Not much today, either. I especially had nothing when I was watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives except a bit of hunger. I was wondering if I should go to some of these places but who wants to travel to EBFE just for a hamburger? And what if it’s the best hamburger I’ve ever had? I’d have to go to Houston, or Peoria, or Cincinnati, or Armpitistan just for another shot at the best hamburger ever? I think I’ll keep taking awful business trips to San Jose for the possibility of going to In-N-Out.

I could talk about the hike we took this morning to Mt. Hamilton in the Gorge (across from Beacon Rock) or about the block party we had today, but I just got off the phone with someone who was updating me on my uncle’s condition and it’s nearly 11PM. Basically, she’s a family friend and she just told me about all of her worries and that I shouldn’t do anything.

Basically, I have nothing positive to say about the situation. I may get to take another last minute trip, this time to Spokane. There’s no In-N-Out up there, but there is a Dick’s Hamburgers. I may have to drive my ass up there and have them tell me to my face that as as first-cousin once removed, I have no say. I’ll try to set things up as best as I can and watch from the sidelines. This could get messy. It’s a good thing there’s other positive things going on in my life to offset this all.

I took two boxes of books to the reseller and they bought quite a few of them. The ones they didn’t take I put in the recycling bin. I hate to do that to books that could possibly be of use to someone, but I’m not sure what to do with coffee-table books of “Buddhist Art of Japan.” I’m just happy to get rid of them, really. They even wouldn’t take one that is rare and possibly worth something because the spine was cracked. What do they expect from a scholarly pamphlet from the 50’s? Powell’s books is kind of a disappointment to me because they’ve become so large that they only sell new books and almost-new books. Any little defect and they reject the book. But I guess it can’t be like it was in the past when we could buy old science fiction books for fifty cents.

I rescued the pamphlet and I’m going to try to put it on eBay. We’ll see how well that works.

I can’t believe a simple business trip would make me feel so old and creaky. My knee hurt from the flight down and today I was so tired I couldn’t concentrate and my back started to knot up. I was fine by late afternoon (and a couple of naps) but really, this is what I can expect from a sixteen-hour workday?

You know things aren’t quite right when you start your day off with a 7:30AM meeting and you finally get home at 11PM and all you’ve had to eat for dinner was some cashews and a couple of cookies. Especially if you had to work through dinner, watching people trying to configure a computer that shouldn’t be so hard to fix. Oh, and lunch was a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger at the Wendy’s stand in the airport which you ate standing in line to get on the plane that you barely caught. At least barely catching the return flight wasn’t so bad because I GOT HOME.

When I got home I noticed that my gateway computer had rebooted itself. I’m not quite sure that it’s working quite right, which is another joy in itself. Also, I guess while I was away, my mother was sick in bed with a 102°F fever. Fortunately my sister was around and I don’t know what all went on. All I can tell you is that a trip to San Jose is probably a lot more pleasant if you see more than the airport, the rental car agency, and the conference room of the company you’re going to visit. Even if they bribe you with a half-dozen peanuts and a day-old pot of coffee.

It happens. I’m tired, I’m a bit stressed, and it doesn’t make me all that happy. I’m still not sure what I should do about visiting my uncle, the plumber is working on the house and that means some disruption at home, and I’m supposed to do something at work tomorrow that isn’t going to turn out well. In fact, it’s looking like someone has to go to a customer site to get yelled at, and it looks like that someone might be me.

Oh, well, I have the X-Files Movie to look forward to. I’m very much a geek about it and I my have to go see it on opening day. It’s just the sort of silliness I need right about now.

I was picking on the 24YO nurse at the gym because, well, she’s 24. It only took me this long to figure out that she’s TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME. I think I mentioned how I was shredding old phone records and I found calls to my college girlfriend from 1984, the year she was born. Yeesh.

Well, she should be worried because I’m trying to figure out how to become a youth vampire. She’ll just get all dowdy like a librarian and want to yell at the kids to get off her lawn and I’ll start wearing a goatee and a porkpie hat and riding a fixed-gear bicycle around. I already see the error in my current plan, because most of the librarians I know are kind of hipsters or in the counterculture as well. I think every librarian I know has more tattoos and ferrets than I’ve ever though of having. I’ll have to rethink this plan. Also, I’m not sure that vampirism really works in any sense other than to get a guy committed or put into prison.

I’m also in a secret race to get a muscle-up before some other people at the gym. These other people are rather competitive, and it’s much easier for me to try to do it without letting them know they’re in a competition. The initial goal was to get one before the Head Honcho’s birthday in August, but these goals are all kind of mutable. The downside to being in a competition that someone else doesn’t know about is that all I can really do is go up to them if I “win” and say, “Ha HA!” without really explaining to them what I’m talking about. Most people think I’m odd enough without going up to them and saying, “Ha HA!” but I guess at this point it probably wouldn’t hurt, either.

I’ve actually had three calls today on my phone. Plus one where I called myself but I’m sure that doesn’t count. All three calls were from our friend Jay the Contractor about the plumbing we’re having put in. He told me that my voice mail was broken the last time he called.

Voice mail is something AT&T/Cingular likes to screw up. I had troubles with my last phone once because Cingular CHANGED THE NUMBER you had to call and forgot to tell anyone about it. I called them several times before someone told me the new number.

Well, this time it was a mess. I called and the recorded message told me to hold down the “1” key on the cell phone. That works for every phone EXCEPT the iPhone. I finally got through to a barely comprehendible operator who told me to call Apple and gave me the wrong number. His number gave me an 1-800 number for “location services” whatever that is. I called back and got another operator who told me I had to call Apple but who then connected me with the Apple recording that told me I had to call back tomorrow during business hours.

My next try was the intarweb. AT&T’s site gave me a Flash animation that told me to hold down the “1” key (useless). Apple’s site gave me TWO documents that told me just to hit the “Voicemail” button in the phone application which did NOTHING. Apple’s site also gave me a doc that pointed me to a NON-EXISTENT settings menu to reset my password.

I finally went back to the AT&T site and found a way to RESET MY PASSWORD (it’s somewhere in my account under my phone options for the iPhone). That fixed things and got voicemail turned on. SHEESH.

I could make a list of the things that annoy me about my iPhone. It stuttered playing a podcast of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, it rebooted when I tried to open Twinkle and even with Wifi, 3G, and the GPS turned off it still sucks battery. But it’s still fun. It’s amazingly good for watching Youtube videos and I got sucked into watching music videos again.

I suppose that’s all there is. My uncle now knows that I know that he’s been in an accident. I didn’t get a call back from the social worker. I didn’t get a call back from the arborist I called. So life continues apace.

I spent most of this beautiful day in the basement, shredding a box of bank statements. It was 11 years of stuff my dad had saved, and I even found phone bills that had my college girlfriend’s phone number on it. 1984 certainly was a long time ago. I filled two large garbage sacks with the shreddings and took those to the dump. I also returned cans, as we do here in Oregon for the deposit, and stuck 632 pennies in a Coinstar machine. Really, a lot of effort with little visible benefit, though I do have several more paper cuts to show for my labors.

I went out and bought a car charger for my iPhone yesterday and I’m convinced the kid at the Apple Store was 100% correct in sending me to Radio Shack to find the Griffin charger that only cost $23. The cable is USB and can also be used as a data cable. I bought it when I thought I’d have to make a mad dash to Spokane to see my uncle in the hospital and didn’t think my battery would last for the 6-hour trip. I’m getting stories that everything is OK up in Spokane and my aunt doesn’t want us Portland relatives to know what’s going on yet. Like I said yesterday, they’re very private people. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for them.

I finally went to the Household Hazardous Waste station to get rid of the old paint and random poisons from the basement and my old boss was still there! She and I went to Portland State and took Chemistry together so we gossiped a bit before I left.

Unfortunately, I got a phone call in the middle of the day that added a bit of unwanted excitement to my life. My 94-year-old uncle in Spokane, WA (my dad’s cousin, really) fell down some stairs a week ago and busted up his ribs and hit his head. His neighbor called me and told me that I was the first relative she found, and that the social worker wanted to declare my aunt incompetent so they could send some aid workers that she was refusing. The thing is, my aunt and uncle are pretty independent. They don’t even want me to know that there’s anything going on. I remember my dad and uncle called each others a couple times a year and their conversation was, “How are you?” “OK. And you?” “OK.” “OK, bye.” “OK, bye.”

I made some calls and there are other family friends taking care of things up there. I think I may be his closest living US relative, but what can I do? Especially since I know my aunt and uncle told the family friends not to call us and tell us what’s happening. I just know because of the neighbor. Fortunately, it sounds (third-hand) that my uncle will be OK to go home soon and his head is fine. But I’d like to hear that from a doctor of some sort.

My mom and I were just joking that our family reunion would mean driving across town to my sister’s place or, if we wanted to go all-out, driving up to my uncle’s place. Zemblanity.

The battery life on my iPhone 3G is awfully short. All I did, really, was use iTunes and it was dead within half a day. I suppose I should turn off 3G and GPS while I’m at work because the don’t work well inside my building. I even had Wifi turned off. Ah, well, that’s what I get for buying a new toy, I guess.

I was fairly tired today because I woke up again last night. This time I had a nightmare that I was losing my job. I’m pretty sure that I’m doing OK, but every day a customer asks a question where I have to research the answer and make sure I’m not telling them the wrong thing. And every day I find out that the answers aren’t easy to find. They’re either in someone’s head, or written down on Post-it notes in another country. I told my co-worker about my nightmare and he said losing the job is his fantasy.

And since it is Friday night in the summer, I stayed in and watched Monk and Psych. They did not disappoint but I’m fairly sure this puts me on the “boring” end of the spectrum. At least I figured out how to “Twitter” from my iPhone (finally).