched TV instead. So much for fulfilling my fantasies.