My usual boring life was pushed to the edge today. I had a plan, and it was simple. Go to the gym. If I didn’t get my laptop charger back, go buy a new one. Mow the lawn. Pack for my trip. Go help set up for movie night at the gym.

I got my charger back today! But instead of taking it easy and doing things at a normal pace, I went out for lunch with friends, let them convince me to see Get Him to the Greek, rush back home to talk to Jay the Contractor about fixing the bathroom downstairs, rush through mowing the lawn (leaving the cleanup for my mom), and then try to set up for the movie.

I’m usually pretty Boy Scout about overpacking everything I need for things like movie night, but this time I winged it and you could tell. I had to make a trip home to get a VGA cable and an outlet strip so we could see the movie, then I had to go home again to get a mini-stereo to double-phono adapter so we could hear the movie. I swear that stuff was all in the projector case the last time we borrowed a projector. Ah, well, it went over well anyway and at least the food was was squared away well by Tina.

Now I’m doing a half-assed job of packing for my trip to San Francisco, which is what I usually do. I figure as long as I have a credit card, I’ll be fine, but now I have other things to save for like a bathroom. Ah well.

The mini-Cindy from yesterday pretty much wiped me out for today, but I still did 33 birthday burpees for Kara, who did birthday burpees with me on my birthday. I’m not real sure why I do such things, but it’s better than eating 33 cupcakes. Unless of course they were spread out over a few days.

You know, other than that I got nothing. The rain just keeps pouring down and I think it’s sapping my energy. This is nap weather, sucka.

I wish I could tell you I was incensed and just plain tired of the craphole that my life seems to be right now, but it’s not that bad. My job is kind of stressful but I’d much rather be busy than bored. I’ve proved to myself that I get in the most trouble when I’m bored. And I looked at how AT&T is screwing me with the new data plan but a dude that pays for both DSL and WiMax really doesn’t use a lot of data bandwidth on his iPhone. And thinking about my lack of success in dating made me remember that I need to cancel my Match.com subscription. I’ve certainly spent $60 on stupider things but do I need to spend another $60?

Speaking of stupider things, I lent a guy my MacBook Pro power supply, which I really only need a couple of times a year and he never returned it. He even forgot and took it home to Sacramento with him. It was supposed to be in the mail months ago so we’ll see if it gets here before I leave for the Apple conference. If not, I get to spend $79 because I did a favor for a guy. Ah, well, that’s just life, right?

Oh, and speaking of Apple conference, I go to listen to talks about the MacOS, not about the iPhone and iPad. The conference topics were posted today and they’re mostly iPhone and iPad. Phooey. I know, still not something that actually makes me mad.

Huh. Maybe I’m just too beat down to be mad. Ain’t that the shit?

I sent out a message at work today, at 9:32AM, saying I was going home sick. My stomach was making all the sounds you don’t want to hear, the ones that tell you that you should be at home, close to the bathroom, preferably one that is yours and not shared. But I wanted to talk to someone about one of the things I’m working on. But I left phone calls, left emails, tried Instant Messenger, but no reply. The first day back after a 3-day weekend meant a lot of people out, and the sales guy was working at presentation until 8PM. So I was there until 3PM and fortunately my intestines didn’t explode. I just feel like I have a stomachache now.

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night because of a stomach ache and I felt OK yesterday. I hope this goes away soon because it’s quite annoying. It sort of made itself the focus of my day, and I really could use something better than a stomach ache to look forward to tomorrow. Perhaps this is all I deserve.

My sister said that yardwork makes her hate nature. I agree. I worked for my dad, a landscaper, for a while and he planted all sorts of weird shrubbery around the house that continues to grow and annoy me. When he was alive he used to hate it when I started hacking on the plant life, saying I had no skills. He was right, but someone needed to trim the jungle back.

The backyard continues to be a mess, but that doesn’t really give my neighbor the right to clean the ivy off his fence and then just leave it piled up back there. I went to ask him if he wanted me to take care of it. He wasn’t there and his wife said he’d come over and talk to me. Of course, he did not. It’s yard debris pickup tomorrow morning, so I put as much as I could fit into our garbage can. I figure he may or may not clean up the mess. If he doesn’t, that just means I’ll have to fill up the garbage can every other week, or get a friend with a pickup truck to help me. No biggie either way. I thought he liked the ivy, so I wasn’t poisoning it with the vengeance it deserved. Better living through chemistry!

I was planning on spending the whole day doing next to nothing, but I was unsuccessful in it. At some point I had to just go out and get light bulbs but I had to go to three stores before I found them. On the way my next door neighbor roped me into helping him move a water tank which did involve some weird weightlifting move to get it up to shoulder-level. In any case, if you saw a guy walking around with a bucket full of lightbulbs, it was likely me.

One thing struck me as I was walking around, I realized that some of my most adamant relationship advice was given to me by people who are qualified to tell me to do as they say, not as they do. I mean, one told me not to go out with anyone from the gym, and that person met his wife at the gym. And the other person who basically told me to give the hell up met a partner at work. If I had to choose, I think that being a complete tool at the gym probably makes more sense than doing the same thing at work,because it’s much easier to find a new gym than a new job in this economy. But whatever. I’ll stick to walking around with a bucket of lightbulbs.

Friday night and I only had two shows left on my DVR. I thought I was going to sleep at 9PM or so but I’m still up. I also thought I was going to leave work early, but I was actually busy until 5 and just gave up at the end. Traffic was bad with people leaving early and I think it was actually an easier commute at 5PM. That’s just usual Friday traffic for you.

Man, cheeseburgers and I have been having a rough time lately. Today, for lunch, I went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries and it was surprisingly disappointing. It was like they forgot the ketchup or salt or something. It just seemed surprisingly bland and I hope they’re not on a downhill slide. Ah well. At least I was number 1.

So you’d figure I’d be all mopey after realizing that I have no friends and burger club is over. But no, tonight I had my weird salad for dinner and watched the final episode of Flash Forward so instead of being all sanguine, I’m left asking the question, “Wha?”

Here I am, though, reading a Salon.com article on how the reason I don’t have any dates is just because I suck and realizing that I spent real money for three months of Match.com and really did absolutely nothing on it but wonder why I’m getting matched with women who either outweigh me or are Republicans and I really just don’t seem to have any negative feelings about it. I guess I’m getting to the point where I just don’t give a shit this week. I just need a vacation, and the goddamn laptop charger that I lent to Chip Conrad who hasn’t returned it yet. I guess just because a guy can teach you several new ways to do harder pushups it doesn’t mean you should trust him with your shit.

I dunno. I just wish I had a bit more to look forward to this weekend. Maybe I’ll eat myself into a coma or something. That sounds new and exciting.

I’m being sarcastic, if you didn’t know.

I can’t even say why life is great, other than life is even better when someone is trying to stick it to you rather than do what they’re supposed to be doing.

Anyway, it’s been a joy of a day. At least I get to go to the gym after work and find out that I’m in physical decline and, as my friend Greg says, I’m just waiting to die. Then I go home, eat a bland salad, and wait for the time I can crawl into bed for my six hours of nightmares, punctuated by trips to the bathroom because I’m not smart enough to quit drinking water early enough in the day.

Honestly, it’s not all that bad. Work is bad right now. The gym points out more ways I can fail. But at least it’s warm and dry at home and I can play with my computer and sleep in some sort of peace. Or I could sleep if I didn’t drink so much water late in the day.

I’d say I had a cheeseburger to look forward to, but I’ve given up on going out to get cheeseburgers. No need to work that hard for something that I’m going to have to do by myself.

Oh, and I forgot, I have to pay some bills. Maybe that will help me feel more alive.

Oh boy, I am still not going 100%. I decided to try doing “Kill me now” with my usual 35lb dumbbells, and I helped Sean get DFL at the gym today. I even did the extra pushups and boy howdy I had to slow things down a bit. Ah, well, fortunately Sean like going heavy too and we didn’t really time it. I just know I was still doing my last set as people were cleaning up. No matter, DFL is better than DNF.

And here I am still up because, for some reason, I watched many of  the penultimate episodes for this season and so I just had to watch the season finalé of Chuck and How I Met Your Mother. I’m afraid this whole week is going to be like that. I know I’m supposed to be reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I’m only on page 30 or so and my sister warned me repeatedly that the first 150 pages are a slog. After that it’s supposed to be good enough that people love the trilogy, but honestly, I have to wait for the TV season to be over before I force myself to watch that.

Well, I suppose FORCE is a bit too extreme, but TV is so easy after another day at the salt mine. You know how it is.

I was just trying to remember what I did today, besides watching all the TV shows queued up on my DVR and cleaning the gutters. I think it was really that little. Yesterday was a bit more eventful, but the only thing I did around the house was probably finally changing out the doorknob on a door we hardly ever use. The laundry room door had some cheap-ass Kwikset locks and I can’t even remember where the keys are located. It’s now keyed like the rest of the house with semi-decent Schlage locks.

But I did get my hair cut yesterday, and even got a straight-razor shave. I thought it would be fun and the place where I go to is sort of a salon for men with massages offered as well as hair cuts and shaves. But the more I looked at the web site the weirder it seemed. I was just looking to see if they validated parking and I couldn’t even find directions, but I did find a “no dating the staff” policy. Weird, right? I also heard that people select their barbers by looking at their pictures, not pictures of their work.

Then when I went in for the straight-razor shave I noticed there wasn’t a strop, the razor seemed a bit dull, and the girl doing the shaving was in her early 20’s if she was that old. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’ve always had straight-razor shaves done by older male barbers. When I got my hair cut and I found out my barber was also in her early 20’s. I don’t think there’s anyone older working there. She did a fair job of giving me a buzz cut, and I’ve had other people not really know what they’re doing with the clippers, so I didn’t think much of it when I went in before.

After paying my bill, I figured I mainly paid about $80 to have women in their early 20’s touch my head. It’s probably the only way that’s ever going to happen again, unless I find another dentist with younger hygenists, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it. For one thing, I had a hand and scalp massage as part of the whole experience and all I could think of was that I usually go to fairly burly sports massage therapists who beat the hell out of me and that’s what I usually expect in a massage. For another, the more I think about the whole gimmick of the place I went to get my hair cut, the creepier it seems to me. The weird thing is that I knew about the place and the guy who finally convinced me to get my hair cut there is a gay guy.

So, in summary, yesterday I just kind of felt foolish after my haircut was all done. But it was pretty relaxing, and I can’t say I won’t do it again. I’m certain to feel foolish for one reason or another and at least this way I still end up with a haircut.

I’ve given up on a lot lately. I suppose I gave up on dating a while ago but someone convinced me to try match.com and I was pretty unimpressed. I can get that level of rejection for free and I don’t need to use my computer. Plus, yahoo personals has plenty of fake women telling they, “search for serious relations, tired to be one, and the good careful man whom I will love me such what is necessary is.” You can’t pay for that level of comedy.

I’ve given up any self-respect at work and just allow people to tell me how the world works in their imagination. There’s no place for the laws of physics when dealing with customers, even if you’re working in engineering.

And now I’ve given up on burger club. No one wanted to go, so I ended up at Jack-in-the-Box tonight.

My mom was asking for a Breakfast Croissant and what am I going to do? No one was going to dinner with me so I got her a Breakfast Croissant. I ordered that and a $1 hamburger and a $1 fried chicken sandwich. It took FOREVER. I don’t mean to disparage the job they do, but they told me that the chicken sandwiches were taking the longest time. I mean, how hard are chicken sandwiches? You open the cardboard box with the chicken-like patties and throw one in the deep fryer. There’s a timer right over the fryer. When it beeps, you take it out and put it on the bun. You forget to put on the mayonnaise or whatever that white glop is because you’re not working that hard, wrap in in a piece of wax paper, throw it in a bag, and give it to the worthless pile-of-shit who can’t get one single fucking friend to go eat hamburgers with him not just this week, but for THREE FUCKING WEEKS IN A ROW. The loser couldn’t find anyone to have lunch with, either, and ate cafeteria food in his grey cubicle by himself with his work email for company. Oh, while you’re at it, since the guy is obsessing about hamburgers, just forget about the hamburger he ordered and GIVE HIM AN EXTRA CHICKEN SANDWICH HE DIDN’T ASK FOR. Yeah, that’s right. Hamburgers have given up on ME.

So fuck it. I give up. I’m going out to dinner by myself, I’m going to movies by myself, I’m going to the theatre (as if I’d go to the theatre) by myself, I’m going out drinking by myself. It’s much easier.