I helped a buddy move today and I was thinking it would be fairly easy, and really it wasn’t that bad. The best part was the whole crew was from the gym and we’re used to lifting heavy things. Plus the guy moving is a Civil Engineer and has much more practical knowledge and spatial awareness. The thing I didn’t count on is that as a Civil Engineer, he has a lot better (and heavier) furniture than most of the people I’ve helped move in the past. There’s a tradeoff between good, heavy, and large furniture, and cheap, heavy, Ikea furniture. At least the Ikea furniture can be replaced easily if it’s broken. The better stuff can be repaired and restained.

I bought some more things for the house, including more lighting fixtures (floodlights for the back yard). Weird how I can spend hundreds of dollars for indoor lights, and only have to pay $20 for outdoor lights from Home Depot. I was too lazy to put them in, of course, but I did wire up my mom’s Washlet. I didn’t want to do too much before the painters were finished with whatever they’re doing. No need to put things in just to get paint on them.

I had some plans for tonight. Boring minimal plans, but plans nonetheless. I’ve been sore all over all week because of THMFIC was on vacation to Hawaii and when he leaves for a week he usually cranks up the workouts. Anyway, my plan was to go to the gym (because I’m foolish) and then get to bed early. UNFORTUNATELY, we’re not only dog-sitting for my sister, but I’m also hiding her iPad (no that’s not a euphemism).

The only program I told her to buy for her iPad is Plants vs. Zombies. I’d never played it, but I’d heard a lot of good things about it. Well, I turned on her iPad and found the game and I didn’t look up for an hour. Fortunately I was able to break free and get on with my evening, however little was left and I really want to start playing again. So much for sleep; I may start playing again after I floss my teeth.

I don’t take many pictures of myself, though I used to do the “camera at arms length while putting my arm around a cute Japanese woman” thing when I was in Japan. That was a while ago, and a lot more random when you had to actually put film in the camera and send it off to get it developed to see what the picture looked like. That’s why I had to ask the gym to see if they’d give me some pictures of me for my online dating profile. I still have a match.com account, for example, that needs updating. That site kind of bums me out, though, and I have yet to get a date there.

Here are some pictures.

So what does that show me? I’m an old sweaty Asian man who seems to squint a lot. Any comments on the pictures from the peanut gallery?

Something yesterday was much harder than I first realized, because my hamstrings are sore and I couldn’t do any ankles-to-bars because my abs were too sore. Other than that, the day was OK. People scheduled customer calls during the time I wanted to be at lunch, but that’s to be expected. Another bad $6 salad down my gullet.

I did spend quite a bit of time researching my RFID obsession. There’s data on my company ID badge and I want to know what it is. It started back when I got an ID card at a conference. This is going to require a very tiny soldering iron and a microscope to build the circuit board all so I can read a long number, I bet. A long and boring arbitrary serial number. I’m not sure why I even bother, but you know how obsessions are.

I’m not dealing with the heat that well. I didn’t have to go outside for more than a couple of minutes today, but that was enough to suck the life out of me. I got home from work and passed out for a few minutes. I went to the gym and felt like throwing up most of the time until we did the workout, where I was DFL for the whole day. No one was slower than me. All I had for lunch was the small expensive salad at work, so that probably wasn’t to blame. I’m probably just falling apart.

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe I need to move to Antarctica.

Hey, those dates I went on a few weeks ago didn’t go anywhere. In fact, I can say more than one of the women has removed their profile and is not returning my emails. I’m hoping this means they found a nice guy and not something less interesting, like giving the hell up. That’s my usual tactic and it doesn’t seem to be working out. But my luck is all used up by not getting hit by meteors. You know how it is.

I’ve been saying that I just want to spend the weekend sitting on my fat ass. I didn’t quite make it through the whole weekend, but I did spend all of today watching football. I suppose I did leave the house in the morning because I wanted to get my air hose connected to my $40 Harbor Freight air compressor, but after I hooked it up I did NOTHING with it!

Hooray!

P.S. It was about 100°F today and we have central air. Hiding indoors is what I do when it’s above about 80°F.

It was about 100°F today and I still had to tear the flooring out of the laundry room. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long because the laundry room is pretty small. Afterwards, I went to dinner and actually ate the “Smothered B. A” at the Stepping Stone Café.

Yeah, that’s a chicken fried steak, hash browns, onions, jalapeño, and cheese inside of an omelette that’s covered in country gravy. What was I thinking? But it was good.

I had a dream I remembered last night, unlike most dreams I usually have. I’m of the opinion that I’m always having dreams but I hardly ever remember them. Last night I remember driving by a lake that we were going to swim in later, but seeing a cloud of mosquitoes near the shore. Then I someone met up with my friend Il, who in real life is pretty quiet and shy, but in my dream he wanted me to sign up for an amateur stripping contest. Man stripping. He was accepted and I was rejected. I felt pretty put out by that when I woke up.

Meh. It’s probably just because he got more dates online then I ever did. I probably just need more sleep.

Monday I was incredibly busy at work. We had a huge issue at work, I was calling up people to find out more about my dad’s cousin’s wife’s situation, and my brother-in-law kept calling me. I even got a call from my mail-order pharmacy. I usually get one or two phone calls a month and I probably got a dozen on Monday. Most of the things worked themselves out, like my brother-in-law finding an iPad for Mariko. That’s right, she’s one of THOSE PEOPLE now.

—–

Sometimes you get good news.

I know I shouldn’t be telling you about other people’s business, but this was on a public site:

So they did a fish test (?) and found that it was Her2 positive the whole time! So now I am on Herceptin and the prognosis will get better and better. In 3 months we will see how much shrinkage there has been and I’ll be at 50/50. He has a lot of patients in remission one these drugs and a handful who haven’t presented any signs of cancer since! Yay!! I can be like you and just keep on truckin’!

Besides, that’s the best news I’ve heard all month.

Most things are really minor in comparison. But that’s my life, kind of minor.

Today was Helen at the gym, 3 rounds of 2 laps around the building, 21 24kg kettlebell swings, 12 kipping pullups. I did a lot of stuff to try to torpedo my time. Last night I stepped on the bottom of my office chair, making me limp for a while. I ate a pulled pork sandwich for lunch. I was waiting on some guys to contact me at work and they finally did about 3:30PM and I got out of work at 5:45PM into rush-hour traffic. I had to go home to change before I hit the gym and I was only about 5-10 minutes late. Anyway, my usual plan of just taking the run easy so I could do the pullups without pausing gave me my best time ever, I think. I was surprised.

So there you go. I’m reactivating my account on match.com in case anyone wants to point and laugh, but other than that I think my day is pretty much done.

I have no idea why my email is acting up right now. I believe one of my computers has decided to be finicky, and my work laptop decided that it didn’t want me to read my work email. I had to call IT and do a bunch of dances, but eventually nothing they had me do worked. I did some other odd things that shouldn’t work, but did. Hooray for Windows 7. Add to that two finicky computers that decided they wanted to start crashing and everything is just complete fun time. And I thought I was going to get some sleep tonight.

The shower tile in my mom’s bathroom is looking pretty good. It’s a lot more normal than what I have upstairs since it’s just white subway tile, but she didn’t want anything too fancy. I think it’s going to turn out great. The laundry room is pretty close to finished. One of these days it will be finished, won’t it?

The cell phone service at my desk at work is awful. I have to actually walk to the window to talk to people now. Not a big deal usually, since I make a half-dozen calls a month, but today I was getting calls all day long. What a mess.

The tile started going in downstairs and it looks pretty good. But other than that, I have nothing today. Work (which I prefer not to talk about), family matters (which I shouldn’t talk about since it is involving lawyers), and other things. Busy busy busy but when I summarize it, it’s really boring.