I don’t suppose all the John Hughes movies were from my high school days, though it really seems like it to me. They were from when I was in college, hating life, thinking that even though high school sucked, it might have been better than the hell I went through at M.I.T. In any case, the movies were from when I was young, the future looked bright, and a midlife crisis wasn’t even imaginable. Look at me now, a midlife crisis is something I’m scheduling for next Tuesday. Thank you Mr. Hughes for reminding me of my youth.

Speaking of aging, we did “Helen” at the gym today. Run 2 laps, 21 24kg kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups. It was fairly awful. I did it in 10:05 after sucking at a push press, dropping 145lbs. I’m never getting over 135lbs for the push press, am I? I could blame the time, which really isn’t so bad, on things like the fumes in the house — we just got icynene insulation sprayed in — but it’s probably my best “Helen” time so far. Not bad for an old man.

The only other excitement today was buying new tires at Les Schwab. Any more exciting and I’m going to need one my friends in the medical field to make sure I still have a pulse.

I went to the gym today and it was more difficult than I thought. My abs felt kind of puny and I couldn’t do the exercises like I was used to. It was a weird feeling afterwards, realizing it was Tuesday since Monday was a sick day for me. Tuesday means it’s Wage Slave day! And this week’s episode was about our friend Melissa’s character. They even filmed part of it at Sean and Melissa’s house.

The gym might have been a slightly bad idea, but rehydrating like I usually do was a much worse idea. My stomach was cramping even worse than yesterday. I’m hoping that’s all over now, because I have to go to work tomorrow to see what surprises lay in store for me. It keeps my job interesting and it’s also why they pay me.

I got up this morning and my stomach felt funny, funny enough that I called in sick. It didn’t really clear up all day and I even took a short nap after lunch that lasted until 4:15. I can’t sleep that much unless I’m really sick, so I figure this was the day to take off. My intestines are still giving me the gurgly warnings you don’t want if you need to leave the house.

So, other than that I really have nothing. I just got off the phone from a friend complaining that his eHarmony date said she’d be busy for the rest of the month, and it’s only the 3rd of this month. I suppose I have no suggestions other than to GIVE UP NOW. I just watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and it’s made me a little sad so I thin I’ll wait to give him my opinion.

I should probably use some tricks from revisionist historians and just tell myself that everything on my list was whatever it is I did today, and I think I did do at least one thing on my list. However, having a headache and napping is what my list would have been otherwise. I had lunch with my sister and Megan at Cafe Nell, where I made some disparaging remarks to someone who said, “Obama has changed us into a socialist nation.” Yeah, if that’s the case, where’s my government check? One I can live on?

Megan’s up trying to box up some of the things in her grandfather’s house and I think they have the opposite problem that my sister and I have about the inheritance. I think we’re all convinced that the stuff my dad bought was fairly cheap and junky and so there is no real value to any of it, just sentimental value. After you’ve seen thousands of things with minimal sentimental value, you just want to chuck most of it and send the rest to Goodwill. But Megan’s stuff looks better than that, unfortunately. There’s going to be a lot of sorting in her future.

The thing that was on my list was to put together one of the kits my sister got me from Japan. I had this this Gakken Analog Synthesizer that just needed to be screwed together and it was fun for about fifteen minutes. I”m sure I’ll play with it later, but for now I’ve made enough annoying blips and bloops out of the thing. I also moved some furniture to allow the contractors to access the attic space, and I returned my neighbor’s hand truck (finally). In any case, I guess I did do something today.

I’m trying to remember how I found out that a friend from the gym was moving today. He’s over 30, so he’s past the point of asking friends to move. Most people in their 30’s should just pony up the cash and pay someone to move, but Orion is a student without much money. I offered the use of my brother-in-law’s truck, which he thinks probably saved him $70 in U-Haul fees. On the plus side, Orion didn’t have all that much stuff and we probably could have crammed ALL his stuff in the pickup. On the minus side, my brother-in-law’s truck is a beast without air conditioning and it was a lot hotter today than I was expecting. I also wear long pants when I’m helping someone move, so that didn’t help matters. I thought it was especially hot in the truck and when I got to my sister’s house to return it I was kind of in a daze and locked my keys in the trunk of my car. Later, my brother-in-law informed me that the the heater hoses in the pickup fell off and hot air was pumping into the cab.

We couldn’t find my spare car key. We could only find my valet key, which would let me into the passenger compartment of my car and let me drive but wouldn’t let me into the trunk, where my only know car key was located. When I got home, we searched the house to no avail. I finally called Hillsboro Honda, but their service department just closed for the day. I called Beaverton Honda (which is closer anyway) and they suggested ways of taking apart pieces of the car to get to the trunk-opening cable. They also told me that they could cut me a key that would let me into the car and the trunk, but wouldn’t start the car because that required a special chip. I drove out to Beaverton and they cut me the key for free!

I made it to my evening’s plans, Rogue’s Bones & Brew. It’s a mini-brewfest (very small) which also had almost a dozen barbecue establishments competing against each other. I must admit I’m a bit of a racist because even though my first consideration was against establishment that didn’t show visible smoke and my second consideration was against establishments that said “it’s all in the sauce,” my final judgement was for the establishment that had only African-Americans manning the booth.

I was rewarded for my racism, as my second-choice establishment wasn’t nearly as good (I tried both).

I planned on eating until I ran out of money or until I was full. Unfortunately, I was full pretty quickly.

I walked a woman (one of my fellow gym rats) home since it was on my way, but I’m not sure what it says about me that it wasn’t until after she got inside that I thought about going for ice cream. Instead of asking her to go, I called my mom and asked if she wanted any. A pint of Alotto Gelato to go, please.

I shouldn’t have eaten Filipino food for lunch. I think it sat kind of heavy in my stomach. We usually go to Mexican restaurants four times a week and one of my co-workers, the one who drives, wanted some variety. We went to JP Cuisine in Hillsboro where I had curry chicken, chicken apatado (I think), lumpia (delicious pork spring rolls), and pancit (vermicelli noodles). It’s mainly does catering and take-out so there are only three or four tables, and the food is in warming trays like you’d find at Happy Panda. It was DELICIOUS. They give you tastes of things and I was thinking of getting the tripe dish. I forget what it was called, but it was tasty.

In any case, that probably wasn’t what slowed me down most at the gym. I picked up fairly heavy weights: “Orion heavy,” as we like to say. I’m also usually tired by this time of the week and the 100+°F weather isn’t helping things. I can sleep thanks to the central air, but the upstairs is still pretty darn hot. And look at that, I’m too stupid to go to bed early. Good to see that some things don’t change.

That reminds me, Costco.com has these Herman Miller Caper XR office chairs on sale for $249 with free shipping. My regular lunch crew and I saw some and thought they were plasticky pieces of crap until we sat in them and each one of us said, “Oh, that’s nice!” I think I just bought a bright green one to replace my dad’s old office chair that was falling apart and ended up in the landfill. The room it’s going in is still looking like a battle zone, but that should be taken care of soon. I trust the contractors.

Speaking of which, I really can’t recommend frameless shower doors. Mine has been leaking since I got it and I finally had the manager of the company come out to look at it. He said, “Yup, it leaks,” when water poured out of the corner and didn’t do anything about it. He did suggest that I move the door a fraction of an inch before my next shower, but that only helped a little. I wonder what I’m supposed to do, just live with it or replace it with a framed shower door?

One thing I do know is that I’m offended by the $0.39 outlets that the electrician installed in the house and I’m replacing them with Leviton Prograde 15A Nylon Duplex Outlets which are a mere $5.44 each. I know, those outlets are for businesses where they plug and unplug things many times a day, but they’re so nice. I don’t know design, but I know outlets, and I don’t like chintzy ones. It’s a wonder I’m not married to some nice guy with an outlet fetish by now.

Last week, a chocolate milk and a salad (just the leafy stuff) kept me going just fine. This week I’m still hungry after dinner. It probably didn’t help that I had 1/3 of a bar of Japanese chocolate left and sitting on my desk. I’m not starving afterwards, but just not full.

I’m not sure if I mentioned one of the things they did on Tantei Knight Scoop was help a guy bake some bread. He had no clue. He grew some wheat and then called his friends over. I’m not sure what all the steps are called in the process, but they beat the hell out of the wheat after putting it in paper bags. Then they had a winnowing machine that separated the grain from the chaff. They used a manual millstone to grind the wheat. Then they were stuck until they called a baker who was on the show in the previous week.

So now that I’m hungry, I feel like doing the same myself. My buddy Greg seems to know people with wheat fields, and they use big combines to get the grain directly from the field. He’s supposed to get me some, but then I have to find a millstone for the next step. Maybe my sister knows someone with one. I’ll probably make biscuits, because that’s easy, or bread.

I’m not sure why I want to grind my own flour and bake bread in the first place. We live really close to Grand Central Baking, St. Honore Pretentious and Crowded Bakery, and pretty close to Pearl Bakery and Ken’s Artisan Bakery. It’s probably the salad that’s warping my brain.

It’s 10:30PM and it’s still 90°F outside. Ick. It’s supposed to stay that way all week. It was 102°F today and is supposed to be 104°F and 105°F the next couple of days. This isn’t the sort of thing an Oregonian can put up with. I should move to San Francisco, where it’s only supposed to be 67°F tomorrow.

Jay the Contractor showed up today and tore apart the bedroom that’s still being worked on. I’m not sure what I expected, but this really wasn’t it. Not that I mind, since they need access to the space between the ceiling and the roof so they can spray in the Icynene insulation, but it was a surprise. I’m just hoping the installer knows what he’s doing and we get the upstairs insulated right.

I set my sights pretty low on the weekends because I know how much I enjoy sitting on my butt. I only had two things I was going to do today, attend our yearly block party and fix the lights in the basement. Unfortunately two things stood in the way. First was the Japanese TV show that I downloaded off of the intarweb. It’s based in Osaka, near where I lived when I was there, so I have even more reason to watch the show. The other reason was that I might have the same stomach problems my mom has now. Every time I eat, I get a stomachache and start feeling weak.

I surprised myself by getting up and finishing the wiring (I was already started when my stomach started hurting) but I didn’t make it to the block party. I also finished all of the episodes of Tantei Knight Scoop I have already, so that won’t be a problem. Unfortunately, my weekend is already over, and my stomach still kind of hurts. My nagging calf cramp hasn’t gone away either. At least the air conditioning still works, because it’s supposed to be close to 100°F for three days.

My brother-in-law has been having some health problems and we’re wondering if it’s triggered from the heat. I had a portable air conditioner just sitting around because we put in central air conditioning, but I gave it to Devon from the gym who is pregnant because who really wants to see a pregnant woman suffer in the heat? So it was time to hit Sears and Costco. Unfortunately, the heat was getting to my brother-in-law, so I ended up buying the thing. I thought it was a little unwieldy, but realized that it was hard to manhandle because it was ninety-five pounds! In any case, he’s going to set it up in his basement because we’re supposed to have a record-breaking stretch of above-90°F weather here in Portland. We’re not used to that sort of heat here.

In any case, it’s Friday, and I’m watching some TV like usual. I found a bunch of Tantei Knight Scoop from the Osaka area. They get questions from listeners and have some comedians go and try to find out the answers. The questions are like:

• My 36-year-old husband thinks he can play volleyball at the Olympic level. Can you find out if he can? (He couldn’t, but never gave up.)
• Can you help a 40-something man make an “Ultra Q” monster from his youth?
• Can you help find a bug that my dad used to eat when he was a kid?
• I’m really into animal whiskers. Can you find a walrus with whiskers I can touch?

The questions are weird, but the show is pretty fun at times. I remember it used to show late on Friday night at 11:17PM, right after the 11PM news and the following ads. Funny how I’m watching it and it’s probably about the right day and time of night for it to be on the air if I was back in Osaka. And really, I should probably be asleep wherever I am.

I really can’t blame anyone for this one. A month and sixteen days from the last cheeseburger I’m admitting to, and Sean and I went to the Slow Bar to get one of their famous burgers. I was told that it’s the best in town, and while I would argue that, it was sure one of the top five. Maybe even three, but it’s hard to tell without having the burgers side-by-side. Lovely Hula Hands had a spectacular burger, though, and I’d like to line them up side-by-side. I think the salad on the Slow Burger might have been better.

People have been telling me that the best burger in town is at the Slow Bar, so it didn’t take much prodding to break my cheeseburger fast. Plus, I was kind of having a bad day. My mom was sick and I came home to make sure we didn’t need to get her to the ER for IV rehydration like the last time she had stomach cramps. Fortunately, she seems much better and just slept all day. Still made me a little tired, though.

I was dreading the workout at the gym today, figuring it would be something awfully awful, but it wasn’t so bad. We started on a barbell push-press cycle, once again reminding me how much that hurts my wrist. And the Workout of the Day, while hard, wasn’t horrible. Partner 1 minute row with 1 minute ball slams for total calories and reps. If the total looks bad, blame your partner. I love partner workouts (and really, I’m usually the one who gets the blame).