Tomorrow my friend Megan goes in for breast cancer surgery. She’s getting the new Diep flap procedure, something an article in the local paper said was the way to go. I wish her well.

And tonight I realized that the reason I don’t eat udon more often is because it’s so darn hot and my tongue burns easily. Plus, I got it in a big metal pot that kept it all quite hot. And I’m not bright enough to avoid things like that. I’m sure I’ll order it again.

Last Wednesday my dad and I went to Skyline Restaurant and I was very disappointed. I’ve been going there for years and so any changes are disappointing. Since my sister’s in town, we went to the old standby hoping things were back to “normal.” I saw a car with the plate “SKYLNE” so I was pretty sure the boss Michelle was there and everything would be fine. And it was. I figure last Wednesday was just a bad day for them. Yay!

Someone asked why I bother going to the Japanese restaurant I dislike. Well, my dad likes it. And there aren’t that many Japanese restaurants open on Sunday.

I was in REI today with my sister. She just wanted to get a running hat for my brother-in-law and she hadn’t been to REI yet. I saw the Odwalla cooler and had to get one. Instead of getting what I usually get — Strawberry C Monster — I got Blueberry B Monster. My sister warned me about getting Odwalla if I wasn’t used to eating fruit. All that fiber. Plus, it must have really been vitamin-fortified because my urine was fluorescent for several hours.

But other than that, all I did this beautiful day was sit around and read more comic books.

I took my dad to a Japanese restaurant I don’t like much, and it was crowded and not very good. But I expected that. It’s the last day of spring break so it’s crowded and the restaurant is never very organized when they’re busy. I was finished with my mediocre curry udon before my dad got his sushi. But that’s why I don’t like the place much. They’re very spotty.

So I can’t say there’s any big reason that I haven’t been posting other than laziness. A couple of the nights the computer was busy compiling things. I was also out one night helping my ex-girlfriend move her computer to her new boyfriend’s place. And last night I was at a guy’s “retirement” party.

My slacking almost killed my sister and it’s a wonder it didn’t kill my ma. The windshield wipers on my ma’s Camry have been bad since the Toyota dealer replaced them for her. I didn’t realize just how bad they were until I drove my ma to the airport in her Camry. The windshield wipers just smeared water around and basically created an opaque mess. I actually opened the window and stuck my head out to see. But the weather got nice and I didn’t have to use the windshield wipers so I forgot about them. Well, my sister drove the car in the rain and couldn’t see a thing! I finally replaced the wiper blades with some spares we’ve had for years and things are clear again.

After going to all the trouble of sharing my iTunes with my sister’s laptop, she said she couldn’t find anything to listen to. I have 6092 songs and she didn’t like most of them. She listened to “ELO’s Greatest Hits” and then made fun of me. At least her friends were over and told me they might have some Howard Jones that I’d like. Whee.

iTunes has the capability to share your music with five people on your subnet. What that means is that my stupid wireless gadget (the thing my sister uses to connect to my network) doesn’t work quite right and I had to do some fiddling to get iTunes on her Windows machine to see the songs on my Mac. After a bit of fiddling, I found a Java program, RendezvousProxy that runs on Windows that allows her to see my Mac’s iTunes. Yeesh, what a pain.

Went to the horribly pretentious, always crowded, yuppie French bakery in my neighborhood today. I finally got something (Croquet Monsieur) that was actually good enough that I can tell why all the yupsters go there. My sister says it’s supposed to have the best croissants in town (she saw it on some foodie web site). But still, it’s very icky in many ways.

I also finally finished a book I’ve had for over a month, Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin. Time to find some more books to read.

I suppose the real story is that my sister is visiting, presumably to keep my dad and I from driving each other nuts. But I’m really more worried about all the damn moths that flew out of my blankets today when I changed my sheets. I know the cure is to stick the blankets in a walk-in freezer, but I can’t be without the blankets unless I want to freeze myself. I should have figured out where all the darn moths were coming from much earlier.

Well, it’s time to finish a reading book before I go nuts thinking about it.

I took my dad to the fancy Korean restaurant in the neighborhood. My food was good but my dad didn’t like his. Probably because it was unfamiliar. He got bulgolgi and I got a spicy chicken dish that was red with pepper. It also made me sweat profusely. It was a bit more expensive than what he was expecting, but they brought out so much food that we were both stuffed. In any case, I’m sure I won’t hear the end of this. My dad likes to complain. At least we got a good dinner out of it.

Doug Mayer, you know, the Car Talk guy. Pretty cool, eh? I had to write to complain that I couldn’t listen to Car Talk online. They switched from Real Audio (sorta evil) to Windows Media Player (much more evil). I mean, I hate how Real keeps trying to get me to buy things, but I’ve been using their products for free for years. They have to make their money somewhere instead of just stealing it like Microsoft does. OK, so Windows is more like extortion than theft.

Most of the NPR programs are using Real, and I had no problems. Oh, well. You win some, you lose some.

My dad and I went to Skyline Restaurant in Portland. It’s a fairly famous hamburger shop that had the admiration of food critic James Beard amongst others. I’ve been going there for over 30 years. Well, the first thing I noticed was that the fries and ketchup were different. Not bad, just different. My burger wasn’t as good as usual, and my dad’s chicken burger was tasteless.The waitress made herself scarce, too. We waited 30 minutes for the check and had to have them search for it.

Like I said, though, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as good. Small disappointments.

So I pulled out an 80’s green shirt to wear as protective coloration today and nobody else was really wearing them. Even got pinched by a guy I don’t know. Whatever.

Guess why I didn’t post last night? I wish I could say it was something exciting but it was because I scored a bunch of comic book scans and I was busy reading them. Yes, I was guilty of leeching off the kindness of the people writing the books but I offset it by knowing that I don’t have collector’s guilt and don’t have to buy mylar bags, etc for the books.

So my driver’s license looks like crap. Not because the picture looks like crap, but because they all look like crap now. Check out the pastels and the ghostly image on the right. They didn’t let me keep my old license, either, the one I’ve had for the last 10 years.

I should have told them I lost it, like I should have told them I lost my Japanese Non-Resident Alien booklet (their equivalent of a green card). Well, less junk is probably good. I have enough junk as it is.

So, I was worried that the medication I take or some illness is making me burp a fishy smell. Well, it started happening yesterday during the day, instead of in the evening. Then I remembered that I’m taking “Fish Oil” as one of my vitamins. Duh.

Went to the local REI today to get a small bottle for my ma. She’s going to Japan in a couple of days, so I needed to get her travel bottles for some toiletries. I think it’s because the weather is so nice, but REI was more crowded than it was during the opening weekend. My huge $1.40 purchase didn’t take too long and the cashier told me that the place had been nuts all weekend.