Archives January 2006

I have packed my lunch and taken it to work for 15 years or more, starting way back to when I was driving truck for Goodwill. It’s funny how my lunch has transformed over the years. When I was younger I gave absoultely zero thought to what I shoved in my mouth. At Goodwill I would normally have a mid-morning snack of chocolate milk and tastycake blueberry pie, probably a 600-700 calorie snack. Then I would have my lunch on top of it. My lunch at that time had some variety with the sandwich portion of it, normally being some sort of lunch meat. The rest of the lunch included yogurt, milk and maybe a half a dozen double stuff oreos. Later the sandwich portion of the lunch became standardized as PBJ with TONS of jelly and very little peanut butter.

I started to clean up my lunch slowly over the years. I swapped out the half dozen double stuff’s for a half dozen of the low fat oreos. Then I cut down from 6 oreos to 4. That lunch configuration was standard for a long time. However in the last few years it mutated further. I cut the jelly out of the PBJ, realizing the jelly was nothing but empty calories, I loaded up on the PB (more protein). I went from big pieces of italian white bread to wheat bread, then to low carb wheat bread (smaller slices) The oreos were phased out and are now replaced by a zone bar with 16 grams of protein. The most recent change swapped out the yogurt for those cottage cheese/fruit combos that offer more protein and half the sugar of yogurt. The only thing that has remained constant in the lunch is about a pint of skim milk. Instead of chocolate milk and tastycakes, I have a cup of coffee in the morning and a protein shake in the afternoon. It was tough to give up the junk food staples that I enjoyed, however now I find I enjoy the healthier choices nearly as much.

To Ali’s dismay, I excitedly tuned the satellite radio to hear Howard’s first day. It was great to hear him again after 9 or 10 months of listening to the local “talent”. Howard sounds the same, Artie was going overboard with all the swearing and everyone else sounded the same with an occasional shit or f dropped in there. I cringed as Artie carried on, feeling Ali’s disdain weighing on my back like a 50 pound weight. Oh well, if it gets crazy I can flip over to music for a bit. I actually brought my wireless headphones into work so I could listen without offending others if need be. However right now I am listening to him over the speakers, hopefully low enough that it doesn’t carry out into the hallway. It feels good to hear Howard.

It got real cold (for Florida) this weekend. When I got up Saturday morning the thermometer read 42 degrees, when I got up Sunday morning it was 38! It was actually cold enough that there was frost on the ground. Thankfully Ali went around on Friday and covered up sensitive plants to protect them. It was an odd feeling walking Nicki with the frozen grass crackling under my flip flops. In a weird way it was nice, if for only a few hours to feel a semblance of winter. By mid day it was close to 70.

We got a bunch of restaurant giftcards for Christmas and decided to use one Saturday night. We were hesitant to do so because we are now in the heart of snowbird season but invited my mom to come along and chanced it. Well it was as bas as we imagined. We went to PF Changs and were not happy to get a quote of 90-100 minutes wait. We put our names in anyway and I said I would go down the parking lot to see if the wait was any better at Romano’s, only slightly better, a 1:15 wait. So we decided to stay put at PF Changs, I confidently said that they always over estimate the wait time. Haha. Well an hour forty five and 60 bucks in alcohol later, we finally got seated. Never again will I go to a restaurant during prime eating hours, during season, that was ridiculous.

I played a lot of WoW this weekend, a whole lot. I have been working some different characters which has sucked me into playing much more in the past month or so.

A nasty cold front is blowing through today for the weekend. Keep an eye out on the weather at the Duffey homestead, the temp could drop into the 30’s!

Yesterday in the mail I got an envelope from the pool cage company that came out to give an estimate. I was anxiously awaiting to see the number so I could have an idea of how heavy the hit will be. Woah… the estimate came in at just over 17 grand. That is more than the total estimate I got from Allstate for ALL the damage which included replacing the water equipment, pool cover and temporary fencing costs. If I went ahead with the repairs right now, going with that estimate and not pursuing any further reimbursment, my out of pocket would approach 10k. So I contacted the insurance company for a supplemental claim and I can only hope that FEMA comes through with a few bucks.

After work Ali and I did a training run. Ali has been reading a book on women’s running and in it it recommends doing training runs 2-3 times a week of a half hour or so. So we ran around Ali’s work for a half hour. Ali kept a very strong pace, just a hair slower than what she ran at our last race. Her pace is now good enough that I have to work much more to keep stride. I’m really proud of her progress.

Last night I was up way late playing WoW, close to midnight. I started a new character on a different server to play with Charlie, since he jumped over there with some co-workers of his. Needless to say I was a bit tired this morning. I did all my morning chores and then poured myself a bowl of shredded wheat. I sat down in front of my computer to read my overnight email and realized that I put a fork in my cereal bowl….

While I was waiting at the dentist I was flipping through a car magazine. I came across pictures of Dodge’s latest retro entry the 2009 Dodge Challenger. Damn this thing looks bad ass. I love the looks of these brand new versions of the classic muscle cars I longed after in my youth.

Happy 2006! My 2006 New Years celebration was rather mild. On New Years eve we watched the 40 year old Virgin and I watched Minority Report for the second time. 40 year old Virgin was very funny, dirty but funny. Ali didn’t appreciate all the boobs in plain sight but she got over it. We had considered maybe going to the casino for New Years Eve but decided against it because Ali was feeling a bit sick and we didn’t want to fight the crowds. We didn’t make any big plans because we were doing a 5k run at 7:30 am New Years day. Minority Report got done at 5 till midnight, just in time to switch over to see Dick Clark’s New Years Rockin eve. Dick hasn’t been seen in public since his stroke last year. Even though he had a stroke, I expected Dick to be more or less back to normal, he’s Dick Clark, the guy that never gets old. Woah, was I ever disturbed by what I saw and heard. Dick could hardly talk and when he was on camera you could tell he had dead areas on his face. Ali thought it was admirable that he did it, which I guess it was, but it doesn’t change the pity and remorse I felt seeing a staple in American entertainment struggle so much to just speak. It really made me sad. It won’t be the same with Ryan Seacrest hosting the show in years to come. During the broadcast he referred to Dick as Dick Carey, mixing up names with Mariah Carey, whom he was interviewing. Damn she is a big moose now, she used to be a cute little thing.

So even with staying home, we didn’t fall asleep till after 12:30 am. We reluctantly pulled ourselves out of bed at 5:30 to get ready. Ali still was feeling somewhat ill and now it was compounded with extreme tiredness. This race was more or less casual. Only hardcore people are crazy enough to do this. They had the timer going but they didn’t hand out awards or keep individual times. It was more of a fun run. We were excited to use Ali’s GPS watch but we were pissed to see it had next to no battery charge left. Evidently I left it on after downloading it’s data like a dumb ass. We only got the first half mile in before it totally died. The pace was quick and we settled in with a few people for pretty much all of the run. Two older guys were carrying on a conversation for the majority of the run which I knew had to be annoying the hell out of Ali. Even though Ali was tired and sick, she kept the strong pace up for pretty much the entire run. When we hit the home stretch we saw the timer at 29:10, holy s, we could do a sub-30! Ali got a burst of energy and we accelerated towards the finish, clicking it at 29:42, her first sub-30 5k! It really is amazing how much improvement she has shown in a short period of time. It was funny, by 9am Sunday we were back home. Ali took a shower and went back to bed, she was wiped.

While Ali slept I did stuff around the house. I took down the Christmas tree but left the outside lights up because we like how they look, We figured I can keep them up another week or so yet without appearing too lazy. Normally I drag the tree over to the ditch and toss it in to wither, turn brown and die. This year I decided to try to perform an xmas tree miracle. I made a fresh cut on the bottom, trimmed some more branches off and threw it in a big pot with fertile soil, evergreen food and lots of water. Even though I know it is pretty much impossible to root a cut Christmas tree, I figure at the least I can keep it alive for a bit longer. It still was basically green and took very little water inside the house so I decided to give it a go. Yea it’s dumb but somehow I felt compelled to do so. I wanted to save our Christmas bush. I’ll try to water it daily and see how long it sticks around.

We finally saw Napoleon Dynamite. Now we know where all the Vote for Pedro stuff is about. It was funnier than I thought it would be. It basically had the most minimal plot you can imagine and instead focused on the incredibly wacked characters. You have to see it to believe it. Ali read somewhere that the guy that played Napoleon was paid a thousand dollars for the film. It made 40 million, doh!

Our neighbors asked us if we wanted to go out on the casino boat on Monday. We always wanted to do it so we agreed. Our only concern was we would have to leave Nicki alone for 9 hours and we were afraid of an excrement accident waiting for us. The ship leaves out of Fort Myers beach which took us about an hour to get to. The ship was big, bigger than I expected. The reason this appealed to me was because they had table games, something the casino by our house does not have. You basically sail out to international waters and park it for 4 hours, gamble and then tool back in. On the way out we had a brunch buffet and then they had bingo on the top deck to entertain you until the hard core gambling started.

It was funny how the old people camped on certain slot machines before the big moment, staking their spot like a parade watcher with lawn chairs. Then all at once, all the machines come on. I left Ali upstairs to play a progressive slot and I went downstairs to play blackjack. The smallest stakes were 10 dollar tables which sorta sucked but I plopped myself down and had at it. I had some early luck and turned my 80 bucks into 145, however I hit a real long streak of bad luck, it seemed I was dealt 12 to 15 for every hand. I busted my 80 bucks and went up dejectedly to Ali. However just as I came up she was cashing out 560 credits, she hit it pretty big which offset my loss. We had lots of time out at sea yet so I went back down to try again. This time I did much better and finshed up 45 bucks ahead. I stopped and Ali and I tried some video poker which was a money vacuum. After blowing 30 bucks, I convinced Ali to give blackjack a try. She watched me play enough to have a general feel. We sat down at a table by ourselves with Ali playing and me coaching. It was cool cause the dealer would help her as well. Early on she wanted to do some dumb moves like hitting on a 14 when the dealer is showing a 4 or 5. However she soon had most basic concepts down. However we started with 100 bucks and had another bad run. On one hand the dealer had a 7 card 21. We were down to three 5 dollar chips. Then all of a sudden her luck changed and in the span of 5 minutes she was back to even. Her luck continued and at one point we were up over 200 bucks. At the end she had a mini-losing streak but we still walked away with 145 bucks. Ali really got into it and by the time we were done she understood why I preferred table games so heavily over slots. Despite my early blackjack losses and the slot setbacks, we were just about even for the day. We were far better off than our neighbors who took a bath playing nothing but slots all day. It was a good time for sure and has been added to the activity lists for any guests that we have that enjoy gambling. Even if you don’t want to gamble, you could just eat, drink at the bar and hang out on the top deck catching some rays.

On New Years Day morning, after we got back from the run, I got an unexpected call from a guy from FEMA, saying he was in our area and wanted to come out to inspect our damage. The call took me off guard as I wasn’t expecting it. After I originally submitted my application to FEMA months ago, I got a letter back saying we didn’t qualify but we could submit again once our insurance claim was processed. A few weeks ago I faxed in the itemized insurance claim to them but did not hear a peep since then. I figured we still didn’t qualify. So anyway, the guy came out, looked around for 5 minutes and was done. I asked why he was working New Years day. He said he was from out of the area and had nothing else to do so he decided to work. Odd to me but it was cool to at least have a shot at getting some FEMA money to chop into that big hurricane deductible we have.

So the 2 or 3 week holiday short week experience ends this week. Even with the blues I felt throughout, it was a positiive time period overall.