I was invited to a Christmas Party and a Hanukkah Party on Saturday. Fortunately, they didn’t completely overlap and the Christmas party was next door at my neighbor’s house. The Hanukkah party was far away, closer to Megacorp and traffic was awful. They were both interesting, though the neighbor’s party was a little more yuppie than I’d care to visit on a regular basis. I was about to go all lefty on one of the Republican yuppies, but just left for the Hanukkah party instead. Fortunately, the Hanukkah party was at a co-worker’s place and we share a similar, cynical, world view.

Other than that I guess I’m getting closer to the end of my massage thingy. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do after going through the course of 12, because It’s not like everything is all perfect now. For example, the horribly painful right-side IT band massage from last week was repeated on the left side, and I could have sworn he did that already. We’ll see, I suppose.

I was supposed to be at a party tonight with a plethora of libertines but I’m at home watching TV. Earlier in the day I had a visit from an annoying friend of mine who wouldn’t leave and demanded snacks for his daughter. He thinks that exposing people to his daughter will make us love her instead of filling us with murderous rage. In any case, the party was run by another friend who is equally annoying. Since I had my fill of annoyance for the day, I decided not to go. Besides, it was a part of “SantaCon” where a bunch of bunch of annoying Burning Man-ish trust fund hipsters get together, dress up as Santa, and annoy the general population. I didn’t need any part of that.

Earlier in the day I had to accompany my sister to a Cisco dealer to listen to a presentation for the place she works for. They’re trying to get a phone system set up and I was her technical backup. It was almost TWO HOURS LONG. Then I had to help reinstall Vista on the Vaio I told her not to buy. I was unsuccessful. Man, do I hate Sony laptops.

I had my passport for nearly 10 years and it had nearly expired before I finally left the country again. I’m getting really boring. Heck, I hardly ever leave the state and Washington is 20 minutes away when the traffic isn’t bad.

I did go into work today and I’ve realized that I’m being quite the slacker about applying for jobs. I should be hounding people because, well, that’s what it takes in Megacorp. Unfortunately, I don’t really have it in me to hound people for some of the jobs I’ve applied for. Maybe when desperation starts setting in. It hasn’t started quite yet.

So L.A. Fitness has taken over the gym and the place feels a little different already. I was in early, so a lot of the people looked unfamiliar as well. I guess the independent personal trainers were given a week to clear out and they’re probably happy to be gone. As a native Oregonian, L.A. is the last thing I want to see moving into the area.

I tried to get out of the gym early, and I wasn’t too late. I had dinner with friends who wanted to try a Japanese restaurant downtown which has had great sushi the times I’ve gone. They wanted to let the sushi guys decide what to make and were afraid they wouldn’t be able to tell them that one of them had food allergies. The waitress ended up speaking great English so there was no problem at all. Well, at least we all got to eat great sushi and Murata in Portland lived up to its reputation.

I postponed my dental checkup twice and I usually don’t postpone it at all. The first time I was in Japan and second time I had an interview that I still haven’t heard back from. I finally made it in and I had a new hygienist who was a bit weird.

The hygienist seemed to be a bit new to dealing with real people. She said, “RELAX YOUR LIPS,” and then grabbed my upper lip. I’ve never heard that before and I’ve never had anyone grab my lip before. I can imagine that dental hygienists have trouble saying the same things over and over but usually they tell me to, “close my mouth,” or, “close my lips,” around the tube that sucks all the liquid out of my mouth and, “open,” or just, “OK,” to tell me to open my mouth again. This hygienist said, “G’head,” to tell me to close my mouth around the tube and, “Mm, hmm,” to tell me to open my mouth again. And she kept hitting my teeth with her tools.

I wasn’t in the best of moods anyway. I had trouble sleeping because of the storm. The rain on the window and the roof kept waking me up. Then, when I thought about sleeping in, the doctor about my mom’s prescription. My mom also told me she was having “hip pain” because of a fall she took in the hospital (she fell on her ass and it started hurting even more today). So I had to make an appointment for her and then throw on some clothes to take her to the doctor. Then I had to rush home and get ready for my dental appointment.

The rest of my day wasn’t as bad. It was miserable outside, windy and pouring and I was lucky enough to be able to hide after lunch. There are trees falling on houses and creeks flooding people out. I’m lucky to just be stuck in the house.

I always liked the idea of buying Sears appliances because it was easy to go to the Sears store and buy replacement parts if something broke. Unfortunately, that theory is kind of busted for our refrigerator. Little plastic bits keep breaking in our “Hecho en Mexico” refrigerator and they’re expensive to replace. The front of the vegetable crisper was first, and now one of the rails a roll-out freezer basket is broken. I hate buying extended warrantees, but maybe it’s necessary if every little piece of plastic is going to break and costs $90 to replace.

Other than that the only excitement I had today was to go to the Nike Factory Store and buy some golf clothes. Not like I’ve played since the weather’s turned to crap, but I can always dream. (And I can dream that my slice has gone away, too.)

So today I really did do almost nothing. I even skipped my weekly breakfast with my buddy Greg because I ate so much last night that I wasn’t hungry until dinner tonight. But I did go over and fix some problems my sister was having with her computers. Really, though, I sat around, watched football, and felt like I shouldn’t have eaten so much last night. Sort of like vacation.

I went to the local steak restaurant for a friend’s birthday party and after I ate so much that I thought I would burst, I had dessert. Brilliant. The dinner was great but some clown hit my brother-in-law’s car and then had the gall to just park in the space in front. They turned too early and hit the front left bumper of his car with their back right bumper. There were witnesses and everything but the guy just parked and walked off. Oh, well. I suppose that’s what insurance is for.

I ordered a bunch of stuff online and I was waiting for one more delivery from UPS, but UPS brought two boxes instead of one. Of course, one was my ridiculously geeky purchase, a ruler like they use on CSI.

The other was a “Get Well” fruit basket from my friend Sun for my mom. Thanks Sun! I think my mom is getting better, but she’s going to be on anticoagulants for months.

So that’s the story of Friday night. I’m still waiting for this week to be over. Maybe I’ll just call it a bad month and figure tomorrow will be better.

Today was the day that I had a meeting with my old manager and my temporary manager at Megacorp. Our whole group was scheduled, one at a time, so it was pretty obvious that we were getting our layoff info today. And we did.

I can’t imagine why, but I was pretty tired today. It probably had something to do with my inexplicable sleep problems. It surely couldn’t be the stress. I took a nap before going to the gym and felt kind of dopey the rest of the day. It was probably for the best, because when I got to the gym I found several of the old-timers in an uproar because our old Mavericks, which became a Gold’s Gym, is now going to be an L.A. Fitness. I guess L.A. Fitness is just going to use the gym as a “pre-sales” location until their behemoth of a gym is finished down in the yuppie Pearl District. At that time, this location will finally close.

So, I think I’m ready for this week to be over.

My mom’s finally back. We thought she’d get out this morning, but hospitals being the way they are, she didn’t get out until 5PM or so. I was at the hospital after my interviews and I was beat. The interview was an all-day affair and I was mainly picked because I can speak Japanese. Because of that, one of the parts of the interview was in Japanese. Unfortunately, it was last and in the part of the afternoon where I thought I was going to pass out. It was torture trying to answer questions at all, and even worse in a language I haven’t used much in years. I really need more sleep.

So, my sister drove my mom home, and I went to the drug store to get my mom’s prescriptions. One of them turned out to be $900 and I was warned it would be expensive so I wasn’t surprised. However, it was also not stocked in the pharmacy or any of the four other pharmacies they called for me. Well, today on Scrubs (which is on like five times a day) someone died of what my mom had, so I’m willing to pay the $900.

In any case, the job I interviewed for sounds like real work. At least it’s a job.

My mom has troubles with chest pains. She gets a cough and then pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining outside of her lung. However, it is chest pain, and even though none of the symptoms are similar to a heart attack I still have to call the advice nurse and answer the questions.

1. Is the pain localized or does it radiate down the arm?
2. Is there pain elsewhere?
3. Do you feel nauseous?
4. Are you sweating?
5. Do you have shortness of breath?

Of course we know the problem, and we know that Advil pretty much cures it, but even though the symptoms say it’s just pleurisy, she has to go to the emergency room to make sure.

Unfortunately, this time they found something. They heard problems in the lungs and got her a CT scan. They thought she had bilateral pneumonia and they admitted her so they could give her IV antibiotics. I stayed with my mom until 3AM, enduring the same questions over and over. A resident who looked like a little kid was the most thorough, but also the most annoying. My mom just wanted to leave.

Well, the good news was that they thought she could leave today. The bad news is that it wasn’t pneumonia, but a pleural effusion. I guess she got a blood clot in her leg and it got up to her lung. She’s going to be on blood thinners for a while. Even worse news is that she had a reaction to some of the antibiotics and looks like a pumpkin. She has to stay another night until her rash goes away.

So, I should be getting some sleep since I have an interview tomorrow, but I’m just a little keyed up. I’m sure I’ll fall asleep at the wrong time, right in the middle of some hard questions. Hooray.

I really haven’t done much during the holiday but sit around and watch football. I suppose yesterday, before dinner, I did to and clean the gutters, and today before lunch I went up on the roof and took down my antenna, but that’s less than an hour per death-defying task.

Yesterday I went to a Thanksgiving Potluck at my sister’s friends’ place in the swanky Pearl District. The Pearl isn’t that swanky, really, but that’s the way it’s marketed. Lots of retirees with money move in there. In any case, my sister’s friends are more of the young urban professional type than retirees, and being physicians the other friends at the potluck were all physicians as well. There’s a fine line between earnestness and humorlessness and everyone was clearly on the earnest side of thing. Very friendly as well. My sister made a huge turkey for the potluck and other people brought a lot of food as well. There were thirteen people and the leftovers were more than what we ate. Oddly enough, I only had one plate of food and I was so stuffed that I was a little uncomfortable. That didn’t stop me from eating the homemade pie.

Today I dismantled the antenna I have on the roof attached to the chimney. I kind of promised a neighbor that I’d take it down until the sunspot cycle was back and the antenna would actually be useful again, but I’m way too lazy to take the thing down for promises or for aesthetic purposes. He didn’t like it because it interfered with his meditation. I took it down because the furnace chimney it was attached to is falling apart. I ended up dropping some rather heavy things off of the roof, but fortunately not the heaviest thing up there (my big ass). As a reward to myself, I went out for a double cheeseburger and a chocolate malt with my friends. I wasn’t going to have the chocolate malt, but everyone else was having one so I had one as well. Too bad that it was in the 30’s and windy. We had to have coffee to warm up after the milkshake.