Another one of the neighbors was yelling at the crowd today. She needed to get out of her driveway and of course it was blocked by people coming to see the birds. It’s bad when someone can make a peace activist yell. I guess you don’t want to block her driveway when she needs to get downtown before something closes.

My co-worker took a week off of work to go golfing with his wife. He bought new clubs and now he’s trying to get me to do the same. I should probably learn how to play with the clubs I already have, even though there are other clubs rated much higher.

The book I’m currently reading is The Devil in White City which was given to me by Carolyn’s friend Heidi for helping her fix her blog. If I recall, I didn’t have to do all that much and so far this book is pretty interesting. Much more interesting than most factual books, anyway.

My newer neighbors are getting very tired of the swifts. The people, more than the swifts, but you know what I mean. One started yelling at the people on the hill because her driveway was blocked for the second time this year and she was already in a bad mood because she has a teenage daughter. I was on the phone calling the police non-emergency number, ready to get the bad parker a ticket, but they showed up and drove away.

My experience with the birds was unique but much less annoying. I just got pooped on.

I sort of was invited next door to watch the birds with my neighbor so I drank a bunch of his beers and a few of his dangerous margaritas. I also ate some of his pizza. I am a bad neighbor. It was a lot of fun, however, and I did remain conscious until the end. The last time I drank margaritas at my neighbor’s house, I apparently gave a dude some money and I didn’t remember that at all. In all honesty, it was for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training, and I got a nice thank you card, but it sounds better when I met a woman, a fellow MIT alum, and gave her boyfriend some money and then blacked out. Let me tell you, some rheumatologists pour very dangerous margaritas.

Today was much more boring. I finished reading Twilight Watch, sprayed the weeds, and started watching episodes of Heroes because I didn’t watch it last year. I’m never going to catch up in time for the start of the series this year. Oh, well.

There’s this woman at the gym I haven’t seen for a while. I say hello to her every time I see her because, well, she is attractive and possibly closer to my age than most. She has a giant yellow walkman, and that’s somehow attractive. She is also married and looks like she needs a cookie. That’s code for meaning I think she’s so skinny I was worried that she might be sick. Anyway, she was in for the first time in months and working out with Dana the trainer. I said hello to her, told her I was glad to see her back, and made fun of Dana’s picture on the trainer’s wall. Later, after she was gone, I told Dana I was happy she was in and looking like she had put on a little weight.

Well, one of the managers took umbrage at my comments and later told me, “Y-y-you have the s-s-sensitivity of a s-s-stone.” I think he overthought his reprimand and it made his delivery a little sloppy, since he never stuttered before. He also said something about her eating disorder, which is private information I had no idea about. Dana, however, thought I was perfectly cordial to the woman and any snarky comments were nothing out of the ordinary for me.

Other than that, work still sucks. It sucks a bit less since I have something to do, but it still sucks. We even had an honest-to-goodness firedrill which showed me how little the clowns in this campus prepare. We went out the emergency exit and then we were stuck behind a locked gate. They opened the gate after a while so we weren’t trapped. A really obese guy with a bullhorn came out to tell us when and how to get back in, but the bullhorn didn’t have any batteries in it. If we really do have an emergency, they’ll have to fire me because I plan on getting out and keeping on going until I’m miles away. I’m not staying at any sort of “assembly point.” Screw that.

So today the crowd for the stupid birds (actually the stupid crowds for the birds) was HUGE. Just slightly fewer people than the weekend, so maybe 1800 people on the hill? I’m so ready for it to be over. I did meet a guy on the hill who was the eldest son (oldest son?) of my first Scoutmaster, a guy who loved hiking and backpacking. Later on someone came up to me and asked, “Are you Mariko’s brother?” That’s pretty much it. I’m Mariko’s brother.

Yesterday at golf I was quizzing a guy about country club memberships. I was thinking that if the greens fees were waived, you could negate the monthly dues. He was talking up his club so I looked up some of the fees. The initiation fee for his club is THIRTY-EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS ($38,000) according to the intarweb. I think that dude, who is probably in his early-to-mid-thirties, is making a lot more scratch than I am. So much for my plotting. I’ll just keep playing the public courses.

I played in a golf tournament today. It was a scramble, which meant I could be a complete screw-up and we’d use someone else’s shots. It was actually a lot of fun and the guys I played with, a neighbor and his friends, were excellent golf partners. And instead of raining like the weather report said, it was a beautiful day.

I must admit that I drank more than I usually do, but there was this cart driving around and they were saying, “FREE DRINKS!” And then we had a free drink ticket for lunch. And then my neighbor’s friend was buying beers because he didn’t want to go back to work. I took the day off, but I was still considering doing some work-related things on my computer at home. Well, I didn’t do any of that. I did make it home and to the gym, but I’m not sure I was 100% sober. One drink per hour and we had six hours, but who knows?

I’m really a boring guy. Maybe my health issues make me a little unique, but for the most part I stick to my middle-of-the-road life. I live in a fairly nice neighborhood in the city, where I stick out because I don’t make as much money as the newer neighbors. I shop at regular stores. I drive a brand new economy car. Even though I get in arguments with people from time to time, I’m pretty much law abiding. So I guess riding public transit is my only real exposure to people who aren’t in a similar situation. I got on the light rail to head home and I saw a family of grandmother, mom, dad, and daughter with a big balloon that said, “Congratulations.” I thought maybe daughter (who was in her 30’s maybe) might have been pregnant. But mom started talking about how it was, “Nice to be out,” and after doing one day of community service she wanted to be locked up for 45 days instead of having to put up with all the crap.

The family was across the aisle and weren’t so bad. If nothing else, they weren’t too loud. There was a guy behind me who was screaming into my ear, and possibly into his cell phone, about getting his mom into rehab and how he’s pretty much going to have to write her off if she didn’t take it seriously. He talked for probably 30 minutes until we went into a tunnel.

For some reason that wasn’t as annoying as the normal people who got on after the family and cell-phone guy got off and started talking without taking a breath about the winners of the Emmy awards. One “normal” woman, who was a bit older, didn’t have her bus pass on her company ID as is required. She had it on her driver’s license and the fare inspector made her peel it off (which destroys it) and put it on her company ID (which she loses quite regularly according to her loud conversation with the inspector.)

I get to miss the drama tomorrow because I’m skipping work to play in a charity golf tournament. I’m guessing I’m going to get the high score tomorrow. Yay!

I thought I was going to be lazy and sleep in until 8:30. I don’t seem to get to bed early enough during the week and I make up for it on the weekends. When I got up it was almost 10. That meant I wasn’t early enough to see all the trash on the hill, but I heard it was pretty bad.

I went and had my fourth golf lesson today. Fortunately it wasn’t so painful. What was painful was my third Structural Integration session: the lateral line. Apparently working on my lats shortened them up and loosening the fascia was quite painful. As were the muscles around my knee, where I had all my trouble when I used to run a lot. This is all supposed to be more gentle than Rolfing, so I can’t imagine what that’s like. All I could think during the thing was, “What did I ever do to you?”

Ah well. Somebody backed into my car and bent my front license plate but that’s bound to happen anyway. Maybe the weather will be cold enough that the birds will go away. That’ll be one less annoyance anyway.

I have an example how how I’m not the only one who is having trouble with all of the people coming to see the birds going into the chimney. First, let me show a picture of the hill before it got really crowded:

We’re figuring there were about 2000-2500 people here tonight. If you look very carefully, you’ll see kids running up and down the hill with cardboard. They slide down the grass on the cardboard. While most of the cardboard is taken home by the parents for recycling, a lot ends up being a present for the neighborhood.

This morning I walked around the hill to see how much crap was left by the huge crowd that came yesterday. It was the night that the grade school encourages their kids to come out. Turns out the thing I saw the most of was little straws and little straw wrappers. I don’t have kids, so I don’t know, but are juice boxes still hugely popular?

My next-door-neighbor had some trouble, too. Most bicyclists just lean their bikes up against trees or the fire hydrant. Dangerous, but I haven’t heard of anyone having trouble yet. Tonight a couple of clowns decided they should walk onto my neighbor’s yard and lock their bikes to their fence.

The worst part is that some neighbor kids took offense (not kids of the next-door-neighbor, but other kids) and put mulch on the seat of the bikes. This caused much yelling by the bicyclists. Heck, my suggestion was for me to go get my Harbor Freight imitation Sawzall and cut the lock. We could set the bikes out in the street, and the clowns would be out $50 for their lock. Actually, maybe I should get a pneumatic grinder with a cutting wheel just for such emergencies. Probably not worth it.

Well, it wasn’t talking to the women at the gym. I noticed I was almost out of contacts and checked my prescription. My ophthalmologist said he wanted to see me every year because of medical concerns but I hadn’t heard from them for over a year. Also, I think the mail-order contact place wants prescriptions that are less than a year old.

So I scheduled an appointment with the ophthalmologist and as soon as I was done I ordered some contacts online. They came the day I was wearing my very last pair from my previous order. Pretty lucky for me.

There was a gas leak downtown today and the light rail was delayed on my way home. They even stopped the train at the edge of downtown Portland, but the stop they went to was where I usually get off the train.

I’ve been reading a translation of Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko on the way to work. Reading time is one of the best things about taking mass transit and not driving. It’s a sequel to Night Watch, which was also made into a interesting and fairly weird Russian movie of the same name with witches, magicians, vampires, and the like. Unfortunately, I have to drive sometimes, even though it’s cheaper to ride the train. It’s hard to get to the golf course without driving, for example.

Oh, and I went to Burgerville today and tried their new hot dog basket. Hot dogs with the Burgerville “spread” were odd because it sort of tasted like hot dogs with mayonnaise on them. Not bad, but not great. I should have stuck with the Ethiopian restaurant.

I still suck at golf, but I’m doing better I think. I drove my car to work thinking that four of us were going to play golf but two bailed. We were stuck with two other guys who turned out to be really pleasant to golf with.

Driving also meant I could unload some of my dad’s stuff. I saw a guy smoking a pipe on my way into work and I asked him if he could use some old pipes and pipe stands. Turns out he does some refinishing of old pipes so he was happy to take them. I was thinking of keeping some of my dad’s smoking paraphernalia — like taking his old pipe box and making some other sort of fountain pen case or something out of it — but I realized it all smelled awful and we really didn’t like it when he smoked. So off it went. The guy turned out to be a little odd, but I hope he’ll get to use the stuff. Better than just throwing it away.

Oh, I do have some smoking paraphernalia that I did keep: his lighters. They don’t smell as bad and I can be a good Boy Scout pyromaniac again (if only they had lighter fluid in them.)