So yesterday I forgot to include a picture of my mom, so here it is:

Today was fairly non-eventful because I didn’t do much. I went shopping for a memory card because the one that came with my camera holds only FOUR pictures at the maximum resolution. ONLY FOUR. Why do they even bother? I guess a SD card that small is close to disposable. OfficeMax had more employees than shoppers. The rest of the day I sat at home doing something with my computer, but I can’t remember what. Oh, well.

I told a vegan friend at the gym, “Happy Tofurky Day,” but she didn’t catch it. My sister got a complete dinner from New Seasons (which, I understand, is a local grocery chain) and it was great! Since my mom came back from Japan today, it was me, ma, pa, Mariko, and her husband Peter.

You’ll notice that there are some gifts my mom brought back from Japan. You may notice the shochu and the sweets on the table. She also brought me a new camera! I think they’re cheaper here but she got a color that isn’t available in the US, and the instructions and the menus are all in Japanese.

You can also see the toys my pa got:

and his “Drip On” instant coffee, displayed by my sister.

I figure while we’re at it, here’s a picture of my sister and her husband, and one of their dog Dede.

No pictures of me, my dad (who was being cranky when I tried to take his picture) or my mom (whose picture I forgot to take!)

Well, that’s about enough for now. Since I didn’t go to the gym last night, I went this morning. Not only that, but I’m sore from standing on a wobbly board and having Dave the Trainer throw a medicine ball at me.

Well, it’s a long weekend and they expected me to do work today! I suppose they expect me to do work over the weekend as well. There’s a deadline coming up and megacorp just doesn’t understand software and software schedules. “Don’t release it when it’s finished, release it on the deadline!” Ah, well. I’m getting paid to work, after all.

After all that I got home late and was too lazy to go to the gym. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow and see what the early Turkey Day crowd is like. I think I remember that they’re open until 1PM tomorrow.
Anyway, my mom comes back tomorrow. Hooray!

I was cranky to my father after he insisted that my mom called and she said she’s coming back tomorrow. Well, she is coming back tomorrow, but it’s tomorrow JAPAN TIME. Thursday Portland time. I’m not sure if she really called or if he’s imagining things, but I’m kind of mad at her if she did. That’s the second time she’s called while I was at the gym and she should know better. He gets all sorts of details wrong and then insists on the wrong details. “Your mother is in Morocco. I wonder how she’s enjoying Morocco?” OK, so he said Osaka, not Morocco, but you get the idea.

Usually I’m not this cranky after going to the gym. Maybe it was the 200 pushups Dave the Trainer made me do. Plus, my sister is getting snarky comments again. Oh, well.

I’ve been kind of busy, I suppose. I was planning on doing work and watching the game, but I ended up going to dinner with my dad and my sister. Then I came back and did some work, took out the trash and recycling and washed the dishes. Along with all the boring bits, I’m sure I had something interesting to mention. I’m not sure what it is, though.

I did get a $1.50 hot dog and drink at Costco. Is that interesting? Most likely not.

• Ironing is something you do while you’re watching a boring football game.
• The swiffer thingy is actually pretty cheesy.
• I really didn’t learn all that much today.

My teeth hurt, however, thanks to some combination of strawberry mochi ice cream and Skittles.

But I really think I should give up. Find women who share my interests, huh? You should see the women who are into computers and ham radio (and I apologize to those of you who meet those criteria, but you have a lot more guys available than you know what to do with so don’t read the next bit): they’re hideous. OK, so I’m exaggerating, but if they’re ever so slightly non-hideous, they have hundreds of geeks talking to them every single day. At MIT, for example, the women who you’d vote most likely to end up living in a house with 40 cats are treated like queens with all the adoration and gifts and paying tributes and whatever else queens get. (And I’m not talking about the queens who listen to the music in my iPod, either.) It’s all about the numbers.

I suppose I could take up other hobbies but nobody suggest swing or salsa dancing. I find them both to be rather obnoxious. I guess I could learn to waltz or something. I’d probably meet nice little old ladies waltzing.

So I can’t keep doing what I like to do and expect to do much other than live in a crumbling house full of crap with small paths from the sleeping area to the computer area to the filthy kitchen to the filthy bathroom. Oh, and maybe a path to the TV room stacked with empty pizza boxes and take-out cartons.

Now that I think of it, a lot of the women I’m starting to notice at the gym seem to share my interests. And by, “share my interests,” I mean, “they want to go out with women, too.” The number of available women gets even smaller.

Oh, well, I had a fine day of laundry and filling my dad’s pill minder. Oh, and minor yard work. I also went out to a Japanese restaurant with my dad and it reminded me why I put up with smoky bars when I get hungry: bars don’t allow children and so you don’t have to watch two-year-olds having temper tantrums all around you. I’m reminded of my friend Shawn and how she told me that her niece and nephew were the best birth control ever.

Well, my post just got eaten. Yeesh.

The post was something about how I probably shouldn’t bother checking out the singles sites or even trying anything online because I never get replies, or if I do it’s mostly from fake women or women who are being paid to pretend to be who they’re not. But how is that different than what I usually do?

At the gym today I talked to the woman with the broken phone (turns out Earthlink sent her the wrong hardware) and she was telling us that one of her friends at the gym wouldn’t talk to her any longer. Turns out they went on a date and it didn’t go the way he wanted it to go. Sounds stinky that he doesn’t talk to her any longer. But I told her that I don’t ask out anyone at work or anyone from places I go to all the time, so that just means I don’t ask anyone out at all.

Funny how I end up disappointed even when I try to avoid any risk.

Anyway, that’s just life as I know it.

I like using beta software sometimes and it shows, doesn’t it?

And who turned on the traffic switch lately? I used to get home in 35-40 minutes, and one a car wreck only slowed me down for another five minutes. Lately there’s no accidents and it takes me an HOUR to get home. That’s an extra hour I could be using for TV or something. Oh, well.

OK, so I’m spending way too much time at the gym. I’ll get there around 6 and leave around 8:30. Part of the problem is that Dave the Trainer says that I should pause several minutes between sets. So I can overdo a set, and then stand around for a while to “recharge.”

While I was busy sitting around resting between reps on the weight bench, a woman came over to ask me how I would fix her phone. I went into geek mode and asked questions and ended up telling her to call the internet phone company she’s using. Then, I though, did she want me to fix her phone or did she want me to FIX… HER… PHONE…? Man, I can not get the signals straight. Are there signals, ’cause I’m pretty sure I’m straight.

Here’s two odd sightings at the gym, a guy who works out in very nice wool slacks, a crisp white shirt, and a nice silk necktie! I think the guy probably is here on business or something and doesn’t have anything else to wear, but is is a bit different. One of Dave the Trainer’s friends was saying, “What if he goes in the locker room and changes into sweats to go home?”

And Dave the Trainer also pointed out a woman on his favorites list (i.e. attractive and healthy). The only thing I have against her is that she wears the shirt of the oppressor. Well, I’m not sure where that “shirt of the oppressor” thing came from (besides out of my mouth) but it said STANFORD. And one of the quirks I should mention is that I never want to go out with anyone from Reed College or Stanford University. I told my sister this and asked if I was just being weird. She told me, “No, Stanford is awful.” HAHAHA. (She also told me that I was gay, and that the gym was full of gay dudes. I told Dave the Trainer and he said, “Man, I feel sorry for all them straight dudes, sitting on the couch and getting fat.”)

Oh, and another one of my hangups is people or pets sitting on things with no pants on. I know pets don’t wear pants, but just getting butt on things kinda weirds me out. Not excessively, mind you, but I think about it sometimes. Like when my sister’s dog Dede sits on things all I can think of is “dog butt.” Well, I rode Mariko’s car with Dede and Dede likes standing on the passenger seat, pushing her butt against you for stability. I didn’t go into a cleaning ritual, so I guess I’m not that weird about dog butt.

I should quit keeping score, but I got one email from match.com (another Chinese woman, but at least this time she’s only 20-30 miles away) but no replies to the emails I sent out on fastcupid.

So I think that recumbent cycling thing does nothing for my muscles, but at least it gets my heart rate up. And makes me sweat a lot too. Anyway, I was on the recumbent cycling thing after my session with Dave the Trainer and he started talking about getting pork chops at Joe’s Cellar. Well, three of us (and I can’t remember the other guy’s name but he’s Dave’s student as well) made an outing of it and all got pork chops. Probably negated all the healthy aspects of the workout, but it was good. We also sat in the bar area and got nice and smoky. Phooey on that.

I had something else to rail about but I forgot and you’re now spared the nonsense.

Oh, and as a scoreboard on the dating sites: four emails sent on OkCupid, no response. Four on fastcupid, no response. One on match.com, no response.

OK, so the poop is not all my fault. He does it all the time when my mom is around, too. I just cleaned his teeth-cleaning contraption that was all covered in red algae or some other nasty slime. And that’s it for my disgusting bodily goo talk for the day.

One of the women in the next row over at megacorp told me she had a profile on Match.com, so I was nosy and looked for it. Fortunately, she didn’t tell me it was creepy and even told me her profile name (the profile is “hidden” and I couldn’t see it anyway.)

In any case, I have 5200 points on fastcupid.com, a dating site with a horrible user interface, so I decided I was going to spend my points by writing stream-of-consciousness emails to whoever “matched” me. One per customer. Heck, I never get responses so it doesn’t matter how silly my emails are. At least I have a new hobby for the next week or so.