I thought I’d be posting more regularly again, and by regularly I meant about once a week. Somehow I decided that keeping up reading all the things I have on Feedly and on Twitter (though I have been avoiding Facebook) would give me more time. That wasn’t the case. I’ve also been a lot more tired this summer possibly just because I’M OLD. I should be glad that I’m not one of my friends who is welcoming a baby into the family because, honestly, I just don’t have the energy. I also don’t have the ovaries, so the argument is merely academic at this point.

My grand experiment to stop eating oatmeal at breakfast and to start drinking an awful concoction of whey protein isolate and water continues. It was mainly started to try to lose some body fat and all it seems to be doing is making my wallet lighter. It does seem to keep my appetite down and is easier to eat than the paste-like instant oatmeal that I was “enjoying” previously, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I guess maybe it just “is”.

I’ve been avoiding writing on this thing because I didn’t think I had anything interesting to write and also because I thought I’d get more sleep instead. But what I really did was start to read a bunch of crap on Facebook that also kept me up late. I’m trying to give up Facebook again but there are good reasons to be on it. For example, last weekend we had another grade school reunion and it was great fun. Once again we were snubbed by most of the “rich kids” and the middle-middle class was partially represented. The kids from the poorer part of the neighborhood were well represented and seem to be doing as well as the rest of us.

I was late, again, because I went shopping downtown for a telephone and window shopping for really expensive watches. I really want a Grand Seiko GMT, which is about $6000 new, but they’re only sold in Japan. A used vintage Rolex is about the same price and can be re-sold without losing a whole lot of money. The Grand Seiko probably isn’t something that retains its value.

I had to get a telephone because I am old and I have real telephone lines in the house. One is my mom’s and the $7 telephone I bought 15 years ago works fine but doesn’t hang up right. So sometimes I’m at work and get messages from my sister that the line has been busy all day and is our mom OK? Finding a phone is harder than you’d think. Fortunately, Office Depot had 2-line and 4-line wired telephones. Sheesh.

I also made a stop at Nordstroms to replace the shoes I used to walk all over Tokyo and Osaka last summer. Then I got on the bus.

I figured since Portland has one of the better transit services, riding the bus wouldn’t be as scary as all the other times I rode it outside of rush hour. I was wrong. I was also probably the only one on the bus with a Nordstroms bag. I was seated behind a girl who looked like she came out of central casting for an eighteen-year-old 90’s Puerto Rican hoochie mama for a Spike Lee joint. (Another reference for old people.). Frosted hair that had work done with giant hair curlers, tight white tank top, jeans, and platform sneakers. During the ride a guy got on who looked like he had some hard miles put on him. Sinewy and a little dangerous. He and the hoochie mama started talking right away and as I incautiously stared at them, he yelled, “TODD FUJINAKA!” The scary dude was my best friend in the summer of 75 or so and I hadn’t seen him since grade school. I made a joke about his big brother being a criminal because I knew Mike is a physician at Mass General and he didn’t think it was funny. I hope he’s forgiven me.

So I was taking my stuff home before I walked the block-and-a-half to the picnic when my next door neighbor told me his new baby had arrived 3 weeks early! Yet another delay, which did make me miss a guy I hadn’t seen since grade school.

But I did make it and I saw a guy I hung out with all the time in 7th and 8th grade. Rumor was that he was strung out on heroin, but that seemed like nonsense, as he looked a lot like the guy I knew back then, just lacking the crazy eyes he had back in early adolescence.

There was a kid from Boy Scouts whose mom I used to see in the neighborhood but who I hadn’t seen in years (neither him nor his sisters). My next door neighbor’s nanny was there with her baby who grew up to be a really nice and not-so-tiny 12-year-old. And it was weird sitting around and having memories come back to me after talking to a person for a while. One of the organizers was wearing a safety patrol jacket and when I realized what it was it made me remember when I was one of the morning crossing guards and she was one of the little kids who crossed the street with her twin sister.

So all of this is to promote going to reunions. Grade school reunions are good because even if someone wasn’t nice back then, you were all kids. I wouldn’t try to talk anyone into going to a 10-year reunion because everyone is still pretty competitive but at 20 years everyone is pretty set in their career and it’s just nice to sit and reminisce. I know many of us have lost really good friends this year and there’s no reason to avoid seeing old friends that you’ve lost track of. I guess there really is a good reason to stay on Facebook, even if I’m not going to look at it all the time.

The past two nights I’ve been going out to dinner after tearing out carpet for a few hours. I really shouldn’t be rehydrating with beer but, then again, there’s plenty of other things I shouldn’t be doing.

Look at what I found tonight after cutting out carpet, pulling out carpet pad, and sweeping up sand-like remnants of the carpet glue:

There’s wood flooring underneath the carpet but I didn’t think it was this cool.

I wish I could say things are just going peachy and I have good news and better news. I paid a THOUSAND DOLLARS to get my first set of progressives (i.e. OLD MAN GLASSES) and TWENTY DOLLARS for a haircut ($2 less than at Bishop’s and a hell of a lot better). I got a much better deal on the haircut, but glasses are glasses and I’d rather see than just stumble around hoping the fuzzy things in my vision are what I’m imagining them to be.

I’m home alone because my mom was in the hospital for a week and there’s one of two reasons for it. One is that they needed to perform a trephination to let out the evil spirits. The other is that non-resolving intracranial bleed and the neurosurgeon had to put in a drain. She’s out now and at my sister’s since my sister works from home. She’s doing better, but she’s still not her perky self.

Some more good/bad news is that the Industrial Café is open on Friday. Turns out it wasn’t a bad reason they were closed, but it wasn’t good news either.

Yeah, that’s right, they were filming for the Food Network and that means there will be lots of food tourists there. Good for the restaurant, but bad for the regulars.

I’ve been going to the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference for years. The last few years the ticket sales have been a bit quirky and many of us even had alerts that texted and emailed us when the announcement page changed. This year the page changed and announced that they’d start selling tickets at a predetermined time, 10AM PDT on 4/25.

Everyone knew the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference would sell out quickly, but for me it was under a minute. Here’s how not to get tickets to go.

1. Log into the site before the official sales start at 10AM PDT. This will serve to confuse things later
2. Start hitting Command-R as it reaches 10AM PDT.
3. Keep hitting Command-R for a minute because nothing is happening.
4. SEE THE PAGE THAT SAYS BUY A TICKET! CLICK THE BUTTON!
5. GET A LOGIN PAGE AND LOG IN!
6. Get an error page that tells you to retry or to click on a link to report the issue.
   1. Reporting the issue could take more time, and may not get a response.
   2. Refreshing will let you try something quicker!
7. HIT REFRESH!
8. SEE THE PAGE THAT SAYS BUY A TICKET! CLICK THE BUTTON!
9. Get the error page again.
10. Refresh again because we’ve determined it’s quicker, right?
11. SEE THE PAGE THAT SAYS BUY A TICKET! CLICK THE BUTTON!
12. Get the error page again.
13. OK, it’s time to try something new. Quit the browser and reopen.
14. Go to the WWDC ticket page.
15. GET A LOGIN PAGE AND LOG IN!
16. Get a page that says SOLD OUT.

OK, at this point, have a shitty rest of the day. This part isn’t necessary if you’re not me, but unavoidable if you are. I also added a nice trip with my mom to her doctor who made us wait an hour after the appointment time. He’s a super nice guy so I couldn’t stay mad, but it didn’t help my overall mood.

My sister attributed my problems to something stupid that actually did cheer me up. She said it was probably Megan’s doing, from wherever she is now, because she thought I didn’t need to visit San Francisco if she’s not there. We both laughed about it. It probably would be something she’d do and it’s nice to think that Megan’s still around somewhere, messing with us.

Yet another reminder of how I’m getting old. It’s my birthday weekend and it’s not really the greatest confluence of events. I’ve mentioned several of the other events and today I found out that Joe’s Cellar, one of the last neighborhood dive bars, is closing tonight. The building was deemed unsafe and was condemned. I was told by the manager at Portland Brewing that this was my last chance to go and it was packed full of people. I guess the weekend there has been nuts, or so said the bartender who might just have been the closest thing to a zombie that I’m ever going to see. Most of the patrons were probably not born when I first went to Joe’s Cellar with my buddy Greg, his dad, and his dad’s co-workers.

I just realized that there’s a couple of other close dive bars and I think I better give them some of my (not huge) business before they close as well. Crackerjack, here I come!

P.S. I just got two emails from two different people on two different dating sites. One from a fake person, and another from someone who is fifteen years older than me. Nice, eh?

Well, it is my birthday and I should’ve made a list of the things I wanted to do. I suppose I did make a short list and I nailed it:

1. Take the day off work.

I meant to do a couple more things, but whatever. I sat on my ass and went out to lunch with a buddy from work at a place that is run by an old grade-school classmate. The only things I did today were lame, like answering all the birthday wishes I got on Facebook (which weren’t that many) and trying to undo whatever my computer is doing to scramble the music in iTunes.

But it is my birthday and it is an off year. I started out the day trying to listen to Marc Maron’s interview with Johnathan Winters and quit just in time to find out that he passed away today. Closer to home, my sister’s goofy old basenji Dede had a seizure at 4AM and had to be put to sleep early this morning. And as my mom predicted, my sister didn’t cry when my dad died, but cried when her dog died.

Hooray. One year closer to my AARP card. I suppose it beats the alternative.

I haven’t gone out to see a live band in a long time. It’s not really my thing because even when I was young I was old and crotchety and I generally think it’s too loud and crowded. The sound is bad and just distorts in my ears. I wonder if people who really like loud music aren’t deafened by it already.

But my weird travels through old-timey music took me from banjo lessons to youtube to fiddle videos to thinking I should go see Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet. They’re a band I would really look forward to hearing on Prairie Home Companion, back when I listened to Prairie Home Companion a lot. Not sure why I quit, but nevertheless, I started trying to google Beausoleil. My first problem was that I didn’t know how to spell Beausoleil since I never took French and I had a heck of a time. When I finally figured it out and thought, DUH, I found out they’re touring and making a Portland stop. I bought my first ticket for a show in a long, long time. And, sadly, the first live show I’m not seeing with Megan in a long, long time too.

The opening band was the New Iberians from Portland and I’m not a big fan of their Zydeco/Blues music. When I got to the venue, I noticed I was one of the youngest people there. The New Iberians started out OK but went towards the Bluesy-rocky stuff I don’t like. The sound was muddy, and the women next to me talked throughout the entire set. I wondered if I made a mistake.

When the New Iberians finished, they started taking AWAY speaker cabinets and put up a couple of JBLs. Not only did this clear up the sound, but Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet (sans Jimmy Breaux) was exactly what I wanted to hear. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to play Cajun fiddle in Michael Doucet’s style, but it sure was fun to listen to. I thought I’d miss hearing the accordion (I guess Jimmy Breaux ‘retired’ and started his own band) since that’s what drew me to Beausoleil’s sound, but the music was great without it. And late into their set, Michael Doucet played the accordion! So I guess I’m a fan.

I am also a bad son. My mom was admitted to the hospital again last night, and I called but didn’t visit today. She was admitted to the ICU(!) but is well enough that they sent her to a normal room and talked about letting her out tomorrow. It’s her birthday after all! Keep your fingers crossed…

Daylight savings time is making me very tired indeed.

Last week, after surviving the tower snookering, I noticed that my forearms seemed sore. The tower was wobbly after we took down the guy wires, so I must have been holding on for dear life and my death grip led to sore forearms. It’s a much better outcome than, say, falling off.

The only other new thing is that I’m realizing how awful my violin playing sounds. It’s actually an improvement that I can hear what I should be playing and know when I’m getting it wrong. It’s also a good thing that we insulated a lot of our house and it’s also a good thing that I don’t play an amplified instrument like the neighbor kid plays. I just keep practicing and tomorrow I should have my first fiddle lesson.

I was kind of upset that the only message I’ve seen on OKStupid lately is one that said, “Sorry, not my type,” but that person certainly isn’t my type either. Who can’t be bothered to write in complete sentences? I bet she can’t spell, either. Plus, most of the time I get NO reply, which at least leaves me with some dignity and the ability to imagine that maybe my email was lost.

So no clear narrative to my life, but at least nothing disastrous at this time, and that’s ok by me.

I suppose I was suckered several times this weekend. My buddy Greg is moving and he needed to take down his 70′ ham radio tower. He suggested cutting it down, which I first thought was a waste since that would mean it would end up as scrap, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it might actually be fun.

By the time I got to his place, other old friends were there and they wanted to take the tower down carefully so they could re-use it. Taking it down carefully is a lot more work requiring lots of ropes and pulleys and one poor sucker who has to climb up the tower risking life and limb. The other guys were a lot older than me (or a lot lazier like my buddy Greg) and somehow I was talked into going up the tower. Saturday I spent two or three hours taking down all the feed lines that used to go to the antennas that I helped take down years ago. Sunday I spent six hours disassembling the tower 10′ at a time, from the top. This also meant we were taking down all the guy wires that helped keep the tower steady and safe. We got it all down and fortunately the worst I can say is that I’m just tired.

I didn’t have time to practice my violin or finish my taxes but I did go to the gym twice. No wonder I’m so very, very tired.

I think I quit writing much on my blog when I realized I didn’t care about writing that much any more. Part of it was just the practice of writing something down every day and that became less important. Plus, I didn’t have that much to talk about on a daily basis. Right now I have a lot to talk about but I’m not sure I’m the one who should be doing it. Let me just say that several of my friends have lost their mothers lately, and I hope they and their families are all doing well, or as well as can be expected. My own mom has been in the hospital twice lately, and it’s no fun.

So, on this day two days after Valentines Day, what am I doing to cheer myself up? After wasting hours and hours for several weeks trying to undo all the damage that TuneUp and iTunes have done to my music library, I thought I’d use some correction tape to mask out some of the things in my beginning violin book. Unfortunately, Office Depot brand correction tape doesn’t work. It either spools off and won’t work because the tape is loose, or the correction bits don’t stick to the page. I’m taking it back (I hope they take it back) and getting Liquid Paper.

I’m also reading the news, which is a horrible thing to do if you’re trying to cheer yourself up. Since work was so hectic this week, I was catching up on a couple days worth of news, and the lighthearted articles from 2/14 were nothing I wanted to see. Fake marriage proposal rejection videos are also not funny to me at all. However, dudes hurting themselves while doing stupid things is pretty funny. Accidents, not so much.

So, articles on the hopelessness of online dating and people mistakenly telling me about their friends and their romantic weekends are not what I’m looking for. Two empty bottles of whisky (which took me months to empty, and have been empty for days) aren’t helping my mood either.

Oh, well. Maybe I’ll play some of the music that iTunes didn’t “fix” for me.

Not real sure why I’m feeling all that cranky right now. I’m finally getting over my cold. Yeah, I had a fever, then stomach problems, then a head cold with a 101.9°F fever, and now I’m feeling better. I’m also sucking ass at playing the banjo and the only New Year’s resolution I’ve kept is to stop watching Hawaii Five-O.

Check it out, though, new glasses and a haircut. You know what that means? I can see my computer screen so I can DO MY TAXES and my head is cold.

Check out that puss though. I’m not sure why the ladies aren’t crawling all over this guy.

Tomorrow I pick up my violin and I can have TWO instruments to play poorly. Nice.