Checksum Arcanius

I believe Chicago O’Hare may be my personal worst airport ever. In addition to having already spent Christmas Eve stranded there, I now had the great opportunity of turning a 45-minute excursion into an hour-and-a-half wait-a-thon while the plan that was supposed to arrive at 10:13 didn’t come in until well after 11:30. Thanks O’Hare, you putz.

Clarification: I picked my parents up at the airport last night. I was supposed to pick them up at 10:15, but it ended up being about 11:45. Their departure was delayed for 30 minutes due to electrical problems at O’Hare, then they missed their scheduled take-off and they had to wait another thirty minutes in the take-off line. When they made it to Sea-Tac, they then had the chance to wait on the tarmac for a while until their gate became open from the on-time plane that was using it. Finally, thier luggage took about thirty minutes to make it to the carousel. And I blame this all on Chicago.

Yesterday was a sunny and successful day. I woke up to my phone-alarm at 5:50 and showered, then had breakfast with Dan at Chaces’ Pancake Corral. After this, I headed home and switched the Highlander for the Truck and my bike. The next stop was Ian’s house for the TRC leadership meeting, which I thought was pretty productive. I had to leave that about 40 minutes early to make it to the South Bellevue Park & Ride, where I met up with Dan and biked West across the I-90 bridge. We made it to the Mercer Island-Seattle bridge deck around 11:40, and the Blue Angels arrived a bit after noon. The show was quite good – better than last year’s, if I remember correctly. It was fairly long – over 30 minutes – and displayed a good number of tricks, including four or five at the end of the show with all six planes working together. It was a good time. After the show, we ate at Subway on the island, then headed back to my truck which we took into Seattle to search for housing for me. We found a number of nice and a few sketchy places that I’m looking into, then enjoyed some Jamba Juice before heading back. I had dinner with the Marshes, excellent ribs by Jay and a great supporting cast including beans, vegies, salad, and bread by Kay. The Parkins were also in attendence, and the conversation was good. The night was wrapped up by watching fear.com, a pretty ridiculously bad movie, but, as I was explaining to Jason, not as bad as some films I have seen. It kept me up a little longer than I would have liked and then I compounded the problem when I stayed up and chatted online. The result is this – although I woke up at 5:50 to my phone alarm, I went back to sleep and only became cognisant around 9:00am. So that didn’t work so well. However, I should be back in my own bed tonight – when I visited yesterday to pick up some stuff, the toxicity part II was mostly dissipated, and the ventilated rooms, including mine, were quite nice to be in. Many thanks to the Marshes for letting me hole up here in the meantime. I enjoy avoiding affixiation.

The final touches went onto the wood floor Friday night. This time, I wised up and thanks to the generosity of some friends, have been able to sleep away from the fumes for a few nights.

A week and a day ago, I hurt my heel while landing after attempting to catch a Frisbee. I mostly stayed off the sore spot, even while running in additional games, and it seemed to be getting better. However, the last couple of days, I put a lot of stress on it again, as it wasn’t hurting as much, and now its hurting again. It may be time to bite the bullet and take a week off so I can get back to full strength sooner rather than later. As some people wiser than myself suggested, it might also be a good idea to get it xrayed (along with the pinky of my right hand, another lingering injury) if it doesn’t get better sometime soon.

Today, while playing ultimate, I took my shirt off, and burned. The last time I did this it led to a very unpleasant experience – so apparently, I didn’t learn the lesson yet, but hopefully, it isn’t as bad this time. Or anywhere nearly so.

As far as goals, I woke up today at 5:45ish, before my alarm (in the form of a phone) tried to wake me. Weird! But I’ll take it. I also called some landlords in Seattle, but talked only to recording machines.

I am going to try some goals again, in a format that is less ambitious and perhaps more realistic. I will put forth two – an ongoing goal for the next 30 days and a short term, one-time goal to accomplish in the next 30 days. This has several improvements over my last attempt:

• Smaller scale – more manageable and reasonable to achieve
• Definitive time scale – in 30 days, I wil know percentage of completion on the ongoing task, and whether the short-term goal has been achieved.

Both of these improvements will, I hope, help me be more accountable to myself.

And now, for the goals.

1. Over the next 30 days, I will be awake by 6:00 am every day.
2. Within 30 days, I will have moved into a residence West of Lake Washington.

A good day overall – I woke up earlier than I had all week, went to a productive TRC leadership meeting from about 9:50-11:50 (it started at 9:30 and was supposed to end at 11:30, so I don’t feel bad about being late), hit up the Libertarian Barbecue at Magnolia Park in West Seattle (I got to eat good food, talk to good people (Jeff Jared is an amazing man!), and saw Scott and Travis (LPKC Chair and Vice-Chair) again. After this, I went to church, where I made it in time for the 5th-Sunday-of-the-Month joint Priesthood & Relief Society meeting, where the estimable Scott Bowen talked about morality, drawing heavily on what seems to have become the general conference talk most frequently used among all lessons of recent times – Jefferey R. Holland’s Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments. After this, I returned home where my mother had cooked a delightful meal of teriyaki chicken and rice. Since my brother was in town, we took some family pictures – and then headed to the airport to drop him off – he was here far too short, it seems. Once back, I chatted it up, and then, as I am now, headed to bed. A good day indeed!

The last two weeks, I have had the chance to play Ultimate six times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with a group near my work during lunch, Tuesday and Saturday with the Robinswood Park crew, and Thursdays with a UW intramural team. This has not come without a toll. Six days ago, Monday last week, I tweaked out a muscle and ended up hobbling around during Frisbee Tuesday evening. I skipped Wednesday at work, and then was feeling better after some well-advised streching that Jeana suggested. However, on Thursday at the UW, I felt the tweak coming back, but kept moving and faught it off successfully. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough and we lost by a point. Friday, I came down hard from attempting to catch a disc and landed on my right heel, bruising it. I was able to finish out the game, but it was sore and it got worse later in the day. Saturday, it was feeling better – I couldn’t run full tilt, but I hobbled around very well, considering. It is now feeling quite better, and I look forward to another game Monday at noon.

Toxic chemicals pervade the air as the wood floors are restained. The only way to survive is to hold a breath while running between well-ventalated areas. Ventalation is so essential that a new high velocity fan was purchased to provide more in the room. It appears to double as a moth destruct-o-tron, scattering their torn carcasses across the long axis of the room.

Toxic also were to words of the young woman at the Jack in the Box we ate at tonight. Maternal units were made sick to the stomach by the words she used to confront the store employees, patrons, and me when I kindly asked her to stop disturbing the parents.