People suck, Turkey vaca roundup, drilled it, Eagles ugly, Treo treasure, dancin fool
I was all ready to go into my 5 day hiatus roundup when an event happened this morning that pissed me off and saddened me to the point that it trumps it all. At Ali’s work there has been a family of ducks that we have watched grow up from little babies to adult ducks. Most days we see them waddling accross the parking lot or yard to get to a bird feeder they have outside the building. Even though they are adult birds now, several of them still stick together and march single file all over the place. When we say the word “ducky” to Nicki, she knows exactly what we are talking about and she looks for them.
This morning as I turned left into Ali’s work, we saw a horrible sight. One of the ducks was lying dead in the road, right in front of the stop sign. I was instantly enraged and disgusted that some asshole either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t care enough to slow down to allow the ducks to pass. It was right at a stop sign of a road where the speed limit is only 25 to 30 mph so I have no idea how someone couldn’t avoid a big duck in plain view. My heart sunk as I saw 2 of the other ducks on the other side of the road just looking at their fallen sibling, waiting for it to get up. They just stayed there and watched, it was so sad, we both felt horrible. As I unloaded the bike from the car I was swearing up a storm, reaffirming how disgusting the human race can be, to not be able to step on the brake pedal for 5 seconds so an animal can pass, it is ridiculous. After I dropped Ali off, I stopped at the edge of the lot and looked at the dead duck and the cars coming up to it and swerving around. I thought how the poor thing didn’t need to be steamrolled under another idiot’s tires. After sitting there for a brief moment. debating, I hopped out, walked over and scooped the duck up with my hands and gently laid it in the grass by the road. It was a horrible feeling. I called Ali and told her I moved the duck and she said she had already called animal services and they would come out and take the duck away. Eventually the other ducks moved away, realizing that the fallen animal wasn’t going to get up. I don’t know if it was my feelings of sorrow that transferred, but the other ducks looked sad, in a duck sort of way.
My 5 day Thanksgiving vacation was quite nice, I enjoyed the time off. We started off turkey day getting up with our normal work day alarm clock to get up for our Gobble Gobble 4 mile run. Unlike the 5k we ran a couple weeks prior, I was not 100% confident if Ali could grind this one out without stopping. Jumping up your distance by 25% in 2 weeks time is an ambitious goal. The race was well attended. Before the race I had a nervous bladder and had to hit the mens room. Unfortunately the bathroom facilities were very inadequate for the amount of people there. The line for the mens room was 10 deep, the line for the womens was at least 30, so I decided I would be fine and skipped it. However 5 minutes before the race the urge was worse so I ran back and waited through a shorter line and was able to relieve myself and get back a couple minutes before the start.
This race had a unique group competing, the youth D.R.I.L.L. team. It is a military style drill program for teenage boys run by the county sheriff’s department. Before the race it was impossible to miss them as they all wore identical t-shirts and shorts and counted out loudly as they held stretch positions. It was really cool to see and hear.
This time we were more towards the front of starting pack so as opposed to passing people, we were the ones that got passed more often. Our intial mile pace was fast for us, but it is tough to run very slow at first with all the adrenalin kicking you along. We were amazed to hear the drill team behind us, chanting continously as they ran. It was a good diversion from running. We settled into our pace. Things went smoothly until somewhere between mile 2 and 3, where I could tell Ali was really struggling. However the DRILL team by that time had caught up to us and hearing them chant and chant really helped Ali along. I wondered how the chant leaders could come up with all this shit to say without missing a beat. As they passed us, I could not believe that on top of the chanting, there were two kids in the front of the squad carrying flags, above their heads! Holy shit. They all ran in unison, like a well oiled machine, it was very impressive and motivating. We found ourselves running to their cadence. The kids got Ali through that tough mile and once we hit mile 3, the finish line was close enough that it pulled us home. As we hit the line the clock was just turning 42 minutes, a great time for Ali. She had set a pre-race time goal of somewhere around 45 minutes which she smashed. In fact, we ran the 4 mile race at a much faster pace than the 5k. I was so proud of her. The week prior at the track she struggled to do 2 miles but in a race environment she doubles it, a tribute to the power fo competition. After the race we went over to the DRILL team and Ali told them how motivational their effort was. The kids responded with a very polite, “Thank you ma’am.” More kids need to go through a program like that, imagine the difference it would make in their lives to have that sort of discipline instilled into them at a young age. After the race we grabbed a few post race snacks and headed out to pick up my mom for our official dinner.
Ali prepared a nice spread of food. It is a tough proposition to coordinate the various food items to get done around the same time. All that prep came down to us devouring our meal in 15-20 minutes and then I happily volunteered to clean up as my part of the process. We got to catch some of the Macy’s parade and then some of the dog show afterwards. It felt good to have Thanksgiving at our place, albeit with 3 people. I took mom home and then when I got back, Ali was zonked out asleep from our run and the food prep. As she napped I watched some more football and found myself dozing off repeatedly as well. The day ended with my feeling content with the 2005 Thanksgiving experience.
On Friday I decided I would tackle the xmas lights outside while Ali mowed. What was fun at first, drug on and wound up being a lengthy chore at the end. Each year I forget how I rigged the lights in certain areas and have to rethink the process again. Plus this year I added lights around Nicki’s area. I had ideas about putting additional lights in additional areas but after 3 hours of working on it I wrapped it up, feeling very wiped. I think the end result looks pretty good. I’ll try to get a few pictures of it.
On Saturday we went to Home Depot to get a bunch of stuff from a list we had been building for a few weeks. When we got back we spent a good chunk of the afternoon spreading dirt and mulch, planting mums and putting wire fencing around the deck in Nicki’s area to prevent snakes and critters from getting under there. Saturday night we went out for a quick dinner at Applebee’s and then saw the new Harry Potter flick. I enjoyed the movie like all the other Harry Potter movies. Ali said there was a lot of stuff from the book that was greatly condensed for the movie but even so, the flick was still well over 2 hours long.
On Sunday Ali had to work. I started my day by by hitting the track to do a speed mile where I push myself to see how fast I can do a mile. I pushed myself hard but it still took me 7:35 to complete the mile. I was very winded and it took me most of the next walking lap to get my breath back. I vaguely remember being able to do a 7 minute mile at some point in my life so missing that mark was a bit of a downer. I’m old. I spent some time banging out any household stuff that was left to do so I would have basically a free day on Monday to do what I wanted (play WoW). Ali got home to catch most of the Eagles game which was unimpressive at best. Mike Mcmahon is a great athlete but he is less accurate than Donovan, which is tough to be. The Eagles, who were a pass happy team for most of the year have now transformed into a run first team to minimize McMahon’s burden. They managed to scrape by and beat the lowly Packers at home. It was not a good win but it was their first win in a month so I’ll take it. I think the league really has to do something about the officials calling all these penalties. It really is taking away from the game. Late in the 4th quarter of the Eagles game, on a play where Farve threw what appeared to be a game ending INT, the referee called a total bullshit late hit call on the Eagles. The Eagles player was diving and hit Farve a split second after her released the ball, it was IMPOSSIBLE for the defender to avoid hitting Farve yet the official throws the flag, in a critical, game changing situation no less. I was furious, screaming at the TV. I have seen this scenario repeated throughout the season and just can’t believe they continue to call it. There is no way a defender can go from full tilt towards a QB to throwing on the air brakes to stop the contact. The league needs to wake up, I understand they want to protect the QB but with the current rules they may as well put flags on him, it’s that bad.
We got our camera model of the Treo on Friday, finally. I dug into it, installing apps. One thing I noticed with most good Palm apps, they aren’t free. I dropped another 60-70 bucks installing additional apps on the thing. However it continues to impress me. I installed Voice Dial software that does an incredible job of voice recognition with no training. I can tell it to dial a certain phone number or tell it to dial a name which it looks up in the address book. Ali and I both tried it various times with various scenarios and it didn’t screw up once. It is a great feature when you are trying to dial from a car. I installed a movie player and copied Monsters Inc to the SD card. The version of the movie was compressed for phones so the quality wasn’t great but I can play normal PC divx movies on it as well with the only limit being having the available space on the SD card. I took a stupid picture of myself and associated it with my address book entry so when I call Ali from my cell phone she gets the dumb picture on her screen. Yesterday I threw on an IM client that allows Ali to hop on instant messenger anytime, anywhere and shoot of a message to one of her “buddies” I have only scratched the surface of what can be done on the device. It is just awesome stuff.
A month ago I commited to Ali to go to a month of ballroom dance classes that are held at one of the city rec centers. This is something that Ali has talked about forever and something I have avoided equally long. Ali loves to dance and is very good at it. I don’t enjoy dancing. Even though I am coordinated in most athletic endeavors, dancing is very tough for me. For some reason my brain short circuits trying to put steps together. However I have been gritting it out for the past month, every Monday night from 7-8. I’ve even been practicing outside of class a bit and I’m able to do most of the basic steps ok now, but I am far from being good. It’s a struggle for me every minute I am doing it, but I have plugged through it. Our instructor is very nice and the handful of other people in the class have been supportive. Last night was the final class of the month. Our instructor wanted us to sign up for the next month, which I resisted. First I commited to Ali to do a month of the classes, which I did. Second, it is a major pain in the ass to get home at 9pm every Monday and then have to haul ass to get stuff done for the following day. I told Ali that we can do more classes but I did not want it to be a 12 month a year thing. Our instructor was disappointed that I wanted to take December off however I told her that I would keep practicing. I think she thinks that I won’t be back but I plan to do it more, just not hardcore, I don’t enjoy it enough to do it that much. My drive to do it is more driven by not wanting to suck at something more than any hidden desire to be Fred Astaire. At this point I am confident enough that I could take Ali out on the dance floor and at least display some semblance of dancing. I know Ali appreciates my effort and as I said from the beginning, I know it is a good thing to experience things outside the box of your comfort zone.