I knew one of these days I’d leave my keys at work. We have to lock our laptops and I have my key on my key ring with my house key. My car key is on a separate key ring, since I found that anything else on that key ring hits my knee and annoys me. Well, I got home without my keys and nobody was here. I called my sister’s house, her cell phone, my brother-in-law’s cell phone and nobody was around. I broke out my work laptop and since I have wifi, sat on my back steps and logged into work. I had a co-worker who was still at work hide my keys. I wasn’t about to drive another hour-and-a-half or more to recover my keys. I called Dave the Trainer and told him I couldn’t make it to the gym because, well, my shoes were inside the house. (I wasn’t about to run up the stairs in my Blundstones.)

Anyway, I got home a little after 5PM and I got inside the house around 7PM. I had offers from several people for a place to wait, including two neighbors, my buddy John, and my sister (who finally called back) but I just sat and read the book I keep in my bag “just in case.” The Dante Club is really quite good but I never can seem to keep reading it. I suppose it may end up like Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, a book I carried around for years until I finally forced myself to read it. It was an excellent book when I finally got into it.

My only disappointment is not seeing the women at the gym. Pretty pathetic, but a guy has to have his fun. I ran up the stairs on my own, probably pushing myself less since there was no one else around, and I still felt like falling over when I was through. At least I got to see all of NCIS today.

It’s my dad’s 90th birthday today! My sister got him a cake and a present. I, of course, regifted something Carolyn gave me. It’s a kangaroo pen and it’s sticking out of his pocket. I figured it would make him happy. I quite enjoyed using the punching function of the pen, but my dad is the toy guy. I’m sure I’m in trouble now with Carolyn.

And here’s a close-up of the cake. We all thought he’d want a lemon meringue pie, but he wanted chocolate cake. Mariko bought it at JaCiva’s and it’s a little rich, but quite tasty. And look how pretty.

In other news, my friend told me what he figured it cost him to drive to work every day. So, here’s the rough calculations. I fill up about every six days and I drive about 259 miles. That means a round trip is about 43 1/6 miles. So, I get about 25.1 MPG and with gasoline at $3.20/gal, my round trip costs about $5.50 in just gasoline. A trip on public transportation costs $1.95*2 or $3.90. But my commute time is only about 35-40 minutes each way in my car and it would around an hour-and-a-half each way on public transportation. Well, we’ll see what the reorganization at Megacorp yields. I may not have a work to drive to next week!

I know I heard the paper being delivered last night, but this morning I found nothing except eggs on my car. I suppose that’s going to be another advantage of the new car. It’s harder to wash things off of the cloth convertible top than a hardtop.

My buddy Il got me some PSP movies for my birthday, and he forgot to bring them on Friday. I happened to be in the neighborhood today (helping my sister move a mattress she bought off of Craigslist) and I told him I’d come pick them up. He said he was too busy playing World of Warcraft with this woman who says she’s a Czechoslovakian pr0n star. He spends a lot of time online with her. He just left the movies on his doorstep so he didn’t have to waste any extra time answering the door. On the plus side, I finally saw Hellboy, a movie I convinced all my friends to see, but one I neglected to see until Il gave it to me on UMD.

A while back I heard my ex was worried about hanging out with me because she might see herself on my blog. I find this unfortunate, because how am I going to exaggerate about a person if I don’t have any contact with them?

Il and I went to Ringside last night and both had something called a “bone-in filet.” It was a tenderloin with the bone still attached and that gave it more flavor than a regular tenderloin. It was excellent, and that’s no exaggeration. We also had a strong-flavored red wine. I can’t remember anything else about the wine other than it cost $65. Dinner, for the two of us, was $206.40. Woo-hoo. Good thing I still have a job at Megacorp.

I went to the car dealer this morning, expecting to have the guy look at my car for five minutes. I left the dealership about two and a half hours later. In that time, all that happened was a guy looked at my car and then told me I couldn’t have the options I wanted. All I wanted was a car with a dark interior and a navigation system. Navigation systems are hard to come by, and so are specific colors. Well, I got the color I initially wanted anyway (silver), and it looks like the cars with the dark seats still have beige-y plastic so they look a bit silly. I paid a non-refundable $500 deposit and they’re going to call me in a few weeks when the car comes in. I’m hoping “few” means a couple of weeks and not a lot more.

I loooooves me some cheesy 80’s music. I think I even found a copy of a song by “Blue Zoo.” Wow that fun. Almost as good as a sharp cheddar from Washington State University Creamery called Cougar Cheese. “I’m Digging Your Scene.” I was just remembering I had a big crush on Kim Wilde and my sister thought I really ought to have liked Clare Grogan from Altered Images (and some of my favorite movies like “Gregory’s Girl” and “Comfort and Joy”.) Which reminds me, I was going to buy “Comfort and Joy” for my yearly Christmas movie. That and the version of “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim. I’m way off-season for Christmas movies.

Ah, the joy of my yoot. Which wasn’t very joyful, as it led to the horror of college. I saw a guy with a Stanford shirt at work and I told my co-worker that there’s only one school I hate more than Stanford. His guess was Reed College, but my answer was Em Eye Tee. AAAAIGH. IHTFP!

The only person I know who actually has a Honda Civic Hybrid read my post. Back to the gym, of course, Dave didn’t make me run the stairs today. Instead, he’s going to wait until the hottest day of the year so far (which is only going to be about 80°F) because that’s much more torturous.

The gym was close to a ghost town today because of the nice weather, but there were some of the usual distractions. They did, however, move the times of the classes around so I missed seeing certain people come in. I know it’s bad that some of the only fun I have is looking at the women who come to the gym, but why not? It’s not all about getting tortured by Dave.

My car, my S2000, was a hard-to-get model. I had to take whatever they had in stock. Fortunately, what they had was a silver car with a black leather interior and that was just fine. Now I’m looking at the Honda Hybrid, and I’m sure I’ll have the same sort of problem. I suppose I’m enjoying it, too.

I’ve decided on the Honda Hybrid instead of the Toyota Prius for great engineering reasons. This great engineer likes it better. HAHAHAHA. I don’t great reasons other than I like Hondas. Plus I’ll be able to see when I’m backing up. UNLIKE MY CURRENT STUPID CAR. (Or the Prius.) Wait, I like my current stupid car. I’ll have to rethink that last bit.

I surely didn’t make it to the gym yesterday. Lethargy got the best of me. That, and screwing around with my computer, which obviously is something that is on my geek schedule. Instead of exercise, I ate a giant pink cookie from Spokane, which my sister reluctantly gave me. I think she’s hoarding them.

Saturday night I was supposed to take my dad out to dinner, but I didn’t think he wanted to fold his body up into my car. So, even though I really like my car, I think I may have to get the Civic Hybrid. I’ve heard arguments for and against the Prius, but whatever foolish brand loyalty I have is for Honda. So far I’ve had three Hondas, and owned no other cars. My mom likes Toyotas. I don’t think that I’d go wrong with either. Oh, well, time for more research and then an impulse buy.

Well, I doubt I’m going to make it to the gym today, and it’ll be the third weekend in a row that I’ve told myself I’m going and I haven’t gone. I still have Sunday, of course, and I may go tomorrow. But here are some reasons I’ve missed out so far:

1. I kept telling myself on Saturday that I’d go on Sunday, and then Sunday I was way too hung over.
2. I hurt my chest pulling on the lawnmower starter cord and it was bad on Sunday as well.
3. And today I’m kind of hanging out with my dad. I started out the day with a sinus headache. I was planning to sleep in but I was woken up several times. First it was my dad’s alarm clock (it never wakes him up but it goes off at 7AM), my aunt in Japan who was worried because she called at 6AM and it didn’t wake me up and nobody answered, and then my sister who just laughed at me. By the time I got around to taking some Advil, a downpour had started and I thought I’d put off going out until tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

Oh, and I went and looked at Hybrid Civics today. I went to the place I always send people but I’m never sure if it’s the best deal: St. Johns Honda. Heck, I walked in and asked if I could look at the S2000 (just for the heck of it) and then asked about the Hybrid and the guy tossed me the key to the hybrid. It’s QUIET inside. I am really tempted, but I do still like my sports car. I wonder if I should be good and boring and get a normal-looking car.

I was on my way to watch a movie with friends when I saw a woman looking at me. I thought she was just looking to see the guy who got out of the convertible, but a female friend says women don’t care what cars guys drive and she was checking ME out. Well, I know she wasn’t really, because my first reaction was to see if I had anything on the front of my shirt.

My dad decided not to go to see his cousin in Spokane. He’d rather sit at home. Hell, I’m a lot younger and I’d rather sit at home than do most things as well. Like father, like son.

I’ve been awfully cranky at times lately. I wonder if it’s because of the weather. I know soon it will be warm enough that I need to have my window open at night and that means the kids parking outside will wake me up and I won’t be very happy about it. I suppose I can try sleeping with earplugs again (even though that makes my ears itch).

My sister and my mom are going to Spokane tomorrow to see my cousin’s kid, who is visiting from Japan. My dad may or may not go. Like I said, he’s almost 90, and his cousin in Spokane is older. I hope he gets to go see Uncle Leo soon.