Category Movie Reviews

We started Saturday off with a trip to the track, I wanted to give a short run a try.  In general my IT band has been hurting less since the road trip so I wanted to see how I would feel.  For the first two or three laps the answer was not good as I felt pain in my right hip and knee.  Eventually as my body warmed up the pain faded.  We completed the 8 laps and I probably could have pushed to a 5K distance if I wanted to.  So far I haven’t had any serious blowback as far as follow up pain or soreness.

We headed out to Home Depot to grab sod and top soil needed to repair the now massive excavation the chickens have performed at various spots around the yard.  Cindy and I worked in tandem to complete the work.  The humidity in the air was noticeably less on Saturday.  The combo of cloudy skies, breezy conditions and temps in the low 80’s almost felt pleasant to work in. Cindy and I set up the inflatable Halloween cat by the front door to complete our decorations. (unless Cindy decides to decorate the coop)  We anchored the cat with opposing 35 pound dumbbells to keep it steady as much as possible.

We have had a wasp problem on the one side of the house that I mentioned last week.   I finally broke down and bought wasp spray although I don’t feel good about killing the insects, despite their aggressive intentions towards me.  The wasps had somehow survived a couple spraying sessions, one by Cindy and one by myself.  I eventually pulled the hose holder off the wall and soaked every inch of it with wasp spray, hopefully putting an end to their persistent unwelcome habitation.

Recently I saw a Lincoln commercial where it showed off the built in ground projection logo set up.  Basically you open the door and an LED projects a crystal clear image on the road.  It’s just a cool thing.  This reminded me that a couple years ago I had bought the hardware to do this for my SSR but never installed it.  I found the box in the garage and hooked one of the projectors up to my 12V DC power supply to verify it worked.  I showed Cindy the bright image it cast on the rug which she thought was cool.

I have two of them as I originally planned to install them as prescribed, in the bottom of both doors.  I have since changed direction.  I want to try to hook one up in the back of the vehicle under the rear bumper.  I am hoping to tap the back up light circuit for power.  When you unlock the truck the back up lights stay on for several seconds so I thought it would be cool to have a projector in the back. I haven’t gotten beyond the thought process stage of this.  I need to put the back of the truck on ramps so I can do some thorough investigation about mounting options.

Speaking of the SSR, I made another large payment on the loan for the truck this weekend during my bill paying session, leaving less than a thousand dollars to go before it’s paid off.  It will be nice to have my only existing vehicle payment evaporate although I still am a bit sad that for the most part the SSR is a much smaller focus of my entertainment sphere nowadays.

We did take the SSR to the movies Saturday night.  It was our first trip to the theater since before the road trip.  I bet it has been a month and a half since we went to the movies which is surely a record for us.  We went to see The Martian, both Cindy and I are big fans of sci fi/space flicks.  The movie theater was decently full, probably half the seats were occupied.

I thought the movie was great and extremely well done.  Really the only negative I can give is it’s long, if you are annoyed by lengthy movies.  Personally I don’t care if a movie is long as long as I find it entertaining and interesting (ie Lord of the Rings).  I felt like I just watched the best space themed movie since Apollo 13 by the end of it.  I give it an A+.  Cindy felt similarly.

Cindy and I had talked about doing the 20 mile DD ride on Sunday morning as a follow up to Saturday’s run.  However Cindy wasn’t feeling great and the skies looked very threatening so we bailed.  It turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain shortly thereafter.  The weather all day was very unstable with periods of sun and rain which I assume were the fringe effect from hurricane Joaquin.

After skipping the ride my day became very lazy.  We grabbed coffee and some gas for the mowers and I paid my bills, other than that I was in slug mode.  Part of the slogfest was watching the Eagles game which was so shitty for most of it that I split time watching it with playing Hearthstone on the iPad.  I really don’t enjoy watching this team play, let me break down the latest loss.

Chip Kelly seems to be a one trick pony.  His vaunted hurry up offense which seemed to frustrate defenses in his first couple years in the league now seems to be passe and easily addressed.  The only thing it seems to do consistently is tire out the Eagles defense since they spend so much time on the field.  In addition Chip’s personnel management skills are proving to be pretty damn awful.  We are seeing the end result of coring out the majority of a team and inserting a random cast of characters like it is fantasy football. The team has no character, no personality and no leaders.

I have not been impressed by Stafford, our new QB.  Yes the offensive line has been more or less horrible and the receivers have dropped some catchable balls but his accuracy is reminding me of Donovon McNabb.  I have seen him miss wide open receivers A LOT, something I did not expect.  So far I certainly don’t see his play as a step up from what Nick Foles could have done for us. It was nice to see Stafford complete a couple long balls.  I think I heard the announcer say yesterday was the first game the Eagles had a play over 20 yards.  If that is true it is a pretty damning stat considering the team used to lead the league in plays over 20 yards.

The running game continued to be awful, again in large part thanks to the shitty offensive line that Chip constructed in the offseason.  Their inability to create anything resembling a consistent running attack further cripples their ability to pass as play action fakes mean absolutely nothing.

Huge kudos to Chip for signing a kicker that obviously has a mental block, missing a short field goal and an extra point which would have changed the game outcome.  I expect Calebs stay with the team to be brief.

Even with the Eagles leading late I had a sickening feeling in my stomach they were going to collapse at the end, which they did, allowing the Redskins to mount a confidence crushing 15 play drive to score the winning touchdown.  The offense came out onto the field with roughly 25 seconds to go and promptly shit the bed, allowing two sacks before crawling off the field with their tail between their legs.

I have read some former Eagle coach comparisons for Chip Kelly, the most accurate one I saw was with Ray Rhodes who did well his first couple seasons until the wheels completely fell off.  At this point I can see this team of misfits scraping together 6 wins.  I am curious if double digit losses is enough to merit the end of Chip Kelly’s pro coaching career.  The miserable Eagles game did nothing to pick up my already gloomy mood which was enhanced by my lack of tangible productivity backed by off and on shitty weather all day long.

Despite us being well past the vaunted super moon my overall mood has not been great.  I am concerned that as I advance further into the depths of middle age that I am acquiring more of the traits I saw in my mom as she got older, beyond wrinkles.  I am lucky to have Cindy’s positive energy to slow my descent.  I just don’t feel like dealing with things a lot more often than I recall in the past.

So after work on Friday I made the mistake of stopping at Costco.  It was a mistake because I forgot to consider that people were worked up into a frenzy about tropical storm Erika.  The mere mention of a remote possibility of it becoming a hurricane is all it takes to set off mild panic.  The aisles of the store were crammed with people preparing for end of days.  It seemed like almost every cart in the store had a case or two of bottle water jammed in it.  As is always the case for me, I don’t react well to mob mentality.  Sure be prepared if there is a serious reason for concern but what the fck, we get severe thunderstorms weekly that deliver as much if not more punch than the storm was predicted to have.  It turned out to deliver even less than that as Erika fell apart Saturday morning.

The state of Florida jumped right onto the overreaction bandwagon with Rick Scott declaring a state of emergency far in advance of there being one.  His declaration meant other government agencies had to fall in line and overreact in kind.  State agencies were given orders to do stuff like shutdown, unplug, and cover equipment with plastic.  It was all just a big production over a very small threat.  Since Florida hasn’t had a hurricane make landfall in 10 years it seems like some EMS agencies are just chomping at the bit to put their emergency action plans in place, regardless of their actual need.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed to the track to run.  We wound up running slightly over 5K in distance, the first time I have run that far in at least 6 months, maybe more.  I felt ok during the run besides being drenched from what felt like 100% humidity.  The rest of the weekend I had an off and on limp but I didn’t expect to emerge from the run pain free.  As long as it fades in a day or two that is the best I can expect nowadays.

We picked up the dogs after the run on our way to do a couple errands.   At Home Depot I picked up some hardware to work on the door to the chicken run.  Since it was built it has twisted somewhat, making it difficult to open and close. My idea was to drive an anchor point into opposing corners and then use vinyl coated steel cable with a tensioner in the middle. My thought was this would resist the twisting forces.

Well it seemed like all it wound up doing was actually make the door even more difficult to close.  I decided to take a new approach, grabbing my large wood chisel and a hammer.  I used it to shave down the 2×6 along the bottom frame of the door until it was able to swing open and closed without friction.  It took a lot of trial and error and I had to keep chasing away curious chickens that thought wood shavings were treats.

Over the weekend I also tried to further address water problems and the coop.  The seam between the chicken run and shed still has been allowing a lot of water to seep through.  The water runs down the side of the shed and then drips onto the chicken door landing, splashing water inside as well.  Yesterday I used an entire tube of caulking to fill that seam as much as possible.  Hopefully I have finally got the issue handled.

During the afternoon Saturday I also completed the rebuild of my pool cleaner.  I installed the new bumper assembly and gear box.  Having ripped it apart several times recently and using my power drill made the work go very quickly.  I was quite happy when I put it in the pool for a test run and it immediately took off, hauling ass around the bottom of the pool like it was brand new.

Saturday night we again stayed home and watched Run All Night, another Liam Neeson action flick.  Cindy didn’t expect much of the film but it was quite good.  Liam and action films have proven to be a pretty solid combo.  I’d give this one an A- rating without batting an eye.

On Sunday I woke up feeling very blah.  I felt unmotivated, lazy, and just down on the world.  I felt like I have such a busy week ahead of me that I should be doing stuff to prepare but had no desire to do so.  The wet swamp outside did little to help alleviate my cloudy mood.  Instead of doing productive work I played some games of Hearthstone for awhile to soothe my mind.  As the hours passed I started to feel a little better, aided by a cup of DD coffee.

I couldn’t mope that long because I needed to get busy on making my famous chocolate cake.  A friend of ours and her kids were coming over Sunday evening so we wanted to give them a treat.  Cindy Periscoped a good portion of the cake prep process.  The end result was what may have been the best version of the cake I ever pumped out.  Both the frosting and the cake itself were dead on.

The rains once again came mid-afternoon making any outdoor activities with the kids impossible.  Instead when they showed up they were entertained by the dogs, Tuki, and the latest Transformers movie that was streaming on Netflix.  Cindy prepared a very tasty meal to compliment the chocolate cake which everyone gave kudos to. It was nice to have them out to the house, hopefully next time the weather is more accommodating.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a super packed week.  I host the fantasy football draft party tomorrow night, have a race to time on Saturday, and oh by the way, a two week western road trip to prepare for.  Yay.

On Friday night before bed Cindy and I had a joint Periscope session going on where we just laid in bed and had random conversation with a bunch of people we don’t know.  Of course I let Cindy do most of the heavy lifting in this scenario since she is clearly the more vocal of the two of us.  I prefer to lay in the weeds and just pepper the interaction as needed to add some variety.  There is something about Periscope that is isolating and inclusive at the same time.  I don’t know if there is an app that capsulizes what modern society is becoming better than Periscope and that is not meant as a compliment.  The world is becoming a screen addicted, voyeuristic, ADD riddled bunch of virtual haters.  Sure it is fun and entertaining but so is cocaine, or so I hear.

Saturday was very chore heavy.  I started outdoors with weeding.  I knew it was going to be miserable day when the heat and humidity felt oppressive at 8:30 in the morning.  I also was overdue for a weed whacking session, despite a good portion of the grounds being either underwater or sopping wet.  I emerged from it with my lower body looking like I grew a second, wet green skin.  I also did some of the vehicle prep for the road trip, changing the oil on the Prius.  I utilized Mobil 1 synthetic for the job since it would be well over 5000 miles until I get a chance to change it again.  The air filter got swapped out for good measure

We also made another trip to Home Depot to grab another 250 pounds of sand.  200 pounds of it got pushed under the coop deck to help dry out the soppy and smelly mess.While we were out we made a very unusual pit stop to grab a couple ice cream cones.  With the heat the cone had to be consumed at a very quick pace before it melted.

We decided to skip going to the movies again this week as there was nothing compelling out and saving a few bucks leading up to the road trip was a good idea.  We instead watched Blackhat, a movie where Thor plays a super computer hacker.  For the most part I found the movie good but the transformation at the end where the computer geek suddenly becomes a ruthless action hero did not make any sense nor was it backed up by any groundwork laid out in the film prior.  It was like the director said “Oh yea, we have Thor, I guess he needs to kill some people” Anyway it pulled a potential B+ rating down to B territory for me, a decent rental.

Sunday morning we did a training brick I never tried before, a bike-run-bike combo.  A traditional duathlon is the opposite where you run-bike-run.  Again it was oppressively hot and humid.  The course I laid out was biking up to Everglades Blvd and then back to the middle school track to run two miles before riding back home.  It worked out to segments of roughly a 7 mile bike, the 2 mile run and a final 3 mile ride.

Even though I wasn’t pushing the pace super hard on the bike I was sweating like a pig during the initial 7 mile ride.  If I was sweating that much on the bike I knew running in the same conditions would be extra miserable.  This was a first on many levels.  It was the first reverse duathlon brick and also the first outdoor running I have done in at least 6 months.  As expected the first couple laps felt pretty shitty as I had some pain in the right/leg knee but nothing overly severe.  The run evened out as time went on but I still was counting down the laps, even two miles felt challenging at this point which speaks to my lack of a running cardio base.

I tried to do a relatively quick transition back to riding gear, wanting to keep the cardio pressure up.  I was a little too quick and had to do some circling in the parking lot until Cindy was ready to go.  The last 3 miles to the house felt weird with my legs not being accustomed to the different demands of riding after riding and running previously.  By the time we got back to the house I looked like I was thrown in the pool, a big sweaty pool.  I used a dip in the real pool to quickly bring down my body temperature.

On Sunday and at various points over the weekend I had to scare a hawk away although I was only mildly successful at it.  It was like the hawk knew I meant it no real harm as it ignored my repeated BB gun warning shots.  Even as I approached the bird he just hung out until I got within 20 feet.  He/she only moved a few fence posts at a time.  The good news was this hawk was small in stature.  At this point all of the chickens are getting close to full size and are too big/fast to be carried off by a small hawk.  It still makes us nervous of course as there are always more predators out there.

I have been obsessing lately about a process known as “dipping” your vehicle.  It is something I did not realize was out there until a week or so ago.  Ironically one of the big companies that does this is based in Coral Springs, right across the state.  Basically you are “painting” your car with a high tech material that is peelable like sheets of rubber if you want to remove it.

I watched a ton of videos about the process and found it pretty incredible.  It brought me back to my teenage years where I spray painted a total of three vehicles, one can at a time.  The visual impact of dipped cars can be fantastic.  The fact that it is totally reversible without damaging the original paint makes it pretty much risk free.

DipYourCar sells kits that include everything you need, including a high quality spray gun for a reasonable price, much less than any paint job you could find.  The actual process of spraying the car requires some diligent prep and masking but is nothing all that technically difficult.  Of course when I saw dipping my first thought was the Tacoma, with it’s badly deteriorating paint.  I would literally have nothing to lose although many people dip brand new cars as well since there is no problem undoing it.

I would wait until dry season kicks in down here before giving dipping a go but I definitely think it will happen.  It should be a fun experiment.  You can dip many things, including wheels, another area of the Tacoma that is in poor visual condition.

Sunday afternoon I took back outside to do a few things including mowing the grass.  The property was still wet, very wet in some spots.  When I mow in these conditions I wind up leaving muddy crop circles in certain areas.  I also have to stop regularly to clear the mow deck chute of the green globs of grass clippings that clog it. To add to the fun I was repeatedly swinging at mosquitoes that seemed adept at landing on spots of my body I could not easily reach.  I really don’t like summer in SW Florida.

Sunday evening I finally relaxed a bit playing some WoW while Cindy continued her near endless practice testing for her physical trainer exam.  She has been working very, very hard.

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.

I got out of work a little early on Friday, I put the time to good use.  After stopping at Sam’s to get a few bulk items I was still home before 5.  I immediately changed clothes and headed outside to get a jump start on the weekend chores.  I got all of the weeding done as Cindy was still finishing up mowing on the tractor. It gave me a nice mental head start on the weekend.

For the past week or two we have had a couple baby turtle doves living by the side of the house on the ground, they are a little larger than a parakeet.  At first when we saw them we assumed they fell out of a nest from the oak tree and were stuck on the ground. That theory changed when saw them sitting on top of a fence cross support and later saw them fly pretty capably short distances.  They seem pretty docile.  As long as I walk quietly I can pass them with only a couple feet leeway.

At one point over the weekend I saw the two baby birds on the ground flapping around, it almost looked like they were fighting.  As I got closer I noticed there was a third bird, an adult turtle dove who I assume is the mom.  The babies were just very excited and I assume mom was feeding them, explaining how they have survived on the ground. It was cute.

First thing Saturday morning Cindy and I worked on deworming the chickens.  Instead of trying to catch each one and shoot liquid down their throats we decided to inject the dewormer into blueberries which the chickens love.  For most of the birds it was pretty simple as they gobbled up the blueberry after which we set them loose in the yard.  Kristen and Pumpkin were the most challenging but eventually they downed the medicated berry as well.

After de-worming we picked up the dogs during a DD coffee run.  I hadn’t seen them in two weeks.  We kept them the rest of the weekend until I dropped them off this morning.

There was more coop tweaking on Saturday.  When we were cleaning the coop we noticed the floor near the automatic chicken door was quite wet.  I have had a problem with some water seeping down the wall of the shed where it meets up with the chicken run but I didn’t think it was that much.  When I built the run I filled in the small gap between the roof of the run and the side of the shed with a piece of plywood.  When I took a look at the wood it looked like it had developed a slight warp that resulted in a slightly downward tilt, directing any rainwater that fell on it against the shed wall.

I took my one leftover spare corrugated white plastic roof panel and cut it down so it would fit on top the area where the plywood resides.  I installed the piece at an angle sloping away from the shed to keep as much water away from the shed wall as possible.  I have to wait until the next good thunderstorm to see if my efforts were fruitful.

I also did some extensive yard maintenance on Saturday hopping on the tractor to mow down the back of the property.  Since we were in one of the dry spots during wet season I figured I better mow while the mowing was good.   Mowing the back is a slow process due to the height of the grass.  Certain spots require you to either go very slow or to back up over a second time to get the high stalked stuff. The canopy on the tractor makes the task so much better on a hot August day.  After I was finished mowing I still had some gas in my motivation gas tank.  I grabbed the weed whacker and started hacking away at the thick high grass that filled the ditch towards the back of the fenced in portion of the yard.  Getting through the stuff required max throttle and a gradual chopping strategy where you knock down the grass/weeds with multiple passes.  When it was all done the backyard matched the front of the property for one of the few times each year.

On Saturday night Cindy and I made our near weekly trip to the movie theater to see Fantastic Four. Both Cindy and I had read the bad reviews of the film ahead of time but we normally prefer to make our own judgements.  Once again we had issues with other theater patrons.  There were two presumably teenage girls that were about 3-4 seats down in the row behind us that had near continuous conversation going on.  It started doing the previews.  Cindy and I assumed they would have the common sense to shut up once the movie began.  Of course we were mistaken.  They got a couple looks from me and a lot more from Cindy, including a “Psshhht!” which did not appear to do anything.

When I weighed the options of getting up and making a scene versus simply moving to another section of the mostly empty theater the latter choice made more sense.  A couple young girls are not going to respond well to requests for common courtesy, a trait the majority of modern day youth are devoid of.  We relocated to the top left corner of the theater with nobody within spitting distance and had a much better experience.

I have had a long streak of having favorable reviews of every Marvel movie I have seen.  Even lesser known titles like Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy exceeded my expectations.  Well this latest Fantastic Four broke that streak.

To be honest the first 75% of the movie was ok, it kept my interest and portrayed an interesting background of how the FF 4 obtained their powers, something I did not know.  However once Dr. Doom emerged as the feature villain of the film things totally flew off the track.  The story all of a sudden got incredibly stupid, simplistic, and unimaginative.   It was like the writers walked off the film at this point and were replaced by 5th graders.  Dr Doom has unimaginable power, literally being able to just look at somebody and make them melt, or open cosmic black holes, yet somehow he winds up in a conventional hand to hand battle with Mr Fantastic, played by an actor no one cared about.  The ending of the film was just incredibly moronic.  It took what was possibly a B+ flick straight down into B- or even C+ territory, it was that dumb.

The movie also was animation feature film short, barely 90 minutes long.  Again it felt like they lopped out huge chunks of film towards the end and just threw whatever was left against the wall.  Hell it was so bad that even Stan Lee did not have an appearance in the movie.  Like true Marvel suckers we stayed till the end of the credits, hoping to at least catch something of interest.  Our reward for waiting was a blank screen and a closed curtain.  The movie certainly is not worth of spending movie theater dollars to see.  Sure rent it on Netflix but don’t expect to be impressed.

Sunday morning Cindy, who just got clearance to bike last week after her toe surgery, and I planned to get out on the road for a bike ride.  We were joined by Kerri whose son is going to be our chicken sitter during the road trip.  She lives close by and has just started road biking.  We decided to ride out to Ave Maria since it was on the way to Kerri’s place.

Prior to Sunday the longest ride Kerri did was about 3 miles, going all the way out to Ave Maria was about 25 miles for her and 30 miles for us so she was making a dramatic increase in mileage.  Kerri however is a good endurance athlete with several marathons under her belt.

I lead most of the ride keeping a pace that was around 16 mph on average, trying to account for the extra distance and Kerri’s lack of riding experience.  On the way back I picked up the speed a bit doing 17-18mph for a good portion of the distance and Kerri was able to hang.  By the time we got back to the entrance to her development both Cindy and I were pooped.  Neither of us had rode 30 miles in quite a long time.  The last 3 miles to the house were not enjoyable between a sore rear end and tired legs.

We still are having issues with chicken sleeping arrangements.  Saturday night we had to remove Peaches from the top of a barrier screen Cindy mounted in front of the electronics.  Every night all 11 birds try to jam on to the top perch area, despite there being three totally empty perches below.  As the birds continue to grow there is less and less space up top.  Cindy and I are considering yet another modification where we turn the big perch structure we made on it’s side so there is a large triangle of perching space all at the same height.  There are some design changes and proof of concept that need to be worked out but hopefully we can make it work.

I got my DJI quadcopter out for the first time in months to shoot some aerial video of the property.  Right after taking off for my first flight I saw something very odd on the horizon.  It was low, bright to the point where I could see it even behind clouds and appeared to be moving very slowly. I tried to position the copter so it was pointing in the direction of the object but on the video I can’t see what my eyes tracked.  My logical assumption is what I saw was a plane with a reflective exterior that was catching the high sun at just the right angle to reflect in my direction on the ground.  The copters higher vantage point may have erased that angle which is why I couldn’t see it when played back.

I burned through all three battery packs shooting my property from different perspectives.  I think the video turned out decent after a lot of cutting and trimming.  You do get a good aerial view of the new coop and chicken run from an overhead perspective.

Over the weekend I was watching several videos of what the first few hours of recruit basic training is like.  The drill instructors screaming repeatedly inches from the recruits face was disturbing for me and I wasn’t even there.  I don’t know for sure how I would react if I ever decided to enlist in the military but I presume it would not be good.  Sure you have to know going in what your role is going to be and that treating you like dirt is how they break you down to reshape you as a soldier.  I just wondered how many of those kids were thinking “What the fck did I get myself into…”

Sunday night Cindy and watched my current Netflix rental, McFarland, a movie about an unlikely cross country team coached by an unlikely coach in a very Hispanic town in California.  Even if you know nothing about cross country running I am confident you will find the film touching and inspirational.  It’s a solid A in my book.

So we are a few days away from the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing away.  To me, the 10th is really the day that mom left us as she was found unresponsive behind the wheel of her car only to be revived too late to save her brain.  The idea of mom feeling the heart attack coming on not being able to do anything about it is something that frustrates me and brings heavy feelings of sadness  and remorse.  I feel like somehow I should have been able to so something to prevent it, somehow.

This past weekend has been one of the most dreary and waterlogged as I can remember in quite a long time.  It basically has been raining to some degree since Friday.  The end result is our property has once again turned into lake front.  There are standing bodies of water all over the place.

On Saturday morning I wanted to get the weeding done and I didn’t care if it was raining.  When I stepped outside it was a light, tolerable rain however the intensity went up and down the entire time I was out there.  At a few points it was an outright downpour.  I was already soaked all the way to my underwear so I didn’t even bother trying to escape the deluge.  After weeding I had my first of three clothing changes during the day due to wetness.

While I was weeding I pulled this huge mutant grapefruit that was in the orchard.  It had split open.  After slicing it with the machete I saw the fattest rind ever.  Unfortunately the fruit did not look appetizing at all so after it’s photo op the monster grapefruit was tossed in the compost bin.

After drying off Cindy and I went out for what is a pretty normal weekend shopping circuit of Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot and Rural King with a Pinch A Penny stop for good measure.  We grabbed five more 50 pound bags of sand for the chicken run.  In total I bet we have dumped a couple thousand pounds of sand in there.  The goal is to eventually have a few inches of sand in the entire 8′ x 12′ run to make clean up easier as well as raising the elevation slightly, something that became an apparent need this weekend.

On Saturday I introduced Cindy to the world of Periscope, an app I only recently discovered myself courtesy of Bubba talking about it on the radio.  Periscope is a way to basically instantly get yourself broadcasting video live.  There are already have been many ways to do this for several years ( I used JustinTv to broadcast live 5 years ago) but somehow they way Persiscope handles it just feels slicker and easy.  When you like what you are seeing a viewer taps his screen and it generates a heart which is the Periscope equivalent of LIKE.  It’s twitter integration and seamless notification system allows you to grow an audience pretty easily.

It is also like Snapchat in a way, something I never used.  You have an option to make the video stream only available live and even if you do archive it, it is still only alive for 24 hours on the Periscope servers until it goes away.  I guess it adds a sense of urgency to viewership. If you want to see the content you better watch it now. The only broadcast I still have alive is some WoW footage.  Better watch it soon, it goes away in 3 hours. 🙂

So Cindy and I took turns shooting silly Persicope videos at various points during the day, the longest of which was sitting in the car before we went into the movie.  It’s a weird thing how a bunch of random people would instantly jump into your broadcast.  A handful of them would use the chat function but the vast majority are silent voyeurs. What they were hoping to find is beyond me.

So after a tasty meal at Olive Garden Cindy and I went to see Southpaw, a boxing movie with Jake Gylennhall.  The lobby of the theater seemed pretty empty so I was looking forward to an equally empty theater.  This was opening weekend for the film, for most big name movies Coconut Point will have a 7:00 and 7:30 showing.  Southpaw only had a 7:20 showing which meant it was not getting big film positioning.  The theater it was showing in was one of the mid-sized rooms instead of the big ones we are used to. This theater had the love seat layout which is nice but actually a little less comfortable than the seating in the bigger theaters.

Well slowly the theater started to fill up with a steady stream of patrons filing in during the previews.  I bet the theater was 75% full, normally unheard of during the summer.  Of course the more people that are in your nearby vicinity the more likely you are to have an annoying asshole in range.  This time it was a hispanic woman that had no understanding of talking quietly during a movie.  Every time she spoke it was at full volume.  It didn’t take long until she drew stinkeye glances from Cindy who said she was ready to yell “Callete su boca!”  If our only option to see movies was in theaters that were this level of population I would stop going to the movies as much as we do.  The more human beings, the less fun, is my general rule of thumb.

So the movie itself was good.  Jake got himself into incredible shape for the film.  It had a real Rocky flavor to it which in my book is a good thing.  Sure it was predictable but that isn’t such a bad thing with this kind of film.  Jake seems to be a lot like his deceased co-star of Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger, in that he really tries to transform himself into the character he is portraying.  He did an equally good job of turning himself into a mega-creepy dude in Nightcrawler. Anyway, I would give Southpaw an A-, just try to watch it out of range of the annoying people.

When we checked on the chickens via the security dvr we saw that all of them were in place except Peaches, who decided to fly up to one of the shelves and sit in a box.  Despite having the chickens integrated for quite a few weeks, more often than not Cindy still has to go out there at bedtime and rearrange chickens which has to stop.  Basically what happens is Lucy decides she is not happy with having the younger chickens close to her and starts to peck at them.  Instead of retreating to any of the three lower perch bars the chicks instead have often used the side shelves or nesting boxes as a sleeping spot which we don’t want.  For clean up efficiency we need them all to stay on the perches.

We tried to address the problem somewhat by adding two half perches a few inches below the top perch so the birds could all be together without having to squish onto one bar.  Cindy also added additional screen hanging from the roof to block access to the top shelves.  Last night seemed to be the best sleeping outcome yet.  Not only did we not have to place the birds, Lucy actually allowed Stephie to cuddle up next to her, a first.

So Sunday morning I had hopes of getting out to do a bike ride since it was not raining when I woke up.  However a quick glance at the precipitation radar indicated we were just in a small break of the wet misery so we bagged it.  It started to pour shortly thereafter.

Like I mentioned, the  steady and at times torrential rain has drenched the yard.  One unfortunate casualty has been the ground underneath the coop deck, an area the chickens normally hang out in frequently.  It became pretty disgusting since obviously the chickens shit under there and we are unable to clean it conventionally.  It had a disgusting sewage like appearance.  The main chicken run was wet but much cleaner due to the additional sand that is dumped in there along with our normal daily poop pick up it remains relatively clean.  Unfortunately there is really nothing we can do about the ground under the deck until the water recedes.

We have had a couple freak out moments with our neighborhood hawks.  The other night Cindy went sprinting out the door when a hawk was on the ground only a few feet from the open chicken run door, being much too brave for our comfort.  Cindy has been firing warning shots with her CO2 BB pistol I bought her to keep the hawk away when she sees it.  At Rural King we went a step further and bought a fake hawk and owl.  You place and move them periodically around the yard as a visual deterrent.

The owl seems more effective as it has a bobble head that spins with the slightest breeze, making it seem more realistic.  We filled them both with sand to make them heavy and resistant to the strong wind gusts that often blow through the property.  I sat the owl right on top of the chicken run. It is annoying to have a constant paranoia about the chicken’s safety when they are free ranging but short of having them live in a bubble it’s just a risk you have to accept.

So the miserable weather on Sunday resulted in me having one of the laziest days in recent history.  I played hours of WoW and enjoyed myself doing so. You may recall me talking about the requirements to unlock flying in the game with the latest expansion.  When I first saw them I knew it would be a lot of work/time to accomplish these requirements, I had no idea just how much.

For the last few weeks anytime I have had in the game has almost exclusively been utilized in accomplishing this goal on one character, which in turn unlocks flying for all of my other characters.  It just seems like it took too much time.  To just do the portion in the new content that was released recently you have a minimum of close to 3 weeks to accrue what is needed to fly.  If you had to do the other achievements in the older areas, like I did, that gets tacked on top.  It was an annoying, extremely repetitive grind that sucked most of the fun out of playing.  I am very glad that it is behind me.

The only real “work” I did on Sunday was to pay my bills, a very minimal chore.  Late in the afternoon we decided to finally film an eating challenge I proposed awhile back, consuming ghost pepper powder.

Unless you have been living in a cave you have seen/heard of ghost peppers.  They are one of hottest peppers on the planet, registering a blistering 2,000,000 on the scoville heat index. For reference, jalapeno peppers are rated at 2,500 to 10,000 heat units.  The powder version of ghost peppers supposedly is more concentrated. Well anyway YouTube is jammed full of ghost pepper eating videos and there is a good reason for it, people like watching other people suffer.  If you eat a ghost pepper you WILL suffer, there is no way around it.

Cindy was very nervous leading up to the challenge.  I was not nervous until the last few seconds.  At that moment I had a feeling similar to prior to jumping in the Arctic Enema at the Tough Mudder.  I knew there was immense discomfort to follow.

We decided to use the dining room table for the video, hoping it would offer the best lighting.  I don’t think that spot has ever been used for filming anything else.  Cindy measured the powder and put a 1/4 teaspoon in each of our conventional spoons.  We started the cameras rolling (Cindy simulcast it on Periscope) and after a 3,2,1 countdown cleaned the spoons of the powder.

We used different techniques when it came to cleaning the spoon.  I used a method similar to if I was eating cereal or a spoonful of peanut butter.  The end result was the powder adhering to mostly my upper teeth, gums, and inside of my upper lip.  In contrast Cindy turned her spoon upside down and deposited all of the powder on her tongue.

The first sensation is the taste of the powder which was not pleasant.  However soon all taste is obliterated as the heat from the ghost peppers starts to set in.  It took very little time until I was reaching for my large glass of water, even though it did not really help.  I almost immediately started hiccuping as the burn really set in.  The watery eyes and running nose followed closely.  The discomfort actually ramps up as time goes on and lingers.  It turned into more of a stinging sensation, almost like I had hornets in my mouth.  At one point I felt somewhat nauseous and was nervous since we had no vomit containers nearby.

Cindy of course was struggling as well.  She slammed a glass of almond milk, followed by water, followed by peanut butter and yogurt.  I only used water and peanut butter to help relieve the pain.  None of it was all that effective.  Basically you just have to ride out the burn.  After about 10 minutes or so things started to die down.  It was a stunt that I wanted to accomplish and now that we have, I have no desire to revisit the ultra-hot pepper genre ever again.

Sunday night we watched 50 Shades of Grey, the movie based on the book that turned so many women into sex craving maniacs.  I was recently separated when the book was  making waves.  I recall many first dates where the woman mention they read the book which I did not know was a good or bad thing.  I heard several accounts of the book turning women into sex starved maniacs, it turned them on that much.

So the movie had a lot of hype behind it obviously when it was released which I obviously did not share.  I only rented it on Netflix because Cindy was interested in seeing it since she started the book but never finished it.  Well if the movie’s main goal was to produce mainstream soft porn it certainly hit the mark.  There was more nudity and sex in the film than any feature film I ever saw before.   However at my age it takes more than sex scenes to keep my interest.  The man in the film had all of these hang ups whose symptoms were his bizarre sexual rituals.  I think the movie needed some more focus on why that was instead of end result of his weirdness.  Overall, even with all of the skin on skin I can’t rate the film more than a B, perhaps a sign of my advancement into the kingdom of old fartdom.

I have short 3 day week ahead of me.  Cindy is having some foot surgery on Thursday so I am burning a couple vaca days to be her transport/caregiver. I have a few to use up by mid-August.

So while I was shopping at Costco after work on Friday I got a text from Cindy.  She said the woman she talked to from Dunkin Donuts that was interested in adopting Jaina wanted to come over to pick her up.  I told her it was fine.  I got home shortly after the woman arrived with her mom and two kids.   After I unloaded the groceries I went out back to join them.  Cindy was in the middle of giving them the chicken coop tour.

It then came time to collect Jaina.  I grabbed my large cat carrier to let Anna borrow for chicken transport.  At 10 pounds, Jaina is bigger than many cats.  Cindy and I were able to corral the bird and get her into the carrier. (even though Jaina is probably a rooster he is still a she to me)

It didn’t take me very long to feel sad.  We had Jaina on the ground in the carrier while we were talking a bit.  She/he started making the noises she always does when she is looking for the other four chicks she grew up with.  Almost instantly the four other “babies” came over to the carrier and actually started pecking at the carrier in almost a “hey let our friend out of there” way.  It sort of broke my heart to split them up.

I carried the carrier out front to their car and placed Jaina in the front seat.  Anna said she will take good care of the chicken.  Although at first she is going to be keeping Jaina in a modified doghouse, they have plans to build a real coop and get more chickens.  I couldn’t help but think about Jaina repeatedly over the weekend, imagining how upset she must be without her familiar flock close by.

So on Friday during the day Cindy had busted major ass around the house, getting done pretty much all of the outside chores that clutter the first part of my weekend.  Instead of using this freed up block of time for rest or relaxation I instead decided to just plug another project in there, cleaning the large shed. The shed has gotten rather messy and cluttered.  I probably have not given it a total cleaning/reorganization since I was actively married.  It was time.

The formula for the project was pretty simple.  Pull almost everything out and separate it into stuff you want to throw out, give away, and keep.  Cindy joked that I was a hoarder.  I would say a non-waster is more accurate.  A lot of stuff that was in there were left over materials from the endless home projects over the years.  Scraps of wood, pieces of gutter, leftover pots, and pvc pipe made up a large portion of what I pulled out.  The giveaway items got thrown in the back of the Tacoma and deposited roadside where almost all of it was picked up by neighborhood pack rats during the rest of the weekend.

Speaking of rats, we discovered an active field mouse nest in the shed.  It was carefully created behind the plywood storm shutters and came complete with a mouse.  When I leaned the board back he was down there looking up at me.  I lifted the one board to try to encourage him to take off.   When I heard a crying noise at my feet I realized I inadvertently pinned him under one of the boards.  I lifted it up and he scampered towards the back of the shed.  I then saw him running along the framing up near the roof of the shed.  I was able to scare him out of the shed and over to the pond area.  I have little doubt he will take up residence inside the shed again at some point.

So after most everything was pulled out Cindy worked on sweeping out all of the sand and dirt while I worked further on separating and sorting.  As expected the process had a number of “wow I didnt realize I had this” moments as well as little memory triggers the various items presented when tied to the projects they were from.  One cool item was a small can that I got from either my grandfather or great uncle.  It turns out it was an 85 year old film canister from the 30’s.  It was holding left over fasteners.

Putting the “keep” items back in the shed took much less time than the pull out phase since we were returning significantly less stuff to the 12 x 20 shed.  The AFTER picture of the shed shows the dramatic reduction of items in there.  It’s odd how simply cleaning or organizing a space can dramatically change the feel when you walk in there.  All of a sudden I felt good walking into the shed instead of annoyed.

Shed cleaning is a project that I would normally reserve for the cooler and more pleasant winter months.  After sweating through it Saturday I plan to return it to as a winter solstice only activity.

On Saturday night Cindy and headed out to go see Ant Man, a movie I was excited to see, a feeling Cindy did not really share.  Despite it being opening weekend we got to enjoy a sparsely populated theater with no more than 30 people sharing the large space with us.

I knew of the Ant Man hero but I can’t say I ever read any of the comics.  However at this point, Marvel has my blind trust when it comes to movie making.  I knew nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy and came out of it thinking it was one of the best movies all saw all year.    I can’t tell you the last Marvel film I saw that I did not enjoy.  I’m happy to say the Ant Man has continued that streak, taking a small (pun intended) facet of the Marvel universe and turning it into a thoroughly enjoyable film.  I also liked how they tied it into the current Marvel films with tie ins to the Avengers and Shield.  Of course as is the case with most Marvel films be sure to sit through the end credits.  It was a solid A film and I am happy to say Cindy wound up enjoying the movie as well.  She was pleasantly surprised.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got on our bikes for a Dunkin Donuts ride.  We didn’t get on the road until close to 9:30 meaning we were going to be well into the heat of the day.   I let Cindy lead the entire 10 miles west.  I told her to go whatever speed was comfortable.  I didn’t have my GPS with but my internal effort meter indicated that she was pushing the pace.  She told me her Cats Eye showed we were 20 mph + for a good 5-6 miles straight.

On the way back I pulled the entire way into the mild headwind.  I stayed on my aero bars and kept my pedal cadence speed up.  I managed to average in the 17’s for the return trip which wasn’t bad.   As soon as we got home I jumped in the pool for a rapid cool down of my highly elevated body temperature.

Before too long I was in the backyard filming another exercise session.  I had decided I wanted to do some backyard deadlifting, something I had not done since 2014.  Since joining Planet Fitness I have not been doing any deadlifting, they just dont have the equipment or space to really accommodate it.  For whatever reason yesterday I wanted to see what I was still able to pull.

I kept my amount of reps at higher weights low as my goal was to see just what I could still pull off the ground with no deadlift training at all.  I was surprised I was able to use a normal pronated grip up to 345 pounds although part of the reason was I was only single repping at that point.  I only went mixed grip for my final pull at 370 pounds which I barely managed.  Getting twice my current bodyweight off the ground was good enough for me with my lack of training.  I filmed the session, something I haven’t been doing much of lately.

I followed up with my second video of the day, this time utilizing my GoPro and Amazon Echo in another head shaving video.  It’s an odd thing how after automotive repair videos, head shaving occupies the second most viewed segment of my YouTube channel.  There is a weird cult head shaving enthusiast underground out there.  Shaving my head in the kitchen without a mirror in front of me full time was annoying.

So over the weekend Donald Trump’s big mouth got him in trouble again as he said that John McCain wasn’t a real war hero and how he prefers war heroes that do not get captured.  It was a pretty outrageous and ridiculous comment for a presidential candidate to make.  However if you have paid any attention to Trump over the years you know he has a long history of saying pretty stupid things.  Despite his enormous wealth, he reacts like a teenager when somebody disagrees with something he does/said.  In this case Trump was angry that McCain didn’t like Donald’s, Mexicans are rapists, verbal brilliance a few weeks back.

Few fellow republican candidates said much about Donald’s anti-mexican rant as they did not want to draw the immature insults that would surely be reflected back at them as a result.  However the ant-McCain comments has drawn bipartisan criticism.  In true Trump behavior, he refused to apologize for the remarks and instead tried to steer the heat back at McCain.  I wonder how many of those Trump bandwagon jumpers that grabbed on to his anti-immigrant talk have jumped back off that wagon and are now walking down the sidewalk with their hands in their pockets and whistling, trying to act like their support of his candidacy never actually happened.  I never thought for a second that Trump had a snowballs’s chance in hell of being nominated but I didn’t think his mouth would derail him quite so quickly.

In an attempt to address what feels like a perpetual sleep shortage I have moved my weekday alarm clock from 5:30AM to 6:00.  The 5:30 alarm time is something that dates back 10 years or more and was established when I was letting out the dogs, making my breakfast, packing my lunch and cleaning up every morning.  Since Cindy started living with me three of those four things usually are taken care of by her yet I continued with the 5:30 alarm.  The extra time was basically just used surfing my Facebook feed.

I think applying that extra 30 minutes to sleep will be a far more beneficial utilization of my time in the long run.

This was another weekend of labor. Hot, sweaty, annoying gnats buzzing your face labor. It started unconventionally on Friday night when our friend Tricia came out to the house with her sister Judy.  Originally they were talking about shooting an exercise video with Cindy for FitFarmChick channel.  They wound up showing up later than they expected so instead they just got a quick tour of the grounds and stayed to eat some Friday night pizza with us.

Judy is a real deal power lifter.  Even though we didn’t put her to the test you could easily tell she had a powerful build that would be able to move a lot of weight.  She also just recently became a certified personal trainer which is what Cindy has been working towards.  Judy is a good source of advice in regards to how to prepare for the test.

On Saturday I did not feel like getting up but Sadie had other plans.  I had a long list in my head of things I wanted to get done so I drug myself out of bed to get the day started.  After weeding the property I jumped straight into running the weed whacker.  By the time I got done with both tasks the heat of the day had started in earnest and I was soaked with sweat.  I turned my attention to the chicken coop/shed which was getting yet another of a seemingly endless amount of tweaks.

Since summer started the interior of the shed has been getting pretty brutally hot during the day.  Even with all of the windows and front doors open the thermometer would get up to around 105 degrees.    Although the chickens are out of the coop most of the day either in the run, under the shed platform or free ranging, it still is too damn hot in there.  Lucy goes in during the day to lay an egg plus I have several hundred dollars of electronic equipment in the coop that doesn’t enjoy temperatures in the triple digits.

After touching the roof from the inside of the coop a couple weeks ago and burning my hand almost instantly I determined the dark brown color of the roof was the primary culprit in super heating the space.  Dark colors absorb heat.  The simple solution, paint it white.  Now a white roof sort of messes with the the color coordination of the coop but I was willing to sacrifice esthetics for function.  After doing some research Cindy and I found some paint that is designed to be used on plastic.  While I was at the timer conference Cindy painted the back half of the roof.  I tackled the front.

It took some trial and error to find a spray pattern that laid down the gloss white in a more or less even manner. Cindy had masked off the edges of the roof along with the two front skylights for me.   I had on my sunglasses and a dust mask to protect my airway from the paint fumes.  Unfortunately because of the heat, breathing became quite challenging with the mask on.  My long arms were quite useful in reaching the upper areas of the roof.

When I was done the roof looked a bit odd but not terrible since the chicken run has white roof panels as well.   The mismatched color scheme was forgotten when mid-afternoon I was able to put my hand on the roof and keep it there.  It was only warm, not hot.  It seems like the simple color change on the roof has lowered the temperature in the coop during the heat of the day by around 10 degrees.

On Saturday my Philps Hue starter pack showed up.  The Hue is an intelligent lighting system that allows you to do all sorts of lighting magic thanks to a smart, web connected hub in addition to smart bulbs that talk to it.  It also integrates with the Amazon Echo, allowing you voice control of your lights which is cool to me of course.

I was able to get the Hue set up in less than 5 minutes, it is very, very easy to do.  I put one bulb in the kitchen and another in the bedroom and named them by location.  After pairing the Hue with the Echo I was able to turn on, turn off, or dim the lights in either location via a voice command.  It was very Star Trek-esque.

I was confused why I was unable to get the bulbs to change color.  After doing some digging I discovered that was because my starter kit has the Hue Lux bulbs which are white only.  If you want bulbs that can change to any color in the rainbow you need to spend triple what the white only bulbs cost.  Even without the Echo integration the Hue system is pretty damn cool.  Using your smart phone there are nearly countless ways you can customize and tweak their actions.

Speaking of the Echo, Cindy and I are still discovering what it can and can not do.  The one frustrating part is the somewhat limited access the Echo gives you to info compared to Siri.  Some of this has to do with the difference in providing information via voice as opposed to a screen but it seems like there is still a lot more power they could add to the device.  Many free form questions like “What movies are coming out this weekend” will generate a generic, I’m sorry I do not have an answer, response.  They are constantly adding features to the Echo so I am sure her sphere of knowledge will continue to expand.  In addition the platform is open architecture, allowing for 3rd parties to utilize the hardware which will only mean more and more power available to the little black cylinder.

On Saturday night we stayed home and finished off our 2nd generation Star Wars trilogy Netflix marathon, watching Episode 3.  After completing the second set of Star Wars films I can’t say my opinion of them changed significantly for the better or the worse.  They still are vastly inferior to their predecessor but are entertaining to a B+ degree.

On Sunday morning I did a rare solo bike ride.  Cindy had a sore neck that would not have been helped by the hunched over riding position her triathlon bike utilizes. I decided to do a 20 mile ride but not to Dunkin Donuts.  Instead I road 10 miles out Oil Well Road towards Ave Maria and then turned around.  I got out on the road a little later than I would like on a July morning, not cranking my first pedal revolution until a little after 9AM.

I hit head wind immediately as I turned onto Immokalee Road.  Head wind was a near constant factor for most of the ride.  Even after turning left onto Oil Well Road I had an angled wind slowing me down that somehow managed to follow me to a degree even after I turned around.  The only time I had a true tail wind was the final two miles after I turned back onto Immokalee Road.  I struggled pretty much the entire time.  I barely averaged 17 mph overall for the ride despite working at what felt like a high level.  The heat radiating off the road sapped my energy reserves and desire.  When I pulled back into the driveway I was soaked and panting.

Part of motivation for going out on the ride solo was I just got done flipping through a bunch of pictures from my 30th class reunion that went down Saturday night.  I have never attended a single class reunion since graduating high school.  I also have seen an amazingly few amount of high school classmates in person since 1985, my only contact with most is if they hooked up on Facebook.  If you would ask me why that is I would not have a clear and definitive answer for you although I am sure it is somehow tied into my hang ups regarding aging, which I have many.  If I would have paid attention more to the date of the reunion I could have easily tied it into my attendance of the RSU conference earlier in the week.  However I did not do that.

So anyway as I flipped through some of the pictures it did not take long until I grabbed my senior year book.  I was surprised how many faces that I had absolutely no idea who they were.  Weight gain, loss of hair, and just plain aging had transformed some of my former classmates enough that I no longer could match my 1985 version of them to the present day.   Of course I found this unsettling and made me feel even older.

From all accounts from the people in attendance, everyone had a FANTASTIC time.  I am relatively confident that once I got over the initial shock of seeing people that in most cases I had not seen in 30 years I would have been able to settle in and just enjoy the fact that we made it this far.  Of course alcohol would have been a key ingredient in making that happen.

I sometimes am curious of what my classmates think of my online presence which has a pretty large footprint at this point.  In school I certainly was not very loud or outspoken.  I would describe myself back then as mostly quiet and not the type to be outwardly seeking new personal connections or looking to draw much attention. (pretty much the same now)  That contrasts itself with my YouTube channel with nearly 600 videos as well as my personal blog that has been running for going on 13 years where I spill tons and tons of personal thoughts, opinions, and experiences for the world to digest. It’s an odd dichotomy.

I spent a decent amount of time editing some additional footage for Cindy’s YouTube channel over the weekend.  She now has over 25 videos posted, not bad for only being in existence a few weeks.  I have supplemented her channel with some excerpts from some of my Bar-barians challenge videos that she participated in.  We also posted some baking, exercise, and hot pepper eating videos.

On Sunday I had a few more tasks to complete.  I quickly threw together a small platform to house a nesting box for Jaina, the monster cornish cross hen.  She is too big to perch like all of the other chickens.  The stand was to house a dedicated nesting box that is supposed to serve as her bed at night.  Last night she was only mildly successful in using the box.

I also grabbed my tube of Scratch X to remove some marks on the back of the SSR that mysteriously happened while Cindy had the truck parked in a lot a couple weeks ago.  I have used Scratch X before to remove what seemed like pretty formidable paint blemishes.  Once again the product did it’s job.  After a few applications and a bit of elbow grease a casual passerby would never know there was a problem.

Later in the day my to do list was finally cleared and I could just veg out.  Cindy shot some cute video in the evening of the chickens hanging with the dogs.  It’s so cool that they all can hang together without conflict.

On my way home from work I picked up the dogs for another long weekend visit while Ali is out of town.  They had to share space on the back of the Prius with groceries from Costco, including two large bags of softener salt.  During the night Cindy and I both had off and on sadness about Lola passing away.  I have a hard time processing when something is here one moment and gone the next.

On Saturday morning I wanted to get started with the ethernet to coop project.  I wanted to get the attic work out of the way before it became a sauna.  Earlier in the week I had cut and put an end on the network cable I was going to extend outside.  My plan was to come out of the attic with the 200 foot ethernet cable via a hole that is already punched in the cinder block where cable, satellite and phone lines are located.

Well as I surveyed the hole from the outside I realized that I had precious little space to get another cable through there.  To make matters worse the hole is not straight through the wall, instead they are offset by 8-10 inches from the inside to the outside, making it even more messy.  After doing a lot of pulling and tugging I realized that it just was not going to work that way.  So it was time to look for alternative exits.

After some thought and further examination I decided to punch through the soffit next to the conduit used to route the pipe to the AC compressor.  It allowed me to hide the cable for the most part as it goes down the wall.  I jammed the cable through the hole from the outside and had Cindy hold it while I struggled to crawl into the corner of the attic where I could barely snag it with my fingers.

Now the fun was beginning, getting the cable routed all the way out to the chicken coop.  I used two tools to get the cable into the ground, a hand edger to cut a slice into the turf and my window spline tool to push the ethernet cable into the ground.  It’s a slow process as I only move the edger about 6 inches at a time between each cut.

For part of the cable run I went into the border around the pool, pulling back the weedblock and shoving the cable underneath.  It was not fun either but easier than cutting through the lawn.  After close to an hour I finally had traveled the roughly 150 feet to the shed.  I drilled a hole in the front corner of the shed floor and had Cindy fish the cable up to me.  I connected the cable in the attic and to one of web cams while I held my breath.  I exhaled with relief when I saw the connection and activity lights snap on as they should.  The coop was now hard wired.

I added in a spare wifi router I had laying around to create a backyard hotspot.  I hard wired both web cams into the router to maximize bandwidth to them.  When I checked the video feeds with the new set up it was clear and fast, just as I hoped.

My shirt was soaked with sweat which I addressed with a quick jump in the pool.  I didn’t want to stink while Cindy and I ran some errands, including a stop at Rural King for chicken supplies, a nearly weekly occurrence.  This time the dogs had to share the back of the Prius with a 50 pound bag of chicken feed and three 50 pound bags of sand.

When I got home Cindy and I were back outside, her on the tractor, me on the weed whacker.  Of course it was hotter than hell in the middle of the afternoon but we wanted to get it done.  When I finished up weed whacking I had a few other things to attend to.  One of them was coming up with a way to block the skylights in the coop.

The heat in the coop during the day is pretty oppressive.  When I checked it at one point on Saturday the thermometer hanging from the truss read almost 110 degrees. Having two skylights pumping more radiant energy into the coop just was not necessary.  The coop has plenty of other windows to allow light inside.

I grabbed some pieces of white corrugated plastic that is typically used for signs.   The pieces weren’t quite large enough to block the area completely but it was close.  Before long the temps dropped into the upper 90’s inside, still hot but not horrendous.  Cindy is going to buy some bigger panels which will completely block the area.  We are also talking about painting the roof of the shed a lighter color that will reflect some of the sun.  The current dark brown native color is a heat magnet.

Saturday night we were exhausted from busting ass all day.  We stayed in watched Episode 1 of Star Wars, yes the Jar Jar Binks episode.  I put all three of the second generation Star Wars films in my Netflix queue.  I just felt like watching them again, maybe as a build up for the new Star Wars that comes out around Xmas.

Watching the movie reenforced the good and bad from second trilogy.  Jar Jar Binks seemed just as stupid as ever and the films over reliance on CGI and little focus on story was still apparent.  If I was to give it a current day rating it would have to be B+ at best.

On Sunday we bagged a bike ride.  Cindy woke up with her hands feeling pretty bad, something a 20 mile bike ride would only make worse.  Instead we got busy with various things.  One of those things is me working on getting Cindy’s YouTube channel up and running with Google AdSense so she can starting making some ad dollars.  Her application was rejected twice due to lack of content on her website.  After adding some additional content it made it through stage one of the application process, now we have to cross our fingers it makes it all the way through.

I also did another dry run of race timing on Sunday, a less intensive test where I just had one mat set up in the dining room that I walked bibs across.  It served it’s purpose and exposed a couple other operational gotchas I need to look out for.

Of course there was a lot of chicken related activities over the weekend.  The current main drama is sleeping arrangements.  Lucy has still been bitchy and pecking the other chicks if they get too close to her.  Cindy built a secondary perch at a right angle to the main perch, hoping Lucy could claim it for herself.

Well since the secondary perch still connected to the main perch structure Lucy still was able to slide down and peck away at the babies.  Last night Cindy tried to address the problem further by stringing some netting that created a slight barrier between her and the rest of the flock.  It seemed to work ok but we can’t really be at ease until all 12 birds put themselves to bed and wind up in their respective spots without us putting them there.

Last night Cindy finished up applying the chip timing device to 1200 bibs we have ready for Saturday’s 4th of July race.  Only 1800 more to go. 🙂  It’s not a fast process but I am confident as time goes on we will fine tune things to consume less resources.

This weekend seemed to be over way, way too quick.  On Saturday after weeding and a few other tasks I worked on setting up my test race in the front yard.  This was the first time I set everything up in anything close to real world conditions and it was a learning experience for sure.  I had my stop watch out to see how long it would take Cindy and I to set up a full 8 meters of mats, the maximum I would need to do for the start line of most races.

The design of the timing mats is quite different than the roll out mats Ipico uses.  From a runners perspective the design is definitely better,  The low profile, durable rubber mats will not present the same tripping hazard that the unavoidable wrinkles in the Ipico mats caused.  In heavy foot traffic situations the Ipico mats would also have a tendency to slide, again causing tripping concerns.  The interlocking design of the MyLaps mats combined with their grippy rubber bottoms should eliminate that problem.

From a time and set up perspective, the Ipico mats are much easier to deploy.  Simply unroll and connect one set of connectors to the timing box per mat.  The MyLaps mats are in shorter, 1 meter sections where the shortest Ipico mats are 2.5 meters in length so you need more MyLaps mats to cover the same distance.  However the real time consumer comes in setting up the cables.  Each mat has it’s own detachable cable that you have to connect at both ends.  On the mat side after attaching the connector you have to route the cable in one of the 8 rubber channels under a flap in the mat, back to the timing box.  If you are doing a full length of 8 meters this is not a quick process.  It took two people almost 15 full minutes to get the mats in place, cables routed, and hooked to the timing box.  For comparison sake I could do something similar with the Ipico system in probably 5 minutes.

Now to be fair this was the first time Cindy and I ever attempted this thus we surely were inefficient.  It took some trial and error to figure out which cables needed to go into which channel to prevent problems.  I am sure we will get faster at this process as time goes on but there is no doubt I need to allocate extra set up time for hardware set up at each race.

Once I got the start timing mats up Cindy strapped on 10 race bibs to simulate 10 runners.  I gave her a ready set go and had her run across the mats.  I then headed to my “finish line” which was a single mat in front of the garage.  I worked on getting the finish line up and running which is made simpler due to the fact the MyLaps boxes automatically synch themselves to GPS time, not requiring me to synch them with my laptop which in turn was synched with my atomic watch.

Once I had the finish mat up and running I started walking the bibs across the finish line to simulate the finish.  I had assigned the 10 bib numbers to various well known people of mine so it was funny to see the results posted which included the likes of Nicki, myself, Randall and even IronLoo (the virtual race winner). Importing the data into my timing software was not difficult at all.  I like the fact that my timing data is absolutely safe on the MyLaps box.  I can pull times off of it in real time or a week after the race if I wanted to.

Later on Cindy and I discovered another noteworthy issue with the rubber mats.  By the time we took them apart the sun had moved enough that the mats were now receiving direct sunlight.  They were BOILING hot, requiring me to grab my leather gloves to handle them.  Of course this was around mid-day, in race situations which are early in the morning the mats should not be able to collect enough heat to simulate this issue, hopefully.

On Saturday while Cindy was outside doing a brief bar park workout I got on the pull up bar, curious if I still could do a muscle up, despite not doing any of them for at least 3-4 months and doing next to no training of the movement over the last couple years.  Well I got my answer of yes, but if you watch the slo-mo video of it you will see two extremely sloppy reps.

Saturday night we decided to mix things up a bit.  Yes we still saw a movie but we did it at Silverspot Cinema in Mercato.  We really went crazy and had a meal at Mercato beforehand at Masa.  We were able to do the date night on the cheap since we had gift cards from Christmas for both places.

The dinner at Masa was very enjoyable.  The food was nothing short of fantastic.  The two Budweisers I drank were more than enough to raise my somewhat droopy mood I was in, thanks to being somewhat dehydrated from a lot of work outside during the day.  I was feeling stressed from two things.  The first was the uncertainty  of timing the upcoming July 4th race with the new hardware.  Not having a smaller, real world race under my belt with the new equipment prior to jumping headfirst into a nearly 1000 person 5k is a bit worrisome.

My second stress item was the chickens, big surprise.  I was worried about them integrating with Lucy and Lola and the long term care requirements our decision to have 13 chickens will present.  It seems like the last  3-4 months have been chicken crazy, first with the construction of the housing quarters and next the challenges of raising 11 chicks.  Now of course the VAST responsibility and workload for the chicks has been squarely on Cindy’s shoulders.  We both feel the work that has been needed has far exceeded what we expected.

I find myself wondering if we will ever get to the point where the chicken care will simplify along with a gradual reduction in the amount of time required in their care.  I know Cindy has had large blocks of each and every day gobbled up with chicken related items.  I was worried that this pattern would continue, making us feel somewhat shackled and unable to what we want because having a big ball of feathers over our heads.  Hopefully the integration, which started last night and I will cover more later is an important first step to more barnyard animal independence.

So the movie we saw was Tomorrowland, a film I had previously decided I would wait to see until it came out on Netflix.  Since there were no other must see films out right now we decided to accelerate our viewing of the film.  Well we could have waited.  The pace of the film was rather slow.  My eyes closed briefly a few times and Cindy reported she dosed off as well more than once.  The coolest thing about the film was the big budget special effects.  The movie was one big green peace message, something I support in the real world but did not make for a compelling storyline.   If you are a regular Fox News watcher you would probably hate the film.  To make matters worse it felt like somebody turned down the thermostat as the movie went on.  By the end of it Cindy and were both chilled to the bone.  Overall I’d rate the movie a B.  Certainly there is no need to rush out to catch it in theaters.

Sunday was Father’s Day.  When I walked out to the office I saw a plastic egg carton on my chair.  It was all decorated with pieces of paper in each egg slot.  Cindy can be very creative and thoughtful.  Each piece of paper had a personal note from each chicken, appropriately written based on their personalities.  The first one I happened to pull was for Kathy, whose paper had a little rainbow drawn on it.  My eyes got blurry with tears for a few moments.  The thoughtfulness of Cindy’s effort combined with thoughts of my mom was just very touching.  I can say assuredly that this was the nicest, sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me on Father’s Day.  The notes from the various chickens were quite funny.  I especially liked Lucy’s “I love you but don’t touch me”

We got out early on the bikes for a DD ride, although I still dare not run with my cranky right wheel I needed to at least do something.  Although I once again did not use a GPS for the ride we definitely picked up the pace.  Cindy is considering doing a duathlon next month, in order to do so we need to crank the intensity level back up a few clicks.  Once we got back Cindy almost immediately headed into the back yard to run 3 miles.  I was sure to wave to her as I cooled off in the pool while splashing Sadie.

A large portion of Sunday was planning for an integration of the 11 chicks with Lucy and Lola.  Cindy and I had somewhat of a role reversal on the subject.  I was more worried about them being under one roof because Lucy was sort of terrorizing the 11 babies when they were enclosed in the run together, pecking the head/back of any that were near her.  Although Cindy and I both know this is a normal part of integrating chicks, establishing pecking order, it still was upsetting.  We certainly didn’t want any of the babies seriously injured.

After we dropped the dogs back off at Ali’s late afternoon we turned our attention back to the chicken integration.  During the day the babies were out in the main run for a good portion of the day while Lucy and Lola free ranged.  The chicks discovered the area underneath the deck platform.  They seemed to enjoy the break it gave them from the brutal sun as well as the secure feeling they got with a low roof with a hardware cloth barrier.

As the sun started to set the chicks were getting very noisy and nervous, pacing back and forth in the run, expecting to be able to make their way back to the chicken tractor they have huddled in for the past several weeks at night.  At first we thought the chicks might actually choose to just stay out in the run so we started putting in some accommodations for them to do that.  However eventually a couple of the chicks went inside which is all that was needed to get most of the others to follow as chickens have a lot of lemming mentality.  We had to stuff a couple stragglers in the coop but for the most part they all willingly went in there.

Getting them into the coop was only half the battle.  Once inside a number of the chicks just started piling in the corners, not using the expansive and sturdy perch system we built last week.  Cindy tried no less than a half dozen layouts to make things workable for the babies.  After at least a half hour of futzing around she was able to get 5 or 6 of the chicks up on the perch with the rest hanging down below.  Once we turned the lights off everyone seemed to settle down.  When we woke up this morning and checked the web cam it appears everyone stayed put all night which was good. Cindy and I are hoping things improve from here and we can establish a less intrusive chicken maintenance pattern.

Last night we watched The Power of Everything, the movie about Stephen Hawking.  I heard it was good and the lead actor was nominated for and I think won the Oscar for best actor award.  Early on Cindy and I were struggling to make out the dialogue, I kept progressively turning the volume up on the surround system.  Even before he was deeply symptomatic it was tough to understand.  Later on in the movie they really could have used subtitles to help the audience make out what was being said.  It was kind of annoying to be honest best guessing all the time about what was being said.

The movie did a good job depicting the incredible resiliency Stephen has demonstrated throughout his life as well as the massive toll it took on his family, especially his first wife.  It is amazing he was told as a young man he had two years to live and when the movie was released he was now 72 years old.  The actor who played Hawking, whom ironically came off as absolutely horrible in Jupiter Ascending, did an amazing job depicting the the physical aspects of Hawkings ailment.

Despite appropriately using the words “incredible” and “amazing” to describe  the accomplishments of Stephen Hawking, overall the movie didn’t grab me all that much.  Like I said, not being able to clearly understand large portions of the dialogue didn’t help matters.  It’s a solid B rental for me.