Last night I went to my friend Zach’s birthday party, even though it’s like a month after his birthday. I saw a lot of old friends who live close enough but I never see. That’s just the way it goes, I’m sure. Zach’s wife Alice got her degree in CS and then hit a dry stretch where no one seemed to be hiring so she went to culinary school. She even worked as a chef for a while before she went back to her geek roots. Anyway, for Zach’s birthday party she cooked a tasty goose.

In any case, I was supposed to go to my buddy Il’s birthday party tonight and it’s actually his birthday. However, we were going to hit a Moroccan restaurant where you have to eat with your hands. I’ve been coughing for the past two days and I didn’t want to touch any community food. I ended up going to a neighborhood pasta place with my mom, sister, and brother-in-law.

There was a strikingly attractive woman at the pasta place looking unhappy. I told my sister I found unhappy attractive women even more attractive because, hey, I’m not going to make them any happier. I had chicken parmigiana because I couldn’t imagine anything other than frozen cafeteria chicken parmigiana and I knew that our local pasta place would be much better than that. Somehow I got stuck with the bill, though. Clever, those relatives of mine.

Yet more proof that my Japanese thermos actually works: I was in so many meetings that I didn’t have time to drink my coffee. I got back to it after lunch and I still burned my tongue. Sure beats the merely stylish cups I had already.

So I’m still not 100% and my throat was slightly scratchy and I was fairly tired. So I punted on the gym again. Yeesh. My brother-in-law actually had to take a day off work because he was feeling sick so something must be going around.

I paid for several years at LA Fitness, but I’m doing most of my exercising at the small workout spot down the street from that gym. Ah, well. As long as it’s good for me. The high intensity stuff kind of makes my knee hurt, so I may have to lay off the “new stuff” pretty soon.

I guess I missed a doozy of a workout last night. I made it in tonight and it wasn’t easy either, but just the description of last night made me feel tired. Who wants to go on the rowing machine TWICE?

I bought an Ergo Sit seat cushion because my sister had one and my last seat cushion was leaking feathers. I swear the thing is not as full as it was before, but I could be imagining things. It’s kind of like a squashed balloon you sit on so I hope it’s not leaking.

I felt much worse today than I did yesterday. When I got in my car after work, I thought I should just take a nap when I got home. I felt better after arriving home, but not well enough to go to the gym. Coincidentally, this is the second time it happened after eating garlic. It won’t stop me from eating garlic, but I can come up with conspiracy theories nonetheless.

Oh, and one of my co-workers has heard of the kind of exercise I’m doing at Everyday Athlete (now Recreate Fitness). I guess he thinks it’s “high intensity interval training” or something of the sort. I hope it’s good for me.

I feel better today and Monday wasn’t all that bad. Even though I spent it watching training videos for the whole day. I didn’t even fall asleep watching them. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

I guess they came to check our roof today and they found a reason for the leak. The high winds had moved the shingles around enough to cause water to find its way in. Phooey on that. Now I also have to get the mason to come fix the furnace chimney and I have to call the arborist to come cut an out-of-control maple. I have lots of ways to spend money now.

So yesterday I meant to say something about the Garmin Nuvi 650 GPS I got from Costco. The GPS only cost $299 on sale and I spent another $179 for an FM Traffic Receiver that plugs into it. Some of the local freeways have speed sensors and the GPS figures out if it would be quicker to just take surface streets. I think it just calculates freeway conditions against ideal surface street conditions because I don’t think there are any sensors in the surface streets.

It’s taken me off the freeway twice in three days and I wasn’t stuck in traffic either time. The other day it just told me that I’d be delayed for a few minutes. So far I really like the thing because my commute can take 30 minutes to an hour depending on traffic and I really only have a couple of choices of roads to take.

Today I had trouble getting up and I think I’m coming down with a cold. I’ve felt quite poky. Other than watching football, I’ve done very little. At least I had an excuse.

I got my laptop fixed at work, which is a good thing because nothing happens without computers at Megacorp. I had a very short week at work and I was still fairly tired from it all.

In fact, I only worked two days and spent Friday volunteering with part of the group. There was a flood in Vernonia on December 3rd and people are still cleaning up. Some of us loaded and delivered firewood and others tore out flooring. I spent the morning helping a man move things out of his house so it could be re-sheetrocked. In the afternoon I helped load firewood.

Basically, I say all this to make an excuse for not doing anything today. In fact, I think I only left the house to eat dinner at the fancy Korean restaurant in the neighborhood. The restaurant is not too cheap, but oddly enough there are always a lot of little kids there. I think there were only four Asian customers and the rest were whiteys with little kids. And I thought little kids only liked fast food and places like Red Robin.

Well, so far so good. My co-workers seem a bit jaded, but they’re all customer support engineer-type people so I can understand. I’m still trying to get up to speed so I’m just hiding and reading training materials.

On the way to work I was wondering why everyone was driving so slowly. It was making me nuts. Then I noticed that a car had slid into the ditch. It was icy, and I don’t drive like a maniac so much any more, so I didn’t notice. I mean going from an S2000 to a Civic Hybrid pretty much means boring driver, doesn’t it? I guess it got even worse after I got to work and there was a head-on collision just outside the entrance to the parking lot. My boss had to work from home because his driveway was a sheet of ice.

I will say one more thing about work: my laptop is starting to die. If I pick it up, the video goes blank and I can’t get it to come back. A blank screened laptop isn’t worth all that much but I don’t think I’m in line for a new laptop for another year (they replace them on a scheduled basis). Weird.

Dave the Trainer is trying to set up a new gig with Everyday Athlete Portland (who have to change their name, I guess) and had me take a class down there today. It started out warming up with some skipping and lunges and then practicing exercises. The practice exercises were then used to create a set of six or seven and you did one for 30 seconds, rested for 30 seconds, and then went on to the next exercise. You went around to all the exercises 3 times. Nothing by itself was that bad, but one after the other was something that could make you want to throw up. But it was pretty quick and pretty fun.

Tomorrow I start my new job, so that’s about it for today. Besides going to the gym, I think I just got lazy, though I did have a lot of email from the new job to read. Stupid work laptop. I should never turn it on.

Once again I did little to nothing, but did make it to the gym. A guy there told me he’s changing jobs. His stories don’t tend to be told in a linear fashion but I found out that doctors get fired too! They wanted to keep him on for a “temporary” job but he decided to move to California. And I thought it was just normal people who got canned from their jobs. (Yeah, I know, doctors are normal people. It’s just that some of them don’t realize that.)

Went out to Skyline Burgers with my mom and the hamburger I had was about three inches tall. Two of the inches were lettuce and a little tomato but it still tasted good and I need my fruits and vegetables. My mom’s club house sandwich had enough bacon to feed a family for breakfast, so that probably balanced out my lettuce burger.

I have another job at Megacorp! I guess even a huge corporate HR department can move fast if they want to. I went in for a second interview yesterday, was told I could have the job, and then got an official “letter” in my email today. I traded a couple of emails with my new manager and now I’m going in on Wednesday. Whee.

I was supposed to go to an open house yesterday but Evite forgot to remind me that it was happening so I went out to a Japanese restaurant with my sister and brother-in-law instead. I told him that his Xmas present was on the way and he told me, “Nobody does that. Nobody gives presents so late.” Well, if he doesn’t want the fancy LED flashlight, I can take it back. (I think he likes it though.) They’re a few dollars cheaper at the local gun store, but I bought it online at Amazon because the gun store was out.

Other than that I’ve just been taking care of more medical stuff for my mom. Nothing real exciting. I should have gone to the gym, but was tired again. After all that time off, I’m still trying to get my sleep cycles right.

I resolve never to buy an appliance from Sears again. I’ll probably screw that up, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the washer and dryer (both Kenmore) don’t break soon. The main problem is that refrigerator is annoyingly chintzy. The door on the vegetable crisper has this tilt-out front and the latch broke. Replacement, if I remember correctly, is around $90. The freezer has a roll-out basket and the left-hand “glide” broke. It won’t latch and just slides right off the end when the basket is only about halfway out. Replacement cost is $148.

Here’s some old-timer talk: I remember when every Sears had a parts desk where you could just go down and order parts for things. I guess they only have a few repair centers now. I tried to order parts for the refrigerator online and the computer swore there was no such thing as the part number that I gave it. I tried other web sites and they’d never heard of the part number either. So finally I went to the local Sears where the really odd salesman tried calling but ended up slamming the phone down when he got stuck in a phone maze. Earlier he’d gotten really frustrated with the parts ordering computer as well.

I decided to drive out to the parts depot instead. Their magic computer was able to decode the part number but, as I said earlier, the glide (like the side rail on a kitchen drawer) was $148. What nonsense.

Oh, and guess who forgot his magic GPS map on this grand adventure? Good thing I generally know how to get places in Portland already.

I went to the gym afterwards and I didn’t do much. I did, however, feel like throwing up a couple of times. That’s what I get for sitting on my butt for almost a whole month. I’ll see if this helps me sleep at all.