I got her what she wanted for Christmas, too, lottery scratch tickets. Well, what she really wanted was WINNING scratch lottery tickets, but that’s kind of hard to guarantee. I don’t know what I did the rest of the day. It took all day, whatever it was.

So I went to my friend Kim’s house and her husband Raffaele makes great pasta. Kim and I always lead each other onto misadventures involving too much drinking but I think I was OK this time. I brought two bottles of wine from Bishop Creek and two half-cases of beer and ended up bringing all the beer home with me. And this time the beer was still in the bottles. Lots off different kinds of grappa with dessert including lemon and milk grappas which I don’t thing are sold in this country.

And of course the company was great. I missed watching “The Incredibles” with Kim’s niece (the daughter of a high school friend, proving Portland is too small once again) but that’s OK.

I ran out of Allegra, so I went with Claritin. Actually, I went with the over-the-counter version of Claritin, loratadine. It works great on my symptoms, better than the Allegra, but it makes me feel a little dopey. I’m dopey enough as it is, thank you very much.

So I made some crack about the StairMaster at the gym. Man, there are some humorless people there. And annoying ones, too, getting in the way of the equipment and being brusque. All the friendly ones must not work out on Friday nights.

I think I may have to start risking the jay-walking fine again. In downtown, you can either violate the traffic laws by waiting for a clear spot and crossing, or you can take your life in your hands by waiting for a “Walk” sign and dodge the cars that try to run you over as they make turns. There’s been a recent crackdown on jaywalking and they’re handing out $97 tickets so I’ve been doing the legal and dangerous crossings lately. But I almost was hit three times on the way to work. It’s not worth it. I think I’m going to cross when it’s safe.

After sitting in front of a computer all day, I had to come home to work on some computer stuff. Nothing is quite complete, so I can imagine doing this again all weekend. I’m slowly getting things back on the “backup” bandwagon so I don’t lose any of the data off my computers. We’ll see how far I get with that.

So today I figured out another reason to work out. I was reading a magazine while on the StairMaster (what else am I going to do, visualize my calories burning?) and I had a hard time holding up the copy of GQ I was looking at. Either I have to pick lighter magazines, or I have to work out more. I’m not sure why I decided to look at GQ for the first time since college, but I did see a lot of nice suits I’m not going to buy. Actually it was tuxes in this issue.

So I’m still against the huge monstrosity in the gym, but I did end up talking to the guy who invented the thing. I love talking geeky things with people. Sounds like he’s only made a couple of these things. It’s neat and all but who can afford it?

And look how much space it takes up.

I’ve got nothing to say besides I didn’t want to be at work. And the gym still has the stupid bicycle stuff in it. I suppose that’s it.

They keep moving the mats around (where you can do your stretching) because they’re adding these stupid bicycle stands with computer monitoring. Not the ones for spin class, but the kind you have to hook your $3,000 road bike up to so you can see how hard you’re working. Anyway, they rearranged the mats again but then put in this ridiculous 20-foot-long computerized bicycle treadmill and there’s no longer any wall space to do any standing stretches or ball-squats. I complained to the owner, but I don’t know if it’s going to do any good. He’s a bike geek and it doesn’t matter to him that only 12 of the hundreds of gym members are going to care that he’s taken up so much floor space with his silly bike crap. In the mean time the Stairmaster skips and squeaks, the grips on some of the cable-row machines are coming apart, and the cables are frayed.

OK, enough kvetching. I guess I’m just sore that when I did my ball squats I had to do them facing everyone since the only wall is the 2 feet between the mirrors and I was standing underneath the TV monitors. I felt stupid, but it was that or nothing. Stupid gym, anyway.

Instead of fixing a program for my sister (for her work) I ended up reading a book all day long. I’m caught up on all my Kay Scarpetta mysteries now. I’m not sure why the last book I read built up and then had a half-assed conclusion but lots of mysteries are that way. I did make it out of the house to have a chocolate malt with my friend Il and mow the lawn, but the rest of the day was pretty much all reading.

Now what?

Today I went up to the Mike & Key Amateur Radio Club swap meet in Puyallup, Washington. It’s about a two-and-a-half hour drive from here and on the way up I was complaining to my friend Greg that people bring computer junk instead of radios. Of course that meant the only thing I bought up there was a piece of computer gear.

We left because Greg bought something that was too heavy to haul around and then drove around looking for a place to eat. We ended up in Olympia, at the only place I know to go down there, a seafood place on the water that I think is called, “The Oyster House.” As always the seafood was excellent. Sometimes I forget how great fresh shrimp is. I had the combo basket of fried stuff (clam strips, popcorn shrimp, shrimp, and halibut) and we also has some raw oysters. Finally drove the two-and-a-half hours back and it was time to take a nap.

I sort of got kicked out of a convenience store for looking at all the Diet Pepsi bottles to see if I can see the winning bottles. If I think about it, if I spend $1.34 for a Diet Pepsi at the and one third of them are winners, then on the average a bottle would be like ($1.24 x 3 – $0.99)/3 = $0.91. But I’ve gone and screwed the pooch on that one since I’ve cherry-picked the winners out and now all the bottles are losers. Even without trying to win anything, Diet Cokes at the pharmacy are only $1 and there’s a cute pharmacy tech there.

So, on Tuesday I saw that the cute librarian is incredibly pregnant! So I’m guessing that means she’s already involved with someone and that now my other librarian friends can’t harass me for not asking her out. She has been sporting a huge rock on her left hand for a while. Then I saw another woman who lives nearby with some huge dude (she’s like 5’9″ and he made her look small). The next morning I saw the bartender at the local bar with her incredibly good looking boyfriend (movie star good looks, not just average good looks). So there’s three fantasy women off my list. I don’t fantasize about married women, either. Well, maybe sometimes, but they have to be porn stars. HAHAHAHA.

Oh, wait, was I supposed to buy the “Los Lonely Boys” CD?

The next-door neighbor kid got a car recently. It’s a 2-door Camry, but there are scrapes on both sides. I keep thinking he’s going to hit my car, since he parks in the spot in front of me and gets pretty close. Today I found my license plate holder is cracked and the paint on the front bumper is crackled. If he doesn’t fess up, I’m just kind of hosed. I called next door and asked his mom if she knew anything about it. She told me she knows her son is a bad parker (sometimes he’s feet from the curb) but she also knows that it could have been someone else and neither of us can just blame her kid.

Arrrgh.

Oh, well. It’s just a bumper. I guess I don’t have to pay several hundred dollars to get it fixed.

I hang out with gun owners and really, there’s no good reason to buy a cheap gun. A gun propels a bullet by creating a controlled burn of smokeless power creating rapidly expanding gases. There’s a technical difference between the fast burn and an explosion and, honestly, I don’t know what that difference is. Probably something to do with control. In any case, you don’t want anything going wrong when there’s something capable of blowing up in in your face. If you need to use a gun, you don’t want it to screw up.

In any case, there’s a bunch of stuff I buy at the gun store, and it’s usually not guns. There’s this $1200 H&K pistol I’ve wanted, but I can’t justify buying it since I’ll never use it. But I have bought an expensive flashlight or two. They’re usually the size of a magic marker and brighter and more reliable than a 4-cell Maglite.

Today, I bought an expensive pocket knife for $180. My gun-owning friend Greg has several Benchmade knives and I thought I’d get one. I got an “automatic” which is illegal in many states, but not in Oregon. I don’t know why automatic knives are outlawed. You need to get awfully close to use a knife and what keeps someone from carrying around a kitchen knife? Anyway, in my case, I now have a fancy, expensive box opener that is illegal in most states. OK, someone send me a box to open.