This is the second year in a row that I missed Courtney’s birthday party because I’m sick. At least this year I’m hoping it’s self-limiting and quick (a stomachache). I’m not sure what happened, but this morning at work I wasn’t feeling so good. A lot of people have been dragging this week and I’m not the only one in the group who is getting slammed with outside requests. Anyway, I came home early to do some writing but I collapsed as soon as I got home and it was two hours later when I woke up. And my stomach still hurt. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better (the stomach part, not the work part).

I don’t like making too many decisions about a restaurant on their first week being open, and today’s experience at Foster Burger kind of is an example of that. Four of us went there after going to the gym as part of our burger club.

When we got there at 8:15-ish, the place was full but not crowded. There were open seats at the bar and at a two-top, I think, but there were four of us and we were on “a list” to be seated at a table. We all had some beers at the bar. I was watching a booth open up when a couple walked in and took it. I don’t know why they bothered to tell us that there was a list if it was just first-come-first-served. We would have been more vigilant if we would have known. They didn’t move the couple, they just made us wait longer.

We finally got a seat in a dark corner. I’m almost twice the age of two of the others I went with, and I was having a hard time reading the menu. Well, it turns out the 25-year-old guy was having a hard time as well. The table was also by the door, which had a big sign saying, “MAKE SURE YOU CLOSE THE DOOR BECAUSE IT GETS COLD INSIDE,” but I had to keep getting up to close it because hipsters can’t read. I was actually very angry with the staff and the couple who took our table, to the point where I was considering doing something to get me 86’ed from the restaurant for good.

They finally came to take our order much later than the couple who stole our booth, and we were told that they just sold out of the black and white fries, which was first on our list. I think the couple got the last order. We put in our order for burgers and waited. And waited. And then we noticed people were being turned away. And then we were told they RAN OUT OF BUNS and we were out of luck. Just as we were going to pay for our drinks and leave (the bartender was nice and it wasn’t her fault we were getting the royal shaft from Foster Assburger), they told us our order was actually IN THE QUEUE, and we weren’t among the bunless. Another minute and we would have been gone. We stayed and waited. And waited. And we finally got our burgers.

The burger was good, but as the foodie blogs say, it’s a great pub burger but not on the gourmet scale. In fact, among the pub burgers, I’d recommend Hopworks first and Slow Bar second and Foster Burger next. They all have their issues (Hopworks is too crowded, Slow Bar treats you like you are at a McMenamins – i.e. like dirt) and you have to consider that when you’re going out to eat. But just on quality I’d say this was really good but I can find better for the same price. And really, unless you’re a hipster doofus or you just happen to live there, why go to SE Portland?

So, really, unless you’re a masochist or overly adventurous or really lucky, avoid Foster Burger for a couple more weeks.

Get your mind out of the gutter. Going to the gym doing pullups or deadlifts just makes my calluses worse and I had to get out the old scrubby dealie I bought in Japan. It does a great job though it is kind of wide and really meant for your heels and not spots on your hands. I guess I’m supposed to be able to deadlift twice my body weight, so let me just pretend I weight half of 305lbs so I don’t have to go any heavier. That’s fair, isn’t it?

I was pretty tired again today, and really wishing I could just quit my job and find something more peaceful. That’s all just a fantasy, I know, but it helped get me through the day.

So, just so I can try to pretend to get to sleep earlier, off I go.

It takes me a while to wind down, and I thought i was heading for sleepy time EARLY for once. But one of the reasons I’m having trouble getting to sleep is because I’ll fall asleep for a couple of minutes and wake up. Then it’s tossing and turning time. One of the reasons I’ve been waking up is because of the kids that park across the street making noise. The noise hasn’t been bothering me for months but lately there’s been this old POS Camry, probably 11-12 years old, that sits there idling and it needs a new muffler. The sound carries into the house. I finally went outside and asked the kid to either cut his engine or park somewhere else. Now I’m wide awake.

And now that I’m wide awake I realized that I have to pay my bills.

Fortunately, I’m in a much better mood today, having seen the female and male John Berg at the gym. Plus, instead of just eating a salad for dinner, I also had a cupcake. OK, it was three dots from St. Cupcake, but Jami says that equals one cupcake. Hooray.

Onto bill paying and THEN trying to get to sleep.

I don’t have enough sense to go to sleep on time, but when I do finally get to sleep I’m having trouble sleeping. When I go to bed early, I seem to wake up early, and way before the time I want to get up. How is this fair. Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to deal with it.

The hope of Sunday was extinguished by the reality of Monday. Actually, I had a head start when I checked my work email last night. Not much more to be said about it, but the daily drudgery has begun anew. Or so I can think with this crossing of the artificial boundary into 2010. Yeesh, I’m getting bleak here. That’s what happens when I don’t get my cheeseburger ration. Or maybe it’s the government nanobots in the H1N1 vaccine altering my body chemistry.

OK, sheesh, it’s Monday. Don’t I get a day to get morose? I actually blame it all on a LACK OF DESSERT. I’m hungry and I need a cookie but it’s a weeknight and all I had was a salad for dinner. I suppose I can go back to fantasizing about the semifreddo at Wildwood, or the bread pudding at Hopworks. Oh, heck, why don’t I just think about the cheeseburger at the Carlyle again? If I keep this up I won’t be able to sleep.

I just spent the last couple of hours spending a bunch of money on electrical crap. More outlets, switches, ethernet jacks, wall plates, and other boring things that most people wouldn’t care about but I figure I should just buy everything and worry about it later. I got started on the buying because somehow I got sidetracked today. I have my list of errands, but I wanted to sit on my fat ass and watch football until it was time to go to Foster Burger for dinner. Turns out they didn’t have any football games today, only massacres, so I started in on my list of errands.

Getting an H1N1 vaccine is a lot easier now. In fact, I called the local Fred Meyer and Walgreens and they wanted me to sign up for Tuesday’s waiting list, but then I called QFC and they just told me not to come in too late. It’s the same QFC with the Coinstar machine that spits out Amazon gift certificate codes for “free”. Instead of losing 8.5% for the privilege of using the machine, I get a gift certificate for 100% of the change I pour into the machine. Then I waste the gift certificate on electrical outlets and telephones. I also bought a 2-line phone for the two lines in the house.

I had $29.57 worth of coins, and my insurance paid for the H1N1 vaccine. I think it might have been the vaccine that lead to my stomach upset, but who knows. All I know is that my stomach felt funny. I did end up running yet another phone line and Ethernet drop upstairs and that required a lot of crawling around in the attic, and I also started thinking about wiring a light into the bedroom closet. The bad part is that everyone bailed on me for Foster Burger for dinner and so that didn’t happen.

Oh, well. Doesn’t look like Foster Burger is going anywhere. I’ll get there soon enough.

I was told that I really shouldn’t have described what I was doing when the New Year rang in (sitting in my room by myself, reading comic books). I actually missed the stroke of midnight because of it. I was expecting to hear a lot of fireworks going off, but it was pouring last night and I think that pretty much put everyone off of standing outside for any length of time.

I wasn’t as antisocial today as I usually am. Went to the gym and then to Trevor and Megan’s to watch the Rose Bowl. Then it was off to dinner at Red Onion with my mom, sister, brother-in-law, Megan (from San Francisco), Nadeem, and Craig. Quite an eventful day, really.

So I think I’m just going to write down a couple of resolutions. A date per month or at least 12 this year. I always blow this one. A trip to Canada. Why not? And studying kanji with some sort of measurable outcome. I’ll have to figure out what that really is.

So much for the first day of the year.

It’s the last day of the year and I usually wait until the last minute to make my charitable donations. This is my excuse for blowing people off during the year (especially the ones coming to the front door), that I’m waiting until the end of the year. I donated to my semi-lefty causes and had to call VISA three times because most of the donations were for the same amount and it set off the fraud detectors at the credit card company. I’m already getting grief from some of my friends for contributing to Planned Parenthood which is ridiculous. They should know that Planned Parenthood provide a full range of health services and should be on me for donating to Oregon NARAL instead.

Calling VISA repeatedly was kind of funny. I figure it’s part of the game. The last time they asked me a bunch of weird questions. “Do you live in a) Benton County, b) Clackamas County, c) Washington County, or d) none of the above? Another question was about several of my previous addresses. I lived in Japan for five years (only 2 different addresses) and back here in NW Portland for 36 out of my 45 years. But they pulled out some weird addresses from my summer jobs. The best part is that I had forgotten some of my old summer addresses (I still can’t remember where I lived in North Carolina) and they asked me about the one place in California where I live for a whole summer but forgot the address of. I’ve actually gone back to that neighborhood and driven around trying to figure out where it was I used to live, and now I know. Thanks to VISA, and their questions where they’d give you a street address where you used to live and ask you to identify the city.

Looks like I spent New Year’s Eve sitting at home watching DVDs, Showtime, and reading comic books. There you go. Another exciting start to a year.

There are a couple of things I need to finish before the end of the year, my year-end charitable donations and compiling a list of resolutions. I can’t remember exactly what my resolutions were from last year, but I think I blew them all. I think in the past I said I wanted to go on one date per month, and I had four dates this year, so that’s not nothing. 33% is still a failing grade.

I worked from home today and then went to the gym. We had burger club after the gym and we went back to the Carlyle where we had mixed opinions. I think it’s high on my list, but Kara hated her burger. Matty G thought the burger was OK. I like it because the meat and bacon are tasty, and the fries are excellent. The cocktails are also quite good. I suppose we just have a difference of opinion.

It’s time to call it a day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some things done.

We had some weather today that caught everyone by surprise. It started snowing when I got back from lunch, and it didn’t get much better. Usually I just wait it out when we get unexpected snow because it just panics everyone into going home early and then melts before the real rush hour, but I left just before 3PM instead. I didn’t get home until after 4. My usual 35-45 minute commute was more like an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s not too bad, though, since the 10 o’clock news showed rush hour was still going when it should have been over by 6:00 or 6:30PM. I have a friend who even gave up and just got a hotel room downtown instead of heading back to Hillsboro with his kids.

I’m not sure why I’m still up, besides being foolish. I wasn’t able to do my full amount of screwing around because the snow covered my DirecTV dish and I couldn’t watch TV. I had comic books to read, though. 100 Bullets and it’s 100 issues long.

The weird thing is that I’ve had trouble sleeping this week. I toss and turn for a while and then when I’m good and asleep I have to wake myself up for a trip to the bathroom. The bathroom trip is just because I drink a lot of water after getting back from the gym, but it does come at an inconvenient time. I’ve seen a lot of twitter postings complaining about insomnia as well. Perhaps it’s the mind control drugs in the water.

I went a whole day with my new glasses and I’m trying to get used to the astigmatism correction. They seem a lot clearer than my contacts, but, like always, I’ll probably go back and forth with my contacts for a while. I like the contacts because I don’t have to have anything on my face and I get peripheral vision, but I like the glasses because they’re clearer and they don’t make my eyes feel funny. It’s always a tradeoff.

Wow, I spent a lot of money last month. I’m watching my bank account get smaller and smaller, but then again I do still have a job so I can’t complain too much. I wondered what presents I bought myself for Xmas (since you get them for the ones you love, after all, and who else is buying presents for me?) and there’s a 42″ HDTV (because it was on sale), some $30 light switches (because I’m crazy — they don’t seem that different than the $3 ones), and a $100 CW Reader/Keyboard/Keyer kit.

Let me explain what a keyer does. It helps you send Morse code with two switches, one that sends the dits and one that sends the dahs. A CW Keyboard lets you type a message on a QWERTY keyboard to be sent out in Morse code. Finally, a CW reader listens to Morse code and then decodes it into text. The kit I bought required soldering and other sundry assembly and required me to wear a magnifying visor.

I should point out that Morse code has been declared obsolete and is no longer used in commercial service such as messages from ships to shore. It’s not even required on ham radio tests any longer. But of course, as soon as they declared it obsolete, I decided to start using it again. Using a CW Reader is cheating, but I decided to buy one to play with anyway.

Other than that I was watching football like a manly American male, and I think I’m also hooked on Community. Curse you Sean!

P.S. I’m already caught up on episodes of Modern Family.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with my buddy Mike and his family, upholding sacred Jewish traditions by going out for Chinese food. I don’t know if the new Chinatown in Portland (down on SE 82nd) was open, but all the restaurants I saw in the old Chinatown were open. We went to Powell’s as well, where I got to read two books to his son. The books weren’t as bad as I’d feared, at least not the ones from the “magic bus” series.

After I got home I watched my triplet of Xmas movies, Comfort and Joy, A Christmas Carol, and Love Actually. I think Love Actually is the only romantic comedy I have since I gave Next Stop Wonderland to my ex. I may have to buy another copy of that movie. Of course, I have Top Gun which might actually be a homoerotic romantic comedy, but I hardly ever watch that even though it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought. (Blade was the first.)

Today I went to the gym and watched football. I think I had some other things I wanted to do, but I thought I was coming down with a cold yesterday and I figured napping and being lazy didn’t require more excuses than that. I also caught up on the episodes of Cougar Town. After Courtney told me it was funny I started looking for episodes and then Sean told me I had to start watching. I actually think it was worth it. Now to see if Parks and Recreation (Sean and Il’s suggestion), and Community (Sean’s suggestion), are also worth watching.

I also seem to have killed my bottle of Laphroaig in the past two days. It is one of my favorites, but I had Aardbeg a few times and wonder if that won’t be even higher on my list. I’ll have to get a bottle to make sure.

Today it seemed like I didn’t actually get a cold for Xmas. I only got one gift this year (besides all the cookies) and it was something from my janitorial job at the gym. Otherwise I got bupkis. I was going to make a point here, but I think the Laphroaig I had is limiting any more thoughts I could possibly have tonight. Andiamo.