Besides getting a good workout, I can also read about how Jessica Simpson was cheating on Nick Lachey. I think I’ve decided why Nick and Jessica (and Brad and Jennifer) didn’t last. It’s because the husband was prettier than the wife! I know I’m going to get my usual accusations of being gay from my sister and Megan (who is undergoing reconstructive surgery on Wednesday! – Good luck Megan) but you have to admit that Jessica is kind of hideous and Jennifer before the makeover was kind of funny looking. Brad and Nick, though? They could have made a couple.
I sure hope I’m getting in better shape. I was able to balance kneeling on top of the Swiss ball and hold a medicine ball out at arms length. Balance was one of the things I wanted to work on, so I’m pretty happy about that.
The Portland City Grill and then a couple of grocery stores? My friend Sun is actually FROM here (Hazel Dell if you want to get technical about it) and RESIDES in Manhattan, so it’s not like I took her on a tour of grocery stores or anything. Her busy parents are too busy to clean the house to her liking, so we went and bought cleaning supplies.
But first we had lunch at the Portland City Grill on the 30th floor of “Big Pink” where we were NOT met by our friend Terry, who is still too good for us. We spent 2 1/2 hours there talking nonsense as good friends who have known each other for too long should. Sun always says she’s known me her entire adult life, since we met in her freshman year at Portland State and now she’s all growed up and making buckets of money at some financial firm in NYC. Or at least close to NYC in the wrong direction (NJ). OK, now I feel old.
My sister and brother-in-law made it back from their 10th Anniversary adventure, and their dogs were alive and the house hadn’t burned down, so I guess things are OK.
My mom still has her backache and it’s going on two weeks now. It’s gotten worse and moved around since she’s seen the acupunturist. I’m not sure why I’m mentioning this now, except I went to the gym earlier and I’m about to fall over.
It was a weird night and oddly crowded. The Chinese-Canadian woman who is the post-doc in molecular biology is still not speaking to me. I was greeting her with, “Ho say guy,” which means good fortune (literally good world) but she was unfamiliar with the phrase and thought I said something else very close which would have been calling her a deadbeat whore (literally, though, a dead chicken). Another woman who usually chats with me has found a new beau and wouldn’t even say hello. Life at the gym is so very much like middle school.
OK, so it’s not that early. It’s 8:18AM, but it’s Sunday and I should be sleeping in my bed. But it’s also the weekend of my sister’s 10th wedding anniversary (how time flies!) and I’m watching their dogs while they go off to some weird pseudo-result. Since they’re dogs, they’re very uncommunicative and so I’m not sure what they want, but I had to get up and let them out so they wouldn’t poo in the house. Now they’re asleep and I think I’m supposed to be walking them. Heck, they’re not real clear about the whole thing.
My sister left me some very clear instructions written in a stream-of-consciousness sort of style. I bet if I asked her for a numbered list it would go something like:
Feed the dogs the stuff in the pantry.
Before you feed the dogs, remember to mix in pumpkin.
Walk the dogs on the colored leashes.
Remember to mix in the joint medication to the food before you feed them.
Oh, the dogs are walked twice a day. Dede on the black leash (which is actually red) and Barkley (who we now call Berkeley) on the green (which is really blue and green).
Don’t feed the dogs before you walk them.
I think you get the idea.
It’s up to 30 degrees now so I think I should take them out so that I may have the joy of picking up dog poo once again.
Once again, it’s incredibly windy and cold. Windy enough that trees are toppling into people’s houses or taking down power lines. I decided to go up on the roof and see exactly what was making all the noise. Turns out that it was the flashing on the edge of the roof, and it looked bent, like something had hit it (like maybe a window installer’s ladder.) Like I said before, the noise suspiciously started when the window was replaced.
Getting onto the roof was fairly easy. Our tallest ladder almost reaches the roof and I can hop over the gutter to get up. But the overhang and the gutter made it impossible to find the ladder on the way down. I ended up having to jump into a tree and climb the tree down. It was about 30 degrees and the wind was blowing hard, making it bitterly cold up on the roof and I couldn’t stay up there too much longer. I need to find a better hobby.
It’s supposed to be 20 degrees or so tonight and possibly windy. I don’t know if the roofers have gotten here but I’m thinking the answer is “No.”
I think Dave the trainer was distracted today. He had a date later on in the evening and didn’t seem as focused on his devious tortures. I’ve been doing a lot of balancing exercises, but nothing like this guy at the gym who stands on the Swiss ball while doing dumbell lateral raises. He has incredible concentration; I can’t even maintain balance on one foot when there are attractive women walking around. Sometimes I even get distracted by my own reflection in the mirror, because I think, “Who’s that funny looking guy?” or “Are my legs really that big?”
I saw my “dream girl” at the gym and she snickered at me again. Well, Rule #1 is, “Don’t talk to your dream girl.” Rule #2 is, “Don’t talk to your dream girl.” Rule #3 was, “No poofters,” or something, but I think I’m a little too homophilic to have that rule.
In fact, I was about to take a picture of the chocolate my sister gave me, but that meant I had to take it out of the box it came in and then it meant I had to bite it. And eat it, of course, because it’s chocolate after all. I wonder if that’s what gave me the stomach ache I have now. Oh, well.
I was told that the new colors of the walls at Megacorp are hideous. Sort of sickly yellow. I kind of like them. The standard color scheme at megacorp is grey. It’s very institutional, like a hospital. But, like I told my co-workers today, I didn’t get into medical school so I never want to be in a hospital again. Ever. Being in a hospital just means someone is sick and that’s not a happy thing.
I really have nothing much to mention. My sister gave me a chocolate heart with a FAIRY on it (quite fancy, mind you) but that’s about as Valentiney as today got. After torturing me at the gym, Dave the Trainer was having dinner with his ex and he told me she seemed suspicious. I expect he’ll treat the event as I would and drink entirely too much.
On the way to work today I noticed something very odd. When I accelerated, the car pulled to the left. When I took my foot off the accelerator, the car pulled to the right. If I had any sense, I would have pulled off the road, but this was on the second-half of my trip to work, the part where I’m in the middle of nowhere and you can’t get off the freeway. When I got to work I noticed that my tire was low. I used AAA for the first time since I started paying for it in 1992, and a tow truck came to give me some air. They also found a screw in my tire, so I drove immediately to the tire store to get it fixed. Who wants to be trapped at work? There really isn’t too much more to the story besides coming back to work and finding NO parking spots. I would have gone home, but my stuff was still inside.
Who wouldn’t be attracted to a guy walking down the street carrying a toilet seat? A BRAND NEW toilet seat? Last night as I was doing some important thinking, the toilet seat cracked and today I had to repair it. This makes me wonder, just how big is my ass now?
My laptop is also kind of falling apart. There’s this weird screw that gets loose and can’t be tightened without taking the whole thing apart, and then the latch broke as well. I called for my extended warantee service and they thought I’d bought the laptop in January 2003, putting the thing just out of warantee. Well, I just found the receipt and it was April of 2003, putting it just IN warantee.
Other than that I actually spent the weekend reading books. That’s something I haven’t done in a while.
I think I found out why the window is buzzing. It’s from the flashing on the edge of the roof! The window makes the noise, but it starts up on the flashing and it conducts down to the window.
I figured it out because it was finally warm enough and dry enough but windy as all hell, so while the wind was blowing and I sat there with my head out the window until I started hearing the buzzing noise. I’ll have to call the roofers tomorrow. It’s been a several years since we got the house re-roofed. I wonder why it started buzzing all of a sudden? Ah, well, at least the mystery is solved (or so I hope).
Like the lawyer told me, though, it didn’t make noise before the window replacement and it makes noise now, so I’m guessing the installers accidentally hit the flashing with their ladders. At least this is something that I might be able to fix myself.
Last Saturday, as I was on a some sort of cardio torture device (next to a very attractive young woman) I saw a Coca-Cola ad on one of the TVs for a Coke float. I mentioned to the woman, “That’s why I come to the gym.” And in reality, food is probably the reason. Today while I was on the same machine, I was giving several the the people around me (all women by the way) the evil eye. Somehow, I smelled angel food cake and I thought that was the most devious and alluring perfume I could think of. Well, other people smelled it too. (Of course I asked them. I am afraid of being as nuts as my sister accuses me of being.)
