I needed a day off and besides going to the gym and out to lunch with my mom, I spent most of the day just playing Plants vs. Zombies. The iPad version seems to have a different set of “achievements” than the iPhone, and I had one more to go today. And I did it!
Now I think I can focus on something else silly, like finishing my library book (one for “young adults”) before the due date. Unless I get sidetracked by comic books or something. Hooray for vacation weekends.
Time to play lots (too much) Plants vs Zombies.
So at 8:30PM, not too late, I got home from the gym (where they tried to kill me) and I noticed a car parked with the windows fogged up. Weird, right? No one in the front seat, so I thought it was empty. When I parked I noticed a foot in the window and the car rocking. AT 8:30PM NEXT TO AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. I called the police non-emergency number and asked if it was illegal to be screwing in a car in a city street and they said, “It is if it’s non-consensual.” Thanks a buttload.
I suppose I may be a prude, but Jeebus, “GET A ROOM.”
I think I’ve gained five pounds lately (measuring first thing in the morning like I usually do) and I think I blame Sean and his vegan ways. It’s causing so much stress that I’m putting on weight. Someone has to make up for all the meat he’s not eating (though he never did eat bacon, the tastiest of meats). It surely couldn’t be stress from work.
I was still feeling slightly off today. A few more people were out sick from work and I left early and took what turned into an hour-and-a-half nap. I still went to the gym. I even ended up staying late, trying to fix the computer. Not their fault, I get engrossed in things like that and am loath to let a computer get the best of me. But I learned something new doing it.
I still haven’t learned to go to sleep on time. Still not Xmas, so Santa hasn’t not brought me my common sense.
Another joyous day at work where I reap the joys of globalization. I had several emails from foreign countries strongly suggesting that I find out the answers to questions from people who are on vacation. I politely pointed out the problems and the names of people who would be out for TWO MORE WEEKS. I should have pointed out that their countries also have vacations where no one is available for TWO WEEKS and that time would be coming next month. But that would make too much sense. Much easier to demand things from me that I can’t provide. At least it’s only a four day week.
I started to feel like doody on the way home, and I noticed I was getting aches and pains in my back. Pretty good signs that I’m coming down with something. Plus I didn’t sleep for crap either night this weekend because of overseas phone calls, late night FAX machine calls, and what I think is an overdose of chocolate Xmas cookies. I wasn’t, however, smart enough to avoid the gym. I did achieve DFL in the workout.
How to take longer (sorry we held you up Zach):
I think we were a full two minutes slower than the next slowest person, and over six and a half minutes slower than the fast women. Perhaps that isn’t the way I should put it. The ATHLETIC women.
Other than that, I got nothing. I’m going to take some Advil and ask Santa for some common sense.
I suppose I could say I’ve been busy with work and with non-work, but mostly I’ve been busy at work and that’s about it. I did spend most of the day trying to reverse-engineer the Harbor Freight alarm thing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve decided that it’s kind of silly. I’ve spent a bit of time on it and I’m not quite finished, but I’m not really sure why I’m doing it any more because it looks like there’s not much I can change on it. Ah well, live and learn.
The end of the year is nearing and I better get on the donations I always seem to put off until the end of the year. There’s probably some way of maximizing my tax benefit, but really my real goal is to assuage my liberal guilt. Besides, I always tell charities that I donate at the end of the year and I think it’s important that I’m not lying. I’ve tried in the past to see if I could actually donate 10% (like the god botherers and their tithing) but I can’t even do that much. Perhaps if I planned better, but I’m not exactly a planner.
A few days ago, as I went to bed, I realized that I’d turned the heat off at the gym. It was back when it was almost 60°F day and night but I was sure it was going to get cold and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I got up and went and turned the heat back on and slept pretty well. I’m not doing very well on catching up on my sleep and I’m still up READING GOSSIP COLUMNS. And some geek news too but mainly GOSSIP COLUMNS. About people I don’t even know. Who the hell is Darren Criss and why should I care?
And why in the hell is my Mac coming up with License Agreements in Japanese from time to time? I have it set to English and my location is definitely in the US in a Blue State on the left coast. Is it because the Mac has been to Japan? Is it because my name is Hisashi Fujinaka and not some round-eye name? I wonder if my buddy Il gets this sort of grief too. Oh, wait, he’s a Windows user. He has other problems.
I’m not feeling all that cheery tonight. I figure that just means I haven’t eaten enough beef or pork products lately not that listening to Xmas music is making me feel any better. This isn’t a very good time of year for mental health, or at least so I’ve been told. My lack of sleep probably isn’t helping.
I like looking at dating web sites especially when they’ve used their broken criteria to match me with people that would never want to date me. ARE YOU SIX FEET OR TALLER? (No, and I believe I’m shrinking according to my doctor’s office.) ARE YOU A LESBIAN? (While my sister insists I’m gay, nobody’s ever mistaken me for a lesbian.) ARE YOU 25? (I was at some point, but that was back when Ronald Reagan was president.) I AM A VEGAN. (And I’m a lacto-ovo-pesco-carnivo-vegetarian. In fact, I probably don’t always eat vegetables if there’s a nice slice of bacon to be had.) Nice to know I’m not wanted.
I did have a good time on the gym’s borrowed ladder. It wasn’t exactly straight and it was a rattly aluminum ladder like I prefer, covered in rotten leaves but still it was a ladder. I do have some fear of heights that I can usually suppress, but I noticed I was sweating quite a bit and I wasn’t dangling off the thing like my dad used to be able to do. Ah well.
Time for Mr. Excitement to update the credit card info on all his bills.
I know why I wake up multiple times in the middle of the night to got o the bathroom and it isn’t just because I’m an old man. I usually drink a whole 32 oz water bottle after working out at the gym, and if I’m not paying attention that can be as late as 8:30 – 9PM. And other little things wake me up as well. I think the little things add up so if I’m sore the noises outside wake me up. Or the heater going off at 5:30AM seems to bother me as well. Who wants to get up a half-hour before the alarm goes off?
Today, though the 5:30 alarm woke me up in the middle of a dream that, of course, didn’t make that much sense but at least after walking around the neighborhood without my shirt on and hanging out with two hipsters who were checking out their 3-day-old beards, I sat on a couch while a woman flirted with me. I know, but it’s all the excitement I’ve gotten lately that didn’t involve a chainsaw or almost falling off of a ladder.
Yesterday was supposed to be one of the rainiest days I’ve seen in Portland. While it rains all the time, we usually only get a 1/4″ of rain in a day. Yesterday set a record with 1.3″, not a lot for some places but not normal for here of course, I was out in the rain cutting up wood because I wanted to have at least one day a week where I could actually rest and not do much of anything, unlike last Sunday where I cut down a tree in the backyard and fed everything I could into a wood chipper. The remains are below. Monday I was quite tired.
I did, however, make all three Saturday evening events that I had scheduled, something I rarely do. I was briefly at my next-door neighbor’s housewarming party, I went to Koi Fusion’s 2nd anniversary/Scion event were I scored a free bulgolgi burrito and some Scion swag, and I went to watch the UFC fight where GSP proved he was a dominant, cautious, and not altogether entertaining fighter. Plus I ran around the house trying to figure out what the hell was beeping like a fire alarm with it’s battery dying. It was a fire alarm with it’s battery dying, that my contractor had taken down and hidden in the basement.
I would have done nothing strenuous today, but I finally bought a tool cabinet at Harbor Freight. The display model worked a lot better (the drawer bearings are awful) and it was heavy. Plus I had to take it out of the packing to cram it into my Civic. I’ve asked my friend to drive his pickup into the city so we could go get it and every time I asked, he drove in his Smart car.
Oh, and I guess I cut my own hair Saturday as well. Heck, I’m not getting any dates paying real money for haircuts. I may as well do it myself.
So I bought a bunch of cheap video cameras, but they all have “video out” and not USB. So then I bought a cheap video-to-USB converter (less than $10) and I was sure I was going to have trouble with it. Sure enough, the disk it came with was defective and Amazon was willing to give me back my $10, but I wasn’t about to let the thing defeat me. So I searched on the net and got it cobbled together under Windows XP in a virtual machine on my Mac. Then I found a driver for Linux, which is where I wanted it anyway. And now I got it running, and I got qmotion (a motion detection program) running. Whenever something passes in front of the camera, it displays it.
I’m going to see if I can get it running from scratch on a lightweight version of Ubuntu and install it on my sister’s netbook. I’m not sure why I’ve decided to do all this, but there must be some reason to it all beyond simple neurotic geek obsession.
I got this really cheap video-to-usb thing and it only works with WindowsXP right now. It’s some progress, but what a mess.
It’s the end of the year, when everyone starts taking their vacations. So work can go two ways: the customers all go on vacation and it’s restful or (more likely) all hell breaks loose and there’s hardly anyone left to handle things. It looks like things are going towards #2 again.
It’s not that bad yet, so I really shouldn’t be predicting a disaster. But really, for me, getting lucky means someone has emailed me a coupon for free crispy burritos from Taco Time so it all balances out. I wonder if I should get a t-shirt made that says, “Mr. Excitement.”