Archives 2005

Yesterday I was off for MLK day. I celebrated the holiday by holing myself up in the house all day and doing basically nothing except playing World of Warcraft. I’m officially addicted. I haven’t spent an entire day (and night) playing a game for at least a half decade if not longer. It’s just that good of a game. It really can fit any style of play. If you want to have wall to wall battles, no problem. If you want to relax, go fishing, go to the store to buy and sell stuff, go play the WoW ebay auction, sure you can do that too. The driving force for me is knowing what abilities and merchandise is waiting for me as I attain certain levels which unlock these things. I highly recommend the game, if you dare try it. It’s like computer game crack.

Saturday was the big flea market. The weather was less than great with temperatures in the lower 60’s and an off and on misty rain. But even so the event was a success for us. We sold probably 3/4 of what we had, made 80 bucks or so and had a good time. Selling as part of a big event is definitely the way to go. Having lots of bodies walk by along with having most of your stuff priced at a dollar or less helps a lot. We had a few very annoying people that wanted to negotiate on 50 cent items. Some of them we told to get lost, later in the day we said “Fine” as we rolled our eyes. There were amazing deals to be found. I scored my best flea market score EVER. As I walked around I saw a big box with 2 ceiling fans in them. As I looked closer I realized these were 2 of the exact same type of fans we have installed throughout the house. We have a couple spots that needed fans yet but never got around to doing it yet. The fans were dirty but were was easily cleanable and fans don’t break . It looked like someone just wanted a different style. The sticker said MAKE OFFER. I talked to the lady who was running the table. It was somethiong that was donated to the school so she didn’t care what it sold for. She said “I’ll tell ya what, you offer a dollar, i’ll take it. It’s one less big box.” SWEET. These fans cost like 80 bucks each. I got 2 for a buck! I hooked one up later in the weekend and it worked just fine! I also scored a women’s set of golf clubs in an awesome leather Ladies Cobra bag for 5 BUCKS! Another steal that will let me take Ali to the driving range to see if she enjoys the sport. The flea market was a nice success.

After the flea market we ran home and cleaned up. I asked Ali if she wanted to do dinner and a movie, which sounded good to her. We went to Ruby Tuesdays and had a great dinner even though we had a young ditz as a waitress that didn’t seem to know much about her job. After dinner we planned to go see Meet The Fockers. The theater was packed! We waited in line for 10-15 minutes to get a ticket only to hear SOLD OUT when we got to the window. It pissed us off that they didn’t have the SELL OUTS posted so we didn’t have to waste time in line. The stuff that wasn’t sold out didn’t interest us so we bagged it and called it an early night.

I have to admit I was very nervous about the Eagles playoff game against the Vikings. I, like everyone else didn’t really know what to expect from them since they shut it down early and also the effect of the TO injury. Well they came out and played a strong game. The receivers performed better than expected and the defense made big plays. The birds left at least another 10 points off the board from some screw ups but they still managed to win easily. Next up Atlanta, they seem to be the bandwagon pick, especially after the dismantling of the Rams. I dunno maybe I’m dumb but I’m not that impressed. They seem one dimensional and I have faith in JJ to scheme to limit what they do best. Plus, they aren’t playing indoors in 72 degree climate control this week. It should slow them down a bit.

Last night after work I started going around the house, room to room, looking for items to try to get rid of at the yard sale. I had a pretty impressive collection built up when I realized that I didn’t get stuff out of the shed yet. So I grab the flashlight, throw on some flip flops and go out to see what I can sell. I spotted the push lawn mower in the back of the shed. We haven’t had to use that in a couple years so why not sell it? However it was buried behind a lot of stuff, including a spike lawn aerator that gets pulled behind the tractor. I moved the aerator out of the way but didn’t make the extra effort to lift and turn it so the spikes were facing the wall. Instead I just slid it to the side and made a mental note to be careful to not back into it. So, as I am yanking on the mower, trying to pull it out of course I back into the spikes with my right heel, impaling myself. The jolt of pain made me jerk my left leg back into the aerator as well, even harder than the right one. I’m in pain and incredibly pissed at myself. I shine the light down on my feet and see the flip flops getting bloody but it wasn’t streaming out so I defiantly pulled the mower up front to the garage, bloody feet and all and then walk around the back and yell to Ali to grab the med kit and meet me in the bathroom. I surveyed the damage. 2 big holes, one in each heel. The left one went in deeper than the right so it hurt more. We washed it out, dumped hydrogen pyroxide on it and then put neosporin and a band aid over each wound. Like most puncture wounds, they didn’t bleed all that much but the imagery of those dirty, rusty spikes entering my feet made me realize that my last tetnaus shot was probably in my early 20’s.

Overnight my heels swelled and today I am walking like I am an old man. I have to walk with my weight off the heels. I have a doctor appointment later this morning.

Last night I was up until almost midnight playing Keener in XBox football. I haven’t played the game hardly at all and haven’t played Keener since he was down to visit months ago. The first game was close for awhile and then some late errors and deliberate screw ups by me led to a blowout score. Keener was trying to rub it in, continuing to go deep even though the game was in hand, kicking onside kicks and going for 2 point conversions, just to be a dick. It was ok, I would do the same thing.

Of course I couldn’t let it go at that. We immediately started game 2. I used a different defensive and offensive strategy and beat him by 3 touchdowns. Even though that was satisfying, I wouldn’t be content until it was decided by a 3rd and final tie breaking game. This game was close. Keener jumped to a 10-0 lead only to fall behind 17-10. Late in the game, Westbrook who had been running wild all game, broke free for a touchdown with less than a minute to go to put me up 24-17. When Keener got the ball back he had around 30 seconds to go. With my stiff defense and relentless QB pressure I wasn’t very worried and called a deep zone package that should have prevented a big pass play. But then the XBOX AI kicked in with a little boost in the pants for the player that is behind, something that has been built into video football games forever to keep games close. Keener completes a deep pass that goes for nearly 80 yards and I just barely manage to stop the guy at the 5 yard line before he scored. Now it was nitty gritty time. Keener had no timeouts due to some sloppy time management so he was afraid to run the ball, because if I stopped him the game would be over. He runs two pass plays, both incomplete. So it is now 3rd and goal, 2 seconds left, his last chance. I figure he may actually run it this time since it would be his last play either way. However he drops back for a 3rd consecutive pass attempt, can’t find anyone and get s sacked for the final play of the game. My revenge was complete. My video football dominance legacy was vindicated. With as late as it was, the adrenaline rush gave me some energy to quick hop on the puter and level my Wow character to 15. I am exhausted today but it was worth it.

I am very good about changing the oil in my vehicles. It’s always done every 3-4000 miles. I used to do it myself when money was tighter. However once I became more enviromentally conscious I started feeling bad about dumping the oil back behind the shed so I began having quick lube places do it. The last time I took my truck to the quick lube they showed me my transmission fluid. It was muddy in color. Trans fluid is usually reddish in color. Yuck. The truck has almost 60k on it and I never had the trans fluid touched. Well I plan to drive this truck into the ground so I want to keep things running well for as long as possible. So I went back yesterday to have them “flush” the trans.

The quick lube place makes me a bit nervous. Each time I go there it seems like nearly their entire workforce has turned over. I was greeted by a young guy with gold capped teeth. He actually was there 2 weeks ago so he must be one of the veterans. I told him I wanted the trans flushed. So the crew went into action and I could immediately tell then never flushed a toyota trans before. They struggled getting the skid plates off and fumbled around for awhile until they were actually ready to begin the flush. The flush machine has a little window where you can see the fluid through. When the flush started, the window was basically black. After about 15 minutes of flushing with fresh fluid, the window turned to a nice bright red. However after the flush, the boys were busy tag teaming an oil change on a full size dump truck in the next bay. As I was waiting, I was talking to the truck driver and got some interesting facts from him.

An oil change on the dump truck takes 40 quarts of oil, the oil gets changed every 10,000 miles and it costs about 300 dollars per change.

The truck is going to need a new set of back tires, they will cost approximately 2400 to replace. The front tires run 800 a pair.

He said the reason there are so many dump trucks lined up in the road on my commute is the ordinance that won’t allow the trucks onto the road until 7 am. After that they all pour out at once and create the mess. (made mental note to make sure I am out the door by 6:50 am every work day)

So anyway, eventually one of the service guys remembered I was standing there and came back over to disconnect the machine and put stuff back together. I drove off, content to finally address a service need of the truck that I had put off forever.

Yep I blogged about my trans flush, noone said blog entries had to be good.

More and more tsunami videos are popping up, these are just incredible. You need bittorrent to download most of these.

Nothing thrilling, insightful or captivating is coming to mind right now, so what else is new. Here is some big news, I added 2 more Hot Wheels cereal badged cars to my live web cam view. The Lucky Charms hot rod wagon and the Trix Rabbit convertible. They join an already crowded picture featuring my bobblehead Spidey.

Sometime this week I need to try to pull out and organize all of my unwanted stuff to be sold at a school based garage sale this Saturday. I am hoping for better results than last year when I sat out in the chilly weather for 6 hours to make 20 bucks. Everything will be firesale priced. I am assuming there will be a lot of sellers there so that should help generate better traffic.

Since I got my Sirius radio, my listening routine at work goes like this, listen to regular radio until Stern goes off the air between 10 and 11 then the regular radio gets shut off and I listen to the NFL station all day on Sirius. It’s hardcore NFL talk 24 hours a day and somehow I don’t tire of it. For some reason, it is more enjoyable for me to have talk radio on in the background instead of music, normally.

I haven’t flown my RC planes in months, maybe 6 months or more. I’m not sure why. It’s odd how a hobby can fall in and out of favor. I had no real negative experience with it and my last flights were aerial photography runs that generated some really cool pics. For whatever reason, I just have no inclination to charge up the batteries and go out and fly. I’m too busy leveling my WoW character anyway.

On the way home from work last night I was cursing a SUV that was just hanging in my blind spot as I wanted to pull out and pass. If you are in the passing lane, you are supposed to be passing cars, not trying to invent a new sport, synchronized driving. Well finally I slow down enough so I can get behind this dope and it becomes apparent why he is driving like he has blinders on with cruise control engaged. He’s talking on his cell phone paying no attention to the environment around him. Then as I swing behind him I see he has a Bush bumper sticker and a Jesus fish on the back. Ah a triple crown winner, annoying dope.

Since I raised the red flag last week when I noticed I gained a few pounds from my holiday cookie hoarding, I did additional cardio work at the gym, tried to resume a more normal eating pattern and expected my weigh in last night to show I knocked a number or two off the scale. Instead I gained another 2 pounds! 4 alarms, sound the siren, this is getting out of hand. So more severe measures have to be implemented. Just these few pounds make my clothes feel different and I don’t like the feel. By the end of the month I plan to be back to my pre-holiday fighting weight. It seems like the cookies apply weight in a delayed fashion that sneaks up on you, damn them to hell.

After scratching the surface of World of Warcraft I am discovering just how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are thousands of people whose reality is more grounded in a virtual kingdom than the here and now. Last week I found out that a common practice is selling “virtual” in game goods on ebay. For example, you can buy in game gold for real dollars. I saw tons of auctions selling 100 in game gold for 50 bucks. There are tons of auctions like this and tons of buyers for the auctions. People also sell in game characters that they spent countless hours creating. These sell for big bucks, 500 dollars is a median number. This phenomenom is amazing to me. Paying real dollars for virtual perks, unreal. Oh yea my warrior is up to Level 13 🙂

The weekend was ok. We did the Xmas undecorating on Saturday. As predicted, the tree removal was a bummer. As I carried it out to the ditch to it’s final resting place, I tried to not look at it as I tossed it. Yea it’s weird, stupid or whatever you want to call it but it’s just part of my quirks. I watched some of the playoff games. I never would have picked the Vikes to beat the Packers but their improbable win means they will be coming to Philly. I like the Eagles chances. Hopefully they are sharp and not rusty as I fear.

We saw Ocean’s 12 on Saturday as well. It was a good flick but I think I enjoyed the first one more. The novelty of having all those name actors together sort of wore off and there were more plot misdirections than I cared to make sense of. Just rent this one on DVD.

This is my first 5 day week of work since early December, bummer. We have next Monday off though, have to love government job’s.

As I am on the ARC swinger at the gym, I am watching one of the news channels. They intro a piece as an American woman who doesn’t know what happened to a family member in the tsunami. “Aw that is really tragic” I thought to myself, so I maintained my focus on tv number 5 out of 9 to see the interview. Well I figured it was the woman’s husband, brother, sister, kid or something like that. It’s her aunt. Ok, still sad. As the interview continues the following is revealed, this is an aunt the woman hasn’t talked to in years, the woman only knows she was in Phuket based on a postcard that was sent to her uncle before the tsunami. The aunt worked as a stewardess for an airline for years but the woman had no idea which one. They posted a pic of the aunt on a plane saying they hoped to have someone identify the airline company. My intrigue by the end of the story turned to contempt. To me, this woman simply wanted face time on national TV to lament the potential loss of an aunt she didn’t even communicate with on an annual basis. Ridiculous.

I’ve been plugging away at World of Warcraft this week. My human warrior character is up to Level 9 (out of 60 possible) I have never played this type of game and I am still undecided on my feeling about it. The game is incredibly complex, incredibly large and requires incredible amounts of time if you want to progess through it. Some aspects of it are a bit slow and boring for me. I’m doing a lot of repetitive killing right now and I didn’t enjoy having to walk 5 minutes to get back to my corpse and revive after I was killed by animals one time and a kobald miner another. However the interaction with literally thousands of players opens up a near infinite number of possibilities so I think that is the draw. I’ll keep plugging away and see if I drift closer or further away from it. The time requirements really can whack things out of balance, something I try pretty hard to maintain.

I just got finished watching some of Spiderman 2 on my Gameboy SP. My own personal, dvd viewer, NES and GBA game system. I almost want to go on some sort of trip where I can whip out my little pocket sized piece of entertainment power. Technology rocks.

I’m feeling a bit down. One of those periods that will pass but makes me feel negative about most things while I am in the middle of it. Perhaps it is a post holiday letdown, something I normally go through. All of the Xmas interior decorations are still up (will come down this weekend), including the tree. It’s just sitting there with nothing under it but the derailed train, just waiting to be stripped and tossed in the ditch. I hardly look at it now, knowing it will soon be disposed of like a piece of trash. I stopped watering it last week. It’s a strange feeling, coldly disposing of something that was chosen carefully, delicately decorated and then cherished till Christmas day. Now it has transformed into an eyesore. Somewhere in there, are some parallels with life that I’d rather not think about. It is depressing some how.

Fittingly, I forgot to mention a senior moment I had last week at the gym. At the gym they have paper towel dispensers along with a cleaning solution mounted on each pillar in the building to clean equipment after you sweat all over it. The holder for the cleaner is like a holster, sort of. Well after doing my last set on a machine, I grabbed a paper towel and the cleaner spray bottle, cleaned the equipment and as I was doing so I sat the cleaner bottle on the floor. I then proceeded to throw out the paper towel and put the cleaner back. However when I went to take a drink out of my water bottle and found the cleaner in my hand, I realized I had put my water bottle into the holster on the wall. I laughed out loud, and didn’t bother to look around to see if anyone noticed my screw up. This stuff happens more often than I am comfortable with.