I really didn’t participate in Nurse Tiffany’s 25th birthday week celebrations, and that’s why I’m still alive. I only went to the dinner and the winery tour which is good, because that was probably all I could survive. I had no idea that a winery tour could be such a production, but it sure took some time management to get to four wineries. It was a beautiful day and a fun time as well. I may have ended up with some water damage on my iPhone, but what price is fun anyway?

I’m trying to remember what else I’m doing and I’m afraid the list is short and boring. Sending out rebate forms? Paying the annual house insurance? Visiting Courtney’s new house? Not taking a nap? The house visit wasn’t boring, and the house was cute, but I just remembered I did that. In any case, a much more eventful weekend than the one I would usually plan for myself, and there was much less reading involved. What a week.

It’s Nurse Tiff’s birthday weekend and there are reasons I should probably be asleep already before I have to get up a little early tomorrow morning, but my sister pointed me at another gossip site and I’m hooked. It’s not the stuff that gets ping-ponged between The Superficial and TMZ (though I’ve forgotten to check those lately) but different enough that I want to keep reading. I really should be sleeping or watching Eureka.

I finally made it over to my sister’s hose to star the transfer of iPhones. When I got my 32G 3GS, I ended up with a spare 16G 3G and my sister’s was only an 8G, so I figured I’d trade her and then possibly keep hers for experiments. Or maybe sell it. In any case, I figured she could use more space on her iPhone for SOMETHING. Not only did it take longer than I thought, but we also found out that her old wireless router seemed to be giving up the ghost. She blamed me and then took no responsibility for absconding with all my raspberries.

I guess I get to fix her network tomorrow. I just sort of fixed my own network today.

Since it is Friday night and all, I think I’ll go ahead and do NOTHING AT ALL and declare it time for sleep! If only I had enough sense to do that during the week.

I’m guessing that until I get a good eight hours of sleep some night, I’m not going to be doing much more than dragging myself around. Especially at the gym. I’m not feeling in tip-top shape, anyway and my stomach has been giving me weird grumbling noises since this afternoon. I figure I was eating too much of the weird cafeteria salad and not enough of the normal (for me) Mexican food.

The odd part about being so tired is that when I do finally drag myself to bed, I usually just lie there awhile, not able to sleep. Then I fall asleep, only to have my usual short nightmare and then I wake up and lie there some more. Maybe if I just went to bed ON TIME (like before 10PM if I want to get 8 hours of sleep instead of much closer to midnight) i might just sleep better. Well, I guess that’s just something else I OUGHT to be doing.

Right now I’m craving raspberry sorbet. I got a bunch of raspberries from a co-worker who brings in eggs to sell. This time he had some free raspberries along with the eggs. My mom doesn’t like the seeds, so she shipped them off to my sister, who is supposed to make something with them. I’m hoping I get some of whatever she makes. That was implied, but knowing my sister she’ll hoover it all before I see anything besides a picture. And most likely a Hello Kitty picture at that.

I’m usually tired at the gym, but today was especially bad. I got there early, sat on the bench like I usually do, but I leaned my head back on the wall and closed my eyes. I wanted to be asleep. I’m not sure if it was the late night working on my computer (like an idiot), or three days of day-long customer meetings cooped up in a room the customers said was “chilly”, or the sudden 90°F heat, but this was closest I’ve been to throwing up at the end of a workout.

Last time I did this one, I did it in 24:04. This time it took me 35:45. I was, however, using Orion weight, and Orion was described today as a “hairy white Bruce Lee” because he’s ripped like that (and white and hairy). The quote is from Evan, who I actually beat, but only because he was doing ridiculous Evan weight (more than Orion weight). Evan is, however, 24 and will probably recover quite quickly.

So there you have it. I survived half this week, but just barely.

There really isn’t that much to talk about because all I have to talk about is work. I got in enough trouble complaining about a job I didn’t like and I’m not about to get in trouble for complaining about a job I actually do like., though I wouldn’t mind winning the lottery and taking a long vacation. I’m in the middle of three days of day-long meetings with dinners afterwards, so there really isn’t much to talk about except for work.

I really should be asleep already, since I’ve proved to myself that 7 1/2 hours of sleep means I can stay awake through the day (though the chairs in the conference room make my ass hurt after about 6 hours) but 6 hours of sleep just don’t cut it. But I didn’t get back from dinner until a while ago and it takes me a while to wind down.

I also ate too much pizza at A Pizza Scholls. I know I swore I’d never stand in a line that long for a frigging pizza, but this was an obligation of sorts, and the pizza was excellent. Besides, it was Tuesday, there wasn’t a huge crowd, and I only waited THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES. (I think I may have waited half that for Blondie’s pizza back in my youth.) I’m not convinced it’s worth the wait, but if someone twisted my arm I’d go again.

My mom does a lot of puzzles. Some of them you’d probably recognize, like the Word Search and Sudoku from the daily paper, but others look like crossword puzzles filled with kanji. The worst part about the crossword puzzles is that there aren’t any hints to them and I’m not sure how you decide what exactly to put in those boxes. I’m sure it’s not random gibberish, because what would be the fun of that? You might as well start writing it on the walls so you can look properly crazy when people come to visit.

Years ago I figured she’d like playing computer games. She’s had little electronic games and a Tamagochi and I’ve been giving her games like Snood and Tumblebugs. (As an aside, Tumblebugs no longer works on the Mac and we’ve been waiting for years for them to fix it.) In any case, I got her a copy of Peggle. She’s been playing Peggle a little too much lately, staying up late at times. And as a bad son, I got her Peggle Nights as well.

As for me, I had a fine day of paying bills and sorting out some of the papers I have piled on my desk. I also finally got my Arduino Ethernet Shield working and I must admit that was a larger pain in my ass than I’d like to admit. A few more parts, though, and I’ll have my remote computer rebooter ready. Much geekier than Peggle, eh?

I spent most of the day trying to get this silly electronical gadget working and I was pretty certain that I hate computers and need them out of my life, but that was only a temporary thought. My computer, after all, has found an episode of Ghost Story from 1972 that scared the crap out of me when I was eight. I still remember “The Concrete Captain” and I wonder now if it would have the same effect on me now. I’m sure I’ll stay up too late finding out.

Fortunately, I didn’t stay up that late finishing Requiem For an Assassin. If I had known that it was the last “John Rain” book, I’d have taken more time to read it. The gym is closed for the next few days, as well, so I’ll have more time for sleeping and geekery. Why not watch a ghost story from my youth to see if it does anything for me. I even had some Otter Pops so I could be OK.

I’ve decided to give up on dating (not that I’d taken it up with much gusto) and that left me with lots more time on my Friday night. I stayed at work late, took my mom to the new Thai restaurant in the neighborhood (Red Onions) and did some inconsequential geeking. The restaurant, by the way, was excellent, though the service was iffy.

So back to the geekery: I have a computer that keeps locking up and I have to hit the reset button to get it going again. I figured I’d use this little Arduino thing with an Ethernet port to be able to reset it remotely, so I had to go digging in all the boxes in the basement to find my soldering iron and my magnifying visor. I was hunched over this little bench like a mad scientist soldering it all together, and then I had to plug it in to see if it all worked. When it didn’t work, I had to break out the Ethernet sniffer and when that didn’t work I gave up and started reading my book. The bad part about reading that book is that I may finish it and have to buy another. I suppose that’s not so bad.

I’ve reverted to my natural state and I’m probably going to hole up in the basement trying to wire together something ridiculous and fragile and ultimately geeky, but that’s the way we roll. Andiamo.

Well, I think I hit another personal best with Fran, but I better write down the time (7:52 with 2 40lb dumbbells) because every time I do Fran I end up a little shaky and the picture I take of the workout board is just plain fuzzy. Last time I know I was DFL with the 40lb dumbbells and I’m pretty sure that meant I took more than 13 minutes. My best time is 8 or 9 minutes, as far as I remember, so 7:42 isn’t so bad.

And look at that, I’m up late again. I’m not too worried about being up late on a Thursday night, because my Friday nights are usually about watching TV and being tired anyway. I’m expecting a long day at work setting up servers, so I don’t have to be completely awake, either. Or at least that’s my current plan.

So I really should put down the Kindle 2 now that I have the software on my Mac updated again, but when have I had any sense? I’ve given up dating so I’m now I can watch more TV. Especially this show Warehouse 13 where they keep talking about cookies. What can beat cookies?

HAH. HAH, I say. I was about to head to bed VERY EARLY with a book, but I helped a friend move his computer across the neighborhood. Really, moving a computer a couple of blocks is something you can do without a car, but moving it a few miles is not.

But it’s still not too late for me to head to bed not quite as early, but with the book nevertheless. I may just do that.

Just one game of Peggle first…

One thing that makes a workout hard is eating too much at lunch. Like a giant bratwurst and an equally large hamburger, potato salad, and baked beans. Plus a couple of beers. I was presented with two choices today, either go out to an off-site with my old group at work and submit to alcoholic and culinary peer pressure, or stay at work. There really wasn’t much of a choice to be made, and most of it had worn off by the time I made it to the gym.

I got a new NAS today (a network connected set of hard drives) and I’m up late setting it up. It’s meant to be very simple and the instructions are abysmally short. The problem is that I was using hard disks that already had data on them from a completely different system, and that confused the NAS. So now, hours later, after crashing several unrelated computers, I finally figured out what I was doing and I think I have it working now. I wonder if I need a new hobby.