Archives December 2004

2004 ends today. It has absolutley rocketed by. Let me start by listing our major purchases of the year:

Timeshare
88 Corvette (sold 6 months later)
2 pieces of investment land
Diamond Earrings
Gas powered generator
Pool Heater
2 Lawn Tractors (1 sold immediately)
Elliptical cardio machine

Damn you would think we were loaded. Hardly.

04 was also the year that I started playing volleyball tournaments on a regular basis again, something I hadn’t done since I lived in PA. It didn’t quite capture the glory of the past but was a satisfying season none the less.

The number of projects this year has been less than years past. The biggest by far was the tiling of the 2 bathrooms. Some of the other noteworthy projects were the weedblocking and mulching of all the landscaped areas, the addition of fill dirt to raise some low areas, installed a pot rack, planted a few new trees, set up a new mosquito trap, made our “laundry center“, put in a 3 foot rock border around the entire house, redid several landscape borders, built steps into the lanai doors, along with various smaller organizational projects. Hmmm, well it seemed like I did less.

04 was a hurricane nightmare. Having our first hurricane wasn’t enough, it was followed by 2 more within a month and a half. The experience was a bit scary and the panicking, hoarding mentality of the masses in such events is very frustrating. We spent 2 and a half days without power during the middle of summer. It was very stressful, very annoying yet very memorable. Certain moments stick out like sleeping in front of a fan, on the sofa bed that is powered by a dc inverter that is plugged into the Tacoma that is parked out back , running all night. The “shower” I took by getting in the pool to get wet, going into the shower, soaping up and then having Ali be my showerhead by dumping water on me with a plastic cup she filled with water from the tub. And most memorably, the 30 minutes when we got power pack midway through the outage in which we threw out all of our ice, emptied the tubs and undid most of our hurricane prep only to have the power click off again to set me off into a near uncontrollable obscenity filled rampage.

The hurricane trauma sparked a rash of hurricane prep spending. We now have a generator, a window AC unit and plywood window shutters for the next time big wind comes our way.

We had our first full year of dog ownership. We both love Nicki more than we thought we could any pet. However the other 4 pets we own have taken such a backseat I feel guilty about the lack of attention they receive.

We had a full year of being in Invisalign braces. By now, we were supposed to be close to being done with the treatment. Instead, we will be lucky to finish by the end of the upcoming year. It has been frustrating, yet my teeth are getting straighter, slowly.

My mom has spent her first full year living on her own in Florida. She is grinding out a living and continues to make minor steps towards more success at her job.

04 was the year I lost “Itchy”, my 36 year old blanket from childhood that I never got rid of. Ali’s efforts to find it were futile but amazing none the less. She was kind enough to create “Scratchy” in an attempt to fill the void.

We had a lot of visitors in the past year. My sis, my bro, Troy, Cheryl & Dave, Shannon, Alison’s parents, Alison’s Pop Pop, Mike, Suzanne and Lauren all have been down in the last calendar year.

My technology purchases continued in earnest this year. Topping the list are my Sirius satellite radio rig, the Roomba, the Sony all-in-one LCD remote, the 2nd hacked Tivo, the DVD/VCR combo, the new XBOX, the Gameboy along with numerous smaller things.

This year I really have been buying and selling a lot on Ebay. I am continually amazed at what I can unload online. I am hooked.

I picked up a number of regular readers of the blog, mostly friends and family but also a few that never actually met me. Gnome, Jenny, Keener, Mike, Torrin, Rich and Joe have made some interesting contributions in the comment sections. To date I am working towards 8000 views.

On a personal level I continue to work hard at staying as healthy as I can. I weigh close to 10 pounds less than I did last year. My fear of aging and death motivates me to hit the gym harder than ever before in my life. I try to be more introspective, more patient and more positive although I often fail to do this as consistently as I would like to. When I allow myself to slow down and take a look around, I realize how lucky I am and how far I have come from the kid that had no idea what was going to happen with his life and didn’t have a clue on how I would get by. I’m proud of what has been accomplished so far yet frustrated by my inability to decide what I want my next step to be. I love living in Florida but I am bummed out about my inability to create any close friendships with people down here. I continue to become increasingly sensitive to the world around me. I get emotionally involved with issues and things like the tsunami disaster really make me stop and take pause, where as 15 years ago I wouldn’t have given it 5 seconds thought. I actually read a few books now and then and ENJOY it.

For 05 I am unsure of what excitement will unfold. There are a few things I would like to have happen this upcoming year. I want go on another cruise. I really enjoyed the first one and have been itching to go again. Making dog arrangements is the biggest hurdle with that. I want to complete Nicki’s dog run and make that the last of the major projects for the forseeable future. I want to spend more time enjoying the fruits of my labor and less time laboring. A big goal is trying to get Ali working only part-time. Doing so would help some of the other goals, hurt some of the others but I think it would be a good thing for both of us in the long run. The idea of kids will probably be decided upon by the end of the year, one way or another.

Tonight we are ringing in the New Year at a dinner theater with Alison’s parents, a different way to do it. It’s too bad that Dick can’t make the call for the New Year’s Eve show but Regis is a good substitute. I hope everyone has a great upcoming New Year and thanks for taking the time to read this drivel once in awhile. Peace.

The Tsunami disaster is just spinning into the biggest disaster of at least my lifetime. The scope of this really is staggering. I have now seen over a dozen videos of some of the carnage and that wasn’t the worst of it. Towns erased, islands obliterated it is just incredible how widespread and severe the damage is. Here are some links:

Videos can be seen here and here

If you already have an Amazon.com account setup, they will donate for you to the Red Cross, no strings attached. You can do that here.

Or donate right to the Red Cross here.

I can not even imagine what those people are going through.

I stumbled across an amateur video of tsunami waters crashing into a resort area. Unreal.

Here is another long one (BBC report)

It’s a little bit old news now but here is my xmas recap. My Xmas 4 day reprieve was quite enjoyable. On Christmas eve I went and picked up mom after work and we had a nice ham dinner that Ali prepared flawlessly. I had the pool heater cranking full bore since Wednesday night and the water was up into the 90’s. As I pulled the solar cover off Christmas Eve night, the steam poured off. It felt great, like a big hot tub. In the pool, Christmas Eve, years ago I would have never imagined that scenario. I was pooped and we went to bed.

For most of my life, sleeping on Christmas Eve has been a tough thing. It was very normal for me to wake up between 4 and 5 am, wide awake, anxious for the fesivities to begin. This year was different, perhaps another sign of aging, I didn’t wake up till after 6 and then fell back asleep until 7. That has NEVER happened. It’s weird because I was still looking forward to everything yet I didn’t feel the urge to get up. So everyone got up around the same time, we made coffee and started opening stuff. Since everyone ships gifts to us, we wind up having quite a few to open. We prefer to do it in an orderly fashion where one person opens up something while others watch and then rotate to the next person as opposed to an all out tearfest that is done in 5 minutes. I bet we were opening stuff for over an hour. I felt bad because my mom was a spectator for much of it but she said she didn’t mind. I got lots of cool stuff, mostly off my Amazon.com list. I got satellite radio accessories, dvd’s, games, gameboy accessories, tools, gift cards and many other nice things. Ali’s big gift this year was supposed to be the pool heater but I surprised her at the end with an envelope that had a riddle in it that pointed her to find a set of diamond earrings I hid on the Christmas tree. She was very surprised. I can tell she is very proud of them, that was the reaction I was hoping for.

My Mom stayed until around noon and then I took her home. Christmas night my volleyball partner from down here came over from the east coast with his girlfriend. We ate, drank a lot of beer and goldschlager, swam in the pool and played some Texas Hold Em video game they brought. I crawled into bed at 2am. They hung out till early afternoon on Sunday and then headed back. The rest of Sunday and my day off on Monday were spent putting some gifts away, installing others and playing with the rest. It was a very enjoyable 4 day holiday.

My in-laws drove down here and arrived yesterday. When we went to see them after work, Ali was shocked to be greeted by Pop Pop as well. I knew he was talking about coming down but it wasn’t a certainity. Ali had no idea. She was dumbfounded. Pop Pop always crowed he would never come to Florida, it was too hot and he refuses to fly. At 91 years old he isn’t a big fan of anything outside his routine. However he decided to step out and travel the farthest away from home he has EVER been. It’s very cool to have him here. On the way home last night Ali said she couldn’t believe she was sitting at a reataurant with her grandfather in Florida. She never thought it would happen. A small after Christmas miracle.

Wow this entry has been very upbeat, abnormal for me huh? Well let me add a downer by mentioning the disaster from the tsunami. The numbers of dead are rising by the hour and the descriptions of the events that went down are beyond tragic. Huge, horrid events like this make me seriously doubt the possibility of a supreme being. What could be the purpose of such a tragedy? What better good was served by 10’s of thousands needlessly dying. I suppose a priest would tell me that God works in mysterious ways, and you just have to have faith. To me it is just another way of saying “I need to insulate myself from the possibility that there is nothing out there protecting me or the world. There is no sense to why certain things happen and to think that a GOD would want some of these terrible events to occur is unfathomable, so I choose to ignore the incongruity of it all” I wish I could explain the tragedy as GOD’s will and go on from there but I can’t get past square one. 911 brought out the same feelings.

I, like many other football fans repeated “Reggie? Dead?” I listened closely to the announcement in disbelief. Then I jumped on the computer to confirm the tragedy and find out what happened. Reggie was LOVED when he played with the Eagles. He was a superb football player but an equally superb person as well. I was dumbfounded when I heard he died. It’s especially shocking whan an athlete dies young as you associate them with great strength and fitness. It’s a terrible shame.

Yesterday was filled with more tragic news of the earthquake and associated tidal wave that has killed over 21,000 so far over in India. Ali told me she read that one of the science outposts of ours saw this coming about an hour in advance but could not warn the people in harm’s way because there was no communication line in place to do so. Supposedly many of the people could have walked 15 minutes and been to high ground where they would have easily survived. Yesterday was a sad day in the world.

Here is a pic from our vball holiday championship, take notice of my scruffy face and Dolphins visor.

I fired up the pool heater last night, wanting to get the water nice and toasty for our visitors. The fan doesn’t come on and I get a code saying it was in “DEFROST” mode. I f’d with it for awhile, took it apart, cleaned out some debris from the inside. Same thing. DAMN IT. So I poured over the yellow pages this morning calling different repair guys, hoping to find one that could come out today. I finally talked to a guy who said he should be able to come out this afternoon. Through my calls I also discovered that the manufacturer of the heater is out of business, wonderful. I am not holding my breath…..

I hope everyone has a great holiday. Might not check back until Tuesday. I am anticipating a good 4 days.

A co-worker of ours died this morning. He was one of the most happy go lucky people I have known. He was a real big guy who recently had the stomach operation to help him loose tons of weight in the past couple years. Then suddenly a couple weeks ago he had pain in his shoulder, then they said it was a blod clot in his shoulder. Shortly after that he had a stroke and then news came that he may have lung cancer (he was a heavy smoker for years) Then yesterday I heard they sent him to a hospice and he had little time left, today he is gone. It’s a terrible thing and it’s tragically ironic that he died after he took extreme measures to finally get healthy. Rest well, we will all miss the smiles you put on everyone’s face.

Yesterday I shipped off one of the last momentos of my first marriage, my 14k wedding ring. I sold it on ebay for a whopping $10.05. I wondered if I would feel remorse, nostalgia or sentimental about shipping off the symbol of my first marriage to some stranger. Nope not really, I don’t think I thought about it for 5 seconds as I threw it an envelope with a packing slip that I hurriedly scribbled “Happy Holidays” on. I guess it is a shame in a way that my first marriage left me so void of feeling about it. There were many good times during that time period but they seem so distant because of the horrible aspects of the marriage that overshadowed them. It’s almost like it happened in another world to me.

Speaking of ebay, it truly amazes me what you can sell on there. I have had a hideously ugly woodgrain steering wheel cover with big bumpy rubber grips for sale on there for awhile. This eyesore was on my Vette when I bought it, which I immediately removed. I had it in my ebay store with little hope of ever selling it, figuring sooner or later I would just toss it out. Well someone bought it yesterday to my amazement. 2 dollar profit instead of adding more junk to the landfill, a win/win situation.

Before I start I need to know, what happened to Merlin Olsen? Does he still do NFL games? As I was watching some of the football action yesterday I realized that I haven’t heard Merlin for a long time, and I missed him.

It seems like I have been off for more than 4 days, a lot of stuff came and went during that time period. Well I guess I’ll just try to go chronologically and hope I don’t forget much.

I was off on my birthday, Thursday, originally because my sister was visiting and I thought we would be doing stuff during the day possibly. It turns out her and my Mom were just going to the beach. It worked out well because I had the electrician scheduled to show up on Thursday to do the power work for the pool heater. I was going to do it myself, but figured eh, it’s electricity, I don’t want to risk burning my house down to save a few bucks. I already bought the 60 amp breaker I assumed we would need. I envisioned it as a simple job. Simply swap out the 20 amp breaker that is being used for the pool pump with a 60 amp breaker and then tie into the existing power line outside. The contractor arrived and I was immediately impressed with the professionalism. He laid a big red doormat in front of the door so he wouldn’t track dirt in. He was a clean cut guy from Texas. I showed him the pool heater and explained to him what I thought had to be done. I could tell he was politely ignoring what I was suggesting. He got out his book and showed me what it would cost. Over 500 BUCKS! What the??? I was taken back because I figured a hundred, maybe 200 dollars, tops. I went over the figures with him and again asked him about my idea of just beefing up the breaker and using the existing wiring out to the pump. He explained that if the pool equipment would have been set up with an external breaker box to start with, that would have been an option, but since there is none, he would have to run an entirely new circuit. Because of the amps the heater pulls he would not be able to run the wire through the existing conduit, it would be too narrow. I asked the guy to wait for a bit while I called Ali. I wanted to digest what he told me and calling Ali would give me a few minutes to make the decision. She was taken back by the price as well but was unable to talk and basically left it up to me. With the avalanche of holiday expenses that are already on top of me, the thought of dropping another 5 bills just to get power to the heater was not an appealing thought. However, I didn’t think the guy was pulling my leg about what was necessary so I gulped hard and told him to go ahead and do it. He did a nice job, was very thorough and at the end of 2 or 3 hours, my pool heater was flashing FLO, meaning it was alive but didn’t have any water flow. Good deal.

This expense made my call from a person that was friends with a woman whom I did computer work for, well timed. Her daughter’s computer was totally useless due to spyware. She asked me to come out to fix it. I went to the address and was floored by this home. It was literally a mansion, just an incredible residence. The hallway was long enough to fit a bowling alley. It was the nicest place I have ever stepped foot into. The computer had an army of spyware on it, compounded by several trojan download viruses. After a couple hours of uninstalling, scanning and cleaning I had 95% of it gone but the trojans were being very stubborn. I asked the woman if there was anything important on the system and she said there wasn’t so I told her I would simply redo the system for her, it would take less time. So the little side job helped pay for almost half of the electrician bill, a small consolation.

Thursday night, me, Ali, my sister and mom went out for a birthday dinner. We went to one of my favorite places, Carrabba’s. When I went to the bathroom they arranged to have the staff come out and sing happy birthday in italian, another Carrabba’s staple. It was a nice time, although I wish I wasn’t the one who had to drive, I would have liked to have pounded a few more back. Another birthday in the books.

Friday morning, a friend of mine who is in the pool business came out to do the second part of the pool heater installation, the part where it gets tied into the pool plumbing. Shortly after he arrived he noticed a major problem. The heater was missing a couple flange parts that are needed to connect it to the water. Damn it. He said he would look for replacements and stop back Saturday. I was bummed, I was hoping to get it all done Friday so my sis could possibly use the pool on Saturday. I was a bit grumpy. Friday night we did yet another dinner out, this time at another favorite, Watermark. Our waitress seemed almost clinically shy, an odd personality trait for someone in her position.

On Saturday my sister was with us all day as my mom had to work. In the morning, my buddy came back and after 2 or 3 hours of tough work he got the heater hooked in and functional. He set the thermostat to 90 and let it run. At the start, the water temperature was clocking in at a chilly 67 degrees so I was anxious to see how quickly it would heat things up. We all watched the 3 hour Apprentice finale on Tivo(my sis is a big fan) Thankfully with the Tivo we could cut it down to closer to 2 hours but it still went on way too long. After that we decided to take a run out to Everglades City. Ali had never seen it and Torrin was ok with it. Everglades City is a very small, very old (by Florida standards) town whose main focus is fishing and air boat tours. Many of the houses are tiny and date back to the 50’s. With the crush of development down here, it is sort of time capsule of what a lot of Florida used to be like. Everglades City is only a couple miles away from the nation’s smallest post office so we took Torrin there as well. I snapped a pic of Ali & Nicki while we were there. Torrin seemed underwhelmed with the trip so after a brief drive through town we headed back home.

Throughout the day I was checking on the pool temperature every few hours. Everytime I checked the temp was up a degree or two so I was happy that my pool heater purchase wasn’t a bust.

One more dinner on Saturday night with Sis before she headed out very early Sunday morning. She flew back to Arizona. She is going to school for oriental medicine as well as helping with her husband’s construction business. I hadn’t seen her since her wedding 2 summers ago so it was cool to spend time with her again.

On Sunday I wanted to get some things done before Eagles football at 1. One of those things was to move the salt tank to the front of the concrete pad. The reason I wanted to do this was because the plumbing for the pool heater was right in front of the salt tank. That plumbing would not react favorably to being accidentally kicked or tripped over while filling the tank so I figured I would move it. I looked in the tank and it was only maybe a third full so I figured I could move it. Salt is heavy, very heavy. The tank easily weighed more than 100 pounds and with the limited space I had to work with, it was going to be a multi-step extraction procedure. I first plopped the tank on top of the one air pressure tank. Then I got in front of all the equipment and was trying to lift the tank over the water line to the front. For whatever reason I didn’t take notice of the one valve that was jutting out right in front of me. All of a sudden I heard a pop and was immediately soaked. There was a mini-geyser pouring out from the hole where the pressure valve used to be. It was quite cool outside, barely 60. So I was totally soaked, cold and froze there for a second while the water pounded me. Then I realized to stop the flow I had to reach around the back and unplug everything. So I balanced the salt tank again, reached through the geyser and pulled the 4 plugs. After a few seconds the flood stopped and I surveyed the damage. The pipe that broke was a small plastic one. I was unsure how hard or easy it would be to find a replacement. So I took the broken piece out and took it to the hardware store where I was lucky enough to score a brass replacement part. Before I repaired it, I heaved the salt tank to where I wanted it. The broken off valve actually made it easier. The brass part fit well, didn’t leak and all was well again. Here is a pic of the repair, look at the gray box sitting on top of the brass pipe.

The Eagles game was another struggle but the end result was secondary to the injury to TO. The good news is he has close to a month till they will need him but the jury is still out on exactly how serious it is. It sure looked bad. The Birds won ugly again for the second week in a row. 13-1, the best start ever, the first time a team beat everyone in the NFC east, twice and the first time the Eagles ever won 13 games. This will be a regular season that will probably never be repeated for us Eagle fans, I just hope it has a happy ending.

Here are the latest pics, at the bottom of the page. Included is a pic of the best home appliance I have purchased , the Roomba. I just love that thing.

As I was at the gym today I noticed some guy that I never saw before. He was wearing a t-shirt and windbreaker pants that looked ridiculous. He was leaning on a machine, on his cell phone. 5 minutes before I finished my 50 minute workout, he got off his phone. He stood there for 45 minutes, leaning on a machine, talking on his phone. That shit annoys me.

I saw The Bourne Supremacy. It was an entertaining, action filled flick, much like the first one. I had one big question. Half the world is looking for Matt Damon and want to capture/kill him. He is some sort uf uber-super-agent that is trained in all aspects of covert activity. However, for some reason he never ever attempts to disguise himself in any manner throughout the story. Maybe that wasn’t part of his training. Fun view none the less.

By the time last night rolled around the pool was up to 86 or 87 degrees. I told Ali we should go in it for a little bit just to do it. She reluctantly agreed. The air was cool, it was around 61. So we ran out, pulled back the pool cover a bit and I stepped in. The first step felt very warm compared to the air. However once I got in waist high the water while mild, didn’t feel warm enough to stay in it with such cool air. I think another 4 or 5 degrees might be necessary. Ali never made it in any further than the second step. I conceded we would be too cold and quickly covered the pool back up. The heater raised the temperature of the water almost 20 degrees in a little more than a day so it works well. Mom is coming over Christmas Eve and some friends of ours are coming over for Christmas dinner so I will crank the heat way up for their visit.

One of my birthday presents was the boombox for my Sirius satellite radio. My plan was to use it at work to listen in my office. My office has no windows so I knew I would have to do some creative cabling on the antenna, I wasn’t aware of how creative. I tried putting the antenna in the windows of my 2 co-workers offices that have windows, but a big concrete overhang prevented me from getting any signal. I surveyed the building and tried to devise a plan. One plan had me using a wireless fm transmitter to broadcast to my regular radio, another one had me running a very lengthy cable extension to the back of the building and then standing on the railing of the loading dock while stretching to attach the antenna to the existing satellite dish. None of these plans were easy or cheap but there was no way I was going to not use this boombox. Then over lunch I had the idea to simply put the antenna up into the drop ceiling. Hmmm, I had a little signal! So I stuck my head up into the drop ceiling and looked for my best option. I wonld up sticking the antenna on top of an AC duct over the office next to me. I’ve had solid signal for the past 2 hours. I’m hoping it stays solid throughout the day. Sirius satellites do a figure 8 pattern across the country so there is a chance that what works now might not work at a different time of day. We’ll see. I’m listening to NFL radio right now as I type, it’s sweet.

Wow Christmas hits in 5 days. December has just rocketed by. Next week I’ll have to post my recap of 2004 and my forecast for 05. Should be compelling stuff, or at least something to do while you are trying to look busy at work.

Happy Birthday to the Teen Beat Boy of the Month.

Today I am 37. I officially departed my mid-30’s and now am sailing off into my late-30’s. Here are a few depressing realities that I came up with.

I graduated high school 20 years ago. 20 F’IN YEARS AGO. How is that possible?

At this age, my mom had already had all 3 of us kids and the youngest was 10 by now. I’m still debating over number 1.

If I had been able to follow through with my original career choice of professional baseball player I would be retired or ready to by now.

I share my birthday with some interesting people, here are a few:

1770 Ludwig van Beethoven
1890 Harlan Sanders founder/CEO (Kentucky Fried Chicken)
1943 Steven Bochco producer (Hill St Blues, LA Law, St Elsewhere, NYPD Blue)
1962 William “The Refrigerator” Perry NFL defensive back (Chicago Bears)

Some history occured on this day as well:

1773 Big tea party in Boston harbor-Indians welcome (Boston Tea Party)
1944 Battle of the Bulge begins in Belgium
1972 Miami Dolphins become 1st undefeated NFL team (14-0-0)
1973 O J Simpson becomes 1st NFLer to rush 2,000 yard in a season
1978 Ronald Reagan denounces President Jimmy Carter’s recognition of China People’s Republic
1993 Shannen Doherty (Brenda) is fired from Beverly Hills 90210

If you want to find out what happened on your bday, just go here.

Oh well, happy birthday to me. Just like everyone else, I’ll keep plugging away, hoping to navigate a path that loosely follows the way to happiness.