I think I did OK on my to-do list yesterday, even though it seemed a bit short. Spent a Groupon for running shoes, went to an MIT alumni picnic, and cut down some odd bush and a moss-covered apple tree. I’m never quite sure what my dad planted in the backyard or what his plan was to fill the yard with tree that grew into monstrosities in the thirty or forty years they’ve been in the ground but I’m pretty sure he’d be mad if he knew I was feeding them all to a wood chipper. He never did like disturbing the neighbors with the racket, either. But, on the other hand, I’m not too enamored of living in a dark mossy forest full of spiderwebs and English ivy. Plus it’s fun to run gas-powered tools like chainsaws and wood chippers. Some environmentalist I turned out to be, but this is a backyard, not a forest and my dad’s trees aren’t exactly native species. I wish I could have kept some of them but if they’re too close to the house or crowding each other for space, they have to go.

Oh, and my stupid computer keeps crashing. Dammit.

Well, it took me over a day, but I sort of backed up my Mac and moved some partitions around. Didn’t really delete or reload anything and I’m just pretending that doing nothing is going to help the situation. I guess I did repair the permissions or something. In any case, I’m back to having a computer and that just reminds me of all the things I need to catch up on. Like reading my twitter feed (not really useful) or paying my bills (better do that tonight). That’s just life.

My Mac is acting up, giving me the grey screen of death several times a day. It may be bad hardware or it may be my OS installation. I’m going to delete everything and start over tonight and that means HOURS of backing up my old computer.

So, not much else for me tonight except waiting for files to copy. Exciting times!

Imran, a friend from the gym is leaving to go to Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, so I decided to take him out to dinner. Our schedules finally aligned this Monday, a beautiful evening when we thought all the restaurants were open. But this is Portland, and when it’s nice everyone is out. Even at 8:30PM, there was a two-hour wait at Little Bird. Laurelhurst Market had a similar wait when we called them on the phone, but we went anyway. It was only about a 30 minute wait in the outside bar, and we even ate outside. It was nice all evening. Since I was paying, Imran got the most expensive steak on the menu. Heck, I encouraged it and even had one myself. I asked if I could get it blue rare, or as a Canadian friend once told me, “Spank it on it’s ass and put it on the plate,” and they accommodated me this time. We also had dessert and I had the always excellent cheesecake.

I didn’t get home until 11PM and I finally got to sleep around midnight. When I got up this morning I felt pretty bad from overeating. It didn’t make work any better, of course, nor my driving at lunch time.

And I have to admit I was pretty darn tired at the gym today. Yesterday we did “Helen” which is two laps around the building (almost 400m), 21x 24kg kettlebell swings, 12x ugly, ugly pull-ups. Three times. I’m sore all over. Today we did the row 200m, bear crawl to the door, run halfway around the building. Five times. With a partner, so 10 times for the two of you. I staggering around a bit after today’s workout and I should be happy that I didn’t see any of my last few meals. Of course, if I had any sense I’d be asleep by now, but you know how that is.

Oh, and my stupid computer keeps grey screening, so that’s another joy in my life right now. Phooey on that.

I suppose it was a good thing that my computer kept crashing because that kept me doing the things I should have been doing away from the keyboard and monitor. I finally made it to Goodwill and I felt bad about taking them so much stuff I didn’t want, until I saw how they treated the things I told them were “fragile”. I took them two Japanese dolls (perhaps they’re figurines) and they’re quite fragile. In fact, they broke just being stored. Well the guy at Goodwill who appeared not to speak English, or Spanish, or any other language native to this continent threw them in a pile so I’m guessing they weren’t quite trash before I took them in but they are now.

He doesn’t come around and tell me how to do MY job, so I won’t tell him how to do his.

I also finally moved some of the cable around so I’m one step closer to moving my 42″ TV into the bedroom. But I still have a few dozen boxes to take to Goodwill so I can get the writeoff and they can train people how to destroy fragile things before I have enough space. But I am getting closer.

I keep thinking that I should get cracking on studying kanji because my Japanese reading comprehension has gone down the tubes. Then the New York Times went and published their 50 Most Frequently Looked Up Words on NYTimes.com for 2011. I felt pretty good because I know a lot of the words on that list. But they posted it as a jpeg or some other image and I started looking around for a text copy so I could more easily look up the words. Well, google found me a list for 2010 and I felt much less smug. Most of the words were pretty foreign to me. I mean, really, inchoate vs panegyric? Good thing I’m not studying for the SATs.

C++ is an awful mess, as far as I can tell. Code is just mashed together until it works. Well unfortunately for me, MacOS X is using a new compiler that is pickier about code than g++ and I’m seeing all sorts of errors in other people’s code. What a mess. I suppose it’s just as well and it keeps me occupied, but there are other things I could be doing! Like watching TV or finishing that stack of books that isn’t getting any smaller just by sitting there. You’d think that it would compact or compost or something, but no such luck.

Well, enough of the computer for now. I’m going to stare at some words and pretend I’m reading. Reading is good for me, right?

I’m not quite sure how all the time in my day goes away and I’m proably not likely to find out very soon. One plan I have is to stop watching some of the summer TV shows that are on my DVR. I’m thinking of punting Alphas because it sounds like it’s going to be an us vs. them sort of story like the X-Men comics were in the late 80’s and that’s pretty tedious to me. And I might punt on Falling Skies because it just gets my blood pressure up worrying about what evil the alien invaders are going to commit.

I suppose tedious stories don’t mean I’m going to stop watching or reading a book. I’m in the middle of The Girl with the Annoying Story series and I’ll probably eventually finish that. And I’m about to finish another one of Sophie Hannah’s mysteries where the protagonist is the most annoying person on the planet only to be superseded by the following protagonist. And the minutiae that she puts in her books is excruciating. But I just keep reading. I am really looking forward to the next Jack Reacher or John Rain novel where the good guy just goes out and kills a bunch of bad guys.

Talk about a case of the Mondays. Last night I was woken up by thunder several times. That would have been bad enough, but one of the times I realized that my stomach hurt. Then I overslept because I forgot to set my alarm. When I got to work I almost missed several meetings because Outlook wasn’t flashing the alarms in my face.

Even better, my stomach started hurting pretty early in the day. I wondered if it was because of the barbecue and ice cream I had yesterday so today, instead of a pulled pork sandwich, I got smoked brisket. So far so good.

And I didn’t ditch the gym but I did find out that when you smack your hand on something doing yard work, it doesn’t help with your workout.

Today was one of the Sunday Parkways events, where they close down a bunch of roads in a neighborhood for bicycles and (supposedly) pedestrians. There’s so many families on bikes that it would be dangerous to try to walk around. But basically, what it means for me is that they close down my neighborhood and make it impossible to drive until evening. To make the best of it, I wander down to the park and look at all the semi-bicycle-related stands, buy some food, and hang around waiting to run into people I know. I was successful, seeing some neighbors and some old friends. And getting more sunburned, I think. Dixon’s Ribs was back as well as the ice cream place I keep meaning to find but never seem to. They do have good ice cream whoever and wherever they are.

Well, last night I was certain that I was going to talk about cutting my neighbor’s laurel or photinia or whatever the hell it is and how I ended up also cutting off a huge branch of his apple tree (the one my dad planted) but I was beat. The hedge and tree were overhanging our garage and my mom kept telling me to cut it back. I could have gone to sleep right after dinner but what fun would that have been? So I just lay on the floor listening to podcasts. Exciting Saturday night. I think I was sunburned and tired from all my fun. The apple tree branch was the worst part. There’s so much awful ivy on it that I couldn’t tell where the apple began and the ivy ended. Most of it went into the wood chipper.

I didn’t do a very good job of scheduling the day. I got back from the gym, ate lunch, and then started cutting. Then I took a shower, went to the coffee shop with my mom, and came back to start cleanup. Then I had to take another shower. That wood chipper seems to be used on the hottest days of the year. It was only in the 80’s yesterday, but that sure seems hot when the previous week was in the 60’s. Plus I hit my head on the garage gutters

I should have known when I signed up to be a “special customer” of Borders for $20 that I’d never make that money back. In fact, while I love books, I’m getting to be a big Kindle fan. I read a lot of books on one of my two Kindles (I really should sell the old one on eBay) or on my iPhone. The thing is, I always have my iPhone and so I always have my books. I’m reading a real book right now and it’s kind of cramping my hands up. I feel like a cranky whiner, but I’m actually getting used to non-books.

The worst part is that I don’t buy as many books as I used to, and I find it easier to get books on Amazon than going down to the bookstore. First they closed the downtown Borders, and now they’re closing them all. We have one of the best bookstores on the planet in Powell’s books, but I hardly go there either. And my biggest problem with books is what to do with them after I read them. I have stacks and stacks of books that I’ve read and re-read and they take up a lot of space. I guess I could try to sell them, or just give them to Goodwill like everything else. Now if I could only convince my buddy MattyG to drive his brother’s truck over here, I could make a HUGE trip to Goodwill.