I walked up to my car the other day and there was a scratch in the fender around the wheel well. It was definitely new. I rubbed on it to make sure it was a real scratch and not just some schmutz on my car. It was disconcerting to find a new scratch. I walked to the driver’s side and there was another scratch in about the same spot. Again, I rubbed on it to make sure it was a scratch. And then there was a scratch on the door, with a door ding I’d never seen before. Again, more rubbing. I figured there’s not much I can do about it, so I hit my remote unlock button and I noticed that the car two spaces away unlocked. It wasn’t my car I was looking at.

I hope whoever that is doesn’t mind that I was rubbing their car.

I remember my dad talking about being lightheaded or feeling sick to his stomach, and today I was feeling nauseous. Or is that nauseated? I think it probably doesn’t matter any more. In either case I wasn’t feeling so good. I almost felt good enough to go to the gym, but I figure I’m old and I could use the rest as well. For some reason I couldn’t get to sleep and I wasn’t at my best today. I felt a bit fuzzy. So now I may go to sleep before the fourth quarter even starts in this Denver/Oakland football game. And it’s not clear who is going to win and I’m kind of an Oakland fan. As long as they’re the Oakland Raiders, anyway, and not the L.A. Raiders. I may actually get to sleep at a sensible time!

When I was younger, I never did watch a lot of sports. Now I can’t wait for football season to start and I can’t recall doing much this weekend besides watching football. It was in the 90’s, too hot for a native Oregonian (at least one from this part of the state) so it was just as well that I stayed inside all weekend. Oh, I guess I did take some stats classes from http://www.khanacademy.org which is something you should check out.

It was my brother-in-law’s birthday yesterday so I got him a present off of his “list” and after that took him out to dinner. It’s funny how a meat curing facility has ling cod, polenta, and chicken for dinner (what my brother-in-law, sister, and mom had). I had the ribeye, which was almost as good as the last ribeye I had there.

Oh, and for anyone keeping track, 5000-6000 birds going in the chimney, 2000-3000 people watching. The birds are being counted, the estimate of people is just a wild-ass guess. The same guy was counting and estimating (not me).

A lot fewer people were at the soccer field dedication, but that’s a different story. $250,000 to let a bunch of rich kids play soccer but whatever. I’m all for kids getting more exercise.

I stayed up late last night trying to figure out how to program all my shows on my blank DVR. I found shows online or on my iPad app and told it to record the series but all I would get on the DVR is an error message. Really, do they want me to get rid of my TV and just download things like a bad person? I gave up last night but tried again this afternoon and finally figured out that the DVR needed to download the TV schedule before it knew what to do. Ugh. So you can go on the intarwebs and tell the DVR all sorts of things but the DVR won’t understand until it gets its schedule figured out.

Well, I overdid it at the gym, like I knew I would. My legs felt wobbly yesterday and today my ass felt like it was cramping up. But I went anyway, and now my back is sore and I may have to sit out a few days. What a maroon. Can I blame the heat again? I think it was 91°F or something similarly unpleasant for us mossbacks here in Oregon.

I felt fine today until I got home and fell asleep for five minutes. Then at the gym my legs felt rubbery and I thought they were going to cramp up a couple of times. I’m probably just watching too much early season football and seeing all the players cramp up thinking it’ll happen to me, but I sure couldn’t row like I usually do. I wonder if it’s the heat, or if I’m just plain tired. I’m guessing it’s a combination of both.

Of course I’m not getting to sleep early, like I ought to, because I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately. I can blame that on the heat as well. If I keep complaining about the heat, my sister will continue to call me a pussy. As she says, “It’s not even in triple digits, you <previously mentioned word>.” You know how it is.

I’m thinking I did almost nothing today, which is pretty good for a holiday weekend. I did finish my course of antibiotics and I was hoping I’d drink a couple of beers, a requirement for a successful Labor Day weekend, but I did not. I did go to the gym and I think one of the coaches is trying to kill me. But other than that I did nothing. I almost went out and bought a hoe because my collection of gas-powered string trimmers isn’t doing it for me, but laziness set in. I think the only accomplishment I can think of is my ability to figure out that the adjective form of “goy” is “goyische”. At least that’s what my failing Asian memory is telling me now. I’m not sure why I’ve picked up some Yiddish when I’m unable to recall the meanings of the words on the New York Times 100 most looked up words list. It certainly didn’t help me on any of the standardized tests I took including the SAT, the GRE, the MCAT, the GMAT, and the US Foreign Service Officer Test. I will admit to being hung over for the GMAT, and VERY hung over for the FSOT. I didn’t figure that either of those tests mattered for my future career endeavors.

So my co-worker who tested positive on the rapid strep test got a different antibiotic than I did. He got cephalexin, which sounds like it comes from reclining octopi, when I got amoxicillin. I looked them up and his is good for pneumonia and mine is good for that and also for gonorrhea. Unless you can get catch nasty diseases through a web browser, I’m not likely to need it for anything beyond possible strep, though.

I did notice that there are a bunch of anecdotal stories of people rupturing their Achilles tendon doing box jumps while being on amoxicillin. I found it on a bunch of Crossfit sites. The general posts were about the dangers of box jumps, especially for old dudes like me, and it made me a bit wary of them for a while. But now I’m wondering why all these Crossfitters are on amoxicillin. I’ve met a bunch of Crossfitters and I’m guessing they’re taking the antibiotics for the thing I’m unlikely to have, not the thing that I’m most likely treating. I think you know what I’m talking about.

Well, I guess not everything is a disappointment. I was expecting the antibiotic I’m taking to upset my digestive system and it’s doing that quite nicely. At least antibiotics come in horse-pill sizes so you feel like you’re getting something for the money you pay.

My biggest disappointment of the day was going to they Dairy Queen near work for lunch. They used to have the old-school menu (Queen burgers, King burgers, and a giant “Hillsburger”) but now they have a much more corporate-looking menu. The hamburgers were awesome in the past, like they’d used fresh meat, and they were served on real, though chipped, plates. Now it’s all fast-foodish paper and the burgers have that cafeteria taste. I described it as the same taste as the burgers in my high school. I thought the meat was actually fake until I showed up too early once and smelled them grilling. Somehow they pre-grill, let them sit, and then reheated them before they served them and that made them taste funny. My co-worker described it as the “rest stop Roy Rogers drive-through taste.” Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Another disappointment was getting the external hard drive for my DirecTV DVR. Sure it’s bigger and will hold more shows, but it completely replaces the internal hard drive and it’s like resetting the whole thing. Nothing is set to record and all the settings were deleted. I was all set to re-enter all the shows to record but the DirecTV web site was down. Ugh. Time to put that all off. Besides, I have a bunch of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” recorded and I don’t want to lose those.

I just realized that I have nothing to talk about except how poorly I’m feeling. And I bet if I actually read my past postings, I’d find that’s all I ever talk about any more. And I’m feeling like I’m going to just continue this nonsense with another report on just how poorly I feel today.

I’ve been sort of sick all week. No sore throat, because to me a sore throat means I can’t swallow at all, not that I can feel there’s some irritation. But I still went to the doctor. My ears are plugged, I feel lightheaded at times, and last but not least, MY G*DD*MN co-worker told me he has strep throat and has had strep throat for a week. I called my doctor with my symptoms and he wanted me to come right in. I had to see “the new guy” and I liked his diagnosis. “It’s probably viral, but your throat is looking pretty grody back there. Those white plaques are most likely bacterial. With your pre-existing condition, I’m going to prescribe antibiotics.” Whoop-de-effing-do.

I should feel better soon (whether or not the antibiotics work) but the antibiotics will certainly make me feel worse for a few days. I am not looking forward to not drinking beer on Labor Day weekend, nor am I looking forward to the digestive problems that antibiotics bring forth. Ah well, I hope it makes me feel better in general.

Oh, and my neighbors don’t seem to like me questioning their M.D. ways. I told them I thought the rapid strep test had significant false positives (it doesn’t in the study I found) and significant false negatives (it does). I also told them I thought there were cases of influenza reported already (couldn’t find an Oregon report, but I did find a confirmed case in Washington). Good thing I know how to use the intarweb and how to search for primary sources.

I can understand that twitter seems narcissistic to some, but then I just realized that I should be twittering because of the same reason I’m not blogging that much any more. It’s not that I don’t like hearing myself talk, it’s because I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT I DID TODAY. If I just twittered all the time (or tweeted or whatever) I would know EXACTLY how boring my life is and I could either
take steps to make my life more interesting or just continue cataloging the boredom and pretend that it’s enough.

But, actually, I can remember what I did today, which is almost NOTHING. I’ve been kind of sick all week, which is kind of lame because I’ve had no big symptoms. I took Monday off because of a sinus headache and I’ve had stomachaches since then. The past few days I’ve felt like absolute crap in the evenings. This morning I got up and I felt lightheaded but went to the gym anyway. It came and went but I got home and took a few naps and so sleeping was pretty much I did today. I did watch some football and vacuum under my bed, so I don’t call the day a total loss. I do want to know why the house is so freaking dusty, though.

It took the Apple Store long enough to replace my RAM, but I figure they’re probably backed up with all sorts of work. When I got there, they made me wait and wait and then tried to give me someone’s old white MacBook instead of my shiny and fairly new MacBook Pro.

So that’s pretty much it for now. I’m about to pass out. I haven’t been feeling all that well in the evenings so I’m guessing my cold really was real.

It felt like Monday today because I took a sick day yesterday. I woke up with a stomachache and a sinus headache. I thought I was being a bit of a wuss, but I slept most of the morning, got up for lunch, and then slept most of the afternoon. The only way I can sleep that much is if I’m sick. Someone accused me of being hung over, but I can’t sleep at all if I’ve been drinking too much.

The comedy of errors with my new, ailing laptop continued today. I took it in to have the overheating battery replaced, and it took a bit of time to drop it off. I finally got my paperwork back and I was almost to the parking garage when they called me back in. They said it shouldn’t take that long to replace a battery. When I got there, I reminded them that they needed to run the thermal test again and I waited. And waited. When the Apple Genius came out and first offered to validate my parking, I knew something had gone wrong. The thermal test had passed, but when they rebooted they got three beeps which signifies bad RAM. The first time I took it in I told them I was getting kernel panics and the three beeps and they replaced the motherboard BUT NOT THE RAM. Then they found overheating issues with the battery. And now they have to replace the RAM. What a fiasco.

So I’m without my laptop again. I just got my $700 copy of Photoshop today and I should probably try it out but it’s hard to do with no laptop. Ah well. Time to read a book.