I have to admit that I’m OK with having a fairly dull life most of the time. Sitting at home, in front of the radio, sending Morse code to weird countries and waiting for a postcard that confirms that I talked to that country is something I like to do. Paying way too much money to replace electrical and lighting fixtures in the house is another thing I like to do. Those are activities that are much better when they’re a little dull as “exciting” might mean “electrocution” or “lightning strikes.”

I did go to a wedding on Memorial Day, which sounds like a weird thing to do but I had a great time talking to the friends of the bride (Jenny) and groom (Rob). I know Jenny from the gym and she’s a firecracker. Being a firecracker, her friends were quite interesting as well which made for one of the more interesting and fun weddings I’ve been to. Other than wanting to fall asleep at work today, it was perfect.

Other than that I was lucky that it rained a bit during the weekend because that reduces the power line interference so I pretended to know Morse code during a ham radio contest. That is also another reason I haven’t written anything on my blog lately because it would be work, gym, ham radio, repeat and that’s even boring for me to write about let alone for anyone to read about. I did spend $400 on lighting fixtures but no one would notice unless they were going down to the basement (stair lighting) or were my brother-in-law (because I replaced the chandelier he would hit his head on every time he came over).

I’m incredibly happy to see my mom back but I’m probably going to gain back the 5 lbs I lost when she was gone. I half-assed a weight lost challenge at the gym but I did lose some weight. Oddly enough, the biggest loss came on the day after I ate the two Big Macs. Most of the time, though, I ate less at lunch and dinner and that isn’t going to happen with my mom home. She buys food like she’s going to eat it like a normal person, but she eats like a bird and gives me the leftovers. Plus, I had a steak, an elk burger, and a crab cake sandwich for my dinners this weekend and that’s not going to help. Ah well, if things were easy, they’d be easy.

I also like thinking that my iPhone is telling me things when I have it playing music on shuffle. It started playing music from my high school years that just reminded me how lonely I was back then. At least back then I was filled with hope and didn’t know what I’d be doing in 2012. Teenagers are suicidal enough without know what is awaiting them in middle age. Later it played “Lady Marmalade,” which probably suggests that hookers are my only chance for companionship. At least the last song it played before I shut it off for the night was “Alcohol” by the Bare Naked Ladies which reminded me that I’m a happy drunk. A happy drunk with a full bottle of Scoresby, the Scotch you drink with a straw, waiting at home.

Maybe I’m lonely because I haven’t heard many people on my $5000 ham radio lately because of poor ionospheric conditions. Let’s just say that’s it so I can call it a night, unlike last night when I stayed up late watching the last two episodes of Fringe and then wondered just why I bothered.

Well today was kind of an off day. Off from the gym, off from work after about 10AM. Last night at about 1:30AM I woke up with stomach pains. I do what I usually do, which is roll over and go back to sleep. After rolling over several more times, I finally had to get up and take what I often think is some sort of Japanese placebo called “That’s 21”. Or at least that’s what I think it’s supposed to mean (the label is in Japanese after all). I got up and went to work as usual, but started feeling lousy around 9-ish so I cut the day short.

The reason you’d really know I was sick is because I went home to a house with contractors in it. And the basement stairs are directly below my bed most of the day there was lots of yelling, sawing, and hammering and so it wasn’t calming. But the math is much better: my floor at work has several hundred people and six toilets and three of them can be closed at any given time for cleaning. The house has two toilets and the contractors aren’t coming upstairs so that means one, WITH A HEATED SEAT, all to myself.

I did send out a bunch more QSL cards (the ham radio confirmation postcards you send out after talking to someone) and I rewired the kitchen light. Woo is it bright now. I hope my mom likes it. Also put a connector on my antenna cable. I’m all set for now, I think.

Last week I was tired most of the time and sore from the gym and yesterday I couldn’t get to sleep. Now I’m back to just about passing out and, at the same time, staying up late.

I bought a direction finding antenna to locate the source of the power line noise in the neighborhood. I think I narrowed it down to a pole, but I have to get the attention of the power company to fix it. I’m about to buy yet another toy to narrow it down even more. Walking around carrying a big antenna isn’t really making me look like a normal person, but the noise is interfering with the guys I’m trying to hear on the other side of the planet!

Walking around looking goofy sure beats doing work on the house. I bought a $180 light fixture that didn’t go together the way they said it would and broke the end off of a compact flourescent bulb. Turns out I had to modify the fixture before it would fit together, but they never told me about that. I also had to move around some expensive light switches since contractors are replacing my basement stairs so they wouldn’t damage them. That’s what I get for buying an industrial light switch that costs $40 instead of using the one from Home Depot that costs $2.50.

It’s about the time for my yearly Big Mac and I’m dead tired and I wasn’t having the best of days (even though it wasn’t all that awful, either) so I gave into my craving. Besides, I’ve found that if I was to go to a fancy restaurant to get a higher-class of hamburger (and there are some tasty ones in Portland) not only would I be consuming more calories, I’d probably also be sitting next to ANOTHER FIRST DATE and I did that once this week already. I’m skipping the fancy for now.

But I just ate TWO Big Macs. I did a few calculations and a Big Mac lists at 540 calories (all of it from fat and salt and miscellaneous carcinogens, I’m sure) and a large fry list 500 calories PLUS 15 calories per ketchup packet (and I’m guessing I’d use about four). So two Big Macs are better, calorically, than a Big Mac and fries anyway, and I get that extra roughage from the iceberg lettuce on the burger.

None of this takes into account that I usually only get one Big Mac, no fries, no drink, and no dessert. But a Big Mac is $3.98 and TWO Big Macs are $4.00. You know what that means, Ronald McDonald is telling me, “GET TWO, IT’S CHEAPER, AND YOU CAN SHARE IT WITH YOUR SPECIAL SOMEONE. NO SPECIAL SOMEONE, HUH? WELL SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIEND. NO FRIEND, HUH? YOU MUST REALLY SUCK!”

Well f*ck you Ronald, Imma buy TWO FOR MYSELF and ENJOY THE HELL OUT OF THEM ALONE. (Otherwise I’d probably just feel sorry for myself and buy a McFlurry, and those are 640 calories.)

Bastards.

My buddy Il is moving in with his girlfriend (fiancée now!) and is getting new Comcast service at his house. He scheduled everything to happen at once, so he asked for help waiting for the cable guy. I hate waiting, whether its for a cable guy, a delivery guy, or for a repair guy. It usually drives me nuts. But it’s Il, so I got up early, drove to a sketchy neighborhood, and waited in a mostly empty house for two hours and the cable guy never showed up. Turns out it was scheduled for NEXT MONTH. Bah.

But I did get the lawn mowed, and I went to get my mom’s car washed. Well, the car grows some kind of lichen like most cars that sit around in Oregon, and it cost extra to get it washed and waxed ($80!) And it took extra time, which meant I had something else I had to wait for today.

Honestly, I ended up playing games (The Heist and Whirly Word) on my iPhone for all the time I was waiting and the only thing that really suffered was my eyesight.

I did go out to dinner to somewhere new, the NW Public House, and it turned out to be tasty and fairly nice. Unfortunately my neighborhood is a bit upscale to begin with, and a “fairly nice” restaurant is also a good place to go on a first date. That means whenever I’m at a fairly nice restaurant in my neighborhood by myself, it’s likely that I’m going to sit next to a first date with all the nonsense awkward conversation that goes along with it. I need to stick to dive bars with the retirees who all seem to know me from the neighborhood.

Dinner was good, but the portions were tiny. Fortunately, that put me near “Salt and Straw”, a hipster ice cream parlor with lines going out the door. My Lavender & Honey + Honey Balsamic Strawberry with Cracked Pepper cone was great. I’d even stand in line for it again.

Especially one full of puzzles I already solved. I’m so tired that I keep playing Heist on my iPhone. Someone stop me.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in TWO HOURS this year and was first announced at 8:30AM EDT. Or, as we on the left coast like to call it, FIVE F*CKING THIRTY IN THE MORNING. And it sold out before 7:30AM, much earlier than most nerds get up. What a mess. Fortunately, this nerd was up and I got a ticket.

There’s really no great reason that I go to the Apple conference, but I figure I might learn something and I get to spend a week in San Francisco. It’s as good a reason as any, isn’t it?

So it’s the dead time before the final sweeps month of the year where all the TV shows air their finales, so that means NOTHING TO WATCH. And my radio is so quiet that I wonder if the antenna fell off (it hasn’t). So I may actually get to bed on time!

Someone pointed out to me that I’m supposed to be happier now because in your 50’s (or close) you figure out that shit’s just the way shit is, and you’re OK with it. That sounds about right to me. Heck, even MIT called asking for money and I’m finally not mad at them for making it the undergraduate hell-hole that it was. I gave them even more money than I did last year when I was there for my reunion. It’s still not a whole lot, but it’s about what I give to most charities. (Someone from our class gave hundreds of thousands last year, so my donation is a drop in the bucket.) Anyway, I guess I still have my dreams but I know they’re pretty much just that. Unless I win a $600 million lottery. Then all bets are off.

Weird, no one is even on 40M. Stupid sunspots.

I know something was going on tonight and I wasn’t invited, but that’s how I feel every night on the radio. There has to be someone on the radio from some foreign country that I could talk to if I was only on the radio. Heck, I’m sure I talked to Croatia tonight but I forgot to hit the button to put it into my computer log. As far as talking to all states go, I’m missing Delaware, Rhode Island, and Vermont and I still haven’t confirmed North Dakota, Idaho, and Kentucky, though I specifically asked the guys from Idaho and Kentucky for cards.

That’s what I get for being past the age where I would spend Friday nights out in a bar, eating dinner and drinking by myself. Now I’m at home eating Bagel Bites and drinking Scoresby, the Scotch whisky you can drink with a straw. OK, so I’m really drinking Glenmorangie, but that’s only because I was too lazy to go buy Scoresby, the Scotch whisky you can drink with a straw. It’s not that I’m cheap: Glenmorangie is $40 for a fifth and Scoresby, the Scotch whisky you can drink with a straw, is $25 for 1.75L. In ‘Merkin measurements, that’s $25 for almost half a gallon. (To be honest, I think I really liked Suntory Yamazaki Single Malt, which was made not too far from where I used to live in Japan, and where I can sense it getting close and point it out as we’re going past it on the bullet train.)

Oh, and I got another haircut:

You’d figure after being a ham for 35 years and finally buying a big expensive $5000 radio that I’d spend a whole lot of time playing with it. It’s been a week and I’ve been staying up late listening to a lot of static and sometimes a few guys talking. Yesterday, for example, I had a very short exchange with a guy in Moldova, and a longer conversation with a guy in Guam. I meant to go to bed early (as I also meant to today) but of course I ended up playing radio. There doesn’t seem to be as many people on tonight, which is a good thing. One of these nights I should probably get some sleep. Really, I think that’s it for excitement from me. Just a guy sitting in front of a radio, listening to Morse code. I start hearing it in my sleep, too, so I better knock it off soon.

Just as expected, my mom just couldn’t find a phone and she was just fine. Now I can go back to celebrating my birthday the way I usually do, doing nothing much at all. Microwaved a burrito and now I’m finally finished playing with my radio and confirming that I can hear just about nobody. I did find out that a whole lot of people still use Facebook and they all sent me happy birthday greetings. I also got two text messages and one phone call, plus an email that made me realize that ONCE AGAIN I FORGOT MY FRIEND SUN’S BIRTHDAY. I am a chump. A 48YO chump at that.