Category Archives: General

Foster Burger is worth going to.

My hay fever is killing me right now. None of the sneezing or itching today, but I was pooped. I couldn’t think straight and I was dragging around. This happens to me every spring and it’s fairly miserable.

So I made it back to Foster Burger for Sean & Trevor’s birthday dinner. It was a random affair that I had to twist arms to get going. Fortunately, Sean & Trevor both showed up. In any case, Foster Burger seems to be up and running and I can now say that the burger is definitely worth going to eat now. It’s not my favorite, and there’s nothing that jumped out at me about it, but the sweet bun complements the quality meat and I’d tell anyone that it’s up there on the list of burgers to try. I’m putting it below Hopworks on the pub scale, but at 8:30PM on this Wednesday you’d be hard pressed to find a seat at Hopworks but there were patio seats at Foster Burger. And if you were looking outside, you could have seen me do the worst job of parallel parking ever. Twice. It took me five tries to get off the damn curb. Sometimes you got it and sometimes you don’t. And sometimes your parallel parking is so bad that someone might put it on YouTube.

I wonder about this WiMax stuff.

I was going to type something on this here computer, but the past two workouts at the gym have taken most of the biochemical energy out of my body and there isn’t enough left for my brain to think of anything. In fact, I think my body may shut down though it is doing its best to turn whatever I ate today directly into gas. The Mad Greek Deli may not be my friend in this case.

I’m trying to remember why it is I’m working this hard. Bikini season? I doubt that. Perhaps so I can floss and brush for the recommended two minutes without tiring myself out. That must be it. It surely can’t be to attract women on Match.com, because it’s not working for that AT ALL.

When it rains, it pours.

Looks like work is heating up a little, and it always seems like it’s everyone having problems or no one having problems. Thing is, I like my job so I won’t say too much about it. Plus, the worst I’ve ever had it is when I got bored at work.

My secondary job, trying to design my mom’s bathroom, is kind of a pain in the ass. I still have to draw some cabinets to see if they look right but I haven’t found a program I like so it might be time for paper and pencil. I may have to build some simulated walls to see if the space I’m putting the toilet is too small. That and a bag of mints will probably get me fresh breath.

I wonder how that one turns out.

Wow, the sale at George Morlan Plumbing was way better than I thought. All the internet prices I found were beat by the normal sale prices, and that’s saying a lot. Nevertheless, I spent $2100 on plumbing crap today and I realized I still have a long ways to go. I better get on it. I think I need to figure out just where I’m going to put all my subway tile and the 3D interior decorating computer programs really aren’t doing me a lot of good. Google Sketchup is total crap, Sweet Home 3D is only a little better. I’m liking Live Interior 3D so far, but I haven’t paid for it yet. We’ll see how it goes. I hope I don’t have to resort to getting out the drafting table, since I gave a lot of it away recently.

So I was watching a couple of movies tonight. Someone lent me Inglourious Basterds and that was absolute crap. I don’t like Tarantino movies, though, so I should have known better. I thought there were two good actors in it and at least they were fun to watch. I also started watching He’s Just Not That Into You, a movie that my Facebook friends told me was definitely a chick-flick, and all I’ve learned so far is that relationships suck. Perhaps the ending is uplifting (something I hope to see in these kinds of movies), but the movie cut out on me and so that’s all I know about it so far. Stupid intarweb.

Happy birthday mom!

No wonder my contractor wanted me to design my bathroom before he came back. It’s a pain in the ass! I’ve spent hours just looking for a sink! I finally had to resort to looking up what I had already, and since there’s no obvious part numbers visible I had to hang out at the plumbing store for hours to figure it out. I had to pick out the toilet, the Washlet seat, even the g*dd*mn knobs for the shower. And I’m not close to being finished. Do you know how hard it is just to figure out what wall spout to put on your tub? Yeesh. Tomorrow I have to put all of this in some sort of 3D CAD program so it doesn’t all look funny. I just realized I haven’t picked out the tub yet. Ugh.

Slightly disappointed.

I know I have issues with rejection and I suck at dating, but why shouldn’t the computer help me out? Well, I went to match.com tonight just to see what it had suggested to me and it told me that I was too picky and it had no women for me. OK, so the only criteria I think I had locked in was age, and the age span was 29-47 (I know, the bottom end is kind of low). But you notice something? THAT’S A SPAN OF NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AND THERE’S NOT ONE FUCKING MATCH. Good thing they have my money already. Jesus H Christ I guess I was looking for some romance (with a woman) and there’s match.com, BONING ME IN THE ASS.

It’s just as well. I usually get on there, send some email, get no reply, and then look longingly at the menu from Laurelhurst Market. Is it almost time to listen to my “friend” who said, “I’ll let you buy me dinner. You’re not going to get anywhere, but you can pretend you are.”

Work wasn’t too pleasant today too, but I can’t publicly reveal any details, but I did get ambushed. Yeah. Whee.

iPhone geekery.

So I found an iPhone app, CardKing, that sounded good when I read about it. It scans the barcodes of all those damn fiddly rewards tags I have on my keyring and then shows them on the screen so you can scan them. But then I read that it doesn’t work with flat scanners, only the handheld scanners. And it doesn’t seem to want to scan in my library card or my Borders reward card. Borders is rumored to be going under (and I’ve heard that for the last year or so) but the library card is something I’d much rather not carry around with me. I never go. And some of my rewards doohickeys are delaminating and will fall completely apart soon. Oh, well, it was a good idea while it lasted.

It’s so sad when the high point of my day is trying to scan my library card into my iPhone.

Apparently I’m not alone with this cold.

I felt like shit today and was quite grumpy at work. It was an odd thing to experience. I didn’t feel that bad but I wasn’t remembering things and I was swearing a whole lot more. After lunch, though, I started feeling lightheaded and I left early so I could take a nap.

Before I left, I saw my old manager and he told me that’s how people were feeling recently. They’d feel kind of off for a while until BAM, they’d get sick. So maybe I have whatever thing that everyone else has. Their gift to me, as it were.

I didn’t feel good enough to head to the gym, and I felt the same way I did last Thursday. I guess staying home from the gym had advantages. I got to see TMZ which was pretty funny, and I also saw the new FX show Justified. TV makes things better.

Fail from the get-go.

My buddy at work convinced me that some of the unique crap I have, like Japanese folding fans, might actually get some money on ebay. I looked and most of them go for very little money, but I’m willing to put them up there. I found a light and a tripod and I was all set to take some pictures but the battery in my digital camera was dead. Oh, well. They’ll be up soon enough and I hope I don’t lose money on them like I did on some of the books I sold on Amazon. I paid more for postage for some of my computer books than they paid me for them. That’s what I get for not paying attention.

Other than that today was a day like any other. Commute to the big grey box, sit in a cubicle, and realize this is my life. At least it’s payday and I like my co-workers. It could be much worse.

Yeah, I’m pooped.

I got an email from THMFIC and he wanted to know if I was sore from the Steve Maxwell seminar yesterday. The answer is yes and no, I’m just plain beat. I’m certainly not as sore as I was from the Swinging Cindy we did last Monday, but my soreness is usually delayed a bit so I’ll see how I’m doing tomorrow.

I actually got a couple of things off of my to-do list today, even between my naps. I’m still feeling kind of crappy and I wonder if I’m going to feel like I’m just about ready to come down with a cold for weeks on end. I suppose I could blame it on hay fever or the change to daylight savings time, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those things. In any case, I replaced another piece of plumbing, but it was just the water filter that lasted almost 18 years and was starting to leak all over the place. I also started sorting even more of my dad’s old crap and I think I’m about to start up my regular pilgrimage to Goodwill again. You know how it goes, I see some stuff that might be worth something and I think about ebay for a while until I get tired of thinking of ebay and just carry the stuff to Goodwill. At the very least it’s not taking up space in my house. I’m obstensibly Buddhist, after all, so I’m probably supposed to be a minimalist.

Beat up by an old(er) man.

I went to the Steve Maxwell bodyweight seminar today where I learned that Steve has even more ways of kicking my ass. There was no actual ass-kicking involved (though I think he is a second-degree black belt in Gracie Jiu Jitsu), just humiliation in body weight exercises. A simple one: 10 pushups, two minutes per pushup (one minute down and one minute up) is incredibly difficult. What about pullups sets where you do a full pullup, then hold for a 10 count at the top, a full pullup, hold for 10 at 50% position, a full pullup, hold for 10 at 25% position, a full pullup, hold for 10 just below bottom, and then a full pullup. These weren’t all we saw in an 8-hour seminar. We ended up with at least 3 sets of 5 minute abdominal exercises. I’m beat up.

I don’t have anything else today. How could I?

Happy DST day, though.

Maybe I’m allergic to social events.

The high point of my pathetic life is my Thursdays where I have a bacon cheeseburger with guys from the gym. It’s not always a sausagefest with me and Matty G but it can be. It makes up for the other nights where I just have a salad for dinner. Well today on the way to the gym I just felt like I was coming down with a cold. When I got there people noticed that it sounded like my nose was stuffed up. I had to just turn around and come home, and I was worried when I didn’t have that moment of energy like when you call in sick to work and feel energetic for a few minutes. Anyway, I’m at home and should be asleep already. If I had the option of staying home from work tomorrow instead of being buried, or if I wasn’t at an exercise seminar for eight hours on Saturday, I’d probably tough it out tonight. Instead, I’m bacon-cheeseburgerless.

Ah well. My life didn’t just start sucking at this moment, it’s just a steady sort of suck. The closest thing to romance I get is reading restaurant menus on the internet or maybe the closest thing to excitement is seeing a large-bottomed woman in high heels try to jump up and see over a grey cubicle wall. I’m not sure, but it’s not good.