Keener came down for a long weekend. Troy is a unique visitor. Typically when most company arrives, the agenda is pretty standard, go to the beach, go out to dinner, see the sights a bit. Now we do some of that with Troy too but we also get to do fun things like going to the dog track, the casino, playing video games and drinking so much beer that the recycle bin is overflowing with empties. His flight was delayed and didn’t arrive until a bit after 10. We went back to our place and stayed up for awhile shooting the breeze. Troy is one of the few individuals that I am able to have long rambling conversations with, which is a rarity in my world. We didn’t get to bed till after midnight, a trend that continued throughout most of his time here.
When I was trying to get ready for bed, I flicked on the bathroom light and was startled by a full size adult tree frog staring at me as he stuck to the side of a cabinet. I went out back and grabbed the net I use to capture other wildlife but in my haste, I didn’t close the bathroom door. When I got back, the frog was gone. Ah shit! My exclamations had startled Ali and I told her there was a frog on the loose which freaked her out. So we began a 20 minute search for this frog. I was cursing myself for not closing the door to enclose him. I had no idea if he hopped into the bedroom, under the bed, into a crevice…. he could be anywhere. We could not find him. We gave up and went to bed paranoid that we would only find the frog when we smelled his decomposing remains some day soon. We were relieved when Ali found the frog the next morning hanging on the inside of the shower curtain. I captured him and released him back into the wild, still wondering exactly how he managed to get into our bathroom.
On Friday I started out trying to introduce Keener to the madness of World of Warcraft. I have been encouraging him to get the game so I would have a strong ally in the game. He has resisted strongly after seeing the grip the game has on me. For some reason he thinks it would be a bad thing. I wow’d him a bit by showing him the ropes, I killed a bunch of horde in cold blood and demonstrated how vast the in-game world is. He was impressed and I could tell he was enticed. I brought up the character creation screen, encouraging him to create a character just for fun to try things out. He toed the line but would not cross it by creating his own named character. I was bummed but I think I may have planted enough of a seed that he might just take the dive sometime.
We then decided to hit the beach. It wasn’t very crowded. We ate lunch there and then just sat out for a bit. I warned Troy that we shouldn’t stay out long as the sun is more intense in FLA and it is easy to burn quick. It turns out I had my shirt off a little longer than him and I was the one that wound up getting burned. My chest was a bright, painful red. Nothing like taking your own advice.
When we got back on Friday we started drinking heavily. Keener was fine with us just ordering pizza and hanging out. (again something most guests would not want to do) Keener attended to some FF league business and monitored his affairs up north on his laptop out on our lanai (which was connected wirelessly to my home LAN) Again I spent some time in WoW, again demonstrating the fun of attacking horde. We also took some time out to introduce Troy to the world of Jack Lalanne. He was dumbfounded by what he saw but he also sort of understood why the guy is compelling to watch. I think the face-a-tonics was his favorite.
On Saturday morning we were going to the dog track but we had the morning free. We decided to dust off my xbox, which hasn’t seen the light of day since WoW, and play some online tennis. Instead of competing against each other as we have always done, primarily in video game football, we competed as a team in online doubles matches. It seemed like the vast majority of the teams we faced were longtime, hardcore players whom were very good, but even so, we mostly held our own and played pretty well. We(I) had the attitude taunt button in use quite often, to taunt the other team whether we were losing or winning. Keener brings out that side of me. It was a lot of fun.
We got to the track a few minutes before the first race kicked off. It looked like they did some minor renovations to the clubhouse level, with a new bar and bathroom. However the renovations didn’t do much to change the overall low brow aura of the place. We quickly picked our tickets and promptly lost. This scene was repeated over and over and over again throughout the afternoon. There were a few sideshows to help lighten the mood despite the lack of luck. There was some Hispanic guy wandering around that evidently didn’t know how to use his cell phone. He said “Hello, hello” into the phone at LEAST 25 times. It was maddening, everyone in the general vicinity took notice of this man. All of us were wondering why if someone didn’t respond to his hello the first 2 or 3 times, why they would respond to HELLO number 19 or 20. At the table behind me was an Indian guy. He looked very mild mannered with a button down shirt and glasses. However when the 40-1 horse he picked in a race came back a winner, he transformed. He kept punching into his hand, yelling “Come on mother f’r, open it up, open it up” as his horse ran down the stretch. He just kept saying it. It was odd. For some reason it just sounds funny hearing obscenities with an accent. Then behind Keener there was an old man with his 2 grand daughters. He was a loud mouth. He had big, gaudy gold chains around his neck. Evidently he suggested a trifecta to his granddaughters to play but they didn’t place it because the one had to blow her nose. The trifecta actually hit. So the rest of the afternoon, Troy and I had to hear this annoying old man crow to anyone that would listen to how he called an 1100 dollar winner and his grand daughters blew it. He went on and on. Two tables down we spotted an old man sitting at a table with his old wife. He had his race program in front of him, pouring over the info. His wife was across the table reading her book. We never saw any interaction between them. At one point we saw she had her head down on the table, catching a few zzzz’s. Troy and I commented on the dedication of a woman going to the track with her husband only to be ignored.
I only won one quinella outright out of 14 races, a far cry from the success I enjoyed my first few times at the track. Troy had even less success. So when the last race was up, we decided to take a chance and do a boxed one dollar trifecta. How it works is that in an 8 dog race you pick 5 dogs. Out of these 5 dogs, 3 of them must finish 1-2-3. It is an expensive bet, 60 bucks. But we split the cost down the middle in hope of turning a bad day at the track into a good one in one swift turn. We figured we had over half the field working in our favor. So we picked the 5 best dogs (in our opinion) and held our breath. We watched in dismay as one of the three dogs we didn’t pick was in contention for the top 3. We focused on the dog and encouraged others to pass him. We felt relieved as the dog faded towards the end and was passed, unfortunately he was passed by another dog in the pool of 3 we didn’t pick! Son of a bitch. So we finished with a bang, losing the biggest bet I ever placed at one time. It sucked. At least I was able to get out of that environment. Hanging at a place filled with hardcore gamblers makes you feel like a bit of a degenerate yourself.
Saturday night we decided to go out to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Although it is a big national chain, Troy was never there. It was full with a lot of the Naples glitz and glamour crowd. The wait was only around 15 minutes, not bad at all for a Saturday night. I told Ali I would abstain from drinking since I got drunk the night before at home and still felt a bit off. She drank a few glasses of wine which flipped a switch in her. She started talking in depth about various subjects. It bordered on lunacy at times but was mostly entertaining. We all had leftovers and all sampled their cheesecake which is fantastic. But it is so rich there was no way I could eat an entire piece without feeling ill so I had some of Ali’s. After dinner we headed home and played some more online tennis, again losing more than winning. Keener had to battle through a sore thumb from playing earlier in the day.
Sunday was Troy’s last full day in Florida. Surprisingly, Troy was interested in participating in Ali and my normal Sunday morning run. I warned him that running in the Florida heat and humidity was a lot different than running in an air conditioned gym on a treadmill. He still was into it. So we hit the track. We walked to warm up and then started the running part. I was unsure if I would be able to run because of the knee problems of the last week and a half I had, but I was able to run normally. Troy made it through a mile. I could tell he was laboring but he made it, no small accomplishment. Ali did a 5th running lap while I stayed back with Troy and gave him gatorade and a towel. We walked a bit and then ran another 2 laps for good measure. We headed home and jumped in the pool to cool down our body temperature and then got ready to hit the beach once again.
We went to Clam Pass this time, a beach I hadn’t been to in awhile. It was hot as hell. Minutes after getting setup on the beach we were in the water, which was too warm to be very cooling. I kept a t-shirt on the entire time to protect my still beet red chest which helped it feel even hotter. We walked the beach a bit, threw the football around and read for a bit. However not much more than an hour later we had enough of the broiler-like conditions and packed up.
I wanted to show Troy the indian casino that I had talked about many times but never took him to. I never had a good time there as they had lame games and the building itself is little more than a warehouse with paint. However I was a bit surprised to see they had gotten some newer machines that were actually enjoyable to play. They still didn’t have any of the good table games like blackjack, craps and roulette but at least they had video poker finally. Troy and I spent a good couple hours there. Troy had a bit of good luck early and was actually ahead. I suggested to him that he should cash out and move to a different machine, to which he paused for a second and then decided to just keep pouring cash into the machine. It was an odd Monopoly machine that was costing him a minimum of 2.25 per spin. He hit a bad streak of luck and soon ate through all of his credits he had built up. I burned through a 20 on the same machines and decided I had enough of that. I moved to a video poker machine and managed to play it for about 30 minutes and came out 5 cents down. We actually went and got “Players Cards” because doing so allowed us to be entered for a 500 dollar drawing at 6pm. We didn’t win but kept our cards in the machines we were playing to build up points, just like they do in other casinos. We walked out of there actually pleased with the experience overall.
When we got home, again Troy was fine with just heating up our warmups from the night before and relaxing at home. We watched some TV and then played some more tennis. However the lack of sleep and lots of drinking really dulled Keeners skills as the night went on. By the time the last match finished I was basically playing 2 on 1. We had to get out the door by 5:30 am the next morning to get him to the airport so we hit the sack.
I woke up, feeling like hell after a rotten’s night sleep and drug myself out of bed. I drank a red bull to help me with the drive to the airport to send Troy on his way. We both had a good time and it is too bad that we have a 1200 mile cushion that keeps us from getting together more often. It was an exhausting few days but we had a great time just being guys.
Even though I was comatose, I still had a long list of shit to get done in my last free day before returning to work. I plowed into the list even though it was the last thing I felt like doing. After 4 or 5 hours of hot, sweaty, annoying work, the list was done. We jumped in the pool to cool off. We then spent the majority of the rest of the day and night getting caught up on Big Brother 6. Between Ali being in PA and then Troy visiting this weekend, we had a full 2 weeks of shows we hadn’t seen. Going through them in progression brought me to a near fever pitch with anger directed towards a despicable female player that did the ultimate backstab. They were in a competition where to win the HoH (the leader) role in the house, they had to stand in a greenhouse with their finger on a button. It was simple, last person standing, wins. It went on forever. It was down to this woman and Kaysar, a guy that was just brought back into the house after America voted him back in. I like Kaysar, he is a smart, strategic player. The 2 of them had been in there for 14 HOURS. The woman had been crying to Kaysar saying how she wanted to win HoH so she could get pictures of her boyfriend and how she would do whatever he wanted in that position of power if he would ler her have the competition. After having her swear on her life that she would follow through on what he wanted, he let go of his button. She then promptly didn’t follow through on one condition of the agreement and then followed up by later putting Kaysar up to be kicked out of the house. She totally lied, totally ignored her word and her attitude after doing all these things was so disgustingly smug I was ready to reach through the TV and strangle her. Her actions resulted in getting Kaysar kicked out again. I was cursing at the tv repeatedly, besides myself with anger at this little troll backstabbing my favorite player after a 14 hour marathon where she promised him the world and thanked him with a boot in the ass. I was pleased when the following show she herself got the boot when Kaysar’s old allies took her out. She is pathetic.
A rather long entry.
