I’m too used to seeing the Monday Night football game at 6PM. It’s over around 9PM. But people on the East Coast know it starts at 9PM and ends around midnight. Funny thing is that I’m actually tired already and it’s not that late.

Went to eat at Lee’s today. It’s kind of like Kentucky Fried Chicken but I bet it never made it outside of Kentucky. There were only two people working there, and they didn’t work together very well. The guy in the kitchen looked like the manager with a staffing problem, and the woman at the counter didn’t talk directly to him and he couldn’t hear a thing she said. I wonder if the unemployment rate is low here, because the people at the fast food place weren’t exactly top notch.
So, do you think I was down in the hotel bar with the single woman or in my room fixing the lamps and watching TV in my underwear? Did I mention I’m in room 420?

And, as far as I could tell, nobody but white folk in Covington, KY. Not even one at the airport. I don’t know what’s going on.

The Megacorp traveling curse continues. Someone told me that it depends on the level you’re at within the company. I always get the last row in the airplane (by all the little kids) and a lower floor room. I think the lower floor room is to keep Megacorp employees from jumping out the windows. Other than that the trip was fairly uneventful. I had dinner at a Skyline Chili just outside of Cincinatti and I have to admit it’s different. I can’t say it’s my favorite thing called chili or Coney Island.

Getting to Lexington, KY from the “Cincinatti airport” (in Covington, KY) was supposed to be difficult according to one of the raving loons who will be attending the conference here. He said it was hilly and curvy and difficult. I can’t remember an easier drive. In the dark, we were all doing about 80MPH, and there was no danger beyond the fact that I was an Asian guy driving a rented Hyundai Sonata. The car, by the way, kind of a piece of crap.

The bar downstairs is kind of a washout (the one at the Radisson was a lot more populated) and the guy first sold me some “local beer” instead of the local bourbon I asked for. I hope Megacorp doesn’t mind that I drank my dinner.

Next week I get to present some data to a bunch of printer geeks. I took a bunch of Linux distributions and plugged in various printers and swore a lot and wrote down what I did to get the printing working. Plus, I wrote down the quirks I found. I’m sure I’m going to get skewered for my mistakes and, even better, I have to travel to Kentucky to do this. A week away from home (which is the only place I sleep well) and in the south, to boot.

If anyone has any suggestions for what to eat or do in Cincinnati or Lexington, let me know. I think I should have some free time. Most likely I’ll be sitting in a hotel room with my laptop on (if I have intarweb connectivity) watching the World Series.

Speaking of not sleeping well, I haven’t been sleeping enough this week. I went to sleep early last night and I woke up having a nightmare about going to see a movie and being annoyed by the guy next to me shining little mini-flashlights in his face during the movie. His girlfriend was doing it too. When I asked them to stop, they started arguing with me. Yeesh.

Back in the real world, I had to detour during my normal commute because there was a police car blocking my way. I didn’t see anything in the news about it and my sister thinks it might have been a movie filming. What the hell. I thought movies were supposed to be made in LA or Vancouver, Canada, not in Portland where they block the streets and annoy me. Sheesh.

I yearn for the old days when spam had pr0n included. At least it was good for something. Now it’s all useless or in a foreign language. Or gif images I don’t see with my text-only email client.

The acupuncturist wants me to keep coming back so he can try to even out my leg length. Hah. He keeps yanking on my leg and somehow I don’t think that’s going to work. But I did see the woman from the gym there. That’s going nowhere fast. I have a better chance of having one of my legs grow a quarter-inch, I bet.

It’s hard to guess what happens when you’re in front of a crowd. I’m not nervous talking in front of groups, but sometimes I just start getting twitchy. I bet if a cop stopped me I’d have trouble catching my breath. And today at the gym I talked to the, “Hot Acupuncture Student,” and I had a hard time focusing or completing my sentences. It was like being in high school again. (She talked to me because I saw her at her school, the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, and she was trying to remember who I was then.)

In any case, I’m just beginning to remember what I said. I hope it wasn’t too awkward.

In clarification to previous ramblings:

• I don’t know why, but I don’t like the Chicago Bears. (I could probably come up with reasons, and Jim McMahon is probably high on the list.)
• I do NOT play World of Warcraft. My computer games usually consist of installing beta software and cursing loudly when things don’t work right.

It’s a law, I think, that your brother-in-law has to be a goofus. He did some horse-trading and got rid of his truck to buy a monster Chevy and then my sister was stuck at home with no car. So they had to get a loan and buy a Honda Fit. Why a Fit for a big white guy who is probably at least 6’2″? I don’t know. He’s a goofus, after all.

For some reason I couldn’t sleep last night and I’m feeling antsy again. Perhaps even a bit cranky. My computer doesn’t seem to be as, “snappy,” as I’d like. I think it was all the rain or something. Paying bills should have calmed me down, right? Watching Arizona squander a 20-point lead to the miserable Chicago Bears should have made me feel better, right? Maybe I should start drinking earlier.

Oh, and speaking of goofus, it looks like the TV I was looking at is available at Costco. Unfortunately, I decided I didn’t want a built-in DVD player and this one has one. Hmmmm, what to do, what to do.

My buddy Greg and I went on a quest for a new TV, one to replace my 20th Anniversary Macintosh which has a built-in TV tuner but seems to crash in the middle of TV shows. I decided I wanted another LCD TV, in the 16:9 format (since we’re supposed to have HDTV forced on us any day now) but only about 15″ so it would fit on my table.

Looking for the TV took us to one high-end sound store, three musical instrument stores, and Skyline Hamburgers (as you can tell, I wasn’t really on a “mission”, as it were).

We did finally make it to Best Buy, who showed me a nice Toshiba, but they sent us from the NE part of the city to the western suburbs to find one to actually buy. In the end I didn’t see any on display in the western suburbs, so I gave up for now. My Mac/TV only crashed once tonight.

I think I’m going to look for a TV online. It’s much easier to shop online than date online.

Well, I wouldn’t know, since I’m not Mr. Supersexy.

What I did was got my sister’s blankety-blank Candyswap data at Eight-blankety-blank-thirty and I spent the rest of the evening trying to fix the damn data for the thing. Maybe it would have been quicker to do it by hand, or without drinking beer.

The candyswap thing is sort of like Secret Santa, but with candy and without any attachment to the pagan ceremonies at the end of the year. The big problem is when one of the screechy hens candy swap participants accidentally gets her candy from the same person twice in a row. It causes great consternation and rending of garments along with the usual complaints to the organizer including calling of names. I have the database to try to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Thursday also sucked because I had a stomach ailment with the attendant weakness (even light-headedness) which forced me to leave the joyful office atmosphere of Megacorp before my usual late-afternoon quitting time. And Friday I tried to work from home but I ended up helping my friend Sun with her broken internet connection in NEW YORK CITY (over the phone, even) and had to recover by drinking this fruity drink called a, “Thunder Bunny,” because I thought it would be funny. It wasn’t so funny this morning. The biggest fun I had today was paying $30 for a ‘flu shot.

Oh, where are the carefree days when Il wasn’t addicted to World of Warcraft and we’d go to the strip clubs on Saturdays?

My sister lent me a book and I noticed that it’s full of sand. I went to see the new acupuncturist today and I think I fell asleep again. But the big news is that the hot acupuncture student who I’ve been missing at the gym was there and I said, “Uh, hello,” to her today. I have missed her.

Turns out I wasn’t eligible for the gym promotion, but they let me have it anyway. Thank goodness, since I told off my project lead again and that can’t be good for my continued income possibilities. Not only is he arrogant, but he doesn’t understand that the boss telling me that my project is cancelled really affects my motivation at work.

Oh, and I called the only New Yorker I know and she wasn’t hurt by the plane crash today. She wasn’t answering her phone because she was seeing the opera. What is it with my Korean friends (both of them) and the opera?

I stayed up late last night reading Bangkok 8 which was worth reading, but I knew I’d pay for the lack of sleep. I was fine until after lunch, but then I started working on some documentation and that was putting me to sleep. I figured I’d go home early, take a nap, and then work on the (boring) Powerpoint documents at home. Unfortunately, I didn’t get up until it was almost time to go to the gym.

Note the flat spot on my head. It’s either from the pillow mashing my hair, or my head is flat on that side.

I’m finally feeling well enough (back-wise) to lift some weights at the gym. Not a lot, and Dave the Trainer is experienced enough to have me avoid stress on my back. I even talked to the unhappy girl today, who I hadn’t seen in a while.

I hope I can make it in time to get this deal at the gym. I think I’ll end up paying $1 more a month to add the “all class” (even though I haven’t been to one class yet and I’ve been going to this gym for over two years).

Drinking beer alone and watching football? Drinking beer alone and surfing for pr0n? Well, if your fridge is full of large bottles of microbrewed beer, you wouldn’t just pour it out, would you? And after another day of wonder at Megacorp, what would you expect?

Actually, I have no idea.

I went back to the acupuncturist, who had hours in a weird 2nd story office off of SE 82nd Avenue. The offices included a place called, “Gold Measure, L.L.C.” that I think is an accountancy, a Chinese Travel agency, and the office he was using that had two two small exam rooms and the small office. The whole neighborhood had signs in English, Chinese, and sometimes Vietnamese. Most of the people I saw in the neighborhood off of the main street were Asian. I was so disoriented that I had to leave as soon as I was finished.

So I still have the sciatic pain, but it’s a lot better than it was. I could actually sleep on my back for the first time in days, so I slept in. I kind of think this is going to take a while but the progress is being made.

The new acupuncturist is quite good, but I wonder if I shouldn’t still be seeing my original guy. The original guy is the student of the new guy, and the new guy really knows what he’s doing, but the new guy never cleans anything before he starts. I wonder if I would have gotten better if I just stuck with the acupuncture and never went to the chiropractor. And I wonder if the old guy would have done everything that the new guy did, only not as quickly. Ah, well. Like they said in Ally McBeal, “Bygones.”