Archives 2005

Each year seems to go quicker than the last as I age. I guess after close to 40 of em, they start to become a blur. Before I recapped my 2005 experience I wanted to see how I did with my goals for 04 posted on last year’s end of year entry.

Let’s see…..

Go an another cruise – nope, didn’t get it done but did tons of other traveling to make up for it.

Complete Nicki’s dog run – completed and turned out better than imagined

Less time laboring – my weekends are definitely more laid back than in recent years

Ali working PT – Ali now works 4 day weeks, we have been able to make the transition without hardly noticing the financial impact

Decision on having kids – Nope, no closer to making a definitive choice, that is a tough one.

So all in all I did a decent job of hitting my 05 goals. 2005 had lots of stuff going on, both good and bad.

One of the biggest events of the year was of course Hurricane Wilma hitting Collier County, the first direct hit our county had in over 40 years. I watched out the back window as our pool cage was knocked down like a deck of cards from the relentless wind. Being in the middle of a hurricane was a bit scarier than I imagined. I’ll never forget the sound of it all. We lost power for 4 and a half days. Those days were highlighted by my efforts to maximize our comfort level during uncomfortable times. The recovery process in our area went very well, much better than expected. Today you can barely tell a hurricane roared through 2 and a half months ago. However getting someone to come out to fix any hurricane related damage is a frustrating challenge.

05 was the most miserable I ever experienced in regards to traffic. The morning traffic situation in my area degraded to the point where many days it could take 90 minutes plus to go 23 miles. It was true drudgery having to blitz through getting ready every morning, knowing that every minute we left after 6:30 am could multiply into many more minutes of sitting in traffic. Thankfully the opening of an additional lane of traffic in the congested area late this year has stemmed the tide and made our commutes much more bearable.

This past year we continue to watch with amazement as the real estate market in SW Florida continues to explode with almost comical property value increases. Our house has approximately tripled in value since we bought it in 2001. The 2 pieces of land we bought as investments have more than doubled in value in 14 months. It makes us look like we are real estate geniuses when in fact we just got very lucky with our timing.

We did more travelling this year than ever before. Partially because we had the timeshare and partially just because Ali said we don’t go anywhere. This year we went to Key West, Las Vegas, Palm Springs and South Beach. Travelling is more feasible now because our new neighbors are able to watch Nicki which is a god send. It was great to be able to travel so much. Hopefully the trend continues.

Speaking of neighbors, we lost our long time neighbors, Dee and Paula as they sold and moved up closer to the Tampa area. Like many others, they cashed out on the huge equity gains and were able to put themselves in a better financial situation by moving to a less expensive area. However we have become good friends with our new neighbors, Rick and Doug, on the other side of our house. It is awesome to have neighbors that are cool. Sorry Jack, you aren’t on that list.

I am still wearing my invisalign braces (the tops) My bottom teeth are finally done but I have months to go on the top yet. This has taken way longer than we were originally told, however they are working, albeit slowly. Ali is done with her treatment plan. I look forward to being able to smile without having to think about my top teeth looking like Billy Bob. By this time next year I should be braces free.

I played less volleyball in 2005 than in 04 but not because of a physical limitation. Basically I was spending a ton of dough driving all over the state so I wanted to cut back. We had dramatically less success this year on the court this year than in 04. I attribute most of it to the main tour that we play on switching to rally scoring. Rally scoring totally f’s up my game by making me less aggressive. Oh well I still had fun playing.

Supplementing volleyball as my major athletic activity, running has become more of a focus in 05. Years ago when I lived in PA, I ran once a week and had worked myself up to being able to do as much as 5 and a half miles. My goal was to run a 10k at some point but before I could accomplish the goal, my bad knee flared up and I shelved running. However since my knee has been more or less healthy for the last couple years I was ready to give it a go. Earlier in the year, I suggested to Ali we start running together on Sundays. At first, Ali couldn’t even do a mile without stopping. She has made remarkable improvements since then and now we have run four or five 5k races and one 4 mile race. Ali is really into running now, she actively pursues finding races for us to run in. It is really cool to see her into it like that. It is even better that we can do this together. She has made steady improvement in her times. Last night we ran a mile and a half at a 9:20 pace. Her immediate goal is to run a sub-30 minute 5k. Long term I would love for us to be able to do a 10k. Running is great mental and physical exercise.

Speaking of exercise, this year has been a good one as far as my aches and pains have been. Drink your flaxseed oil. The chronic wrist problems I was having have subsided and my strength levels at the gym in many areas are as good if not better than they have ever been. I can only cross my fingers that it continues. I am still hitting the gym 4-5 times a week.

My personal hobbies in 05 were dominated by the discovery of World of Warcraft. This game has dwarfed all my other hobbies. I flew my planes maybe a half dozen times all year. I have no desire to buy another “fun” car. To gain an idea of how much WoW has become entrenched in my leisure activities, all you have to do is a search on my blog on how many entries refer to it. I knew of Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games for years but always dismissed them as something for Dungeon and Dragon geeks. I considered them boring and I scoffed at the ridiculousness of people paying a monthly fee to play a game. Even so, in January I got around to installing World of Warcraft. I was a huge fan of Blizzard’s other RTS games so I figured I could at least give it a shot. It didn’t take long for me to get addicted hard core. This game was wired into things that really appealed to me on many levels. Visually the game is beautiful, the scale of it all was mind blowing, and the complexity of it which was at first overwhelming, became very appealing after time. The never ending list of things you can do in the game fed into my personality, electronically communicating in a virtual world with thousands of other players simulataneously was cool beyond words. For a time period, my addiction to the game was getting unhealthy. On weeknights I would basically ignore Ali and stay up until midnight, 1 or even 2am playing. It was crazy and I throttled it back. However now, almost a full year later, I still love the game with no end in sight of my addiction. In some ways my WoW playing has been negative as it sometimes dominates my thinking and insulates me from doing other things. However in other ways it has been good. My dedication to the game really dried up a lot of that nickel and dime spending I was doing on the side from living on ebay. I attribute most of our ability to actually save some money this year to WoW. For the 15 bucks a month I pay for the game I literally get dozens of hours of entertainment. Who knows, maybe that is like saying people that are hyped up on speed get a benefit because they never sleep so they get a lot done. 🙂

As mentioned, the major purchases this year were very slim in comparison to recent years. I bought some gadgety stuff like the GPS for the car, a new universal remote control, a used 21 inch monitor for my puter and the chip to mod my xbox. For the house, the major purchase was the new dining room furniture and a new mattress for our bedroom.

I discovered Jack LaLanne this year. I always knew of him but just from his appearance on infomercials primarily. One day I saw the Tivo recorded his show and I just happened to check it out. It was one of his original shows from the 50’s or 60’s. I was immediately hooked. His energy level, overwhelmingly positive attitude, humor and outlook on life really appealed to me. Many nights Ali and I would go through his routines with him from the show that aired that day. I was really pissed that ESPN classic stopped broadcasting his show. Ali bought me Jack’s entire DVD collection from his website. I love this guy. I wish I could adopt more of his positive attitude into my daily life.

I stepped out my comfort zone and did a month of ballroom dancing classes with Ali. I am not nuts about it but it wasn’t as bad as I expected either. I at least know enough that I could get out on the floor with Ali and not look like a total boob.

I’ve gone through a lot of introspect (is that a word?) in 05. At times I felt so flustered and wrought with anxiety I didn’t know what to do. The lack of a big event in the forseeable future created much doubt and confusion for me as to what I should be striving for. I’ve never been the type that was ok with things staying status quo, I always need something to be aiming for. My inability to be satisifed with things is a benefit in some ways and a curse in others. I am sure I’ll continue to struggle with it.

Ok so how about some goals for 06? Well I am looking forward to getting the pool cage rebuilt. Unfortunately with our insurance deductible, the rebuilding process could cost us 6 or 7k out of pocket. In quick order I also expect we will be replacing our water cleaning equipment and our pool pump. I want to travel more in 06. I am hoping to do another trip to Vegas with Keener and hopefully be able to line up a cruise this year. Financially I have a big but possibly attainable goal of being able to pay off the mortgage. I don’t think it will happen in 06 but I will be working hard to pay down the debt to a level where selling the 2 plots of land could wipe the slate clean. Being mortgage free would make a tremendous impact on our lives and I think it is doable. I would love to see us be able to run a 10k before 06 expires. I will play probably the same amount of volleyball as 05 with no big expectations in mind. I just want to play and have fun. I want to jump out of a plane this year. Yea I would still like to be confident in a decision on kids in 06 as well.

Last year at this time I had just under 8000 blog hits, this year I am at 13,000 plus, so readership has been steadily increasing which is a cool thing. Even if noone read it, I would continue to pound it out because I find it therapeutic to spell out what is rolling around my head.

Since we are running a 5k New Year’s Day, I haven’t made any plans for New Year’s Eve. We may go to the casino to get a shot at winning a new Jaguar or we may just ring it in at home, I don’t know.

I hope your 2006 is properous, safe and fulfilling.

I have never even played with RSS feeds, I just haven’t had the need, however I know many people use them. I just discovered that my blog has built in RSS support so I thought I would post the feed URL for anyone that would like to use it.

Plug this URL into the RSS reader of your choice:

https://blog.duf.net/mtlog/duf/index.xml

Wallah!!

I tried it in the Google RSS reader and it worked just great! Let me know if you have any problems with it working.

Ali got some old film developed that was on the Advantix SLR camera. On it were some sweet pics she shot at the Singer Island volleyball tournament last year. Check em out here, they are on the bottom half of the page.

I added the current weather at my house to the cam page as well.

Wow, 6 days off in a row, I don’t think I have taken 6 days off from work in a row for a looong time, maybe 10 years. My Xmas break ran the gammut. The days up to and including Christmas were rather busy. On Friday I wanted to knock out whatever I could to free up the remainder of time off. We had to clean up for my mom coming over Christmas eve as well. I enjoyed the feeling of having many days off in front of me. The first day of vaca is always the best for me, as the end of the time off approaches I spend a lot of that time mourning the end of the fun. I thought that perhaps as Christmas neared, my holiday excitement level would possibly increase. It never happened.

On both Saturday and Monday, Ali and I went for 2.5 mile + runs. For her birthday I bought her this sweet little wrist worn GPS. It is used to accurately track your runs. It is amazing. It tracks every aspect of your run you can imagine, including a graphical representation of the course you followed. You can have it act like a virtual partner that runs at a set pace to help keep you up to speed. It actually motivates you to run more and faster. I think of all the gifts Ali and I got for our birthdays/xmas, this was the coolest one.

On Christmas eve afternoon I went and picked up my mom. Ali made a lasagna that was fantastic. We finished off the night watching the Polar Express. It was a cute, different kind of holiday flick. On Friday I watched the original, uncut version of Christmas Vacation. I forgot how much better it is when the swearing and non PC content is put back in. I love that movie.

Christmas morning came and I got Ali up around 7’ish, a far cry from the 5am ish start times I used to push for. There was a lot of stuff. It took probably an hour and a half until we opened all the gifts for me, Ali, my mom and the pets. It took forever. It was mostly anti-climactic because so much stuff arrived for us unwrapped or in boxes that identified its contents. After everything was opened, a sense of dread / anxiety overtook me. Seeing all the shit everywhere and thinking about how I was going to get it put away/installed/used was digging at me. This feeling was compounded by the normal melancholy following the completion of the xmas ritual.

After eating a french toast breakfast my mom prepared I tore into the pile. Ali could sense my anxiety and helped organize and put stuff away. I threw the wireless controller onto the xbox, I installed and configured the USB Bluetooth adapter on Alison’s computer to work with her Treo, I set up the cat water fountain, I replaced our Cable/DSL router with a new one and played with the wireless weather center I got.

Mom and Ali took some time to sit out in the sun while I continued with my madness, frantically trying to restore order to what I saw as chaos. Ali and I took my mom back to her place in the early afternoon. The three of us walked down to the beach for a few minutes just to say we did. The weather was cool and overcast, not good beach weather. We found someone had taken the time to spell out Merry X-mas in shells on the beach. We took Mom’s pic in front of it to use at a later date. It was the first time we had been to the beach since the hurricane came through. All in all it looked ok. We walked back and thanked mom for coming over and went home.

Even though the end of daylight was soon approaching, I headed out to construct the mounts for my outdoor weather center. I had to do some trial and error to locate the stuff where it could communicate with the base unit inside. I wound up mounting the stuff in the orchard. I then attached the base unit to Ali’s pc and installed and configured the software. The software allows me to upload the current weather to my web server. Very geeky but I like being able to monitor the weather conditions in my yard realtime. I finished up just as the sun was going down.

Christmas night I was still itching to get out of my skin. I tried to describe to Ali how I felt. It was a big snowball of negativity that I knew was uncalled for but I could do little to make it subside. I felt empty, discouraged, anxious, sad and angry all at the same time. I went to bed that night knowing that future Christmas holidays will probably follow the same path unless we decide to have a kid.

On Monday I noticed that my outdoor temperature reading was 10 to 12 degrees higher than it should be. My initial design did not shade the remote unit from sunlight so the suns rays were artificially raising the temperature. I went out and built some additions to my mount to block it on 2 sides from the sun. It seemed to keep the temps more inline with reality. I worked more on getting things put away throughout the day and by the end of Monday, most things were back in order. I felt less anxiety than the day before.

We watched a lot of movies over the break. We saw Cinderella Man, Dodgeball and Anchor Man. I though the first 2 movies were great, Anchor Man was garbage. The funny moments were very slim in that flick. I have a ton more movies to play on my xbox media center.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Ali was back at work so I had the days to myself. Tuesday I wanted to crank out any and all remaining housework so I had Wednesday to WoW till I dropped. I finally dug into the ebay pile of stuff and listed 8 or 9 things online for sale. I did some minor outside work and then played WoW the rest of the day. Wednesday was even more hardcore Wow. With nothing else on my schedule, and no dog at home to demand my attention, I had a marathon session. I basically played from 6:30 am to 9:30 pm with maybe an hour and a half break thrown in there. I played almost exclusively with my rogue and traveled all over the Eastern continent. It was over the top ridiculous playing that long, but I had fun and it was nice to totally ignore everything else. With my rogue I find myself looking for trouble, killing horde whenever possible and just basically being a thorn in other player’s side. It relaxes me.

I’m back at work for a 2 day work week and then it’s another 3 day weekend, yahoo. We are running yet another 5k this weekend on New Year’s Day which will dictate a mild New Year’s celebration.

This could be the last blog entry prior to the big day so I’d like to wish everyone out there that reads this little square of my mind on a semi-regular basis, best wishes for the season. I hope your holiday is a great one.

I’ve been waiting for 2 months to simply have a pool cage company at least give me an estimate on rebuilding our cage. I call and call and never get a call back. Last night on my machine there is a message from an individual in a heavy spanish accent.

“Uh yes this message is for Shawn Duffey. I heard you need work on , how do you say, screen repair? Give me a call back.” That’s it. No name of the company or individual and no phone number. This sucks.

My grandfather always used to have hard candy sitting out at his house. I preferred the red and white peppermint swirly things. However once in awhile he would not have those so I would pop one of those root beer barrel candies. They were horrible. I don’t recall if I ever made it to the end of one without spitting it out. I have avoided them ever since.

I just got my “permanent” retainer for my bottom teeth. It is a wire glued to the back of my teeth. So far I am not digging it, it feels like I have shit permanently stuck between my teeth. At least they are straight. The top teeth, the ones I really wanted fixed, still have 6 or 7 trays to go. The two teeth that bug me the most don’t seem to have moved much to me, they have a ways to go in the next few months.

On Friday after work we went to Carraba’s. There was an hour wait so I drank 3 beers and then drank a woman’s gin and tonic. She got 2 for happy hour but only drank half of one so I didn’t want it the other to go to waste. However the prospect of having to leave a vehicle there and the whole having Mom along thing, made me shut it down before we sat down for dinner. The alcohol did help dull the sting of being firmly entrenched in my late 30’s, if only temporarily.

On Saturday morning I went out to run errands and try to wrap up my Xmas shopping. Going out into the shopping areas the week before Christmas is asking for misery but I went for it anyway. As expected, each place was jammed with people circling parking lots, people filling the stores and just basic madness at every turn. As I was waiting in a long line at Sam’s Club, I took a moment to just look around and saw that basically every nook and cranny of the store had someone in it, doing something. There are just too many people. Unfortunately all my effort didn’t result in my wrapping up Xmas shopping for Ali. I need to snag her something this week yet, sometime, somehow.

Saturday afternoon we had another 5k. This was a Christmas run, complete with little bells that the runners wore on their sneakers. It was the smallest field of any race we ran so far, maybe 130 people. This race we basically ran by ourselves from the get go. A pack went ahead of us, a pack was behind us and we had at least 100 yards in either direction for most of the race. Again we had a fast pace and I tried to keep it that way. Ali struggled but managed to battle through it to another personal best, breaking the 31 minute and 10 minute mile mark at 30:50. She was totally spent. I was very proud of her effort. We stuck around for the award ceremony in case Ali managed to place but she didn’t get one. Originally we had planned to watch the Marco Island Christmas parade right after the run and we went up to the parade route and sat down in a ditch, for about 5 minutes, after which we both agreed that we would rather just get home, so we left. Finding our way out of Marco, avoiding the parade route was a challenge but thanks to the GPS we managed to get out. On the way home we stopped at Pizza Hut, a place I haven’t stepped foot in for at least 2 years, to grab dinner. My bad knee was hurting enough that I iced it when we got home, however it felt better the next day.

On Sunday I watched the dreadfully bad Eagles game. I can’t remember being less excited about an Eagles victory. Both teams played uninspired ball and it was sloppy as hell. I could not believe how many false start penalties the Rams had, I bet it was close to 10. Mike McMahon is just terrible, he threw another 3 picks. He needs to be moved to a different position like wide receiver.

After the game I was complaining to Ali how I was basically devoid of Christmas spirit. We sat down and watched Charlie Brown Christmas and the Grinch movie. It helped a little bit but my holiday needle is still pointing at 1/4 tank or less. I have a 4 day week then took off additional days so I won’t be back to work till next Thursday.

Today I’m officially 38. Nowadays when my birthday rolls around I normally do a brief inventory of my life. In some ways, my path has strayed off where I thought it may be. In other ways, I have exceeded expectations and am proud of some the things I have accomplished. I am probably in better shape now then I was 15 years ago. I think the area of my appearance that has been the most affected by time is my face. If I have no expression on my face it isn’t obvious, but if I smile, there are lines and creases that spring to life that never existed in the past. Overall I realize that in most ways I am very fortunate to be in the position I am. I still have the moments when I stress out about not having a definitive idea of what is next down the road for myself. I insulate myself from these moments the best I can by keeping myself busy for most seconds of the day. We are going to go to one of my favorite restaurant’s tonight for my birthday, Carraba’s. I’m gonna drink a little bit.

The Aprrentice wrapped up last night. I think the final two were the best final two since the show has aired. Randall won which was a pretty obvious pick. The guy was as sharp as a tack. I found it very interesting at the end when Trump basically offered up to hire both of the final two since they were so good and he asked Randal’s opinion on it. Randall was good friends with the girl he was in the finals with, yet he held his ground and told Trump that he thought the Apprentice was all about finding ONE winner, not two. Rebecca was obviously pissed with his actions, but hey, he won, he was the better candidate and he felt that she shouldn’t slide in as a consoloation prize. If that was me, I would have taken her along but that is why I am not on the Apprentice.

Today is the last day for Howard on regular radio. I bought my Sirius satellite radio over a year ago, waiting for this time to come. Since then, I fell in love with satellite radio for tons of reasons besides the fact that Howard was coming. The music choices are endless, I love the NFL and other sports broadcasts they offer and they have talk content to fit most any taste. Stern will air January 9th. I can’t wait. I am sure he will go a bit overboard initially with the swearing and sex related content. I look forward to when he settles down a bit and can just have conversations without having to worry about chosing his words carefully. Actually my favorite part of his show is when the different people on the show rip into each other. I could care less if he had another stripper on the show ever.

At the gym Wednesday I saw a character that I had seen a few times before, whom annoyed me then and annoyed me even more now. Both times I saw the guy he was wearing a tight, plain, white t-shirt, the type that old men normally wear underneath a button down dress shirt. This guy constantly breathes like he just got done holding his breath for 5 minutes, he inhales and exhales loudly, ALL the time, even when he is just walking around the gym. When he actually gets onto a piece of equipment it is amplified, the noises get louder and are accompanied by hideous looking grimacing. It’s very distracting. Plus he likes to slam the weights onto and off of the bar, perhaps to punctuate just how hard he is working. I mean this guy is over the top, you can hear him breathing from 30 feet away. He will be forever identified by me as Hyperventilation Man.

Across the street from us there is a hispanic family that we have never really spoken to. I believe the husband is in the landscape business, like many Mexicans in SW Florida. Most mornings when I am leaving for work I see what I belive is the wife walking to the end of the driveway, turning around and walking back up it and then back again. She uses the driveway as her own personal track, walking up and down, up and down. It’s an interesting way to get some walking exercise but at least she is trying.

Tomorrow evening we are running in yet another 5k, this time it is on Marco Island. We are running right before the Marco Christmas parade, along the parade route. There may be people lining the streets waiting for the parade that could double as race supporters. We hope to watch the parade after the run. It should be a good time. Since my strenuous weekend, my lower back has been hurting all week. I hope it clears up before tomorrow, otherwise I will require some advil to assist my performance.

I turned my cam back on so all could see my decorated office. I’ve had occasional issues with it blue screening my pc so I have had it off for awhile. But the holiday season is cam season so enjoy the holiday show.

Last night I was exhausted. The combination of my physically taxing weekend, compounded by staying up late Sunday night watching the Survivor finale, caught up to me. I was in bed by 9:30.

Friday is my birthday, I’ll be 38 years old. Even better, it will be full moon right around then as well. It should make for a miserable combination. I told Ali that any birthday celebration needs to include me drinking a lot of alcohol. The past year seems to have flown by in a blink. I remember when I was 11 or 12, a year seemed like an eternity.