I don’t say much about work so I’ll just say the last two weeks were pretty busy. Insanely busy. And busy as well. And not only demanding of my attention, but busy. Really, I’m beat. And when I finally get home my brain makes me watch TV until it’s too late and then I’m tired for the next day, which is busy. It really hasn’t been that much fun.

But the worst thing about my day is that I found out that an online friend had died from, I think, the ‘flu. And I don’t deserve to feel bad like her close friends and family, but she’d email me from time to time and I’ll miss that. I mentioned that to a co-worker, and she told me she had a kid who died from the ‘flu. We both talked about how we’re big proponents of the ‘flu vaccine and, wow, I felt even worse. But I also feel like a schmuck for bringing up the ‘flu to her.

The ‘flu is something that seems like you just soldier through but more than a few people I know have died from it. It’s more dangerous than it feels like it should be.

So I’ll go back to work tomorrow, where it will probably be very busy. I also have to move my cube from where it is to a new space where it’s louder and hotter than I like. But ti’s not as bad as it could be.

I think I know how this basketball game turns out (stupid push notification on my iPhone and iPad) but I still want to watch it. Even though I bet I forgot to set my DVR long enough and I bet I’m not going to see the end of this game. But it’s the NCAA National Championship game. The only other sporting event I actually watched after recording (I usually end up not having the patience) is the Superbowl.

I did succeed in doing very little this weekend, but had breakfast with my buddy Greg (and, coincidentally, friends from the gym John and John), mowed the lawn and then did a whole lot of sitting around. And a few rounds of Angry Birds. It was a nice weekend, but not nearly as nice as it was in the Bay Area. It sounded like summer, and I heard it was the best weather they’ve had in a while. Leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and motorcycles. I actually like the rainy weather, but it’s nice to get some sun once in a while.

And I know I was sick. This is the first trip I’ve made to California in YEARS that I missed getting an In-N-Out burger. Heck, I almost missed a flight once because I stopped by the drive-through at Rengstorff and 101. I think I may have to schedule another trip down there.

Funny how the meaning of certain words change. Like during the Apple conference a couple of years ago when I went to Twitter and someone asked where I’d been. I said, “Twitter,” and was misunderstood; they thought I meant, “Check Twitter,” when what I was saying is, “I was at the Twitter offices in San Francisco.” The place I went was sort of like that, but wasn’t Twitter. On the plus side the weather in the Bay Area was beautiful but on the minus side my cold came back.

So, I’m kind of hoping it gets colder this weekend because that’s better sleeping weather. And rainy because that means I have an excuse for staying inside. And knowing my luck, I’ll be fine on Monday. Ah, well, what better to do with my free time than sleep?

Most everyone who knows me knows that I’m a straight up geek that is much too blunt most of the time. Also that I’m not very lucky So when I say, “I’m in a $200 per night room in California,” they know that I’m in a Los Altos Residence Inn for an unplanned extra day of a business trip in a room that smells like old lady perfume. And my cold has gotten worse today. My big excitement was sitting on hold changing my appointment, then brushing my teeth with a glorious disposable toothbrush, and then soaking in the shallow hotel tub.

Dinner was at a highly recommended ramen shop in San Jose. The broth was fatty and bland and possibly some of the worst I’ve had. But I had a big cheeseburger for lunch and couldn’t go to In-n-Out for dinner. Maybe tomorrow.

I didn’t have a great nights sleep so I figured I’d sleep in late and call in sick. Usually I feel guilty about it, but I slept in until 9:45AM and then got up to a headache. I didn’t feel quite normal until after dinner, when I remembered that Advil was my friend. Most of the day was spent in a dark room reading a book, which was not a bad way to spend the day. Not moving around a lot meant my head hurt less.

Not much else exciting on a sick day, but that’s the way it should be.

I finally got the results of my blood test and it’s negative means it’s a positive result. In other words, nothing bad, time to celebrate. Or I would if I didn’t have this cold. Just as well, I probably should get more sleep on a regular basis anyway and that means WHY AM I STILL UP? xXx: State of the Union was over an hour and fifteen minutes ago!

Last night I went to the wedding reception for Katie and Mark from the gym. It was a lot of fun and I got to find out that everyone thinks Mark doesn’t talk much. I remember telling Katie, “You look tall. And beautiful,” and she told me, “I’m not sure I like the order of that.” But she did show me her pink platform shoes. The only negative thing I can say about it all is that I’m jealous that I’ll never look as good as Mark and Katie did.

Speaking of tall, there were a lot of incredibly tall women there and I think they were on OSU crew with Katie.

The only big surprise (no big surprise to me) is that two of the more outwardly law-abiding people I knew there told me about how they’ve been in the back of a patrol car in handcuffs. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been in a patrol car, even after having friends who worked in the radio shop for the city who put all the equipment in the squad cars. I’m a big smartass with a problem with authority, but I think I’m also too Japanese to annoy cops directly or to forget to pay my parking tickets.

I found out during Grand Jury that the courthouse is all about the waiting. Buying a Prius is all about the waiting. Getting my iPad 2 delivered was all about the waiting. And even more important, the labs my doctor ordered are all about the waiting. He called me ten days ago, I had my blood drawn a week ago, and I haven’t heard a thing. So here’s my prediction: good news would have come fairly quickly but bad news needs to be rechecked to see if it’s right. Or the labs just take longer to process than I thought. Or, like my last bone marrow biopsy, they lost the samples. In any case, there’s not much to know if there’s not much to know.

Fortunately, I’m not too worried about things this time. What could I do anyway? Something ridiculously ostentatious or frivolous might be fun but I’m not really about grand acts. Plus I have a busy weekend coming up. Maybe I can get my hard drive backed up by then. Probably not, though.

Today was my first day back at work and I can’t say it was awful. I can say that Jury Duty might have been a bit more interesting.

I still haven’t had enough time to mess with my iPad, but I did find out that there is a program called “Cheats with Friends” that you use with “Words with Friends” to find the words you can form with the letters you have. I think this goes under the list next to, “Am I really working out if I do shitty pushups or lighter weights?” which gets back to who am I cheating anyway? I suppose this is why other people are rich and I’m driving a car with a broken bumper.

I jinxed myself today.

I was waiting for my iPad to arrive and I was hoping it would be before I left for jury duty. There’s always more sitting around to be done in the courthouse. It wasn’t to be, and almost missed my bus because I took down an old traverse curtain rod (the kind with the string for opening and closing) because it finally broke. I read the schedule wrong and ran to catch the bus, dropping one of my earbud covers (making them useless) and getting to the stop five minutes early.

As I expected, I had a lot of waiting to do at the courthouse. We thought we’d be out in a few minutes, but I had to wait to sign indictments and turning in our notebooks took more time than we thought. During the wait, one of the guys who works at Les Schwab Tire was telling us how younger guys didn’t know how to change a flat. I really jinxed myself by insisting I knew how, because after getting home and going to Lowe’s for curtain parts, I heard a hissing sound from my left front tire. A loud hissing sound. By the time I got back to my car the tire was flat. I put on the doughnut spare without much difficulty and made it to a different Les Schwab to get it fixed, but it would have been nice to avoid that altogether. As it is, I’m up late because I had to re-hang the curtains and poke at my iPad just a little. I waited long enough for the thing so I had to fire it up and play some Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies.

Back to work tomorrow at my real job. I’m not looking forward to it.

Wow, it’s been a full (short) month of Multnomah County Grand Jury Duty already. We finished most of our cases but we did have one absentee witness who is going to make us come back for testimony. There were seven of us on the grand jury and we’d only see the DA and his witnesses. Being part of the “drug” grand jury (Grand Jury #2), we usually had very short testimonies mostly by police officers. They’d find drugs, they’d do a test, they’d usually get a confession, and so we’d pass down an indictment. That just meant we thought there was enough evidence for an actual felony jury trial. We also saw several person-on-person crimes (usually the purview of Grand Jury #1), and several property crimes (Grand Jury #3). We were also the only half-day Grand Jury and we often were dismissed at 10AM. I still had to stick around to sign indictments because I volunteered to be the foreman. I think I’m going to miss the excitement.

It sure would have been nice to fill up some of the waiting times by using my iPad 2, but I still don’t have it. It sat in Portland since last Friday morning, so it should be in my grubby mitts by Tuesday afternoon. We’ll see.

I think I’ve sold my Mac, but of course I’ve been monkeying around with the partitions and backups and just generally moving things back and forth and being about as cavalier with my data as a geek can possibly be. So far, so good. My backups are all corrupted but my Mac still keeps working.

I think I mentioned it’s my mom’s 80th birthday and my sister and brother-in-law left for Hawaii today. We went out for dinner last night and I noticed that my sister is enunciating her Greek words more. I wonder if she’s getting a smack-down from her friend Maia if she mispronounces things. The only thing I’ve decided to start pronouncing correctly is Hyundai and ukelele. No one is going to understand either of those things so it’ll be funny, at least to me. Everyone already thinks I’m nuts so I may as well be snickering to myself.