Today continued my lackluster streak that began with my return from Portland yesterday.

Portland actually was quite nice. On the ride up I learned that my boss’ assistant, a quiet woman who’s a bit older than I am (maybe low 30s?), enjoys listening to punk covers of songs, had a Homestar Runner song stuck in her head, and was quite conversant in matters of South Park. Damn. As you might guess, the ride up was thoroughly entertaining for me. I don’t know that my boss was as involved in the conversation, though.

My arch-rival actually works in a nice building surrounded by green grass and trees (!). (Note that there’s construction going on around my office, so the most I usually see is a mound of dirt. Also note that my family hasn’t watered our lawn this summer, so the grass is D-E-D dead.) Training went all right, though was rather generic (“this is how you get things to work, in general…beyond that, you really just need to mess around with it”). I think she’s probably right about that, though—some things need to be learned through experience. I also met one of my boss’ affiliates (who also happens to teach in the College of Business—small world), and was treated to lunch (a tasty chicken club sandwich, otherwise notable for being Not-Fish) with everyone at a seafood restaurant.

Anyhoo, today. The day started off around 5:30 am, when heavy rain and thunder crippled any chance I had of real sleep. (Yesterday had been completely sunny and pleasant, so the change was remarkable.) I was woken again around 7:30 am, and decided to go unplug all the big electronic devices. I arose last at 10 am, still to thunder and rain…which cleared up soon after.

I had serious difficulty ordering lunch for Marin and me from Taco Time—I completely forgot about my food, and generally bumbled while getting Marin’s order to the cashier—and I think the cashier added a Stupidity Tax to my meal. At work I discovered I was completely unable to multi task, which lowered my throughput substantially…when your main job is watching paper go through a scanner, you can usually get something else done as well. If you can multi task. Which I couldn’t. I also dripped Mountain Dew on my shirt, thanks to a leaky lid, and dropped my iPod twice. Short distances both times, thankfully. Ugh.

Corrections

A few things have come to my attention over the last couple days. One was actually from an email Eric sent me a while back that I had forgotten about until I ran across it again this evening, and the other is much more timely.

First, as long-time readers might recall (if they had a much better memory than mine), in my July 21st update I made mention of a local Hawaiian show that Eric had introduced me to. I had originally guessed that the show was entitled “Da Brothers.” Eric has since corrected me: the show is spelled “Da Braddahs,” and it even has a web site. The offending post has been corrected, and the web site has been noted.

Secondly, I regret to inform you that I used the incorrect title for my last blog update, but am still too lazy to change it. The title used was “Isshou!,” which—as best I can figure out—might be translated as “one victory!” It might also be translated, however, as “one existence,” “a generation,” “a general,” “a laugh,” “a unit of old Japanese liquid measurement (1800 cc),” “with utmost effort,” “to laugh (someone) down,” “the noontide of life,” and “yo mamma.” I was unaware of the serious nature of this last translation, and for that I apologize. I should have entitled the last update Nippon Ichi! instead.