I’m sure it was stressful for the people working in the new gym because it was PACKED today and everyone, of course, had an opinion about the new space. People wanted to be there for “opening day.” I certainly was guilty of having issues with the space. Obviously, it’s bigger, but with more people, it’s more crowded.

I was especially cranky because I really should have been home in bed instead of at the gym, since I’m coming down with something. But, like I said, I had to be there for the transition. The gym is full of obsessive people and I’m not excluding myself from that category. I even pushed myself to have one my faster times in the gym. Unfortunately, I paid for this. I thought I was going to fall over when I took a shower because my back hurt so much. Thank goodness for Advil.

In any case, the new gym is really cool and the weird bits are going to be fixed, I’m sure. They got a new mop and I think I can mop the whole gym in the same time it took me to mop the old one. Mopping, surprisingly, is a great core exercise, and this new heavier mop is great for the shoulders.

I really ought to sleep more, too, instead of staying up listening to the directors comments from Love, Actually. I probably need a new hobby.

I was at the last workout at the gym today, which was the last workout at this location. After that we helped move the last little bit to the new location. A lot of the people from the gym showed up to help and it didn’t take long at all. It’s a good thing, too, because I think the Brains Behind the Gym overthinks things too much, and THMFIC doesn’t like change. It’s a big change, a big new location, and I said I was going to mop the whole floor. It’s huge.

I didn’t think I’d do that well tonight because I woke up with sore sinuses. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but I usually come down with something just in time to be sick for the weekend or a holiday, and then I”m well enough for Monday. I did well enough to beat the yoots on the workout, which included 3 laps around the block in 40°F weather.

Oh, boy, and it’s now 1 hour later than I planned to hit the hay. The tile guy is supposed to be in tomorrow at 8AM to finish the bathroom counter. I told Jay the Contractor I wanted to replace the wood and restain it, but I also told him that he could try talking me out of it because, well, he is my friend after all. I’m up too late because I bought a copy of Gregory’s Girl and I had to put it in my DVD player like an idiot. It’s a teen movie from Scotland that I saw when I was in my teens, back when things were important and the world was filled with possibilities. That’s what I got when I was watching Comfort and Joy while drinking on Xmas, two Amazon purchases of movies by the same writer/director, BIll Forsyth, Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero.

Both of those were movies from my teens, too. I suppose I should be glad that there is still hope in my life, but not so happy that the hope is that my bathroom is finished before the year is out, especially since it’s still January.

I was just looking at the gym’s blog from a year ago and I think I eased into things, but my first day was a year ago. I’m trying to quantify what’s changed in that time, but I can fairly say that the pants that were getting a little tight are now falling off of me at times. I wonder if that means I should moderate the number of cheeseburgers I eat to make my jeans fit. That would be a bit of an experiment.

Any day that starts with a trip to the dentist is usually not going to be the best. Sure, there’s that period of time where your teeth feel extremely clean, but who can avoid ruining the feeling with a nice piece of chocolate? Or even a nasty piece of chocolate like a mini-Milky Way that you find on a random counter at work? I brush and I floss and I floss and I brush, and they still find something to scrape at with their painful metal hooks.

When I got home, the house was once again full of fumes, and the stained wood looks awful. If you remember, the painters randomly came in and primed all the wood doors and trim that should have been stained. They stripped and sanded the wood, but the process wasn’t uniform and now there’s splotches in the stain. I got madder as I thought about it and figured I had two options:

1. Replace all the trim in the bedroom and hall, and also the three doors with their trim, and start the staining process over. Make the painter pay for this and the labor because it was their fault and they ruined the wood without instructions from anyone else.
2. Live with the awful stain. This would be quicker and we wouldn’t have the house smelling for too much longer. I would also take the effort to badmouth the painter and his stupidity and probably get an account on Angie’s List so I could let everyone know how incompetent he is.

The other option is to paint over the stain, but at this point I don’t trust the guy to paint properly. I figure the stain would bleed through and the clowns would also paint the wrong thing.

Ah well. I was in a bad mood and waited it out long enough that I just feel like going to sleep. Sometimes the nightmares clear and I can have a nice dream about being happy or something before I have to get up and have people tell me I’m stupid.

The main phone line to the house has been intermittent since the snow, and has been “busy” since last Monday. They’re scheduled to come in NEXT Monday to make sure we didn’t screw anything up. Well, I have the lines coming in from the outside dangling in free air so I think the problem is on their end. Calling the phone company involves the usual sorting through menus and waiting on hold, and it makes me mad. Not mad enough to change, since all telecom companies suck in the same sort of way.

Oh, and they wanted me to FAX a copy of my dad’s death certificate and take over the responsibility of paying for the bill, something I’ve been doing for the past 10 years or so. Too bad that after I did all the scanning and cutting and pasting, the number they gave me was wrong.

My other adventure for the day was borrowing my brother-in-law’s truck to help the gym move. I took the bus across town (no transfers, we’re on the same line) and that was actually a nice, boring ride. The ride back was not so boring. The truck is kind of a POS, good for moving and dump runs. The inside was completely fogged up and there aren’t any lights to show you how to adjust the heater in the dark. Fortunately, there’s a flashlight on my keychain, and the only hard part was maneuvering the behemoth through the city streets. Hard when you’re used to a Honda Civic. I was also told that the truck was a little too butch for me. I think I’d agree.

I got up this morning feeling like doodie. I didn’t sleep well and I was coughing. I suppose it was probably because the painters were here doing prep work and sanding, creating all sorts of dust that was kicked up when the furnace turned on in the morning. In any case, I didn’t feel very good today but I couldn’t just go home because the painters were here and the house was set to be full of fumes. In fact, the painters, being painters, left the windows closed all day instead of airing the place out. It still smells like stain right now.

The painting should be finished tomorrow, and then the tiling on Thursday and Friday. The shower door is supposed to go in on Thursday. And the plumbing might be in on Friday if I’m lucky. So that means, if all goes well, I can take my first shower in my new bathroom on Saturday.

We’ll see how the disappointment goes.

New goal for 2009: make Carolyn eat her hat.

I’m not sure I did all that much at work today, but I did do something and I actually survived. I hadn’t woken up this early for several weeks, so I was worried about walking around like a zombie. So far so good.

I guess I did have a bit of an adrenaline rush today because I had to call the phone company. They’re just so annoying that I really, truly, wanted to hurt someone. Our main phone line is out and they’re blaming us, of course, but I’ve disconnected the wires that come into the house and hooked a test set up to it and there’s no dial tone. Basically, the phone lines coming to our house are shorted somewhere. Ugh.

So, I guess I made it through the Monday workout at the gym as well. I’m wondering if I need to take more breaks, because Mondays are usually better days for me. Two days of sitting around and resting are probably the reason, but more sitting around isn’t one of my resolutions. I think I should try to go on at least one date a month. That means asking out at least enough women that someone might say yes. The baseline statistic I’ve heard of is 1 in 20, or maybe that was something else, but that’s a lot of work to do in a month. Hell, I probably don’t even know 20 single women I could ask out. I think I’ll have to come up with another plan here.

I’m still considering my resolutions for the next year. There has to be something I can do to change things around a bit. I should have some goals for my career and some for my social life. But really, am I just setting myself up for disappointment?

Speaking of disappointment, my bathroom should be finished soon. The electrician was in on January 1st. The tile guy is supposed to be in early this week. The painters as well. The sink and fixtures have been delivered to the wrong location, but should be in the local warehouse this week, so the plumber might be able to finish his work later this week. The toilet and washlet are working well. However, everyone who has dealt with contractors knows about delays and the shower door is probably another week out as well.

OK, so my first resolution: don’t worry so much about disappointment and just deal with it. How’s that?

I don’t have a lot of sense to begin with, and even when I’m trying to do something that makes sense, I don’t always do it. It was a co-worker’s 40th birthday party yesterday, and I hung out with his hockey buddies afterwards which, of course, didn’t make any sense at all. We went to two bars and I was in no shape to do anything but walk the 2 miles home. Unfortunately, that took me past another bar where some friends regularly shut the place down. I ended up talking to some older gentlemen I know from the neighborhood as well as everyone else in the bar. I don’t feel so bad right now, but I think that’s because I’m not awake enough to be hung over.

I think I need a keeper or something.

P.S. The Kobe beef burger at Rogue Brewery is worth resetting my no-cheeseburger counter.

This is a real vacation day for me, not one that I just kind of took. Nobody was online when I turned on my work computer, and I didn’t receive any new emails. So I watched a bunch of movies. Let’s Go to Prison (meh), Ten Ten (cute Japanese road-trip movie), Dead Alive (gory and campy), Tokyo Eyes, and Eagle Eye (better than I expected). I think I also finished watching the first season of Futurama.

Turning off cable didn’t get me very far from the TV. I probably should do something that gets me out of the house, but it’s been frigging cold and rainy lately, when it hasn’t been snowing. I suppose I was out 3 of the last 4 nights, so I’m not a complete shut-in.

The first day of the year, I went to a friend’s New Years Day party and had some great food. Unfortunately, a couple of beers was a enough to make me fall asleep at 9PM. That never works out for the best, of course, and I woke up at midnight feeling like I couldn’t get back to sleep. It was oddly bright outside, and I looked outside to see a couple of inches of snow. There really wasn’t anything to do but try to go back to sleep and hope it would be gone by the time I got up.

So now here it is, 2009, and I have to think of some resolutions. Resolution 1: think of some resolutions. Give me a chance.

I just got home and I suppose if I was a good friend, I would have left the party much earlier so my friend could have had more time with his ex (who in fact was looking much better than the last time I saw her). But no, I was busy drinking and talking nonsense with my friends. Several of them were drinking uncharacteristically as well and it was a lot more fun when you’re not the only one talking nonsense. In fact, one of my friends was purported to speak in Japanese when she is drunk, and I finally got to see it. Her husband had no idea what she was saying to him, which made it all the funnier to me.

The only bad part is that I’m supposed to be at the gym at 11AM tomorrow. I was feeling puny today after having two beers and I had several more than that tonight. Well, maybe it was last year. In any case, Happy New Year and it’s now time to restart our arbitrary clocks.

So usually I’m getting ready for bed by 9:30PM but this year I have plans. I’m supposed to be out at a party. My buddy is in town from Hawaii and he was supposed to here an hour ago. Somehow he IM’ed his ex from 3 or 4 years ago and now he’s supposed to be on his way to get her and then come here.

The adventure continues. Another night of high drama, maybe.