We just went to Higgins where the burger was pretty darn good (probably on the level of Wildwood and Laurelhurst Market) but the experience was such crap that I don’t know if I ever want to go back. We waited about an hour for a table in the bar (we were the only ones waiting), our food took another hour to arrive, and the bartender was surly to me. I know I felt unwelcome at the Slow Bar, but I didn’t feel like I was being discriminated against there. I just felt like they didn’t want to be nice to ANYONE. At Higgins, however, I felt especially like crap.

It’s a shame, too, because the burger was so good. The dessert was better than average but didn’t measure up to Hopwork’s bread pudding or Laurelhurst Market’s cheesecake, or Wildwood’s Lemon Semifreddo. Really, I’m not sure what to think about Higgins, but I surely won’t suggest it to anyone who asks.

We have a few engineers at the gym and one of them was talking about this giant reservoir he was designing. I mentioned to him and his wife (who has a PhD in Civil Engineering, btw) that if I could get a site visit to see the giant hole, that I’d appreciate it. I like looking at giant excavations. His wife said that was because I’m a guy. I also told her that the furnace guy at Home Depot (made out of silvery ductwork and who waves around because of the air blowing in him) made me happy as well and she thought that was funny. Add that to the list, and include fried chicken and cheeseburgers.

So I was watching TV again and on NCIS, DiNozzo was torturing McGee by eating a pastrami sandwich without sharing any of it. That made me incredibly angry and I was worried that I was going nuts. I realized that my salad dinner was leaving me hungry once again and it was impairing my judgement. This is why I don’t watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives until the weekend when I’m not on my crazy dinner plan.

I’m staring at my stupid GPS trying to update the maps. It told me to update the maps. It charged me $119 to update the maps. But does the computer actually connect to the GPS? Not at all.

It’s just as well. I was going to use my computer to make myself a list. I figure one of the reasons I’m single is because I’m too darn picky. I’m picky about the usual things, but there must be some deal breakers. So here are some I thought of.

• Poor spelling or grammar.
• Republican or Libertarian politics.
• Religiousity.
• Unintelligent.
• Unwilling to put up with my cursing.
• San Diego Chargers fan.

So really, this isn’t the time for me to be making such a list. I really should get back to letting my GPS torture me and then get some sleep.

I figured out one of the reasons I didn’t want Sean to beat my time in the marathon: I’ve done it once and I don’t need to do it again. I found a way to justify my time, though. At San Francisco, a much hillier and twistier course (or so I tell myself) the fastest runner finished in 2:45. Portland was like 2:15. So that means I get an arbitrary scaling factor and I can tell myself my time was faster, relatively.

In any case, Sean is on my list for beating my time, and Jeff is on it for helping him do it. Not that my list means much of anything, as my more important list has things on it like, “remember to buy gas on the way to work tomorrow,” and, “go to sleep earlier.” Stuff that I forget until it’s too late. What was I talking about again?

I had something that I can’t remember the name of for lunch again, c-something de pollo which just turned out to be chicken soup. It was, as most things are at Super Taco Ochoa, delicious.

Much better than this frightening sight this morning at work.

Congratulations to Sean for beating my SF Marathon time from 1998. Geez.

This year there was almost NOTHING going on at mile 11 except they moved the aid station away from the commercial buildings into an area with some apartments and we had someone come to complain about the noise. I was at the wrong place two blocks away, the medical supplies were with me, the ambulance was at the wrong place, and it was all kind of a half-assed mess. But no one got hurt at our station, and we have anyone in the sag wagon. All I did all morning was flirt with some student nurses. For the most part they were older and married, but it beat talking on the radio all morning.

I just realized that I had a dessert on Friday that I probably forgot to mention: the bread pudding at Hopworks. It’s one thing to eat a doughnut on an empty stomach (the only way a Krispy Kreme is going to taste very good) but I was stuffed to the gills when I tried the bread pudding and I still thought it was good. In fact, I think I took a second bite. That’s the kind of thing you want for dessert.

On the other hand I had some of the Pyramid Brewing Apricot Ale today because my brother-in-law kept saying how good it was. It was pretty sweet, which isn’t what I like in a beer. The burger, however, was pretty darn good. It’s on a par with most bar burgers, and I’d post a picture, but my computer is acting up.

There was a study I heard of about where big friends were a big indicator of personal enbiggenning. Basically, if they said if you have obese friends you’re likely to get or be overweight as well. Unfortunately for me, I not only have large friends but i also have friends who consider themselves competitive eaters and can stuff themselves silly. I had dinner with Sean tonight, who isn’t too large but is definitely someone who likes to stuff himself silly. We, along with Jeff and Adrienne, went to Hopworks and I suggested splitting a steak sandwich and a pizza but Sean wanted to eat a whole sandwich and split the pizza. I was stupid enough to think that was a good idea. Turns out that the steak sandwich at Hopworks, while delicious, is also ginormous and half a pizza is what a sane person eats for his entire dinner. Half a pizza plus a ginormous steak sandwich and you’re going to be sitting propped up watching TV hoping that you don’t fall asleep and roll onto your engorged stomach in the middle of the night.

I’m afraid that I need to figure out some way of remembering what else happened during my day, but I’m afraid there’s nothing else I can talk about. That’s what happens when the day is filled with work and I can’t talk about that. I can mention my trip to Krispy Kreme, though, where I had one of the worst maple bars I’ve ever had with one of the worst cups of coffee I’ve ever had. Maybe I have to be white to appreciate Krispy Kreme, and the suburbs too.

Our usual Thursday night burger club was morphed tonight into a trip to a Thai Restaurant where I had an omelette. A Thai omelette, but an omelette nevertheless. It wasn’t the usual burger gang but the “regulars” are going out for pizza tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to fix THMFIC’s laptop for weeks now. Everything I’ve tried kind of said that Applecare was the only way to go. We decided to take the hard drive out to see if we could get some data off of it, and I think the drive itself is completely hosed.

I guess I’ll just have to keep my 13 rounds of mini-Cindy (5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats per round) as my big accomplishment for the day.

I’m not sure I can take more from these painters. The last time they were here it cost me $6000 to have the f*ck up my wood. They primed the wood that was supposed to be stained, and then stained it all splotchy. That got one guy fired. This time they put all the hardware for my $3000 window on backwards after painting the frame. I’m exaggerating, because really they only seemed to have six of the eight pieces either swapped left to right or on backwards so the window wouldn’t close. I was wondering why that room was so cold and I finally figured it out at 10:15PM that it wasn’t really latching. 30 minutes of f*cking with the window later, and the thing now closes. I tried looking up the window diagrams on the intarweb to make sure they didn’t go eight for eight on the backwards pieces, but the drawings don’t match my window.

My buddy Eric welcomed his twin boys last Wednesday, and today Devon and Dave from the gym welcomed their new daughter to the world! Hooray! All I can say is I won’t suggest interior house painting as a career choice for them.

It’s starting to get cold and the heat pump kicked on today. I suppose that means the seasons are changing and we’re getting back to the Oregon I’m used to. On the plus side, this probably also means that the crowds watching the birds will be gone soon.

The painters are almost done (they say) and after the carpet gets in, I gain another room! Hooray! I still haven’t gone through much of my dad’s old crap. We’ve resigned ourselves to thinking that most of the stuff he had was cheap, so a big trip to Goodwill is definitely in my future. Anyone wanting weird and probably chintzy Asian stuff might want to hit the Goodwill on West Burnside.

I was falling asleep at work all day and I’m not really sure why. My stomach wasn’t actually hurting last night, but it doesn’t feel great. That’s what I get for eating oysters off of the sidewalk, I’m sure. I came home early and I had to take a nap and my stomach still felt odd. Didn’t keep me from going to the gym, but after I got back I felt a little lightheaded when I stood up too quickly. And I even saw those fun stars that float around when your brain doesn’t feel like it’s getting the oxygen it deserves.

Even worse is that my stupid DVR, which probably runs some form of Windows, decided it was going to record all my shows off of the East Coast feed of CBS, and then that it wasn’t going to allow me to see anything other than my local station. Most of my Monday recordings were useless to me. Ah, well. And I seem to have some sort of odd spider bite on my side that itches and hurts at the same time. I’m just falling apart. Maybe it’s time for a vacation, or at least a lot more naps.

All this work and here’s what I’ve been doing all day: watching this TV. Looks like I need to improve my home theatre, huh?

Apparently he tries to clear out his DVR backlog and watches Ghost Town.