So after talking up the burger at Meriwethers, I took a group there for burger club. Turns out that, like Wildwood, the chef didn’t seem to like eight burger orders coming in at once and it wasn’t as good as the last time I was there. The meat was tough (but tasty) and the bun was toasted until it was burnt and that meant sharp shards cutting up my mouth. It wasn’t bad, but there’s a certain expectation when a burger is $14 and the most expensive place on the burger club rotation.

Ah, well. It’s not the biggest disappointment in my day. Maybe I can dream myself happy. It doesn’t happen that often, but you can always hope.

I guess I did fail today. I told myself I wouldn’t go over a 305lb. deadlift and I tried 315lb. and 335lb. anyway. I made 315lbs. 315/2 = 157.5, so I haven’t made double my body weight. I tried 335lbs due to a miscalculation, thinking that would put me at twice body weight, but I should have just tried 325lbs. And now that I think of it, I think twice body weight makes a nice strong line in the sand that I don’t need to cross because I’ve hurt my back doing deadlifts in the past. Now I just have to keep from gaining weight so I don’t have to recalculate this number. 325-45 = 280, 280/2 = 140, so 3x45lb plate + 5lb plate on each side of the barbell.

So much for thinking. I think I forgot my New Year’s resolutions already. One date per month, wasn’t it? It’s getting close to the middle of January and nothing doing so far. Gotta pace myself or I’ll burn out early. 🙂

So here I am, telling myself it’s 37 minutes past the time I should be asleep but I’m not doing anything about it. I got a call from a friend a while back and I can just blame him for being up this late. Not that it helps any.

I’m also getting more and more TV shows to watch on my DVR. This wasn’t happening during the holidays because there weren’t many new shows, but now that I’m not rabidly watching them, the mid-season shows are starting up. Just in time for football season to end.

In any case, you may think I’m just sitting here, staying up too late, trolling for new facebook friends. You’d actually be right. So much for extra sleep.

So here I am, after getting my ass handed to me at the gym, staying up too late again. I think I’m just about ready to start using my right pinky for typing again, two months after I smashed it open at the same gym. In any case, I’m up late finishing reading a graphic novel because books tend to get in my head and bug me if I don’t finish them. In any case, I should probably think about hitting the hay rather than do my nightly typing practice.

I surely didn’t break any records at the gym today. I suck at overhead weight lifting. However, I beat a guy who runs almost as fast as me, and is almost half my age. I could probably just say half my age, because that would be somewhere around 23, but the guy is probably 27, and (23-27)/27 is something around -15% error. That’s sort of like how one of the Crossfit “goals” is to deadlift twice your body weight, and even if weigh myself first thin in the morning, that’s 163*2, or 326 lbs. I’m only up to 305lbs, and I’m probably stopping there so I don’t hurt myself. I may go up to 315, but even then that’s (315-326)/326 or -3% error. Wait, I figure 2% is statistical noise, so if I make it to (326-326*2%) or about 320, I’ll be golden.

Or of course I can just lose some weight, so I can weigh 305/2 or 152.2, but I haven’t weighed that little since the 90’s and I was training for the marathon.

I think I’ll just stick with the sensible thing, try for 305 again, and then go up to 310 if the 305 feels OK, declare victory, and move on. I mean, heck, I got several attractive women to friend me on facebook so I think my romantic goals for this year are complete as well. VICTORY! (+/- 100%, anyway.)

I wonder sometimes about people who think this is a serious blog or something. I guess a link to my complaining about Foster Burger ended up on the Portland Food forum and I had a bunch of people reading it one day. One seemed to think my snarky comments about SE Portland were based in some sort of reality. To bad for him, I suppose. I deleted the comment because, well, this is my playground, not his.

I think I truly succeeded in doing very little today. Football season is almost over, and I’ve spent a bit of money on my TV and silly DirecTV service, so I figure it’s my duty to watch the NFL until the end of the season. It gives me a good extra excuse to sit around. Oddly enough, I seem to be listening to a lot of the game without actually watching it, and I seem to be reading a lot of graphic novels.

Well, so much for my weekend.

This is the second year in a row that I missed Courtney’s birthday party because I’m sick. At least this year I’m hoping it’s self-limiting and quick (a stomachache). I’m not sure what happened, but this morning at work I wasn’t feeling so good. A lot of people have been dragging this week and I’m not the only one in the group who is getting slammed with outside requests. Anyway, I came home early to do some writing but I collapsed as soon as I got home and it was two hours later when I woke up. And my stomach still hurt. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better (the stomach part, not the work part).

I don’t like making too many decisions about a restaurant on their first week being open, and today’s experience at Foster Burger kind of is an example of that. Four of us went there after going to the gym as part of our burger club.

When we got there at 8:15-ish, the place was full but not crowded. There were open seats at the bar and at a two-top, I think, but there were four of us and we were on “a list” to be seated at a table. We all had some beers at the bar. I was watching a booth open up when a couple walked in and took it. I don’t know why they bothered to tell us that there was a list if it was just first-come-first-served. We would have been more vigilant if we would have known. They didn’t move the couple, they just made us wait longer.

We finally got a seat in a dark corner. I’m almost twice the age of two of the others I went with, and I was having a hard time reading the menu. Well, it turns out the 25-year-old guy was having a hard time as well. The table was also by the door, which had a big sign saying, “MAKE SURE YOU CLOSE THE DOOR BECAUSE IT GETS COLD INSIDE,” but I had to keep getting up to close it because hipsters can’t read. I was actually very angry with the staff and the couple who took our table, to the point where I was considering doing something to get me 86’ed from the restaurant for good.

They finally came to take our order much later than the couple who stole our booth, and we were told that they just sold out of the black and white fries, which was first on our list. I think the couple got the last order. We put in our order for burgers and waited. And waited. And then we noticed people were being turned away. And then we were told they RAN OUT OF BUNS and we were out of luck. Just as we were going to pay for our drinks and leave (the bartender was nice and it wasn’t her fault we were getting the royal shaft from Foster Assburger), they told us our order was actually IN THE QUEUE, and we weren’t among the bunless. Another minute and we would have been gone. We stayed and waited. And waited. And we finally got our burgers.

The burger was good, but as the foodie blogs say, it’s a great pub burger but not on the gourmet scale. In fact, among the pub burgers, I’d recommend Hopworks first and Slow Bar second and Foster Burger next. They all have their issues (Hopworks is too crowded, Slow Bar treats you like you are at a McMenamins – i.e. like dirt) and you have to consider that when you’re going out to eat. But just on quality I’d say this was really good but I can find better for the same price. And really, unless you’re a hipster doofus or you just happen to live there, why go to SE Portland?

So, really, unless you’re a masochist or overly adventurous or really lucky, avoid Foster Burger for a couple more weeks.

Get your mind out of the gutter. Going to the gym doing pullups or deadlifts just makes my calluses worse and I had to get out the old scrubby dealie I bought in Japan. It does a great job though it is kind of wide and really meant for your heels and not spots on your hands. I guess I’m supposed to be able to deadlift twice my body weight, so let me just pretend I weight half of 305lbs so I don’t have to go any heavier. That’s fair, isn’t it?

I was pretty tired again today, and really wishing I could just quit my job and find something more peaceful. That’s all just a fantasy, I know, but it helped get me through the day.

So, just so I can try to pretend to get to sleep earlier, off I go.

It takes me a while to wind down, and I thought i was heading for sleepy time EARLY for once. But one of the reasons I’m having trouble getting to sleep is because I’ll fall asleep for a couple of minutes and wake up. Then it’s tossing and turning time. One of the reasons I’ve been waking up is because of the kids that park across the street making noise. The noise hasn’t been bothering me for months but lately there’s been this old POS Camry, probably 11-12 years old, that sits there idling and it needs a new muffler. The sound carries into the house. I finally went outside and asked the kid to either cut his engine or park somewhere else. Now I’m wide awake.

And now that I’m wide awake I realized that I have to pay my bills.

Fortunately, I’m in a much better mood today, having seen the female and male John Berg at the gym. Plus, instead of just eating a salad for dinner, I also had a cupcake. OK, it was three dots from St. Cupcake, but Jami says that equals one cupcake. Hooray.

Onto bill paying and THEN trying to get to sleep.

I don’t have enough sense to go to sleep on time, but when I do finally get to sleep I’m having trouble sleeping. When I go to bed early, I seem to wake up early, and way before the time I want to get up. How is this fair. Oh, well, I guess I’ll have to deal with it.

The hope of Sunday was extinguished by the reality of Monday. Actually, I had a head start when I checked my work email last night. Not much more to be said about it, but the daily drudgery has begun anew. Or so I can think with this crossing of the artificial boundary into 2010. Yeesh, I’m getting bleak here. That’s what happens when I don’t get my cheeseburger ration. Or maybe it’s the government nanobots in the H1N1 vaccine altering my body chemistry.

OK, sheesh, it’s Monday. Don’t I get a day to get morose? I actually blame it all on a LACK OF DESSERT. I’m hungry and I need a cookie but it’s a weeknight and all I had was a salad for dinner. I suppose I can go back to fantasizing about the semifreddo at Wildwood, or the bread pudding at Hopworks. Oh, heck, why don’t I just think about the cheeseburger at the Carlyle again? If I keep this up I won’t be able to sleep.

I just spent the last couple of hours spending a bunch of money on electrical crap. More outlets, switches, ethernet jacks, wall plates, and other boring things that most people wouldn’t care about but I figure I should just buy everything and worry about it later. I got started on the buying because somehow I got sidetracked today. I have my list of errands, but I wanted to sit on my fat ass and watch football until it was time to go to Foster Burger for dinner. Turns out they didn’t have any football games today, only massacres, so I started in on my list of errands.

Getting an H1N1 vaccine is a lot easier now. In fact, I called the local Fred Meyer and Walgreens and they wanted me to sign up for Tuesday’s waiting list, but then I called QFC and they just told me not to come in too late. It’s the same QFC with the Coinstar machine that spits out Amazon gift certificate codes for “free”. Instead of losing 8.5% for the privilege of using the machine, I get a gift certificate for 100% of the change I pour into the machine. Then I waste the gift certificate on electrical outlets and telephones. I also bought a 2-line phone for the two lines in the house.

I had $29.57 worth of coins, and my insurance paid for the H1N1 vaccine. I think it might have been the vaccine that lead to my stomach upset, but who knows. All I know is that my stomach felt funny. I did end up running yet another phone line and Ethernet drop upstairs and that required a lot of crawling around in the attic, and I also started thinking about wiring a light into the bedroom closet. The bad part is that everyone bailed on me for Foster Burger for dinner and so that didn’t happen.

Oh, well. Doesn’t look like Foster Burger is going anywhere. I’ll get there soon enough.

I was told that I really shouldn’t have described what I was doing when the New Year rang in (sitting in my room by myself, reading comic books). I actually missed the stroke of midnight because of it. I was expecting to hear a lot of fireworks going off, but it was pouring last night and I think that pretty much put everyone off of standing outside for any length of time.

I wasn’t as antisocial today as I usually am. Went to the gym and then to Trevor and Megan’s to watch the Rose Bowl. Then it was off to dinner at Red Onion with my mom, sister, brother-in-law, Megan (from San Francisco), Nadeem, and Craig. Quite an eventful day, really.

So I think I’m just going to write down a couple of resolutions. A date per month or at least 12 this year. I always blow this one. A trip to Canada. Why not? And studying kanji with some sort of measurable outcome. I’ll have to figure out what that really is.

So much for the first day of the year.