Before I describe the dream I had last night, I had a dream the night before last where I was in the dark, and I knew I was in the basement, and I was yelling at my mom to turn the lights back on. Sometimes I’m down there screwing with my computers or soldering on some piece of electronic equipment and my mom turns out the light. There’s a desk lamp on the workbench, so it’s not a big deal. Also, the comforting glow of the monitors keeps me company. It was a dream, though, and I woke up right after it happened.

Last night I had a dream where I forgot to pick my mom up from the airport and when I got up it was 10AM and she was already here. I woke up right after that dream, too, and I checked the clock. I had set my alarm for 5:45AM and the clock said 6:24AM. I rushed downstairs, threw on some clothes and my glasses, and ran outside. When I got outside I noticed frost on the windshield and I had to take care of that before I could leave. I drove as fast as I could (not passing anyone, but not going the speed limit) and made it to the arrival gate to find no one there. I called my sister right away to find out if the flight was delayed, and it wasn’t. It was 6:56AM (I can tell because of cell phone logs).

So I waited. And I waited. I was parked outside, and I walked around outside my car to look in the windows. There weren’t that many cars, but I couldn’t just leave it there without having Homeland Security bother me, so I just walked through all lanes of traffic to see inside through the windows. I moved the car back about half a city block to get a better view. It was 34°F outside, and I stood outside my car until I was half-frozen to make sure my mom would see me.

At 7:33AM my mom came outside and found me. Turns out she was inside waiting for me, away from the windows. Yeesh.

I was kind of worried about the alarm. My dad (who both my sister and I don’t want to be like) used to sleep through his alarm every day. It could be beeping at him for a full hour and it wouldn’t be turned off until someone else went in and shut it off. I was afraid that I was becoming more like him. So I checked my alarm clock this afternoon. It said it was 2AM on 1/1. I think that means that there’s just something seriously wrong with that alarm clock.

My mom should be on a flight right now, heading back for Portland. We left her in Japan for two more weeks and I think she caught a cold. It’s something she seems to do every time she travels to Japan. It’ll be nice to have her back. She can watch me cross something else off my list: replace the chimney cap. I didn’t want to do it with no one else at home, in case someone needed to call an ambulance or something. In any case, I may be up on the roof tomorrow, after I get my car fixed. We’ll see.

I had an idea about some things I needed to do soon. Renew my passport. Recap the chimney. Take my car in for the recall. Fix the window.

I did none of those things today. Every time I thought of doing ANYTHING, it would start pouring. And it was a cold rain today, too. So the lunch I was going to squeeze in didn’t happen. The green tea latte I was going to get at Starbucks didn’t happen. The only thing I got out to do was to get dinner at McDonalds, and then put out the garbage. The only thing I really learned today is that getting a combo at McDonalds is only 10 cents more than getting just a Big Mac and fries.

It’s supposed to be a lot nicer tomorrow and I have a list of things I have to do. One of the things is to buy a quart of gravy (an errand my sister gave me). Let’s hope I can do something that simple without screwing it up.

I’ve been talking about my rolfing-ish experiences and they’ve been painful at times, but today I had the head session. This means I got my neck massaged, and then my jaw (in my mouth), and then had a grown man stick his finger up my nose. Let me tell you, I was a bit lightheaded after all this and I actually feel a little better, but it was one of the weirdest things I’ve done, I think.

In any case, I didn’t do much of anything else of note today, though I did get my laptop ordered..

I was a little late for everything today. I got to the Honda dealer to buy some new windshield wiper blades and the guy told me that if I’d gotten there a minute earlier, I would have had the last pair, but right then they were putting the last pair on someone else’s car. I called the dry cleaner and they said they were closing in five minutes. And I got to the ATM just after the protesters set up to complain about the bank’s funding of coal mining. It all seems meaningless, though. I called my sister to complain and she told me that one of her old friends had just committed suicide. She was married with two kids and had quietly been battling depression.

Kind of makes my problems seem silly.

Speaking of silly, I was told there were 2200 openings at Megacorp. If I filter for ENGINEER and my geographic area, and the pay grades I can apply for, there are only 87. Of course, I’m not just any kind of engineer, so I looked through the 87 and only found about 2 or 3 that I’m qualified for. And the “new” jobs postings for next year won’t happen until after I’m kicked to the curb. They usually work it out that way.

I pay for Amazon Prime, which means I’m a sucker and an Amazon fanboy. I pay too much to get free 2-day shipping, but I pay it every year. Today I tried to order something that clearly had the “Amazon Prime available” o the web page, and they still charged me for shipping. A book and an oven thermometer, all of $26, and they tried to charge me an extra $22 in shipping. To repair this problem, I had to call what sounded to be Indonesia in the morning, and what sounded to be India in the evening. Both were incredibly slow calls and the guy in the evening appeared to be a bit mentally impaired. I had to read him the order number FIVE TIMES VERY SLOWLY. And by very slowly, I mean like, “ONE (one one-thousand), ZERO (one one-thousand), etc” and that still wasn’t slow enough for the guy. I’m guessing that Amazon is updating their software before the Xmas season and they’re screwing it up.

It was also the last day to pay for property tax and get a discount and I almost forgot. I never forget these kinds of things, but the whole job situation has me a bit discombobulated. Fortunately, I keep emailing a co-worker, asking him, “What are you doing? I’m doing nothing. How many jobs have you applied for? I’ve only found one I’m qualified for,” and he replied that one of the only things he’d done today was pay his property tax. That guy is a lifesaver.

The only other thing I did was go to the gym. One of the women there was pretty darn surly. It was around peak time (5PM) and I finally found an open cardio machine, but it had a cell phone on it. I wanted to get it back to the owner, so I asked her if she saw who was on the machine. No dice. She said she didn’t know and I got the attitude that she didn’t care because it would take 15 seconds of her precious time. I wanted to say, “Listen bitch, this is Oregon, and we have some manners here. If you want to work your flabby ass out to distract from that flabby face, fine. But at least be courteous enough to fake concern about other people so we can get this phone back to its owner. OK? By the way, your haircut is atrocious. I don’t care if you’re married, a lesbian, or a married lesbian. There’s no reason to have a haircut that looks like that.”

I’m afraid that my current situation is making me a bit surly. At least I didn’t say it out loud.

Imagine a guy on the first day of his job search, the day after he’s been told that his current job will no longer exist. You’d figure he’d send out a few emails, call a few contacts, surf a few job web sites, and then just relax because it’s his first day of externally imposed freedom, right? But for some reason it feels weird when that same guy spends all day sitting around watching TV shows that are queued up on his Tivo. Even if that guy took vacation days in the past, doing the exact same thing.

On a different note, I bet I was a lot more attractive when I had a job, compared to when I didn’t.

I went to work late today because I had a stomachache last night. Well, it was also because I was demotivated by the prospect of not having a job soon, and knowing that meant that I probably had no work to do because what can they assign you to do in a few weeks?

On a completely different note (COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. REMEMBER, THIS IS NOT RELATED TO THE THING ABOVE!) can anyone who has successfully found a job to give me any hints they have? Since 1991, all the jobs I’ve found have been through referrals. Basically, friends tell me when there are openings and get me in the door. I have been incredibly unsuccessful in finding jobs through other means like monster, the classifieds, etc.

I went to the gym for the first time in weeks and I’m underwhelmed. I suppose there could be other factors suppressing any joy I can get from life, but I’m uncertain what that could be. Certainly it couldn’t be work, or the burglary, or the strife in the neighborhood, or any other such thing, could it?

It wasn’t the best of days, but for some reason I’m not feeling all that well. Perhaps my dinner isn’t setting right.

Last night I went to sleep late and I was woken up by sirens! Apparently I slept through the gunshots, but a guy caught someone peeping in at his girlfriend and gave the alleged peeper a beat down. This happened on the other side of the school from where I live. The alleged peeper was armed and fired some errant shots and I don’t think anyone was hit. The news tonight said the fight went on for 20 minutes. The alleged peeper looked like hell in his mugshot on TV, and the boyfriend seems to have broken his hand.

So today at Megacorp, we found out how confusing it is to not have a manager. Our manager bailed on us last week. He’s known for a month that he’s transferring out and he’s been gone for a week without telling us that he’s not coming back. He said he was on a “special project” but really he secretly switched jobs. And today we had a divisional meeting where we were told that our group was targeted for reassignment. Hard to know what that really means when your manager is gone. Fortunately, we have managers “up the chain” who are going to let us know what they know. Well, a little of what they know because they can’t tell us everything. That’s the nature of things. So this means that my sister should really figure out what she wants for her birthday (which was back in August but she keeps changing her mind about what she wants) while I still have a job.

I think I just bought my sixth Mac of the year (two were for my sister and brother-in-law’s) just now. A friend is getting me a discount – a legitimate discount! – and I should have a laptop within a week or so, I bet. Whoopee!

Friday night I was so tired that I had a couple of bagel bites for dinner. This is after a spectacular two days back at work which I can’t talk about for obvious reasons. In any case, falling asleep appears to be something I’m getting even better at.

Saturday was Megan’s brother’s wedding. They had a small family ceremony and a bigger reception. Oddly enough, the reception was in a beautiful venue in Milwaukie, Oregon, where it was hard to know that you were in amongst all the auto body repair shops and strip clubs. The only other oddity is how the staff of the venue wanted to hustle us off after 8:30PM. I suppose after the bride and groom left there really wasn’t any reason to hang around. Megan took us all out for drinks afterwards and I almost fell asleep there as well.

Sunday was almost normal. I woke up to watch some football. I went for my painful, I mean INTENSE, massage in West Linn. But this afternoon my brother-in-law wanted me to to take him to the Apple store to get a new MacBook. This is the fourth Mac I’m involved in buying this year. We got it back to his place and started setting it up when my sister and Megan got back. They also had computer questions and it was a weird sight after dinner, the three of them with their laptops on the kitchen table. Even weirder was my brother-in-law checking out iTunes and singing along with old Stones tunes. Yikes!

And here I am, up too late, trying to figure out why I’m trying to catch up on the TV shows I missed while I was in Japan this late at night. I’m not too bright, I guess.

I’m back at work now and, well, things are probably going to happen. But I’m not talking about that any more.

I think I’d better go ahead and replace my lost laptop soon. My mom will be back soon enough and want her “game machine” back. I got her a DS Lite and the Japanese version of Brain Age but she’s hooked on Tumblebugs. For that she needs the MacBook. If only Apple would come through with another discount. Oh, well.

I think I’m too sleepy to think of anything else. Megan’s coming up tomorrow because her brother is getting married this weekend. Whoopee!

After a poor night of sleep in Tokyo, I got up at 7AM Japan time which was about 3PM yesterday US time. I’ve been up for about 30 hours with only very short naps of less than 5 minutes. We got on the plane about 3PM Japan time and we got into Portland early, at 6AM. Unfortunately, being early didn’t help much because customs wasn’t ready and we had to sit in the plane, on the ground, for almost half an hour. I was at my sister’s house by 7AM and I think I was home by 9. And I did nothing today.

It wasn’t really nothing. I did laundry, got my car out of my neighbor’s garage, checked out some library books, and even locked myself out of the house. Late in the afternoon, my sister called and told me that the weather was going to get bad soon. I decided to “rake the leaves” (run the leaf blower) and mow the lawn. The mail arrived in the middle of this all and I realized I didn’t have the house key. Fortunately, two different neighbors had the key and I wasn’t out for very long. I even had time to clean some of the gutters before it got too dark.

And this evening I went to the Apple store to exchange my “old” (2 week old) MacBook with one of the new ones that just came out. I had to pay a restocking fee, but now I have a fancy new motherboard or some such thing. Hiron, the graphic artist, told me that in Japan all you can do if they come out with a new version soon after you bought your computer is go home and cry. I figure a restocking fee was a little easier than than.

I tried the US version of the Green Tea Latte at Starbucks and it wasn’t quite as good, but good enough. The sweetener tasted like Japanese apple juice for some reason. And my first dinner back in town was at Jack-in-the-Box. Lunch was a chili dog from a cart in my neighborhood. Do I know how to live it up or what?