Live With The Nerds
Don't Be One
June 2001
Tonight I tried to play again, it was stiff but not too sore, so I ran just
a couple of games before I quit.
Well Fila is still leaking all over the place, I upped his insulin back to
3 units, and he seems to have reduced the volume of pee, but not the leaking,
I may have to take him in next week. Speaking of which I scheduled my thermal fogging
and ozone work in the master bedroom for early next week, maybe I'll even get to
move in on the 4th of July before Carey and Jo get to town.
I was more awake after my nap, good thing too cuz I went out to dinner
and a movie with Kit (Pho, and The Fast and the Furious) napping then
would've been a major faux pas. Both her cat (tigger) and dog (misty) were
very entertaining and fun, even though we starved them before we got back
in time to feed them ;) One funny thing, we went to see a movie about
tricked up car racers, and we ate at a place that had a bike pack visiting
nothing like burn-offs in a mini-mall parking lot -- still want a bike down here,
but won't be riding with squids like that any time soon.
Sunday I slept much better (the mask stayed on) and was fairly alert almost the
whole day -- had to go to work for a bit to turn all the lab stuff on, then I
headed out to Sam's bbq, spent the better part of 6 hrs there, pretty fun, lots
of good food (including roasted oysters), hadn't seen Brown in quite a while
and it turns out he's moving to Seattle in August. Karen eventually showed up,
as did some of Sammy's (Sam's younger sister) friends.
As always with this group, there was quite a bit of drinking (the 2' bottle
of Belvedere, as well as Gray Goose and Stoli's, along with the requisite beers)
much dancing (brown and karen polynesian style) and hilarity (you just had to
be there, Miguite was in much trouble with Katherine ;) Their poor setter (for
the Houston tourny, Bo) was such a lightweight that he was out after 2 shots
and a wine cooler ... he's really gonna be messed up when they get ahold of
him at the 3 day tournament.
I had another smoke odor removal estimate yesterday, it sounds like this
may work. They generate a thermal fog (like real smoke) that penetrates everywhere
that regular smoke would, and it binds and neutralizes smoke particles. Then they
run an ozone generator/cleaner for 2 days to make sure that the last bits of the
fog and smoke are handled.
Tomorrow I have appointments with another odor/paint guy and a carpenter to
get an estimate for the baseboards in the house -- at this rate I might
actually move upstairs before August, although I would dearly love for Fila
to be diabetes free before that happens. I'd hate to have him leaking all over
the stairs.
Today was a light day at work, since we have a (planned) power outage tomorrow
for all of the labs (new generators for the rolling blackouts) I shut everything
down pretty early and then jetted out. Even managed time for lunch with Kit, she
works at this pretty cool place (Kamimoto
String Instruments) in fact if you go to the site you'll see a picture
of her playing a violin. Lunch was good, right in SJ J-town, the place even
had spam musubis. To top off the day, Kit (and one of the tutors) played
some cello music for me, next time I'll have to get it on tape. Kit is pretty
amazing, AA volleyball, and a musician, as well as a homeowner, wonder what
other surprising things I'll learn next (aside from her being a heartbreaker ;)
My current working theory is that I got the same effective amount of rest
in 5 hours, that I normally, barely get in 7.5, now if I can just retrain
to actually sleep 7 or so with the cpap, I'll probably be feeling really great.
Tried to play some bball tonight, went well for a while but then the ankle
started getting sore so I quit. Body was kinda tired from the lack of sleep, but
wasn't really winded, just a bit burnt out.
In the blast from the past category, I heard that an old ex-girlfriend of mine
thought it would be a good idea to get together for lunch the next time I was
in Seattle, may just have to do that. It was a long time ago, and things are vague
but I'm pretty sure I gave her a lot of cause to want to break up.
Today I sub'd on a coed vball team and met someone who plays in the womans league
with Miki, we may all play this weekend, but she wanted to play a tourny so
I'll have to get in a bit better shape.
It turns out that I don't have to have another sleep study, cuz of insurance
they just gave (rented for a month) me a cpap machine to try with the settings
from the original sleep study, hopefully tonight will be a good (and snore free)
nights sleep. The unit is fairly small, but not tiny, I'll be able to travel
with it but it'll take up a good chunk of space.
Kenny got into town friday night so we all hung out for a bit, then
saturday was volleyball mania -- lots of play at the oval, mostly reverse
coed -- I tried playing left side for a bit but sucked badly, then it was
back to the right side where I was playing better till I landed badly and
twisted my ankle again, what a pain.
We had a pretty good crowd show up, me, ken, miki, jack, karen, julie, john, mike
and the cuties jae and kit. Later that night it was bbq at miki & jack's where
we found out just how wild jae really is, and some interesting "tidbits" about
kit (or kitty kitty pong pong as miki calls her ;)
Sunday was tourny day for Miki and Ken, as well as for Kit and Mike, so I just
hung around (resting the ankle) all day, that was pretty fun, Kit was hilarious
with the effort (and flirting) she put in, while miki and ken dominated
until the last match (2nd in A).
Aside from the injury, it was a great weekend, even playing poorly was better
than what I've been doing lately. I think the best part was getting to know
Jae and Kit better, since I really don't know them too well. They are
excellent players and a lot of fun. Kit was especially tolerent of the
ribbing we'd give her (since it lasted 2 days) and she has this really cool
dog named Misty, unfortunately (or fortunately for Ken) they're a bit on the
young side (mid-20's).
Best Non Finals match - Friday there was a pair of sisters (starting setter
for USC and UCSD?) both about 5'7" or so, and they just ground out games against
bigger folks with out even blocking.
Player to Drool Over:
Rachel Wacholder you just had to see her play ... and she was a good sport hacking
around during one of the audience participation games.
Most Interesting Offense: Holdren and Rodger -- seeded #1, I saw them (in a single
game) run multiple quick sets, front shoots, jump set back 2's and 4's, pretty amazing
that they could run a real offense in doubles. By contrast Fonoi and Blanton ran
skyballs all the time (I swear they were 15' higher than the antenna at least)
Wierdest Change: was going to pick the smaller court, in that everyone was shooting and
tipping the ball instead of banging away, but really it goes to the new ball, prototype
Wilson AVP's made to the FIVB spec, they were really boingy, and felt like they were
synthetic. I heard a couple of the women players complaining that even they weren't
allowed to buy them yet. I guess I better order one of the old ones soon if I want
to get one. Strange side-effect was that the qualifiers weren't jump-serving at all,
but everyone, and I mean just about everyone, was hucking hand-sets up there. Gotta
love those new rules.
Non-Player to Drool Over, (and its a small world): a surprise visit by
Reta
on Sunday, we spent all day (with her NAGVA friend Doug) at center court
and just catching up. Sounds like she's going to move there, cuz there was
soo much eye-candy for her (and Doug's camera ;)
Did manage to see Lori while I was there, but she didn't have time to hang out
much at all since she had a tourny of her own. Mason, on the other hand was
awesome, he's really starting to "talk" it up, and he likes to play, well
mostly he likes to giggle.
Finally friday I caught up with Sam and Karen at City Beach, and played a couple
of hard games of indoor 6's unfortunately I landed on someones foot and tweaked my
ankle a bit. The next two days Sam, Karen and I (amoung others) closed out her favorite
sushi bar (Midori on El Camino) turns out she's a regular and we were getting
all kinds of drinks and specials, not to mention that the sushi chef (Tommy) and
one of the waitresses Jean (cute and single ;) drank heavily with us. Since I
detest beers, they let me slide with midori and sake shots while they all did
sake bombs (kinda like sake boilermakers). Even so, they were so wasted that
Sam and Karen both crashed at my place for the night.
Saturday was volunteer work at the Sunnyvale Art and Wine fair (NetApp handles
a wine booth every year) then that night it was back to Midori with a gang
of 8 (including Ivy and Sam's sister Sammy, and her friends) more sake, and sake bombs
galore. Luckily I only had to keep up with Ivy, so I remember having more than 5
shots, but not more than 10 -- we must've gone through at least 30 large bottles
of Asahi (for the bombs)
Sunday we met up at 1 to see the Art and Wine fair, lots of eating, and some
of their other friends came down from East Bay and we wandered off to see Moulon
Rouge. Except for the ankle it was a pretty busy and fun week, this coming week
will be hectic getting ready for Hermosa, and Kiz will be back from vacation
so maybe I'll get see her before I'm off.
Today was Ki* day, lunch with Kit at Spaghetti Factory, then dinner and Lara Croft
with Kiz, good thing I didn't have much work to do, I'd have been too distracted ;)
In any case it was a good day. I even got to put some more toys/games on my new
Handspring Edge. I got it because they're running a $100 turn in/upgrade special, so
my sister gets my old palm 5, my other sister gets her palm 3x, and I get to turn in
my original palm pro that she has.
So the weather has changed kinda drastically, rained most of tuesday afternoon,
strange but nice. Played some bball, ankle was ok but stiff for a couple of games
then it started getting sore, so I quit. It was sore on top though instead of the
side, and my hamstrings were still kinda tight, I suspect I might have overdone
it at yoga on Monday.
Ok, now I'm sure the cpap machine works, friday night/sat morning I appeared
to have removed my mask, don't know when, but I had to be up around 9am to
meet with the other odor removal guys and a carpenter (for my baseboards), was
groggy almost all day long, in fact, even though I made it to lunch with Karen
and just a bit of shopping (to pick out a baseboard) I was so zonked that I
had to nap for about 4 hours that afternoon.
It must be working, some at least, I'm not so groggy in the mornings,
am getting about 7 hrs sleep, and still have enough brainpower to write
journal entries more regularly.
Well, first night with the cpap, strange, I think I slept better, but still
woke up sorta tired. For some odd reason (or because of the mask) I was up
before 7am, now I normally go to sleep around 2am so thats not much sleep, and
everyone knows I'm not much of a morning person. However, I couldn't get back to
sleep so I ended up going to work before 8am. Getting up wasn't a struggle and
and my brain was actually clear and alert the whole day, although my eyes felt
tired it could have been from the amount of sun I had this weekend.
Yesterday I was exhausted and my ankle was still kinda sore, so instead of going
to yoga, I went to see Swordfish with Kiz. It was pretty entertaining and
the opening violence was amazing.
What a week, ankle was better, did some yoga, then I tried to double
up (vball and bball tuesday) and it got sore again, luckily I had
nothing wed, and then vball thursday, which went ok.
It was colder in LA than SJ .. go figure, but I still made it to the beach, pretty
good play, even though it was overcast and a bit windy. The finals were awesome, and
sunny as all of the matches went 3 with the winners coming from behind (pretty far
behind) in the 3rd game.
Kiz is back and she brought me a lizard shirt, kinda cool, things have
been busy at work, trying to get everything done before heading off to LA.
Got to my ENT today, turns out I do have a moderate sleep apnea problem, the
test results are kinda scary, I guess at some point I had an oxygen level of 84%
which is pretty low since the Dr described that holding your breath at the bottom of
a pool till you can't anymore would generate a level of around 89%. Daryl (and others
who have had to share a room with me) will be happy to hear that I averaged something
like 200+ snores per hour at 14db .... Next up is another sleep study, this time
with a mask so they can set the appropriate amount of air pressure. Supposidly
a positive air pressure mask (the whole unit can travel) is effective in 90% of the
cases -- although it'll be odd sleeping with a mask on. Soon maybe I won't be so
tired, and my bp will get under control without the lotrel.
What a week of exercise, first was the shopping on monday, that made my
calves really sore, that night they even kept me from sleeping, and woke me
up early in the morning. Tuesday I had a massage, in fact that worked so well, I
played the best I have in quite awhile, even played wed again, but it was too
warm and was sucking air badly after an hour of 3 on 3 half court. So I took
it easier on thursday, just played a bit of recreational grass vball (6's).
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