Scary lookin dude….
People like this walk the streets. Well this guy isn’t right now thank goodness…..
People like this walk the streets. Well this guy isn’t right now thank goodness…..
Here are the pics from the PA trip.
Here are the pics of our flooded property.
This is a long one. This weekend was our trip to PA for me to play in the Pottstown Rumble, my favorite volleyball tournament ever. Due to all the money we spent last month, I booked the flight out of Fort Lauderdale to save a couple bucks. (a 2 hour drive) The drive was long and the airport was very busy. Our connection flight to Atlanta left a half hour late but the flight itself was uneventful. However the late take off meant we had about 15 minutes to get to the next gate. We hurried to the gate and got there during the final boarding call. Whew! We found our seats and were taxing out to the runway when the plane stops. After a delay, the captain informs us that our flight to Philly was going to be pushed back an hour and a half due to the crappy weather in PA. BY the time we taxied back to the gate, it was only going to be 15 minutes till they began boarding again so we just stayed put on the plane. We finally got in the air and soared into Philly, as we approached and got down into the clouds, it got amazingly dark. We could not even see the ground until 30 seconds before landing. When we emerged there was nothing but grayness and rain pouring down. It was nasty, real nasty.
Our next leg of the journey was a drive to my bro’s place. Of course to do so we needed a rental car. I pulled out my reservation form I printed from the internet. 34 bucks a day for a full size car for 3 days. Came to about 130 odd bucks. The person behind the counter asks me for the driver license, and if I wanted the minimal, medium or full coverage on the vehicle. I said minimal of course since I have rental car coverage through my auto insurance policy. She prints up the bill and the total is over 200 dollars. Woah! Wait a sec, I say. What is this? This is almost a 100 bucks more than my quote from the internet! She goes over the charges and lists the 19.99 a day charge for minimal “insurance” !!! The way she presented it, it was like there was no option for NO additional insurance. When pressured, she said I didn’t have to take any additional coverage. Nice. They try to just slip that in and hope you shrug it off. Bastards. That really pissed me off. Don’t rent from Dollar. At least the car was VERY nice. A Chrysler Concorde with all the goodies.
Normally, this entire drive may take an hour and a half. It took double that because of the rain. Flooding everywhere. We were starved and decided to just pull off and eat dinner, hoping traffic would ease a little bit. We wound up not getting to my brothers until 10 pm. Our travel day started at 7 am. You do the math.
Eating at the back of my mind this entire time is what was going to happen with the volleyball tournament. The Rumble is ALWAYS hot and humid. Saturday was forecast to have even more rain and be in the MID 60’s! Unbelievable. As soon as I got to my Bro’s I hopped on the internet and looked at the tournament site. It said on there RAIN or SHINE , BE PREPARED. The weather was so bad that even I, a diehard when it comes to stuff like this, was considering calling up my partner and telling him that we should just bag it. Playing in the cold and rain sucks all of the enjoyment out of a volleyball tournament. If it isn’t enjoyable, what is the point. So, I called him up to hash it out and he told me the tournament had to be cancelled, the field was literally underwater. Ah geez! Even though I was contemplating bagging it myself, hearing that it was cancelled really bummed me out. 1200 miles for nothing. A bitter disappointment but I had to admit that even if it was played, it would have been horrible. So my depression was at a pretty deep level the entire weekend. Instead of battling it out at the Rumble my Saturday was spent visiting friends and family. Always a good time but I had a hard time masking my general feelings of blah.
Saturday night through Monday morning were spent at my brother and sister-in-laws. They scheduled the christening of their daughter (my neice) around this trip. I got to meet my 5 month old neice Lauryn for the first time. She is a little sweetheart. The christening went well, followed by a luncheon and then some family came back to their place. There was the normal drama that seems to pop up during family gatherings. By the end people were mad at other people and it was time for it to wrap up. My bro and sis-in-law are in an in between townhouse until they buy another house, so room was tight and I could tell it was a bit of an inconvenience for them to have us there. I slept one night on the floor and the other on their couch.
We pulled out Monday. The weather was great! 80 degrees and sunny. 🙁 The flight home was uneventful and we actually arrived back in Florida 15 minutes early. The 50 dollar parking fee and 2 hour drive back after a day of flying stiffened my resolve to never fly out of the other coast for the sake of saving a few bucks.
We got home to our house around 9pm. Evidently it has rained like mad while we were gone. 10 plus inches of rain over the weekend! Our property that was dry when we left was filled with standing water when we returned. Another 3 inches of rain in 2 hours Tuesday afternoon, totally flooded the low lying areas. Pics of it to follow.
So that’s it. In a nutshell the things that were enjoyable about the trip were:
Nice rental car
Seeing friends and family
Every other aspect of it, basically SUCKED.
Leave for AZ in 2 days. Not again…..
Here are some pictures of the latest snakes we found on our property. Tim identified the big one as a Florida King snake.
Here are pics from the FSL all star game. Including a picture of bell man!!!
Looking for some more puppy pics?
Mowing the grass. It is at least a 9 month a year job down here in SW Florida. I have a Murray 42 inch riding mower that helps me do battle against the always growing grass. I go through a lot of mower blades. We have many hard objects scattered through our yard which beat the hell out of the blades. During my last blade purchase, they didn’t have the normal Murray replacement blades but they had the “high performance” commericial style blades that were nearly double the cost. 60% more cutting area!!!! I was excited and put them on last week. I was out mowing last night and was thinking to myself how the blades are cutting just OK but not great, a lot of the grass blades were just bent up and not cut. So I turned off the blades, pulled back the chute cover and slightly engaged the blades so I could watch em spin. Yep, they were on backwards! Damn it!!! I put these new blades on facing the same direction as the old ones they replaced!!! And the ones before that, and before that…. So, I probably have been running the blades backward for the past year or so. Doh! After reversing the blades, it cut like a razor. My mowing duties just got a little easier. 🙂 It’s amazing how much faster you can mow with blades installed correctly.
One more day of work then out for 5 days. Cool!!!!!!!!!!
I had my wife take that IQ test I took yesterday. She beat me by two! Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Another weekend hits the books. Some ups and downs. On Saturday we had housework galore to get through as well as grass to mow. We got it all done and cleaned up to go to the Florida State League All Star Game. It was pouring down rain the entire way there. They cancelled the homerun derby and wound up starting the game 45 minutes late. We had great seats. As we sat there, we got to do a lot of people watching. First thing that caught our eye were the 2 families within 5 feet of us. The kids in both of these families were at the baseball game, PLAYING THEIR GAMEBOYS. The entire time…. I am a video game junkie, I have played them all my life but this crossed the line even for me. How pathetic is it that a kid is at a baseball game playing a video game? Ridiculous. These same kids were both obese and were happily fed junk food and soda by their parents. The entire park was filled with obese children. I read in the paper that 1 in 3 children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes due to the horrendous eating habits and lack of exercise that plagues youth (and adults) today. That is flabbergasting, 1 in 3. I blame ignorant parents. Oh well enough of that. The other standout moment was the gentleman that brought a bell with. The type of bell they ring at a boxing match. Everytime someone from the minor league Dodgers team did something he would be banging the bell. It was really funny to watch. We bowed out after the 5th inning. Baseball is a lot more fun to play than to watch.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time on the puter getting some stuff done I have been meaning to. I ripped off stills and video from our Fort Myers vball tournament. You can see them here.
The weekend was warm and humid, both days we had some hellacious thunderstorms. We lost power for about an hour and a half on Saturday. We had more run ins with some new creatures. Ali found a baby snake, later my mom found what appeared to be the snakes mother. It is a type that I have not seen on our property before. I hope to have snake expert Tim identify it for me. 🙂 I also saw my first field mouse in Florida. We also seem to have adopted a permanent rabbit friend that hangs in the yard all the time.
I paid the bills Sunday night. I paid off the bills from our most expensive month of expenditures I can ever recall. We bought and did so much stuff in May it is staggering. I am in spending hibernation until further notice.
I have been sleeping abnormally solid recently, a full nights sleep with no interruptions. Last night the streak was broken. I woke up at 4am and was unable to fall back asleep. My mind went into the dreaded state where I do nothing but recollect things. I remember past events and how long ago they seem, which makes think about old age and how depressing it all is and then I jump to another memory that continues the cycle. I try to clear my head and remind myself how tired I am but it doesn’t help. Life would be so much simpler for me if I didn’t have to dwell on mortality and getting old. It really gets to be a drag.
Did anyone else imagine the homes they would show in Tide commercials were the ideal home growing up? This was another thing that ran through my head this morning. I remember seeing the laundry detergent , household product commercials growing up and imagining that was how I wanted my household to be. Weird.
The next 3 weeks are all short weeks. This weekend we go home so I can play in the Pottstown Rumble. The following weekend, my sisters wedding in Arizona. I wont be working a full week until July 7th. 🙂
David Brinkley died today at the age of 82. When I was growing up I used to watch the national nightly news quite often. Back then we only had a TV antennae so we got the major networks and that was it. So, from 6:30 to 7 you had news and nothing else to choose from. When I saw David Brinkley he would do special spots as John Chancellor was the host. (is he still alive?) He was a very odd looking man with a speaking style that was unmistakable. When I heard the news from him and John Chancellor, it was important. They were serious beyond reproach. I’m sad to see David go, he was a good one.
I found out some disturbing news today. Evidently FEMA, the governments disaster department wants to classify our entire area as a high risk floodzone. They want to make flood insurance mandatory. The insurance coverage down here is odd. If a hurricane rips off your roof and everything gets soaked, you are covered. However if the associated rains causes flooding and outside water gets into the house, you aren’t. Unless, you have a separate flood insurance policy. With a high risk flood rating this has the potential of socking every single home in our area with a 2000-3000 dollar flood insurance premium every year! (on top of your homeowners insurance!) Naturally there is an uproar. The people that live out in our area are generally working class people that live in the Estates because they can’t afford to live anywhere in the high rent districts of Collier County. Such an insurance premium would put a big squeeze on the majority of the people in our area. Evidently the FEMA maps are based on old data. The county claims that the building codes requirement of raised slabs also makes this floodzone designation erroneous. Our house is built on top of a 3 or 4 foot high mound. It would take amazing amounts of rain to climb to that height. It’s letter writing time….
I know a lady that was out of work for more than 6 months being treated for cancer. She is a heavy, heavy chain smoker. Granted, the cancer was not lung cancer, but it was cancer nonetheless. I thought that when she returned she would have certainly given up cigarettes, given her brush with death. Nope, still smokes like a chimney. My ex father-in-law had a heart attack. The docs said you HAVE to stop smoking. Did he stop? Nope? My mom smokes, my brother smokes. I just can not fathom the thought processes that go through the heads of people that smoke but especially those that have had significant health issues caused either directly or indirectly by their inability to kick a bad habit. I guess the same could be said about the multitudes of obsese people that develop diabetes and other health problems because of their terrible eating habits, weight gain and lack of exercise. To me, without your health, the rest of life gets pretty miserable real fast. I have a hard time finding sympathy for those that experience health problems as a result of their inability to control themselves…. Don’t particularly know why this came to my mind today….
Yesterday I picked up one of those free brochures that you always see laying around. It was about the Federal Reserve and how bankers have basically indebted our country to the point where we could sell every single thing of worth to them in this country and we still would not be out of debt. It discussed how reform was needed and suggested a system called Social Credit. It was pretty eye opening stuff and really made me think about how much corruption is simply accepted just because that is the way it has always been so noone gives it much thought. If you are interested on more on the subject, look here.
For the first time in 7 months, I headed out to the beach to play some doubles volleyball. I have not played any outdoor doubles since last October. Neither has my partner Rich, who flew down from PA to play in this tournament with me, among other things. This tournament was much closer than most that I play in. Only a 45 minute drive instead of the near 2 hour treks I am accustomed to. It was a loong day. Lower to mid 90’s with humidity nearly as high. Rich had some serious heat related issues and by the end of the day it was just down to a matter of surviving the day. We only lost one game on our net during pool play and then lost our first playoff game by a couple points. I’m positive that if we didn’t have the heat issues we would have been in the finals for sure and had a good chance to win it. However in the end, winning didn’t really mean all that much to me anyway. As a matter of fact we conceded the 3/4 consolation game so we could get out of there.
All the teams on our net except one were nice. The “Not nice” team was a co-ed team playing men’s BB. This team had a huge gaping a-hole that constantly verbally abused his female partner. In the 10 + years of playing volleyball I had never seen such behavior. I assume they were boyfriend/girlfriend. He was saying how she sucked at this, sucked at that and rolling off the curse words like he was firing a machine gun. After one of his tantrums, he took his nascar/Budweiser visor and tossed it off the court. His partner was nice enough to walk over and retrieve it and hand it to him. He yells “I guess I didn’t throw it far enough the first time!” and throws it again! He was a total idiot. I felt very bad for her. At one point when hothead was off stomping somewhere else, I went over and asked her if she wanted me to say something to him. She said no, she was used to it and thanked me for offering. I told her how not cool it was and she didn’t deserve to hear that sort of crap. She shook her head in acknowledgement and again thanked me for offering. It was really an awkward situation. You want to mind your own business, but there is just no reason for a man to treat a woman like that. I held my toungue. One of those moments I regret not doing more, I am sure I could have had a convoy of backers to confront the dope. Argh it frustrates me just thinking about it now. And the ironic part is, this team was playing in Men’s BB and finished 4-2 in pool play! She was a good player. Guy was such a jack ass .
We came home beat up, sunburned and tired. On Sunday we hit the airboats (my 4th time) and then spent the rest of the night relaxing and geeking on the Xbox. Fun.
Ali flew up to PA on Saturday for her family reunion. Nicki was looking for her all weekend. She was also scared of Rich and his girlfriend so we had to try to pacify her. I felt bad for her. Ali comes back tonight so things can start getting back to normal hopefully.
No yard/house work this weekend so the grass is long and the house is pretty much a mess. Guess I will be spending the evenings this weekend trying to restore order.
