Pounding the pavement, Special delivery, Weird Water, Returned, Using a 40 year old skill

So Friday evening I rebooted my running program.  I had done cardio at the gym every day during the week and didn’t feel horrible so I figured my standard 13 lap run would be a good gauge of where I was at.  Cindy actually came with me which was nice.  It had just gotten finished raining so the temps were down a little bit although there was still plenty of humidity in the air.  I had no pace goal whatsoever, the only intent was to put one foot in front of the other for roughly 3.4 miles without stopping. I managed to accomplish the goal without major incident.  It was tough and I felt some mild pain in my right side but I felt mild pain in various other spots too, likely from not running in close to a month.  It felt good to get back out there.  I’m hoping I can build from here instead of slowly crumbling.

On Saturday morning Cindy and I busted our ass in a major way.  After tending to the chickens we weeded the property.  I then set Cindy up on the tractor while I grabbed the weed whacker.  We did battle with the yard all morning, manicuring it to an even level.  When that was done I told Cindy I wanted to move her trailer to a different spot.  It has been sitting stationary most of the summer so there was all sorts of weeds and high grass under it.  I hooked it up to the Tacoma and did a big loop.  We mowed down the old spot and moved the RV to a different spot, closer to the chicken area.

By the time we were done with everything it was after 1PM.  It was a long, hot, sweaty morning.  I was just glad that Cindy was able to do the mowing or else I would have had another two hours tacked on top.  However we of course had more to do.  We went and grabbed lunch at Culver’s which just opened up in the shopping center about 9 miles from the house. After that we had to drive up to Cape Coral.

Cindy had sold a table of hers to a guy that lived up there.  In exchange for him agreeing to pay Cindy’s full asking price we agreed to deliver it to his office up there.  He is a lawyer who is in the process of getting a divorce.  The guy had a very lawyer-ish personality if you know what I mean, but it didn’t matter.  He handed Cindy the cash that was agreed upon which is all that mattered.

On Saturday night we watched our Netflix rental, The Shape of Water, which was something Cindy requested.  I recall the movie getting mentioned for a lot of awards last year.  I had no idea what the movie was about.  Well the first adjective I would use to describe the film is strange, followed by different, very different.  Multiple times Cindy and I gave each other repeated WTF looks during the movie.  This isn’t to say it was bad, I would probably give it a B+ just for being so out in left field.

Sunday morning we took a different approach to my EUC ride.  Elsa, Cindy and I drove to DD together.  Once there I pulled my 18L out of the trunk of the car and rode it North Collier Regional Park while Cindy drove there.  She walked Elsa around the park while I rode to and around there.  It was a fun variation on my normal weekend rides.

Sunday afternoon I watched the Eagles game, but not on the Directv receiver that I spent 90 minutes getting working the week prior.  No, for the second consecutive week I was getting terrible reception on the Sunday Ticket channels.  It’s ironic that I wound up signing up for the more expensive MAX package that includes streaming, because without it, I would have been unable to watch the games.  When the signal was bad last week I dismissed it to bad weather at the time.  When it was bad once again this week the skies were mostly clear. I assumed the issue was the oak tree that is near the dish.  A couple times in the past I have had to trim branches that were in the line of site so I figured it was time to do so again.

Well at halftime I thought I would run outside and knock off the branch that seemed like it could be problematic.  I grabbed my battery powered sawzall and a ladder.  The limb I cut was very long and angled over the corner of the garage.  I was very nervous about it damaging the new roof/gutters I recently had installed.  I cut it carefully.  As soon as I saw it starting to drift downward I stopped cutting so it could lower onto the roof and gutter in a controlled manner.  Once it was resting on the roof I cut it the rest of the way.  I then had to get back on the ground and pull the 15 foot limb off the roof, it was a hassle.

So anyway, I ran back inside to see how much better the satellite reception was since I cleared the obvious obstruction.  Imagine my joy when I saw no improvement whatsoever.  Weird, so I went back out and stood behind the dish trying to calculate the angle the signal was coming in on.  There was one more branch that could possibly be in the way so I quickly climbed up and knocked that one down as well. Again when I went inside I saw no improvement in signal.

After the game was over, which I will talk about next, I went back outside, not to cut any more off that tree but instead turning my attention to the other large oak tree.  When the roof was installed my project manager told me that it was important to not let any of the branches of the oak tree drag on the roof.  Right after the roof was done I cut a couple branches that were close but I saw there was one very long one that was within three feet of the roof.  I figured I already had the equipment outside so I may as well knock it down as well.

When I got up in the tree I was annoyed to see the roof under that branch already had a bunch of black mess on it from the tree, presumably from rain run off.  Hopefully I can clean it off.  This oak tree is much bigger, probably close to double the size of the tree on the garage side of the house.  I used the aluminum six foot ladder to get up into the main branches.  I utilized my childhood tree climbing skills to scale another 10-12 feet which was made more challenging trying to do so while wielding a sawzall.

I finally got myself into a position to cut this branch which was at least 15 feet long and 9-10 inches in diameter at it’s base where I was.   Cutting something this big with the sawzall was a lengthy process, requiring me to take a few breaks to switch hands.  Once again the branch was over the roof so I used a similar technique as before, dropping it slowly until it touched the roof.  Once it was resting on it I cut the branch the rest of the way.  As the heaviest and thickest part of the branch came crashing down to the ground it hit the ladder on the way down, instantly mangling it and making it useless, damn it.

While I was up there I cut another branch that wasn’t a problem yet but could be in the future.  So now it was time to get down, sans ladder.  Cindy was not home during all of this fun, which was probably a good thing as I repeatedly put myself into precarious spots.  To get back down I wound up wrapping my arms and legs around a branch like a monkey before finally dropping to the ground.  I felt fortunate to escape the tree with only a few scratches.

So now I had huge oak branches littered across the yard.  Cutting these thick branches with the sawzall would have been very time consuming and inefficient.  I dug the chainsaw out of the big shed and used it instead.  It made short work of the limbs, allowing me to cut them into more manageable sections.  The last step of the process was loading the back of the Tacoma with three huge piles of oak tree branches to be dumped in the fill pit out back.  I was pretty beat by the end of it.

So the fact that I still could not get good signal on the satellite dish after clearing line of site had me place a call with DirectTV.  I have two theories.  The first option is a simple one, maybe the dish just somehow got knocked out of alignment.  The second theory is the other thing that has changed since last football season is the new roof and gutters were installed.  The new gutters are an inch or two wider than the old ones.  I am wondering if that is just enough to get in the signal path.  If so the only option would be to remount the dish with some sort of spacer block that pushes it a few inches off the wall of the house.  I will find out on Tuesday, I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.

So the Eagles came away with a close victory in Carson Wentz’s return.  There were a lot of good things that came out of the game.  Carson seemed like Carson, he didn’t seem all that rusty and was still able to move around and run as needed.  He made a lot of good throws.  He also made a couple big mistakes, turning the ball over twice deep on the Eagles side of the field.  Thankfully both times the defense held the Colts to field goals.

I think the Eagles got rather lucky in this game.  On the long drive that resulted in the game winning TD they were helped out in a huge way by penalties to keep the drive going, once on a second and 26, and a second time after a failed 4th down attempt.  The game was filled with penalties on both sides of the ball.  The Eagles dominated on time of possession but that did not equate to much scoring.  I also can’t stand Mills, the Eagles CB.  The guy gets burned for huge penalties every game it seems.  Yesterday was no different as he got called on pass interference, twice.

But I’ll take the win.  Last year there were tons of situations where the Eagles got lucky just at the right time.  There were so many Eagle teams in the past that would have allowed the Colts to come back and score on their last drive.  In their two wins this season the defense has come up big when they had to.  Sure it would be nice to have a comfortable win where the outcome is decided before the last 3 minutes of a game but that seems to be a rare thing nowadays.