Early weekend recap

I still have one more day off from work but thought I would drop in a recap while I had a few minutes to do so. My wife has been gone since Friday so I have had free reign. I enjoyed my time alone but am ready for her to come home.

On Saturday I had my to do list all ready to go, it wasn’t pages long but enough to keep me busy. I cleaned up the house which took me the morning. Then in the afternoon I had some things I wanted to pick up. I got a replacement XBOX and a new UPS for my office PC at home. I was absolutely sick and tired of the old broken UPS giving me .5 seconds of battery runtime before the unit would die. The XBOX served two purposes. My old one while functional, was one of the earlier units that has an older DVD drive that doesn’t read all the DVD formats the newer ones do. Second, I wanted to give my old XBOX to Keener so he could hop on XBoX live and do some gaming with me. He isn’t motivated enough to go out and get one on his own.

On Saturday night I decided to go to the Firecats Arena football game solo. I had asked a few buddies but they either weren’t interested or were busy. So what the heck I’d go myself. I had a stroke of luck when as I was approaching the box office, an older guy stopped me and asked if I needed a ticket. I immediately thought to myself how I couldn’t believe someone would be trying to scalp for this game, the Firecats are lucky to fill half the building. To my surprise he was offering the ticket to me for free! Evidently someone else had given him 2 free ones and he only needed one. So I triumphantly entered the arena without paying a cent (except 5 bucks for parking) I grabbed my first 20 oz draft beer and headed up the aisle towards my section. The guy that had given me the ticket was standing there so I just hung out and gabbed with him for awhile. He is a retired guy that loves sports. He goes to sporting events by himself often as his wife doesn’t want to be bothered by it. We talked a lot, mostly about sports. We talked long enough that I finished my 20 oz beer and got a second. By the time we found our seats I had almost finished that one. I was drinking all of this on barren, empty stomach. I was feeling it. But that didn’t stop me from going for number 3. The game started and I had that one gone before halfway through the first quarter. So I had pounded 60 oz of beer on an empty stomach. I wasn’t stupid drunk, but I could tell I was starting to run words together a bit when I talked with the old guy. I knew I had enough beer as another 20 ouncer would have flattened me. This was reenforced when I tried to get up to go get some food. As I stood, I wobbled and half fell into the row in front of me! I was embarrassed and said something like “Woops, I lost my balance…” When I came back with my diet coke I admitted that it was enough beer for me. The old guy smiled. The game itself was ok. AF2 football is rather lame in comparison to the NFL. There is very little defense. In fact, other than a fumble, the Firecats did not stop the other team from scoring the entire game. The final score was 76-60, Firecats lose. Oh well. By the time the game was over I had drank the 60 oz of beer and eaten a big slice of pizza, a hot dog, a soft pretzel and a cup of ice cream. What a pig, plus I bet it cost me at least 35 bucks. At least all the food helped sober me up and I got home without incident.

I didn’t get home till after 11 so I took a shower and then instead of going to sleep like I should have, I decided to throw on the Van Damme movie IN HELL which was on the Tivo. This movie was only released in 2003 and it was on broadcast TV already so you know it couldn’t have been popular. It actually wasn’t bad. It followed the same plot as all Van Damme movies, kick ass for revenge. It also had Lawrence Taylor in it. Claude is looking a bit beat down after all of this years but he still is in decent shape. The movie had enough action in it to keep me awake until the end. So I didn’t click off the TV till almost 1 am.

Yesterday I got up early and mowed the grass. It was my first time mowing the grass on the new mower and it was not fun. It works fine but using the 6 speed is cumbersome beyond belief on a property like ours. We use only the tractor and a weed whacker to mow everything. So we need to manuever around, change directions and speeds constantly on our yard. Well anytime you need to do a speed change or direction change you have to engage the clutch/brake which jerks you to a stop, change gears and then jerk to a start. I now understand what Ali meant when she said mowing wasn’t fun. Mowing actually really sucked. It is enough of a pain in the ass to have to spend 2 hours on the tractor every week without having to fight it to do what you used to be able to do so easily with the hydro static transmission. So I started running ideas through my head. Before you knew it I was down at the Home Depot and Lowes in the afternoon comparing my options. I thought this would be a huge surprise for Ali when she gets back. So I found one that was impressive, a Cub Cadet at Lowe’s. If a Murray is a Chevy Cavalier the Cub Cadet is a Cadillac. It is much heavier duty and is sure to last much longer. However I wanted to get a deal. I knew that Home Depot and Lowes routinely hand out 10% off anything coupons to new home owners. On a big ticket item like a mower the savings could be well worth it. When I got home I jumped on the internet and did some research on how to get these coupons. I found out that all I had to do is go on Lowe’s web site, tell them I was moving and they would send me a link to print a coupon! I signed up last night and hoped I would get the coupon quick so I could surprise Ali.

The coupon didn’t arrive as of this morning so I proceded with my plans for today. First I took Nicki to the dog beach. She had a great time running around, chasing birds, and swimming in the gulf. When we first got there, there was only one other couple there so she had pretty much free reign of the place. Shortly afterward others started to show so she got a bit timid as she normally does but she still had a fun time. I got back late morning and checked my email again. Cool, there was the coupon! So I had to make one more decision if I really wanted to do it or not and I decided I would. The plan was to get the new mower, sell the one I just got to help offset the costs and all would be well. Plus just imagine the look of surprise on Ali’s face when she realizes mowing can be fun again.

I went down and picked it up with little fuss. I knew the woman in the department because she runs our neighborhood crime watch and lives right down the road. We loaded it up and I proudly transported my new Cub Cadet home and pulled up into the driveway. Then I did something stupid. I have ramps to load and unload things into the truck. I had the truck pulled up close to the garage which is a bit of an INCLINE. I put the ramps on the truck tailgate and lined them up with the tractor wheels. I remember thinking to myself for a brief moment how it may not be a smart move to unload it with the rear of the truck facing downhill a bit. I thought, wouldn’t it suck if it somehow fell off the ramps? I dismissed the thought quickly. I mean I had already cheated the injury gods last week by pressure washing the shed roof in flip flops, surely I would be fine. Wrong. I start the tractor up and start to inch it back onto the ramps. As I do I can feel one of the ramps move a bit. I take a second to think of what would be a good course of action since I am alone. I decide to try to slowly pull forward again. It was a bad move. The wheels turning forward served to push the one ramp totally off the tailgate! What happened next was blur. Basically The tractor fell off the tailgate, rear first, with me in the drivers seat. All I remember is me going down hard and then having the tractor more or less laying on me. I lay there for a second trying to understand if this really just happened to me. If my stupidity indeed did catch up to me this time. Well it definitely did. I was on my back with my legs in a weird position while the tractor was on 2 wheels on top of me. I was able to push it over and have it go back on all 4 wheels with a bang. My next series of concerns went like this, FIRST I hurriedly looked across the street to make sure our next door neighbor who had gotten home a few minutes earlier did not view my act of extreme stupidity. SECOND I quickly surveyed the mower, I immediately feared that I had just wrecked the equipment that I didn’t even cut a blade of grass with yet. It appeared to be intact other than some paint that was scratched off the rear fender where it had rolled onto. FINALLY I remembered that I basically cushioned the tractors fall and hadn’t even thought about what I did to myself. Everything still moved but I had some cuts on my elbows as well as some bad bruises on my lower back. I even felt some tingling in my one leg for a bit but that subsided. Once these three things were addressed I could turn to being angry at myself for being such a dipshit. I picked up the ramps and threw them with disgust. I hopped on the tractor and turned the key, praying it would start up. It did. I did a quick mow test and everything appeared to work, whew. So I drove it around a bit, it is impressive by tractor standards. It rides well, cuts with authority and makes the Murray seem like it should have pedals. So I parked it in the shed and I plan to spring it on Ali when she gets home tonight. Then once she knows I can explain to her why I have these bruises on my back. Every once in awhile when I start to feel invincible I always manage to give myself a cold slap in the face somehow. I was a lucky man today, I could have been one bad angle of impact away from being in a wheel chair or worse.

Ali’s flight isn’t scheduled to come in ntil 11 pm. There is a strong possibility of further delays because of the bad weather around here as well as the heightened security alerts causing additinal delays. Going to be another late night, yawn….