When Mark was trying to get a muscle-up at the gym there were videos and photographs and diagrams and on the white board. When I’m trying, there isn’t bupkis. Whitey is keeping me down. It’s just as well, my shoulders hurt a bit after my repeated attempts.

None of this really matters because it was 100°F today. ONE HUNDRED DEGREES. I got home and after the house was rather warm after this second day of heat and I just passed out on the floor. I often feel like I have to take a nap after work but I usually don’t pass out. I guess I’m lucky we’re not working on the ham radio antenna this week.

I’m not sure why everything has to happen all at once. Months and months of boredom and here I am getting all sorts of calls from all sorts of customers and none of them believe a word of what I say. Like, “Hey, you’re talking about someone else’s product. Why are you asking us about it?” My guess is that we answer quicker. It’s all very strange to me.

And it’s not enough that everyone is trying to get on my last nerve, it was also 102°F today and it’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow. I wanted to take Friday off, but on a 104°F day it’s much cooler at work than it is anywhere else. It’s supposed to be 100°F on Sunday, too.

I seem to be losing weight, but I’m sure it’s just sweat in all this heat. In any case, I figured after all the nonsense I’m dealing with at work it was time for me to splurge once again. I did notice that after working out in the air conditioning that I weighed at least 2 more pounds than I did yesterday working out in the heat.

The “Helen” workout at Crossfit requires a lap around the block along with 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pullups. Three times. I can run around the block a couple of times but the third time just kills me. And even better, my joints have been aching a bit lately. Time to make an appointment with my massage guy.

Other than that, I’m just dreading Friday. I was going to take the day off and run some errands like getting my hair cut and looking at the tile at the tile store, but the weather report just said it was going to be 107°F then. Sounds like a good day to sit in the air conditioning at work and hope that nobody calls. I even got a call while I was driving home today, asking me why I hadn’t replied to an email (which I hadn’t received.) It’s not even anything I was supposed to be working on. Hooray for extra confusion and yet another day of angry customers.

Not only have I been sleepy the past couple of days, everything seemed to go to hell in a handbasket today. Several customers all seemed to think the sky was falling on the same day. That plus knowing what the workout is tomorrow, I should probably get more sleep than usual.

I’m supposed to pick some colors and tiles and flooring for my bathroom project. While my sister and Megan swear I’m gay, I’m really not, and I have no frigging clue what colors or to pick. All I know is that I want the toilet seat to be splinter-free and that I want the floor to be comfortable to walk on with bare feet in the wintertime.

Oh, and I think my friends are trying to make me look foolish again for their own amusement. They’re trying to get me to ask out an attractive woman from work who also has her PhD and is much younger than I am. According to the head honcho at the gym, I have 3 things going against me there so I must have nothing to lose. Except, of course, my dignity (if I had that to begin with.)

I was a bit tired at work today, understandably, and I slipped into my regular non-work persona when I called my sister today. The contractor happened to be there as well. I let them both know that I had no idea what I was doing on this remodel and that I had some misgivings on Chinese design of parts. The words I used were a bit more blunt and now anyone near my cube at work knows I’m a foul-mouthed racist.

It’s my sister’s birthday and I haven’t gotten her anything yet. I usually ask her what she wants and she usually tells me about November. It’s good that I’m not the only indecisive person in the family.

My mom, sister, and brother-in-law all went out to dinner tonight for my sister’s birthday. When they got back here, my brother-in-law said he wanted a pipe and I thought he wanted a scrap of the galvanized steel plumbing I cut out of the basement last week. He’s an odd guy at times, so I didn’t think much of it. Turns out he was looking for one of my dad’s old tobacco pipes. My sister and I were so sick of smelling smoke when we were growing up up that I gave away all the pipes and none of us — me, my mom, or my sister — wanted anything that smelled that foul. There are plenty of good memories of my dad without those malodorous things.

I was standing around for most of the day, but instead of just standing in one place comfortably, I was 70 feet up in the air trying to get my friend’s ham radio antenna down to the ground so he could fix it. I was one of the “lucky” ones who got to go up the tower. It’s kind of weird, you don’t get to move round as much as you’d like (because falling to your death is a bad idea) and if you drop something it’s a big production to get it back, especially if you hit anyone down on the ground. When I got passive-agressive about it, I’d make sure no one was near my drop zone and I’d drop things that were getting in my way, like water bottles.

We started in the early afternoon and I think I finally got off the tower at 7:30PM. My buddy who owns the tower bought us dinner afterwards and I had something unhealthy since I thought I deserved it, but I didn’t expect to see 4 orders of ribs on one plate. Those people in Scappoose sure know how to eat.

In retrospect, I really have to find a weekend where I can just sit around and watch TV or something.

I hung out with some people watching a UFC fight tonight. I’m not a very violence-prone guy and I try to avoid it in most cases, but I get sucked into watching things like that. It’s like watching a train wreck. I can’t look away.

Speaking of train wrecks, I went to look for bathroom fixtures yesterday and found some nice, boring fixtures from Price-Pfister. Unfortunately, my plumber and my contractor told me to go back and find something else. It’s my understanding that Price-Pfister has had some trouble with their kitchen sink fixtures. I went and found something slightly nicer that cost approximately $600 for the valves and fixturing for the upstairs bath. Then I also looked for some fancier things for the downstairs since it gets used much more often and the fixtures I priced there were more like $2000. I think my mom also wants the Toto Washlet bidet as well.

I suppose there’s a big question about why I’m spending so much money on this, but I haven’t had a girlfriend since 2001 so it’s all for me to spend how I want. Although if I ever do get married, I bet my wife will tell me to tear all this crap out and replace it with what she wants, but that’s much less likely than lightning striking me at this point. Especially since I have to climb my buddy’s 70-foot radio tower tomorrow to do some antenna work. Good thing I’m not sober now, but unfortunately I’ll probably be sober by the time I have to climb up that damn thing.

None of the stuff they took was a big deal and really, I needed to replace the toilet and sink anyway. Plexiglas was cheap the last time I checked and looking at all the junk they got out of the bathroom really just reminds me that I should have thrown it all away much earlier. I’ve gone through my those drawers before but, like the rest of my dad’s junk, I’ve been putting off going through all the stuff. So tomorrow I go to the plumbing supply to look for toilets and sinks. I bet they’re expensive.

Other than that, I’ve been wondering what’s geekier, the weird bulge you get from keeping your iPhone in your front pocket or the weird belt pouch. It probably doesn’t matter anyway. It was pointed out to me that at my age I’m invisible to single women. Somehow I think age has little to do with it.

So the contractors came to tear out most of the old upstairs bathroom. I didn’t think about it until now, so I hadn’t cleaned out the drawers up there. Instead of leaving the crap in the drawers and just demolishing the cabinets, they unloaded the crap into all the spare cardboard boxes I had that I was using to take books to Powells. That annoys me a little. They also decided to throw away the old fixtures, which could have been reused. The old toilet was sitting at the sidewalk and the old sink is missing. Not only that, but they took the plexiglas we use to keep the wind off of the basement windows and probably other random stuff around the house as well.

All I have to say is what the hell, man. I’m not going to be able to sleep because I’m fairly annoyed at this.

MobileMe has messed up my work calendars, making my iPhone useless for work. There’s no end of annoyance for me tonight.

For the most part, I seem to get sore at the gym and my joints sometimes ache, but to really hurt myself I need to do something that has little to do with actual exercise. Today, for example, I pulled the tendon that goes down my middle finger down my forearm when I was pulling on my gym shoes. The time I hurt my back so bad that I was out for most of a month, I was putting golf clubs into my trunk. While I think the medication I take probably makes me more susceptible to muscle cramps, this is all getting ridiculous.

Other than that my brain is fairly fried and the only thing I can think is that 95°F is too hot for this Oregonian. So, I think I’ll go lie in bed and hope my brain doesn’t melt.

Last week it was cold outside during the day. I think there were days in the 60’s and, in any case, it actually rained. But today it was 91°F. Probably even more here in the city. The workout at the gym included 3 laps around the block and I have a hard time with more than 2 on a good day. The sudden heat and my trying to cough up a lung after being in the basement all weekend (blowing black snot) didn’t help either.

When I left for the gym there was a girl down at the school practicing tennis against the wall. She was wearing shorts and a bikini top. I would have taken a better look, but I figure anyone with that sort of fashion sense is probably very, very young. An exhibitionist wouldn’t be behind the school and anyone closer to my age would probably be wearing long sleeves and sunscreen.

I could always try to embrace my inner dirty old man and break out my trench coat and a bag of candy, but I don’t have the kind of aberrant tenacity to pull that off. First, it’s too hot to wear a trench coat and it only comes out of my closet when I’m wearing my suit and it’s raining like for a funeral. (The suit only comes out for weddings and funerals and weddings are usually during the sunny season.)

And how in the hell would I keep a bag of candy in the house? First, I’d eat some for a sample. Then I’d have to make sure that the sample was representative of the rest of the bag. Then I’d have eaten almost half, so I’d have to eat approximately half of the candy. Then I’d accidentally east some more. Well, now that I was almost 2/3 of the way through the bag, I’d have to get to 2/3. But a 1/3 of a bag of candy is close to 1/4 so I could eat a bit more. And 1/4 bag of candy isn’t worth keeping around so I’d have to finish it all. This theory seems to apply to cookies and cupcakes as well.

So, I think I’ll stick to the ice cream as a vice, if I only had some ice cream.

P.S. I put some pictures of plumbing on yesterday’s post.

The best thing about this weekend is how well my $20 saw held up. I think I got rid of most of the old pipe in the basement, at least all I could get out. My friend the contractor came by to tell me that he thought all the siding might need to come down and I he was surprised at how much pipe I got out.

The most surprising thing to me was the state of the hot water pipes. One by the hot water heater snapped off when I tried to unscrew it, and the pipe to the bathroom sink was almost completely plugged up with rust.

Speaking of the bathroom sink, it decided to start leaking today and I had to replace the drain. So that’s my life right now: plumbing.

(I always just take a picture to take to the plumber’s supply so it’s easier to explain things to the guy at the counter.)