Category Archives: General

Am I supposed to be getting healthier?

So another doctor’s appointment today. It’s a bit weird to me, I had a bone marrow biopsy before treatment started, at 3 months after treatment started, and I’m supposed to have one at 6 months. In between 0 months and 3 months I had a doctor’s appointment almost every other week. Between 3 months and 6 months I have one appointment. So it feels to me like I’m getting the next biopsy, the one at 6 months, right after the one at 3 months.

Anyway, the doctor says I’m doing well and the molecular and FISH studies looked good. Good thing I’ve forgotten all my molecular biology.

But the worst part is that every one of my many previous appointments I only weighed 169 pounds. Always. 169 pounds. This time I’m up to 174 pounds. Isn’t this going to the sports club thing supposed to be making me feel better (I feel like someone beat the hell out of me) and make me lighter (not 5 pounds heavier)? And for those who don’t recognize my attempt at humor: I know things don’t happen overnight — except for feeling like someone beat the hell out of me.

A late Friday night workout was nice and quiet, and there were still a couple of attractive women to look at. The tough looking guys who were there didn’t sound so tough when I heard them speak. In fact, they sounded more girly than the women there.


I finally saw Blade 2 today and I must say that I’m not disappointed. But I am disappointed in my picks from GreenCine. I keep putting “good” movies on my list — in this case Tokyo Story — and then only watching the fluff. Oh, well, I guess this tells me a little more about my own likes and dislikes.

Still moving things over.

OK, so bozo the blog converter is editing a lot of stuff by hand when he should use whatever little bit he learned in his computer science classes to use. But I keep thinking, “Oh, there’s just a couple of these comments I need to move over….” More like a couple hundred.

Who knew I wrote so much random tripe? And weird pseudo-html from some odd blosxom plugin I found somewhere. And who would guess that other people read what I wrote?

Well, anyway, all the comments should be imported soon. Unless, of course, I go to the gym and get so embarassed that I have to hide for the weekend. (And boy are my triceps sore today. Who knew I even had triceps?)

The second time at the “club”.

The things I do at the club are pretty limited.

  1. The plank
  2. Squats with a giant ball
  3. Double Barbell shoulder press
  4. Cable low row
  5. Bodymaster chest press

So I’m only there for a short time. Today I saw this tall, thin blonde woman (taller and thinner than me) who was doing the double barbell shoulder press with 20-30 pound barbells. Good thing I’m used to looking foolish.

The barbells I use for the double shoulder press have the Number “8” on them. I’m hoping that’s pounds rather than ounces.

In any case, once my arms quit being so sore, I’ll try heavier weights.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRGH.

Heh. So I imported my old posts into WordPress. Well, I need to do a lot more to fix the posts. So, if you look and it all looks like crap, that’s why.

Also, I’m slightly sore all over from waving those light weights around. Not that anyone else cares. It almost feels like I have the ‘flu. My friend Melanie laughed at me when I told her about it. I guess she did some work with a medicine ball and it hurts when she laughs. Well, back for more fun tomorrow.

Hey, it looks like the dumb TV show I saw about Hawaii (and guess what? it’s called Hawaii) is on NBC’s fall schedule. Too bad they didn’t call me back to ask me about it. I could have told them what I really thought.

Trying a new blog.

OK, so I heard that Movable Type is causing all sorts of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Their new pricing scheme is cheesing people off. Well, honestly, I hated it from the start. Installation was a nightmare. It seemed like they wanted to keep the instructions minimal so you’d pay for the installation service. Fortunately, it was written in Perl and used a MySQL database so I could poke around a bit and figure it out.

So now I’m trying WordPress. We’ll see how it works.

I finally went to the Sports Club and spent a half-hour waving some very light weights around. And I feel very, very tired. I felt pretty stupid wandering around and being a weenie-boy, but what’s a geek to do? Well, I can look stupid in front of attractive women. I’m good at that.

Ah, petty vandalism.

I noticed my antenna is missing from my car! I always hated the dumb little stubby antenna I had, so it’s not that big a deal, but why steal something like that? They had to unscrew it from my car before they took it. Ah, well.

So I finally joined a sports club today. Had to sign up for two years to avoid an initiation fee. Boy, am I a sucker. We’ll see if I remember to go.

Also saw Austin Powers:Goldmember (finally) and had okonomiyaki for dinner. Anyone in Portland who wants to try it should make it to Kyofu. I never see many people in there (it’s in a bad spot on 40-something and Powell) and I hope they make it. How else am I going to get okonomiyaki?

I finally saw Phantasm.

I called my friend Greg to wish him a Happy Birthday and he told me what he usually tells me when I call every year. It’s not repeatable in polite company.

I finally saw the movie Phantasm. My sister has seen it a bunch of times and told me it was pretty funny. My friend Larry also saw it a few times and told me it was one of the scariest movies he’s seen. It was fairly amusing, but definitely a low-budget movie. Good, but low budget.

I rejoined GreenCine and my only complaint is that I had to change my username. Just like last summer, I plan to avoid the re-runs on TV and watch a few DVDs.

Finally made it to the gym.

I didn’t sleep real well last night, knowing that I had to get up early for a 7AM appointment at the “sports club.” Too bad they didn’t know about the appointment on their end.

I had a 2 week free pass, and I realized early on that I had no idea what I was supposed to do at a gym. So I started calling to see if someone could show me around, etc. A week later, on the last day of my two weeks, I finally got an appointment with a trainer. The appointment was for 7AM, but they double booked the trainer so she wasn’t free until 7:40AM. Good thing I got up early.

Fortunately, she was very helpful, just like everyone else at Mavericks, at least once I could get them to call me back. Talk about low-pressure.

Did I mention I’m sore from lifting some 5 pound weights over my head?

Moving day.

It wasn’t like helping my ex-girlfriend move into her boyfriend’s place. Today we helped the boss move into his new digs in the Pearl District. Fortunately he just moved across the street from a fancy apartment to a fancier condo. Even more fortunate for those who were helping, he didn’t have much stuff and he treated us to dinner at an Italian restaurant that was full of Italians. I’m not sure of the official name, but I think the unofficial name is “Gino’s”. They strongly recommended the lasagna and that and the seafood pasta were the best of the bunch.

It sure beat the 18-minute-long cell phone call I got from a friend who told me in great detail how she had to blow me off to hang out with her ex-boyfriend. Some days it doesn’t pay to answer the phone.

Traveling in circles.

And I forgot to post because I was searching for my the registration renewal letter for my mom’s Camry. I don’t remember that she gave it to me and I couldn’t find it. I did find a lot of old issues of Technology Review that I’m sure I’m not going to read. They all hit the recycle bin. That all kept me up late.

But this morning started out well. Going by Mio Gelato I noticed that Fox12 was broadcasting and the Mio Gelato guy was being interviewed holding a tray of gelato and panini. They were wrapping up when I went by and my friend Melanie (who is the manager there) told me to go get a free gelato. That’s being at the right place at the right time!

Geeky weekend.

Aaaaigh. I just realized I forgot the Slabs again! They could have saved me!

Instead I was counting on my friend Jennifer to save me from climbing up a couple of trees and sawing like a maniac. She wasn’t around so then I counted on something genetic to keep me from falling out of the tree. What I noticed was that I had a hard time hauling my ass up the tree. I really need to pick a sports club and start going.

But other than that, I spent the whole weekend changing the ham radio club web site to use a database and to hide email addresses. Yay for geeky-ness.

Oh, and thanks to Chris from the Fink project who gave me a “geek” work shirt.