Burger club, where a bunch of us from the gym go out and have burgers, is getting a big overlarge. We had thirteen people tonight and we went to Metrovino. The burger there was excellent, and it’s probably close to the one from Laurelhurst Market.

It was a giant double burger and they only had five left. Fortunately, it was big enough that ten of us split five of them. On the minus side, there were no fries. I had the bacon-wrapped date salad instead. It was quite tasty.

The desserts were good as well, though the cheesecake at Laurelhurst Market is my favorite right now. On the minus side, the curb outside of Metrovino is ridiculously high, and not only did I scrape up my bumper on it, but someone slammed my door into it as well. I guess that’s why I drive a Civic.

Anyway, the burger is definitely recommended, though it is huge.

I kind of knew something awful was going to happen at the gym, and for some reason I just didn’t care that much. I figured I’d take the run easy, then I decided I’d do the kettlebell swings easy, and then I tried to stay on the pullups longer than I usually do. I finally broke the 10 minute mark on Helen today by doing something else quite simple: cheating. My last few pullups weren’t as pretty as they should have been.

My new bathroom scale is a bad thing to have. I’ve been weighing myself every time I go to the bathroom, just to see if going to the bathroom makes me lighter. I think I weigh more than I thought, but I won’t really know until the morning when I’m good and dehydrated. My clothed weight and my unclothed weight are closer than I thought. The surprising thing is that going to the bathroom does make me measurably lighter. Going to the gym took about 1 pound off, so that means I lost about a pint of fluid even after I drank half my water bottle? Yeesh.

I’m afraid I’m going to have to hide the bathroom scale soon or it’s going to drive me nuts.

I never get enough sleep, so I really don’t need a call at 1:30AM from a FAX scammer. My phone lets me turn off the ringer during specific hours, so I could just let everything in the middle of the night go to the answering machine, but the last time someone called in the middle of the night it was my friend’s wife because my friend was in the hospital. I got up and went down there as fast as I could for moral support and that’s a good enough reason to leave the ringer on. But if these FAX scammer bastards keep calling I don’t know what I’ll have to do.

My shiny new bathroom scale was supposed to be delivered today, but I got an email that said that UPS had broken the scale and they were refunding my money. Why didn’t they just SHIP ME ANOTHER ONE? Maybe they know I’m going to be jumping on the scale repeatedly and MAKING A GRAPH. Nobody really cares about what I look like naked, and really I’m too lazy to be neurotic about that sort of thing. I mean, who (besides my doctor) is even going to see me naked? A man of my age should probably be wearing EXTRA clothes.

My sister asked me what I wanted for my birthday and told me she’d pay for half of an iPad. I was going to wait for the second generation iPad, but why wait?

I’ve decided I’m pretty close to completely nuts, so I just need two more things: an accurate bathroom scale and bagpipes. The bathroom scale I’ve been using is older than I am. My mom doesn’t know how old it is since it was in the family since before she was married to my dad. It seems to give repeatable measurements, but I’m not sure how accurate it is. Now I can weigh myself all the time and make a graph, like all the weight obsessed weirdos that hang out at the gym.

Speaking of weight-obsessed, I was all set to do 60 push presses with a pair of 40lb dumbbells, but I ended up using 35lb dumbbells. Probably just as well. It would have taken even longer than it did with the heavier dumbbells.

I had a couple of burgers in the past few days that were OK, but not that great. The burger patties at the Mad Greek and Helvetia Tavern are probably from Sysco. I’m really unimpressed with Helvetia but I have reasons other than the burger for my loyalty to the Mad Greek. In fact, my Yorgo Burger at the Mad Greek was free because of their Tuesday Facebook giveaway. I was feeling the burger in my gut all day. Today I had my favorite thin-patty diner burger at Skyline Burger with fries, and a chocolate malt. Somehow that combination is hard to beat.

I forgot that Easter is a big deal for some people. Skyline Burgers was open, but there weren’t many people there, maybe three tables. When I took my mom out for dinner, both Portland Brewing and Justa Pasta were closed. Widmer Gasthaus was open and is probably a bit better food than Portland Brewing. The Gasthaus is usually pretty crowded, but wasn’t tonight.

I was just going to watch Life of Brian for Easter but I lent my copy to my brother-in-law, so I watched TV instead. I’m still not caught up from last week’s TV. Plus, that pile of books is still sitting there taunting me. I had to finish at least the library book that’s due this week. Stupid deadlines.

That’s pretty much the idea, but yesterday I was at a birthday dance party and quite sober but tonight I’m watching TV and movies and drinking. I must say that this Maestro Dobel Diamond that they’ve started to sell in Oregon is quite nice. Today I had to drive THMFIC to a submission wrestling tournament and I figured I’d better not be hung over in a room overfull of testosterone and lack of sense. I had a good time at both, surprisingly, standing in the corner at the party and at the tournament. Turns out it’s better to stay out of the way in a lot of places. At the party I could have met some dangerous nurses. In the tournament I might have made some friends who wanted help taking the wheels off of their houses. A dull life, but the life I’m used to.

So we cancelled burger club this week in favor of salad club because several of the usual suspects are participating in a jiu jitsu tournament this weekend and they’re watching their girlish figures. In fact, I went as far as looking for a vegetarian restaurant for the guys, but like my sister says, we only go to vegetarian restaurants BY ACCIDENT. Anyway, instead of burgers, we did Thai food but NONE OF THE FLAKES SHOWED UP. Sean had a good excuse: he was feeling sick. But Jeff said he had to punt to get some work done. Come on, jiu jitsu guys DON’T HAVE JOBS. At least the Thai omlette was as good as I remember at Thai Orchid on Burnside. I know they think they’re too good for us, but at least we had a good time.

I finally filled out my census form today. I KNEW it said I was supposed to do it after April 1st, so those census guys better not be coming around.

Today I did a 345lb deadlift. A good rule of thumb I heard was the ability to deadlift twice your body weight. Well, if you count my minimum body weight, first thing in the morning after a whole night of dehydrating, it’s about 162 lbs. So that means I really only have to deadlift 324 lbs, which I did last week. But as it is, I weigh something around 172 lbs when I go to the doctor (they don’t let me get all nekkid on the scale there) so I got twice that body weight today. My next goal is to deadlift twice the weight I peaked at, 2 x 185 lbs or 370lbs. That might take a while.

Since I can’t find any woman to go out with me, I figured I should look for my ideal woman. And how else to do that but with MATHEMATICS? You know the minimum age thing where you take half your age and add seven? That’s nothing. I figure I should go out with a woman who turned 33 1/3 when I turned 45. I keep doing the calculations and getting different numbers, so I figure I should show my work and let someone else make sure I got it right.

Here’s where it gets tricky. What exactly is 1/3 of a year? And do I want to get the exact time of birth in this? Aw, heck, I’m never going to find this “ideal woman” anyway, so I might as well half-ass the math like I’d half-ass anything else.

So that gives:

So I googled that date and I found one woman born on that date, a Japanese actress from the area I lived in back in Japan, Tomoka Kurotani.

Woo, and the Zodiac says:

The Aries-Sagittarius combination is very good, because you are both Fire signs and you have so many ideas that you could recreate the world from the beginning. You are both curious about anything that surrounds you.

The Chinese Zodiac rates Dragon (1964) and Rabbit (1975) a 7 out of 10 for compatibility.

So where does that leave me? Actually, it leaves me just about finished updating the software on my mom’s computer, which is where I wanted to be. It still makes me a lonely dude living with his mom, but the Mac’s up-to-date.

I spent some of the evening (more than I’d like) doing work and I’m still not really finished. So I have nothing to see here, other than this growing stack of books I’m supposed to read.

There’s a Kindle 2 on top that has a couple of books in it as well. Time to try burning a disk.

Eleven years ago I told my crazy friend Megan that I was going to buy Ricky Martin’s CD if (when) he came out of the closet. Today I bought two. Good luck Ricky!

I had something else I was thinking about, but really I can’t remember what it was. I decided I was going to take it easy at the gym, but instead I started doing extra pushups during the Renegade Row in the “Kill Me Now” workout. Chip Conrad wouldn’t think they were extra, though. Basically, I think that pretty much used all the glucose up in my noggin.

I was going to quote from some personals ads of people who were looking at my profile because I can’t do broken English like a real Nigerian scammer can, but the profiles were taken down already. The only other activity was from a 24YO serving in Iraq. Really, I don’t know what to think about that, other than identity theft. It’s not that I see the glass as half-empty, I see it as half-full of bad-tasting, smelly, and possibly harmful liquid.

Well, there you go. I even got an invitation to become a Facebook friend with someone who looks like a real person who wrote in COMPLETE SENTENCES with no MISSPELLINGS. They liked my blog postings, thank you very much. In any case, I don’t think I’m an extreme pessimist at all. An extreme pessimist is the guy who thinks, “Wow, lots of good things are happening to me right now and I wonder how it’s all going to turn to shit,” where I’m more likely to think, “Well this isn’t turning out the way I’d hoped, what now?” And in my experience it usually does go slightly downhill. I’d think that was more along the lines of being a slightly negative realist. Most people who work in a customer service related field know what I’m talking about.

So here’s another mystery for you: I go to the gym five times a week, lifting moderate weights like 24kg kettlebells dozens of times (that’s 53lbs snatched on each arm at least 5x 12 times each arm) or deadlifting 325lbs and I got a cramp in my back by screwing an anchor into drywall to mount a flashlight onto the wall. Basically, that’s using a screwdriver on something that is about as tough as butter. As my dad would say, “What the hell?”

Back to the intarweb, though, those fake Facebook friend invitations are nice to get, too. Lots of photos of attractive women and interesting emails that sound like,

I very nice girl, very much like to go in for sports I run more often! I wish to find to myself the person with which would be happy!!! Very much I wait for your letters!!!”

Oh, wait, that’s just a cut-and-paste of a personals email I got last week. The realist in me (not the pessimist) knows I don’t have it in me to date a real “very nice girl” who “very much wait for my letters” but at least it’s nice to see that the intarweb scammers are still thinking about me. It’s nice to be wanted.

Maybe I should go check match.com again, or as I like to call it, “I don’t know what I’m looking for but it sure the hell ain’t you dot com.” I figure I should finish one of the eleven fiction books I have in my stack before I start in on that sort of intarweb fiction, even if I am throwing away a monthly fee on it.

Some people have such easy lives that they think a hamburger is going to make me suicidal. I guess they could be right, if they thought that my lack of aggressiveness in looking for female companionship is going to keep me from passing on my genetic legacy and that could be thought of as suicidal. Or if my lack of belief in their god will exclude me from their afterlife, so then I’ll be dead, dead, dead when I die and that can be thought of as suicidal. But in either case, I DIDN’T COME TO MY EXISTENTIAL DECISIONS BECAUSE OF A MOTHERFUCKING HAMBURGER.

OK, to be fair, I should have said BACON CHEESEBURGER, because in my life there is a serious difference between the two, but you get my idea.

I’m thinking some people have no idea how to spot the suicidal. The most depressed I’ve ever felt was when they were jerking me around between various anti-depressants which I probably didn’t need in the first place. You start up with some of those and you can feel incredibly despondent and I don’t ever want to feel like that again. But when I was feeling that way (and this was nine years ago?) I didn’t behave like I did the other night. I wasn’t blogging or complaining. I was calling the doctor’s office asking why I was feeling so horrible and if the goddamn medication was at fault. They said probably, and they gave me the number for the suicide prevention hotline. A fat lot of good they were.

Ah, well. I told my sister this and she laughed. She said, “You write that crap to be funny, and if they don’t like it they don’t have to read it.” Which is exactly what I’ve said on numerous occasions. Then we talked about external CD drives for her netbook or something. I’m only useful when I’m being a geek.

OK, so I did get a WiMax modem lately, and I can download things incredibly quickly now. I have a DSL connection so I can run some servers, but that’s reliable but slow. So I got this WiMax because, well, I have money to spend on silly things like this. Well, I downloaded all I wanted, and now it’s kind of just sitting around eating up juice. Ah, well, maybe I can stream Netflix with it or something.