I’m about the worst stalker ever, because I’m too lazy to leave my house to actually see what other people are doing outside. I mean, I’m willing to type in someone’s name to google to see what they’re doing (or my own for that matter) but I’m not willing to actually do move myself further than from the keyboard to the mouse to do it. I mean, really, have you looked yourself up on google? I sure hope you’re more interesting than I am. Geez. Talk about hideously dull.

In any case, I’ve actually been trying to find a picture of my college girlfriend, to see what she looks like now. Quite voyeuristic of me, really, but she’s a lawyer and quite well connected in her neck of the woods, being the Chief of External Affairs for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and Director of Government Relations and Planning for Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services so you’d figure there’d be a picture of her on google somewhere. It took me a long time to find one, and I only succeeded because her husband, 17 years her senior, just retired as the County Manager of San Mateo County. Googling him got me not only her picture, but also that the guy pulled down $500,000/year plus overtime as County Manager and that he was caught in a prostitution sting in 1993 but the evidence mysteriously disappeared. In any case, if you look him up, you can find a picture of her. All that work and all I can say is, “Meh.”

Maybe I should try finding pictures of my Japanese ex-fiancée. I’m sure that would require even more work and the result would be another picture I look at a couple of times so I can say, “Meh,” or whatever meh is in Japanese. Probably, “Ah so.” It’s probably just easier to stay friends with my old girlfriends so I can read their twitter feeds instead of going to all this trouble.

Really, if you’ve been following any of this you’d realize not only am I the world’s worst/laziest/most ineffective stalker, I’m probably the most boring as well. In fact, I could probably post YouTube videos of myself playing Solitaire on the computer and that would be more exciting than what I do on a day-to-day basis. That’s life.

We had another partner workout today, and it really is Monday — the start of a week of workouts for me — but it still felt like a weekend workout. I was partnered with a fast college freshman (her dad is younger than me) so that meant very little rest between rounds and it was a killer today. I may have been pre-compromised as I slept like a log for 10 hours until someone woke me up, but after the workout I was completely pooped. I remember back when I started doing crossfit, I’d have to take a nap after every Saturday workout but I haven’t had to do that lately. Today I had to take TWO naps. I even got messages from other people who made similar comments.

But I did finally get to see Star Trek today and I’m glad I did. I’m a big fan of The Original Series (TOS) and not of whatever the heck they called that thing with that Picard dude who never did get the girl. Whatever. I wanted a big swashbuckling, over-the-top, space western, and I think I got it. I’m glad I was warned that the movie would have a completely different story line, because it sure does.

Wow. That makes two movies this year, and I really want to see some other cheesy ones like G.I. Joe. They might take my hermit license away.

My sister and brother-in-law have new car fever and sold their Honda Fit for a Toyota Yaris. They’re Toyota people, and they weren’t happy with the Fit. Something about turning radius, and wanting a ride suitable for a grandma. In any case, they wanted me on the new car bandwagon, and wanted me to check out the new Honda Insight. What I found out was that the new S2000’s are on sale and I kind of miss my old car. Really, though, not enough to buy an S2000.

I test drove the Insight because it has rear seats that fold down and that’s really the only thing that I truly wish my Civic Hybrid had. That and possibly a darker colored interior. Turns out that it is a little tinny but still might be quieter than my current car and has better gas milage. Unfortunately, it has a darker and smaller interior and sort of looks like a cave inside. It also doesn’t look like it has any better carrying capacity than my Civic and besides, I like my Civic. The new Civic Hybrids have a leather seat option, which would be great, but I don’t know if I need to trade in my car for heated leather seats. They usually just make my ass sweat.

I think the fantasy of a new car is going to stay a fantasy and not become reality. Time to work on some other fantasies.

So I think I may be setting myself up for failure. I’m sticking my head out of my hole when I really know I should be hiding. The less notice I get, the better off I am. That’s about all I can say.

I guess the sad part of my life, which I probably shouldn’t even say anything about, is that getting lucky means I only spent $120 tonight. I’ve already been asked how you can spend $120 going to the movies, but there was sushi involved in all this. Really, the way things have been going, if things went the way I was thinking:

But really, that assumes a linear increase when we all know that it should be exponential. It’s too hard to extrapolate that sort of thing from two data points. Really, I should just stick to my strengths and just buy a bag of tacos ($0.99 for two deep fried tacos at Jack-in-the-Box) and rent all the Star Trek DVDs. Leaving the house is just too scary.

The class at the gym was oddly small today. Sometimes it’s like that. The weird part was that we had a partner workout on a Wednesday, which usually doesn’t happen. I knew I was in for it when the only other dude there was Daniel, a firefighter who is one full drinking adult younger than me (he’s only 24). During partner workouts, one partner is working while the other rests. When you’re paired with someone fast, you don’t get much rest. Daniel and I finished in incredible time, but I though we might have missed a round. I mean we were using 40lb dumbbells (5lbs more than most) and used the tall box with the riser for box jumps. But my counting is always bad and I usually do extra exercises when I don’t need to, so I should just trust his count.

I got home tonight and I found a credit card deal that seemed a bit too good to be true. 3% back for the top 3 categories you use and 1% for everything else. I wasn’t expecting a deal that good in this economic climate, especially since there are rumors of the end of credit card deals to “deadbeats” like me who pay the outstanding balance in full every month. Well, it turns out that the offer expired in October of 2008. It must have been sitting in my stack of junk mail for a while. Oh, well.

How odd, I kind of felt bummed earlier tonight and I had no idea why. I guess it might just be the weather. One of my friends told me a bunch of people had the same sentiment today.

It was an auspicious day, otherwise. Two of my friends who are about to have kids found out what sex their kids are going to be. I don’t know why I find that so exciting, but I do. Here’s to having more friends disappear for a few years until their kids get old enough to play little league.

Or maybe that was all yesterday. I can’t remember anything any more.

I’m always joking at the gym that I’m going to do 3 rounds of some exercise because, in general, I should be able to 6 of almost all of the things we count in that fashion. Today I barely did four. The reason, besides standard Monday fatigue, is that we did a 500m row for time. I’m sure we look like complete doofuses to anyone who really knows how to row, but we flail and pull and do whatever we can to finish as quickly as possible. The fastest guys at the gym are all over 6 feet tall. I finished in 1:35.7 which isn’t all that fast but still my personal best (I haven’t been able to beat my 1:39.2 for over a year now). Sean was right next to me and finished TEN SECONDS FASTER. I can barely get my instantaneous time under 1:20 pace on the meter and he finished in 1:25.7. Wow.

I’m not sure I have much more than that going on today. I did find out that my friends are useless in their suggestions of who I should ask out. I knew that before; they’re all married guys who met their wives a long time ago and have no memory of what dating is like. I also suspect they take some pleasure in seeing me fail. The latest woman they were trying to get me to ask out looked way too young for me and I confirmed that by finding her online profile. I also found out she’s married. I also found out her spouse is a woman. As my friends pointed out, at least now I have several reasons why I don’t need to bother asking her out.

At least no one has hacked me up with a hatchet (I should probably stop using Burn After Reading as a comparison to my dating life.)

For all the bad things I say about Reed College, I have plenty of friends who went there. It was a long time before I could say I knew plenty of people who graduated from there. I guess in the 80’s it was more interesting to actually get in than to graduate, and the most successful people I knew from Reed were dropouts. Things change, though, and the kids nowadays are graduating. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Case in point is my friend Aaron who should have graduated ten years ago but finally got his one and a half general studies credits to finish up. And those credits were from classes he took BEFORE he went to Reed. It certainly makes for a better story this way.

I spent a couple of hours under a tree in his backyard, and I found out that the SPF rating of a tree must be very, very small. I’m quite sunburned now. On the way home I got to see that I’m not the only one doing renovations, another friend is redoing his basement. I don’t feel so bad now.

I get grief at the gym for being so pale. It doesn’t help when I take off my shirt because I’m a dumb sweaty old dude. Dumb because I wear a lot of cotton that doesn’t help much when it’s hot. There are a bunch of us who take our shirts off, so don’t think I’m some sort of exhibitionistic anomaly. Just, perhaps, an exhibitionist.

In any case, I decided I should get some sun because I’m tired of explaining to people that the whiteness is to blind my enemies. I also decided not to overdo it, so I just sat outside with my Kindle for 15 minutes. It didn’t seem to help any, but I did forget that I walked home from breakfast and my neck feels quite burnt. At least I finished the book (and started another).

I was supposed to go to a birthday party but I ended up watching some movies instead. I’m thinking Burn After Reading wasn’t the best choice because the level of desperation seemed to be close to what I’m feeling. Nothing, of course, is as interesting as in that movie, and I’m not going to get caught up with any federal agents, but otherwise the sentiment is the same. Fortunately I also watched Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist which was just the right amount of silliness for me. Just like Gregory’s Girl when I was in high school.

Sometimes I have painful stomachaches because of some medication I take and it’s bad enough that I just want to lie around to read a book. Honestly, just about anything makes me want to lie around and read books so there it is. In any case, it was a nice day I should have been out in, but what are you going to do? It’s not the first time this week I had a stomachache, after all.

My Friday night was eventful as well, watching TV shows from earlier in the week. It’s getting to be that time of year where all of the series finales are on, full of a special sort of ridiculousness. There’s nothing like a good cliff hanger to make you think, WHAT THE F*** WAS THAT ABOUT?

I didn’t do as well as I thought I would at the gym today, but I guess I didn’t think I’d do that well at all. Yesterday morning I was having some intestinal difficulties (a gurgling warning that told me to get home quick) and greater fatigue than I usually expect. I decided to go home early, after all my morning meetings, and take a quick nap. Well, I know for a fact that a seven-hour nap isn’t quick, and when I can sleep fairly normally after such a long nap, I know I was probably under the weather a bit.

In any case, I wanted to do seven rounds of seven 40lb medball cleans, seven burpees, and a lap around the building, but I only hit six and 2/3rds by the time the buzzer went off. I was really dragging my ass around the building during the runs. But like I said, I was on the mend.

In any case, I just want to sit around and read my Kindle so I don’t have much new to report. It’s just as well. Recuperation, while satisfying, tends to be quite boring. Andiamo.

Tuesdays haven’t really changed from a particular workout format at the gym and it’s usually a repeated sprint of sorts. You do something for 20 or 30 seconds, rest for 10 or 30 seconds, and then do it again. You can go until you want to throw up (like I usually do on the running) or you can go until you do something stupid like jam your finger when you miss catching a 20-pound medicine ball like I did today. My head also hurts. That’s enough whining for now.

I wish I had some interesting observations, but I really don’t. I thought someone had broken in and stolen my laptop today, because I couldn’t get to it over the internet. At first I called around trying to get someone to go check and make sure nothing had happened, and then I started thinking about what sort of laptop I should buy as a replacement. Turns out nothing was stolen, but my laptop had turned itself off for the first time in months. Ah the joys of setting up the system wrong.

I actually had to try to do some work today and it’s going to get worse. Not a lot of work to do, but I have to do one of those things where you go to another group and try to convince them to do the right thing. A lot of begging and schmoozing have to be done as well as well-timed threats. I’m not good at any of that, so it should be hideous. It’s high risk for low results, but it’s my job. I guess that’s why they pay me.