I was thinking there’s something I meant to do today, and I’m not certain of what it was. I did, however, remove the unused electrical conduit and another piece of water pipe out of the basement and swept and mopped the grime that accumulates down there. The recent electrical work didn’t help, either, as it knocked grime out of the ceiling. I’ve been blowing black boogers out of nose all day because of that, and I cut myself with the conduit. I figure at least I did something that wasn’t football-related.

Well, my team didn’t win, but it was actually an interesting game this year. I was expecting to go to my buddy Il’s house and see the game with Il, his brother, and his brother’s kids. Il’s brother went skiing this year so it was just me and Il eating a pile of chicken wings, Doritos, and potato chips. Health food. We then watched a Blu-Ray copy of Hancock which was funnier than I remember. Last time I saw it was on a tiny screen on an airplane instead of a 52″ HDTV so I probably missed a lot of the visual effects. My TV is a 15″ standard definition, so it doesn’t compare. At least I now have seven months or so to get an HDTV before football season starts again.

So Joe Fury at the gym, who is older and wiser than me, told me that you’re supposed to tell yourself things during the workout to keep yourself going. For example, during a 1000M row, you’re supposed to tell yourself, “The discomfort is only now. It’s temporary. Keep going.”

I’m not sure what I’m thinking, but usually it’s more like, “I’m too old for this crap. Why am I working this hard? No one is paying me to do this. In fact, this has no bearing on my job, which is what I should be doing right now instead of fooling around in the gym. Oh, hey, I can catch up to that person next to me. Maybe I should try that.”

So we’re not supposed to pay attention to anything other than our own efforts, but I contend that you have to balance that with whatever motivates you, and if your motivation is competition, you have to go with it.

I was asked today why I was such a hater. I think I had some issue with a couple of groups of people. I guess the problem with both groups is that they seem very insular and don’t feel all that friendly. I talk to just about everyone I meet, and a lot of my opinions are based on just the small cross section of those people. But really, I feel like thinking about why I don’t seem to like firemen, when everyone else seems to love them.

I don’t like firemen because the ones I’ve met are rather humorless and macho. Macho I can deal with, but humorless I have a big problem with, especially with people who take themselves too seriously. And a lot of the firemen I’ve met (a small percentage of all the firemen on the planet, mind you) don’t really give a crap about anyone who isn’t either on fire or is a fireman themselves. A couple of my friends worked for the fire department as maintenance staff. One was an electrician and the other was a radio technician, and they were often treated like servants. Not by all the firemen, but by enough that I got the feeling that I shouldn’t bother being friendly because there was a certain club I’d never be able to join and I might as well remember that I wasn’t welcome.

Growing up non-white in Portland, where most everyone is white, there are lots of places where I didn’t feel welcome, and some times where people would want to hurt me when I was minding my own business. I guess that’s why I feel so strongly about “clubs” I can’t join.

Also, it doesn’t really matter, because I doubt any firemen give a crap about one guy who doesn’t like them. It’s not like I go out of my way to impede them or be rude to them. I just don’t feel any reason to join their cheerleading squad.

I’m not worth a $22 bottle of wine, but I’m worth half a $80 bottle of wine. This doesn’t quite make sense, but I suppose the situations were different. The expensive wine was when I was out with my HLP (heterosexual life partner) Il for his birthday dinner, and the $22 bottle of wine was what I drank while I was watching the TV shows I had stored up for this week. I have a couple of winner movies from Greencine this week, Alphaville and City of God but I know I have to keep up with the TV shows or I’ll have nothing to talk about when I meet normal people.

Speaking of other people, here’s a memory that a high school classmate remembers about me and I forgot about.

I have to relate this memory I have of you in high school because I keep thinking about it and laughing!
Senior year in chemistry class, (the teacher) was reading off a list of job prospects and you piped up and said “I wonder what the prospect of being a bum is?” He got really mad and said “Fine Todd if that’s what you want to do is be a bum then go ahead!!” He stopped reading off the list of prospects after that (thank God!). I’m not sure why that sticks so vividly in my mind, but I’m sure entertained by that thought!

Really, every year I’m a little less of an ass. So those of you who know me now, you have no idea how much worse it could be.

I can’t believe the silly actions of some people. Like me. I just bought a program for my iPhone to solve Rubik’s cubes. It’s pretty cool, actually, but quite foolish. I don’t have the time to fool with my Rubik’s cube any more, but I wanted to get it back to normal. Like I said, foolish.

The electrician was in working on the basement, putting in outlets and more lighting. We only had two outlets before, and we’re getting a half-dozen or so put in. We also only had three bare lightbulbs down there and now we’re getting a half-dozen or so. It’s quite bright down there now and kind of frightening. I can see all the crap I’ve stashed and now I’ll have to do something about it.

I have an Italianish suit that I bought when I was in Japan. Of course, that was 20 pounds ago, or is it 40 pounds ago? I weighted about 65kg at the time, and that’s 143lbs. The start of last year I weighed 185lbs and I’m 19 years older now, so I probably don’t have much chance to fit into that suit. It’s in my closet with at least three other suits and several sportcoats that I had back when I was in high school and college. Even more stuff for Goodwill unless I opt for some serious surgical intervention or stop eating altogether. The Mexican restaurants in Hillsboro aren’t going to allow me to even consider fasting as a viable life choice.

THMFIC at the gym was out for a couple of days because of pinkeye. There were seriously odd theories about how pinkeye is spread, most likely due to the rigorous scientific research put forth by the movie Knocked Up. I doubt anyone was rubbing his face on a dog’s behind, so the main theory is probably unlikely to be true. In any case, it’s nice to have him back but unfortunately the brains behind the gym is now sick with the same ailment. I wonder if I should just start wearing goggles to the gym. I could probably find some suitably dorky ones like the BCGs issued by the military. If they’re strong enough I may be able to see through beams so I can actually read the workout without walking to the whiteboard all the time.

Here I am, up late and drinking again, because that’s the only way to do proper system administration. I tried to upgrade my server and it’s slower than ever. There’s a good chance you’re not going to read this until the end of the week when I finally figure out what’s going wrong. It might make more sense for me to quit fooling with this crap and to just get a real life, but that seem unlikely at this point.

I did go down to the Apple store to buy iLife TWICE. The first time I thought there was something wrong with the DVD because it popped up an error message that said something like, “Get a new DVD, this one is broken all to hell.” Turns out that it may not have been the DVD, but that my system was weird and that’s the generic error message. It’s installed now and the part that I tried, iPhoto ’09, is working great. Which is more than I can say about other things, like work. Oh, well.

Everyone at the gym is talking about their Jackie times and why should I be any different. In my class, I was only beat by three people, one who is 15 years younger than me and competes in the Crossfit games, one who is 17 years younger than me, and one who is 20 years younger than me. I could have done better (though not faster than them) if I hadn’t hurt my knees doing proper, deep, front squats of 180lbs beforehand. I doubt anyone else stopped in the middle of their thrusters to stretch out their quads, hoping that would minimize their knee pain. In any case, Jackie is:

• Row 1000m
• 50 thrusters (squat to press) of 45lb
• 30 pullups

My time was 9:42, which is probably two minutes faster than my best time. I usually suck at the thrusters, and I’m getting better. If it wasn’t for the knee pain (which reminds me of how I felt when I was training for the marathon) I probably could have done a little bit better. Whatever.

So, I think my New Years Resolutions are shot to hell. I think I should just do whatever makes me happy. For example, my new drawer pulls make me happy, even though I haven’t put anything in the drawers yet. The thought of buying iLife ’09 tomorrow makes me happy. And I just realized that I have some work to do tonight, something that doesn’t make me happy, but something I better get to before it gets too late.

Honestly, I make a pretty crappy hedonist. Maybe I should take lessons from our depraved mayor.

Several of my geek goals for the day have been completed. I netbooted my old SPARCstation 20, I got NetBSD-5 running on old SUN4M hardware, and I helped my neighbor with his wireless and network printing. But the big adventure for the day was walking to Grand Central Baking for lunch and to the hardware store to buy soap dishes and towel hangers for my new shower. I also went to Restoration to get some drawer pulls. I can’t believe I spent $100 on random stuff for my new bathroom, but I suppose that’s the way it goes.

I’m not sure about the rich weird people that shop at expensive hardware stores. One guy had two beautiful throw pillows and thought they were $19. But it was $19 for the cover, $20 for the down insert. Instead of saying, “Oh, I guess I don’t want them,” he tossed them at the guy at the counter and said, “Keep them!” I, on the other hand, had a handful of chromed handles and gladly paid $9 for something that wasn’t bigger than a shiny metal jawbreaker. Maybe that’s why he had the tall model girlfriend, and I was shopping with my mom.

And, as it usually occurs this time of night, I can’t remember what else I did. I am wondering if I should really quit going to the gym so much. I was wearing the only jeans that almost fit me when I started going. Today they kept feeling like they were falling down. I’m sure I could just go out and buy a new pair of jeans, but think of all the slacking I could do if I just quit going! A new pair of jeans costs more than a full set of drawer pulls from the yuppie hardware paradise of Restoration.

Today was a partner workout at the gym and it was my partner’s first time. I don’t think he’s had a 20-minute long crossfit workout, even though the guy is all muscle. I’ve talked to him at my old gym and today and I know the crazy things he’s capable of. Today, after the workout, he was able to climb the rope without using his legs. In fact, I heard he was in an L-sit position, with his legs out straight horizontally. Woo.

My day was pretty nondescript otherwise. I just realized that I was supposed to be picking out drawer pulls for the upstairs bathroom. I have a hard time picking things like drawer pulls, because the ones I like are usually quite expensive. I’m sure they do this on purpose, make everything look kind of nondescript except for the really expensive hardware. At least my towel rack was cheap. Maybe it’s just time to go to Home Depot.

I have never liked Sam Adams. He worked for one of my least favorite mayors, Vera Katz, the mom of a classmate from grade school times. Sure she was a proponent of liberal causes, but she made the City of Portland a hellish place to work for all my friends who had jobs there. Sam has been a proponent of expensive boondoggles such as the Portland Streetcar and the OHSU tram which both are competing with and are less financially efficient than the buses that run in Portland. He also wanted to tax all grocery sacks even when the city REQUIRED our recycling to be sorted in grocery sacks. Did he want us to pay extra for recycling or did he want us to just chuck it all in the garbage? He just never made any sense to me. And I really didn’t care who he was screwing, as long as it wasn’t me. The trolley, the tram, the grocery bags, they were all screwing my me or my causes like education.

And now he’s been caught fooling around with a kid who was turning 18. There are several reasons our mayor’s case bothers me.

First, I’m not saying I wouldn’t entertain fooling around with an 18-year-old even though anyone under 25 is incredibly annoying to me, but everyone knows that I wouldn’t keep that a secret if I did. I certainly wouldn’t perjure myself. And if I was foolish enough to fool around with an 18-year-old, I know I’d take all sorts of grief from everyone in my life and I’d probably lose enough trust and respect that I’d have to change my life. Like maybe stepping down from public office, if I ever got to that position. I’d certainly take responsibility for my actions.

Second, Sam seems to have no sense of humor when it comes to what he’s doing. I’m not a big fan of anyone with so little self-deprecation in their personality. Someone who’d lie about their situation, calling it a “mentorship” when it was a romance. He made me doubt the guy who brought up the rumors of this affair back when Sam was running for mayor. He smeared the guy, as did I, because I believed Sam when he denied his dalliance. And now t Sam hasn’t even apologized to the guy.

Third, Sam is quite calculating and he should know that people in the public eye are held to a high standard. I’m not saying it’s a higher standard than others, because what would happen if a teacher were to go out with an 18-year-old? Or me? Hell, I’d probably have to quit going to the gym because of all the grief I’d get and that’s most of what I do with my free time.

Maybe my problem is that I’m expecting Sam to pay as much for his actions as I’d have to if I did what he did.

I know. Life’s not fair. All I had was one vote and “Anyone but Sam” really wasn’t on the ballot.

Il and I had a very nice dinner and Ringside and now I’m trying to sober up. I was supposed to work over the weekend (programming for my sister’s job) but that fell through in a huge way. I may end up doing something even more exciting: my taxes. I love my life.