I could sort of blame the gym for my level of tiredness, but really I had a hard time sleeping last night. I kept waking up and feeling quite awake. I knew sooner or later I’d be feeling it and today it was sometime during the workout. We’ve only been doing sprints on the rowers of 250m or so but today we did 500m, 3 times. My sister laughs at how short we row, but she was just a coxswain, so what does she know?

Even worse, I had a “special” salad in the cafeteria which meant it was smaller and more expensive than the usual chicken caesar I have. The caesar tastes like they use collard greens or something equally bitter and I’m just hoping it’s good for me because it surely doesn’t taste very good. In any case, I was hungry for the rest of the day.

Since it’s Monday, I’m still up watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives of course. Mmmm, hamburger.

My mom was telling me about a dream she had where my dad was outside cleaning up the yard and burning the yard debris. We wee both happy that he seemed to be doing well even if it was only in her dream. That’s probably where we’d like him to be, puttering around in the yard, not sitting in front of the TV all day watching M*A*S*H. I’m not even sure M*A*S*H is on all the time like it used to be.

Right now I felt a sense of loss for something which matters a lot less: my bathroom. I was just thinking about how nice it would be to spend some quality time up there by myself, away from everything else. Also, how nice it would be to stumble out of my bed in the middle of the night and to be only a few feet to the bathroom rather than down a flight of stairs and through an obstacle course of a hallway.

The old bathroom, if you can imagine it, had a bathtub in the back. The purple towel is plugging up the drain for the toilet. The hole in the floor where the board is was where the sink was against the right wall. There was a cabinet that stretched back to the door.

The new imaginary bathroom is going to have the shower in the back left corner with expensive tile I picked out. The window is going to be much smaller (see where the tape is?) The toilet is moving closer to the door. The sink and the cabinet are going to be on the left side and the door is moving to the right side of the room. Holy crap I bet this is going to be expensive.

I was reading blog entries from some of the gym people and several of them were busy surfing today. Another guy who swears he isn’t a lazy load slept in until noon before hanging out with an ice cream man.

I can tell you how boring my life is. I got up and watched some football until I couldn’t stand it any longer and went and took a nap. Then I went back into my old room which is filled with cardboard boxes and looked for a book I was supposed to lend someone but all I found were countless boxes full of books that I haven’t thought about for years. Every box was covered in dust and was greeted by my exasperated blaspheming. “Jesus Christ! Another box full of books!” And except for my early engineering text books, I’ve read them all.

I’m glad I went from being a slackass student at MIT to a semi-conscientious one at Portland State because you know where that got me: to a job that is basically customer service. It’s not a bad job, but aren’t I supposed to be an investment banker or something by now? I guess it’s just not in me. Like my neighbor suggested, I’m going to set all the books free. Well, not so free, but probably to Powell’s Used Books. Too bad I can’t convert them directly into ice cream or fried chicken.

I’m trying to think of why I have this headache today and I was blaming it on my sinuses. But I remembered that I forgot to take my contacts out last night and even thought I did replace them with new ones, those could be my biggest problem.

Not that I don’t have other headaches.

I suppose the workout at the gym could have dehydrated me and that might be why my head hurts. Or maybe it’s because of the weight of the world. I think it’s much more likely that I forgot to drink enough water. That, at least, is much easier to take care of.

OK, so then why am I still up? Playing games on my iPhone of course. I can barely see the computer screen.

I got a new computer at work today, which means I was a big mess and wasn’t able to do all that much real work. But I was busy trying to get SOMETHING done with my new misconfigured computer.

My doctor yesterday was worried that I was going to obsess about my Body Mass Index. I told him that before I started worrying about that I’d have to start eating better. You can probably guess how likely that is to happen. I mean I had dinner and already I’m daydreaming about fried chicken. Sheesh.

I had a doctors appointment today and instead of taking a book I took my iPhone and played a game on it while I was waiting. And then when I got home, I played some more. I can’t see a darn thing now. It’s probably just as well.

Here’s another story of how computers suck. I try not to screw with my work laptop too much but I install things to get my job done. I’m also required by IT to install their special patches. Today when I installed some required patches, my computer wouldn’t boot up any more. I’d get a Blue Screen of Death. I took it to IT, who blamed me for all sorts of things, but we found out what happened was that my disk was dying and that the new patches had written important files into bad parts of the hard drive. So I get a new laptop tomorrow. It may be a dusty relic covered in other people’s finger grease, but it’ll be new to me.

In the mean time, nothing happens in my job that isn’t done on the computer, so as you can guess I’m kind of hosed. I guess I have even more time to play that game on my iPhone.

I had to work most of the day without time to sit and stare at the walls or even just surf random sites on the intarweb today. Since I don’t like to write too much about work here, there isn’t much to say. I went to the gym, felt real puny, and went home. Honestly, that doesn’t make for a very exciting day.

Really, I’m just sitting here surfing the web and thinking how nice it would be to have the upstairs toilet back and wondering how nice the dual-flush Toto Aquia® II Dual Flush Toilet will be.

The only horrible thing I may have done is to eat Huevos Rancheros for lunch (3 eggs, tortillas, rice, beans, and hash browns) and a cupcake after dinner. I think I’ve eaten 4 or 5 eggs today. Pretty soon I’m not going to be able to take my shirt off at the gym, which I shouldn’t do now for aesthetic purposes but for thermal purposes it’s too warm to wear a shirt there sometimes.

Obviously I think it’s too warm but the dude behind me is wearing long sleeves. There’s an obvious disparity in temperature perception. I’m an Oregonian and find it hot when it’s over about 65°F.

Seems like every time I try to fix the plumbing I end up fixing more than what I was planning. Other bits start to leak and I end up going to the plumbing supply. Even if I didn’t need any more parts to start out with, I end up replacing things. Fortunately, I’ve gotten better at going to the store in the middle of the day rather than right before they close, so I can buy more parts if necessary.

It’s a good thing to know, since who knows where one’s career path will lead them? Custodian. That sound pretty good right about now.

The bird people have started again. There are an estimated 1000 Vaux Swifts now going into the chimney at Chapman school. I wasn’t out there to look but by my estimates and knowing the numbers they have, it’s probably more like 500. I’m not sure who is right, but I’ve actually sat around and helped a guy count. I dunno. In any case, if that’s the number then there’s going to be ten times that amount at the peak, if we’re lucky. And a whole lot of annoying people here watching the birds.

We spent a lot of time trying to get breakfast after working out at the gym today. It’s Labor Day, after all, and our first-choice restaurant, The Industrial Cafe, was closed. Our second choice, Stepping Stone, was packed. We went to our third choice, Roses, which wasn’t too bad food-wise, was a big loss because they’re not too organized. We got there around 11:30AM and we finally got our food at 1:30PM. Most of the time was spent standing around waiting for a table.

I’m not a big fan of waiting around. Portland’s “best restaurant” (and I’m not sure who decided that) is Pok-Pok and while it was pretty good, I think I’ve had better Thai food. I can’t remember where, though. Maybe downtown, maybe in Japan, maybe in Boston. In any case, it wasn’t so much better than everywhere else that I’d put up with the hassle of standing in line or having them run me out after I’ve finished. They’re quite rude there, as well, and they can afford to be because they’re so busy.

There’s a Japanese sushi place called Saburo’s that’s the same way. White people will tell you it’s their favorite, and the only explanation I have is that the sushi is huge and white people like that. And maybe white people have a hive-mind that all decided that standing in line for two hours for mediocre sushi from rude wait staff is what they like. I remember back in the day there were two sisters who used to work there and the chef married the one who actually owned the building. The other sister we called, “Slow Mo,” for her lack of speediness. In any case, I can’t list the places I like better because there would be most of the other places in Portland, a bunch of places in my old neighborhood in Japan, and even the convenience stores in Osaka.

I can’t say more than this picture does. I was in North Plains, Oregon today, helping my friend construct part of his base for a 70′ ham radio antenna.

I left before dinner which was venison sausage and sauerkraut. They were calling it a “Sausagefest” which really describes every ham radio event I can think of.

I did want to make it to a barbecue this weekend but it ended up being a pizza party. Not quite the same thing, but more suited to the current weather conditions. Seems like it’s time for rain again.

One thing I’m not that great at is this stupid iPhone game that I’m addicted to, Aurora Feint. There are timed puzzles where you’re supposed to clear away blocks at a rapid rate and I’m ALMOST getting there under the time limit. ALMOST. So, of course, I keep playing. Phooey.

I might be good at inviting myself to barbecues. Not the real Southern US kind that require wood-fired smokers, but the kind that mean grilling. I’ve successfully invited myself to one in the Bay Area two years running, and I may have invited myself to one in SE Portland tomorrow. We’ll see. It may actually rain us out tomorrow.

Also, I’ve found out the price for much of the house renovation. Every little piece is around $10,000, plus or minus 50%. The furnace, $12,000. The electrical, $7,000. Plumbing, I don’t quite know yet, but I bet it’s in the same range. The bathroom is probably divided into windows, plumbing, and cabinets, but they’re probably all within that range I gave.

In any case, we’ll find out soon enough. I’m going back to my iPhone game.

I think I’m supposed to have a series of plans at this point. A plan for my career. A fitness plan. A plan for my further education. A plan for my lackluster romantic life. A plan to make these plans.

But this is America and if it’s not worth doing half-assed, it’s not worth doing at all.

The problem is that bumbling through life you bump up against these people with plans and they’re kind of annoying. Not only that, but they’re probably from the East Coast and went to some Ivy League school and haven’t figured out just why we don’t drive that fast here in Oregon. You only drive fast if you’re trying to get somewhere else. That’s why when Oregonians are driving in Washington, we’re driving really fast, because we know they’re bad drivers and we don’t want to be there. If we stop, we might have to buy something and pay Sales Tax.

No one really wants to be on the highway in L.A., so they’re all driving really fast. Most of Portland is OK, so we’re not driving fast unless we’re on I-205 or US 26 or 82nd Avenue or Foster Road. I’m usually driving fast on the way to work because I really don’t want to be there either.

So this weekend I may just drive around under the speed limit. These three-day weekends are pretty nice because a bunch of people leave and it’s like the Portland of yesteryear. I may even go out and buy a Sno-Cone or an Icee.

I was looking at my work email last night because I am an idiot. Well, one of my co-workers was online as well and he told me that he had flown his radio-controlled airplane into a tree. If you click on the link for the tree, you’ll see a nice google maps picture. A nice big field with two trees at the very edge and the genius flew his plane straight into it. I consider the genius a friend, so when he asked me to help him extricate the plane from the tree, I knew I’d end up helping him. We were lucky, no one had stolen the plane and the wind hadn’t knocked it out of the tree. It was pretty stuck in a bushy tree.

The thing is, no one was willing to climb the tree but me. I guess I have some experience watching my dad, who was still climbing much higher into his seventies. I’ve also done plenty of climbing around while pruning the trees at home and once I got stuck on the roof and only got down by jumping into a tree next to the house. Funny how the guy in his 40’s was up in the air wearing a dress shirt while the kids in their 20’s were on the ground.

I’ve also decided I miss getting my bills in plain white envelopes. I used to use the “back of the envelope” for taking notes but now there are advertisements printed there and all I can do is recycle the things. I found a stack of printouts from my when I got my MS in Computer Science so I probably don’t need the envelopes.

I used the scrap paper to sketch out my new bathroom and I think I’ve made some errors. I sure hope I can move the toilet around or there’s going to be some space issues. Maybe if I just make some sort of bridge so I can get to the shower I’ll be OK.