It was hideously nice today, probably 82°F. I went to the gym where Tina (the actual brains behind the gym) had made me a CD of “oldies” which are from when I was young so I deny the songs are old at all. Nathan, The Head Honcho, had joked earlier in the week that I should bring in my box of birthday candy and share it. I certainly don’t eat that much candy in general, so I did just that. Dana the Trainer said, “What are you thinking, bringing candy to a gym?” I suppose I should have taken it all to a dentist’s office instead.

After I got home I mowed the lawn. I could hear lawn mowers running all over the neighborhood, but I ran out of gasoline and had to use manual methods. Good thing we have two push mowers as well as a gas mower. In any case, none of this was good for my hay fever. I decided to try a Benadryl and I was surprised it didn’t make me sleepy. Until later, when I passed out watching the Masters.

I went out to dinner with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law, and my brother-in-law’s friend Dave. I guess it’s actually his buddy’s dad. We went to the Berlin Inn, a German restaurant I’ve sent people to in the past, but I’d never actually made it until tonight. It was great!

Oh, and I didn’t really expect anything from my sister, but she and my mom got me a Nike Sumo driver! I may have to go to Golfsmith to ask them if I should swap it for the big square one that’s supposed to be easier to hit, but what a great present! Now to get some wedges…

I’m an Asian dude, and fairly hairless, but I think I have more hair in my nose than on the rest of my body. My old boss insisted that you should pluck the hairs out, thereby warning the remaining follicles to keep in line, but I’m afraid it’s a lost cause in there. I’m also never going to be able to grow a decent moustache, but maybe I can just have a combover of nose hair. My eyebrows are out-of-control as well but I can’t think of a use for that.

So I’m intolerant at times, especially for a liberal. I think I’ve decided I have no use for humorless people. I’m not sure why but they sure do annoy me. It’s too bad that we can’t make them all get jobs as accountants and then ship them off to some sort of “Accountant Island” or something. I’m sure some accountant will take umbrage at some imagined slight in my plan, but that would clearly indicate their humorlessness. Ain’t nothing worse than a humorless person who thinks they have a sense of humor.

THH bought me my cheeseburger today. I was supposed to look into the best places for cheeseburgers but I was so buried at work that I had to go with the general consensus that Widmer was the place to go. I think I’ve confirmed that the food there is generally great, but the burgers are kind of dry. But dry or not, I still like my cheeseburgers.

So I got my first (and possibly only) birthday present from my buddy Sun. A box of 70’s candy! My sister told me how much tax she owes and let’s just say it’s more than I thought it would be. I didn’t expect anything anyway. Maybe a bag or Ricola or something.

And just in case you can’t read what’s in it, here’s the text from the lid.

I think there’s a lot more eating in store for this birthday, too.

DoodieheadThe Head Honcho at the gym said he was expecting to read about the workout today which was kind of hard. I’m sure normal crossfit guys would scoff at it, but we did dumbbell clean and split jerks interspersed with runs around the blocks. It started out as 20-run-20-run-20-run, but we looked tired enough after the first round so it was cut down to 20-run-15-run-9-run.

I wasn’t quite last today because someone else cramped up. Most days I’m almost certain to be DFL. (Dead effing last.) But I consider that to be a lot better than DNF (did not finish). I keep telling THH that I should be lifting a lot less weight, but he doesn’t buy it. Saturday we may have my birthday workout. It’s number 44. He’s threatening 44 pullups, etc, but Dave the Trainer (yeah, my old trainer) said it’s more likely that I’d do 44% of that. Hahahaha. Dave still has my back.

So THH told me he’d buy me a cheeseburger if I beat my rowing time last Wednesday and I did that quite handily. Well, by several seconds anyway. I sort of lucked out, too, since I did the row before some of the rest of the exercises. Now I’m supposed to find a non-divey place for a cheeseburger tomorrow. I think the consensus was the Widmer Gasthaus, but I’m supposed to come up with some options. I think THH thinks I spend most of my day at work dinking around surfing for hamburger places on the web. That used to be the case but since so many people are out, I’m actually working. Oh, the humanity!

I felt OK today. I went into work and even had to answer a bunch of questions since a lot of people are out. It was probably the busiest I’ve been so I wasn’t tired at all. I woke up in a cold sweat last night but (beware of corny joke here) I don’t have a girlfriend who told me she was pregnant so I must have been running a fever.

I even felt good enough to go to the gym today. Nathan (the head honcho, aka Doodiehead) was talking about other Crossfit gyms in town. He kind of considers them fellow travelers rather than outright competition, but it made me think of the following quote:

… crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.

And I was reminded that since I pay by the month, the same amount whether I show up or not, showing up does not take food out of the mouth of the trainer’s kid. It just makes for a more peaceful workout since I’m not rambling on about things. Tonight, besides the Conan quote, I was thinking about old cheesy music. Undercover Angel? Island Girl or Don’t Go Breaking my Heart? It’s really their fault for playing the Partridge Family during our workout.

My sister asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I can’t think of anything. Hmm, how about a Nike Sumo driver? Or a Sand Wedge? Or maybe even better weather so I can actually go and play golf?

It’s kind of a weird name for a school, but my cousin’s kid Kota graduated with his Masters Degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. My mom and my aunt can’t understand what he’s talking about most of the time, so they usually just call him the 宇宙人 or the outer-space alien. He said that if he’s an alien, then what about Hisashi? (me)

He’s got a job with Yahoo! Japan, which I think is owned by Sofbank and is probably safe from all the Yahoo! stuff going on in the US. But what do I know?

Well, I’ve almost been watching Lord of the Rings for 12 hours now. I should get some sleep but I can’t stop now.

I still have a cold. 12 hours sleep on Friday night, 10 hours sleep on Saturday night. The best part is that I don’t have to feel guilty about my lack of gumption (or vocabulary right now). All I did yesterday was watch the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament and then Constantine when it came on cable.

So I have a new plan: to get an Argentinian girlfriend. It will annoy my Peruvian friends and when she finds out I have Peruvian friends, she’ll be annoyed too.

I didn’t say it was a good plan.

This means that I won’t be able to maximize the number of times I go to the gym, thereby taking food out of the mouth of the gym-owner’s kid. It’s probably for the best. I got home from work a couple of hours early and took a short nap. A short 3-hour nap. Then I went to sleep around 11 and got up around 11. I can tell that there’s still something wrong because drinking hot tea is making me break out into a cold sweat.

The worst part is that I got an invitation to a party JUST LAST NIGHT (Friday) for today (Saturday)! I may feel better by then, but I figure I’ll really have to play it by ear.

Now it’s time to get myself healthy enough to watch two basketball games. 🙂

So last night I woke up a few times feeling like I had to sneeze. And at work I was sneezing as well. It definitely felt like hay fever. Turns out I wasn’t the only one. A co-worker told me his symptoms started up today and so did my sister. Ah, springtime.

I dragged myself down to the gym. There’s usually 3 phases to the workout: warm up, skills (learning things we do during the main workouts), and the Workout Of the Day (WOD). I really wanted it to be:

• Warm up: walk to the gym
• Skills: talk to the trainer
• WOD: walk home from the gym

Fortunately, I felt better after moving a bit, and didn’t have much trouble with my hay fever until I started walking home. I remember the past few springs, having to go to my old gym to do my cardio because there was too much pollen outside. If I was lucky, they’d leave the big doors closed and we wouldn’t get any crosswind bringing in the allergens. I guess I’m just lucky that it comes and goes as the seasons change.

And with that I can’t think of what else I was doing. Time to try to get to bed early (hah!).

Funny how I hear weird Eurodisco and I can’t even buy it over here in ‘merika. I just have to find it somehow. Some of my favorite is the Mash-Up mixes. The best one that I bought was Alcazar’s mix of “Upside Down” by Diana Ross and “This is the World We Live In” by Genesis. But the best stuff is probably just underground. How would you get the rights to mix “Smack My Bitch Up” by Prodigy and “Orinoco Flow” by Enya? I just wish I could get more of that. My iPod usually sounds like a gay disco anyway.

I don’t think I did anything spectacular at the gym today besides coming in last in the timed portion again. Dumbbell cleans to split press just kind of sucks. But I did get a personal best on a 500m row. Even after I was sucking serious wind towards the end. I wonder how I would have done after eating a cheeseburger for lunch?

The problem is I had Phở for lunch. They always sell me a large (“It’s only $0.50 more!”) and I can’t be trusted to keep from drinking all the broth. That just overfills my stomach and makes me feel bad. You’re probably thinking, “Aren’t you an adult and responsible for your own actions?” and I would have to answer, “No.” I cannot be trusted with Phở. I also can’t be trusted at a buffet, nor can I be trusted to keep from eating everything on my plate. Everyone has issues, right?

The closest to a prank I saw was just pictures of me making funny faces at the gym. I was told that I could use this one where I’m not making a horrible face. I think it was suggested that I put in in a “Personals” ad, but we all know how well that usually turns out for me.

I survived my 6AM phone meeting only to have to get out and scrape the ice off my car for the commute. I got to work and I was trying to figure out what I’m doing, trying to hide the fact that I’m a big fraud. That’s my big worry, that I’ll get found out. But really, I’m actually learning enough to be of some help.

It was a nice afternoon and a small turnout at the gym. I guess people were busy doing other things in the nice weather. It was a fun workout and I only caught the medicine ball with my face once. I think they missed taking a picture of that.

A friend at Apple has me beat. He was talking about a 2AM meeting he might have to attend. I got an work email asking if 8AM was OK for a meeting, and then the guy scheduled it for 6AM. I guess Outlook sucks whether you’re here or there. Either way, it’s late in the day for the guy on the other end. At least it’s not midnight for him, like the last meeting we had.

You may have noticed a little outage yesterday. I fixed things here so I could get OUT from here, but I forgot to check to see if people could get IN from the outside. So I could send email, but I couldn’t get it.

I’m being banned from using the word “Eggamuffin” at the gym. Even worse, I’m not supposed to have a cheeseburger tomorrow. Today we went to Dairy Queen and the three of us who went decided to be a bit “healthier” and had grilled chicken sandwiches. They were awful. So now we know: don’t try to be healthy at the DQ. The hamburgers are great and they’re cheaper than the chicken, so we should eat them.