So Jay the Contractor made new doors for one out of four attic access doors, and even that one is a little broken. The painters had painted it shut and getting it off cracked part of the frame. The door wouldn’t stay on the wall and Jay suggested magnetic latches, which I bought last week but never did install until today. The door stays on, but it also is kind of warped.

I found out yesterday that the painters also seemed to get some schmutz on my HDTV screen. My buddy Greg suggested I try getting it off with some alcohol. Denatured alcohol has methanol in it and I’m not exactly sure if methanol is good for plastics, so instead I bought some Everclear. Fortunately it worked to get the schmutz off.

Really, that’s about all I did today. I did get honked at and yelled at by a guy for talking on my cell phone while driving. I was on a city street, keeping up with traffic, and as far as I know it won’t be illegal to talk on the cell phone while driving until January 1st 2010 in Oregon. My bluetooth headset was acting up so I couldn’t use it. The yelling dude was weaving in and out of traffic and even ran a red light, which I figure is a little bit more illegal than talking on the phone. Whatever.

I finally found the fine print that told me why my iPhone backup software wasn’t backing up my text messages, etc, it was because I had an encrypted backup. Whatever. Like I always say, if the government wants my password, it wouldn’t be hard to beat it out of me. I’m not that attached to it.

I went to Schoolhouse Electric today to pick up another matching lighting fixture for my bedroom. At Home Depot I’ve been buying $10 fixtures but the one at Schoolhouse, which is made locally, cost $115. But it’s also a lot cooler looking.

Other than that it was a very rainy day at times so I just stayed in and watched TV. I did notice that the attic hatch is warped and it looks like there’s schmutz on my HDTV screen and I think it might be paint. I don’t have any luck with painters, do I?

I took some time off in the middle of the day to attend Andy Letourneau’s funeral, and I ran into a lot of people from Boy Scouts. Guys I haven’t seen for nearly 30 years and they’re probably all in their 40’s now. My old scoutmaster, an old camp director, and lots of guys who would have been my peers in Boy Scouts. It’s sad that this is the only reason I have for getting back together with these old friends. The funeral was well attended, as I expected, because Andy was a great guy.

Afterwards I went to Laurelwood with the Scouters and had mac and cheese (and a beer) for lunch. Beer is a bad idea before a workout, and was definitely slowing me down today. I went to the gym tonight because I missed Thursday night. The workout of the day wasn’t that long, and had two runs, but the beer I had at lunch was kind of percolating in my stomach and the second run was more of a trot. Liz and I were reminiscing and laughing about how we used to run until you couldn’t see us from the gym and then walk for a while. We were also saying the new people lately seem to be running a lot harder than we were able to when we started. In any case, my second run kind of felt like and extended effort to keep from seeing my lunch again, so I’ve proved to myself that beer is not a performance enhancing drug. At least not for Crossfit.

I wrote a review of the burger, steak sandwich, and the beer. There’s really nothing I can say but I like it there. I wish it was a little less crowded, but they probably deserve to be because of their food and their beer. I’m not a complete fan of the beer, but it is good.

Other than that it was all about work today, so nothing to report. All my kvetching about work is done in person nowadays. I did have the opportunity to cancel my workout and be on a phone meeting instead, and of course I accepted. Having a job is a good thing.

I stayed up late the last couple of nights instead of going to sleep early, lie I promised myself I’d do. I guess this is my self-destructive behavior, which is probably the best I could hope for. Work is still going pretty well, but it’s still a bit stressful, so watching Lie to Me, Castle, and NCIS probably beats drinking for my health. Either way I’d probably stay up too late and there are hardly any calories consumed in watching network TV.

Seriously, though, I wonder how Sean can live on Muscle Milk. I’ve been going through the box I had him get me and I think Lactaid and chocolate milk were much better. Eating salad for dinner hasn’t been so bad, except for the part where I have to avoid Food Network, but at least I splurge on my extended weekends so I can watch Diners Drive-Ins and Dives then. It’s really only three nights out of the week where I’m limiting my viewing pleasure, and sometimes only two.

Today was a red-letter day. First thing in the morning I read the death and disaster section of the newspaper, also known as the Metro section, and came across an obituary for a guy I knew in high school. I met Andy Letourneau in English class my freshman year. Three of us tested out of freshman English and started in the sophomore class in at Benson Polytechnic, which was mostly male at the time and freshmen were hazed. I guess the guy who actually burned me and lit me on fire wasn’t doing it because I was a freshman, but that kind of tells you a little about my high school. In any case, he was very nice and excited about poetry at the time. Later, when I went to a Boy Scout leadership camp called Brownsea, I saw him again. In fact, I changed to his troop in NE Portland and even was a counselor at Brownsea the following year. I think he was one of the reasons I went on for my Eagle scout and got into Order of the Arrow. Really, not a perfect guy, but a great guy nonetheless. Perfect would have made him boring.

After that auspicious start, I went to work where I did not have an ideal day. I’ll leave it at that, but when I get a message from someone at the Vice President level, I start to get a little nervous. Didn’t turn out poorly, but it did get me a bit jittery for most of the day. I also had three separate phone calls about the same issue. I even had to go off campus to buy obsolete hardware to help debug the problem. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get that paid back.

Then when I got to the gym after work, THMFIC was in a mood and started yelling at two of us. I can understand why, but it really wasn’t what I needed to end the day. Yelling back was involved, though it happened later in the hour.

So, fortunately, I have TV to watch to numb my brain. Not really a way to live up to all the things given to me in the past from Andy Letourneau, who possibly died diving with sharks (seriously), but it’s a life.

I made it through the workout at the gym through sheer stubbornness. It was a kettlebell workout that I like to call “stand and sweat”. 5 rounds of 5 swings, 5 high pulls, 5 snatches, 5 clean and press, 5 reverse lunges, 5 figure 8 to hold, and 10 around the body passes. That’s for one arm. I used a weight that was a bit heavy and also followed the instruction to not put the kettlebell down. It took me forever, but I finished. Unlike any of my previous relationships, I looked at that 45lb kettlebell and figured I was going down with this ship.

If I was talking about work, I’d say it was Monday. Also that computers hate me. But I try not to talk about work and the computers at home seem to be hating me as well.

I should also mention that I went to Home Depot again today, and that the electrician is supposed to come tomorrow to finish the west bedroom so there’s something else to check off my list. Hooray!

I went to three hardware stores today, one twice. My buddy Greg and I started at Harbor Freight and went to Home Depot afterwards. Later in the day I walked to Pearl Hardware and then realized what I’d forgotten at Home Depot and went back. I think I even bought the wrong thing and may have to go back yet again. What a mess.

In any case, I’m getting the pieces to finish the upstairs and I’m hoping it will be done soon. There are cosmetic defects here and there but what needs to be finished is getting short.

The east bedroom (where I’m sleeping) needs two attic doors, the closet to be trimmed out and then painted, and that’s about it. The extras are a couple more light fixtures. The room is full of boxes and furniture and that needs to be relocated throughout the upstairs.

The west bedroom needs carpet, outlets installed and connected to the breaker panel, closet light, two attic doors, and “window treatments” (or blackout shades in reality).

Oh, and then the stairs.

After that, I should have the upstairs back!

I wonder if the guy who “invented” USB is embarassed. I mean what a POS standard. It doesn’t come up early enough in the boot process to be useful in kernel debugging, it’s slow, and what about driver hell? Plus the asynchrononicity. Geez.

I did some awful work on the house. I’m waiting for the other upstairs bedroom to be finished and feel like going ahead and wiring up all the outlets and light fixtures. But the electrician is coming to finish all that and I don’t want to do a half-assed job that he’ll have to fix. I guess I’ll just have to be patient. In the mean time I went to Courtney’s house and replaced a GFCI to get the wiring out of my system. Luckily I had a spare.

Several of us from the gym went to Dove Vivi for pizza on Friday and I figured out how to get a good pizza there. They do a cornmeal crust which actually isn’t as tasty as it sounds when you get it by itself. I figured out if you load up on toppings, it’s pretty good. So I got the corn, onion, and pepper with additional sausage and pepperoni. I can recommend that combo. I can also recommend walking down the street to Staccato Gelato for dessert. I think I ate less than last week but I felt more full. Odd, huh?

We just went to Higgins where the burger was pretty darn good (probably on the level of Wildwood and Laurelhurst Market) but the experience was such crap that I don’t know if I ever want to go back. We waited about an hour for a table in the bar (we were the only ones waiting), our food took another hour to arrive, and the bartender was surly to me. I know I felt unwelcome at the Slow Bar, but I didn’t feel like I was being discriminated against there. I just felt like they didn’t want to be nice to ANYONE. At Higgins, however, I felt especially like crap.

It’s a shame, too, because the burger was so good. The dessert was better than average but didn’t measure up to Hopwork’s bread pudding or Laurelhurst Market’s cheesecake, or Wildwood’s Lemon Semifreddo. Really, I’m not sure what to think about Higgins, but I surely won’t suggest it to anyone who asks.

We have a few engineers at the gym and one of them was talking about this giant reservoir he was designing. I mentioned to him and his wife (who has a PhD in Civil Engineering, btw) that if I could get a site visit to see the giant hole, that I’d appreciate it. I like looking at giant excavations. His wife said that was because I’m a guy. I also told her that the furnace guy at Home Depot (made out of silvery ductwork and who waves around because of the air blowing in him) made me happy as well and she thought that was funny. Add that to the list, and include fried chicken and cheeseburgers.

So I was watching TV again and on NCIS, DiNozzo was torturing McGee by eating a pastrami sandwich without sharing any of it. That made me incredibly angry and I was worried that I was going nuts. I realized that my salad dinner was leaving me hungry once again and it was impairing my judgement. This is why I don’t watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives until the weekend when I’m not on my crazy dinner plan.

I’m staring at my stupid GPS trying to update the maps. It told me to update the maps. It charged me $119 to update the maps. But does the computer actually connect to the GPS? Not at all.

It’s just as well. I was going to use my computer to make myself a list. I figure one of the reasons I’m single is because I’m too darn picky. I’m picky about the usual things, but there must be some deal breakers. So here are some I thought of.

• Poor spelling or grammar.
• Republican or Libertarian politics.
• Religiousity.
• Unintelligent.
• Unwilling to put up with my cursing.
• San Diego Chargers fan.

So really, this isn’t the time for me to be making such a list. I really should get back to letting my GPS torture me and then get some sleep.