Archives March 2005

Julio Franco of the Atlanta Braves is 46 years old and still playing major league baseball. That is simply amazing. Hell I remember when I was still in school, he came up with the Phils in the mid 80’s. I guess it as a testament to what can be done with some good genes and a good conditioning/fitness routine.

Terry Schiavo, I don’t want to sound cruel or to go to hell or anything, but please, die. This has reached a level of coverage that is just obscene. Her parents are being self centered bastards because they can’t deal with the idea of their daughter dying, hiding behind the pro-life army of zombies. Catholics don’t want to practice birth control because it interferes with nature’s course but they are ok with artifically continuing the life of someone that would have died a decade ago if nature took it’s course. It’s been 15 years, she has shown zero signs of improvement. Let her go. It needs to end. She is the brain dead version of Elia Gonzalez or whatever the little cubans kids name was.

I have a habit of making assumptions that are based on little more than what I devise in my mind. Friday was a painful example of that. I took Friday off to tackle sodding Nicki’s area. I estimated that 2 skids of grass would fit the bill (estimation based on no facts) and I pictured me easily dropping the 2 skids into the back of my pickup truck and happily carting them home and installing them at my leisure. What a delusion that was.

I popped out of bed nice and early, excited to get the project underway. The grass place was all the way in town, a 45 minute drive. I find the place abd go in and pay for the 2 skids. When I got a look at the skids as I went in the office, I thought to myself, “Hmmm they are pretty big, maybe I’ll only be able to take one at a time” No big deal. The woman that took the money, to my surprise, was also the one to run the forklift. She came out and took one look at my truck and immediately proclaimed that she didn’t think there was anyway it would fit. I said that I’d like to try anyway, feeling that she underestimated the payload ability of my mighty toyota. She inches the skid up to the bed of the truck. It fits inside the walls of the bed but not inside the wheel well. No problem, I told her to try moving back and setting it down behind the wheel well, I coould just leave the tailgate down. Her face told me that it was a joke to even try, but she obliged. As she lowered the weight of the skid onto the bed, the truck fenders immediately sunk to the tires, it was practically doing a wheelie. “Get it off!!!”, I tell her and she raises the grass to relieve the crushing weight off my poor truck. “These weigh 2500 pounds each” she tells me. “You need at least a 1 ton truck to haul one” And I thought I could throw 2 in. This is something that could have been discovered if I dug a little bit beforehand but oh well, like so many other times, I learn the hard way. She puts the grass back down and I tell her I will have to go get another truck.

As easily as I said that I was unusre of exactly how I would find another truck. I didn’t know anyone that had one that heavy duty and even if I did, it was Friday, how would I get it? Well a stroke of genius came to me. Rent the Home Depot truck! Luckily it was close by. As I drove up I saw it was on the lot and it said it had a weight capacity of 3000 pounds, perfect! I go in to the rental desk and anxiously tell the guy that I want to rent the truck. “What for?” he asked. I told him I needed to haul 2 skids of grass. He asked if they were from Home Depot, and I said no. He points to a sign that says something about the truck only being rented to HD customers as a convenience to transport stuff they buy there. I panicked for a sec, this was my only feasible option, albeit a pricey one. I told the guy that I was also going to be buying top soil to mix in to the dirt. I think he could see the stress I was under and agreed to rent me the truck. Whew. The truck is typically rented for quick trips. I did some quick calculations, 2 trips all the way out to my house, unloading 2 skids of grass myself, oh boy, this is going to be costly. However the bug up my ass has to be satisfied and it was going to get done, today.

I hopped in the truck and chugged back to the grass place. The woman was much more pleased with my transportation this time. She placed the skid on the truck with little effort. However, as soon as she pulled the forks away, I heard an ear piercing noise from the truck. What the hell?? I start looking around, as I open the door, the noise is even louder. The old mexican man that was cleaning up some extra sod came over and looked as well. Then I see the sign on the dash. “This vehicle is equipped with an overweight alarm, to disable alarm lighten payload.” I was freaking. I had the 4 50 pound bags of cow manure in the back so I grabbed them and threw them in the cab, as I threw the one in it snagged on the seat belt, ripping the bag and spilling some manure in the cab. I was too flustered to care. The siren keep screaming. I pop the hood to see if I could simply pull a wire to silence the madness. I didn’t see anything obvious and I certainly didn’t want to disconnect something crucial. I was angry cause the truck should support the weight no problem and it appeared to hardly flinch when the skid was put on it, yet an overly aggressive alarm was incessantly requesting that I lighten the load. Well again the bug was driving me, “F it, I will just have to drive with this f’in thing wailing the entire time, I don’t care.” I fire up the truck and put it in drive, silence… Ah I’ve been blessed, the alarm cuts off once you put the truck in drive…

The ride home was slow as the grass had a bit of lean that the old mexican pointed out to me. I took the turns real slow to prevent an inadvertent dumping of my precious sod on the roadway. All the time I am plodding along I am thinking how much this truck is costing me to rent. I got to our house, and backed up to Nicki’s area. As soon as I turned the truck off, the alarm is going off again. The noise added to the stress as try to hurriedly unload and place the turf. At first I was taking it off piece by piece and placing it. Soon I realized this would take forever so I hopped into the back of the truck and tossed the grass off, piece by piece, trying to throw it into some semblance of piles on the ground. Once it was down on the ground I had to handle each piece a second time to place it. It was hot and humid on Friday and I was rushing trying to get this done. I was running out of gas fast.

The one skid of grass was enough to do the area that I estimated would take two. So skid number two would be used to sod the area in front of the shed that also was bare dirt currently. By the time I got the first skid unloaded I had taken almost all the time I had given to the HD guy as my estimated time of rental. So I had to call him back and explain it would be another few hours yet. He was ok with it and I went back for load two. I picked it up with the alarm once again piercing my ears. This time at home I simple threw the grass off in piles off the back so I could hurry up and get the truck back to keep the rental charge as minimal as possible. By the time I got the truck back I had rung up another 110 bucks in charges. Ugh, oh well at least the grass is at my house.

After I dropped off the truck I went back into the store. I wanted to find an Easter plant for my mom. As I went in I noticed some cool palms that were on sale. It was a great deal, I found a triple pygmy palm that I thought would look great in the middle of Nicki’s area. So I bought that too. The HD guy loaded the heavy tree into the back of my Toyota. It sunk under the weight, but nothing close to the what a skid of grass did to it. I leaned it back and wedged it into place. So I returned home with my latest prize, with a huge pile of sod still waiting to be laid down. I get home and start ripping into phase two of the grass project. It had clouded up, making it feel a bit more bearable. I was tired but didn’t have to work at a fast pace since the truck rental was no longer over my head. I got the grass down in about an hour. Then it was time for the tree. Ali had dug a sizeable hole already. I backed the truck into the area. We tried various methods to get the tree off the truck gracefully but wound up doing a semi-controlled crash off the tailgate instead. It was at least 300 pounds. Once on the ground we rolled, tugged and pushed it’s way into the hole. We got it straight and filled it in. It looked awesome. The grass looks great as well. It was an exhausting, ass busting day but I am pleased with the outcome. Pictures will be coming.

On Saturday we cleaned up in prep for having our new neighbors over for dinner. They have lived next to us since December but we couldn’t work out having them over till now. Ali made a great dinner and desert and we had a nice time with them.

For Easter we went to mom’s for ham and fixings. While I was there she had a list of stuff for me to work on while I was there, the biggest of which was installing vertical blinds by her back sliding door. The food was great and it was nice to see mom. I talked to my bro and grandma while I was at mom’s as well.

I had a lot of WoW time as well throughout the weekend. Up till 1am on Friday night. No matter how late I go to bed and even though I walk Nicki right b4 bed, she insists on waking me up at the crack of dawn regardless. So I stumble outside in a zombie-like state as she wastes time just sniffing every blade of grass. It gets to be a bit annoying.

I missed the start of Spring. It’s odd how the seasons melt into one another down here. I remember when I lived in PA, the countdown to Spring was BIG. It meant that warmer weather was on the way sooner rather than later and things like baseball, playing volleyball outside and being to walk outside without a coat were going to be possibilities again soon. This morning I glanced at the calendar and saw we were 3 days past the first day of spring, oops.

I’m off Friday. Yes!

It’s wonderful getting older. My right wrist, right shoulder and left elbow/forearm have been hurting for a good couple months. Throw my right knee into the mix. It seems I aggravated it from being on my knees a lot building the deck and crawling around on floors, connecting and disconnecting PC’s. At the gym I try to be smart and stop an exercise if I get to the point where the pain is more than mild. Today I was doing incline presses and it sounded like I was popping jiffy pop in both my shoulders. I suppose it has little hope of getting better as I age does it? 🙂

I suppose I could try to take more than a couple day break from lifting but that is easier said than done.

It was another spectacular weekend weather-wise. Saturday was sunny and in the lower 70’s, Sunday was sunny again but closer to 80. On Saturday Ali had to work and I had to go into another branch in the afternoon for more weekend work, ugh. The conversion at this branch didn’t go quite so smoothly. Even though I know very little about the new setup, I went in there and took care of 4 or 5 issues that the installers were spinning their wheels on. I didn’t get home until 7:30. We spent Saturday night watching the Money Pit on tivo. Damn that is a funny movie. But I slept through the last half hour or so. Every few days after staying up till 11-12 playing WoW I am incredibly tired and just have to crash early. Saturday was one of those nights.

On Sunday Ali and I went to the beach again. Unlike last time, it was great beach weather. The sun was warm, the wind was light and the water was a bit warmer. I really enjoyed just sitting out there reading a book and then walking the beach for a bit. All in all we were only on the beach for an hour and a half. However with no sunblock on, this was more than enough to get fried. My chest is beet red. It seems odd to get sunburned in March. Oh well we all look better with a little color.

This past week we had like 3 inches of rain. The water had an adverse affect on the tile creation that we have built into Nicki’s deck. The water warped the plywood and in turn made a couple of the tiles pop loose. 🙁 That sucks. It sucks not only because that means the unique part of the deck is broken, it sucks because we have to pull it out and then rip up all the cut pieces of decking and replace them with full boards. Another 80-90 bucks at Home Depot and the labor to pull up the existing wood and lay down the new stuff. Sigh…

Does anyone else think this controversy about the woman having her feeding tube pulled is absolutely f’in ridiculous? I sure do. The woman has been a vegetable for 15 years, she told her husband she didn’t want to be kept alive like that but someone found it necessary to escalate this all the way up to the president’s desk to make sure she can continue to “exist” indefinitely? What exactly is the point? It makes no sense to me. If I wind up that way, kill me, please. So stupid.

Those 5-6 pounds I put on during my pre-holiday cookie eating blitz are long gone. I am back to my November weight and maybe a pound or two less. I actually am trying to shave off another 4-5. I’m in good shape but I think losing a kilo or two will get me to a point where I would be happy to maintain at. To help me get there I have made a change in my dinner routine. For forever my routine was eat dinner and then shortly afterward have a glass of milk along with something sweet as desert. I had no nutrional or hunger needs for this, it’s just something your body gets accustomed to. What I have been doing for the past week and a half is after dinner I get a big glass and fill it with ice water. I continue to drink these throughout the night. Besides curbing the feeling I need to eat sweets by making you feel full on water, it does a good job of hydrating me to the max. The only downside are the frequent bathroom trips. So far it’s working well. On weekends I allow myself to grab deserts, it’s all about balance. It’s funny, many times Ali will proclaim how easy it is for me to stay thin, it comes naturally. Hah, hardly. I have made so many modifications to my exercise and eating habits since I turned 30 it is like night and day. The only throwback I have to my old eating ways are the pop-tarts I allow myself to have for breakfast during the weekends. Those are total garbage food but it’s just about the only junk I eat routinely.

That leads me to a related idea. Goal setting or more specifically how you measure yourself. To me there are three schools of thought, up, down, or don’t care. There are people like me that set my goals above me. I want to always try to keep improving in something I work at, physically, financially, or competitively. There are those that use people below them as examples. For instance, well things may not be great for me but at least I am better off than so and so. With these people, this attitude is usually a convenient way to not do things, to do less and feel ok about it. Then there are the don’t care people. The people that have a family history of cancer, diabetes and heart problems and decide to be fat chain smokers anyway. These people I have little sympathy for as they deserve whatever comes to them. My point? There isn’t really one other than it has been on my mind.

It’s funny how things can lead you down memory lane to trigger something you hadn’t thought about in a long time. The American Idol exit of that Mario guy meant that Nikko Smith was put back in the show since he was the last one voted out. As I was looking for info on the situation I read that Nikko is the son of former great Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith. Then it hit me how much he looked like Ozzie and I never realized it. That then got me to thinking about how Ozzie Smith used to be on this baseball skills show that used to be hosted by Johnny Bench on a regular basis. The show was on every Saturday and I hardly ever missed it. It went over basic baseball skills with various major leaguers. It was at the time in my life where I seriously thought I was going to be among them someday. I loved that show and I loved Ozzie Smith.

Speaking of reality TV, you would think with my WoW obsession that I wouldn’t have time to watch any TV. Well it has been scaled back for sure (not a bad thing) but I keep up with American Idol, Survivor, The Apprentice and the new show The Contender. I love the Contender. It’s a boxing show that has Sugar Ray Leonard and Stallone as hosts. It is just a very compelling show. They have a great mix of personalities and the first 2 elimination fights have been nothing short of fantastic. It’s gotten poor ratings thus far but I would give it 2 huge thumbs up. Check it out, Sundays at 8 on NBC.

This weekend I had some work duties related to the driver license systems getting upgraded at a couple of our branches. It required me to be on call as well as going into the offices a couple times over the weekend. However I already had pegged this weekend as “deck building weekend” so it was going to get done come hell or high water.

The deck was for Nicki’s area, a small 8 foot by 8 foot platform would be large enough from our calculations. Like I said previously, I rarely do projects like this in a normal fashion. I didn’t draw anything up, I didn’t write up a materials list, rather I went to Home Depot, grabbed what wood and materials I figured I would need and went for it. Of course this technique leaves much room for error and I had to make an additional trip to HD to pick up some more materials.

The project covered parts of both days. On day 1 we got the frame built, dug the holes and cemented it into place. We cemented it down so it doesn’t blow away if we have another hurricane season like last year. On day 2 we installed all the decking as well as the little ceramic tile piece I made months ago with left over materials from the bathroom tile job. I got creative and spelled out Nicki’s name in tile and then drug her over to it and put her paw into the wet grout to make a paw print to forever mark the area as hers. Yea corny but cool at the same time. You can see a bunch of pics of the project in various stages here.

Some of the boards I got were not exactly straight and required some prying with an iron pipe to straighten them out as we hurriedly drove in screws to keep it in place. It all wrapped up round 5 oclock on Sunday. It looks good, is sturdy and will be nice place to relax and read a book while Nicki runs around untethered. The last part of the project will involve getting a skid or two of sod to create a nice grass area and maybe planting a tree or two. I am pleased at how it is coming together.

The local paper ran several front page stories on Sunday regarding the horrific traffic is in our area everyday. It really put a big glaring spotlight on just how terrible it is and how poor of a job the county has done at managing the growth that causes the gridlock. Ali and I had the opportunity to be in one of those articles but I declined because I didn’t want to cause waves at work. But after reading the way the articles were written, I probably could have done it with little problem. Oh well.

The news in recent months has been nothing short of horrific. The tsunami and it’s aftermath, the war in Iraq with no end in sight, incredible deficits, the BTK killer, global genicide in 3rd world countries, and now the terrible shootings at the courthouse. It all just makes me sad, makes me think what is the point of it all. We are living on a timebomb. We will end ourselves way before someone does it for us.

Over the weekend we dug up a bunch of pineapple plants we had around the property to take into work and give away. We had too many and wanted to plant some different stuff in those spots. Pineapple plant leaves have a serated, saw-like edge to them which resulted in both Ali and I getting many cuts and thorns into our hands and arms. There were a couple offshoots that broke off that I tried to give away but noone wanted them. So I took the offshoots home, feeling bad about just throwing them out so I decided I would plant them in the back of the property and see if they would take root.

So I rushed home and immediately drove the truck around back. Daylight was waning so I had to hurry up. So while I am still in my work clothes I grab the shovel and drive to the back of the property. I dig out one hole and dump in one of the plants, I got a few more cuts right away trying to set it in place. Then I jump to the other side of the fill pit to plant another one. I dig the hole extra wide to make it easier to get the plant into the hole. I plop the plant in and start scooping the dirt back in with my hands. I notice that these cuts on my hands were painful. Then I noticed the pain increasing and spreading to different areas. I look down, you guessed it, I must have dug into a fire ant tunnel and had dozens of them all over my hands. So I am cursing, frantically trying to bat them all off. They literally have a death grip on the skin. You could squash one, dismember it, it won’t release the grip until you directly pull or tweak it off. So my now burning hands finish off the job safely, using the shovel at all times to pack in the remaining dirt. I go inside and pull out pineapple splinters with a tweezers while examining the forming welts from the fireant assault.

I fired off a letter to the editor which I haven’t done for a little while. It was regarding the closure of left turns out of a development that was one of the big contributors to the gridlock in the first 3 miles of our commute.

When I was younger I had several runs in with warts on my hands. They are nasty. Well I have had one on the palm side of my left middle finger forever. A year at least, maybe longer. Well I got sick of looking at it so I got some things that look like band-aids and wore them for about a week. It makes the skin in that area look all white and dead looking. This weekend I pulled one off and there was a nice neat circle of skin that came off, wart included! Yea that makes for good blogging huh?

On top of the warts when I was younger, my friends enjoyed calling me “ringworm”. When I was a kid I accidentally bumped my wrist against the scorching hot muffler of the tractor. As a resulut I have a small patch of skin on my wrist to this day that has an abnormal look and texture to it. Some astute classmate said it looked like I had ringworm so for a couple years I battled that name but eventually tired of explaining it was a burn. So I would just answer to ringworm, less fuss. 🙂

Ali and I went to the beach for the first time in months on Sunday. It was sunny but there was a very cool breeze blowing off the gulf so as soon as the sun would duck behind a cloud it would feel uncomfortably cool in your bathing suit. I stuck my feet in the gulf. The 70 degree water felt very cold. However there were a few brave souls actually out in the water. The beach itself was packed.

There were 2 women and one of their daughters sitting within 10 feet of us. The entire time we were there (hour to hour and a half) one of these females was talking the entire time. Talking on their cell phones, to each other, it never ended. Ali was extremely annoyed with these women and moved further away and laid on her blanket with her thumbs in her ears. I was less bothered by it because I was reading a good book that isolated me from the squawking. Even with the distraction, I enjoyed just sitting there with the sounds and smells of the beach, reading a book. It’s something we have to reintroduce into our routine on a regular basis. For cripes sakes we can get to the beach in less time than it takes to watch a Tivo accelerated episode of the Osbournes. We need to take advantage of it.

When we had enough, on the walk back to the car I saw another first. As we were on the downside of a reasonably steep bridge there was a woman on rollerblades on her cell phone as she braked hard to keep from accelerating down the hill. I could hardly believe it but she seemed to have done it before as she navigated it without issue. It just looked odd.

On Saturday we went to Home Depot to accumulate the wood needed for phase 2 of the Nicki play area construction project. With projects like this you would think I would have everything drawn out by a plan so I know exactly what I need. For whatever reason I rarely do that, instead I have the idea, dimensions and shape pretty much entirely in my head. The construction process itself is rather dynamic, changing as it goes. I hope to break ground on the deck this upcoming weekend.

My Hot Wheels collection has expanded to the point where I needed a better display option. Check out the new arrangement on the cam page. You can also check my ever-lengthening hair. My mom saw me for the first time in a little while and was amazed at how long my hair is. For the better part of 10 years it’s been high and tight. Now it is frumpy and even sort of curls at spots. I just wanted to look a bit different, even if it meant looking more unkept.

The girls on AI are definitely inferior to the men as a group this year. Most of them sounded very average last night. However there was something definitely off on the sound levels with the show last night. Almost all the girls sounded like they were being drowned out by the music.

I threw up a pic of my monster monitor. It’s big, it takes up lots of space so doing things like eating at my computer desk are a bit more inconvenient but it’s worth it. It’s fantastic for gaming and supports higher resolution than the Sony throw in monitor I got with the puter.

Yesterday at the gym I finally “met” a guy that I actually knew from the gym for 2 or 3 years. He used to go to Powerhouse, then joined Gold’s for a year and now he joined the new gym I go to. I have talked to the guy off and on many times at the gym but neither of us bothered to ask each others names. For whatever reason I have a hard time initiating friendly conversations and when I do, I feel odd about asking about names. It’s probably because I am miserable at small talk. Well anyway, yesterday I decided after 3 years I would learn the gym guy’s name. So after he got done spotting me on a set I simply said “I don’t remember if I ever asked you your name, but if I did, I forgot it.” So I find out his name is Dan and I tell him my name. Somehow it felt like a small burden was lifted off my back. So I now have maybe 3 or 4 people at the gym I know by name. I wish I could be more friendly with others as I welcome interaction with most human beings, especially those that share a common interest in physical fitness. I just have a tough time taking the first step. However once that step is taken, it almost always results in finding out that there was nothing to be hesitant about.