Archives August 2003

A quick 3 day week, I could get used to it. Last night I put my homemade plane back in the air. I found out through some RC message boards that I had the propellor on backwards! Reversing it made a big difference in it’s flying capabilities! Much better. It’s very cool since I can build one for about 5 bucks in materials. (plus electronics) I hope to do more tweaking this weekend.

My slate is full this weekend as there is a long list of things to do. Ali always hates it when I have a long list. I tell her to not worry about it, that I will do it all. She refuses to take that answer since she feels guilty when I do nothing but bust ass all weekend. Leads into all sorts of other issues, argh.

I caught the puppy in the act of attempting to start yet another hole in the vinyl floor last night. I snuck up behind her and wailed her on the ass and screamed NO! She yelped and ran away. Ali thought it was extreme but obviously her method of firmly scolding was not registering with the dog. Hopefully my method works. A little fear is a good thing in a pet / owner relastionship in my opinion. If they don’t respect your discipline they have no reason to heed it.

Mom has almost 2 weeks under her belt at the new job. She seems to be slowly getting accomodated. She complains but not as bitterly as early on. I hope she sticks with it because in the long run, the benefits this place offers could really be helpful to someone in her position.

My left shoulder is still sore as hell from playing volleyball. I flat out can’t do a lot of stuff at the gym I normally do and my evening push up regimen is on hold till this thing gets better. I was dumb and did chest exercises on Wednesday even though it was painful to do so. Probably did more harm than good.

Watched some preseason NFL football last night! Love it, can’t wait for the real deal to start. Go Eagles!

Woops, I forgot to mention when I was waiting for my flight on Saturday, who was sitting right across from me in the terminal but Judge Judy. She lives in Naples. She was with her grand daughter. It was kind of weird to be sitting right there next to her. I didn’t say anything to her. I am surprised more people did not notice. Wild.

I have been slacking on taking pictures of my projects so I finally snapped a few. Here they are.

I had another whirlwind trip up north to play in a vball tournament. I flew out Saturday morning and was back by Monday at lunchtime. On Saturday after I got up there I went right to Gary’s place for an informal cookout. Within the first 5 minutes of me being there I was in the pool with everyone playing pool volleyball. It was very weird, like I was never gone and stepped right back into the crowd. It’s nice to have friends that you can be that comfortable with. I drank quite a bit and played some non-jumping volleyball in their sand court. It was really a fun time for me. A reminder of how I miss those hang outs more then most things from PA.

On Sunday we were out early to our tournament. It was Rich, me, Sue and Jonna. It is the first time we played a quads tournament with 2 girls. We played relatively well all day and were in position to go into the playoffs when it started to rain, HARD. A Florida-like deluge that turned the field into a muddy, slippery mess. People left in droves and so did we. It wasn’t worth risking getting rained on more and/or getting hurt slipping in the muck. So, we piled our drenched muddy bodies into Rich’s truck and left. It was a bummer, almost like reading a good book and then not getting to read the ending. The rotten PA weather strikes again.

Saturday night I hung with my bro and sis-in-law (beat him 2 out of 3 in NFL blitz) and then I was out at 5:45 am to drive to Harrisburg. When I got to the gate I saw they were looking for volunteers to get bumped for a free ticket anywhere. YES! I checked and would get into Fort Myers at 5:30 instead of 12:30. A pain in the butt but I could deal with it for a free ticket. I frantically tried to call Ali at home (left for work) and on her cell phone (no answer, right to voice mail) DAMN IT! I debated if I should just do it and let her know after the fact. I finally decided to not do it since I couldn’t reach her and the idea of spending 4 hours sitting at the HBG airport was going to be miserable since there is NOTHING there to do at all. It pissed me off that Ali didn’t have her cell phone on. It turns out that she said she did have it on and she would have been ok with me letting her know after the fact. Oh well, guess I know for the next time.

The flight home was annoying. It was a late departing and arriving, the planes that US Airways uses are all old, I was stuck next to a 300 pounder on the one leg and the luggage took a good 20-30 minutes to hit baggage claim. After flying other airlines recently like Continental and Delta, US Airways is at the bottom of my list.

I picked up a Wired magazine at the one airport. I love that magazine. It is the only magazine that I read almost every article. It has the kind of info I find interesting. It’s great.

I was off from work Monday and Tuesday. I spent that time doing little house things but spent most of the time working on my home built plane and playing Frozen Throne on the computer. On the plane project, I actually got it into the air and flying. It gave me some satisfaction to see something I totally built from scratch flying in the air, albeit very slow and clumsy. Now I just need to do some design tweaks to see if I can get some better performance out of it. It’s a real pig in the air. My video game playing was probably a good 8 hour chunk out of my day yesterday. Yea that’s excessive but I was in one of those moods that wasn’t very pleasant and sometimes I deal with that by burying myself in a game. I think I was still bummed out about the unnatural end to the volleyball competition and some other little things.

3 day week. Like it.

Has ANYONE ever seen ANYONE use those phones that are built into the headrest of airplane seats EVER? Every plane has them. I can imagine they cost mega dollars to implement, and NOBODY ever uses them. Wonder who got canned for that one?

Tomorrow at this time I will be up in PA again! My friends up there are doing a casual cook out thing which should be a great time. Sunday we play, Rich and I are teamed up with 2 of our female friends. They are both good players so it will be a lot of fun going up against all men teams and giving them a run for their money. The forecast may be a little wet but nothing terrible.

My homemade plane project is progressing along nicely. I hope to have it in the air within a week. It isn’t very pretty but I think it will at least fly.

I have to admit I am watching ONE reality show with regularity right now, Paradise Hotel. Yea it is plenty dumb but it gives me some good chuckles. I was happy to see Zack, otherwise known as Mr I am Smarter, Better Looking, Better Built and Harder Bodied than all of you, get the boot. It took balls for Keith to send him packing, the fireworks were great and the aftermath will continue for awhile.

The puppy got into trouble the other night. She was back in the bedroom like she normally is and was laying in the bathroom. We saw her get up and start acting like she was digging. Since she was on the vinyl in there we thought no big deal and pretty much ignored it. Well a few minutes later I see her chewing on something. The little sh&thead dug a hole in the vinyl floor! After a harsh scolding she was thrown out of the bathroom. We covered the hole with a bathrug for now. I caught her trying to start up again last night and immediately screamed at her. I hope this isn’t a continuing habit. It could necessitate our moving to ceramic tile sooner than we planned.

I love animals. I am very compassionate towards animals. If I catch a spider in the house I trap it in a little device I have and throw it outside. When I find a snake, I relocate it instead of chopping it in two with a shovel like many do. Last night I opened the garage door to pull the car in. I noticed a toad sitting in front of the garage door. This happens all the time as the spotlight draws them in to try to catch bugs. Like I always do, I gently shooed it with my foot. Instead of hopping off to the side it hopped under the car. Great. So I pulled the car backwards so I could see where he went. Evidently he went right BEHIND A TIRE! It made me sick, I squashed the poor guy. Felt like a heel as scraped him up. I tried to do the right thing, really. Really made me sad.

Won’t be back until Wednesday.