Great. All those workouts and I hurt myself PUTTING STUFF AWAY at the gym. Figures. I’ll have to see how my back feels tomorrow. This is one of these cases where I say, “Brilliant,” when what I really mean is, “What the f*ck was I thinking?” That’s what I get for putting stuff away.
In any case, I’ve got nothing. I’m still accumulating TV shows on my DVR and I’m watching them as fast as I can. Maybe I can be on injured reserve and watch more TV tomorrow. We’ll see.
I gave up bicycling when I got tired of giving it up every winter. The rain in Portland isn’t exactly road biking weather, and I have issues with mountain bikers. Also, bicycling started making me numb in places that I didn’t want to be numb. The last year I rode a lot was probably the last time I participated in Cycle Oregon, 1995, and the last time I remember even being on a bike is riding to the opening of the REI in the Pearl. That was FIVE YEARS AGO. Even after all that time off, things came back pretty quickly and I was able to start getting my feet in and out of the toeclips and almost had a track stand at one point. I also passed a lot of people going up the hill from Burnside to the Pittock Mansion.
Unfortunately, that biking combined with the front squats we did today are making my ass hurt right now. I wish I had better problems to complain about. I told my grade-school buddy about a picture from the Emmy’s that featured someone else from our grade school who we remember being unkind to us. He told me he went out with her in middle school for three whole days. Well, that’s three more days than me. I suppose I was invisible back then and I’m pretty much invisible now. Never when I want to be, but you can’t have everything.
So, I’m not sore from the race yesterday, and I already bought new shoelaces to repair the ones that almost killed me yesterday. I wasn’t able to sleep very well, but that’s really neither here nor there. Hung out at some hardware stores with my buddy Greg, then spent the afternoon trying to wire more phone outlets in the house. Somebody (I suspect the contractors) cut one of my pull strings and I had to go through a lot more nonsense to finish pulling wires through the wall. I suppose I should have expected that.
I just got back from Courtney’s housewarming and as always, she cooked some terrific food. I stayed until I was sure the birdwatchers were gone and it was fun.
But the real fun I had today was running and biking in the rain during the Portland Oyster race. My position on the team was to take the blame and make Melissa look good. Melissa took care of looking good all on her own, so I just had to take the blame. I may be dead tomorrow because I had to eat an oyster off the sidewalk in Old Town, a place where the sidewalk is usually covered in transient urine. On the next leg, for example, we ran through something that looked a lot like diarrhea, so I may have dysentery. We’ll see.
In any case, people have been asking what we had to do. There were teams of 3 to 6 people and at least 3 had to be out on the course, within 100 feet of each other unless the instructions said otherwise. There were a lot of puzzles to figure out where we were going, but I’m just going to say what we did.
It was only sprinkling at this point.
Then we had to find a picture of three statues with four feet on the ground and take a picture of us and all four of the feet.
Extra curricular activity:
This is the only section I thought I’d have to quit, because my shoelaces got caught in my chain ring and shredded and then looped over my water bottle cage. Fortunately there was enough slack and I didn’t fall off my bike. I wasn’t able to do much with my shoelace, so I just left it the way it was and tucked it in my shoe.
Extracurricular activity:
Second, find the spot on the water with the banner. One guy kayaks across from the banner while another guy runs across. Switch and come back. At the same time, everyone else goes to Deke and Bryan’s Next Adventure to get a tattoo. Return to Pioneer Square.
Extracurricular activity:
Extracurricular activities:
On the way back, I went to Red Star for the shot of vodka, hoping that would kill the street germs.
The End.
So if I die from the street oyster, I hope to come back and haunt the SOB who decided that eating an oyster off the ground would be a good idea. If I just get sick, I may just find some other method of revenge.
Once again, I’m going to steal part of this post from the Portland Burger Blog because we just went to Wildwood and had one of the better burgers in town. Man, was it tasty.
Before hitting the gym, though, I did “Helen’ at the gym: 3 rounds of 2 laps around the gym, 21 24kg kettle bell swings, and 12 pullups. The fastest I’ve done it in is 10:02 and today it took me 10:17. I blame Nadine for not posting it on her blog. I usually check it to see how much I can eat for lunch, and she’s been slacking lately. I figured we did a timed workout yesterday so we wouldn’t do another one today, but I was wrong. I did well enough, though.
In any case, let the review of the Wildwood burger begin!
I have to admit that I’m a bit conflicted when it comes to Wildwood. It’s been around for fifteen years at least and it used to be run by a guy who was a few years ahead of me in grade school. The food is supposed to be great, but it’s the kind of place where the rich people from the suburbs like to go. They’ve always had a reputation for a good hamburger, though, and I convinced several others to accompany me to try it. Sean, Erin, and I had the burger and Melissa had a salad.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this is one of the best burgers I’ve had. I’m not sure if the Laurelhurst Market burger is that much better than this one, but I’d give it the edge because this one was a little salty for my tastes. But man, I’d hate to have to make a quick decision between the two. The picture doesn’t do the burger much justice and you can’t really see half of it under all the bacon they gave me on top of it. Above the bacon pile you can see the top bun with the grilled onions. The bun was soft and tasty and the meat was delicious, just the way I like it. They also had a garlic confit, but I wasn’t able to distinguish it amongst the other flavors. It was tasty.
We stuffed ourselves silly and they apologized for the time it took for the burger to be prepared. It wasn’t quick, but we didn’t think it took too long, but they comped us a couple of desserts to make up for it. One was profiteroles stuffed with a chocolate mousse with salty pralines. The other was a lemon semifreddo with huckleberry sauce. Both were delicious. In fact, Melissa thought she would like coming back just for the desserts. I have to say huckleberries are one of my favorite fruits and they really won me over with the lemon semifreddo.
The whole dinner wasn’t all that expensive, either, but I think you have to ask for the bar menu to get the hamburgers. In any case, it’s certainly a place I’d recommend.
I have selfish reasons for learning Spanish. Some of the food we like to eat in Hillsboro is in places where they don’t really speak any English and I have a hard time reading their hand-written menus. I had something today, which looked like flat breaded steak (and tasted like it too) but I can’t remember what it was called besides “Especial de Hoy” which is the only part I understood. Man was it good, though. Beans, rice, tortillas, the meat, guacamole, and it was only $5 to stuff myself silly. I feel bad, though, that I’m going to their restaurant without knowing how to say, “Hello, how are you today? The weather’s getting cooler, isn’t it? Which would you suggest the
That’s the way it goes at Ochoa Super Tacos for me. I point at something, ask what it is, they look at me with a confused look, I look at them with a confused look, and order it anyway.
I’m about to fall apart, I think. My little finger feels like I jammed it, my right hip flexor feels like it’s cramping, and they’re still making me do crazy things at the gym. Run around the building, 20x 20lb ball slams, and 20 jumping squats. I felt like I was sandbagging it a bit but I did get some consistent times and came within a second of a guy who can seriously outrun me. Still, my ass feels sore from the front squats (I should say “glutes” so people don’t get ideas, but it’s my ass) my shoulders are tired from a kettlebell press, and I think I mentioned my various cramps. No wonder my massage guy wants me to take up yoga or pilates instead.
I have to be pretty careful about ice cream because as an Asian dude I have several superpowers including not being attractive to American women and lactose intolerance. The former has very little to do with the ice cream, but the latter does so I have to be picky about eating ice cream or milkshakes or whatnot. My sister told me that the 50 Licks guys would be working the birdwatcher group and if I didn’t try it, she’d kick my ass. They were standing around when I got home today, so I bought two little half-pint containers for $4 each. It’s pretty good and actually tastes like something. The carmel apple has distinctly carmelly tastes, and a little apple as well. It’s not as good as the Baskin & Robins in Japan where everything tasted just like what the label said it would taste like, but it was good. I’m not sure it was $4 good, but the quality and texture were excellent as well. I should stop being so miserly and just say I’m worth it.
I’ve been watching more TV lately, and perhaps that’s rotting my brain. I don’t want it to be complete mush, but it could stand some softening up. It’ll keep me from thinking about weird things too much, like trying to get MMS working on my iPhone before the scheduled 9/25 announced date. That’s just what I need, an inoperable cell phone. It’ll keep me from obsessing about learning how to fix my drywall by myself, too.
For some reason, I’m quite hungry right now. I felt kind of woozy at work today too. Perhaps I have a tapeworm or something. In any case, they went to Blue Plate in downtown Portland on one of the re-run shows and I’m pretty glad that it wasn’t there when I worked in the same building. I think I’d be HUGE if they were there. It’s bad enough that there was tasty stuff all over downtown but if there was fried chicken in the same building I don’t know what I would have done. As it was I only had to walk across the street to get to Huber’s, or around the corner to get to Aroy Thai or Rovente Pizza. And there was a teen modeling agency that did “head shots” with the girls in bikinis across the street. The engineering firm below us had binoculars on their window sills so you know they knew what was going on.
In any case, Blue Plate looks pretty darn tasty.
I got this whole satellite dish mess because I wanted to watch football. I suppose I did that last night when I watched the Ohio State/USC game and the end of the Oregon State game. I got the NFL Direct ticket and I watched almost no NFL football today. The reason is because the DirecTV made me realize that I needed a phone line and network cable upstairs, and that made me realize that the mess the contractors left me with dangling phone lines was unacceptable, and so it was time for me to mess with the wiring again.
If you’ve ever dealt with a sysadmin or a network admin, you either get the guys who wire things up and leave them messy, or the ones who are constantly trying to rewire things to look right. Really, you can’t mess with it much if you want to keep your computers working. In any case, I’m just doing as little as possible but when there are a bunch of things dangling from their cords, you have do do something.
It took all day. I went to my friend Greg’s house to get the scrap of plywood, but he didn’t have anything though he thought he did. We ended up working on his deck for a bit. I called another friend, Brad, who had some but the wrong size. We chatted with him for a while. I went to Home Depot for parts and, as usual, they have ALMOST what I need. I finally got home around 5PM and started in on the actual work. I finished around 10:15PM. I should probably sleep, or watch ESPN to see what I missed today, right? I really did miss Lou Holtz when I didn’t have ESPN.
It’s Friday night and I’m just watching TV shows off of my DVR. Or I would be if it wasn’t so screwed up. Somehow it decided to record LAST WEEK’S Warehouse 13 instead of THIS WEEK’S so I ended up looking for a showing of the right one to record. I missed the first few minutes. Good thing there’s the intarweb for that. Also watched Monk and Psych tonight.
So the birds going into the chimney is one thing, but the crowds are another. Having huge crowds in front of your house for weeks is just a big pain. I blame Dan Viens and his movie, but whatever. Anyway, time for a picture.
My Fridays are usually quite dull and so it’s time for bed.
I was tired at the gym and yet I still managed to do OK on the timed workout. At least I’m happy with my time. I probably would have done better if I wasn’t dragging around and my nose wasn’t full of whatever it’s full of. And I’m not going to get much more rest tonight because I still haven’t started watching the football game on my DVR! And that’s the reason I got DirecTV in the first place!
I’m home late because MattyG dragged me to his favorite hamburger place, Holdens. I must say it’s a good pub burger, but I’m disappointed with it. It was overcooked (standard pub move) and it needed some ketchup. With the ketchup, it was great, but I’m not one for having to doctor up the burger. Give it to me the way you think is right, and I’m going to eat it that way. The meat wasn’t tasty enough to stand on its own. The fries, while tasty, had the nice crunch you only get from the frozen product. I mean it was all quite passable, but it was $12! I’m spoiled, but for that price I could be getting a Laurelhurst Market burger, or for a couple of dollars more a Yakuza burger. I think the Slow Bar burger was only $9 (I could be mistaken). If there is a rating scale of quality to price, this was a $7-8 burger.
Now that I’ve burned my bridges there, it’s on to something new!
I’m sitting here, in front of my computer, clicking on windows like I’m over-caffeinated. I thought I was doing absolutely nothing but showing some sort of indeterminate compulsive behavior then I stopped to see what I was getting done. Turns out there’s all these software updates and I’m actually installing them. The copies from my NAS are slow, making my brain impatient, and I start clicking all over.
So what’s new today?
I’m also looking at all sorts of sites about sheet rock patching. The sheet rock guys said they were finished, and I’d like to fix some more stuff before the painters come back in. I’m watching videos, reading web sites, and remembering what a crappy job I did the last time I tried to do this on my own. I’m likely to do another crappy job, but it’ll wait until the weekend.
Other than that, I really have nothing, and I have to get back to my incessant clicking.