I think it’s traditional for Chinese restaurants to be closed on Monday and it seems like Korean restaurants are following suit. I had the day off, as did my sister, and we took our mom on a Costco run. We figured we’d go to a Korean restaurant we like but it was closed, as were my second and third suggestions. We ended up at a Korean restaurant that was supposed to be good (and it was very good) but it took TWO HOURS to get out of there. We only saw one waiter and one busboy, and I wonder if they were both doing the cooking as well. The food was actually really fresh and if it weren’t for the wait I’d recommend it. I think it goes on my list of places that are too big a pain in the ass to eat at, like Apizza Scholls, Screen Door, and anywhere else I have to wait two hours to get a seat.

I will admit we were seated the whole time and were able to watch something called “Pop Star” that looked like “Korean Idol” and a dating show where the unlucky guys were thrown into a pool, but if someone told me how long it would be I would have found another place to eat.

I went to a ham radio swap meet for the first time in years today. For the past several years I’ve been choosing to go to the gym instead of driving to a dusty fairgrounds to see the same junk being sold by the same people. The junk tends to move from owner to owner, but it always seems like the same stuff. I really just go to talk to the “old-timers”, the friends I only see a few times a year at some excuse for a ham radio gathering. This time I spent several hundred dollars on power cabling and tools, but everything I bought was new though the big draw of the swap meet is the older pre-used stuff. In any case, it was fun and I did stay to say hello to a lot of people I know.

I guess the big news is that I did punt going to the gym today. It’s mainly because I realized that I’m not sure why I work so hard to say fit. My New Years resolution is to do more ham radio, and that means I have to gain several hundred pounds and get a comb-over to fit in. The gym is counter to those goals.

So, how romantic can I get? I read a comic book series that fell off the intarwebs onto my hard drive, I watched <b>Comic Book Men</b> on AMC, and then watched <b>How I Met Your Mother</b> ’cause it was on my DVR. Sorta romantical, innit?

I’m on a couple of dating sites. The more legitimate one keeps sending me women who don’t exist and are probably wanting me to send money to Nigeria. The other one has matched me up with lesbians in the past, but recently it matched me up with a woman who said, “I won’t date anyone shorter than me.” This made me think a bit. How nice to have one thing to be measured against and I wonder how I fare. She says she’s 5’10”, but is she rounding up? I’m sort of 5’9½”, but that’s just between what I probably am in the morning and what I probably am at night. And the last time the doctor measured me (the most official measurement, probably), I took my shoes off and it told me I was 5’8½”. (Of course I wasn’t having any of that and I got out a book and a tape measure when I got home and was just over 5’9″.)

But honestly, how nice to have something like linear me sure to use to weed me out before I get turned down because of some personal failings. She probably doesn’t like Asians either, but whatever.

Got some more things in today and while I should probably inventory the $500 of connectors I ordered to make sure everything is right, I decided to put together the kit that sends Morse code from a USB connection.At least it cheered me up a bit.

Not really sure why I’ve been so cranky for the last couple of weeks. Can’t be because of February 14th, the birthday of the great state of Oregon or the fake dating emails I’ve been getting which appear to originate in Nigeria. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to Nigeria on the radio. I wonder if I can somehow convince one of the fake prospective dates into talking to me on the radio and then sending me a card to confirm the contact? Probably not.

Now I have two tripods, one rotator, three antennas, and nothing on the air. One tripod is on the garage roof, the other is in the backyard holding up an antenna. Two of the antennas are in the garage. I spent the weekend putting together the other one which turned out to be much larger than I was expecting. It’s taking up most of the backyard. I really just need to have SOMETHING up and connected to my radio, but nothing is “up” and I still don’t have enough cable to hook anything together.

So, lots of work done this weekend but nothing finished means I don’t get to play radio yet.

I’ve been feeling especially cranky this week and not quite sure why. I wonder if it’s low blood sugar. I honestly am not sure if it has to do with the itchiness and the stuffed head I have from what is possibly hay fever. It’s been nice and in the 50’s and plants are starting to bloom. Maybe it’s football withdrawal. I don’t know.

I just realized that my midlife crisis car could possibly be a Toyota Prius. How pathetic is that?

I drink a bunch of water after I go to the gym which is kind of a bad idea because I go to the gym in the evening. This usually means I wake up in the middle of the night wanting to go to the bathroom. It’s not far, and it’s not uncomfortable, so most of the time I get up but not always. Last night, though, I was having dreams about going to the bathroom before I woke up having to go to the bathroom. I don’t remember this sort of thing happening since I was seven- or eight-years-old. Fortunately, the dream didn’t actually mean I was really going to the bathroom since that would have been the rubber-sheets sort of mess that I should have outgrown decades ago and shouldn’t have to revisit until I’m in my 80’s or something.

Wow, I’m pretty tired tonight. So tired that I don’t feel like getting up and going to bed. I just want to sit here and stare at the screen which won’t do me much good tomorrow. Bed time!

My boss (also an old ham radio buddy if you haven’t been paying attention) came in with connectors for the cable he gave me, so now it’s time to get one of my antennas up and running! Unfortunately, I left the connectors at work. It’s just as well since I shouldn’t try getting it done before the weekend. Standing on the roof in the dark is something I should give up since I’m older and it’ll take me longer to heal than when I was starting out playing with radios THIRTY FOUR YEARS AGO.

And I made it in to the gym but that was kind of iffy at first. I didn’t sleep well because my stomach was churning all night and then it started grumbling again in the afternoon. Nothing odd happened at the gym, though, and I felt better running around the building than I usually do. Probably because it was close to 50°F outside. They had the heat cranked up to about 90°F in the gym for yoga and I was complaining until I realized this is the way it is in the summer only backwards (cold inside, hot outside). The worst part was I was standing under a vent when they cranked the heat up. Honestly, yoga is not my friend.

No longer do I suffer the tyranny of, well, my OWN stupid obsession with football. At least until next fall. I’m free to do whatever I want with my weekends and not be tied to the TV where I watch large dudes run headlong at each other all in an attempt to move a stupid pointy ball around. This just leaves me more time to spend on my hobbies and that just means a big drain on my wallet. Lately I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on ham radio, and this weekend I made several trips to Home Depot. Instead of living with the $0.19 outlets that the electrician put in, I’m replacing them with the “industrial grade” outlets for $5.44. At least it isn’t the $4.79 light switch I replace with the “industrial grade” $45 light switch.

Maybe it would be better football if was on year ’round.

My sister thought I would like to know that a friend who is seven years older than me is going out with a woman who is less than half my age. Actually, she’s five-twelfths my age. That means she’s four-elevenths of his age and younger than any of his kids. I’m not really sure I’d even want to talk to someone that young except to say things like, “GET OFF MY LAWN!” and “WHAT ARE YOU KIDS THINKING WITH THE TWITTER AND THE FACEBOOK?”

I think I’ve noticed that women are much more friendly to me when they’re not single. I wonder if they’re thinking, “Oh, god, I’m single and he’s single and there’s not a chance in hell that I’ll ever be desperate enough to end up with him so I may just have to die alone and where did my dog go now?” Maybe that’s why I get along with grandmothers because they’re probably thinking nothing of the sort, but, “What a nice Asian man, I wonder when he is going to bring me my chow mein noodles?”

Clearly I either have a horrible lack of telepathic skills or the world is much odder than you would have expected. The best news for me, of course, is that my boss told me he is bringing in 75′ of cable to connect my antenna to my radio. Geeks unite!

I was thinking about that ad for a gym I’ve never seen where the guy just repeats, “I lift things up and put them down,” which is really what I do most of the time I go to the gym. I also tend to get weird bruises and cuts, but I’m not real clear on how that happens. Today we did some rowing, which is a degenerate form of lifting (to the side) and putting things down (letting the chain go back in). Plus, I’ve met plenty of super nice bodybuilders and they’ve all put a lot of thought into their passion (I was about to say hobby) so I’m probably not the one the ad is trying to target.

I suppose I was also the one who described my job as, “Gotta go move the mouse; it’s not going to move itself.”

That could just mean that I spent all that time and money at MIT to be able to reduce things to ridiculousness. Now if I could only turn that into something useful.