Daylight savings time is making me very tired indeed.

Last week, after surviving the tower snookering, I noticed that my forearms seemed sore. The tower was wobbly after we took down the guy wires, so I must have been holding on for dear life and my death grip led to sore forearms. It’s a much better outcome than, say, falling off.

The only other new thing is that I’m realizing how awful my violin playing sounds. It’s actually an improvement that I can hear what I should be playing and know when I’m getting it wrong. It’s also a good thing that we insulated a lot of our house and it’s also a good thing that I don’t play an amplified instrument like the neighbor kid plays. I just keep practicing and tomorrow I should have my first fiddle lesson.

I was kind of upset that the only message I’ve seen on OKStupid lately is one that said, “Sorry, not my type,” but that person certainly isn’t my type either. Who can’t be bothered to write in complete sentences? I bet she can’t spell, either. Plus, most of the time I get NO reply, which at least leaves me with some dignity and the ability to imagine that maybe my email was lost.

So no clear narrative to my life, but at least nothing disastrous at this time, and that’s ok by me.

I suppose I was suckered several times this weekend. My buddy Greg is moving and he needed to take down his 70′ ham radio tower. He suggested cutting it down, which I first thought was a waste since that would mean it would end up as scrap, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it might actually be fun.

By the time I got to his place, other old friends were there and they wanted to take the tower down carefully so they could re-use it. Taking it down carefully is a lot more work requiring lots of ropes and pulleys and one poor sucker who has to climb up the tower risking life and limb. The other guys were a lot older than me (or a lot lazier like my buddy Greg) and somehow I was talked into going up the tower. Saturday I spent two or three hours taking down all the feed lines that used to go to the antennas that I helped take down years ago. Sunday I spent six hours disassembling the tower 10′ at a time, from the top. This also meant we were taking down all the guy wires that helped keep the tower steady and safe. We got it all down and fortunately the worst I can say is that I’m just tired.

I didn’t have time to practice my violin or finish my taxes but I did go to the gym twice. No wonder I’m so very, very tired.

I think I quit writing much on my blog when I realized I didn’t care about writing that much any more. Part of it was just the practice of writing something down every day and that became less important. Plus, I didn’t have that much to talk about on a daily basis. Right now I have a lot to talk about but I’m not sure I’m the one who should be doing it. Let me just say that several of my friends have lost their mothers lately, and I hope they and their families are all doing well, or as well as can be expected. My own mom has been in the hospital twice lately, and it’s no fun.

So, on this day two days after Valentines Day, what am I doing to cheer myself up? After wasting hours and hours for several weeks trying to undo all the damage that TuneUp and iTunes have done to my music library, I thought I’d use some correction tape to mask out some of the things in my beginning violin book. Unfortunately, Office Depot brand correction tape doesn’t work. It either spools off and won’t work because the tape is loose, or the correction bits don’t stick to the page. I’m taking it back (I hope they take it back) and getting Liquid Paper.

I’m also reading the news, which is a horrible thing to do if you’re trying to cheer yourself up. Since work was so hectic this week, I was catching up on a couple days worth of news, and the lighthearted articles from 2/14 were nothing I wanted to see. Fake marriage proposal rejection videos are also not funny to me at all. However, dudes hurting themselves while doing stupid things is pretty funny. Accidents, not so much.

So, articles on the hopelessness of online dating and people mistakenly telling me about their friends and their romantic weekends are not what I’m looking for. Two empty bottles of whisky (which took me months to empty, and have been empty for days) aren’t helping my mood either.

Oh, well. Maybe I’ll play some of the music that iTunes didn’t “fix” for me.

Not real sure why I’m feeling all that cranky right now. I’m finally getting over my cold. Yeah, I had a fever, then stomach problems, then a head cold with a 101.9°F fever, and now I’m feeling better. I’m also sucking ass at playing the banjo and the only New Year’s resolution I’ve kept is to stop watching Hawaii Five-O.

Check it out, though, new glasses and a haircut. You know what that means? I can see my computer screen so I can DO MY TAXES and my head is cold.

Check out that puss though. I’m not sure why the ladies aren’t crawling all over this guy.

Tomorrow I pick up my violin and I can have TWO instruments to play poorly. Nice.

101.2°F

Much better now.

I’ve been a lazy lump of sloth this week. I finally remembered that some time ago I had this same sort of thing happen, a cold followed by odd lingering stomach problems and I even went to see a doctor about it all. The Asian doctor recognized that the aging Asian man in front of him probably had GERD and prescribed something or another that was replaced by Prilosec OTC. Everything was sort of OK until just recently and I finally remembered this. I started taking whatever-it-is I found at Costco (not Prilosec) and I was starting to get better but today I FELT LIKE I’M COMING DOWN WITH A HEAD COLD. So just to recap, I had a fever, I had stomach troubles, and now I have a head cold. I love winter.

As far as my New Years resolutions go, I’m taking banjo lessons and boy do I suck. It’s still fun, though, so tough beans for anyone who has to listen to it.

I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m either coming down with another cold or I’m allergic to beer. I sure hope it’s not the allergy bit because that would surely suck.

It was a somber week at work. One of our co-workers had a heart attack in the parking lot and was not doing that well.

Today was Megan’s funeral and I’ve heard it was planned out by Megan. The service was surprisingly quick with hardly a mention of her name. There were standard prayers that were over in half-an-hour and no speeches. Later we all met at a restaurant and had a bit of a wake. It was actually quite nice and full of old friends I hadn’t seen in years and I appreciate that she didn’t give us any chance to be sad. But all last night, as I was tossing and turning with a stomachache, I felt like I was going to see Megan in the afternoon and I knew that wasn’t the case. I knew none of us would be seeing her again. I wonder if that was making my stomach hurt.

OK, so somewhere in the middle of kvetching about things I’m not doing this year, I realized I should shut the hell up and make a list of things I want to do. So today, on the biggest annual procrastination day of the year (otherwise known as the day my self-assessment for my work review is due) I took my violin to the luthier to get it back up to snuff! Then I went to a beginning banjo class (clawhammer for those of you who know more about banjo than I do) without having a spot in the class and made it in off of the wait list! This is something I never was able to do for medical school! (Yeah, I know, they’re not really comparable.)

I have to go back tomorrow to rent a banjo for the class, but this new-found interest led to watching YouTube videos of old time music, which led to the realization that I like old time violin, which led me to YouTube tutorials of violin exercises. So, now I have two instruments I could be playing soon (or not, we’ll see) which really does make more sense than keeping up with my twitter feed or my Facebook page. I feel sorry for anyone who has to hear this racket, but my mom’s hearing is going and I can hear the neighbor’s kid practicing on an electric piano so there’s no guilt! Plus, all my adolescent shame is gone and I can practice the violin outside of the closet!

I suppose it’s time to prioritize. I sure wish I was more organized. I can make lists, but then I forget to look at them. The list on my iPhone, for example, has items that I haven’t done for a month. I suppose that’s why I hire people to do renovations. It takes me months just to get around to fixing a squeaky door. I’ll have to rethink this.

Last weekend I was out with two high school buddies. One was off to New York to meet a woman in her early 20’s, but he’s loaded (I don’t know anyone else who has a house in Tokyo with a pool, for example) and the other was trying to decide whether to get back together with his ex who is now 27 but who he used to date nine years ago. Yeah, that means he was 40, but she was 18. Honestly, I don’t even want to talk to anyone below the age of 25. Somehow this got me to thinking about my resolutions, but I think such odd behavior just means it’s time for a midlife crisis. I’d rather avoid the crisis, myself, and perhaps avoid anything that seems a little too high-schooly.

I don’t mean to avoid being juvenile because I’m not going to drastically change my personality and start acting like an adult. That would take years of analysis and behavior modification therapy and I’m not sure it even works. I mean avoiding things like Facebook which just make me feel inadequate and make me hate all the people who are trying so hard to impress. I’ve also realized that there are certain activities I participate in which are cliquish and annoying and really don’t make me all that happy.

So, I’m not going to run any races this year. I’m not running any obstacle courses. I’m not going to join a kickball team. I’m not going to climb Denali. I’m not going to start up with any dumb-ass martial arts. I’m not going to take up skeet shooting. I’m not buying a boat.

That still leaves me with way too many things I want to do. I wonder where that puts banjo lessons on the list.

I was fatigued today. Not really tired, just dragging ass like I overdid it at the gym after being out sick for a week and a half and it made me kind of cranky. So on the way home, when some jackhole in a Suburban honked at me for waiting for a pedestrian and not just running the poor guy the hell over, I stopped my car and got out to tell him about WAITING FOR PEOPLE CROSSING THE EFFING STREET. Fortunately, he kept going because I don’t think we would have had a very productive conversation. Really, I lucked out on that one.

So I went to the gym and what did I do? Overdid it again. I was DFL in the workout because after I easily ran around the block, I came in and felt like I was going to see my lunch again. There are certain rabid exercisers of a cult that I won’t mention who would probably beg to differ, but half-digested sushi is not something I ever need to see in my life. Throw-up-and-keep-going sounds like a worse option than slow-down-and-don’t-waste-the-money-you-spent-on-food.

So there you go. Another day goes by with a sense of impending doom, mostly at work and nothing really spectacular to report in my outside-of-work life either. Maybe I should go on Facebook to see if I can feel really inadequate.

Well, that didn’t end well, and by that I mean 2012. I got sick before Xmas and I think I still went to the gym a few times and I swore it was cold that week even though people were pointing out that it was much warmer than the week before. That’s probably because I was running a fever of 100.3°F that I didn’t realize until t the Sunday before New Years. I found that out when I was taking my mom’s temperature just before I took her to the ER for chest pains. She had a blood clot in her lung. She had to stay in the hospital a few days and I stayed at home feeling miserable. It wasn’t much fun.

So, NYE, or amateur night as some people call it, I stayed up until 10PM. That’s at least an hour later than I’d planned.

I think I made some resolutions. One is to get out more. I went to a gathering of old co-workers from an old dot-bomb we all worked for and had a nasty hangover after three whole beers. THREE. That’s getting old for you. I think getting out once this year (and right before that I was at dinner with old high-school buddies) qualifies as “out more” so maybe I can chalk that one up as a win.

Another resolution is to ask someone out this year, maybe one person a month. That’s 12 chances at humiliation and more likely, 12 more times someone just says, “No.” In the spirit of making this a real New Year’s Resolution, I may just not do this one at all.

And finally I think I’m telling myself to buy more books AND READ THEM. I bought two already. I wonder if that’s enough?

Lots of awful things have happened and lots of not-so-awful things have as well. I’m going to do the ostrich thing and ignore some of the awfuler things, but my friend Megan lost her fight with cancer and I’m hoping she’s kicking ass and taking names in the afterlife. I’m not a believer, but she was, and if anyone could have willed herself into another existence just to tell everyone how things should really work, it would be Megan.

Honestly I don’t think I’ve had that much to say lately. In the nerd realm, I’m applying to become an official NetBSD developer. I bought a new antenna for my ham radio even though the last time I talked on the thing was back in August. And I bought a new iPhone 5 because that’s one of my addictions. I’ve had many disappointing cheeseburgers and my addiction to the gym appears to be waning a bit because, well, I’ve not been giving a crap lately. It’s hard to run around and get all out of breath if you don’t give a crap.

I suppose that’s why I’ve updated some of my blog software but I haven’t written anything, the giving a crap thing. When the only email you get is from Amazon, The Gap, and Sears there’s really no reason not to hole up for the winter and declare hermit status.

Ah well, the most exciting thing I have going on for New Years Eve is staying at my sister’s house to make sure her geriatric dog doesn’t freak out. I’m not sure how my being there is going to help the dog’s mental status, but I really have nothing else planned. And that, I suppose, is the end of my year.