Archives October 2003

I set a new non-creatine bench mark today of 260 at the gym over lunch hour. It felt like I could have even gotten 265 possibly. I haven’t heard any new bench highs coming from the yard gnome lately so I am assuming that he has not passed me yet. Pip squeak.

There is a regular gym goer that I see quite often. He is stocky, not huge, not ripped but he’s strong. He has very odd workout routines. He will do the same exercise repeatedly with very high weight, very limited reps (1-3) with very long rest periods in between (5-10 minutes) It’s very odd and would seem very difficult to complete in under 2 hours considering the hour I was there he was doing the same exercise for all but the last 5 minutes. Today he was doing I guess what you would call a dead lift, except he wasn’t picking it off the floor, he was picking it off the squat rack. In total he wasn’t moving the bar more than 6 to 8 inches. Granted he had 5 or 6, 45 pound plates on either side of the barbell but still he was moving it such a short distance I was speculating if I could do the same feat. Last night there was some old man that used horrible form on every machine he was on, pulling the lat bar down to his knees, using the tricep machine as a modified ab exercise, crazy stuff.

Remember I said I had a snake in my water equipment? Here is a pic of it.

Here is a pic of my Audrey set up on our kitchen counter. Speaking of the Audrey, I added further geektronics last night. Now when a phone call comes in, not only does the caller id come up on the Audrey, it also flashes up on my PC. How cool huh? 🙂

Survivor this year is just flat out great. The most entertaining stuff on tv right now in my opinon. How great was it that they brought back all the kicked off people and let them compete against the remaining people??? The fact they won was even better. Again, like almost every other Survivor a black contestant made a very poor showing. I’m no racist but for whatever reason, almost every black contestant on Survivor has come off very poorly whether it has been through editing or reality. However in this case there was no sugar coating it. Osten, the most fit looking contestant of this show’s cast basically quit. He asked his team to vote him out. He basically was ready to quit a few days in but they refused to vote him out at that time. This time they granted him his wish. At tribal council Jeff probst basically embarrassed him. Osten expressed how he was just done and wanted to leave. Jeff simply asked the others if they agreed he was going to go. They all said yes, no official paper ballot vote was taken. Jeff said, fine, Osten came up and Jeff put out his torch and said go home. Jeff laid his torch down on the floor, no parting words were shown by Osten, he was just gone. This has never happened before in Survivor. What an embarrassment. Osten is a schlub.

Last night we carved our pumpkin. Instead of putting it outside it went into the fridge so it keeps for today. My mom didn’t understand but I explained how quickly a pumpkin rots in the Florida environment once you carve it, plus it would have been filled with frogs, insects and God knows what else if we left it outside. Tonight we have nothing big planned besides hanging out for the handful of trick or treaters that we will get.

The pool is slowly recuperating. It went from cloudy green mess to clear but it still has a light green color to it. I will blast it with muratic acid and chlorine this weekend to kill whatever is in there yet.

This weekend we have a lot of home stuff to do. Clean the inside and mow outside. At least we can get away with mowing every other weekend now. Next weekend I will be in Green Bay with Keener at Lambeau Field watching the Eagles. It will be wild. I have to scrape together whatever semblance of winter clothes I have left. It is going to be cold.

Damn I wish I had a video camera and editing software growing up. This kid is quite funny.

I’v been dumping different images on my Audrey the past couple nights. I think I finally settled on one. Last night I was listening to internet radio on it, playing mp3’s and using it as a digital picture frame. It’s way cool.

Last night Ali and I watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special for the at least the 20th time. It’s amazing how it never gets old. Still makes me laugh.
I love when they are going trick or treating, “I got a candy bar, I got a quarter…… I got a ROCK” 🙂 Love Charlie Brown.

Last night when we got home we found out we had a nearly empty pool filled with well water. We had a crack in the finish and called in the repair. However we had no idea when they were coming. So the crack is fixed but now our clear blue water has been replaced with murky green water. It will take a couple weeks until we get it cleaned up.

Even though I have been down in Florida for over 3 years, I have been able to stay more or less current with my buddies up north thanks to using instant messenger. It is super convenient and helped keep my day moving along. Recently, Sovereign Bank (where I used to work and where most of my buddies are) declared instant messhenger stuff as a security risk and banned it from desktops. As a result my contact with those people is much less frequent. Bummer. 🙁

I had one of my more laid back weekends of recent memory. No grass mowing, only minor housecleaning and no real “projects”. On Saturday we went to the state park with the intentions of renting kayaks to tool around on. The rental place we remembered from the last time we were there was no longer there. So we decided to just hang at the beach. This beach is very natural and has the clearest water of any of the beaches in our area. Lots of fish, shells and natural beauty. It was very peaceful, very relaxing and once again reminded us of why we moved to Fla. Late October, relaxing on the beach with the sounds of surf and birds to put you to sleep. We really enjoyed it. Down the beach a bit, outside the state park lines we found a rental place that wanted 25 bucks for a hour rental of a kayak and you were limited to paddling in a small rectangle area. No thanks, we wanted to take it down the inlets.

Saturday night I totally forgot about the World Series game and tuned in just as the celebration was taking place. What a great performance by the Marlins. Talk about a dark horse, noone would have given them a shot to win it all in the beginning of the year.

We took my mom out to dinner at Romanos Macaroni Grill. She has been very negative and we hoped a dinner out would help change that. Great food, so so service. I can see where I get some of the negative part of my personality from. Mom seems negative about most things and is scared to do most anything outside of her “box”. After dinner she was ranting about her windshield wipers and their poor performance. I just replaced them a month ago. She was happy that with the time change she could wake up to sunshine. However that evening, she complained about it getting dark early. I know I complain more than the average Joe I’m sure, but I hope I don’t get that bad.

On Sunday we went for a walk/run of 3.2 miles, the distance to the end of our road and back. It was quite warm and humid. We both were sweated through our clothes by the end. We went through our closets and cleaned out a shitload of stuff we didn’t wear or didn’t need, about 5 trash bags full. I am making a trip to the donation store at lunch.

The rest of Sunday was filled with football, some rc plane flying and video game playing. The Eagles won and looked better than they had the prior weeks. However they were playing the 2-4 Jets so they SHOULD look better I guess.

A good weekend for sure.

I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but if you can find Windy City Heat on Comedy Central, tape, tivo it. It is REALLY funny. It is basically a movie about playing a prolonged practical joke on some schlub. I laughed my ass off.

You may not get a laugh out of this if you don’t play video games but maybe you will. Last night I decided to throw in NFL2K3 on my Xbox and go online to play with the XBOX Live service. Live is a service that allows you to play people worldwide and also has cool features like letting you talk to your opponents as you play. So I find a game. I haven’t played NFL2K3 in at least 6 months so I will suck for sure but I just wanted a casual game. We get to the team choice screen. I say HI. No response. I say helllllllo. Nothing. Evidently this player does not care to speak. (it can be turned off) Ok no big deal. He picks the Eagles as his team, oh well that is my team normally but I don’t mind playing as someone else because it’s just for fun. I pick the Rams and then wait. I watch him goin through dozens of screens customizing his roster, play selections, selections, everything….. What the hell, I say, even though I know he isn’t listening. Evidently this guy takes his NFL2K3 seriously. Still I laugh it off. Finally he is done tweaking his team and we start. I win the toss and receive. On my first possession I go 3 and out and gain like 1 yard. I punt to him. On his first play he throws a 65 yard touchdown pass! Grrrr. Then after the play he pauses the game goes into the stat screen and highlights his passing statistics and keeps flashing the screen. He was basically talking smack without speaking. It didn’t take me long to figure out he was trying to punk me. I was laughing still but I also wanted to give some pay back. Soon I remembered enough about playing that I was able to score and tie it up. I returned the favor by bringing up the stats screen and highlighting my stuff. 🙂 We went back and forth till halftime. Him flashing stats, showing me replays and just generally being annoying. By halftime I think he was ahead by a touchdown, 28-21 or something like that. Regrettably I had to flick it off at that time to go catch Survivor. Funny stuff. Had to see the non-verbal taunting to appreciate it. 🙂

I am a Marlin backer. Even though they bumped my Phillies out of the playoffs, it’s hard to not like this team. Basically a bunch of younger guys just playing their asses off. Although I haven’t seen any of the series games to their conclusion due to sleepiness, I have watched the majority of all the games. It made me remember why I enjoyed playing baseball. The one on one confrontation between pitcher and batter is what I miss the most. The Marlins closer has a great name, Ugeth Urbina. Perfect name for a closer.

Tomorrow we plan on going to the beach and renting ocean kayaks. 3 years ago we were going to do it and didn’t with the idea that we would do it soon. Well 3 years isn’t soon but better late than never. My mom cleaned up the house yesterday on her day off so that was a nice surprise, less for us to do this weekend.

Have you been wondering about details regarding the Kobe case? Me either, but if you want to see the girl involved and some explicit details, look here.

Blogging is minimal this week due to it being tax bill season. During this week we print, burst and mail some 250,000 tax bills. A big task made easier by high speed processing equipment. This is the busiest week of the year for us back here.

Last night I decided to hammer out mowing the back yard since I got my replacement battery. 2 hours later I was covered in sand and grass shrapnel but mission was accomplished. I wanted to clear that job out so we would be able to go rent ocean kayaks this weekend at the beach and putz around.

Whitey, my other beta fish appears to be on deaths door. 🙁 If he goes I am going to sterilize the tank and go with some conventional little fish.

Here is some more flash sillyness, very funny if you are 30 somethin like me and remember boss hog and the gang.

After the gym I quickly stopped at Walmart to pick up another case of dog food for our 2 can a day puppy feedings. As I walked in, they had the back end of the store all decked out for Christmas, including an almost life size singing, dancing Santa Claus. As I tried to leave, cradling the box of 24 cans in my 2 arms, my path was blocked by 2 old ladies and an even older man getting funky with Santa. The old ladies were dancing and singing along with Santa while the old man just stared with a grin on his face. They were so involved with the robotic Saint Nick that they didn’t even notice my prescence. I politely said excuse me and they left me pass. They giggled as I think they were embarrassed that I witnessed their dance routine. I hope I’m that giddy when I’m old.

As I went out to the lot I noticed a big full size Ford truck did the lazy man parking job, you know the type where the person makes zero effort to park in the lines and instead parks at a 45 degree angle across them? The truck was proudly adorned with two bumper stickers. One said, “I’m not speeding, I’m qualifying!” the other said “I’m not tailgating, I’m drafting!” Yahooooooo. Giddy up.