I was home sick again and I’m feeling better, but I have a cough now and I hate it when people come to work with a cough. I wouldn’t have stayed home otherwise because the sheet rock is up and now the mudders are in making their usual extreme mess. There’s no rest to be had when those guys are around.

I just got my DirecTV hooked up today and now I have hundreds of channels. But still, there’s hardly anything I want to watch. It’s been, what, almost nine months since I had the cable turned off and now I have a GIANT 23″ HDTV hooked up to an HD DVR. I will admit that I was switching between channels and there’s a HUGE difference between HD and regular TV. The installer was a super nice kid who did a great job and so far I’ve had very little problem with DirecTV. I just got it though. Now I’m using the HD DVR to record every episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and this is probably not going to be the best thing for my health. I looooves me some cheeseburgers and some of the ones on the TV are looking mighty fine.

I just have to wish Sean and Melissa good luck tomorrow! They’re getting married, and luck may not be exactly what you’re supposed to wish for a wedding, but I know the old saying is true: It’s better to be lucky than good. I’m hoping for a break in the rain for their ceremony, and everything to go off without a hitch. I’m sure it will be great as they’re both incredibly laid back and I can count on them to just enjoy their special day!

I took the day off work today because I kept waking up in the middle of the night feeling like crap. I was really not faking it; there’s no way I’d stay home when the sheetrockers were coming in otherwise. Speaking of which, not only is my brain fuzzy but I could have sworn I wrote something on this blog last night about the sheetrockers coming in. I was hoping that I’d get my DirecTV set up before all the walls went up, but that wasn’t to be. That’s just life.

In any case, I did buy a HUGE new HDTV in preparation for the DirecTV service. It’s a Samsung TWENTY-THREE INCH HDTV. I figure that’s good enough to see if the thing is working or not and I can figure out if I want a bigger TV when we finally get some of the rooms sorted out in the house. I’m not quite sure when that will be, but it surely isn’t right away.

I did stay up too late for a sick guy, having a burger at Laurelhurst Market. They changed up the burger, adding heirloom tomatoes and changing out the pimento cheese for aged cheddar. Now I’m convinced that this is my favorite burger, and I really couldn’t completely taste everything. And now I know just why everyone was raving about the cheesecake. The first bite was tasty, but the second bite was even better. I wish my brain wasn’t full of cotton candy, because I’d really like to say how great both were, but I’m just not quite hitting on all cylinders right now.

Oh, and my doctor told me that my LDL cholesterol was 101. They really like to have it below 100, and he also suggested (without any prompting from me) that I could probably get it down a point by avoiding the cheeseburgers! I wonder if he’s psychic or if there’s some sort of cheeseburger signature that showed up on my bloodwork. I don’t like this waffling sort of cholesterol level. I wonder if I should try jacking it up or try to place it firmly below 100. I mean we almost killed THMFIC at the gym by “making” him eat a Slow Burger and a fried pie. He had to go home sick from the gym because of that. The rest of us were, as they say, fat, dumb, and happy. That makes my think my destiny is to have a higher cholesterol level, but I should probably have more sense than that. Though I don’t, usually.

I think I’m coming down with a head cold. It could be just allergies, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. It wouldn’t be the first time I slept all the way through a 3-day weekend because of an illness.

So while Melissa’s bachelorette party sounded a little wild, Sean’s bachelor party was in danger of only one thing: overeating. We were going to make a pilgrimage of several taco trucks, but that got derailed when KOi Fusion was closed. So we headed to Slow Bar for their burger. The regular Slow Bar Burger, with the onion rings, is pretty much how I like it. Mine might have been slightly overcooked, but the meat tasted great and the sweet crunchy onion rings made it just the right flavor. It might have been a little tall and messy, but I think this is probably the baseline for the burgers I like. It’s not the “best” (some of the fancier burgers are probably better because of the ingredients) but this did taste just the way I like it.

After Slow Bar we went to the food carts on SE 12th and Hawthorne and got some peanut butter and chocolate hand pies at Whiffies Fried Pies. I ate too much.

We did drive by some strip clubs, but in a city that’s supposed to have the most strip clubs per capita, it’s kind of hard to avoid them. And why would you want to if you need to drive by them to get a fried peanut butter and chocolate pie?