Everything’s back to normalish in my life. For example, I was supposed to go out to lunch with some co-workers on one particular Thursday, and they texted me from the restaurant telling me they forgot me. It was OK, because  I was supposed to go out to dinner. But that got canceled to. But that also meant that I got to use a coupon for a free Jumbo Jack and when I finally got home my smoke alarm started chirping! While I was still awake! That’s about as lucky as I can get, so I put that day in the “win” column.

The f*cking birds are going in the f*cking chimney again, which means about three thousand people are across the street from my house every evening. It’s a bit stressful, especially if you need to drive in or out of the neighborhood at that time. Instead of worrying about traffic and parking on a daily basis, I’ve been walking down to do yoga instead of going to Crossfit. Last time I went to Crossfit, I hurt my back helping someone put her weights away. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

Three gym memberships, and I’m down to just going to one. Funny thing is, I’m going to the cheapest of the three.

Huh. I still don’t feel better all the time. Figures. Took a while to dig this hole and it’ll take a while to crawl back out. Weight loss is still a positive.

Yesterday going to the gym helped a lot. My neighbor was telling me he never experienced runner’s high and that’s too bad. Sometimes it happens at Crossfit too, but today I found that sometimes it doesn’t. One of my fellow gym-goers did tell me something that I didn’t fully realize. I told her I couldn’t keep the unhelpful thoughts out of my head and described why, and she said it’s because if we weren’t competitive we wouldn’t be at Crossfit. Even me, the guy who takes the longest to do the workout. DFL, once again, in the gym and probably at life.

Well, I knew the way to stop feeling so stupid about having a crush on someone was to actually ask, politely, if the feeling was even close to being mutual. And the answer of course was no. But I understand this process and while I’ll feel like someone punched me in the guts for a couple of days, I’ll also have several benefits. One is I’m sure this will all go away quicker. Second is, I have little interest in food and I’m losing some weight even more than just by working out.

I’m getting too old for Crossfit. I know there are superb physical specimens even older than I that successfully participating but for me it’s just a way to get hurt more often. I’ve known I should try yoga instead but it’s taken five or more years to finally try it. There’s a Core Power in my neighborhood and I finally am doing the “free week”. I’ve discussed this at length with my neighbor and I’m probably not getting the whole spiritual benefit, but I’m doing it for the exercise. My guess is that some combination of Crossfit and yoga might actually be what I need to do and that expensive gym membership to the Multnomah Athletic Club is going to just be one of the multiple gym memberships I’m going to have.

What do I care? What am I going to spend my money on? I just confirmed my philosophy on dating: It doesn’t work out for Todd. (Or Hisashi, same thing.) I was discussing this with my neighbor. As I was growing up I found very few women who wanted to go out with Asian men. I know it’s changing, but just for younger guys. And when I went to Japan, I found out that Japanese women wanted to go out with Japanese men (not Japanese-American men) or really foreign men (not Japanese-American men). There could be someone out there for me, but so far I’ve found very little to prove me wrong. So gym membership, gym membership, THREE gym memberships.

And, unfortunately, I am feeling better so I’m afraid my appetite is going to come back.

I’m pretty sure no one is reading this so I can go spouting off, but every time I assume no one is reading this somebody is reading this. Well, I’m pretty sure it’s down to two or three people, tops, so I should be OK.

My life continues to be a series of annoyances, but recently one of my neighbors died. Sam Blackman was great guy, only 41, with two cute boys and fit as hell. The only time I remember being annoyed by his arguments was when he was trying to tell me that we needed to understand the position of Joe Arpaio instead of dismissing him out-of-hand like I was doing. He had his quirks, like being very stingy about his clothing allowance, but with the reasoning that he was going to be in public service some day with a very small paycheck. This coming from a multimillionaire, I’m guessing, who sold his company to Amazon. I would see him walking down the street with his two boys, taking them to baseball or soccer even on cold rainy days. He’s going to be missed by a lot of people, me, our fellow gym members, the local high-tech community, and the state of Oregon.

My little problems don’t seem to matter that much, but that just makes me thing that I don’t matter that much. Thinking like that, along with being tired, makes me feel a little depressed. I usually know how to get out of that by now and that usually just means blasting dance music into my head during the day, and watching music videos on youtube if I feel that way at night.

Then I remembered one of the reasons I started writing a blog was because I started Crossfit and it made me feel  incapable, old, and dull. Everyone was younger, fitter, faster, and I was just taking up space and sweating too much. Being able to say that out loud made me feel a little better. That was years ago and what am I doing again? Crossfit again. And in that time since I first started, people are even younger, even more fit, and doing way more interesting things.

The worst part is that I can’t stop thinking about someone and just like most times this happens, there’s no reason for it. I’m a grown-ass man, and I’m feeling moony like I did in high school. At least now over the years I’ve figured out ways to distract myself from this, but now what I’m old I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep and guess who pops into my head and keeps me awake? (Here’s where my sister is starting to think it’s probably a dude, but it isn’t.) I thought I would’ve grown out of this sort of thing, but I guess not.

At least there’s my iTunes to distract me. My iPhone has 1639 songs or 4.7 days worth of music, that gets put on shuffle. Of course shuffle is awful and it plays the same few songs over and over, but tonight it was on point. Walking down to the store it started with 38 Special’s So Caught Up in You, a song that I remember hearing in high school while I was feeling the same way. Then on the way back Alcohol by the Barenaked Ladies came up, which was appropriate because all I was doing was getting my growler filled. Not as apropos but fun nevertheless, You be Illin’ by Run-D.M.C. came up. Ah, the distractions of weird old music. At least it helps me.