Moo

I'm quite happy with my new cow template, which used to be a lighthouse template until I killed most of the pictures and replaced them with my own. Now the rocks in the far lower right corner might be cow pies. Who can say for sure which they are?

The Christmas Miracles and the Boring Friday Night

The Christmas miracles of which I speak were thrice:

1) I'd been trying to get a piece of a bed bed frame for a customer for 6 months for a bed they had ordered over a year ago. First they sent the wrong part, then they said they didn't have it. Then they ignored me for 2 months. Then magically the part shows up from England on Wednesday, I bring it to the customer, the bed is finally done. Huzzah!

2) Usually when we try to fixed a purchased product we have to talk to 12 people at corporate and nobody seems to think it's their job to send parts. Nor does anyone know how to not charge the customer for the parts which should be under warranty. But on Thursday a customer asked for 3 parts to a bed frame, and I called one person in corporate who said he'd send the parts out right away. No mus, no fuss. It was worryingly amazing.

3) It's Friday night and I haven't been called to go do something that nobody else knows how to do.

Which has left me time to do this. I've dubbed it the Fire Pipe. Apparently butane is heavier than air. And after you've had it going for a while you can take the lighter off the far end and it burns for an addition couple of minutes, depending on how long your pipe is.

Fire sure is neat.

Here Comes the Magic Bus

There's an excruciatingly lowered 60's era Volkswagen bus which has just overcome the cold weather and gravity to drive away up my hill.

It has two huge air intake vents on the side, which look rather like Wallace (as in and Grommit)'s ears, and a tailpipe which extends fully 2 feet out the back and which is held aloft by a bungee cord attached to the roof. It takes a good 5 minutes to warm up and sounds like its powered solely by flatulence.

It's just impracticle and retarded enough to be cool.

Damp

Taking a shower to kill time while my laundry is in the dryer is not a good idea. I only do one load, and my towel is in that load. I don't know why everybody keeps telling me it's a good idea.

I'm not good at shaking dry.

Three Men Walk Into a Bar. Clang, Clang, Clang.

A man walks into a strip mall wearing a sweater. As a very attractive girl walks past him and into a yoga studio, a sock falls out of his sweater.

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn't it? No such luck, it was a portion of my Saturday.

And there's no punchline. I picked up the sock, said, "that's where this went," and continued on my way to the store I was looking for. The attractive yoga girl paid me no attention.

Couldn't Think of a Title

Christmas is inadvertently overwhelming me. I've got all my Christmas shopping done, but all the ancillary actives are using up all my time.

- I need to research how I'm going to get to the airport at 7:05am on Christmas Eve.
- My apartment desperately needs cleaning before I go so I don't come back to a fuzz-covered carpet.
- My laundry needs doing, but I can't seem to find a spare evening in which to do it.
- I need to wrap a present for my landlord which requires buying some wrapping paper. (I usually wrap things in stolen pages from the huge stack of Chinese newspapers in the garage, but I don't think she'd feel that was very festive.)
- I've received several Christmas cards in the mail - the kind with pictures and letters summarizing the past year. I kind of feel like I should write one, but I just don't know if I can summon the motivation to do it. Especially when I realize that nobody will get it until New Years.

In other frustrating news, I've just finished a disappointing dinner of milk and truffles. (The chocolates not the pig discovered fungi.) The disappointment by no means stems from the truffles, they were home-made-not-by-me and therefor delicious. No, the disappointment comes from me waiting two hours for the oven to finish a Butter Ball turkey roast, and now I can't figure out how to get the turkey out of its stupid elastic hairnet thing. The little card on the outside of the package said specifically to cook the turkey roast skin-side down inside the netting. I did so and now the netting is a permanent part of the turkey and my left pointer finger and thumb are tender from turkey burns.

I'm going to let the turkey cool, finish the episode of Man Versus Wild I started this morning, and hope that the African savanna into which Bear parachuted while I ate breakfast gives me some insight on freeing turkey bits from a spandex meat net.

A Very Long Night

Friday sucked.

Sacramento called at 4pm and said they needed a bariatric suite. For those who aren't in the know, a bariatric suite includes a hospital bed, a wheelchair, a commode, and a walker for a VERY large and bed bound patient. (The particular bed the requested can hold a 1000lb person, though this guy wasn't even close to that big.)

Since they called at 4pm on a Friday, normally the guy who's on call would deliver everything Saturday morning. Unfortunately the guy who was on call had never delivered a bariatric bed frame and therefor didn't know how to load it, unload it, set the scale, build the fracture frame, or where the serial numbers were on any of the equipment. (I've worked at my company for a little over 2 years. He's worked there a little over 3.) When I started to explain how everything worked he looked like he was about to wet himself. As pained as his expression was then, I could only imagine how many phone calls I would get as he tried to figure everything out while I was trying to enjoy my Saturday.

Ring, which way does the mattress go? It doesn't matter.
Ring, why doesn't the scale work? Because the bed isn't plugged in.
Ring, I forgot the bucket for the commode.

So I loaded up the wheelchair and walker and set off toward Stockton, where our only available bed frame was living. Let me tell you, 580W at 5pm is an absolute treat. 80 mph, then 5. Then 45, then 0. And for no reason. There were no accidents, it was just that everybody would speed up at the same time then slam on their brakes.

I got to Stockton at 8pm, and had to wedge my van between storage spaces so my headlights pointed into the bed lair. It's a normal storage space during the day, but it just so happens to be in a spot where none of the outside lights shine through the door. It gives the place a kind of spooky den of mattresses feel. Like you might be found in the morning smothered but evenly supported under a pile of foam matts.

Once I arranged all the crap in the storage space in such a way that I could maneuver the bed frame, I had to move the van which was both helpfully lighting the space, but also blocking the door.

After I got the bed loaded I set off toward Sacramento through a newly blossoming storm.

Let me take a moment here to talk about Ford headlights. I can't speak for their entire vehicle line, but the 2000 E150 headlights are about as helpful at lighting up the road as I am with providing advice for wooing the ladies. In short, they're abysmal. There's nothing like driving through the wind and pouring rain, semi mist being smudged around by my "windshield wipers", while my headlights do their best impression of 99 cent D-cell flashlights.

As I pulled into the facility's parking lot the loading zone streetlight went out. (Streetlights are always going out on me, and I have no idea why. I think it's a feud at this point. Whenever they go out I flip them the bird, and when ever they see my they go out.) So I unloaded the whole shebang in the rain, through the dark, and into the darkest end of the facility.

It's really creepy putting together a bariatric fracture frame in a dark and silent hallway of a skilled nursing facility. I felt like I should be sneaking into everybody's room and stealing their blood pressure medication.

After I had everything unloaded, set up, and explained, I climbed back into the van to head home. As I started the engine the streetlight came back on. Jerk.

My drive home was full of Arizona Green Tea and an embarrassingly large box of Hot Tamales. When I arrived at my doorstep at midnight after an excruciatingly long 15 hour day caused by somebody else's ignorance, I really needed to brush my teeth.

Luckily Karma's a bitch. On Saturday the afore mentioned ignorant guy got a call to go to Fresno, which is an 8 hour round trip. Half way there his alternator went out and he had to sit around and wait for a tow truck for several hours. He got home at midnight. Ha.

Electric Plant Waterer Revealed!

Here it is! I couldn't find a good box to mount it in, so it's still only sort of done. When I find a good box I'll put it together for real which will improve things in the following ways:

- I won't need the pot holders to muffle the sound of the compressor.
- I'll put a switch plate on top of the dimmer switch for a more professional look.
- I'll have something to screw the dimmer switch to so it doesn't fall out.
- Tape won't have to be employed to hold the box together.

Without further ado, here it is:


The whole shebang. Isn't she beautiful?


The Kadel Engineering tank. (No relation.)


The box which holds the dimmer switch, air compressor, and the plug.


The sheer power of the electric plant waterer with the compressor turned up (via the dimmer switch) full blast.


The tender watering ability when the dimmer is turned down about half way. Past half way and the compressor just hums and nothing comes out.

Ta da! I'm sure it wasn't worth the wait.

Delayed

My trip to Home Depot to finish up my electric plant waterer has been delayed by laziness. Laziness and the fact that I didn't get up earlier due to my working 15 hours yesterday. I'll go into all of that tomorrow.

There are two things wrong with this post:
1) It's boring.
2) It assumes that somebody is going to come looking for my electric plant waterer and be disappointed when they aren't here, but read this post and feel better about having to wait another day.

I have a half a mind not to push publish.

My Oeuvre of Stuff Nobody Needs ...

Will soon be expanding into the (possibly dangerous) realm of electric plant watering devices. A quick trip to Home Depot on Saturday will finish off my supply needs and I'll have pictures available so the world can better imagine what they'll soon be coveting.

Tonight I tested the basic theory and components, and they worked like a charm (before they blew the GFI outlet in my kitchen.) It's going to be awesome!

Target, The Holiday Cactus, and a Digital-Dual-Heat-Oscillating Apartment Improver

So nobody passes out from suspense, yes, I got a space heater this weekend. Though not from Costco. The jerks sold them all before I got there. No, I had to go to Target on Sunday and buy this little gem:


(My sole source of heat.)

It oscillates. It had a digital thermometer. It has two heat settings, so I can run my microwave and heat up my apartment at the same time. It has a stately white plastic shell which brings to mind Kenny from South Park if he were to put on a fencing mask. It's amazing!

After my failed attempt to buy a space heater at Costco, I went to my friend Karen's house. Her living room is all decked out in Christmas lights and she has a little light and candy cane covered Christmas tree which sits on a book shelf looking festive and smelling delicious.

My apartment, unfortunately, is really too small to hold even a small potted Christmas tree like Karen has. My holiday cactus died back in 2005, and since I sleep next to where any plants have to live, I'm not about to get another one.


(The cactus of Christmas past.)

But Target plans ahead. For those of use with tiny apartments, Target offers the Christmas-tree shaped holiday rosemary bush. It's the perfect shape to cover with Christmas, small enough to not cover my bedroom window, and has enough foliage to hold the tradition aluminum foil holiday plant Star of David. And even though Scarborough Fair seems to be running through my head a lot, I'm pleased with how it turned out.


(Plants huddled up to my window.)

The Holidays are Here

You know how I can tell? I'm freezing.

When I got home from work today my apartment was 58 degrees. Now, almost 3 hours later, it's 61.

"Turn on the heat!" You say. Well, one of the many illegal aspects of my apartment is that I don't have heat. I do own a space heater, but its job is to blow warm air on me when I'm in the bathroom, possibly while I'm talking on the phone.

I don't want it to multi-task so I'm headed to Costco this weekend to buy one for my living room. I just need to remember not to run it on at the same time as my bathroom heater as half my apartment runs on the same fuse. Last year I had my microwave on a timer delay while I was cooking dinner. I stepped into the bathroom, and so I didn't get toilet-seat frost bite, I turned on my heater. A few minutes into my bathroom visit my microwave kicked on and everything went very dark. (Luckily I usually carry a lighter and happened to have a votive candle in there that day.) I had to ask my landlord where the fuse box was, and she had to ask her uncle Joe, the same genius who installed my shower doors with a hammer. In this instance uncle Joe came through and told us where to click my power back on.

This weekend, if I'm careful, I'll have both light and warmth in my apartment.

Electricity Poems Apply to Alien Technology as Well

Later today I'm taking my electric skillet to Las Vegas with me to add an extra cooking surface for our late Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still debating whether or not to check the bag it's in as the little plug thing had kind of a spike on the end. And when I woke up just now it occurred to me just how retarded that is.

When dealing with electricity, things that stick out are not live, and recessed connections are. That way people aren't always brushing against live wires and dieing. While I was contemplating this, my brain offered up the following poem:

Electricity lives in gullies and wells.
You can't reach it, so everything's swell.
The tines and the spikes and things that are pokey,
don't carry a charge so they're okey dokey.

In other technology news, I had to deliver a mattress and bed frame to Los Gatos last night. This lady's neighbor (a tiny old lady who sounded a LOT like Kermit the Frog) had to let me in to set everything up. She was also the only one available to sign the paperwork and receive the explanation of how everything works. I spent 10 minutes explaining the controls of her air mattress, the frame controls, how to adjust the rails, and how to move the lifting pole. Just as I finished the telephone rang. The neighbor picked it up, held it like a walkie talky, said hello into the ear piece, waited a second, then hung it back up.

I think I managed the equivalent of landing a UFO in this lady's living room and explaining how to use it in my alien language.

No Sleep! Bum Bum. 'Til Bedtime!

I've had a terrible time going to sleep for about the past week and a half. Last week was because I was up to my eyeballs in snot and sore throat. But on Sunday my congestion cleared up and my energy level has been running backwards, or if not backwards, at least not in the order it's supposed to.

I get up at 6am and am exhausted. Now, when I should be in bed getting mode, I'm ready to start a project, or write some email, or as I've done tonight, browse through personal ads for an hour.

I'm used to being exhausted at 6am, tired again shortly after lunch, and then semi sleepy again at 9ish. The only thing I can think to blame is my newly increased intake of diet Safeway select caffeine free sodas. Damn you diet cherry!

The Joys of Craig's List

As I may have mentioned, I've been trying to trade my extra DVD player for a VCR. I have some home videos I'd like to put on DVD and I currently don't own a VCR. Consider my logic: A new DVD player runs in the neighborhood of $35. So I could probably only get $10-15 for my good quality, but used, one. A new VCR would also cost me $35 or so which is more than I want to spend for something I'll hardly ever use. A trade seems like the most logical choice.

So I put up my ad, and going by the unspoken rules of Craig's List, I went with the first guy who responded to my message. I met him at the taqueria, kitty corner to the Balboa Park BART station, and we traded our respective consumer electronics.

When I got home I discovered that he'd given me the world's cheapest VCR. It had a bright orange face, the play, stop, fast forward, and rewind buttons were all bright pink, it was mono (as opposed to stereo), and it had NO CLOCK. The hallmark of any VCR is the blinking clock that nobody knows how to set. I've never not been able to set my VCR clock, so I can't see why having a VCR without one would be a positive. In addition to the VCR's aesthetic drawbacks, I had to turn up the TV to hear the sound over the noise generated by playing a tape.

For two weeks I've been trying to get my DVD player back. At first I thought it was going to be easy. He suggested we meet at 7pm at an IHOP in Redwood City on Tuesday, a day when he goes to visit his mother. How nice. 7pm rolls around at the International House of Pancakes and I walk over to a guy sitting in his car obviously waiting for somebody. "Hi," I say, "weren't you driving a van last time?"

"No," the man replies.

"Well, here's your VCR. Can I have my DVD player?"

"I don't think I'm the person you are meeting," the man says, explaining his lack of DVD player and choice of vehicle.

It was dark at the taqueria, so I was on the apparently overly generic lookout for a portly, bald, bedandruffed man with skimpy mustache.

7:15. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is.
7:30. Nobody. I leave a message asking where he is and informing him he's got 15 minutes before I go home.
7:45. Nobody. I leave my final message, tell him I'm going home, and letting him know that he can drive himself to San Francisco to give me back my DVD player.

A couple days go by and I send him a couple of emails. He finally writes back saying that he hadn't checked his email after he suggested the IHOP rendezvous, and that his car had broken down on the way to Redwood City, and that he'd forgotten his phone in the car at the shop where the car had ended up. Super.

Relenting somewhat from my demand that he bring the phone to me, I wrote him an email asking when might be a good time to come get my DVD player. A full week goes by before he finally writes back and suggests, again, the Whipple Rd International House of Pancakes tonight at 8pm. He also cheerily suggests that he'll bring a possible substitute VCR for trade, as the DVD player was destined for a single mother that attends his church. I love it when irritating, unreliable, sleezeballs play the guilt card.

I got to IHOP early and passed the time by reading Make Magazine (which is awesome) and listening to the man two tables down ask the waiter how to say various things in Spanish, ignore him, and make up his own Spanish.

"I'll ceiro el shrimpay con excellanto."

His wife ordered a glass of wine. White wine at an IHOP.

Anyhow, when 8pm rolled around Captain Nose Grease showed up and offered me the worlds dirtiest VCR. Non-plussed, I pointed out that I'd like to test things before I trade from now on, not adding that I didn't trust him as far as I could smell him.

At long last my DVD player has made it back home. Next week I'll try again, this time making sure that all trades will be made in the company of an available TV and outlet.

The Wayward Youth of Nicer Neighborhoods

I was riding the M-Line home from the San Francisco car show with a bunch of skateboard youth, all in the 13-15 year old range. They were trying to look all cool and skatery, but has braces and zits, a both losers in cool points that are hard to overcome.

As they rode the MUNI toward a potential skate location they were comparing various school mates' house sizes to their own, mostly unfavorably. And one girl, who it happens has a helipad on her roof, has a nice house but is always busy with all her after school activities. Said the shortest and most portly wayward youth to his friend, "that's what I love about my life: I'm free. I don't do any after school activities. I don't do any sports related stuff. I don't do homework. I have a ton of free time."

The children are the future.

Inspiration Strikes

While I move to and fro in my rolly chair, my legs covered in a blanket, I keep getting the wheels stuck in the blanket. And thus is occurred to me: Were I ever to become wheelchair bound, I'd need to cover my legs with a much smaller blanket.

All Hail the Sheila

After my thrilling evening of waking up with a sheet of plastic on my head and surrounded by plants and dirt, I've decided to go with drapes to keep the neighbors from watching me wander around in my underpants while still letting sunlight into my little room. (How's that for a HUGE sentence slash synopsis of "Last time on Annoying yourself without improving your living space, with Mike?")

I started my Tuesday with one drape which was more than wide enough and about a foot too long for my tiny window. I ended my Tuesday with two nicely sized drapes, half a box of fried rice (also how I started my Wednesday), three carrot cake cookies, and the promise of dirt free sheets.

The drapes were a collaboration with the following contributions:

Me:
- Brought the drape.
- Cut the fabric.
- Ripped stitches.
- Folded up 2 seams.
- Ironed 2 seams.
- Sewed 2 seams.
- Fidgeted while trying to help but actually hindering progress.

Sheila:
- Ironed most of the drape.
- Ironed in the cut lines.
- Showed me where to cut the fabric.
- Showed me which stitches to rip.
- Showed me how to make seams.
- Folded up 1.5 seams.
- Sewed 1 seam.
- Fabricated two small loops from one large loop.
- Fastened the loops on all straight and nice.
- Started and finished sewing all my seams.
- Donated thread, the use of her sewing machine, expertise, 2.5 hours, and 3 cookies.

Without further ado, here is my newly covered window:

*

Sheila rocks!



* It looks like the right drape is longer than the left one but I can assure you that it's not. Something must have been caught on something when I took the picture, because it's as even as a bowl of oatmeal now.

It's Time for Drape

Saturday night at 3am I was rudely awakened by my translucent window cover leaping off the window and landing on my head. It brought with it my lamp and two potted plants. Having only fallen asleep 45 minutes earlier I was less than enchanted to wake up covered in plastic with two medium sized piles of dirt on my flannel sheets.

Quickly deciding between the fastest way to return to sleep and not making a mess, I chose sleep and put the plastic next to my bed and brushed the dirt between my mattress and the wall. I tried to vacuum back there tonight, but I fear it will remain dirty until I move out.

To let light but not sight through my window I've changed my tactics to using drapes, or in my case, drape. I went to Target last night and bought two of the smallest drapes I could find. But since my window is so small I'm going to have to take the single drape I found and cut it in half, then take off the bottom 10 inches. And of course take the other drape back to the store.

I should have my own HGTV show. It could be called "Annoying yourself without improving your living space, with Mike."

It's Back!

For months now not a soul has looked at my Onion Personal profile. At first I thought maybe the collective preference of the eligible ladies of San Francisco had swung to the opposite of me*. But soon after my people stopped visiting my profile some of my pictures disappeared, my blurbs went missing, and I stopped coming up on a search of 28 year old males in San Francisco.

Last week I finally figured out that they had turned my profile off. It's odd that it got turned off, and especially odd that I couldn't tell that my profile was turned off until I searched for myself by name. So I turned my profile back on only to discover that I still wasn't getting any traffic. I finally emailed customer service and they told me that people are much less likely to look at my profile if I don't pick a gender.

Seriously? You can't sign up for on an online dating sight without a gender. It won't let you. And on the Onion once you pick a gender you have to email customer service if you want to change it. And still it doesn't occur to them that this might be THEIR fault that I'm a genderless, dateless, person. Jerks. On the bright side I fixed it last night at I've already had two ladies look at my profile.

In other productive news I've just successfully installed a phone in my medicine cabinet. I tried a portable phone, but each room of my apartment is a Faraday cage and the phone would buzz when out of sight of its base. Not to be defeated by this minor setback, I ran a wire behind my couch, behind my fridge, over my kitchen cabinets, down a space between two of them, through the kitchen wall and into the back of my medicine cabinet. It's perfect.

Why would anyone need a phone in the bathroom? I need one there to counter-act everybody's uncanny ability to call me as soon as I sit down on the toilet. Although, now that I have a phone within easy reach of the porcelain department I haven't received a single phone call at home. Coincidence? I think not.**


*A taller than average female with light hair, dark skin, large feet, and an extra testicle.

**I've tested the phones and they still work, so it's not that.

Dark Haha

I went to New York last weekend to visit a friend, and as we were riding the subway to go see Spamalot (which was excellent) a homeless man wandered down the middle of the subway car. "Does anyone have any sodas or snacks? Chips? Burgers? Anyone have anything to drink?"

"He's a like a flight attendant in reverse," I pointed out.
"You are going straight to hell," my friend assured.

I do worry about my sense of humor. As I was driving down from Napa this week I saw a rabbit which had been run over in the middle of the road. It's body was flat, it's face was flat, it's tail was flat. It was as if somebody had neatly drawn a lifelike rabbit on the pavement. It was entirely two dimensional except for its perfectly intact, upright, rabbit ears, as if it were part of Nature's pop-up book. When I saw it I simultaneously laughed out loud and said "gross." The laughing out loud is the bit that worries me. I hardly ever laugh out loud.

Colusa, CA - Land of the Large

Today I visited beautiful, historic, downtown Colusa to clear up a small traffic matter. While I was driving down from Portland last month the CHP decided I was going a little too fast and gave me a $405 ticket. I went up to request traffic-school which, bless the judge's heart, I was granted.

Before court I went to the bank to withdrawal my rent. The guy in front of me line was probably 5'5", and must have weighed 220 pounds. He was not the biggest guy I'd ever seen, but he was certainly showing off his curves via his outfit selection. He had on some very tight work pants which stuck close to his stick legs and followed his contours up to an abdomen that made sure the sun never hit his bright red and white basketball shoes. The rest of him was covered in a yellow, white, red, and neon blue, spandex sport shirt. It sort of said NASCAR to me, but I think that's because the busyness of the shirt reminded me of all those stickers they put on the cars. The man looked, and was shaped like a heavily sponsored candied apple.

In the court room one of the other traffic defendants came dressed for the judge in stretch pants and a stretch shirt which was 3 inches shy of covering her disturbingly hairy belly. My theory was that she planned to frighten the judge into dismissing her case.

In pot calling kettle news I've been keeping track of my weight for 2 months now, and at last check I'm exactly the same weight as when I started. On Friday morning I decided to get serious and really eat right and on Friday evening a package was waiting for me from the KQED membership department. It contained 4 gigantic Ghirardelli dark chocolate bars. Then last night I went to Napa for a nice family birthday dinner. On my way out the door I was loaded up* with an extra serving of mashed potatoes, steak, sautéed mushrooms, and 3/4 of a Boston cream pie.**

It looks like I'll be restricted to my fat jeans for a while.


* I made my own plate of leftovers, so I can't very well blame anyone on that point.

** I currently have 1/2 a Boston cream pie. We'll see if the pie can hold steady through breakfast.

The Incurable Fixit

Today I was driving back from Union City where I had been to fix* a bed frame. Before I set off into 3:30pm traffic on 880, I went in search of a bathroom at Petco. In the bathroom, on the counter next to the empty paper towel dispenser, was a nearly full roll of paper towels.

I can see three explanations for this:
1) They lost the key to the dispenser.
2) The key is available, but they can't figure out how to install the roll.
3) The guy who is in charge of cleaning the brown ring out of the urinal is also in charge of the paper towel supply. I.E. Laziness.

Being the person I am, I flipped out my Leatherman Micra and popped the lock on the towel dispenser, perused the handy instructions printed on the inside, and loaded the paper towels.

I was a little unhappy that I'd taken the time to upgrade Petco's bathroom facilities because in the process of closing the dispenser lid I got whatever goo was on top all over my hands. And apparently the squirt of soap I had used before spotting the paper towel tragedy was the last squirt available, so I had to make do with rinsing my hands and wiping them with a freshly loaded paper towel. Thank goodness for my endless supply of hand sanitizer.


* I didn't actually fix the frame. It frame was not broken. Our homecare bed frames get crooked after a while if you don't either bring them up to their full height or lower them to the ground. Many adjustments around the middle of their height range make one end of the bed significantly higher than the other. But it's easy to fix: Bring the bed all the way up or all the way down. I tried to establish whether or not this was the problem before I drove the 40 miles to Union City, and I was assured that a) the bed was put together backwards, and b) only half the bed would move. I think there was some sort of language/IQ barrier between the person on the phone and I because both a) and b) were totally false. Jerks.

Happy Birthday

To me. Woot!

And it Ended Well

Today I was having a fairly boring day. My many boring activities included:
-Eating cold pizza.
-Watching TV.
-Getting a haircut.
-Buying a UPS from the liquidating CompUSA.
-Eating warm pizza.

Then, while I was driving around, a very attractive girl with two lip rings driving a VW Bug smiled at me. And just like that, I had a good Saturday.

It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Mid-60's Retro Gothic Dirt and the Brown Phlegm Kazoo

Today I delivered a bed frame to one of those houses that is probably worth a million or two, but would be worth quite a bit more if it wasn't decorated in mid-60's retro gothic dirt and didn't smell like pee.

And why is it that people who need hospital beds, usually because of a lack of mobility, never live on the ground floor? I had to lug 325 pounds of stuff down a long flight of stairs to the front door, then up a long flight of stairs to get to the bedroom. There really should have been a catwalk from the street to the bedroom window.

As I constructed the bed I had to deal with 3 things:
1) The pee smell. It's hard to put something together while I'm wishing I had a urinal cake to help clear the air.
2) A barrage of questions from the creepy brothers, sons of the patient.
3) Some serious B.O. coming off creepy brother #1. Every time he moved his arm I felt like switching careers to become a urinal cake.

After I had the bed put together, I explained to the creepy brothers how everything worked. They seemed so eager to know all the ins and outs of the bed frame while I was building it, but after I was done explaining it to them they chided me for not explaining it to the patient, who was sitting outside on the deck, and was apparently not planning on coming back in for the lesson.

So I moved my explanation out to the deck, which was difficult in that I was explaining the operation of the hospital bed which I generally do while standing next to the bed. I basically had to explain everything in theory with no visual aids or demonstrations. And to make matters worse I was trying to understand the questions the patient was asking while the creepy brothers were having an argument on the other side of the open glass door. This might not have been a big deal if the guy didn't talk using a throat kazoo. Throat kazoos are not made for loud speech.

When I had everything set up and all the pertinent questions answered, and some odd non-pertinent questions from creepy brother #1 answered, the patient started coughing up big gobs of brown phlegm through his kazoo and wiping them up with an ever more saturated piece of toilet paper. The phlegm is neither here nor there. I see gross stuff all the time. But as I was leaving the guy started to put out his hand for a farewell handshake. I didn't want to be rude, but I was not about to get brown kazoo phlegm on my ungloved hand.

As I made my out of the house creepy brother #1 decided he would walk me to my van. He asked several more questions which were only vaguely related to the delivery, explained how to get back to the main road (go down the hill and take the left fork, not hard) and then offered to ride with me until we got back to town. I gave my most hearty no thanks and drove away hoping against hope that I never have to go back on a service call.

My Day in Reverse

My last delivery of the day was fairly straight forward, but was overarchingly irritating. I'd been trying to deliver this guy's mattress since Friday, but he wouldn't let me because he "has no where to put it and he can't get the patient out of bed." I checked again on Monday and he angrily told me he'd call me back when he figured out how to use the Hoyer lift. So today he called and said he was ready, so I scheduled a 4:30pm appointment and he told me that I "shouldn't come early. Be here at 4:30pm exactly." I rang the doorbell at 4:30 and 15 seconds and he invited me into his GIGANTIC house and asked me to "just set the mattress down in the hall here. I'll put it on later." It seems like an awful lot of hassle for something I could have done on Friday.

My second to last delivery was to a facility which caters almost exclusively to the aged Chinese. There's a common area where all the residents sit in their wheelchairs, eat, nap, stare off into space, and/or watch TV. Today most everybody was staring off into space or napping. I guess they weren't interested in the sexually lurid anime that was blasting out of the TV.

I had lunch at a surprisingly festive Taco Bell today. There were two-flower vases on every table sitting on black and white thin plastic table"cloths". The ceiling behind the counter was covered with mylar balloons and every once in a while an employee would come by and offer everybody some free birthday cake. People kept inquiring about the occasion, but the employees either didn't know or didn't have the English acumen to get the message across.

Us: What's the occasion?
Them: It's a party.

Us: What's the cake for?
Them: For the customer.

Us: What's with all the decorations?
Them: It's a birthday party.
Us: Whose birthday?
Them: Taco Bell.

So I guess Taco Bell had a birthday today? Did anyone else see anything like this? Or maybe just this location?

But 3 taco supremes, 1 slice of Taco Bell birthday cake, and a guy who decided the far left FasTrak lane was not for him and that he should park perpendicularly across my FasTrak lane did not do my heart any good. Tomorrow I'm back on a diet of better food and driving.

Boo!

Does anyone here listen to This American Life? I really like that show and they are having people call in with scary stories that they'll play on the air for their Halloween show. I just called in and told the story of on of my coworkers talking to a dead guy and apologizing for having to disturb him. It's not very scary, but I have this ill-conceived hope that Ira Glass will want to talk to somebody who has a job as weird as mine is.

As unlikely as it may be on the face of it, it's even more unlikely I'll be on the radio due to my extreme nervousness. I had to record my story twice on the voicemail thingy, and who knows how many details I screwed up. My brain tends to shut down in situations like these. I may have related an age old family recipe for banana bread for all I know.

Misc.

I've discovered that the optimal way of motating around a large warehouse is in a rolly computer chair. It's exciting to propel myself backwards at great speeds, and I can take corners by grabbing onto the shelving. It's great fun now, but I'm worried that someday I'll hit a floor-crack just right and end up under a bariatric commode.

My through-the-wall neighbors are cooking something that actually smells delicious. They must have broken out their new Orifices Are Not Ingredients cookbook by Rachael Ray.

Over the last week and a half I've had 3 over night visitors. (Not romantically, they all slept on an inflatable bed in my livitchen.) And I've noticed that I get a little antsy when I can't come home and strip down to my boxer shorts. I may not be able to ever have a roommate again. And soon I may not be able to stand having friends over. Perhaps I'd better befriend a group of semi-nudists. Then again, I'm not sure I'd want to sit around with other people and have underwear leisure time.

I Weird Myself Out

I was trying to figure out how to spell blogosphere (I originally had it as bloggosphier), so I typed it into my Google bar. Lo and behold, as I typed it in my fingers came up with the correct spelling. I should learn sign language so I can better listen to my hands.

And last night I had a frustrating dream where I was trying to kiss my girlfriend. (It was a dream, I don't really have a girlfriend.) The kissing was hindered by the fact that her orthodontia* included a metal model of the solar system with all the planets orbiting around her head. Jupiter kept defending its sun against the onslaught of my lips. What an irritating gas-ball.

*She was of appropriate age. 23 to be exact, as she seems to be somebody from Yahoo Personals whom I've never met.

Medium Rare

I think I may have sun burnt my face. I'm not sure when I managed to do it, as I've hardly spent any time outside. I did drive to and from Portland over the weekend, so maybe I was beset by the suns rays while I was cruising down I-5.

On the bright, but somewhat premature side, the holiday season is coming up and I'm hoping it'll bleed over and improve my dating possibilities. My red face in combination with my green eyes is kind of festive. I'm hoping there's a lovely lady out there who's in the market for her own, personal, affectionate Christmas ornament.

Norbert AKA Snowball Update

The AKA seemed appropriate for I've just found out that Norbert is on the lam. Well, on the lamb might be a bit extreme since it sounds like the authorities have called off the search.

While I had Norbert she was an indoor only cat. She was most interested in the goings on outside my window, but she never yowled to get out.

When she moved to Novato and changed her name to Snowball, the person to whom I gave her decided she'd like to be an indoor outdoor cat. And indeed, she very much enjoyed being an indoor outdoor cat. But after a while she decided that indoor wasn't all it was cracked up to be and she's switched to being a 100% outdoor cat. Apparently she has a loyal network of apartment dwellers who leave big bowls of food and water out for her enabling her to completely stop visiting her original Novato apartment.

She started out life eating bugs and living in the bushes, and I guess she's going to finish it that way too. I guess if she's going to be a feral she might as well be a spayed feral cat. Cute as they may be, we certainly don't need any extra little Norberts running around.

Folgers in my cup would have been preferable

Today I woke up with my mouth open and my face perilously near the wall. I don't usually sleep with my mouth open, nor do I normally sleep right up next to the wall, and now I know why. Every time I exhaled my morning breath would ricochet off the wall and end up in my nose. After who knows how long I woke myself up.

Perhaps I should Listerine before bed.

Dating for the Science Minded

I've decided that I may be a little too science minded to date. I operate by coming up with theories, testing them, and either deciding I'm right or moving on to new theories. This is, I've discovered, not how dating works at all. In dating you try something, and if it doesn't work you try the same thing over again. And in all probability most of the time things won't work. I need more positive reinforcement than that.

I want some easy to follow, concise instructions as to how to find a girlfriend.
1) Take to first impression beverages, if all goes well, move on to dinner.
2) Meet for sparkling conversation in the park followed by a trip to X21 Modern.
3) Stay in for a movie, moves are made, relationship becomes official.

Instead the equation seems to go: X + Y + random personality mismatch or early-bird other guy = no relationship. And since all dates are relatively the same, it becomes increasingly difficult to put myself through them in hopes of a different result.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Don't do that.

And, when I can see a way to improve my chances, I bump up against the immutable laws of physics. In the case of my last two dates I would have been in the clear had I started dating them a month or so before I started dating them.

I just finished a gargantuan book on tape where the main characters achieved faster than light travel by having a sentient computer program that lives in the relationships between people wish their space craft in and out of existence.* It seems to me that faster than light travel, at least in this instance, works on roughly the same principle as dating. Regardless of how many times you've managed to not wish yourself someplace else, as long as you keep thinking positive thoughts and trying your best, eventually you'll wish yourself out of rush hour and into a relationship.

Now if I can figure out how to make a sentient computer program that lives in people's emotional attachments to each other I'll be all set.


* After I finished the book, Xenocide by Orson Scott Card, I discovered that it was in fact half a book. Yep, it was so long that he made it into two books. But I've given up on Mr. Card, and now I'm reading Youth in Revolt, the Journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne. I unabashedly checked it out from the teen fiction aisle and enjoying it almost infinitely more than Xenocide.

Relationship Osmosis

My last two first dates have ended with a budding new relationship. But not with me and my date, they've been with my date and the other she's been dating. I have two theories as to why this might be:

The Good Example Theory - The other guy decides he's going to have to make a commitment to stop his new lady friend from seeing other worryingly alluring men like me.

The Bad Example Theory - The girl realizes that the person she's been seeing is probably worth while if other dates are going to be like this one.

I was talking to my sister tonight and she was saying the same thing used to happen to her except she'd make couples get back together. We have some sort of a self-effacing relationship mojo. It's both a gift and a curse*. I'm thinking we should start some sort of relationship catalyst service.



* It's just a curse.

Do not, under any circumstances, listen to a book on tape for 15 hours in 2 days. It makes your brain feel murky.

For What?

Today I delivered a hospital bed to a guy who wasn't expecting it. His wife knew it was coming, and his son had arranged the whole thing, but nobody had let the guy in on the secret. From what I could gather, the man is not a big fan of change.

As a lugged 275 pounds of stuff up the stairs (why does nobody live on the ground floor?) I could hear the guy spouting fury from his bedroom.

I set the foot section down and, "What they hell are they bringing up here, God damned sons of bitches!"

The head section goes into place: "What's all this stuff?! Are they trying to build a new house?! Stupid bastards!"

I set the mattress in the hall and, "Why is he doing this now? God, damn him! God, damn his soul to hell!"

When somebody tells God to damn me, and really means it, I see that as being a little mean. And I know where he would like God to damn me. I'm not assuming he means that I should be damned to Dairy Queen. But even so, to carry the thought to conclusion, to damn my soul to hell out loud, that's just uncalled for.

Though to be fair, all this yelling was conducted inside the bedroom while I was stacking bed parts in the hallway and while he was struggling with his pants. When he finally achieved a full state of dress and made it outside to the hallway, he didn't seem to hold any malice toward me. "Who's that?" He asked. "Somebody you've hired to do something?"

Maybe he's just in a bad mood in the morning until after his first cup of pants.

All the News that's Fit to Print

I've been sitting here for 5 minutes trying to come up with a publishable tid bit. But I can't make anything come to mind.

Sure there are things I'd like to write about. I had a great Sunday that I don't really want to get into. I heard an extremely entertaining story involving a celebrity croquet tournament, Joan Rivers, and the Cheshire Cat, but it isn't my story to tell.

I can, I suppose, tell you that if you see somebody who is just so cute that you need to say hello, but because you are a San Francisco male and are too much of a woos to do it, myspace is always an option. Sure it may seem creepy to look somebody up and send them a message when you've chickened out mere hours beforehand, but what's the worst that could happen? She could set her profile to private - there are far worse fates. What's the best that could happen? You might get a first date with an awesome somebody. Or so I hear.

In a totally unrelated note, somebody one floor up from me is singing a song from their native land and they are waaaay off key. And it's distracting enough that I'm going to give up writing this post and go brush my teeth.

Beef, It's What's for Breakfast

I came home tonight to find all my stuff where I'd left it. The Cantonese speaking, PG&E impersonating, landlord's mother's name knowing con artists have been thwarted yet again.

In an unrelated development, I've decided that most quick breakfast food is overrated and I'm not going to buy it anymore. I can't find any cereal that piques my interest. I've never told anybody to leggo of my Eggo. They're welcome to it. Bagels still hold some gastrointestinal motivation, but my toaster oven is mostly on the fritz. So instead I've decided to each dinner for breakfast. Last night I made some chicken and put in the fridge. When I got up this morning I nuked it next to a bowl of peas - Breakfast of champions. Then on my way to my first delivery I stopped for a mint cookie ice cream sandwich - Breakfast of champions part II. I really need to quit with this ice cream sandwich/cookie business.

And lastly, the San Francisco Public Library refuses to deliver the book I requested to my sullen local branch. I requested both it and it's sequel and only the sequel has arrived, which, as you can imagine, does nothing to help me pass the time during lunch. So while I wait for my book I chose to reread something I own. I'm currently reading The Watermelon King, by Daniel Wallace. I've read all the Daniel Wallace books, and they are all excellent. But it's stuff like this, stuff that makes me laugh out loud (which I rarely do), which makes me hope he'll write something else soon.

"And Zeus, well, you know how it happens. He seduced her behind the barn. The pregnancy was mystically accelerated, and you plopped out of her a few weeks later. In the old days that would have made you a demigod, but unfortunately all the traces of any kind of supernatural power were eradicated in the public school system."

So good.

Super

My landlady just called to tell me that somebody posing as a Cantonese speaking PG&E guy called to say he'd be coming by for an inspection tomorrow. She called PG&E and they hadn't scheduled any inspections.

So not only do I live someplace with obvious* drug deals going on up the street, but I have oddly informed con-artists trying to inspect the house.

I keep perusing Craigslist for other apartments in this price range, but I apparently have the best deal in all of San Francisco. So if there's no blog post tomorrow, you'll know that PG&E came by and stole my computer. Or I was struck by a debilitating attack of lazy.

Maybe I can write a letter to the city requesting some immediate gentrification.

*And I do mean obvious. A car stops right, smack, in the middle of the street and somebody walks over to it. Window goes down, baggy goes in, money comes out, window goes up, everybody goes on their way. For goodness sake. Could you guys at least pull over so I don't get stuck behind you on my way home from work. Jerks.

Enough with the Help

Today I was plagued by the overly helpful. It's a nice gesture when people decide they are going to help me carry whatever it is I happen to be delivering, but usually they are less helpful than they expect to be.

My first delivery today involved setting up a hospital bed in the Mission. A little, tiny, woman in her 70s decided she was going to carry the mattress down to the room where I was to set up the bed. I rolled the bed frame down to where it was going to go, and when I walked back to get the mattress the woman was still trying to wrestle it off the ground. Gravity showed her no mercy. When I picked it up she marveled, "Oooooh, you are veeeeery strong!"

After my delivery I went to pick up a bed frame and the same thing happened except with a woman of more average size and age. She decided she wanted me out quick, so she chose a portion of bed frame and tried to carry it outside. She couldn't get it off the ground either.

On my last delivery, also a bed frame, the patient himself managed to actually help me carry things up the stairs. I tried to communicate that I had it covered, but he only spoke Spanish and I only speak English. His deep and productive coughs, however, were in the universal language of yuck. He carried 40lbs of handrails up the stairs at a speed slower than a slinky, but just fast enough so I could see that he was making actual progress. It's nice to not have to make another trip, but then again I had to follow him up the stairs holding 50lbs of headboard. And his coughing and wheezing made me worry that we were all going to end up in a pile at the bottom of the stairwell.

I think I need a multi-language card I can pass out that says:

1) Tell me where it goes.
2) Sit back and relax while I carry things in and set them up.
3) I'll come get you when it's time to show you how it works.

Thanks for not hurting yourself with our products.

On a mostly unrelated note, I went to a guy's house today who sounds exactly like Morgan Freeman. EXACTLY. I kept expecting him to say something along the lines of "Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." But he kept saying stuff like "Call me when you get here and I'll buzz you in." And, "thanks for being on time." The disconnect between what I was seeing and what I was hearing was kind of disconcerting.

Eyeball Exfoliation

Have you ever had your eyes open when taking off your shirt? Have you ever rubbed an open eyeball on the inside of a polo shirt?

If you have, I share your pain. If you haven't, I'd try to avoid it. It's kind of unpleasant, even if the shirt does say "Participation Committee 2004."

Onion Famine

Nobody has looked at my profile on the Onion Personals for 10 days now. I'm not sure what happened. This does not bode well. I wait for somebody to show interest, then pounce.

See, I don't send out emails asking anyone out. That's never worked. It costs 200 points to send out an email, and I'm not wild about spending my points on asking out a cold and unanswering universe. It's just as useful and much cheaper to pray for a date.

"Please god, send me a girl who likes travel, fine dining, to have a good time* but also likes a chill night at home watching a movie*."


* Are there people who dislike having a good time?
** Is she implying that watching a movie at home isn't fun?

Car

- I washed it for the first time today. I managed to get the spot right in front of my house this weekend. But my Saturday was full of Yuba City, my Sunday took me to Pacifica, and the other days this week have been plagued by gloomy dark clouds and cold air. But since street cleaning happens on Thursday on my side of the street, tonight was my last chance to take advantage of my proximity to the hose. So my car is shiny and clean again, but I may catch my death of cold after repeated self hosings in the cold gloomy Southern edge of San Francisco weather.

- My previously neglected emails were all getting answered this evening when I got distracted by researching cold air intakes. But upon discovering that the horsepower boost is up at 5400 RPM and that they can cause vapor lock, I switched to investigating my auto loan. And holy crap does sales tax suck. It added something along the lines of $1317.50 to the price of my car. I should have bought it in Oregon. It's going to take me a little longer that I was expecting to pay it off.

- My gigantic mirror left its mark; literally. While I was washing the car I found a divot on the top edge of my bumper. I guess that's what I ran the mirror into when I broke the bottom while getting it out of the car. I kind of felt vindicated on behalf of the car that there was only a small divot in the paint and the mirror sustained far more damage. But then I realized that both of them belong to me and that in the end I've lost both ways.

Girlfriend

On Friday night I had a girlfriend dream. I hate girlfriend dreams. I'm happily snuggling with somebody when I wake up to find my pillow and I having a tender moment. Not to take anything away from my pillow, the soft, squishy vixen that it is. It's just that I like my significant others to be less rectangular and pillowcased.

This particular girlfriend dream was actually just an anxiety dream. I was trying to make it home from Brazil (my dream didn't bother to explain that one) and at some point I ended up at a movie theater trying to get to my seat with my girlfriend. (This girlfriend happened to be a friend's ex-girlfriend in real life.) This was not, however, your average movie theater. Imagine a 6 story office building with a great big screen in the parking lot. Now imagine that the wall facing the screen has been removed and the seats go all the way up to the edge. As in there's no walkway to get to a front row seat. You have to climb over the other seats to get into a front row seat, and when I did my feet hung over the edge into 6 stories of nothingness. Also, the seats were too close together, so as everybody moved around and tried to get comfortable, their shoulders would touch mine and they all seemed to be forcing me forward toward the drop off. But despite my eminent death by falling 6 stories, and the fact that I was still trying to escape from Brazil, it was nice to snuggle with my friend's ex.

When I woke up I was relieved to be secure in my bed, but depressed that I have nobody to cling too incase the situation comes up in real life.

Things I saw on Saturday

-Little Miss Sunshine. It was excellent.

-A guy on the street juggling 2 flaming sticks in front of a bar. He stopped to let me pass.

-People stopping on the freeway to read those big signs that let you know about accidents and road closures. Seriously people, we need to work on our freeway literacy. I was in stop and go traffic 3 times and each time was because people were slowing down to read the sign that said the Bay Bridge would be closed over Labor Day weekend. Admittedly it's a big deal, but after you've read the sign once maybe we could just cruise on by the next 2 times.

-A nerd/punk gang from the 80s. Standing in line in front of me while trying to buy a ticket for Little Miss Sunshine were a group of 5 kids who had completely embraced their nerdatude. They ranged in age from 13 to maybe 16. And the strangest thing about this particular group was that they got their bad-ass rebellious look right out of Pretty in Pink. The youngest kid had curly blond hair hanging over his eye, a rimmed hat tipped back on his head like Duckie, one REALLY large fake diamond earring, a white undershirt, and the very sunglasses from risky business. And while they started out in front of me in line, an argument broke out about who was paying for tickets, and several of us normal people from the 2000's cut in front of them. They didn't seem to mind, or even notice.

And may God bless me this evening as much as I would bless Him if I were He and He were Charles Dalrymple.*

In my old apartment I had a Brigadoon fly. Once in a while he would show up, fully grown, and buzz around the apartment until he died, all big and ungainly, in the track of the sliding glass door. He never appeared small and grew large. He was full size or he wasn't there at all.

In my new apartment I seem to have a Brigadoon daddy long legs. He appears every so often fully grown in my shower. If he were to appear fully grown by my front door, he might get politely ushered into the garage. But if you're a spider, and I'm naked when I discover you, you are going to die.

I have a theory on why and how the Brigadoon spiders keep appearing. I think that there is an alternate dimension ruled by Spider Command and they happen to have access to an interdimensional portal. Alas, spider world is running out of food, and their plan to combat hunger is to capture a fully grown person. The clothes would be too much trouble to get off when feeding the multitudes, so they send their biggest, best, and brightest into my shower to bag me when I'm clean, fresh, and without indigestible clothing. Unfortunately they keep losing contact with their recruits. Before they can send a message back to headquarters they've been summarily sprayed with raid and flushed down the toilet. Spider Command is baffled but keeps pushing willing daddies long legs through the portal while assuring the population that everything is going smoothly.

Hooray for raid. Some of these suckers have a leg-span which is too big to safely corral inside a wad of toilet paper. Raid makes them a lot more compact, though it does make my shower time quite a bit less pleasant.



*In case you were wondering, it's a quote from Brigadoon.

The Fastest Way to Lose a Cleaning Deposit

I was looking through the 1 bedroom listings just now and stumbled upon an apartment I was in just this afternoon. It's only $300 a month and it's in Marin, so the rent is about $900 less than your average 1 bedroom in the area. However, there are a few reasons why I can't/won't live there.

-You have to be confined to a wheelchair to rent a unit.
-The whole place smells like (and is filled with) stubbed out cigarettes.
-There's a large bag of pee in the bedroom.

In all of my travels, today was the first time I had ever seen a big bag of pee not attached to the person who was filling it up. I happen to know this guy moved across the country, so he can't have been in such a big hurry that he couldn't properly dispose of his pee bag. Abandoned pee bags really give a room an extra jolt of creepy.

And that, my friends, is just the kind of story I find to be so plentiful in my life, and exactly the kind of story which I could never tell a date.

Fail Safe Diet Reminder

I just put an 80x42 inch mirror in my living room. And I managed to squeeze it into my xB. Go xB. (I also just managed to squeeze it into my living room with only has an 84 inch ceiling.)

It really makes my living room look bigger and brighter. Unfortunately I now have a full body reminder of my enormity as I walk around my apartment in my undies. I'm either going to have to wear more clothing at home or keep up the jogging.

In Search of The One

I've been updating my Onion Personals profile this evening. I've added a picture of the top half of me in a suit (the bottom half has a suit on too, it just isn't showing), a pumpkin wearing my sunglasses, and of me standing in front of a taqueria. Girls like pumpkins and taquerias right?

I've also tweaked the stuff I've written under the prompts. For instance:

The word or phrase that best describes my personality: Quaint

My most humbling moment:
P.E. class, the 7th grade. There was one day when we were all forced to take a shower, perhaps to promote good personal hygiene. Not being comfortable with public nudity at 13, I moved a little too quickly on my way back to my locker, slipped, fell, and landed hard enough on my elbow that I couldn't get myself back up to my feet. My P.E. teacher, Mr. Everheart, had to help me back to my towel. Wasn't middle school just the best?

The best or worst lie I've ever told
This is the best question ever!

I'll have to wait and see whether any of that scores me a place on anybody's hot list.

In unrelated news, I seem to have a small infestation of fruit flies. This is odd because it's been quite some time since there's been any fruit in here. And while fruit flies are right up there with the most annoying creatures on earth, I do enjoy feeling like a Ninja when I reach out and snatch one out of the air. I'm thinking about practicing with some chopsticks.

Get a Move On

I need some exercise. I've needed some for a while, but my problem with exercise is that I hate it. Moving for the sake of moving isn't fun and makes me feel terrible afterward.

This is not to say that I want to remain stationary on my couch until the end of days. If somebody wanted to go on a hike, I'd go with them. If somebody wanted to play frisbee, I'd play with them. If somebody wanted to go running, I'd remain stationary on my couch. I hate running. Running is awful.

And yet ...

Today I went running. Turns out that running is the only exercise I can get without driving someplace and/or meeting a bunch of new people. I can open my door and run down the block until my lungs threaten to fall out, then I can walk back. Doing anything else takes too long. Running takes 13 minutes of running and 17 minutes of walking back.

If I had a membership to Baly's Total Fitness, I might go there and use their various workout equipment. It's walkable. Unfortunately health club memberships cost roughly a trillion dollars a month.

So alas, the only thing I can think of that will get my out from under my genetic gut of Damocles is running. If anybody has any special techniques that avoid the burning in my chest, the faint taste of blood, shoulder cramps, and the resulting woosey feeling that I suppose is my bad-trip version of a runner's high, then please let me know. I'd love my love handles to go away, but I don't want my cardiovascular system to leave with them.

Constellation Under My Chin

I've decided to try shaving with a razor again. For years now I've been shaving with an electric razor, and it's been fine. But the blade has been getting dull for longer than I've lived in San Francisco, and I thought I'd give manual razoring another go.

I shaved this morning, and didn't cut myself at all. However, when I got home it looked as though I was about to spout cat whiskers, and my chin had little hair oases all over it. So I reshaved just now and managed to create 19 tiny cuts under my chin and on my upper lip.

So far I'm leaning toward old buzzy.

MySpace

Ah MySpace. What a pain. It's annoying that's so useful.

I greatly dislike when my email lets me know I have a message and friend request waiting for me at MySpace, but when I get there it turns out to be some hip hop group who would really like me to give their songs a whirl. Carlos, of BigSexy Ent for instance. No Carlos, no matter how big or sexy you may be, I do not want to be your friend nor attend any of your promotional events.

There's also a fair bit of porn spam on MySpace. If I get a friend request from a girl who is kind of mediumly attractive, I click on it to see who she might be. If I get a friend request from a girl who's the hottest thing since building hospital beds in the sunshine, I delete it because I don't need other peoples porn foisted on me when I'm not expecting it.

All this with the added benefit of being the slowest site on the interweb, you'd think nobody would visit. But alas, it has its uses. What do you do, for instance, if you meet somebody at a party but mistakenly come away with the impression that she is a lesbian? You look her up on MySpace, that's what.

If only I wasn't such a social Olympian*, I'd see if she wanted to get some coffee or something**.

*Olympian of the special variety.

**Something being any of the fantastic Ideas in the comments of the last post. Well, fantastic apart from the Joo's.

Ideas

OK people. I know it's been a while, and I hate to ask you for things when I've been such a bad poster, but I beseech you: I need second date ideas.

Things to keep in mind:
-I'm not overflowing with wealth. Reasonably nice meals are a go, but renting helicopters is out.
-I don't drink. So while going for drinks might work in theory, it might be creepy for me to hand her a Jack and Coke while I sip my Shirley Temple.
-A date which stimulates conversation, or requires some non-talking time would be great. I'm not so good at keeping the conversation flow going until I get to know somebody better.

And ... brainstorm!

Snickers Chords

You never know what's going to get a big response. Figuring out the Snickers song seems to be a shared experience though. So here's the chords, at least as close as I'm willing to make them. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

This is pretty close:

As near as I can tell it's kind of a walk down from G to Em. I'll make
up a name for the middle chord and tab it out. Say G/F#.

G/F#
e-3
B-3
G-0
D-0
A-X
E-2

G-------------------G/F#
Happy peanuts soar
-------C---------------------D
Over chocolate covered mountaintops
------G---------------G/F#-C
And waterfalls of caramel
-------------G-----------------G/F#
Prancing nougat in the meadow
-----------C--------------D
Sings a song of satisfaction
---------G
To the world

A Good Reason to Lose Sleep?

Probably not, but when the urge comes I can't deny it.

The snickers commercial came on where a guy in a carpet store is sitting at his desk about to eat a snickers when another guys comes up and says, "let me help you enjoy that snickers." Guy #2 then pulls out a guitar and sings the following:

Happy peanuts soar
Over chocolate covered mountaintops
And waterfalls of caramel
Prancing nougat* in the meadow
Sings a song of satisfaction
To the world

And they harmonize "To the world." Then guy #1, obviously touched by the song looks at his snickers bar and whispers, "The world!" As the scene fades to black guy #2 pats guy #1 on the shoulder and says, "That's right."

Well, that commercial came on and I had to spend 10 minutes writing down the lyrics and figuring out the chords. I did, and now I can go to bed satisfied, as it were.

Monday, Stupid Monday

I had a hard time functioning today, and I have no idea why.

-I took 20 minutes to fax 25 pages of paperwork to corporate, and when it was finished corporate called me and told me I'd faxed them the back of 25 pages. When I faxed it again the fax machine told me I'd sent 26 pages. Better extra than not enough I guess.

-The email was screwed up so my Gmail dispatching system wasn't keeping up. I hate when email doesn't work. Customer service kept asking if I was ignoring them. Yes, all of a sudden I've decided to ignore you. That makes a lot of sense.

-I tried to give a little demonstration of a new product to a customer and couldn't make it work. I'd press the power button and some random lights would flash, then it would turn itself off. Power, nothing. Power, beep, nothing. I walked away to check the plug and it turned itself on and started behaving. Fine, give your own demonstration Alternating Wheelchair Cushion!

I think this was all caused by the successful baking of a loaf of banana bread. I even improvised a little in the cooking time, shelf placement, and the addition of an extra banana. I didn't burn it AND it tastes good. I should put bananas in the bottom of my shopping basket more often.

Anyway, the banana bread used up my all smooth-week karma on Sunday. It may be a long week. But a long week full of short days. I need to get caught up on my email, but when you get up at 5am, get home at 6pm or even later, and go to bed at 9pm, that leaves very little time for writing email. Or doing much of anything. I'm looking forward to both the end of radiation and next week when I get a week off from being my own supervisor. It takes a lot of work to keep track of myself, to say nothing of everybody else in my depot.

I've just noticed that for three weeks straight on my calendar I've written "Radioation."

More programs need spell check.

The Glow of my Belly Button

As it turns out, I'm not a big fan of this radiation thing. I have a map of California drawn on to my tummy in permanent marker and I get to feel nauseated all day.

Surgery I can handle. You hurt, and day by day you hurt less until you're fine. But radiation makes you feel progressively worse until you're done. Suhweeet! This is day 2 and I'm already losing my cookies.

My anti-barf pills help a lot. So I'm hoping that my nausea won't get too much worse as I work my way through days 3 through 15. You know what doesn't help? Watching the Dirty Jobs episode featuring Mike Rowe's tour of a skull cleaning business.

Also, taking a bite of spicy processed cheese when I was expecting a bite of pepper jack cheese was just another in a long list of whammies today. Hooray for bed time. (7?! Yes. 7.)

Dawn's Fissure

Tomorrow's my big day. I get to be radiated for the first time. And the best part of the whole deal is that my appointments, Monday through Friday for the next 3 weeks, are at 6:45am. This makes it early enough so I won't miss work, but late enough so I have to get ready for work before I go. Hello 5am.

I haven't visited 5am much recently, but I'm pretty sure any time pre the already ugly 6am is not my friend.

This weekend I went to a wedding which was almost entirely a good time. The single part that wasn't was when a guy at my table came over for what I thought was a friendly conversation. We talked about U.C. Davis, jobs, and post-school debt. I guess we both managed to not really have any after college, but he related that after he got married he and his wife found their way into the red. His plan was to be all paid off in 5 years. They planned to do this, he explained, through he and his wife's business.

Me: What kind of business do you run?
Him: I'm an internet franchise owner.
Me: What does the franchise do?
Him: Sets up online communities.
Me: So how do you make money?
Him: Well, most people spend half their budget on advertising, and we don't have to. So we've doubled our money right there.
Me: Well, that's money you don't have to spend, but how does the money come in?
Him: We sell the rights to set up online communities.

Ah. So it's a pyramid scheme. He then went on to explain the he and his wife had just met with the guy who founded the company. Apparently this guy has 9 Corvettes and earns 90K a month in passive income. And through the seminars that this guy puts on he and his wife plan to retire in 3 years. And didn't that sound good to me?

No.

I'm not sure he's going to do well in the pyramid scheme of things. You can't go around telling people that you plan to get out of debt in 5 years and retire in 3. I'm pretty sure that retiring while you're still in debt makes it both hard to retire and hard to get out of debt.

Also, who wants 9 Corvettes? How about spending some of your passive income on a little variety?

Pub Quiz Update

Amos came to visit this weekend/week and so the old pub quiz team was in full force on Wednesday. Our team name was So Tiramisu Me, but there were so few teams that the best team name category didn't happen. It didn't matter, however, because we won. Go us!

I don't know how it came up, but we were talking about how Aer Lingus is a bad name for an airline. As badly named as it is, a great safety-oriented slogan comes to mind: Aer Lingus - We won't go down on you.

Potpourri
(As opposed to Potent Potables)

I know it's been too long since I've posted when blogger forgets who I am. If only my life were more exciting, or entertaining, or something. I think I need another pet to drive me nuts.

We have this patient at work that drives us nuts. Actually, the patient is very nice; it's her daughter that drives us nuts. She (the daughter) has tried every single one of our mattresses and deemed them unacceptable. And yet she demands we give her something else. It's not like we're holding out on her. It would behoove use to make her happy so she would go away.

The most exasperating part of the whole thing is that each time we give her another mattress to try she calls us up with some phantom problem that she wants me, and me only, to come over and investigate. And no, it's not because she likes me or anything. It's just I'm the only person who will take the time to crap out answers to her ridiculous questions.

And all her supposed problems with the mattress are things that I can neither see happen at the time, nor recreate later. She might as well call me up and ask me if I can get the aliens to stop giving her visions of the mother ship. Or if I can please do something about the kitchen elves stealing her pasta. No. I can't. Because these problems aren't real.

And now she's demanding a mattress that I know she'll hate. In fact she's already tried it and hated it and she's demanding it anyhow.

With a startling lack of transition, I don't think I'm cut out for this online dating thing. I don't know if my emails come on too strong, or not strong enough, or if I'm perhaps boring potential girlfriends to pieces. Whatever the issue may be, the result is that after an email or two they all disappear. In fact, the less I write the longer the correspondence will last. The only time I can get to the point of an actual first date is if I'm ambivalent about writing back in the first place. If I put in just the bare minimum effort so that I can come across as polite, I'm almost guaranteed a coffee date, which will go badly. I need to find a different method.

There needs to be some sort of monkdom that involves tinkering and does not involve religion.

No More Food

They're closing my Albertsons. Who closes an Albertsons?

And it's really the only grocery store within walking distance. Now the two closest fooderies are the Pacific Super, which is like Asian Albertsons and an Albertsons on Ocean Ave, which takes 10 or so minutes to reach by car. The problem with the Pacific Super is that they often don't have quite what I'm looking for. Grass jello? No problem. Cans of squid? The end cap on aisle 3. Bullion cube? Nope, they don't have those. Ground turkey? Sorry.

So I think for the most part I'll shop at the other Albertsons, which I'm not entirely unhappy about. I mean, it's a pain to have to drive to the store because I don't usually buy more than 2 or 3 little bags worth of stuff. But this other Albertsons is MUCH nicer:
- The Aisles are clean.
- There is a BofA inside which is open until 7 where I can take out my rent in cash.
- Both clerks and customers are more attractive than the clerks and customers at the old store.
- Nobody is shucking corn in the vegetable department.
- All the self checkout lines work.

I'm hoping that some other grocery store will go in where the old Albertsons used to be. Perhaps a Trader Joes. Or, if I'm really lucky, a cinnamonbearatorium.

Pentadotted

My radiation hasn't started, but I did just go in for my simulation appointment. I'm not sure why they call it that. It's more like a mapping and drawing appointment.

I was under the impression that the simulation appointment would show me what a regular radiation appointment would be like, would tell me when and for how long my appointments would go on, and that I would have a firm idea of how the rest of my treatment would go. But no, that's not how doctors work.

In preparation for my simulation I went into the bathroom to put on the robe the nurse gave me. Since all this stuff is happening in my abdomen area I left my shirt on, took off my pants, and unfolded the robe. This robe, however, simply would not do. It turned out to be the shirt half only, and would have made my stay in the waiting room a little drafty. I'm just not comfortable in public wearing only black socks and a hospital robe halter top. So I put my pants back on and went to find a more suitable robe.

After a couple minutes a nurse and a doctor in training came to show me to my x-ray table. On the x-ray table they projected a grid of light on my abdomen and then drew on me with 3 or 4 colors of permanent marker, took 2 x-rays, and went off to consult the doctor. When they came back they were happy with their map of my innards so they made some permanent landmarks so the radiation people could radiate me with some measure of accuracy.

Yep, that's right, I got tattooed. I have 5 whole tattoos. I'm finally cool like Cate, except hers are quite a bit more ornate than mine are. Mine, boringly enough, are just little dots. Just a drop of ink and a poke with a needle in a 3 dot line an inch to the right of my bellybutton and a dot on each love handle. If you connected the dots you'd get a big sideways cross. Or if you used my moles and freckles you might get the Mona Lisa.

When I was leaving they told me they'd call me the next day to tell me when I'd have my month or so of treatments. When I called them two days later they said that they'd call me in a week or maybe a week and a half. When I asked how long my treatments would go the nurse told me it would be between 2 and 5 weeks. It's hard to pin doctors down on things.

Washing Advice

Do not combine rinsing your mouth with Listerine and washing your face into the same activity. If you happen to spit at the same time you're bringing a hand full of water up to your face you're liable to rub Listerine-spit-water into your eyes.

At least I'm secure in the knowledge that my nose won't develop gingivitis.

Home Sweet Home?

I need more space. I'd like room for people to sleep when they visit. I'd like to have a spot to build things. I'd like to not ram my knuckles into my light fixture when I'm putting on my shirt in the morning. Oh, and I'd like more than one window.

On the other hand, I hate moving, and there are no places available that are so obviously better yet still affordable that I would go through the horror of moving out.

With that in mind I was cruising along on craigslist when I saw two houses for sale: One for $175K and one for $160K. Those are reasonable home prices in most places, but they are a steal in the bay area, especially because they are both in Marin. So here are the catches. The first is a floating home, and the second is a mobile home.

I'm still interested in the idea of a floating home. It's just that this particular floating home wasn't my cup of tea. When I went to look at it there was quite a bit of water cascading off the roof, which was odd since it hadn't been raining. Then there was the fact that when the tide goes out the home sits in the mud. Stinky mud. And to top it off the road that leads to the dock floods every time there's a big rain storm. No thanks.

Now the mobile home had a little more promise, at least as far as homey things are concerned. For $160K I would get 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a little back yard, new parquet floor, granite counter tops, and access to the pool and tennis court. Then again, at the end of any given date I'd be left with the problem of how to phrase the question "would you like to come back to my trailer?"

I think I'd still consider the mobile home if I got the ground underneath for my $160K. But I don't trust people to not sell the dirt out from under my house if I'm be renting it. What would I do with a $160,000 house with no place to put it? It's not like it has wheels. Maybe I could sneak it into Golden Gate Park. Ending a date with "would you like to come back to my house in Golden Gate Park?" would probably work wonders. Or she'd think I was homeless.

Pub Quiz Update

The team name: It's Called Soccer.
Our place: 4th.
Skittles flavored gum: Gross. They're just like regular Skittles, except you chew them twice as long and spit them out instead of swallowing.
Winner of funniest name: Quadravag. (A team of 4 girls.)

Not to Change the Subject

But I'm not sure I have any more thrilling or entertaining stories of cancer with which to entertain you at the moment.

What I will talk about briefly is that I've just gotten an email for a girl on a personals site. And that's great; I don't get a lot of emails. (And I don't get a lot of replies to my emails which makes for some pretty slow going.)

Anyhow, she's awfully good looking, and that worries me. It's not that attractive girls cause me great dismay, but I'm worried she isn't real, or who knows – just that something is wrong. I've been fooled before. I once had a very nice email from a girl telling me I could contact her for free via her profile on her "friend's" website. Since you have to pay to email people I thought it was really nice that she'd tell me how to contact her for free. No such luck. It was all an evil ploy to get me to sign up for another dating site.

I've also had messages from little cute pictures of girls who, when clicked, turned into bigger pictures of girls with Adam's apples and big, hairy, man-hands. Not things I'm looking for in a relationship.

But all her pictures confirm that she's a cute girl with regular sized girl-hands and a bulge-free neck. And she hasn't asked me to go sign up at a website or anything. So I'm just going to go ahead, cross my fingers, and hope she's a real person who just happens to think the picture of me in my plaid hat is worthy of an email.

At the Hospital

The Friday I had my surgery I arrived at St. Luke's at around 4pm. Eventually, after I had signed in, and then wandered around the hospital trying to find the recovery room, I was lead to where I needed to be by a nurse. They brought me over to my gurney, I undressed and got under some preheated blankets, and another nurse fished around under my skin looking for a vein and trying to insert the IV.

In general, any time I have given blood for any reason the blood taker says, "oh my, you have such nice, big veins." And the first nurse said exactly that, but apparently the second nurse didn't see what the first nurse saw. She had a hard time, and I did too.

After I was all IVed, prepped, and ready to go, the anesthesiologist came in to explain the stuff he was about to give me. "This first thing is just to relax you." He said, injecting some stuff into my IV. "It'll be like having a couple of margaritas."

"Oh. Um, I don't drink."

"Ah, well, it'll be like having 6 or 7 margaritas then."

And I was off to the operating room. The anesthesiologist put a mask on me and said he was going to give me some oxygen. I remember thinking that the mask didn't fit very well because a lot of the gas was shooting over my right cheek. Then I was out.

When I woke up I was back in the recovery room, and after some odd hospital apple juice, they wheeled me up to my room.

All through the night attractive nurses came in to see what my pain level was. (Generally I said 3 or 4, which I guess is what one aims for on a 10-scale pain chart. 3 or 4 corresponds to the smiley face who looks like he just knocked over somebody's favorite lamp.) Then they'd ask to look at my incision and draw on the dressing with permanent marker, or in one case, with a ballpoint pen. (If you ever find yourself as a nurse in this situation, use the permanent marker. You don't have to press as hard.) I'm certainly not used to attractive women asking to look at my crotch.

I only spent the one night in the hospital, but it was a toughy. I had to stay on my back, and I don't sleep well, or at all, on my back. In addition, the nurse's station was right out my front door and there was a lot of noise from out there. Lastly, even though I was 10 floors up, I could still hear through my window things like screeching tires, sirens, and cops yelling "Stop! Police! Stop or I'll shoot!." Finally, the bit that was most responsible for keeping me awake was the fact that I'd had an IV in me since 4pm, and I had to pee roughly every half hour. And there were a number of things making peeing difficult:

1) Having to pee in a jug.
2) Having to pee in a jug while lying down, on my back, unable to roll over very far onto my side.
3) Trying to relax to pee into a jug while my mother slept mere inches away on a fold-out bed/chair on the floor.
4) Trying to fit in a pee between nurse visits.

Although I do have to give the pee jug people credit for the curved neck design. Kudos for reducing spillage.

In the morning I was up and hobbling around, and decided to sit in a chair for a while while a nurse came in to take my vitals. As she was doing so I was watching a bubble travel down my IV into my arm, and I asked her if that was ok. My understanding was that bubbles and blood vessels don't mix. She said she didn't know and would ask another nurse.

15 minutes or so passed and another nurse came in and checked my vitals. I asked her the same question and she said it was fine. This, of course, begs another, and possibly more serious question: Who was the first nurse? Does she even work there? Does she just go around checking people's vitals and not telling anyone?

Finally it was breakfast time and the real nurse told me she'd ask the nutritionist to organize some breakfast for me. I wasn't looking forward to a breakfast designed by a nutritionist, but I didn't have much choice. When breakfast arrived it consisted of pancakes with maple syrup, sausage links, coffee, cranberry juice, and milk. Basically a fatty version of the stuff that surrounds the cereal bowl in the fruit loops commercial. I could totally be a nutritionist.

After breakfast it was time to go home, so my mom helped me put on my underwear, socks, and pants. I was a little worried about the taxi ride to my apartment because the pharmacy had been closed so all my pain meds were still at Rite Aid waiting to be bought. I asked the nurse how much pain medication I was getting through my IV, and she said, "None. Do you want some?" Little did I know that I had just had right testicle removed the day before, and from the point of waking up to walking in my front door I had taken no pain medication at all. I'm not sure who should get the credit for that: The Surgeon? Me? But somebody should.

The last obstacle for the day was getting from the hospital to my apartment. I had contemplated asking a friend to pick me up, but it was early and I didn't want to explain that I had cancer, surgery, ask for a ride home, and apologize for waking them up all in the same phone call. So we called a cab.

You know how people are made up of something like 60% water? Well, this cab driver was someplace near 75% amphetamine. He was simultaneously adjusting the radio, asking where we wanted to go, asking for directions on how to get there, explaining his 6 months absence from driving, and assuring me that telling him to drive smoothly was a good move on my part. And he was doing all that and driving at warp speed. He was also breaking at warp speed.

When I got out of the cab the driver jumped out and offered me his arm. I decided I'd rather not take any help from Mr Jitters, so I took hold of the door instead.

"Oh man! I hope you feel better man!" He said, shuffling back and forth. "Maybe you should get a cane or something!"

And by Monday I was back at work.

Oh, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my mattress for being awesome. I slept on my stomach that Saturday night. The 4" Eurotop was totally worth the extra money. You go Serta.

Back

Well, not back really. It's not like I went someplace.

So here's the deal - the reason I haven't been writing: The day after my last post I found out I had testicular cancer. Then I had the right one* out on Friday. I'm fine now, though I need to undergo some radiation therapy just to be sure they got it all.

So for a while there all the stories I could think of were hospital related. And you can't very well tell a bunch of hospital stories without explaining why you were in the hospital. Well, maybe I could have, but not stories that involve attractive nurses coming in every hour or so to draw on my crotch with magic marker, or hearing an-only-barely-avoided shootout below my hospital window at 2am. Mattress delivery rarely involves either of those things.

Then, as non-hospital related stories came up, I felt like I couldn't just jump right in after 2 weeks with, "today I went to Arbuckle California and saw a coffee shop called Starbuckles Coffee." Or "Today I delivered a mattress to a guy named "Charlie Brown." I needed to explain my absence first. One can't follow a post about Arbuckle Coffee with a post about cancer. I think people who do that are called blog fouls.

Anyhow, I decided I should just write about it, then it'd be out there and I could talk about hospital stories or what ever else happened to be going on. I could even post another math joke if the mood struck. (Don't worry, I don't have one.)

So yeah, there it is. And I'm fine, so nobody worry. I wasn't using the right one anyhow. Really, for the other people I know who have had cancer, it was really a much more traumatic thing. I feel like my experience has been much more low-key. My experience was the medical equivalent of having a spider on your back, saying "Eek! Get it off!", and then not being able to lift anything heavy for 2 months. Ok, so the lifting thing doesn't fit with the metaphor, but you get the picture. The spider's gone, and on August 1st I'll be able to heave 72 lb boxes of gel mattress pad around just like I used to.


*As opposed to the left one. Not as opposed to the wrong one.