I've been very flaky about working out this week due to the heat so today, for the first time, while it was mildly cooler, I forced myself to do 1000 situps in a row. It was a sloooooow row but I got it done. I also got this blog up to date and I'm going to work harder to keep it that way.
On Friday (7/13/07) I went to a photo shoot for one of my clients. It was great. The guy has worked for my company for almost 30 years. It's so awesome that he is finally getting recognition. He's going to used for publicity material (ads, sides of trucks, etc) for the company. And he's the sweetest, most humble person ever. It couldn't have happened to a better person.
Relief...sigh.
Today, after Chi Kung, I saw lightning in Portland which is rare. I met my roommates and Dean up at the soccer field to watch it. It was awesome. I miss thunderstorms. They are so commonplace in Nebraska but they're an every-other-year occurance in Portland.
After a bit, I started to head home with Dean and it poured on me. With the heat from the last couple days, rain was more than welcome. I was listening to Destiny's Child on my Ipod and started dancing while singing and slipping around in my flip flops, half-jogging back to my house. Simply joyous.
On Wednesday (7/11/07) I couldn't take the heat.
Several friends and I converged on another friend's place who had air-conditioning and watched "Willbe Wonderful" which was an endearing movie. We started to watch "Apocolyptica" or whatever that Mel Gibson movie is called but Ashes and I decided to leave. The movie looked interesting but I had no interest in it.
Oh, my new thing was changing a client's depends. It's not like he climbed on a changing table or anything. He just needed help with the tape. It was not the highlight of my career but again, I got big props from the co-workers.
I'm pretty sure that it got up around 104 degrees Tuesday (7/10/07) in Portland and what did I do? I took five clients to the zoo. Everybody at work was commending my initiative. I didn't know it was going to be this hot or else we would have rescheduled.
It wasn't my first trip to the zoo but it was my first big field trip with the ATE clients. They were great for the most part. It was just too damn hot. It's weird being responsible for so many people in a public setting. Luckily I was with my friend Connie from work.
I have mixed feelings about the zoo. I love to see animals but I hate to see them in cages. I like "natural environment" displays in the Omaha's Henry Doorly zoo a lot better.
I have WAY too many clothes. I honestly have no idea how many pairs of black pants I have. This is one of the burdens of having worked at a thrift store. Another burden is going to trendy second hand stores and seeing their higher prices or worse seeing the price of clothing NEW!!! The last piece of clothing I bought new was a black pin striped shirt I got at a small goth store on Hawthorne over two years ago. Before that, I hadn't bought NEW clothes since moving to Portland which was five years ago. But I do LOVE to get new-to-me clothes. That's why Monday (7/9/07) was fabulous. I picked up a clothing donation for a local charity with one of my friends. As "payment" for picking up these clothing from various second-hand stores, we get to go thru them first and pick out some items for ourselves. I got the lovely red dress with white polka dots pictured above that I plan to turn into an apron for cooking. I didn't need the feather boa because I already have one exactly like it but can one ever have too many feather boas?
Today I saw the movie Caballos Salvajes which translates to Wild Horses (not Wyld Stallions but I've never one to pass up a pop-culture reference). It was an awesome movie and pretty much was better than anything else I did today. Sad but true.
However, I said I wouldn't count new movies as doing new things so I'm going to count meeting Mike for the first time as my new thing. Mike is the stylist who cut my hair today. He was cute and nice and I actually enjoyed talking to him. I usually don't like talking to people when they cut my hair. The conversation usually feels forced but it was alright this time. I think I'm warming up to humanity. Yay for me.
Hhere's what my laptoop types likewhen itt is unedited. It's rerally been pissing me off. I'm not abad typist. The damn keeyboard just doesn't work. I've tried cleaning it and blowing the airr thrru it but the damn buttons just won't worrk. Iit takes me so long to type shit because I have to go back and edit it. For every ten letters i type, I hahve too use my backspace at least five times to add iin spaces, gett rriid of spaces or get rrid of extra letters. On Saturday, for the fiirst time, I bought a desktop computerrr with aworking keybooard and even i f it doesn't work, it's interchangable unlike the laptop. Plus a friend is going to give me a hard drrive with super memory space. I'm so damn stokedd!!
I like being a roadie. It allows me a certain social osterization that I am comfortable with. I don't like the spotlight and I don't like being expected to have a good time. I can be all Daria like that. However, I do like the guys in Riot Cop and I like everything they stand for. Plus I love traveling and I enjoy free beer, free food and free other stuff. So being a roadie (or merch guy as I like to say) suits me.
The bassist for the band today (Friday 7/6/07) had to work late so I had to push his share of equipment across the Burnside Bridge in a shopping cart. This was a first for me because another good thing about the band is they don't expect me to move equipment, just to sell the merch and handle the money. It's a good gig.
So after hiking, my legs hurt again. I went to work at my regular time on Thursday (7/5/07) though. I wasn't there for very long when one of the clients there, we'll call her Nina, passed by my cubicle, stopped and asked me if I was okay. I thought it was a little odd but I said I was fine. Then she asked, concerned-like, if my legs were okay. I had not been hobbling around much, I hadn't mentioned my leg pain to anyone and I hadn't seen Nina at all yet that day. It was freaky.
When people go blind, their other senses become more acute to compensate. I am almost convinced that Nina has some form of empathy. I know it might sound like a lot of gobbledy-gook to people but it was too coincidental for me to easily dismiss. So that's my new thing for the day. I discovered a true empath. That and I wrote "gobbledy-gook" for the first time.
On Tuesday (7/3/07), I was part of a punk people pyramid. We were shooting photos for the Riot Cop album cover and we decided to do a pyramid. It looks a lot easier than it is. I was on the bottom. We ended up with a 10-person pyramid. I didn't put up that photo though cuz we're keeping it under wraps! Awesome time though.
(I love good word play. In case you didn't get the title, it's a reference to South Park.)
I generally hate holidays. I'm not a scrooge or anything. I just hate being told when I should be having fun. I don't even like celebrating Gay Pride because I'm usually proud anyway and don't need a committee to tell me when to be more proud. The 4th of July is no exception. It was nice to have the day off work but I really didn't have any interest in the fireworks. That, combined with a healthy lack of patriotism leaves me with nothing to celebrate. So Arturo and I took Dean to the woods.
We went on the Salmon River/Huckleberry Wilderness hike. It was a good escape for all of us. It's cool how everything out there is oblivious to whatever is going on in the human world. While hiking back, we stopped for a bit and Dean took a nap. The poor guy was tired and missed his couch. Also, a shrew ran on the path in front of us. I have never seen one in the wild before. I put my hands down and it ran up my hand and jumped off. So damn cool!
When we were driving back later that night, we left the serenity of the forest and were greeted by the loud bangs and crack of explosives. It was such a harsh mind-fuck. At least I escaped it for one day.
When I bought my scooter (2006 TNG Milano), I was real nervous. It was the most I've ever spent on any one thing; over $1400. My car(s) have always been cast-offs from my family. My current car (1991 pink Lincoln Towncar) barely wants to work though so I needed something to get around for work and I decided that the scooter would be worth it. And today was a great example of that.
For the first time, I hit all my stores in one day. I filled up my scooter with $2.94 in gas. I have four stores that I have to check on. Two are in SE Portland, one is in N Portland and one is downtown in NW. I also went to a brokerage. All in all, it added up to 40 miles. For work, I get paid $.465 per mile. So I ended up accruing $18.60. That's a 632% profit. And, damn, I got paid to ride around on a scooter on this beautiful day.
Oh, and the above picture is the gas gauge AFTER I did all my scooting around.
I first realized that I got motion-sick from watching Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. When the N64 came out I had to take Dramamine before I would play it. I've since have been careful about spinning things, especially amusement rides so it's surprising that I had as much fun as I did at Oaks Park.
My nine-year old housemate had his birthday party there today. First we had the cake, presents, then a pinata (pictured above) and then there was the Scream N Eagle (pictured below).Normally rides like this are a no-brainer. I see it, my gut says no and I listen. But then this damn blog came along and suddenly my willingness to do something new overrides my common sense. I found myself on the ride with Guy and Arturo. It wasn't too bad. Guy sat in the seat that was directly in front of me so I just focused on him panicking and ignored the rest of the chaos. It didn't even make me nauseous which is saying a lot. The Scrambler however was another story...
