I remembered what else was bringing me down: I was staring at the New York Times crossword puzzle for THREE HOURS and making little progress. It’s not all that hard, but I got nowhere on it.

My sister isn’t the only one crafty in the family. I finally put up a gallery of pictures from a show of my grandmother’s crafts. She died last year at the age of 98-years-old (and five months).

And I suppose that’s about it. Went to the gym, read about DSPs and FLASH RAM (what else do you do when you’re climbing an endless set of stairs) and I suppose that’s about it. Besides hiting reload repeatedly on GirlReaction and getting no gratification.

Got up today feeling quite tired. So, after taking a nap, I decided to do my taxes! After wrestling with TurboTax and typing in all my medical expenses, the software ended up submitting the 1040EZ for me. Hell, the 1040EZ is designed to be filled out with a CRAYON and I could have done that in a minute. I wonder why I went to all that trouble. So onto the task that makes me crazy: doing my parents taxes. Mostly because I have to dig through my dad’s crap to find most of his paperwork. He likes to squirrel things away for some reason.

Anyway, being tired and cranky and doing my taxes made me realize that things are probably ebbing right now. No more pretend girlfriends, etc. Magic Date Ball will repeatedly tell me, Not a chance! Friday I was on the phone for about an hour trying to clear up my mom’s insurance with all the referrals and authorizations and other mumbo-jumbo and arcane incantations required to get the bills paid up and it looks like I’m going to go through the same sort of torture to get my dad’s taxes all straightened out.

Oh, well. I found out I won a door prize at the Ham Radio Swap meet and so I can run all sorts of things that require 12V. That’ll have to amuse me until my mail-order soldering iron arrives.

I probably forgot to do it. I was going to mention that my friend Sun realized that she’s known me all her adult life (whatever that means) and that we seem to have misplaced a lot of the friends we had. TERRY PRIBBLE, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT YOU. And Ian Griswold (though he’s married and in a different category) and Greg Watkins and Ed-whose-last-name-slips-my-mind-right-now, etc.

Anyway, two other things. One is that I went to the ham radio swap meet and bought another Morse code key:

Something I’ve wanted to find for a while and it says “Flame Proof” on it. Not that I’m going to test that.

The second is that some woman I know called me up late at night to tell me about her date! I can’t get anything going and she’s out with an accordian-playing janitor she met through online personals. I really haven’t seen any online personals I want to follow up on, myself. I suppose that’s my own problem, though.

OK, so I even went as far as calling Il’s co-worker Rick. Well, I TRIED to call his co-worker Rick, but I didn’t know Rick’s last name so I think they gave me the wrong Rick. No wonder he didn’t call me back. In any case, Il was off on a cruise in the Carribean and swore he told me before he left. We figured out that he did call, but didn’t get me and didn’t leave a message on my answering machine. He did, however, gain 10 pounds on his trip.

Did I mention my 88-year-old father was poking me yesterday, telling me I am fat?

Oh, and let me know if you can’t read my blog, since SOMEONE is convinced that it’s broken. Yeah, I know it would be hard to read that if you can’t read this blog, but I don’t need to make any sense. I should, however, quit using the intarweb to cheat on crossword puzzles.

OK, not Chan, but my friend Il Oh. I figure he’s just on vacation or something, but I haven’t been able to contact him since before SuperBowl Sunday. He’s one of the three people I call on my cell phone, and since my sister is always watching some horrid TV show and can’t talk, he’s really just one of two people I call. I get bored on the walk back from the gym.

Speaking of the gym, I didn’t feel any better after going today. Usually I feel a little better and a little less tired after I finish, but today I just felt beat. Perhaps I’m still running a temperature, but it’s probably because I let some TV show recordings pile up and I had to watch several episodes of Numb3rs (or however they spell it) and didn’t get to sleep until around 1AM. You-know-who from the midwest was talking the show up so I had to watch it. It’s as silly as Alias but entertaining.

But what if she’s calling during House? I got two calls during the show. The first was from Arbitron, who somehow thinks that I’m going to do their bidding for the huge payment of $2. The second was from she-from-the-midwest-who-will-not-be-named coming back from one of them newfangled rocky-rolly shows. But it was during House! How could I talk to her? Well, even if I could use my non-existent charm, she’s a bazillion miles away in some foreign land of kielbasa and pierogi.

Now I’m hungry for pierogi. Feh.

I got to spend it working late, but as a single male with no one to pester him about Valentine’s Day, I did spend some time during my lunch hour at Rite Aid, watching the frenzied purchasing of last-minute chocolates. I just kind of wandered around snickering. We have to have our fun some way, don’t we?

I’m feeling a little tired, and my head hurts. Plus, since my back hurts, I’m probably not going to the gym soon.

Speaking of the gym, my friend Deren thinks I should quit taking my own magazine to read, especially since I usually take a geeky computer science journal. But if I don’t take my own magazine, I usually grab some gossip rag to distract me from the crap that’s on TV. So, I don’t know what’s worse. Being caught reading about 3-D shading effects or being caught reading about Brad & Jen.

1. I’m running a slight temperature.
2. I’m getting fatter.
3. Bone marrow biopsies still hurt.

I would go to sleep early if Monk wasn’t on. 🙂

Well, I went to the library to return several overdue books that I never read and I ran into some neighbors who took me to an international development gathering at the local pub. Dunno what it had to do with international development. I talked to a woman about Utah for a minute, a guy about Idaho for a minute, and then listened to a woman complain about Canada and how she wanted to go home. Well, I did talk to a guy who worked for Citibank in Japan and he was pretty interesting, but I also met an attractive Russian woman and told her the Russian phrase that seems to piss off everyone I tell it to. People are usually expecting some sort of rude cursing, but mine is from a James Bond novel. “Smyert Spionim.” I think it means, ‘death to spies,” but it’s probably much worse since it pisses off most people I tell it to. It’s my social experiment.

So, I think I annoyed the attractive woman in like 2.5 minutes. If I take that to be about average, that means if I ever go on speed dating where you get 8 minutes, I’ll have 5.5 minutes of awkward silence per woman. Or 5.5 minutes of recovery time between the time I get socked in the nose and the time I get to start annoying the next woman. Take your pick.

And I took the Asshole/Bitch test, and I guess I’m three-quarters asshole. Not that anyone is surprised.

So, for the most part, I can tell (honestly, guess well) what nationality most Asian people are. It’s much easier when it’s Chinese vs. Korean vs. Japanese since I have much more experience with that. But I thought this one dude at the gym was Chinese, but he’s not. The Chinese woman (good thing she was reallly Chinese or I would have been 0 for 2) told me she thought he was Filipino. AIIIGH! My BLIND SPOT.

Well, Happy New Year to both of them anyway. And all of you. For those who like to sound, well, more gay, it’s the year of the cock. For those pretending to be more proper, like my sister, it’s the year of the hen or rooster.

I’m going to have to figure out the story about the red envelopes. I always thought the older people gave them to the younger people, but a guy I know swears it’s only married people who give them out.

Speaking of music, which we WEREN’T speaking of but I couldn’t think of a segue, I bought both the Jackson’s original “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” and Shaggy’s remix, “Shake & Dance.” And I’ve bought all these odd dance CDs because I HAVE NO TASTE AT ALL. Well, I have odd tastes. It’s not like I listen to C&W. Ugh.

Not exactly much for debauchery, but I ate a pulled pork sandwich for lunch and pork chops for dinner. And now I’m getting so sleepy that I can’t think of much more. I did get a call from someone telling me of her escapades on the singles website. I surely haven’t anything from my personals ad. Maybe I’m not the writer I thought I was.

It’s FREE ITUNES time again and this time I’m getting the songs as I go. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to get “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)” by the Jacksons or “Shake & Dance” by Shaggy which samples that song. Choices, choices.