First off, here’s what happens when someone steals your driveway.

We’ve wanted to “fix” the driveway since we moved in and that was 42 years ago. It’s a “Model A driveway” which means it was built for an old Model A Ford. Narrow and high clearance. The garage, for example, is small with barn doors that swing out. It’s only good for being a storage shed, and to hold up my antenna.

But back to Mondays, on the way to work on Highway 26 I heard a clicking sound. I knew it was my tire. It went away, but I got an indication that my tire was going flat. If you’ve ever been on Highway 26, you know there aren’t that many exits, and my car was handling just fine. Just fine until it wasn’t and so I pulled off at the next offramp when I realized I could barely control the car. So I got to change a tire on the breakdown lane of Highway 26. It was a fine morning for it, and went without incident.

My next stop was a parking lot where I started my phone calling. The tire was original Toyota equipment and only had 8,000 mi, but I understand how tires can fail. My Toyota dealer (Broadway) told me to call a dealer of Toyo tires (which were on my car) because they didn’t want to deal with it. So I called Les Schwab. They told me I’d have to call Toyo directly and were nice enough to give me the number. Toyo tires only transferred my call once before Candace told me to have the Toyota dealer call. So, It was back to calling the Toyota dealer, who said they’d have to see the tire.

It’s about 18 miles to work, on the highway. I can’t drive on the highway with a donut tire. I was halfway to work. So, I figured I’d just drive back to the dealer on surface streets and leave them my very expensive but useless-without-a-real-rear-right-wheel car until they could get a tire and make it un-useless again.  The dealer looked in their computer and told me it would take a day to get a tire in.

I guess I’m getting some discount on the tire because there’s some road hazard insurance, but I really just want my car back and I can afford to buy a new tire. But nothing is that easy on a Monday.

It was my sister’s birthday today and we went out to dinner. The only picture I took was of my hamburger at Songbird. I was trying to find the menu on google last night but I found that googling for “seabird” didn’t give me the right results.

I also figured out who sent me the postcard. It’s my buddy Greg and his daughter Bridget. I have to say it was both of them because Greg is the laziest man on the planet and probably came up with the idea but never would have gotten his typewriter off the shelf to send the postcard. I could tell it was him because the zero looked funny and he was the most likely to have a typewriter with a slashed zero. I called and asked him about it and he said, “I sent you a letter.” Mystery solved and much less interesting than when it was a mystery.

One thing that isn’t a mystery is whether I’m still feeling puny or not. I went to the gym, felt like throwing up, went hard anyway, and got lightheaded a couple of times. I know the Crossfit way is to push yourself until you do throw up but I’m not in a Crossfit gym any more and not throwing up is my own little victory. Not real sure why I’ve been tired all day, either.

But the new mystery is a postcard I got today. It’s a postoffice postcard with my addressed typed on the front and the back has the single letter “M”. The first person I told about it (my sister) wondered if it was a ham radio thing. Then she said it might be a secret admirer and probably peed herself laughing. The second person (a gym friend) asked if it was a ham radio thing and then wondered if it meant someone wanted to murder me. The next two people (also gym friends) wondered if I’d just get a series of post cards spelling something out. If that’s the case, I’m guess it’s going to be an abbreviated form of “m*th*rf*ck*r” because spelling it out completely will take too long.

I’ve watched hours of the Olympics, and I think I’m ready to watch pre-season NFL football instead. That’s like saying I want an itchy rash on my ass or something but honestly, I have a hard time watching all those ads only to have events I’m interested in interspersed with things I couldn’t give a sh*t about. I’m stupid enough to see the news during the day so I already know who is going to win beach volleyball. I have absolutely no interest in rooting for the underdog who I know is going to lose. Unfortunately, the Olympics preempt a lot of the crummy TV shows I like to watch.

Enough complaining. Maybe I should read a book or do something constructive. What to do, what to do?

My sister and I are always accusing each other of becoming our father and my behavior as of late (and more importantly, the failings of my body as of late) make me think I’m headed down that path. I was sick this weekend with no severe symptoms but my head hurt and I felt “off” enough that I skipped going to the gym. After walking down to the dry cleaners and having lunch, I decided to take a short nap. Five and a half hours later, I figured I wasn’t completely well. Today I had other vague symptoms at work like light-headedness. If I could just have a fever or a runny nose (and no, I don’t want either) I would know that I had some ailment I was more used to. I even went to the gym and was closer to throwing up than I ever remember being since college when I had the bright idea to push hard on the bench press and squats in the same workout. Fortunately I had the sense to half-ass it the rest of the time I was there, though for me that means going heavy and going slow in a workout meant to be a lighter sprint. I like being contrary.

So in summary, weak, old, maybe a little sick, and it’s Monday. Need to step it up if I’m going Gangnam Style.

Well, I suppose the first thing I need is more common sense, but it’s probably much too late for that. More sleep would be nice as well, since I stayed up way too late after Il’s wedding. But moreover, I probably need lots more than what I think I need.

What I think I need is more music videos. Especially more dance music videos with funny dancing, silly suits, and  goofy looking Asian guys wouldn’t hurt either. I heard this music video is blowing up the intarwebs: Gangnam Style by Psy.

Surprisingly (for a Japanese dude) I have two very good Korean friends, Il (who got married yesterday! hooray!) and Sun. Both of them convinced me that I should NOT learn Korean because what was I going to use it for, to talk to their parents? Because of this I have no idea what the guy is singing. I’m just hoping he’s not talking about killing all the dirty, dirty Japanese or something like that. I hear he went to Boston University and Berklee College of Music, both places where the people were quite pleasant to me while I was attending a technical school across the river from them.

I should stop watching the YouTube video for Gangnam Style and hit the hay. I am, however, conspiring with my sister to get a suit like the one at 1:42 (better view at 3:45). The MC Hammer shorts were also something I thought about, but the suit is something I MUST have.

And I hear the earth moved.

Trek in the Park was rehearsing near where Anna and Il got married!

There was something else exciting that happened and I can’t remember what it was. A stomachache? A free box of Rasinettes? I really can’t remember when I actually sit down and try to scribble it down. My memory isn’t what it used to be and I’m not helping it any with my poor sleep habits.

I was thinking that maybe the things I don’t talk about are the things I care the most about, but you could disprove that by finding things I don’t care about that I don’t talk about. Vintage Falcons. Real falcons of the genus Falco. The Atlanta Falcons. Not too interested in any of those, really, and never mentioned them before now. In any case, the excitement (or lack thereof) in my life has nothing to do with those things. Well at least not yet. Who knows? I do kind of like Peregrine Falcons and football season is coming up.

A friend from the gym asked if I’d been taking a blogging break, and certainly I had. Mainly because there was nothing happening. The most exciting things I can think of are the concrete guy calling me back after a month-and-a-half to look at redoing my driveway, and finding out that the rent for a small furnished apartment in Tokyo is a lot more than I first thought. My brand new FABULOUS laptop continues to be FABULOUS, but I still haven’t sold my old laptop and it’s just sitting in my room. And, since I’m not all that bright, I may even buy ANOTHER laptop next year. (Still single, still no kids, so that means more laptops for me.)

Lots of things have happened to my friends but I wonder if I shouldn’t leave their stories for them to tell. One bought a house (and I helped introduce her to the WASTE TRANSFER STATION, a glorious outing that culminated in the funner-than-you-think task of “pitching shit out of the back of your truck”. And there’s a glorious lightness you feel when you’re rid of that junk that was taking up space in your garage. Another friend is getting married this week and I’m one of the few who were invited. And sadly, a work friend’s partner passed away altogether too young.

So I suppose it’s been an eventful summer and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I need to simplify my life and by life I really just mean my banking. I have a stack of credit cards (most of which sit idle most of the time) and several bank accounts. Paying the cards sometimes means I have to shuffle the money around the accounts in some sort of weird ritualistic manner at some late hour where I’m not completely paying attention to what I’m doing and that means I have enough money SOMEWHERE but the account doesn’t get paid because of delays or mistakes on my part. I love banking penalties, so I get to pay hundreds of dollars (or at least one hundreds of dollars) for each mistake. M*th*rf*ck*rs.

I see a mistake I made so I contacted the bank and the credit card, and I was told I CAN’T DO ANYTHING YET because NOTHING IS WRONG YET. So I’m waiting for a large, painful series of alarms to go off sometime tomorrow.

I really hate banks. Maybe I can get my employer to pay me in small denomination bills and put them under my matrress.

I just got my most recent VISA bill and it was much more horrific than I was expecting. Perhaps “horrific” isn’t the proper word, but it pointed out that I had a month of utter gluttony behind me. And my FABULOUS new laptop isn’t even on it (nor is my hotel room). I have a feeling that I’m going to be seeing more horrific VISA bills in the future.

My AT&T contract is up again, and that means I got to unlock my iPhone 4. So now I have an unlocked iPhone 4 and an unlocked iPhone 4S so maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to have cheaper cell phone service in Japan. I suppose i’ll just have to try to find out when I get there.

Along with my utter gluttony, I’ve been neglecting my blog. The database backing the blog, in fact, has been horned for a while (I can’t tell how long) and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL ME. In fact, my sister’s blog was probably also down and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL ME. Come on now, there are at least dozens of people reading her nonsense and probably three to six reading mine. At least one of those people has my email address and several probably have my cell phone number.

I suppose a nice blank web page was somehow more comforting than knowing what I was really up to, which was not feeling all that well last week. Well I’m back, beaches, and me and my nonsense are about to get, well, middle-aged and GERD-tastic on someone’s ass? Ebay did tell me last week that I’ve been a member for 11 years. Maybe I should bid on some Prilosec.

This is where I talk about going to sleep on time and how I’m going to fail at that again. At least some things don’t change.

I wish I could say I had nothing interesting going on, but I spent last week in beautiful San Francisco at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, filling my head full of things that have nothing to do with my job. Included in that was seeing my friend Megan before she left for LA and eating and drinking way more than I should have. I mean, seriously, look at what I ate the first day with Megan and Nadeem. (Yes, lunch was Umami Burger).

Oh, and click at the images at your own peril, I didn’t bother to shrink them.

Of course I got up early for the keynote, even though I was booked in the WORLD’S LOUDEST HOTEL (and forgot I had earplugs until Friday night) which meant I kept waking up and having these feelings that a keynote without the possibility of seeing Steve Jobs wasn’t much of a keynote at all. Really, it wasn’t as good but it was pretty darn good anyway. My stupid faulty brain has turned the actuality into Tim Cook telling me that the new laptop was FABULOUS and so I got drunk and bought a FABULOUS new laptop the next night. It’s backordered, of course, and should arrive in July sometime. The teases at Apple have put the external optical drive in my hot little hands already, but what good is the drive without my FABULOUS new laptop? By the way, the night of the keynote (Monday night if you’re keeping track) was the last night Megan was still in town, so here’s what was for dinner.

I’m looking for the bottle in the middle.

I didn’t take may more pictures of dinners until Friday at La Mar with the horrible, horrible view and hanging out with a guy I only see once a year. Great guy to hang out with, even though he’s a Hurricanes fan.

What a week! I can’t wait to do it again.