My friend Kim and her husband welcomed a new person to this world! No more details from me, you creepy internet stalkers, but congratulations to them! It’s funny how long I’ve known Kim now. I met her when I started taking MCAT prep classes at Kaplan downtown. That was 11 or 12 years ago. I kicked ass on the MCAT, but screwed up enough of the rest of my medical school applications to avoid being admitted.

It’s probably just as well that I didn’t get into medical school. There are so many levels of bureaucratic nonsense in the typical doctor’s office that I’d probably go nuts. For example, my mom’s eye appointment was really screwed up by the office procedures. I called on Tuesday and by some lucky coincidence I got her an appointment for Thursday. I told them I’d have her primary care physician write a referral by the time of the appointment. They’ve never had any problems with that and they told me that if it wasn’t there when my mom got to her appointment, they’d just have her sign a form saying she might have to pay the whole bill.

Today, Wednesday, a receptionist called my mom and cancelled the appointment because there was no referral. She had no idea that I’d just made the appointment yesterday. I called around, and had the referral to the ophthalmologist’s FAX machine an hour after the cancellation phone call, about 11AM, around 24 hours from the time I made the appointment. I had to reschedule the cancelled appointment with the dingbat receptionist.

I told the dingbat that this was all unacceptable, changing the rules day-by-day. Yesterday they were willing to give my mom some slack for the paperwork, but today they wanted my mom to bring in cash if the paperwork wasn’t complete to their approval. I told the dingbat I wanted to complain to the office manager about their broken processes. Guess what? The office manager is out of the office this week and has no voice mail. I said that was ridiculous, and she countered that the office manager had a family emergency. I replied that I didn’t care if the office manager was dead, they should still have voice mail for someone who was responsible for running this circus.

Now if I was a doctor I think I would have throttled a couple of people today. Oh, and my mom’s primary care physician has a broken phone system. You listen to all the options and no matter what you hit you get put in a hold queue for five minutes with awful music and advertisements. Then the receptionist transfers you to someone who wasn’t busy the whole time and could have just answered the phone if you had their number. It’s truly a joy.

I think that if I ever needed to raise my blood pressure, I’d just call a doctor’s office and ask for something they weren’t expecting. I’m sure they’d just screw me around until I had a proper headache.

So I’m feeling OK this week after going to the gym two days in a row. Last week I think I was ready to pass out. Today, so far, I feel OK even after rowing and bouncing a weighted ball 7 times for a minute each. I’m either getting better or I’m just learning to take it a little easy so I don’t throw up. Or both. Actually, I think it’s a little of both, plus I didn’t start out this week by calling in sick from eating too much seafood. I suppose if I just keep going I’ll probably get better times. Or not. I think I’m happy to be doing more pullups, though I was able to do 8-10 earlier this summer when I was really working at it.

Oh, and I found that standing on my head makes me dizzy. Funny how that works.

We used to have a small local Honda dealer that wasn’t the cheapest place, but they were local and they just gave you a price on the cars with no haggling required. I bought my Civic Hybrid from them. Unfortunately they were bought out and they renamed and moved the business. Now they’re much closer to work, but they’re much more like a regular car dealer. I got my oil changed by them today, and it was kind of disappointing to see the changes. Plus, it took two hours to change my oil. They seemed to be thorough about checking things so I’m no longer upset, but I liked the old place. That’s progress.

I spent Superbowl Sunday at my buddy Il’s place where everyone else was halfheartedly rooting for the Patriots. The only one who was really rooting for one side over the other was Il’s oldest nephew Riley (who is in grade school), and unfortunately his team lost. But it was a good time, hanging out with Il and his brother and his brother’s kids. Riley is an incredible sports fan, and it’s fun to watch the game with a kid who is so into sports.

Did you expect me to do much else on Superbowl Sunday?

An old friend of my dad’s passed away in January, and her funeral was today, almost a month later. I was planning on hitting the gym, having lunch with my buddy Greg, and then going to the funeral. Well, I woke up with my sinuses all clogged and decided to punt on the gym. And then mid-morning, it started to snow! I looked out the window and it seemed to be sticking.

I called my friend Greg but he’s no help at all because he lives on top of a hill outside of town and always has snow. He basically told me I was lame because he had several FEET of snow today. I cancelled lunch and was wondering if we could even make it to the funeral when my sister sent me a picture from her house.

She lives at a higher elevation as well, but she’s very close to the Oregon Buddhist Temple where the funeral was to be held.

Fortunately it started to rain and the snow in my neighborhood started to melt. My mom and I decided to take our chances with the weather. Rather than put on a suit, though, I put on a dress shirt and jeans just in case I had to deal with the snow. Well, it turns out that there was NO SNOW in the rest of town.

I just felt foolish about my worries, and felt bad that I didn’t dress up for Ruth Tateishi’s funeral. She was a very nice person and, honestly, was loved by all. I knew it would be a longer funeral because she has a huge family, and everyone remembered how friendly she was and all her artsy craftsy stuff. I had no idea she had an origami booth at the state fair! She will be missed.

So I had to excuse myself from the gym today because i was too tired and because I had to do some extra work for my sister. I thought I’d have to spend hours editing this awful program I’ve been working on for my sister for almost six years. Usually it takes me about half-an-hour just to figure out how the program works and were I need to edit things. Turns out I had to add one word, and I knew exactly where to add it. So that means I got to sit around and catch up on a couple of TV shows. It’s too bad that I don’t have any lighthearted shows to catch up on. Life is grim enough without grim TV shows.

I was going to go to bed early, but you know how that works. At least it looks like I’m going out with my buddy Il for his annual birthday steak. I missed his birthday party due to illness and I haven’t seen him for a while.

What would be good is to watch xXx. Unfortunately, what I watched was the second xXx: State of the Union which wasn’t nearly as good. But it was the sort of cotton candy that I needed.

Man, am I pooped from the gym. So, instead of writing any more I’ll say check out my sister’s blog and see the crab carnage from Sunday.

I finally made it back to the Recreate Fitness gym today and I found out that they’ve seen my blog. So I can’t talk about how hard it was, and it wasn’t really because I actually took their advice and TOOK IT EASY TODAY. I mean, I called in sick yesterday, I was away maybe two weeks with a cough, and I figured it was time to take it easy. It was hard enough, but I could have made it much, much harder. Check out their blog to see what they have us do.

The reason they’ve seen my blog is because Tina is a knitter. I think someone should convince her that sewing is fun, too, but I’m not about to take that up again. Somewhere I have a picture of the teddy bear I made. I haven’t done anything artsy-craftsy lately, though I have a Sound-activated Japanese Temple I should put together.

I took the day off from work today. Not only was I feeling under the weather, but the clock-radio was announcing all the schools that were closed due to inclement weather and all the car accidents on my usual route to work. It was icy out and I was too tired to get up. I’ve had a sinus headache for the past few days, but I compounded it with stomach problems.

Last night I went out to a crab feed with my sister and brother-in-law and had all sorts of crab and raw oysters. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the oysters, because that usually isn’t a “single-ended” problem. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t the crab, either. It might have been all the horseradish I ate with the oysters. Who knows? In any case, I was up fairly late listening to my stomach grumble ominously.

So now I think I’m just going to pretend that I’m better. It’s probably much easier that way.

I am so ready for Friday. Not real sure if it’s just old age, the cold, or what, but this week at work is just dragging along. I like my job so far so that’s not the problem. But this morning it just felt like it should be Friday.

I have to stop this head hurting thing, too. It’s getting old.

I wonder if I’m getting better or worse. My cough is about the same except now I’m coughing stuff up. Enough about being sick.

I went out to dinner with my mom and on the way back home we saw a pink Honda Fit. My sister has been talking about those for months, ever since she saw one when we were in Japan. I called her on my cell phone and left her a message. My brother-in-law didn’t understand what I said and thought I was calling about, “A big shit,” rather than, “A pink Fit.” Sheesh. The scallops and risotto at the Industrial Cafe were excellent, by the way.

So now I’m trying to figure out what the difference is between an “oil change and lube” at one Honda dealer and an “oil change” at the other dealer besides $10. Just how much lube does a 2-year-old Honda Civic need, anyway?

So usually the stuff I download is for personal use and you can imagine it’s all sorts of nonsense. A lot of it is programming nonsense, or at least normal people will think it’s that way. Oddly enough, tonight I’m downloading all sorts of stuff for work. Sometimes it’s faster to get it at home than at work. I’m not sure why. It’s all open source software and stuff I play with anyway, but now it’s work. Yow. Who woulda thunk it.

My cough isn’t getting much worse and I’m glad for that. I cough maybe a dozen times an hour? Usually when I have a cough it seems almost constant. It feels like I’m coughing up stuff so that means a doctor would ask what color the stuff is I’m coughing up. They’re weird that way. But like I said, it’s not that long and it’s not that bad and I’m knocking on wood that it doesn’t get any worse.

Good thing the writer’s strike is on. I just borrowed the Clerks II DVD from a co-worker and watched every commentary track and extra feature, which is a lot of stuff. And I’m not even a Kevin Smith worshipper. I didn’t like Clerks when I first saw it and I really got tired of how his characters stood around and made speeches to each other. But the vulgar stuff is funny to me. Ah, well, I guess I should just grow up. It’s a little late for that, though.