It is a busy week of meetings. There's a Tuesday night resourcescout meeting, a Wednesday night session with the collision shop and rental car place, and a Long Beach noise ordinance meeting on Thursday night.
It is a long and difficult week because of lost sleep, bad gut feelings, wild emotions, and raised red flags concerning Person G. I finally start the discussions with Person G about my feelings and needs and this opens up a whole other can of worms. There is, of course, more lost sleep and more red flags raised.
Friday evening I get to the International Motorcycle Show at the Long Beach Convention Center. Unlike last year where I was working on a new motorcycle, this year I buy a nice summer riding jacket (with body armor at strategic points). I do take notice (and touch) of the Yamaha M1 as ridden by Carlos Checa - but it isn't the same reaction as last year when I touched Valentino Rossi's Honda NSR500. I guess that shows my adverse reaction to four strokes.
There's a late Friday night ice hockey game against the team that I used to play on. It is a close game and it ends up tied at 3-3 after regulation play and overtime. The opposing team asks, no begs, me to come back and play with them. But I decline at the current time.
Saturday sees a session with the weights, the laundry, a bicycle ride, another session with the weights (when dinner with Dao, Person M_C, and Person Will is canceled), some resourcescout development work, and some relaxation in advance of a night at Club Asia.
It seems that everyone has blown me off at Club Asia so I only run in to Person Ray and Person D. Person Ray and I have a brief conversation about Christmas parties and stuff. It is not a huge crowd tonight and everyone tends to leave me alone to listen to music. Tonight I like being left alone. There are a couple of offers being prepared - you get a sense of it after a while - but I move away or avoid the situations. I'm home in bed a little bit after 1am on Sunday morning.
Sunday, after a session with the weights and a reasonable bicycle ride, I head to a coworker's photo studio (which is actually his and his wife's house). Both are into photography and my coworker was the official photographer for a number of metal and punk bands quite a while ago. He shows me photos of the bands as they were just starting out. There are other colorization techniques and texturing techniques that he explains to me. I am lucky that I showed up early during his studio opening because that gave us the chance to spend the time together looking at old photographs and talking about techniques. I am walking out the door after 3pm as people are starting to arrive. Good - just leave me alone.
I get home and have another session with the weights prior to dinner with Person T*. This is the lunch that I put off from Friday and felt "obligated" to attend dinner. (Just leave me alone.)
As I'm driving to Person T*'s house I'm weaving all over the freeway because I am tired. I arrive near her house at 5:42pm for a 6pm dinner. I park a block away and close my eyes to rest. The next thing I know I am jolted awake by the ring of the mobile phone. I do not know what time it is and am surprised that it is Brandon calling (as opposed to Person T* calling and wondering where I am). It turns out that it is 6:10pm and I am not that late for dinner. Brandon and I talk about his upcoming final exams, his Christmas visit home, and the flu/cold that he has picked up. I am entering Person T*'s house at 6:16pm and explain to her that I fell asleep and was encouraging Brandon for his final exams.
After dinner Person T* and I flip through the television channels. After watching the end of a show on the histroy of aviation and after flipping past has-beens singing old songs for public television funding events (Simon and Garfunkel and Byrds members), we settle on a show in Korean featuring k-pop videos. None of the program is subtitled and so we spend the time trying to figure out what the VJs are saying as well as what the songs are about. The majority of the videos appear to be about lost loves and reminiscing about them. And we try and predict if the lost loves will be reunited or not. This theme spurs on a discussion with Person T* that gets cut off because I am again falling asleep and decide that I need to go home and sleep.
I get home and give Nopey some extra attention because he has been ignored most of the day. When I leave the kitchen to go get ready for sleep he starts whining and wimpering and so I return to see what is going on. It appears that he is trying to get up to go outside but he cannot - his hips preventing him from standing up. When I try to pick up his hind quarters to help him stand up he goes limp - assuming that I just want to pet him. After a number ofattempts to try and get him to stand up or at picking him up myself I gently push him along the (sorta) slippery kitchen floor until his two front paws are hanging over the door threshold (towards the outside) and encourage him to stand up. This actually works quite well as he doesn't have to lift his entire body weight as far. He goes outside and, among other things, drinks a whole lot of water. This makes me wonder how long he has been unsuccessfully trying to get up and get outside.
On Monday morning I repeat the slide-prop-encourage procedure of getting Nopey stood up. It appears that this will be the norm for when he has difficulty getting up. At least the part of the kitchen floor where I slide him along will be getting cleaned each day.