I have lots of excuses for not going to the gym, and one good reason. Well, two good reasons. My mom is leaving for Japan in a couple of days and I figured I should have dinner with her. Plus, my elbow hurts when I pick anything up with my left arm, and it’s getting better, so I should probably lay off that arm until it gets better. So really, I had a pretty good reason for slacking today.

I should really go to sleep earlier but today my sister called and told me that there was something happening on House and I keep hearing that there’s a big development and I have to find the episode and see if this is the one with surprise. I’m staying up to see what it is, and woo, and there it is. So much for going to bed early, I have to watch this whole thing.

There are always a couple of days in spring in Portland that are incredibly nice and make us think we’ve turned the corner from winter. But really there’s no early break and we go back to cold and rainy most years. The bright sunny weather does bring out lots of people and also crowds the roads with bicyclists who have no business being out in traffic. I almost saw one crushed between two cars as she wove in and out of traffic and then rode between the world’s worst parallel parker and a parked car. The worst part for me, of course, is that it’s the start of hay fever season.

I spent most of this beautiful day indoors, in a dusty room, just shoveling my dad’s crap into boxes. It takes too long to sort through stuff and I really need to get the room cleared out by the end of the week. I’m not going to make it, I think. The dust doesn’t do much for my hay fever, either. Lifting the boxes didn’t do much for my arm. So really, this first really nice day of spring has been a joy all around.

First off, for those wondering, I went on a blind date and it went well. I don’t want to say too much, but I guess I can say that she wouldn’t be approved by Mrs. Oh, but that just means she’s not 6′ tall and Korean. And now I know why John suggested we don’t get the tapas, she’s tiny and she doesn’t eat much. That just meant I wanted to eat a burrito afterwards. Or a cheeseburger. Or maybe fried chicken. I think maybe a cheeseburger.

I went to Five Guys Burger and Fries yesterday and the burger was one of the tastiest greasy burgers I’ve had. I still prefer my In-N-Out but this is one of the best substitutes I’ve found. Much better than that inconsistent Helvetia Tavern nonsense.

I was supposed to empty out my dad’s old bedroom this weekend but I took today off because my arm hurts. In fact, I can’t even raise it over waist high sometimes. I even went to get a massage to try to fix it and it’s kind of a mess. My back and arm are all knotty. I may need to take some time off from the gym and what’s up with that? But it did give me a chance to finish Monsters of Templeton so now it’s time for the Kindle!

So I usually don’t write about my dates on here until things have gone horribly awry, but I figure I can talk about blind dates in general. But how would I know? I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever gone out on a blind date before. Internet dating, once. Willamette Week dates twice. This is in several decades of trying, mind you. I figure I must be even more underwhelming on paper than I am in real life.

In any case, I’m going on a blind date tomorrow. I know hardly anything about her but I guess that’s the interesting part of all this. The problem is that I’m supposed to act like a normal person and, really, my charm is not in the normal or fake normal arena. I figure the worst that could happen is that she (or he — I really know nothing about this person) is humorless. That would be truly awkward. OK, it could be worse: they could be smelly and then try to kill me at some point. But I’m hoping for a normal dating situation. If this goes the way of my recent experiences, she either won’t show up or she’ll bring her boyfriend. I’m an eternal optimist.

Speaking of which, I’m optimistically thinking of getting some actual sleep tonight, so I better get off my silly computer. I know there’s something I’m supposed to do, but I can’t remember what it is. Cleaning my mom’s fancy espresso machine was on the list of forgotten tasks, as is watching some TV show from earlier in the week, and finishing the last book I have standing between me and my Kindle 2. Oh, and clearing out my dad’s old bedroom. The bedroom is so filled with crap that the contractor usually goes in, puts his hands on his hips, blows out a breath through pursed lips, and says, “Wow that’s a lot of crap.” I just have to find a place to stash the crap for a little while so the flooring can be redone. It also needs a new window, new plaster, and new paint, but I’ll worry about that after I get all the crap out of the room.

Jeebus, what got your panties in a knot? Do you realize that not everyone is at the gym to become a obsessive denier of pleasure who counts the number of almonds they eat in a day so they can make sure their body fat is exactly 2.000000% of their entire body mass? That some of us are there with no other goal than to BALANCE OUT A SHITTY DIET? (We’re not trying to gain on it. Just as an example, I had fried chicken, Greek fries, and an M&M cookie at the Mad Greek Deli today and it was GLORIOUS.) That I can yammer on and even complain in the gym during particular exercises like ring rows because there’s no way I’m ever going to cardiovascular failure on that, just muscle failure? That marginal gains in fitness add up over time without actually permanently hurting you? (I know you don’t hurt yourself that often, but wait ’til you get older and creakier.)

Yeah, I know, I’m not exactly the one you’re talking to, I’m often the guy resting his head on the bannister during rest periods, mumbling incoherently, trying to get some air in my lungs before the next round. And I know some people need to push a bit harder, but I just wanted to balance out your rant. We’re all going to Recreate Fitness, and not Look-at-my-sky-high-testosterone-level Fitness. And even the people who look like they’re slacking a little, who don’t look like the fittest people you’d meet in a gym, are working a lot harder at Recreate Fitness than they would at a local generic gym.

We’re all kinds of people and I support everyone &mdash as long as they’re not in the way of my jingle-jangles or heavy medball carries. We know who we are and what we can do.

So I say to you all, get in there and sweat and I’ll make sure to mop up afterwards.

Speaking of which, how much extra am I paying to mop those floors anyway?

Somehow it seems like it should be later in the week. Maybe it’s all the drugs. I’m feeling much better today, but it was one of those days where you’re supposed to go as hard as you can for 15 seconds, rest for 15 seconds, and then go again. I thought I was going to pass out at one point which would have been a bit embarrassing because I know THMFIC would still make me mop the floor. The brains behind the gym is back from her trip to SoCal, though, and so I’m guessing his days of wandering aimlessly around his house poking at things trying to figure out how they work without reading any manuals is over.

There has to be something interesting that I can write about that won’t get me in trouble, but I can’t think of what it could be. I read today about how some PR dude got in trouble for twittering that he hated Memphis before giving a presentation to FedEx, who are based in Memphis. I mean, holy hell, can’t the guy have an opinion? Don’t the people at FedEx have a frigging sense of humor? I really don’t want to live in the south, either. In fact, I’m trying hard to avoid ever going to Texas in my life. OK, so not really trying HARD, but I’m telling myself that I’m going to use my sheer force of will to keep me out of that state and some of the adjoining states like Oklahoma or Arkansas. Then again, I had to drive through parts of Kentucky a couple years ago and I even went to a Microsoft conference in San Diego. (I was too conscientious to skip out, so it could have been in Peoria for all the sightseeing I didn’t do in San Diego.) Texas is probably not all that bad, comparatively, plus they have all that barbecue.

What am I saying? I’m avoiding Texas. Yes. And anything south of, say, San Diego. I watched those shows on parasites on the Discovery Channel back when it was the airplanes and tropical diseases channel and not the Mythbuster/blow-stuff-up channel like it is now. Guinea worms! Malaria! Dengue fever! It all comes when you get south of the border. And by “the border” I think I mean the city limits of Santa Barbara. That’ll even keep me out of LA, another place where you could catch me twittering about how I’d hate to live there. You can even tell my boss. He has a sense of humor.

I’d make a graph as to how hot a woman would have to be to get me to live in the South (again) or Los Angeles, but I’m not sure of the units of woman heat. It’s probably something metric and just plain confusing like Kelvin. I mean, Kelvin doesn’t even line up right with Celsius. Who was the marketing genius who came up with that? Dry ice, -77°C. What was I talking about again?

Meetings seem overrated to begin with, but when you get last-minute meetings that go from 11AM to 3PM you know you’ve done something wrong. Or at the very least someone thinks you’ve done something wrong and you’re being punished. In any case, it really felt like a Monday and I’m lucky to have survived it.

It was also my first real day of hay fever symptoms this year. I took some Claratin, and I felt sleepy all day. But today was also the first day that my back felt OK when I got up and that made for a relatively easier time at the gym. Relatively, because I still feel more tired than I usually do, and the first lap around the building I wondered if I could do any more (I did 6 more, along with the cleans and burpees that went along with them.) Still, having to stop in the middle of a workout to blow my nose was a little weird.

My back’s been hurting again and yesterday after working out at the gym I was looking forward to taking a handful of Advil and taking a nap. I did go out to breakfast at the Tin Shed and stuffed myself so it was the best idea I could think of. But I got a call from a friend who wanted help moving. I’ve known his family since way before he was born and I couldn’t say no. He’s even had some health issues lately, so that trumped any sensible thoughts of taking it easy on my back.

Today was much more of the sitting around I was planning on doing yesterday. I finished A Spot of Bother which was a good book that made me feel uneasy through most of it, though nothing truly horrible happened in the storyline. Some friends from the gym came by in the afternoon and got me out of the house, but at what cost? A bird pooped on the side of my head. I keep hearing that’s lucky, but I think the only lucky part is if I don’t end up with the bird ‘flu. Ah, well, it’s not as bad as if something larger and more mammalian pooped on my head. If I had to make a choice, I suppose cloaca poo is the way to go. But why would I have to make such a choice?

I’ve been waiting for about an hour for my Mac to update iLife and iWork and I’m close to giving up now. I’m even resorting to blogging on my iPhone which is usually more painful than it’s worth. Give me a real keyboard any day.

In any case, I was a little under the weather today and almost went home mid-morning like I did on Tuesday but I have a surprisingly large amount of questions popping up from all sorts of customers this week. I felt a little better by the end of the day and should have stayed home from the gym but I made it in for several silly reasons. The biggest reason is sheer compulsiveness, as always. It was a long cardio workout and I was sucking wind the whole time. And cranky too. There is a small subset of people at the gym who find it cool to throw their dumbbells and kettlebells and it pisses me off for some reason. I think its the noise, mostly, though it is dangerous because the rubber mats and bumpers make the weights, 20-100lbs, jump around and they could hurt someone.

The noise just reminds me of the loud guy in the next cubicle over at work who is the worlds loudest typist and noisy in general. All day long he sounds like he’s hocking up a lung and farts loudly. He also grunts while he eats and generally makes me glad I have an iPod every day hes at work. Customer phone calls are also a joy when he’s around.

Oh well I better call it a night before my thumbs fall off.

And yet another personal defect I’ve found today: I can’t remember to lay off of exercises when I’m coming off an illness. When I get sick, my back gets hurt pretty easily and I should remember this when I’m at the gym. We were doing 10x deadlifts and box jumps and my back cramped up a little on the deadlifts and I certainly felt it jumping down off the box. I substituted something else, but I should have known better. When I got up this morning I felt much better than I did yesterday, but my back was a little tight.

Oh, and what a great nights sleep I had. I started with kids parking across the street and being so boisterous that the cops were called. Then, around 5AM, I found out that the country code for El Salvador is the same as the area code for Portland, Oregon, 503. That’s because I got THREE calls that were for El Salvador at 5:09AM, 5:16AM, and 5:17AM. If you dial 011 you get international dialing, then if you dial another 1 by mistake you get Estados Unidos and then when you dial 503 you get Oregon, and the rest is the phone that happens to ring in my bedroom. In the past half-year, I’ve only gotten phone calls from four people I care about (3 dudes and my sister) and a half dozen telemarketers. It’s just dumb luck that I got a call from someone calling for El Salvador.

In any case, the high point of my month is tomorrow. I’m sorry Grayson, it wasn’t the lunch we all had on Saturday, but it’s the day I finally get to start using my new shower again! The grout has been resealed and we’ve given it more than three days to cure.

I wish the zenith of my month could have been more exciting, and I even tried going on a date, but the most interesting thing for me is the actual use of the rooms I’m getting renovated. Which reminds me, I still need to clear out my dad’s old bedroom and have it refloored, recarpeted, and repainted. Ah, the excitement in my life is neverending. This reminds of a song by Limahl. I really shouldn’t have had that glass of wine with dinner.

I knew things wouldn’t be going that well when I got up in the middle of the night and my stomach felt like I’d eaten cement. When I got up this morning I just felt lightheaded and just not quite right. I’m used to this being a symptom along with a head cold, but this was different. I left work early and finally took a sick day. I still got on my computer and checked my email, but most of the day I just took it easy.

I did, finally, do my mom’s taxes and I sorted through all the credit card bills I was piling up. I can’t say anything exciting happened, but I got some things done. I just hope I feel better tomorrow.

I guess I was the first one to finish our normal workout at the gym (it was timed) though three people were faster than me in the earlier class. That’s good enough for me. I knew Nicky would be faster than me, so I decided not to fight in his weight class and picked up heavier weights. HaHA! Not that it really means anything. You just need to compare your own times and just use the people around you as motivation. Today, we ran two laps, and did a 30-20-10 of dumbbell deadlifts and dumbbell push press. Jeff was faster than me on the middle of the workout, though he doesn’t run as fast as I do now. I made it back in after two laps around the building first, but he caught up to me on the 30, and we were pacing each other throughout. I took off out of the building just before he did and I think I made it around the corner as he was coming out. The thing is, I felt out of breath and wanted to walk, but I could hear him behind me. I thought I was going to throw up but I kept pushing myself and finished in pretty good time.

I forgot to mention that it was in the high 30’s and raining when we were out there and I was pretty miserable and cold. The sound of Jeff’s footsteps behind me was really the rain falling off of the building because when I finally decided to look behind me, he wasn’t there. I’m still not willing to push myself to the point of throwing up, but I was lying on the ground for a while after this.

I get grief from THMFIC for my old t-shirts that I wear to the gym. I have a lot of running shirts from my sister and I figure nobody’s going to care at the gym. The long-sleeved t-shirt I had was from 1990. I had to admit to someone who told me she was 9 at that time that I was 26 then. That sort of math makes me feel old, probably because I am old. Ah, well, it’s still a long way to 91, where my dad just about made it to.

And if anyone else is keeping track of my bathroom woes: I get to start using my shower again on Thursday. Finally!