I was stuck in a training at work all day which meant I had a salad for lunch. Salad for dinner, salad for lunch, and I don’t really think there’s enough calories there to keep going at the gym. Plus it made my stomach feel funny, enough that any exercise that required abdominal strength was hard to do. At least that’s my excuse. Plus I’m old. I almost beat Sean, but he came tearing around the corner on the last lap and I couldn’t keep up with him. Heck, I had to mop the floor afterwards and all he had to do is lie there and not move for a while. 🙂

Tomorrow we’re planning on getting hamburgers. My sister suggested the new Laurelhurst Market, and Sean has some other ideas as well. We’ll see how well that works into my plans.

I’m not even sure I’m losing any weight from this salad kick. I started it because I was eating dinner rather late in the evening and I was wondering if that was what caused my massive FIVE POUND weight gain. Or more. I dunno. So in true delayed gratification form, I decided to eat like a rabbit for dinner which just caused me to fantasize about cheeseburgers and fried chicken. Plus, I’ve been having more stomach troubles than usual. I’m not sure this is worth it, but why give up the experiment after only a few weeks? Next up, though, may just be an ice cream diet to see if that helps things out at all including my weight and my performance at the gym.

It’s my sister’s birthday and it’s also time for me to be ridiculous and start screwing with the database that is behind my blog. I could be melodramatic and say it’s like playing with plutonium, but really this is only my own blog and not something people are paying me for. I suppose I should back some of the stuff up, but like I said, my own blog.

But I digress. It’s my sister’s birthday and I asked her what she wanted. We go through this every year. My brother-in-law has a rule, you only get a couple days of leeway after your birthday and if you haven’t picked anything out then you get NOTHING. Well, we Fujinaka’s aren’t real good at celebrating birthdays or any other sort of occasions, so my rule is she gets to pick whatever she wants any time after I ask. I usually ask a couple of weeks before her birthday and she usually tells me what she wants in October sometime. Her Xmas presents come in February, too, which really doesn’t matter either since we’re not Xtian.

My stomach still felt odd, but at least it didn’t hurt today. I did an experiment and drank some more chocolate milk and now I’m wondering if the real problem is chugging an ice-cold Gatorade. It would make more sense. I do have an appointment to see my doctor. I figure it’s about time for a checkup anyway. I asked if at my age I should be coming in for some routine maintenance, changing the oil, rotating the tires. My doctor is probably going to stare blankly at me and ask why the hell I came in if nothing was bothering me. I’m not sure he gets the whole preventative maintenance thing.

I wonder if i’ve gotten so old that I can’t afford to eat any spicy at all. I woke up in the middle of the night with a stomachache and it didn’t get any better all day long. All because I had a Buffalo Chicken sandwich? I wonder if it’s a creamed cauliflower diet for me now. I suppose I’m really old. My little sister’s birthday is tomorrow and she’s really old too.

I have very little else going on because I had to come home early and take a nap because my stomach hurt. Then I paid some bills because I’m so exciting, and now it’s time to sleep some more. Whew, that’s life in the fast lane.

I never can get to sleep right after I get home, even when I get home at 1:40AM. So last night I made a list of things I should do. Some of the things were pretty simple, like “move the pedal wrenches back downstairs” and others just sounded simple like “mail in the Greencine DVDs”. I’ve had the Greencine CDs for five months, though, so that could be harder than it sounds. In any case, I did a bunch of little errands, several hours of yardwork, pulling more nails and cutting out old pipe out of the attic space, and just more than I’d really expect from myself today.

I also took apart one of the antennas I had sitting in the backyard. It used to be up on the roof but it’s been down for years because of the poor radio conditions. Being a good ham would mean I should keep all the bits that I could reuse and store them forever, especially if it looked like it could save me some money even though in reality it cost me more. Instead I took all the metal bits and put them in the recycling bin. My friend Greg pointed out this is because I’m a horrible socialist and I know what’s best for other people, and what’s best is that they don’t put this used antenna way up on a tower and have it fail. I also think that since I’m a lefty liberal I actually practice trickle-down economics and don’t think of it like the right-wing does, as an abstract thing like the Easter bunny. I’ll just buy a new one when I need it.

I keep thinking about buying a new car and I keep talking myself out of it. I had a 2000 Honda S2000, and now that it’s 2009 and they’re not going to be making them any longer, I was thinking I should get another. Pretty foolish idea, though. My buddy Il reminded me that I got hit a bunch of times in the S2000. Not while I was in the car, but it’s pretty tiny and people would run into it all the time. They do it to my Civic from time to time as well, but not nearly as often. I also realized that the only reason the cool kids from the gym hang out with me is because they don’t have cars right now and I do. Yet another reason to keep a car that seats 5.

So there you go. I may not have sat on my ass all day, but you can bet that’s what I really wanted to do.

It’s funny when I go to a Portland event and I don’t recognize anyone. Usually I know someone that I didn’t know would be there. In this case I didn’t, because I don’t know that many hipsters and I want to keep it that way. I stayed off the dance floor because it didn’t take long in that room make my ears ring, and I also was just hanging out with the people I went with. Since I was driving, I tried to keep my drinking on the boring side. I had a glass of water and had to steal a bottle of ginger ale that was supposed to go in the mojito mix. I’ve never heard of ginger ale in a mojito, so I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about stealing it.

In any case, I’ve now proved to myself that I’m good and old and shouldn’t be at late night parties, though a good percentage of the people at the party probably were my age. Driving this late at night is pretty easy as well. I’m sure I’m going to pay for this tomorrow.

I kept talking about going home early today, but I was there until 5PM. Made a quick and boring trip to Costco on the way home, but after I got there my sister delivered something I’d been waiting for: a Nail Hunter. I saw it at my brother-in-law’s and I wanted to try it out to see if I could pry out some problem nails from the old wood in the basement. It’s better than I expected, really, and can pull out nails and staples that my pry bars and cat’s paws were not working on. I pulled out all the insulation staples and sheetrock nails from the bedroom that’s torn apart right now, and even got out a bunch of problem nails from the basement rafters. I still ended up with busted knuckles and blisters, but the nails that weren’t budging are now gone.

Pretty exciting Friday evening, huh? I can’t believe how interesting my life is.

I don’t suppose all the John Hughes movies were from my high school days, though it really seems like it to me. They were from when I was in college, hating life, thinking that even though high school sucked, it might have been better than the hell I went through at M.I.T. In any case, the movies were from when I was young, the future looked bright, and a midlife crisis wasn’t even imaginable. Look at me now, a midlife crisis is something I’m scheduling for next Tuesday. Thank you Mr. Hughes for reminding me of my youth.

Speaking of aging, we did “Helen” at the gym today. Run 2 laps, 21 24kg kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups. It was fairly awful. I did it in 10:05 after sucking at a push press, dropping 145lbs. I’m never getting over 135lbs for the push press, am I? I could blame the time, which really isn’t so bad, on things like the fumes in the house — we just got icynene insulation sprayed in — but it’s probably my best “Helen” time so far. Not bad for an old man.

The only other excitement today was buying new tires at Les Schwab. Any more exciting and I’m going to need one my friends in the medical field to make sure I still have a pulse.

I went to the gym today and it was more difficult than I thought. My abs felt kind of puny and I couldn’t do the exercises like I was used to. It was a weird feeling afterwards, realizing it was Tuesday since Monday was a sick day for me. Tuesday means it’s Wage Slave day! And this week’s episode was about our friend Melissa’s character. They even filmed part of it at Sean and Melissa’s house.

The gym might have been a slightly bad idea, but rehydrating like I usually do was a much worse idea. My stomach was cramping even worse than yesterday. I’m hoping that’s all over now, because I have to go to work tomorrow to see what surprises lay in store for me. It keeps my job interesting and it’s also why they pay me.

I got up this morning and my stomach felt funny, funny enough that I called in sick. It didn’t really clear up all day and I even took a short nap after lunch that lasted until 4:15. I can’t sleep that much unless I’m really sick, so I figure this was the day to take off. My intestines are still giving me the gurgly warnings you don’t want if you need to leave the house.

So, other than that I really have nothing. I just got off the phone from a friend complaining that his eHarmony date said she’d be busy for the rest of the month, and it’s only the 3rd of this month. I suppose I have no suggestions other than to GIVE UP NOW. I just watched Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and it’s made me a little sad so I thin I’ll wait to give him my opinion.

I should probably use some tricks from revisionist historians and just tell myself that everything on my list was whatever it is I did today, and I think I did do at least one thing on my list. However, having a headache and napping is what my list would have been otherwise. I had lunch with my sister and Megan at Cafe Nell, where I made some disparaging remarks to someone who said, “Obama has changed us into a socialist nation.” Yeah, if that’s the case, where’s my government check? One I can live on?

Megan’s up trying to box up some of the things in her grandfather’s house and I think they have the opposite problem that my sister and I have about the inheritance. I think we’re all convinced that the stuff my dad bought was fairly cheap and junky and so there is no real value to any of it, just sentimental value. After you’ve seen thousands of things with minimal sentimental value, you just want to chuck most of it and send the rest to Goodwill. But Megan’s stuff looks better than that, unfortunately. There’s going to be a lot of sorting in her future.

The thing that was on my list was to put together one of the kits my sister got me from Japan. I had this this Gakken Analog Synthesizer that just needed to be screwed together and it was fun for about fifteen minutes. I”m sure I’ll play with it later, but for now I’ve made enough annoying blips and bloops out of the thing. I also moved some furniture to allow the contractors to access the attic space, and I returned my neighbor’s hand truck (finally). In any case, I guess I did do something today.

I’m trying to remember how I found out that a friend from the gym was moving today. He’s over 30, so he’s past the point of asking friends to move. Most people in their 30’s should just pony up the cash and pay someone to move, but Orion is a student without much money. I offered the use of my brother-in-law’s truck, which he thinks probably saved him $70 in U-Haul fees. On the plus side, Orion didn’t have all that much stuff and we probably could have crammed ALL his stuff in the pickup. On the minus side, my brother-in-law’s truck is a beast without air conditioning and it was a lot hotter today than I was expecting. I also wear long pants when I’m helping someone move, so that didn’t help matters. I thought it was especially hot in the truck and when I got to my sister’s house to return it I was kind of in a daze and locked my keys in the trunk of my car. Later, my brother-in-law informed me that the the heater hoses in the pickup fell off and hot air was pumping into the cab.

We couldn’t find my spare car key. We could only find my valet key, which would let me into the passenger compartment of my car and let me drive but wouldn’t let me into the trunk, where my only know car key was located. When I got home, we searched the house to no avail. I finally called Hillsboro Honda, but their service department just closed for the day. I called Beaverton Honda (which is closer anyway) and they suggested ways of taking apart pieces of the car to get to the trunk-opening cable. They also told me that they could cut me a key that would let me into the car and the trunk, but wouldn’t start the car because that required a special chip. I drove out to Beaverton and they cut me the key for free!

I made it to my evening’s plans, Rogue’s Bones & Brew. It’s a mini-brewfest (very small) which also had almost a dozen barbecue establishments competing against each other. I must admit I’m a bit of a racist because even though my first consideration was against establishment that didn’t show visible smoke and my second consideration was against establishments that said “it’s all in the sauce,” my final judgement was for the establishment that had only African-Americans manning the booth.

I was rewarded for my racism, as my second-choice establishment wasn’t nearly as good (I tried both).

I planned on eating until I ran out of money or until I was full. Unfortunately, I was full pretty quickly.

I walked a woman (one of my fellow gym rats) home since it was on my way, but I’m not sure what it says about me that it wasn’t until after she got inside that I thought about going for ice cream. Instead of asking her to go, I called my mom and asked if she wanted any. A pint of Alotto Gelato to go, please.

I shouldn’t have eaten Filipino food for lunch. I think it sat kind of heavy in my stomach. We usually go to Mexican restaurants four times a week and one of my co-workers, the one who drives, wanted some variety. We went to JP Cuisine in Hillsboro where I had curry chicken, chicken apatado (I think), lumpia (delicious pork spring rolls), and pancit (vermicelli noodles). It’s mainly does catering and take-out so there are only three or four tables, and the food is in warming trays like you’d find at Happy Panda. It was DELICIOUS. They give you tastes of things and I was thinking of getting the tripe dish. I forget what it was called, but it was tasty.

In any case, that probably wasn’t what slowed me down most at the gym. I picked up fairly heavy weights: “Orion heavy,” as we like to say. I’m also usually tired by this time of the week and the 100+°F weather isn’t helping things. I can sleep thanks to the central air, but the upstairs is still pretty darn hot. And look at that, I’m too stupid to go to bed early. Good to see that some things don’t change.