OK, so when Carolyn came to visit, she took some pictures of a a foggy Forest Park. Well, this morning there was a beautiful fog over the river and I thought I’d take a picture with my new phone. I saw it in the screen, heard the little clicky sound the phone makes when it takes a picture, and then IT DIDN’T SAVE! I have to read the instructions again.

Well, at least the phone part of the phone works pretty well.

So, I did some calculations to see if this “walking to work” thing is worth it. I wear out a pair of shoes in about three months. In three months the bus would cost about ($1.25 * 4 days * 2 ways * 4 weeks * 3 months) or $120. (Only 4 days since I get a ride downtown a couple times a week.) And the shoes I buy are about the same amount, around $125. Maybe there are better shoes for walking than running shoes, but that’s just what I had handy. And the exercise can’t hurt.

In attempt to lure more women towards my 40-year-old carcass, I had to make my smile more enticing and get rid of the brown streaky coffee stains. The stains are more noticeable now that I used Crest Whitestrips to whiten the rest of my teeth. Last weekend a female acquaintance of mine even asked me, “What’s up with your teeth?”

So what did I do? I got MORE WHITESTRIPS! And this time, they’re making my teeth hurt! Good thing they’re making my teeth whiter, too.

When I got home today, I had a package from Carolyn! Yay! She sent prints of Forest Park in the fog and a DVD of Love Actually, the movie I wanted to see. (Mariko and Carolyn vetoed me and and we watched Spiderman 2 and The Bourne Supremacy instead.) I hope it’s as good as an Xmas movie as Comfort and Joy, one of my favorites.

At least it wasn’t a big gay movie, and speaking of big gay movie, I hear that there’s going to be a new release of Top Gun! I could have dreamed that, though.

Anyone else get the email:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ….
That which brings the highest happiness!!

There’s a rude definition of gouranga on UrbanDictionary.com, but that’s all I really know about it. Sure beats chain letters and fake mortgate offers.

So I think my Xmas shopping is finished. I really just have to buy something for my sister and my brother-in-law. It’s all secret, since my sister is one of the six people who read this blog (and I count myself in the six, of course). My mom will be happy with scratch-it lottery tickets, and my dad just likes toys. And then he’ll forget I gave it to him and then he’ll be disappointed that I didn’t get him anything. Doesn’t stop us from getting him silly things, thought. My sister is the queen of silly things like these weird fried shrimp/Hello Kitty things from last year:

I’ve got nothing like that on my present list.

I got a new cell phone today with new Cingular service. It comes with lots of weird little buttons that start downloading crap from the wireless web and that costs me extra money. I didn’t even get the “Unlimited Nationwide Calling to AT&T and Cingular Customers” because there isn’t anyone I need to talk to unlimitedly. Even with a whole nation of AT&T and Cingular customers.

Anyway, it’s a Motorola v551 and it even takes OK pictures and I can download them to my PowerBook using Bluetooth:

At least I finally get to use Bluetooth.

I spent an HOUR in the Cingular store waiting to talk to a salesperson, and when I finally made it to the front of the line I was told that I could get a better deal by calling customer service. The Cingular store is next to a bar, and instead of trying to filter the air of all the cigarette smoke coming through the vents, they put up “air fresheners” that emit a sickly sweet cherry smell that I’ve only ever smelled in a public toilet. The smell gave me a headache.

I called customer service, but they told me to go back to the store. I couldn’t get a better deal. The first guy from customer service was kind of a jerk, but the second guy looked for a better deal on his computer and then told me that the deals were all “regional.” So somewhere in the US you can get “Unlimited Nationwide Calling to AT&T and Cingular Customers” with any cheap-ass plan (like the plan I got) but you can’t do it in Portland, Oregon.

After popping some Ibuprofen and doing some more work, I went back to the store. The store is only a few blocks from work, fortunately. It took me ANOTHER hour to get my phone and I got to the gym very late.

Did I mention that I’ve decided it’s a bad idea to stay friends with ex-girlfriends? Well, most of my ex-girlfriends (as few as they are) are on islands thousands of miles away. Mostly Japan, and I think my crazy Hawaiian girlfriend from college is back in Hawaii. Anyway, I saw an ex-girlfriend who I’m still friends with (come to think of it, the only one I’m still friends with) and she wants me to pill her cat while she’s gone for Xmas. My co-worker thought I should just throw away the pills and tell her I did it, but I like the cat. I’m not sure how that qualifies me to torture poor Minou, though.

So last night I figured I only had 3 beers and that wouldn’t interfere with my sleep, but we also had hideously high winds that knocked out power and cable TV and pushed over trees. I have this horrible 70’s aluminum window that I’ve been meaning to replace for a couple of years. The window rattles and if the wind hits it just right, it makes an incredibly loud humming sound that is louder than my alarm clock. I didn’t sleep that well.

The news said the power was out on 23rd Avenue (or Trendythird Avenue as it is also known) and that’s only four blocks away. All the little yuppie shops had some troubles and it’s only two weeks until Xmas. Our cable was only out for a couple of hours and, knock on wood, the power won’t be out at all.

I spent the day surfing the web for teeth whitening solutions and took a nap to make up for my interrupted sleep. What excitement.

Went to the other two get-togethers this weekend. A tree trimming and a potluck. I found out several things: making chocolate chip cookies with orange chocolates (like the Mandarin orange chocolates made by Lindt or whoever that is) are GREAT, Epicurious has some good recipes for salads and cakes, Intel Corp people don’t like me very much (’cause I’m often screwing with them), and something else. At the moment I can’t remember what the something else was.

P.S. I remember what the other thing was. The host was drinking “Coors Lite” so I tried one. I drink PBR on occasion when I want something that is as close to soda as I can get without drinking soda, like when I’m working on my friend’s computer. Even with that perspective, the Coors Lite was ass. Yeesh.

I was supposed to go to a potluck today at one of my pretend girlfriend’s but I blew it off. I’m an old man and I’m usually too tired to do much on Friday nights. And also I’m suspecting it was a bunch of crunchy vegetarians. My trick of bringing a box of Popeye’s fried chicken wouldn’t have gone over very well.

Hey, I got a nice present from my sister! It’s a jacket that’s much more stylish than I am and has that strange sizing problem that clothes seem to have lately: it’s GINORMOUS.

You can also see the toaster oven my sister got for my ma.

So I had to take the “LARGE” jacket back to REI and got one that fit and it was “SMALL!” Sheesh. Why is athletic clothing always so large?

Also, someone has to clue me in on the whole Lemony Snicket thing. The trailers look intriguing. Not as intriguing as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Blade: Trinity but it looks interesting.

My email says so!

ATTENTION: Dear Sir/Madam,

I am MR. MR.ISAAC HAYES the fiduciary agent assigned
to your case. I wish to Congratulate you on your victory,
you are a lucky person to have won this lottery.

MR. MR. ISAAC HAYES goes on to tell me that I’ve won Four(4) installments of 500,000.00 Euros {Five Hundred Thousand Euros} which, with the current exchange rate, is like a BAZILLION US DOLLARS!

Oh, my imaginary life is shaping up quite nicely.

So, not going to the gym for a couple of weeks has made me pretty wimpy. Not only that, but I was shamed into trying the StairMaster and climbing an endless set of stairs was pretty unnerving. I almost panicked when I started getting tired after only five minutes! On the plus side, I felt quite tall on that contraption. On the minus side, there was a woman taller than me on the StairMaster to my right so I couldn’t pretend I was the biggest giant in the gym.

So, the story of how I ended up on the StairMaster is more interesting if I embellish it. It’s rude to quote someone’s email without asking her if it’s OK, so let’s say that this imaginary person named, say, CAROLYN is still talking to me and told me:

if you are at the gym to see hotties you will never get in shape. i notice no one else when i am at the gym. i am ALL FOCUS.

Internally, I was shamed. So to prove to myself I wasn’t just fooling around, I tried the one apparatus that everyone looks unhappy using: the Stairmaster. Fortunately, I didn’t fall off the thing.

Anyway, I’m in shape. It’s kind of a blobby shape, but it is a shape. (Oh, and even though the imaginary person who we’ll call CAROLYN wouldn’t notice me at the gym, you know I’d notice her.)

My camera is lacking, however. There wasn’t enough light for the thing so the only thing they could take a picture of was the light fixture.

Well, later on I was able to get a picture of the cheese plate, after we’d destroyed it:

And for comparison, here’s a picture I took outside of where Elephant’s Deli is going to move to. It’s an old “il Fornaio.”

So I’ve been accused of taking Carolyn to a pr0n store on purpose. I thought we were going to Reading Frenzy and instead we went to CounterMedia next door. Honestly, I thought they were both ‘zine stores and I’m not hip enough to know better. We can pretend that was a ploy of sorts, but how is a ploy going to work on someone who lives over 2100 miles away? Well, I’m sure I can make the story more interesting this way, since it’ll all be made up.

So there I was, in the locker room of the gym, surrounded by naked guys, and I really wanted to get out of there so I could start exercising (and have the cute girls sneer at me.) But I couldn’t! In the week-and-a-half since I’d last been to the gym, I forgot the combination to my lock. In my mind it was a mish-mash of the last two locks I had. (Both bought recently; I lost the first one.)

Fortunately, after twisting the thing around for a while I figured it out. I had the same problem on the way out. The guy standing next to me laughed and told me that was why he had to use a keyed padlock for his locker.

Oh, and my other fun for the day: since AT&T and TDMA are going the way of the dodo, I went to the AT&T Cingular store to see what deal they had for me. The phones weren’t that much fun and the plans were more expensive than, say, T-Mobile. But they did say that I’d get a new user deal if I explicitly switched from AT&T to Cingular. The worst part is that I’ve been such a “loyal customer” that my $29/mo plan gives me my original 60 minutes + 60 bonus minutes + 100 bonus minutes + 1000 weekend and evening minutes. And my evening starts earlier than others, at 8PM. I LOSE ALL THAT.

Oh, well, that’s progress for you.

Well, I helped my friend update some software on his computers and he wanted to do some horrible network cabling using some cheesy wire. Not nice network cable, but a bundle of six wires that pretended to be a network cable. Of course, it didn’t work at all (no surprises there).

My big drama queen sister headed back home to California today after blaming me for various incongruities in the gifts given to us by our parents. She did leave a big pile of garbage on my desk with the note, “These can be recycled,” so I guess I should be happy she thought of me. HAHAHA