I finally got the results of my blood test and it’s negative means it’s a positive result. In other words, nothing bad, time to celebrate. Or I would if I didn’t have this cold. Just as well, I probably should get more sleep on a regular basis anyway and that means WHY AM I STILL UP? xXx: State of the Union was over an hour and fifteen minutes ago!

Last night I went to the wedding reception for Katie and Mark from the gym. It was a lot of fun and I got to find out that everyone thinks Mark doesn’t talk much. I remember telling Katie, “You look tall. And beautiful,” and she told me, “I’m not sure I like the order of that.” But she did show me her pink platform shoes. The only negative thing I can say about it all is that I’m jealous that I’ll never look as good as Mark and Katie did.

Speaking of tall, there were a lot of incredibly tall women there and I think they were on OSU crew with Katie.

The only big surprise (no big surprise to me) is that two of the more outwardly law-abiding people I knew there told me about how they’ve been in the back of a patrol car in handcuffs. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been in a patrol car, even after having friends who worked in the radio shop for the city who put all the equipment in the squad cars. I’m a big smartass with a problem with authority, but I think I’m also too Japanese to annoy cops directly or to forget to pay my parking tickets.

I found out during Grand Jury that the courthouse is all about the waiting. Buying a Prius is all about the waiting. Getting my iPad 2 delivered was all about the waiting. And even more important, the labs my doctor ordered are all about the waiting. He called me ten days ago, I had my blood drawn a week ago, and I haven’t heard a thing. So here’s my prediction: good news would have come fairly quickly but bad news needs to be rechecked to see if it’s right. Or the labs just take longer to process than I thought. Or, like my last bone marrow biopsy, they lost the samples. In any case, there’s not much to know if there’s not much to know.

Fortunately, I’m not too worried about things this time. What could I do anyway? Something ridiculously ostentatious or frivolous might be fun but I’m not really about grand acts. Plus I have a busy weekend coming up. Maybe I can get my hard drive backed up by then. Probably not, though.

Today was my first day back at work and I can’t say it was awful. I can say that Jury Duty might have been a bit more interesting.

I still haven’t had enough time to mess with my iPad, but I did find out that there is a program called “Cheats with Friends” that you use with “Words with Friends” to find the words you can form with the letters you have. I think this goes under the list next to, “Am I really working out if I do shitty pushups or lighter weights?” which gets back to who am I cheating anyway? I suppose this is why other people are rich and I’m driving a car with a broken bumper.

I jinxed myself today.

I was waiting for my iPad to arrive and I was hoping it would be before I left for jury duty. There’s always more sitting around to be done in the courthouse. It wasn’t to be, and almost missed my bus because I took down an old traverse curtain rod (the kind with the string for opening and closing) because it finally broke. I read the schedule wrong and ran to catch the bus, dropping one of my earbud covers (making them useless) and getting to the stop five minutes early.

As I expected, I had a lot of waiting to do at the courthouse. We thought we’d be out in a few minutes, but I had to wait to sign indictments and turning in our notebooks took more time than we thought. During the wait, one of the guys who works at Les Schwab Tire was telling us how younger guys didn’t know how to change a flat. I really jinxed myself by insisting I knew how, because after getting home and going to Lowe’s for curtain parts, I heard a hissing sound from my left front tire. A loud hissing sound. By the time I got back to my car the tire was flat. I put on the doughnut spare without much difficulty and made it to a different Les Schwab to get it fixed, but it would have been nice to avoid that altogether. As it is, I’m up late because I had to re-hang the curtains and poke at my iPad just a little. I waited long enough for the thing so I had to fire it up and play some Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies.

Back to work tomorrow at my real job. I’m not looking forward to it.

Wow, it’s been a full (short) month of Multnomah County Grand Jury Duty already. We finished most of our cases but we did have one absentee witness who is going to make us come back for testimony. There were seven of us on the grand jury and we’d only see the DA and his witnesses. Being part of the “drug” grand jury (Grand Jury #2), we usually had very short testimonies mostly by police officers. They’d find drugs, they’d do a test, they’d usually get a confession, and so we’d pass down an indictment. That just meant we thought there was enough evidence for an actual felony jury trial. We also saw several person-on-person crimes (usually the purview of Grand Jury #1), and several property crimes (Grand Jury #3). We were also the only half-day Grand Jury and we often were dismissed at 10AM. I still had to stick around to sign indictments because I volunteered to be the foreman. I think I’m going to miss the excitement.

It sure would have been nice to fill up some of the waiting times by using my iPad 2, but I still don’t have it. It sat in Portland since last Friday morning, so it should be in my grubby mitts by Tuesday afternoon. We’ll see.

I think I’ve sold my Mac, but of course I’ve been monkeying around with the partitions and backups and just generally moving things back and forth and being about as cavalier with my data as a geek can possibly be. So far, so good. My backups are all corrupted but my Mac still keeps working.

I think I mentioned it’s my mom’s 80th birthday and my sister and brother-in-law left for Hawaii today. We went out for dinner last night and I noticed that my sister is enunciating her Greek words more. I wonder if she’s getting a smack-down from her friend Maia if she mispronounces things. The only thing I’ve decided to start pronouncing correctly is Hyundai and ukelele. No one is going to understand either of those things so it’ll be funny, at least to me. Everyone already thinks I’m nuts so I may as well be snickering to myself.

Tomorrow (today?) is my mom’s 80th birthday, so we went out to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law. They’re leaving on a trip to Hawaii for spring break so we had to have dinner a day early. I also took my mom out for lunch, and I bet we’ll go out for dinner again tomorrow.

I think I may have sold my MacBook Pro. Now the question is whether I can actually get another one to replace it. I’m pretty sure I won’t have any troubles, but I have reservations since I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get a Prius for a while. At this rate I better just be happy with my current car and maybe even fix the bumper that I’ve been putting off.

I have a friend who suggested not donating to relief efforts in Japan because they had enough money, and to donate to Haiti instead. Fair enough. I take a much looser approach and just donate to the Red Cross (separate donations to the local and national organizations) and let them allocate it as they see fit. The donation to Japan is just something more to do with my heritage. I know being Japanese-American isn’t the easiest way to get a date, but it is what it is and I had to send money to a country where I still have friends and where most of my relatives live, even though none of them were affected by the earthquake.

Oh, and I don’t believe in any of the nuclear disaster scenarios. Sure bad luck could bring a concentrated cloud of radionuclides directly onto my head, but I have other problems to worry about. And did you see that it’s snowing in the earthquake-affected areas? I think more people are going to die from the cold than from any radiation effects.

Other than that I continue to lead my sheltered and selfish life, tracking the progress of my iPad from Hong Kong to Anchorage, and on and reading articles about how I picked the WRONG MODEL. And after thinking about law school again, especially after being on the grand jury, my sister reminded me that no one is going to hire someone as old as me if I try to change careers. So much for that fantasy.

Today I went to get a blood test and I was expecting an experience similar to what I used to get when I first started going to this doctor. Two big tubes and six little tubes that were sent off to random labs for testing. But today I only had two tubes. For some reason this has lessened whatever minimal level of panic I was feeling. Honestly, I wasn’t feeling much panic to begin with.

Last night as I was going to sleep I was fantasizing about mashed potatoes. I still have food fantasies when I have salad for dinner and I’m hungry enough that I can’t watch back episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives without getting a little upset. Somehow I found myself at Blueplate for lunch and they have mashed potatoes instead of fries as a side. I had a Reuben burger. The patty was a mixture of spiced pork and beef, on Texas toast with sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing. And it wasn’t huge but it was tasty.

Really, I should have other things to fantasize about. Maybe my iPad 2 arriving.

I’m tired from the gym, have eaten some ice cream, and my iPad 2 has shipped, so I’m in an oddly good mood. I’m feeling much better than I did yesterday, though my stomach still doesn’t seem 100% so I didn’t go all out at the gym. At least not on the shuttle runs.

That being said, THMFIC at the gym’s dog is getting minor surgery and dental work tomorrow and, for that, is getting anesthesia. Poor Jakey isn’t the youngest pup, so here’s hoping he gets through the procedure with no ill effects.

And I get to go in to play pincushion tomorrow. I figure it’s a win-win. The labwork will show what to do next in any medical treatment, and if it’s bad news at all, I’m going to buy a new MacBook Pro whether I sell this one or not. I might even do it if I’m fine. I was going to make three selfish purchases: an iPad 2, a Prius, and a MacBook Pro. The Mac is on hold because I’m having trouble selling my current one (it’s the top of the 15″ line, isn’t a year old yet, and worth a bit more than most people are willing to spend). The Prius is probably on hold because Toyota has shut down their manufacturing plant. At least the iPad is in the hands of FedEx.

Oh, and I guess I should post the link for the Google 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami donation page. Like I said, I donated to the Japanese Red Cross Society, even though it’s a foreign organization and possibly not tax deductible. The tax implications are not the reason I’m donating. I also gave a bit more than usual because, well, ¥10,000 (which is closer to what I give to local charities) just didn’t seem like a lot. It’s a lot if you convert it to US dollars, but it’s just one banknote in Japan. It’s a psychological thing. Plus I wish I could do more than just click on a web page and send money.

Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

In a more immediate and limited problem, my stomach was bothering me last night and that actually gave me nightmares. I didn’t feel great in the morning, but felt better as the day went on. But after I got the wood chipper running and finished using it, my stomach still felt a bit heavy. I figured it was a good reason to stay home from the gym for another night and be lazy.

Turns out it was a good night to stay in because I got a call from my oncologist and they found an increasing number of odd blood cells which means more tests and maybe new drugs. How odd. About the time my medication is about to go generic, it’s possibly not working any more. Ah, well, we’ll see what the additional tests show. I know I shouldn’t worry, but the first time this came up I felt fine but could only sleep about five hours a night. I bet my blood pressure was high as well. Stupid subconscious.

Oh, and I just donated money to the Japanese Red Cross through google. Not quite sure if the Japanese Red Cross is as good as the American Red Cross, but I figured the money would be closer to where it’s needed.

So, there you go. Kind of puts the delay on my iPad 2 (coming next week if I’m lucky) and the cover (coming next month if I’m lucky) into perspective.