Day after day I post things because how else am I going to pretend that anyone cares what I do on a day-to-day basis? Heck, I even find it tedious and uninteresting for the most part. All I’ve figured out this weekend is that some of my socks say “R” and “L” and I can’t seem to put them on the right feet. I suppose there isn’t all that much more I’ve learned this weekend.

I did go to a friend’s housewarming party on Friday where I ended up drinking more than I should have, which is at all on a night before a Saturday morning workout at the gym. But instead of taking a nap that afternoon, I was busy moving things out of the old gym for fun. The old mats will now be heading for a barn to protect horses from the concrete floor and while we were always tracking dirt into the gym, the horses will be using the floor as a bathroom as well.

And even after being up all day, being tired from staying up late, and having daylight savings time take an an additional hour from my beauty sleep, I still didn’t sleep that well last night. And now I really should be in bed instead of watching movies on my computer, but it still feels early.

At least the phone isn’t ringing for the second time today. Nobody ever calls, but I got a collect call from the county jail this afternoon and I didn’t accept it because the person didn’t give a name. Even as I wasn’t answering, I thought it might be one of my friends needing some help so I immediately called everyone who has called my home phone in the past three months, at least everyone who isn’t a telemarketer. The list, sadly, is quite short and I only ended up calling five people who all laughed at me. None of them is at risk for getting into trouble with the police, of course, but sometimes you can have a bad day. So far it’s still a mystery who called. Maybe it was a telemarketer.

So as I’m headed to the gym today, it starts POURING. The rain is cascading down the street and I have to put my windshield wipers on high. It dies down on my 5 minute drive there and when I arrive, PEOPLE ARE RUNNING AROUND THE BLOCK. I guess it’s “Helen” day at the gym:

• 2 laps around the building
• 21 kettle bell swings
• 12 pullups

THREE TIMES THROUGH

I just wasn’t feeling it today. Our skills workout was one-arm kettlebell push presses x3 and I got up to 36kg, but I was breathing hard and feeling pretty tired every time I push pressed. I think all the leg work early in the week, all the core work yesterday, and something else this week to toast my shoulders made me zombie-like in demeanor. Seriously, I was wondering if I was going to see my lunch just from the push press.

But it was the workout, and so far this year I’ve just gone for it. If you just push through the workouts, you get steadily fitter. I now have some base fitness and I can make it through most of them with a good time and with good form. Not great, but good. And today, to my surprise, I was the first one through in our class. That’s even doing two extra pullups because I thought I miscounted on the first round and having a drippy runny nose from having to run out in the cold rain. That’s my excitement for the day.

I’m not sure what this is but I saw it on another blog and found it an amusing use of youtube videos.

I really hate rebates but they usually seem to pay them. I would have said they’ve always paid them until I bought something from Tiger Direct and they stiffed me. I think it was $50-100 or so, and I’m certainly not buying anything from them again. Looking at google, I’m probably lucky just to be out whatever I am out. The rebate I got is from Sandisk and it’s a VISA debit card. I’m not sure if I’ll have the same kind of trouble I’ve had in the past where I have to keep track of how much is on the card or merchants can’t use it.

Rebates are kind of silly for me. I’ll buy something that’s too expensive that I barely need, knowing I’m getting a rebate. Then when I get the rebate I’ll think of it as free money and spend it frivolously. I suppose that’s what the merchants are counting on. Also, I now have four 8G SD memory cards and I can probably only use one or two of them since I don’t take that many pictures. And looking at the manual I can hold 1580 pictures per card at the highest resolution.

Ah, well. Maybe I can use this card towards the frivolous purchase of a Kindle 2. I’m still not going to buy one until I finish the books I have stacked on my desk and I’ve been too busy to read them lately. Maybe I’ll buy some illuminated light switches or some other boring home improvement stuff.

Of course I’m really tired during the day, but I’m never tired when I should get to sleep. I suppose it has to do with going to the gym late in the day and then eating dinner even later. Oh, well. That’s just the way life goes, I suppose. And what would be the purpose of being wide awake at work anyway? I probably wouldn’t have an excuse for trying to drink my body weight in bad work coffee.

There have been a lot of pictures of me at the gym looking old and tired. As Megan points out, that’s because I’m old and tired. Perhaps instead of going to the gym, I should be getting more rest. This could be facilitated if I had THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. I could buy a completely upholstered house and hire someone to de-lint it on a daily basis. I could sleep whereever I wanted. I could also have another house that has TEN THOUSAND square feet of floor space. I wouldn’t need furniture. I could just spread everything out all over the floor. I wouldn’t even worry about heating costs. I could hire someone to worry for me.

As you can see, there’s a good reason I’m just old and tired and whatever is controlling the universe has made sure I don’t get that THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS.

Hmmm. I guess I could stand to lose some winter weight. I’m looking pretty Asian there which is a good thing because Megan will tell you, I’m old, tired and Asian as well.

I was back at the gym today and I’ve now realized that I can’t judge the workouts by looking at them on the whiteboard. It was seven rounds of seven medball cleans, seven burpees, and seven ring rows. Why did I think it was going to be easy? I even started out wrong. I did ten burpees the first round and then made up for it by doing four the second round. Fortunately, someone else was counting the number of rounds for us or I would have been completely confused as to when to stop. We were supposed to take a leisurely 2 laps around the building to finish up but you know some of our definitions of leisurely weren’t quite right. Fried chicken for lunch might have been a mistake.

The floor to my old bedroom is now finished and the carpet is supposed to come in tomorrow. I’m not sure when the installer is supposed to be here, but it shouldn’t be too much longer. This weekend I may need to move my bedroom crap back upstairs and then I get to empty out my dad’s old room so we can work on that. That is if Jason the Contractor isn’t tired of all the work he’s done so far. I can only imagine how much more work there is to do on the house.

I finally went to see the movie Coraline today and the worst part was trying to quickly read through the credits to find the names of my friends who work at Laika. I saw two guys in the IT department, but no one else. I know some of their names must be in the credits but I missed them nevertheless. The movie was very well done and fun to watch. The 3-D made my eyes bug out a little. The only really bad part was that the tickets, during matinee pricing, was $11 for a ticket! Come on people, this is Portland, not some metropolis.

I’m still staring at the Kindle 2 in my Amazon shopping cart. I still have several books in my “to be read” pile and so I’m not in a huge hurry. In fact, I’m currently reading Shinjuku Shark, a book my mom read in the original Japanese. The gadgety goodness still beckons. It’s not like I’m going to spend it on dating or anything (and just as an update, 2 months, 0 dates — I wonder how Carolyn is doing.)

At least when I go to the gym, I make it out of the house for a while. Today, however, I took the day off because my back hurt yesterday and I didn’t want to aggravate it. I don’t feel that bad, but who wants to make things worse? Instead I spent ALL DAY (that means from about 10AM to 7PM) doing my taxes. Most of it was just taking all the Goodwill receipts and entering them into a the “It’s Deductible” web site so I could get them into TurboTax. It paid off financially but my mother’s penmanship is atrocious and it took some doing to figure out what it was we gave them.

It’s funny. I don’t mind paying my taxes and I’ll even support paying more, but I sure do like getting a refund.

I have even more Kindle 2 envy now. My sister came by this morning because she was doing her long run in the neighborhood and she brought the Kindle 2 so I could look at it. I’m not sure if it will save me any money in the long run. Now when I buy books, I lend them to my sister and she lends me her books as well, so we spend less than we normally would. But buying a Kindle 2 will cut down on all the trees I’m killing, won’t it? Oh, the choices we have to make.

So now I just have to do my mom’s taxes. At least hers are usually a lot easier to handle.

I’m not sure what it was, but it’s been coming all week. After going to the gym, I’d feel a sharp twinge in my back, the same sharp pain that laid me up before, but it would go away quickly. Today, however, after warming up and deadlifting we were supposed to do 3 rounds of 2 laps around the block, 5 pistol squats each leg, and 20 ball slams. On my second round I felt the sharp pain in my back and it wasn’t going away. It wasn’t intense enough to make me have to stop, but I wasn’t going to push it. I figure this means I get to take tomorrow off as well. Even after four Advil, I still feel things in my back. There’s no need to be laid up for several weeks again.

I was awfully tired at work today, so I might not be on my “A” game. I drank twice as much coffee as I usually do (four cups instead of my usual two) and I was still falling asleep. Unless they changed all the coffee to decaf (which would stifle productivity) I’m thinking that the week is really catching up to me.

Well, Jay the Contractor pointed out that he shouldn’t get rid of all the insulation between my bedroom floor and the kitchen below because it cuts down on noise transfer. So one of the big reasons I had for wanting the floor replaced was nullified. The new floor is partially in and it actually seems greatly improved. They glued it and nailed it with ring-shank nails and it’s a lot stiffer and sturdier. And even more important, the contractors found out that the clowns who did the second-story addition forgot to nail any of the the floor joists to the wall. ANY OF THEM. Jason fixed it, so yet another reason that I’m glad I have him on my side, even though I probably need a lot more money to finish all the repairs.

In any case, I won’t be at the gym tomorrow and will have more time than I thought I would so I’ll probably doing something really exciting: my taxes. I love life.

I’m not sure my body likes anything that’s good for me. Fresh fruit and vegetables mess with my digestive system. I seem to need a modicum of grease in my diet and I may just have to resort to eating some fried chicken tomorrow. Tonight my mom made me eat some liquid tofu. Last time I had it I got heartburn and I wasn’t sure what it was that did that to me. I’m narrowing it down, however, and liquid tofu is high on my list.

I have envelopes piled on my desk and I often use them to take weird notes. I have no idea why there are phone numbers on my health insurance, nor whose phone numbers they are. Since the only phone calls I can remember getting lately are from bill collectors looking for someone else, I can’t believe the numbers are important. Perhaps they’re a winning lottery number or the password for my ever-dwindling retirement account. Who knows? I very much doubt that it’s anything interesting, though.

My sister just got her Kindle 2 from Amazon and I had to call to ask how it was. She’s been lording it over me that she had one on order and now she has it. I’m pretty jealous and I have dumb reasons on why I want one. I’ve read books on computer in the past, including almost ruining my eyes reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander on a Toshiba Dynabook with a failing backlight. She was an online friend and she sent me her book on floppy disks. But that’s not a big reason; I don’t need to make my eyes any worse. But I do have troubles reading books because I don’t break the spine on books and I often hold them with my left hand. My hand cramps up and makes it difficult to keep reading. I figure the Kindle 2 might help. It’s really just a case of gadget lust.

I felt a lot better at the gym today, though it’s probably psychological and not physiological. Though I agree with Megan that I’m getting old, I’m going to keep pretending that I’m not. But I do keep seeing pictures of myself and wonder who the old guy came from.

I guess I’m a quitter. I gave up bicycling cold turkey to start running, and I gave up running when I started back to work and decided that going to the gym would be better time-wise. And today, coincidentally, I’ve read two articles that tell me that I should seriously think about knocking off the booze. Shirt Off John at the gym took some notes about drinking after going down to Gym Jones in Salt Lake City that kind of point out that drinking might be why my energy is down this week. The biochemistry is what I’m interested in (as an organic chemist). The other article I saw was from the BBC and was mainly talking about women drinking alcohol and cancer, and how one drink a day raised all types of cancer rates in women by 6%, but really who needs that whether they’re male or female?

Great. Now I have to find another hobby.

I was also thinking I’m 0 for 2 on this monthly date thing, and the real reason I now have to want to go on a date is to go to some of the restaurants I keep hearing about. I can’t keep going with Il all the time. Then again, if I don’t go I won’t drink or overeat and I’ll save some money. All my spare money is going to Jay the Contractor anyway.

Or is that waxes and wanes? In any case, I think I’m on a downhill slide for energy at the gym, but I was sick last week (twice in fact) so I’m not surprised. I was even feeling a little slowed down today, which is no surprise. I should probably get more sleep.

Other than that, it’s Monday. I was looking at age appropriate singles ads the other day and I noticed every single one of the women looked pissed off. No wonder I look at the women who are too young for me. I’m pretty sure I’m going to disappoint someone so I’m not all that sure I want to meet someone who is pre-disappointed.