Fast four
I figured I better gather the fragments of my memory before they are lost. Friday was my first day of my impromptu 5 day staycation. Cindy and I started it with a DD bike ride. It was the first time I was taking my freshly modified Trek 2.1 on the road. Earlier in the week I added a stem extension and aero bars to enhance my riding position comfort. Despite being a much better/lighter bike, the Trek has spent most of the last two years hanging upside down in my storage shed because it just was uncomfortable to ride. Instead my 300 dollar Dawes bike was getting all of the road time. My alterations to the Trek had the effect I was hoping for. It felt good on the road and the higher quality and lower weight of the bike felt noticeable. The 20 mile ride went by without incident.
After we got home I headed outside to get the weeding done while Cindy attended to the chickens and some other things. After a quick dip in the pool we were ready to head out to Costco. We wound up getting over $200 in groceries there which is some sort of record. Hopefully we will be well stocked for awhile. The grocery slice of my monthly expenditure pie chart in Quicken has been getting quite large lately.
Friday my new megaphone that I ordered for Green Machine Timing showed up. It’s smaller than the others I have for the running club, only 40 watts max power, but that is part of it’s appeal, it’s easier to carry around. However the biggest plus for me was it uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack that is encased inside of a built in charger. The bigger megaphones use 8 C batteries that are a pain in the ass to maintain. Plus the housing for the batteries is very imprecise so when you have the lid closed you may not get any sound until you jiggle things around. It’s annoying. I no longer will have that issue. Cindy and I used it to film a funny Periscope video that she posted on FB.
Friday night was a normal pizza night. It felt great knowing I had another four days off remaining.
On Saturday morning Cindy and I were up early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon the local triathlete group puts on. Cindy and my primary responsibility was in the bike transition area where we helped the kids ranging in age from 7-13 stage their bikes and help them as needed during transition. I also brought my GoPro with to film the event. I was frustrated that I missed a lot of the little kids with a malfunction early that I got figured out later on. You can see the kids in action here. By the time the event was over at 9:30 it felt sweltering hot.
During the afternoon the it became quite rainy and stayed that way for most of the day. Cindy and I kept ourselves entertained indoors. There were no movies that came out this week that interested us enough to spend movie theater money for. Instead we just kept things simple and enjoyed a nice meal while watching my latest Netflix rental, Tracers. The film was basically one long parkour video but I found it entertaining enough to give an average B rating to the flick.
Sunday we did our second DD ride in three days, something I don’t think I ever did before. It also meant that in 8 days I rode a total of 70 miles, again new territory for me. Cindy actually cracked the century mark for those same 8 days since she did an additional 30 mile ride during the week with a friend of hers. I strapped the GoPro on to my right handlebar for the ride. It gives an interesting perspective/visual when combined with a soundtrack and ample captioning to fight off the boredom.
After another pool bath we were back in the car to go pick up Nicki and Sadie. After grabbing them we made a couple stops on the way home. Sunday afternoon Cindy was quite busy cooking. She recorded her efforts for her YouTube channel. I did a lot of video editing, gaming (now have 7 level 100 WoW characters) and paid my bills.
One of the things I wanted to address was the failure email I got from my DD perks account saying the automatic reload of my coffee card failed. When I logged into my account I saw that the credit card I had associated had the wrong expiration date. Ok, no problem, I will go in and edit the credit card information. Well after 10 minutes of futzing around I realized that there is absolutely no way to change the CC info. Ok, I guess I will just delete the credit card and reenter it with the correct info. Nope, it won’t let you do that either. The ONLY way you fix this is with a phone call to them which I made on Monday. The call required 20-25 minutes of wait time to speak to a person. After explaining the issue the phone rep says it will take TWO DAYS to clear the card from the system. I asked her in disbelief “Are you serious?”. She said it is a limitation of their current set up for credit cards and they are looking to change things in the future. It seems so odd because in many ways Dunkin Donuts seems very modern and tech savy in their business practices. To have such a ridiculously inefficient set up to manage credit cards seems very odd.
Monday morning Cindy and I took Nicki (and Sadie) to the vet. I made an appointment for Nicki to have some large masses on her belly looked at further. She has had them for awhile but they seem to be really growing and I wanted to get an updated opinion from the vet about them to see if he thought anything needed to be done at this point. This was the same vet that did the eyelid surgery that drastically helped Nicki’s vision.
He agreed the lumps were getting pretty big but said that labs are prone to growing fatty masses as they age. The general advice is if they are not causing the dog pain or discomfort the best course of action is to just let them be as the risk of surgery on an old dog could outweigh the benefit of removal. I mentioned how Nicki’s bark has been sounding progressively weaker. He said it is likely due to another old lab trait where the tissue that covers the larynx (forget medical term), becomes partially paralyzed. The end result is difficulty in breathing. (Nicki also pants all the time)
The vet did aspirate one of the masses to send it out for testing to be sure. (a $200 gotcha) However we basically just confirmed that Nicki is old and is having old dog issues. I wish I could wave a wand and make it go away. While we were there both dogs got their nails trimmed which was very needed.
When we got home I got a bug in my head to pressure wash the pool deck and cage. I HATE this house maintenance chore but a glance at the pure green scuzz on some sections of the cage combined with my extra time off made it seem like I would be an idiot for not doing it now. The end result was several hours shoulder/forearm burning labor as I directed the 3000 psi wand overhead with sometimes as much as an 9 foot extension hanging off of it. It is miserable. Doing it during the crushing heat of the afternoon added to the misery.
I wasn’t happy that at a few spots on the pool deck which we carefully prepped and double coated with pool deck stain lifted off under pressure. It was in areas where the deck is especially smooth. Maybe it needs to be roughed up a bit before we touch it up. Anyway, the pool area looked tremendously better by the time I was done. Hopefully it will be the holidays before I have to think about it again.
After I took the dogs back to Ali’s place Cindy and I chilled most of the night catching up on a backlog of dvr’d content. For my final day of my staycation I have no major plans other than some type of workout and whatever other minor things come to mind. We already had excitement this morning, the unwelcomed type. There was a hawk no more than 25 feet away from the pond area the chickens were hanging under. It was sitting in the palm tree. It was oddly unafraid of me. I was able to walk right up to the tree with my bb gun in hand without it moving. I yelled at it to get lost but he only retreated a short distance away. I then used my weapon to fire a few warning shots and again they were ineffective. I kept walking and firing until the hawk was a 100 yards off in a tree behind the back fence line.
Yes it makes both Cindy and I nervous to have hawks scouting out the chickens. The good thing is the property has a bunch of hiding spots for our birds and all of them are healthy, decent sized and fast. Hopefully this and our continued warning shots makes the hawks realize there are easier targets elsewhere.