Archives March 2006

Last night after work Ali and I put in almost a 4.75 mile run. On Tuesday we did a little less than 4 and then the race last Saturday was 4 miles, meaning we put in 12 miles+ in the past 5 days. I believe that is the most we have done in that period of time to date. I’m feeling it today.

I finally got a reply back from my critical email regarding the LUNK ALARM.

Shawn,
Thank you for your question. We will certainly keep your points in mind.

Regards,

Candace Talon
Member Relations
Planet Fitness

Haha obviously a canned response. Stupid.

This weekend I am going to see if I am able to swap the driveshaft on my Tacoma. I got the correct one at the junkyard this week. Oh and also the Ford dealership took back the seatbelt part for the van without a problem. I have a bunch of other things on my mental list to take care of. Don’t forget on Saturday night we turn the clocks forward.

A few weeks ago my gym had the brilliant idea of installing a huge sign over the dumbbell racks. In huge letters it said LUNK ALARM with a defintion that read something like this:

LUNK – (lunk) someone who drops weights, grunts or judges others

Mounted on the sign is a big purple chaser light and above it is a siren, yes a siren. The first time I saw it, I figured the light and siren were there for effect, nothing more. The sign was rather overbearing, hypocritical (the sign itself is judging) and stupid but I just wrote it off as someone’s bad interpretation of a clever idea.

Well Tuesday over lunch I was at the gym, doing decline dumbbell presses. As I finished my set I lowered the weights to my side and sat them on end and then let them go as I sat up so they plopped on the floor, they may have “dropped” a total 3 inches and keep in mind these are rubber coated weights on a rubber floor. Just as I sit up I hear the f’in siren fire off for a second. It scared the shit out of me and I look around and spot the middle aged, little woman behind the front desk looking at me with a stupid grin on her face. I was pissed off. I think she just identified me as a LUNK! Me, the guy that wipes down the machines after he uses him, the guy that organizes the weight plates, the guy that has been there since the doors opened, a lunk. However I wasn’t 100% sure she directed it at me so I acted like nothing was going on. The noise scared everyone in the gym. The more time passed, the more my blood boiled at the ridiculousness of this device. However when I left I didn’t comment to the little troll behind the desk because I knew I was going to blow up. I was cursing myself as I walked out on the lot, knowing that I should have called her out on being an idiot, on having nothing better to do than observe members and try to embarrass them if she determined you put down a weight harder than she was comfortable with. But I didn’t, I was already late getting back from lunch and causing a scene would have been a mess. Yet, I know I would have felt better if I did.

So after I got back my anger continued to be amplified because it was compiled with the anger I had with myself for not freakin out right then and there. So instead I resorted to my specialty, an angry email. In the email I identified that the lunk alarm was the stupidest thing I ever saw in 20 years of going to a gym. I questioned the business sense in installing a device designed to embarrass it’s customers. I pointed out that having someone fire off a siren in an environment where people are routinely lifting heavy weights over their heads could easily cause a personal injury which would be squarely their fault. I used my name and real email address and sent it off. I received no response and haven’t seen the little bitch behind the desk since Tuesday. Who knows if they even got it our care about it but if that f’in thing ever goes off again I WILL go ballistic. The only bad thing is I am running out of gym options.

It has been very dry here, we have had next to zero rain the past couple months. I drove out to our Everglades City branch which takes me right through part of the Everglades. Normally the water is right next to the road, however now, the water is gone and instead has been replaced by large sandy spots and low grass. I never have seen it like that. It has to make the airboat tourist business challenging. Because of Hurricane Wilma, our office has been relocated to a FEMA supplied trailer.

This Saturday we had a 4 mile race in Lehigh Acres. Ali hasn’t run a race in a bout a month because of being sick. She still isn’t totally healthy yet and she also had a sore toe from kicking something awhile back. When we got there she was debating if she would be able to run at all because the toe was bothering her that much. She jumped into the registration line with me after deciding to give it a go. It was quite chilly Saturday morning with temperatures in the low 50’s. It is a pain in the ass when it is that chilly because it’s hard to get loose and to keep warm you wear extra clothes. However those extra clothes that feel good in the beginning make you feel very overheated by mid-race.

The race went well, all things considered. Ali struggled but managed to keep a pretty steady pace despite the cold weather, stiff wind in some parts and limited training.. We settled in running around a woman and her young kid, who was probably somewhere in the 10-11 year old range. I felt bad for the kid because his mom kept running ahead of him, trying to make him go faster. The kid was really struggling. But then when the finish line was in sight, the kid turned on the afterburners and sprinted to the finish, it was funny. We crossed the line in 39:24, not a blistering pace by Ali’s standard but it was still almost a full 3 minutes faster than the last 4 mile race we did on Thanksgiving day. I saw the moron that went ballistic on me for hearing something I didn’t say a couple races ago. He ignored me and I did the same. I told Ali I felt like bitch slapping the old geezer but she thought he wasn’t even worth the effort. Even running Ali’s pace I got 4th in my age group (out of 4). You just never know how many bodies are gonna show up.

After we got back I wanted to rip into my to do list so my Sunday would be laid back. The first two projects were failures. After two trips to the Ford dealer in an attempt to find the correct seat belt buckle I discovered it was still wrong. I paid almost 100 bucks for this damn part. The old one is riveted in place and evidently is a custom part that comes with the conversion package. Project two was to take a look at the driveshaft of the Tacoma to see if I would be able to swap it with the one I got from the junkyard myself. I roll underneath and look at the driveshaft. I look at the one I picked up. I compare again. Son of a bitch, it’s the wrong part again. The one I picked up is too short and if I were to guess, I would say it was for a non-extended cab model. So I have 350 dollars worth of wrong parts. So now I have to go through the bullshit process of trying to return them and get the mess straightened out. I can hardly wait.

Another project was replacing the filters on the reverse osmosis system. I pulled out the carbon filters and they didn’t look too bad. But then I decided to replace the main filter, which I think may have been replaced once in the 5 years we were there. It hasn’t been replaced because it was a royal pain in the ass to get out. After f’ing with it for a good half hour I got it out. It was nasty and had to be replaced. So we jumped in the party van with the dog and went to Home Depot. I found a filter but also spotted a deal they had on trees. They had 15 and 7 gallon plum, red plum and taiwan cherry trees. The 7 gallon trees were only 10 bucks and the 15 gallon only 25 bucks! It was a sweet deal and we needed some trees to replace the ones that got wiped out in the frost. So we drove home and picked up the truck and drove right back. We got two 7 gallon plums, one cherry and one red plum. We got them home and spent a couple hours getting it all in the ground. If they take hold, they will make a very nice addition to the landscape as they mature. By the time dinner time came around we were both tired, it was a busy day.

Sunday was very laid back, the day went something like this. Nicki gets me up at 6:30. I get up, take her out, eat breakfast reading email and checking the headlines. Then I settle in and play WoW for 3 hours while Ali sleeps. I take a break and water the landscape, wash the car and truck and then eat lunch. I played Wow for another few hours in the afternoon. We paid the bills. I finally got to watch the Transporter DvD my buddy from work loaned me. That movie started out decent but the just got ridiculous with the lunacy of the fight/chase scenes. Then we watched an episode of the new season of Surreal Life (outstanding) and finally settled down and read more of the Davinci code for a couple hours.

The Davinci code is really fascinating to me. It talks about a theory regarding Christianity/Jesus that I never heard before, yet supposedly has been something that has been spoken about for centuries. The theory undermines everything about the Christian religion and further cements my own personal views on the subject. It seems ironic that something as high and mighty as the christian faith would be based on lies, coverups and death, yet evidently there is ample history of this throughout time. So much hypocrisy it is sickening.

Business is great!
People are Terrific!
Life is Wonderful!

Noone will ever accuse me of being a good conversationalist, probably not even a marginally average one. Many times when someone says something I have no opinion about, wasn’t listening to, or don’t care about I used to always respond simply with the word “Cool” whether I thought it was cool or not. I have noticed that for some reason I have been replacing “Cool” in those situations with either “Crazy” or “That’s crazy…” Pathetic. Person – “Yea I was drving down the road and saw a bird in the sky” Me – “Crazy, mumble, mumble…”

Has anyone else noticed that the price of gas has gone up about 30 cents in the span of a week? Has anyone noticed that there has been no mention of it in the news at all? No reason, no explanation, no justification, just 30 cents more. Last week I paid 2.37 a gallon and this week the same gas station is selling gas for 2.69 I suppose the oil companies felt the need to put another quick billion or so into their already fat wallets. It makes me sick.

For awhile now I have received complimentary subscriptions to Eweek and Network World. The way it works is once a year you fill out a lengthy survey and they give you the subscription. In an effort to simplify my life, I realized that I get next to nothing out of these magazines so when my renewal notices came around this time, I ignored, deleted and threw them all away. They have been relentless. I keep getting the magazines month after month, each one wrapped in a special covering saying this is my absolute last issue if I don’t renew. Yet, the next month another one comes. I continually receive emails from them and junk mail, all pleading for me to renew. It has been going on for at least 4 months. Now today I come to work and they have sent me a fax asking me to renew. WTF? I refuse to renew, I am curious how long it will continue.

The DaVinci code is a fictional story based on a bunch of wild real world facts. One thing I just read about was the number PHI which is 1.618 (pronounced fee) Evidently this number is used repeatedly through out nature. 1.618 is the pattern that is used over and over in terms of proportion. For example if you take your total measurement from head to toe and then measure from toe to belly button and compare the numbers, your total height will be approximately 1.618 of the distance to your belly button. If you measure from shoulder to fingertip, and then compare that to the distance from your elbow to your fingertips, the number will reappear. Hips to feet compared to knees to feet, same deal. This number permeates nature everywhere in the way that living things are laid out. It really is amazing. This book is really, really good.

2 weeks ago I started a creatine supplementation program again. I took creatine 6 or 7 years ago and got some impressive results. My bench press that was stuck at 225-235 for the longest time, shot up to 275. I was able to jump higher in volleyball. Dunking a volleyball on a basketball rim became much easier. I got bigger, my weight creeped into the low 200’s. However my knee injury also occurred while I was on creatine. I equated creatine with the injury. However when my strength started to fade after being off of it for awhile I jumped back on the wagon for a bit. However shortly after starting again I got what I believe was a small kidney stone and I stopped.

Since my creatine days I went through several years of really struggling with my right knee after 2 surgeries. Anything impact related caused me pain. However eventually with the help of flaxseed oil and leg strengthening routines my knee has come around and over the last 2 years has been about as good as I could hope for. If you would have asked me 5years ago if I thought I would able to ever start up a consistent running program again I would have laughed.

Well for some reason I got the bug to try it again. My logic was nowadays I work out harder/smarter and eat better than I did 6 years ago. I was curious what sort of results I could get under these conditions. Of course I also had anxiety because of the negative things that happened last time I was on the stuff. Well 2 weeks into it I have had a mix of results. I already put on 5 lbs of mostly water weight. With creatine it makes your muscles hold more water. It is very important to drink tons of water when you are using it. My inadequate water consumption was probably what contributed to the kidney stone last time. Last Friday at the gym I put up 255, the first time I did that amount of weight in a year or more. However my bad knee has also been crankier than normal. I ran 3 miles yesterday with Ali without incident but during down time I have been having more pains than normal. Needless to say I am monitoring things closely. I am cutting back my dosage of creatine to see if it helps matters. I don’t want to sacrifice running or volleyball for getting some extra pounds on my lifts. I am striving to find the happy medium that allows me to get the best of both worlds. Right now as I am sitting here my knee feels ok. Of course Ali thinks the creatine is a bad idea but hey I want to give it a whirl. If this goes bad maybe I will try Endothil CR.

The weekend came and went. They go very quickly and they seem to run into each other. Even though we are constantly doing things for the most part, things still seem very routine, very mundane, very blah. As an effort to mix up the routine, I actually started reading a book, the DaVinci Code. So far I am enjoying it. On Sunday we actually took the time to watch 3 movies. We say Supersize Me, The Big One and the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.

Supersize me was very entertaining. I admit that as healthy as I try to be, I still will drive through McDonald’s once or twice a month. Typically even after just having McD’s once, you have the side effects of feeling like shit shortly after eating it. This guy ate nothing but McD’s for a solid month. His transformation was staggering. He gained 25 pounds and his blood test numbers went from super healthy to dangerously bad in that same timeframe. The repeated images of all the fat asses walking this planet drove home the point of just what a mess our society is. It really is sad to see the majority of America be classified as clinically obese.

The Big One is a Michael Moore flick about corporate America and how they have no problems shafting American workers by closing down domestic plants and outsourcing operations to overseas locations with dirt cheap labor in order to pad already astronomical profits. Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that Moore has balls. It is funny as hell when he is presenting corporate stuffed shirts with Downsizer of the Year awards and then he shakes their hand and leaves. However Moore also could have been one of the extras in Supersize Me, he is a big fat f.

Charlie and the chocolate factory, the original always was a strange movie for me. I remember seeing it as a kid and being disturbed by it. Gene Wilder came off as evil to me and the things that happened to those kids was scary to me. The new version follows the same general style. Johhny Depp is equally disturbing and I felt like I was almost watching a white Michael Jackson with pale skin and a dutch boy haircut. The movie of course had modern special effects. It was watchable, but again, if I had a kid I wouldn’t feel good about him watching it. It’s just weird.

To Valvoline Instant Oil Change:

I have 3 vehicles that I have taken to this location for 2 or 3 years. My past 3 visits have been very unsatisfactory. 2 weeks ago I took my 93 van to the location. I spent 100 dollars for an oil change and replacement of the fuel filter. I discovered after the fact that the oil filter had not been changed. I took it back and pointed it out. They replaced the filter but the manager said nothing to me at all and offered no apology or explanation for the oversight.

Then this past Wednesday I took my 99 Tacoma for an oil change. I pull up to the facility at 5:05 (they are open until 5:30) There are no cars in the garage being serviced but the “manager” was out in the lot working on what I believe was his own personal vehicle. One of the other employees came over to me and said “My boss said we are closed” I asked why and the employee just repeated that they were closed and would be open tomorrow. It made no sense to me but I said “whatever” and decided to come back the next day.

So again today I pull up after work at a few minutes after 5. There is one truck in the one bay and none in the other bay. The same employee walks out to me and says they have a big job to do on the truck in the bay and they wouldn’t be able to get to me today. He said they only had 2 people. I was angry now and asked what the hell was going on. Yesterday they told me they were closed and today they tell me they can’t get to me even though they had a bay open and a half hour till closing time. The employee went back to the “manager” and then reluctantly waved me in. There were three employees working there, not two.

Since the oil filter was not replaced last time, I watched very carefully what actually was done this time. They drained the oil, changed the oil filter and added washer fluid and nothing else. They did not check tire pressure, they did not examine the air filter, they did not do 90% of the things that were listed on the service invoice.

The entire process took all of ten minutes and during that ten minutes they turned away three or four more customers that were interested in the service. Needless to say, my three vehicles will never be going to this location again unless the personnel are replaced. It’s ridiculous to be treated that way as a customer and I am sure many others have experienced similar results from the current staff at this location.

P.S. Even though they were so “busy” the employee had time to try to pitch me the Fuel Injector cleaning service… what a joke.

a bumper sticker on the back of a Toyota Highlander.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons…
for You are Crunchy & Good with Ketchup….

There was another 5k race this Saturday. Ali had been sick all week so there was no way she could run it but I decided I would go it solo. I have wanted to try running a race at my own pace to see how I could do. This race was in Ft Myers Beach during the Shrimp Festival. Parking for the event was a mess, they had a bunch of the road blocked off so we parked probably a mile away and walked. This race was tough, probably the toughest course to date because it went over and back across the Matanzas bridge, the highest point in Lee County. The bridge part hits right in the middle of the race so it is a real test, especially for Florida runners that never see hardly a slight incline. It was hot as well, by the time the race started at 9:30 it felt like it was into the 80’s already. I was excited to go all out and see how fast I could go but at the same time nervous about the pain I knew was to come.

The gun sounded and I took off pretty fast. I passed a bunch of runners that Ali and I normally wind up running with. The first mile was 7:37 and I was feeling it, I was already tired and I didn’t even hit the bridge yet. There was a different mindset running by myself. If someone passed me, I took it personally and tried to compensate, where as if I was with Ali I wouldn’t give it a second thought because I knew I was sticking by her. You pick out targets in front of you and work on picking them off, if you are really tired you work on just not losing ground. Then the bridge came. Boy it sucked, I dug in and plugged away up the hill. I passed numerous people who either started to walk or slowed down their pace greatly. Getting to the top was a relief but the knowledge that I had to come back over the hill was looming large. I was really working hard. I was too tired to monitor the GPS watch, I just had tunnel vision, I didn’t look at the crowd around the parade route, didn’t look at the scenery, I just looked ahead.

The second trip over the hill is where I found my target that would pull me into the finish. A short woman that I pegged as being in her forties. She was in front of me up to that point but I passed her on the 2nd trip over the hill, however she hung with me from the downhill on. Evidently a lot of people knew her as she got lots of cheers as we went by the spectators, calling out her name. I could tell she was only a few steps behind me but there was no way I wanted to get passed by a chick in the end. So I pushed hard, really hard. I was as tired as I can remember. At the 2 mile mark I grabbed a cup of water and choked down a few drops and threw the rest on my chin, I missed my face. The last half mile felt like forever, I was just focused on staying ahead of the footsteps I heard behind me. At the very end I passed a 20 something chick for good measure. You can see from this picture Ali took at the finish line how close they were. You can also see how damn tired I was.

I crossed the line in 25:12, right around an 8 minute mile pace. Considering the course, I was happy with the result. I would assume with a flat course I could be comfortably into the 24’s. After I took off my ankle timing device I found a patch of grass and just laid down on my back. Ali was worried something was wrong and I assured her I just was tired. I pushed myself to just about the limit of my cardiocascular ability. My time was actually good enough to get 4th in my age group, only 20 seconds off of 3rd. It was a challenge to run the race solo at my pace, it’s something I am ok with only exploring now and then. I’m ok being Ali’s pace setter most races.

On the walk up before the race we stopped at a 7-11 because I had to pee like mad. I grab the knob and it’s locked and some guy mumbles something. He’s was in there a long time so I assumed he was taking a dump, great…. The guy comes out, he has long black hair, a baseball cap, sunglasses and is talking on his cell phone. I hurry into the bathroom, hold my breath as long as I can and relieved myself. This was significant because this same guy showed up again as I was running back over the bridge the second time, he was one of the morons that was walking out in the middle of the race route instead of using the sidewalk. Then after the race, walking back to the car, I see the same 7-11 shitter riding in the passenger seat of a truck pulling a parade float. Why it was intended for me to see this guy 3 times in a few hours is beyond me.

Even though I was wiped after the race, when we got home I still plowed into my to do list. In the space of a few hours I had watered the landscape, worked on the van, pulled off the pool cover, cleaned it and cleaned the junk out of the pool, filled the bird feeders and a handful of other things. Saturday night we watched Chronicles of Narnia. It was a marginal quality copy where someone sets up a camera in a theater. However the movie, while lengthy, was very good. Ali and I both enjoyed it.

Sunday I was feeling the aches and pains of running hills when you aren’t used to it. My calves and shins were both killing me. We ran out to do a few errands and we tied up the to do list. One of the to do’s was to have Ali buzz my hair again in prep for my latest skin removal procedure.

Monday was the appointment at 11:30. Before the appointment I ran more errands like going back to the Quik Lube place to point out that they didn’t change my oil filter (which they then did), a stop at the Ford dealership to order a couple van parts and then Pinch a Penny for pool supplies. I had more time to kill so I spent in browsing through Best Buy where after looking at the nice 20 inch lcd monitors that I desire, settled on getting a new set of headphones that don’t hurt my head like my current set. I explained it as a “surgery present” to Ali.

The procedure went fine. Before we started I told the doc that I can’t even really see any more discoloration at the spot and maybe he got it all when he scraped it. He said the pathologist said it was suspicious and in a case like that the safest bet is to remove a small region outside the suspect area. (yea and then he also gets to bill me an obscene amount of money) So he numbs the area and says he will be back in 5 minutes. 15-20 minutes later he comes back and starts to cut. It hurts so he injects more numbing stuff. The procedure took maybe 20 minutes total. Since the area was in the hairline, they couldn’t get traditional bandages to stick, so the nurse put a gauze pad on the area and then slapped what looked like a cross between a hairnet and headband around my head to keep it in place. It looked ridiculous. Once I got out to the van I looked in the mirror and adjusted the headgear to make it look as inconspicuous as possible, which was fruitless. When I went home the women at the drive thru paused and gave me a funny look when she saw my choice of head fashion. I told Ali I was going to to put a hat on when I got home to hold it in place but I decided to leave the headband on so Ali could see how dumb I looked. As the day went on the incision started to hurt a bit which was controlled by popping a couple Advil.

This morning I took off the headband to reveal my latest frankenstein scar, it’s lovely. I had an appointment with the orthodontist. I am on my last set of trays for my upper teeth., great right? Wrong, my upper teeth aren’t straight yet. From straight on they look ok but when you look from the side you can see the 2 teeth that I have been most conscious of my entire life, still are at angles that don’t match up with the rest of my teeth. When I pointed this out to the ortho, at first he acted like they were ok and the flaw was minor. However I persisted that those 2 teeth were the entire focus of the 2 and a half years of crap I have been going through and I wanted them straight. The doc first suggested that he could dimple the tray to put pressure on the tooth. I told him that we tried that before and it doesn’t really do much. Then he offered they could design the retainer to put pressure on the tooth. I told him that was what they told Ali and the one tooth she has issues with isn’t moving with the retainer. Then he said he could get more trays from Invisalign but that procedure would add another 2 months of down time when nothing is happening. So I think what is going to happen is the next time I go in they will be slapping metal brackets up top. I will have a metal mouth for a couple months but at least there will be complete control of the teeth that way. I just want this ordeal to be over with. Invisalign is ok for minor tooth fixing, I would not recommend it if you need major work done.

Does anyone know why gas is priced at whatever and 9/10? Why is it priced per gallon to a value that you can’t actually pay? If I walk in and say I want to buy one gallon of gas, how do I give the clerk 9/10 of a penny? Is it just another scheme by the gas companies to pocket that 1/10th of a penny? I guess when you add up the billions of gallons of gasoline that are consumed it adds up to a fortune. It pisses me off.

This morning I dropped off Buttons at the vet for her dental cleaning. A side effect of the diabetes is her teeth are rotting out. Everytime we take her in for a cleaning another couple teeth get pulled out. Soon she will be gumming her food. I also have to pick this months supply of dog heartworm and flea/tick medicine. I also stop by regularly to get the special diabetic cat food. Add in the annual check ups, bird food, dog food, dog toys and other vet trips we spend a small fortune on our animals each year. I refuse to run a summary report in Quicken because it will shake me up.

I’m also pissed off at the place I get my oil changed at. With the starter problems on the van, I spent a decent amount of time looking under the hood. While doing so I noticed that the oil filter was not changed at the oil change I just had done the week prior. I also noticed that it is dripping oil, I suspect they didn’t tighten the oil drain plug correctly either. I will be stopping by there Monday to address the situation.

Tomorrow is another race. I may run it solo because Ali doesn’t want to run right after getting over her illness. I tweaked my knee squatting at the gym early in the week so I am a bit hesitant about running although it feels ok right now.

On Monday I have more stuff cut out of my head. This spot is up in the hairline, about an inch above where the first spot was. This isn’t fun. I am wondering if I will have a permanent hole in my hair.