Today was our neighborhood block party and I made some “Chocolate Peanut Butter Hash Browns” from a recipe my sister sent me. They were OK, and probably the best I could do for my first try at baking in probably 30 years. Well, I made a pie from a can a couple years back, but that probably doesn’t count. Most of them disappeared, so I figure I didn’t do that poorly. It sure wasn’t as good as the fruit cobbler or the Tiramisu, but it’s baby steps for me.

I even went swimming today.

But after it was all done, I went crawling down under the house to take pictures of the foundation. I would have done it earlier, but my camera refused to cooperate. First it was the batteries, then it was the memory card, then it was just acting funny. In the end, I got some boring pictures of the foundation.

Spent the day kicking around with Greg so there isn’t much to report. I’m thinking of trying to put a cell phone into a dial telephone like this guy did. It might be funny and worth the fun building the thing. We’ll see.

I also have to try to bake cookies for the first time in about 30 years tomorrow. Wish me luck!

On the way to work this morning, I ran for a “Walk” light. After I got to the other side of the street, I noticed I was a little light-headed. Even worse, I got a complete-body cold sweat. I did some of my usual morning tasks, but around lunch time I decided to head home and — at the very least — take a nap. I felt a little better, but figured I’d better call the trainer I was supposed to meet with and cancel my evening torture session. As soon as I got off the phone, I felt much better. (It went downhill a bit from there, so I think I’m still not doing that well.)

I didn’t sleep all that well last night and I hope it wasn’t dinner. Seared tuna on couscous and a glass of white wine at Gino’s. I think it’s more likely it was the stuffy room and getting sore two days after working out.

Well, I took a nap for an hour and a half and I feel like taking another!

Anything banned is on my list to buy. The list does not get updated very often, so I don’t make it a crusade to find things that are banned. But so far, I think I have:

• 2 Live Crew: As Nasty as They Wanna Be
• Rage Against the Machine: Evil Empire

Wait, that’s it? And I never even listened to the Rage Against the Machine CD. I got that back in the late 90’s, and even had to get BMG to ship me a second copy since the first one had a CRACK in it, and I never played it! If I had my big iPod at work (and if I hadn’t erased everything on it in a giant bizarro experiment to backup my laptop) I’d try listening to it RIGHT NOW.

OK, so I also read all the Harry Potter books after they banned it, and I started using Morse code on ham radio after the military “banned” it (obsoleted, really). So I guess there is some more to the banning thing and being odd.

Oh, and I’m not all that sore this morning. Just very, very tired.

Met with a trainer today. When I got to the gym, he’d forgotten and had already left. No biggie, since it didn’t take very long to come back. In any case, he showed me some exercises that were very simple but very difficult. Ever tried pushups with your toes on an exercise ball?

In any case, holding my arms high enough to type on the keyboard is making them very tired. I think he also said, “You have anything against Advil? You may need Advil tomorrow.”

So the mason came by and he thinks the facade on the front of the house is sinking. That means tomorrow I get to talk to “earth anchor” about something-or-another that is going to cost a lot of money. Well, the option is watching the front of the house crumble, and I don’t like that idea. Yar. Home maintenance.

Since it’s in the low 90’s today, I have little else to talk about other than that I can’t wait for the cooling that’s supposed to happen in a couple of days!

OK, I can’t remember what I was going to go on about, so first, some spooky sounds from NASA. Click on the “play sound” link for Halloween-y science-fiction-y sounds.

I finally made an appointment with a trainer so my undirected flopping around at the gym can be more directed flopping around. I really should be saving my money, since we’re having the gutters replaced and the stonework in the front of the house fixed.

And finally, a picture:

My connection has been awfully slow some days so I decided to install some graphing software to show me what’s happening. What’s happening is that so far, this month, my sister’s site has had 1273756 hits. That’s 1 point 3 million. I’ve had 32 thousand. Yar!

So instead of doing the one thing I thought I’d do, go running — well, go running and then mow the lawn — I attended a neighborhood meeting with our neighborhood police officer, helped one neighbor install a new air conditioner, and then helped another neighbor move some furniture. After that it was lazy time. This shows you why my sister gets 40 times more hits than I do. My life is booooring. Ice cream socials for her while I’m watching “The Replacements” on TBS. Well, it’s my life and I miss football.

I was supposed to go to a barbecue tonight, but I was hanging out with Greg and I ended up going out to dinner with his family. That wasn’t so bad, but you know how a cartoon character can eat a bomb and have his body expand due to the internal pressure? I felt like that. Not really sure why, and I’m also not sure why I’m not burping and why the gas production happened quite a ways “south” of my stomach. Anyway, I’m feeling better, but there’s a good chance that a hazmat team could be called in if someone gets near me tonight.

It also looks like a bazillion people are hitting my web server, but I haven’t quite figured out what pages they’re looking at. Time for more graphs.

Most everyone who deals with Key Bank (or has dealt with Key Bank) told me, “Well, duh. Everyone knows they suck ass.” What they do well is to charge my poor mother fees for every little thing she does. She transferred a bunch of money into a Key Bank investment from a Key Bank CD and it just meant a free-for-all on extra added charges. So, usually, we go into the local branch and talk to the local manager. Every stinking month they’d charge her $12 and she’d have it credited back.

But guess what? The branch manager transferred. So I go in there and this new guy is giving me the hard line on the apparently non-refundable $25 fee on all IRAs under $1000. “Call the number on the statement,” he says. I tell him what we usually do and am about to tell him how much I love the voice maze on the phone line. He holds the thing behind his back and says, “I can’t do that.” I ask why. He tells me, “It’s not even your account.”

His demeanor and his lack of helpfulness made me want to call him a runty little pile of crap, but instead I said, “Call the police. If you think I stole this account information, call the police. I’ll wait for them.” He refused so I asked for something more reasonable, the number for the old branch manager and his name. Hector Martinez. I was expecting something else, something more Middle Eastern, but what do I know?

Later, I spent a half-an-hour in voice maze hell and had my questions answered. The general answer that Key Bank gave me is: withdraw all your money and put it somewhere else. The penalties for closing out a less-than-$1000 IRA are less than the $25 yearly fee and there’s no reason to keep a small checking account at such an annoying bank.

Not much new today. Peter was supposed to be away for dinner, so I was going to go to the gym. He ended up coming back to my parents’ house, so I was supposed ot skip the gym and head home.

Not a whole lot to report after that. I ended up in the basement trying to get some electronic gadgetry to work. Unfortunately, everything I touched went to hell today. The morse code gadget I was playing with the other day now has a fine display on it, but it no longer makes any sound. The PIC programmer I bought no longer connects to the computer.

Plus, all sorts of mysterious knit bloggers are leaving me comments. I BLAME MY SISTER.

No, not me, but my sister. My brother-in-law is here and he’s a weird old man. I’m a spoiled kid in this house, I admit it, but my ma was trying to save 2 pieces of pizza, one for me, one for Peter. He ate them both. He almost did the same thing with a large bottle of beer. And today we went to a movie (The March of the Penguins — it put me to sleep at one point) and while we were sitting on a bench in the theatre waiting for friends to arrive he said, “OH! LESBIANS!” Not that I think he has anything against lesbians, he just seems to talk like an old man, too.

He is a nice guy, though. Just sorta like pa.

CLARIFICATION: Peter is only a few months older than I am, and I’m only 16 months older than my sister. So he’s almost a couple years older than her. He only ACTS like an old man. Not that we’re spring chickens or anything. (This clarification is for the few people who read this for whatever unknown reason, and who haven’t actually met Peter.)

I should have gone to sleep early yesterday but I stayed up and finished the Harry Potter book. I had to return it to the library for the next person to read. The only disappointment I have is that it kind of seems like it’s just setup for the next book. Oh, well. Can’t win them all.