Live With The Nerds
Don't Be One
September 2001
Fila appears to be getting more used to hanging out upstairs when I'm there
still lots of complaining though. There is a bit of smoke odor, which I now
am sure is in the ducting, I've been spraying frabrez up there and it does seem to
cut it down a bit (and I can smell it through the ducts on the main floor) I
just have to find something that'll do the trick for good.
Sunday was a rare weekend day with Kiz, we wandered off to the A's vs M's game
pretty fun, fairly close, but the M's weren't playing all that well. Then we
caught a movie before I ended up going home to work on the server.
I thought a disk was going bad, but then the other disk in the enclosure had problems
too -- and when I took it all apart (after moving the server out of the kitchen
and into the office where it all belongs) I noticed that it was the enclosure
powersupply that was clicking and whistling -- I suspect that was causing problems
for both drives, so I've been trying to fix/recover everything for the past
few hours. I think everythings ok now, but I'll have to watch closely, as I'm
now using a different (old DEC) enclosure, hopefully the drives will stay stable.
Friday I played a bit at City Beach with Sam, Will and Brown (who didn't move
to Tacoma) but my body wasn't quite up to it, and our play was pretty sloppy
all around. Saturday was movie mania on PPV (just to avoid watching the news)
and a bit of shopping. I even made it to Valley Fair for a bit of NW cooking
they have the only Ivar's in the area. In fact it's probably the only
real fish & chips place down here.
Later that day I even managed to
get to the range and whack a bucket of balls. My dad was right, I'm probably
going to have to regrip the clubs, they were twisting badly, and my hand
got kinda sore. At least it was the left hand, which means it was doing
most of the work (as it should). With these perimeter weighted Ping's (Karsten 1's)
there wasn't any excess torque (or off center stingers) from my swing as there
was with my older, bladed clubs.
I could tell that its been a while though, between the grip and rust I could only
fly my 5 about 150, and the 3 just past that. At least a fair amount of the ones
that were in the air were decently straight.
Sunday I rested my body -- things were stiff and sore (especially my left hand)
but at least my back seems to be ok -- more like out of shape/practice stiffness
now instead of injury pain. Hopefully my ankles will stand up to the pounding
when I start playing a bit more in a month or so. I did manage to finally wash
my car, and I noticed a dent by the bumper right by the trunk, can't quite tell
if someone was thinking about pry-barring the trunk, or if a shopping cart ran
to it somehow (it's above the bumper so that seems hard to believe)
I also managed to catch up with the remote folks via phone, there was a call from
Kat, just to touch base since she may visit soon. Then a late night call from Caroline
(Hawaii time difference had me up chatting till 3am) and I finally (after much
phone tag) got a hold of Rod to see what's up with him -- looks like I'll have
a place to stay if I want to visit Park City UT (or the Winter Olympics)
Friday was doctor day, first I had a vision appointment, my original doctor
had un-retired and was working with my current doctor at a new place -- strangely
when I was there, I ran into an old boy scout friend (Paul Gonzalas) who is
one of the opticians in the frame/lense side of the business.
After that I had to run from downtown (seattle) to federal way to have my
orthodontist fit my new invisi-line braces, gonna have to wear them for just a
bit to stop my teeth from rubbing each other in front. Then it was a quick trip
over to Bellevue/Redmond for lunch with Jo and Ivan -- nifty place (Cafe Orti ??)
next to the Video Only off of 20th and 140th it had good food and even fruit
tapioca drinks.
Next I had a haircut (Studio-1 just off of 24th) and then was off to the newly
remodeled (repainted) Sonics store to pick up a free cap (for season ticket holders)
and some assorted pins and things, all of which had the new logo. Shopped in Chinatown
then ran over to the Newcastle golf course for a gift certificate. Early still for
dinner, I shopped at the Factoria Mall, where I ran into Stuart Terashita, and Kin Lau
so we caught up for a bit before I headed out to Tokyo's for my sister's bday dinners.
Still not done with friday, I drove down to Tacoma with Kat to attend Jacquie's
poker/game party -- that was pretty fun, about 10-12 people, including Ken Becker,
Cindy & Scot, Scot Thompson and some of Jacquie's other (south end) friends.
Party ended around
1am, but Jacquie and I cleaned up and chatted till about 3:30 or so -- finally got
home to bed around 4ish been a long time since I've had such a busy day.
Saturday was lunch with Felly who has moved back to Seattle, then it was
off to Redmond to see Ken, Jo-jo, Cindy (more on her later) and Dave Dickman,
just crush everyone to win the 4's competition. Cindy was yet another small
world story -- Ken was telling me about this women he met that was pretty
good in vball, came from the San Jose area, actually knew Kit, and had recently
(3 years ago) moved to Seattle -- I asked if she worked at the Bush school, cuz
I met someone on the plane to SJ that sounded just like her a couple of years ago
but couldn't remember her name -- and it was, she thought I looked and sounded
familiar but couldn't figure out why.
That evening it was out with Patty and Meryl -- off to see Jeepers Creepers but
didn't hear either of them scream, then it was dinner at Outback, always interesting
chatting with those two, even if Patty is often less than amused.
Sunday was bball day, nice lunch at Deby & Jon's and they have a really cool
dog named Fletcher (Golden Retriever) what really likes to play. Then we were
off to the GP All-Star Classic -- not a lot of great, technical basketball, but lots
of entertaining plays, even better was the surprise appearance of Jamie Fox as
a guest announcer.
Monday I was up at 5am to catch my flight, picked up Fila from the vet's, he
was less than happy but not too bad off, at least they were able to give him
his shots this time -- even reduced the dosage, but he started with the
peeing and diarrea again -- I think the stress was getting to him, so I've
up'ed his dosage again to get him to settle down, hopefully he'll be back
to normal at the end of the week. Last night I managed to go to yoga, but
we have a new instructor (distractingly gorgeous) and a new routine (seems
like more power stretching) that really left me sore today -- and thats with
going easy on some of the poses that were tweaky to my knee/ankle. Oh well
can't expect much after missing 3 straight weeks -- and I was pretty tired
to boot.
The tourny wasn't too bad, but we had a major set back right at the start, although
we had 7, our primary middle blew his knee half way through the first game --
yeah, the set might've been tight, but he ended up going horizontal toward the net
as if he slipped on his approach. Turns out he had previously injured his knee
in Seattle (july) and thought he could play through it with a brace.
The rest of the day we played, somewhat erratically against some pretty good
BB/A teams. We ended up 2-6 for the pool, and after they shifted a few teams
(2 up from B, 1 up to A) we were seeded 8th out of 10 teams. Sunday we played
very sleepily in our first match and were spanked badly. In the loser's bracket
we drew the weaker of the 2 B teams, they could barely return serve so we
advanced against one of the other SJ BB teams. This time we played much better
and won again. Then we got the other B team, only they moved our match into
the other (B) gym, lighting was bad, no space around the court and it was
dangerously slippery. On paper our team looks fairly experienced, but you could
tell that years of play didn't equate to positional, strategic, or mental strength.
We didn't just play down to their level, we were significantly below it and got
pasted pretty good, surprisingly only one of the other guys was as livid as I
about our play ... which says alot right there.
For most of Saturday my back was fine, Sunday it was sore again, so I kept
my brace on in between matches and it finally loosened up. After we were done
I wanted a shower before the long drive home, turns out they only had the
woman's locker room open but since it was a NAGVA tourny it probably didn't matter
much -- except that while getting out of the shower I slipped and fell on the tile.
The only thing running though my head (which I didn't hit) was how strange it
would have been to found naked in the womans locker room at a gay tournament ...
the rest of a team had a good laugh when I mentioned it to them.
Monday, surprisingly, my back was in pretty good shape (maybe the fall put everything
back in place?) but my right knee and shin were pretty sore froma llthe running. In
the afternoon I went up to meet Barri & William who are in town for the week,
they wanted to see the aquarium at pier 39, it was pretty neat since the main attraction
was a "tunnel" under the bay -- seamless plexiglass with a long people mover going
through it. Afterwards we kicked around the marina and ghirrardeli's for a while before
we headed out to chinatown for dinner. It was a pretty fun time and I still got
home early enough to play with fila for a bit before sacking out.
Things have been so hectic the past few weeks, and I've really been
kinda worn down -- even exercise (or yoga with the cute instructor) weren't
much good, always seemed kinda tired and buzzy. Then today, it started raining,
thunder and lighting too -- and after yoga I walked out into rainstorm -- and
what do you think? I think I missed the rain -- just like a few years ago during
that long summer draught, I'd forgotten how irritable I get when it hasn't
rained in a long while. I've always liked the rain, and driving in it at night,
I think things will be easier now -- that is as long as these sunshine only
drivers don't slide into me ;)
Turned out to be a pretty good and busy weekend. Saturday was mostly
cleaning, and moving stuff around, got my bed setup in the master bedroom
finally -- even spent the night there -- new futon will take a bit getting
used to, but its harder for fila to figure it all out (up more stairs etc)
it still smells a bit, and now I noticed that the guest toilet leaks on
flushing -- but I think the room'll be ready by the time Ken shows up on
Thursday.
Most of the week was fairly depressing, nothing to watch but the news
and even that was spotty in it's accuracy. Nothing but continual speculation
and no way to take our minds off of it. At least I managed to play a bit
of bball wed although there wasn't much spark (or attendance) in everyones
game.
Yuck, what a horrid day, spent all day watching/listening to the news at work,
no one from our company was hurt, and the few people that I know attached to
the east coast were fine (Elaine who lives in Manhattan particularly, but Daryl
wasn't there either, and Karen's family was ok) I guess I should recap the weekend
before I get too overloaded with everything else.
Long, busy weekend. The drive to Sacramento went much faster than I anticipated
at 9pm it only took 1hr 45minutes -- stayed at a dive motel with Dan, at least
it was cheap even for 2 queens, only the second night we had some of the other
teammates stayed with us too, they had sleeping bags and slept on the floor, but
at least they didn't snore.
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