I dragged myself over to the conference again and I thought I was going to have another day-long headache. Fortunately, I was wrong, and I actually stayed awake through most of the lectures. There was one by the most… exciting… speaker… on… the… planet… and that one was a little rough. Other than that, it was pretty good.

I was on my own this evening, and I went down to the basement to a tiny exercise room to try 10-to-1 burpees and thrusters and I thought I was going to pass out. I guess the lack of sleep gets to a guy. I was going to stumble to a restaurant afterwards, but I ended up just eating at the (expensive) hotel restaurant. It was tasty, but I’m not sure it was $51 tasty. I figure it’s about twice the price of what I’d pay in Portland, but the hotels probably have a premium at home as well.

So I’m back in my room early and I almost passed out already. I thought I’d get up and read some more and FLOSS MY TEETH like the exciting guy I am, but the book may just have to take a back burner tonight. Sleep may come sooner than I think.

Today was the first day of the Apple Worldwide Developers conference and the keynote is usually packed. The conference itself has 5500 attendees and the keynote also has a whole lot of media and “VIPs” taking up seats, so people line up hours early. I got there “late” again, around 7:30 for the 10AM keynote. The line wrapped all the way around the block, all the way back to the entrance, and the block that the Moscone Center is on is HUGE. I made it in, though.

The big announcements were new laptops and a new iPhone coming out next week on 6/19. I’ll probably have to pay “full price” for a new iPhone again, but I might do it anyway. The new iPhone is faster, has a better camera, better battery life, and a compass. It also has different guts in general. Both the old iPhone and the new iPhone get new software on 6/17 including video and the possibility of MMS (though AT&T won’t turn it on until later in the year) but I still want the new one. I may even buy a new laptop and sell the one I have now. Who knows?

I hung out with Megan and Nadeem and Marcy was up from LA with her newest baby Maxine! Cute! I didn’t take any pictures, though, ’cause I’m a doofus.

I’m in San Francisco now and I should have more to say about that (including some pictures) but I’m too tired at the moment. It’s 11:23PM and I just got back in my room from tomcatting around – which in my case means I left the hotel a few minutes ago to go out to Walgreen’s. You might wonder what Mr. Excitement needed at Walgreen’s on such short notice in San Francisco after 11PM at night and I’m going to tell you: dental floss. I know I packed it but I haven’t been able to find it. It’s probably in my running shoes or something.

I have to get up early to stand in line for the Apple WWDC keynote address tomorrow morning. So I’m going to give you some really crummy photographs. Here’s where I’m going to be for the next week:

Here’s the reason I think my hotel is more San Francisco than a company-approved hotel should be (including the question asking if I wanted more info on LBGT-friendly events), XL leopard print camisoles for sale in my closet:

I met up with Megan and Nadeem and we went walking around the Presidio today, mainly because we’d gone to Joe’s Cable Car to eat chopped steak sandwiches. Unfortunately, the chopped steak turned out to be more like coarsely ground hamburger this time. Not a disappointing burger, but certainly not chopped steak. I also went by San Francisco Crossfit to see what their last workout looked like and I think I’m going to avoid it this week. I’ll try to hit the basement exercise room when I can, but I’m on business travel which usually means that I’m going to be busy until I get home. At least that’s my current story. (If you can see the board, it says “Warmup: Annie”.)

So I’m off. I have to get up quite early to line up for the keynote. Excuse me while I have my way with my dental floss.

This is yet another posting from my iPhone. Nothing is wrong with my Mac this time, but I am backing it up before I take it to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco next week. It’s busy doing a boring disk copy so I have to contend with this fake iPhone keyboard that really isn’t all that bad if your program lets you use it sideways. I’m excited to see if they announce a new iPhone next week and I may be foolish enough to upgrade. That’s the way I roll.

Today I had my periodic doctors appointment and I was scheduled for a Possibly Painful Medical Procedure. My doctor is actually quite skilled at this particular PPMP and it has never been that bad, but let me tell you that one of the words in the PPMP is “biopsy” so there’s really nothing pleasant about it. I know what’s coming – I’ve had several already – and like I said it has never been that painful in the past, but it still made me a bit anxious. Turns out it was a mistake in scheduling and I only had to have a blood draw which was surprisingly painful today. And I only found out that I wasn’t going to have the PPMP at the end of my visit. It was a relief but also a bit exhausting.

So I spent the rest of the day recovering with Scarpetta which is ok but not the best. It’s a liberry book so I have to finish it and return it before I can get on with my literary life. I do have the next Myron Bolitar mystery in paperback and the next John Rain on my Kindle as well as a hardback of The Girl With the Snake Tattoo from my sister, so I better get a move on.

The workout at the gym was pretty hard today and I don’t have much to say besides I’m glad that I didn’t underestimate it at lunch time. Like I’ve said in the past, I usually splurge on days when I don’t work out or when I think it will be relatively easy. My usual diet of rice, beans, and chavindecas (or huevos rancheros when I’m hungry) works pretty well for lunch when it’s a hard workout and I’m glad that’s what I had today. Even the warmup was hard. We were supposed to do an easy run around the block but some CRAZY REDNECK was chasing me the whole time.

My dinner tonight was DINTY MOORE BEEF STEW. I want everyone to know that I feel rather foolish for eating it, mainly because I’m so darn lazy. It sure didn’t taste very good and I think it could have been greatly improved by half a bottle of Tabasco sauce, but I didn’t have any on hand. Ah well.

I’m off to test the improvements to my shower door that are supposed to stop it from leaking. We’ll see.

My book addiction continues unabated. I finished that Harlen Coben book last night and started reading Scarpetta but that wasn’t enough. I ordered the next book in the Myron Bolitar series by Harlen Coben even though it’s only available in paperback and would have bought the next book in Barry Eisler’s John Rain series if I could have navigated my sister’s Amazon account. I was even fantasizing about visiting the Borders in downtown San Francisco to buy more books. Sheesh.

I went back to the gym today and I felt weak. My stomach is better, but it still felt like someone had replaced them with concrete. And a new mop head was waiting for me, which was hard to use because a new mop head absorbs a lot of water and is much heavier than a used mop head. Ah, well, that just means I got a better workout.

Usually when I feel rotten on Monday, I can still drag myself to the gym and I feel better after beating myself up a bit. But today I started out very tired and it kind of got worse. I couldn’t sleep AGAIN because of the heat, and as the day progressed my stomach started to hurt. Then my ribs decided to get in on the action. By the time I got home, it was just my stomach, but I still had to skip the gym and it’s already going to be a short week for me.

The sharp stomach pains encouraged me to lay around and read a book (not that I need any more encouragement) and I finished Back Spin a “Myron Bolitar book” by Harlan Coben, a book my sister lent me just yesterday. I forgot how much fun it is to read a paperback. Now I’m onto Scarpetta that I checked out from the library in hardback and I’m wishing I had it in paperback or on my Kindle. Huge hardbacks are a pain, but that still probably won’t slow me down much. Onward.

I never realized that there are a bunch of hipsters out there trying to make their blogs more clever than they need to be. I’d think something like that would come across as overly slick and annoying to read, but then I remembered all the other hipsters would probably enjoy pointing out the cleverness in their own clever way. Ick. I suppose that’s why I have trouble reading the blogs of some professional writers, they’re too busy proving that they still have their writing chops and they’re still creative even though they have to write manuals for typewriters or specifications for rotary dial telephones in their day job. Me, I just let the man keep sucking my life away, eight hours at a time.

That’s why you’re guaranteed to see the opposite of clever here on most occasions. Guess who has digestive problems? ME! Guess who has been eating too much? ME! Guess who won’t give you great pictures of what he’s been eating too much of? Well, me, but here’s a picture of the fried chicken and spoon bread brunch at the Country Cat.

According to my sister, brunch is the way to go at the Country Cat as she’s been there for dinner as well. I’ve only been there the once (today) and I thought it was great. As long as I’m posting pictures, here’s one of Megan and Nadeem.

Megan’s been giving me grief about her pictures of me being all “squinty and Asian looking” because, as those of you who have met me in person know already, I’m kind of squinty and Asian looking. I think this picture shows Megan proving that she’s a “round-eye”. I don’t have any pictures of me unless I steal them from others because who gets pictures of themselves on their own cameras? OK, that would be me, as well, but only when I have my digital camera out and not when I’m using my iPhone.

So there you go. Your daily dose of “not all that clever”.

It was a beautiful day yesterday but I sat inside and finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child. It’s just as well, I think something weird is blooming again and I’m having weird sneezing fits. I’m guessing it’s cottonwood, but only because someone else mentioned it. It could be almost anything, I’ve never been tested for allergy specificity.

I’ve decided I’m bad at tanning. I’ve got a farmer’s tan and I try to offset it from time to time by sitting outside in a chair with my shirt off, but it’s not working. But like my sister said, tanning is bad for you and I should just get a spray-on tan and look like an Oompa Loompa like Tim Tubb of the Crazy 8’s. I’m afraid I’ll probably just be lazy and subject the people at the gym to my farmer’s tan.

In any case, it’s time for me to get outside and try poisoning some weeds. I ate too much at Megan’s barbecue last night (her boyfriend Nadeem has some skills on the grill). I should have stopped with the parts from the kebabs, but you know how it is when there’s too much food. I wanted a small piece of chicken, but I got a big one and even after I was full there was homemade pie. My stomach didn’t hurt for that long afterwards.

I was just at the Crazy 8’s concert at the zoo and while it was lots of fun, I’m old and it was a little loud for me. Afterwards we talked to the drummer, Ricky, who seemed to have a big crush on my sister. As our friend Megan pointed out, my sister is quite clueless about the dudes who like her and there were scads of dudes in the past. Because of this, Megan thinks, dating karma is causing me to not have any luck dating.

Whatever. In any case, Megan and Nadeem are back in town and that means fun!

I’ve been feeling a bit tired lately but the worst part is that I haven’t been sleeping all that well. I found out that I’m not the only one. I guess it’s because of the warmer weather but several of us have been waking up repeatedly in the middle of the night lately. I’ve also had a bit of a headache that Advil doesn’t seem to affect. It’s not that bad, though.

The workout of the day was “Helen” and I wanted to beat my time from a month ago. But, as I was saying at the gym, I was a full month younger then, and much faster. It was also 20°F warmer today, in the 80’s, and as a native Oregonian I just don’t function well in the heat. 70°F is about a hot as I like it. Fortunately, I was only off by 20 seconds and I felt like I did OK.

The best part is that there weren’t any new TV shows on tonight so I was able to finish Rain Storm by Barry Eisler. I’m still not going to get to bed early, but at least I finished the book that was keeping me up!

I thought the workout at the gym was easy today, but I forgot to take a picture of the workout on the board (something I do to keep track of what we did) and I’m kind of sitting around in a daze right now. That tells me it wasn’t that easy.

I had a plan to go to bed early today, but that’s gone to hell. My Mac started acting up, and that usually only happens when I do something silly, like when I try to run a beta version of the OS. Things have cleared up after a reboot, but that’s usually something I never have to do with my Mac. I suppose it’s just conspiring against me along with the wireless mouse that keeps disappearing from my computer.

One of the reasons I’ve been staying up late (besides being just plain foolish) is that I’m reading another “John Rain” book by Barry Eisler. This time it’s Rain Storm. I really should get back to it because I’m not bright enough to avoid it to get a good night’s sleep. Reading addict. That’s me. And THMFIC at the gym just gave me a “Jack Reacher” book to read. He’s an addict, too.