Archives May 2006

I guess my chest twinge I felt on Monday was a false alarm.  I was able to do my max bench day without incident today.  I loaded up 275 and pressed it out, I think.  I have a guy I know from the gym spot me.  The only problem is he is the type of spotter that keeps his hands right by the bar throughout the movement.  He said he had zero weight but I never quite count a max if there is even a chance that the spotter took an ounce of the weight.  The way I like to be spotted is if I say “a little help” help me, otherwise I want to strain and grind it out.  However it still is the first time I had 275 on top of me in maybe 8 years so it’s an accomplishment, sort of. 

 I think the writing is on the wall as far as my gym converting over to a psuedo geriatric wellness center.  They have removed all of the protein drinks and now only sell water and Gatorade.  It’s a shame, when the new ownership took over, after some initial skepticism, I thought they were doing a nice job with the place.  However now they have mutated into almost a condo-cop mentality that makes me sick.

My weekend has a big list of to do’s.  Ali said something about how it would be nice to be able to start using the pool, even if we don’t have a cage yet.  So earlier in the week I pulled the pool cover off to reveal a nasty green mess underneath filled with twigs, toads and various organic matter.  So I started treating it with chemicals and will continue trying to clean it up this weekend.  If I have some success it may be swimmable by the following weekend.  My 2 new water tractors have been a big success, they do a great job and don’t need to be baby sat as much as my older ones. The new tractors and the fact that we actually got a half hour of rainfall this week should make my watering duties slightly less time consuming.

My Roomba robot floor vac has been getting less and less work lately.  Although I love it, there are some realities I have come to accept that have made it more of a novelty and less of a mainstay in our floor upkeep routine. First and most importantly, it just can’t do as good of a job as a regular vacuum.  A battery powered device just can not generate even a decent percentage of the amount of suction as a conventional vacuum cleaner.  As a result, although the rug looks cleaner from a distance, a closer inspection reveals there is still plenty of dog hair on the surface.  Second it requires regular maintenance and cleaning.  They recommend you do a thorough cleaning every 5 uses or so.  This involves removing all the hair, and fibers that wrap themselves around the brushes, gears and wheels, knocking out the furballs that find their way into every corner of the unit and blowing out the sensors with compressed air.  To put it plainly, it’s a pain in the ass.  Finally, the battery life goes downhill very quickly.  Brand new you can get close to 2 hours of run time out of it.  However after 8 months I barely get a half hour out of it.  I have had many calls into IRobot tech support for various problems I have had with my Roomba and even got a replacement unit out of them eventually, all for free.  But even with the good support I don’t think it is a great investment for someone that has big time pet hair issues like we do. 

I used to think Priscilla Presley was a good looking woman.  If anyone else saw her on this week’s American Idol you will see she has mutated into a botox frozen, cheek implanted, face pulled too tight, joker mouth looking, freak show.  It is so disturbing looking at her face.  I can identify with wanting to stay youthful and young looking but damn, how can she look in the mirror and think she looks good?  Her face is so still from all the botox it almost looks like a mannequin. It’s a shame. 

Speaking of American Idol, it is an outrage that Chris was voted out.  I mean c’mon, throughtout the entire show he has been the best performer by far.  Taylor may be more entertaining with his dancing antics, Elliot may be a more flexible singer, and Katherine is cute as a button and looks the part, but none of them came close to Chris as an all round performer. I never heard him sound bad.  I think he is right up there with Kelly Clarkson as the best contestant ever to come out of American Idol. It really is a shame he went last night. No, I am not gay. 

I may be forced to switch back to that shithole gym I used to go to.  There is a rumor going around our gym that they are pulling out all of the dumbells heavier than 60 pounds and remove all of the bench press benches except one.  Supposedly this is to curtail the “gangs” that have been there.  The bigger muscleheads evidently are scary to the geriatric gym goers that the ownership seems interested in catering to.  It’s total bullshit and if it happens I’ll be out of there the same day.  I mean give me a break, first they install a lunk alarm and now they want to castrate anyone with even an average amount of strength.  If the people are doing things that are causing issues, warn them and if the actions continue, cancel their membership, don’t penalize the vast majority of people that come and go without incident.  I paid my up front intiation fees based upon the equipment that was available to me.  If they decide to transform the gym into a sterile box only fit for senior citizens and chubby housewives I will be sure to do my best to make my opinion known.

Yesterday on my lunch hour I went out on a search for replacements for my 2 broken water tractors.  Without the water tractors my lawn will turn to sand.  The one tractor I had was a Craftsman model so I figured I would go to Sears and see if they had them on the shelf.  I was disappointed to find only conventional stationary sprinklers available.  I figured I would check out Home Depot.  I had little hope because I never remembered seeing water tractors there before.  I was thrilled to discover they had the Nelson RainTrain in stock!!

I saw these on ebay and it turns out that I wound up paying less just getting them at the store, they charge outrageous shipping on these.  I grabbed two of them.  After work I put them both together and hooked one up to give it a try.  It works great!

I went to the gym after work.  It was chest day.  I started my chest day like I always do, with the bench press.  Even though I have been off creatine for a week, my strength is still there.  I pressed 225 lbs for 8 reps, something I never ever did before.  I went as high as 265 and then for my last set I went back to 225.  Halfway through my 4th rep I felt an abnormal pull in my left pec, followed by pain.  I racked the weight and tried to assess what just happened.  The area felt warm.  Did I rip my pec? Did I strain it?  I had no idea.  I tried to stretch it out.  I hopped on the fly machine to see how that felt and couldn’t even do one rep.  It felt bad.  I was pissed off and had thoughts running through my head about this being a serious thing that could really throw a wrench into my training.  So I hopped on the cross trainer and just did cardio for the rest of the hour. 

I picked up Ali and told her about the incident.  It was sort of just a dull ache by that time.  However as the night went on it felt better and this morning it is stiff but not overly painful.  I’ll have to be very careful.  I really thought I ripped something initially.

If you want to see the handful of pictures I took while I was in Orlando go here.

Nicki and I pushed out the door around 8 am on Friday.  The GPS has us going a more direct route up the center of the state instead of up I-75 to route 4.  Although it is more direct it also went through many small towns with slower speed limits and traffic lights so I don’t know that it was any faster, in fact it may have been slower.  It took me all of 3 and a half hours to get there.  Nicki repeatedly wanted me to roll down the windows so she could stick her head out.  At first I wouldn’t do it because I figured I was going too fast.  She kept waiting and waiting for the windows to magically open so I eventually relented and let her stick her head out.  I figured she would figure out it a few seconds.  Nope, she seemed to have her head blowing in the hurricane force wind.  She would sit down for a few minutes and then go right back to sticking her head out.  Dogs are weird.

 I warned Ali we were arriving so she could come out and greet us outside.  If Nicki’s first sight of Ali occurred indoors she would pee all over the floor for sure.  After almost a week of not seeing Ali, Nicki was besides herself with excitement.  When we got up into the tiimeshare it was more or less a subdued scene.  Ali’s Dad was napping and everyone else was sitting around with some cartoon on the TV for the two kids.  My neice Lauryn had developed a fear of dogs since we saw her last so she grexxed and whined when she saw Nicki.  Nicki despises children and was equally scared of my neices.  My other neice Laiken had no such fear of dogs and was very interested in Nicki.  Nicki wanted nothing to do with it. I had not seen my neice Laiken since she was a few months old.  Now she is walking, talking and is basically a holy terror that wants to get into everything. She didn’t really know what to think of me.

After I had been there 10 minutes or so, my brother, sister and mother-in-laws along with the girls were out the door on their way to downtown disney, leaving Ali, Nicki, Ali’s dad and me.  I thought it was a bit odd that everyone took off right after our arrival but soon found out that it was pretty much the norm.  A lot of hurrying up to get places and not a whole lot of enjoying the being there part.  So while Ali’s dad watched fishing shows on ESPN, Ali and I ran out to Subway and brought back sandwiches for the three of us. 

The timeshare was nice.  We had 2 units, one 1 bedroom unit and one 2 bedroom unit connected by a door.  I was worried it would be less than advertised but for 450 bucks for a week you couldn’t beat it.  It was literally 5 minutes from the Disney parks so you could not beat the location. 

After we ate lunch we decided to go to downtown Disney and try to catch up with the others.  Ali’s dad was fine with dog sitting.  After we got there we tracked the others down via a cell phone call.  Then the whirlwind tour started.  We went from store to store in quick succession.  They snapped a few pics of the kids and then in about an hour or so they were ready to head out.  Ali and I opted to stick around and look around a bit.  I assume part of the fast pace of my in-laws was because of having two children there that may have been too young to enjoy the experience.  I think being close to double digits in age is probably the optimum age for kids to enjoy disney.  I doubt they will even remember their time there.

It was very hot in Orlando for May, it was in the lower 90’s.  Ali and spent maybe another hour walking around seeing the sights.  We went into a huge Virgin record store where I got to see my first Xbox 360 in person.  They had 6 of them set up, each with a different game.  You know games today all pretty much have outstanding graphics, it’s just a given because of the technology out there. But damn, the 360 took it to another level. You have to see it first hand to appreciate just how good the graphic quality of the games are.  For a few moments I felt the need to have one, but quickly I reminded myself how since my WoW addiction started, my playtime on my XBox has dwindled down to practically nothing.  Those graphics were sooooo good though.

We got back to the timeshare around four.  Ali had done some homework about restaurants that had outdoor seating and allowed dogs.  She made reservations at some italian place.  She was nervous because she didn’t want to be the fall guy if the place sucked.  The place was 20 something miles away so we allocated 40 minutes to get there.  Thanks to gridlock on I-4 it took 60.  On the way over I discovered that although the AC now did a fine job of keeping the passengers in the front of the van cool, with temps in the lower 90’s the people in the back were uncomfortably warm.  So in an effort to keep them cooler my father-in-law had his window down and they had the sliding windows in the back open which totally eliminated any benefit of the AC.  I felt bad that they were hot back there.  I knew that my brother-in-law had to be wishing that they just rented that full size SUV they were going to get.  But hey we saved them the 700 bucks they were going to have to spend on the rental.  The party van was cumbersome fully loaded down with seven people.  At highway speeds any movement was exagerrated and hitting the brakes hard resulted in a strong pull to the right and a pulsating brake pedal that screamed for attention.  I need to get the brakes fixed sometime. 

The GPS got us to the restaurant just fine although it had the side of the road for the establishment reversed.  The place was nice, right by the lake.  It was windy outside but otherwise very nice.  The place was right by a lake where jet ski’s were pulling guys on those big inflatable discs that get airborne.  It was fun to watch them.  Dinner was fine and after a couple hours we were on our way back.  Luckily the traffic had subsided.  When we got back there it was time for everyone to pack.  They wanted to leave at 5:15am to give them 2 full hours to get on the plane.

Our bedroom had two double beds.  Ali and I slept in one bed and Nicki slept in the other.  It was not a good nights sleep.  If Ali or I moved an inch we would wake the other up.  Needless to say we both felt like death when the alarm fired off at 4:30 am.  Ali’s parent’s alarm did not go off and they didn’t wake up till shortly before 5 so they had to hurry, hurry, hurry up.  We piled in the van and I drove them to the airport.  We gave our hugs and goodbyes and went back to the timeshare.  We had all of our shit to pack up yet as well as all the kitchen junk to clean up.  I originally had the idea that we could pack it all up immediately and get on the road nice and early so we could get home before lunch.  However Ali said there was no way she would be able to follow me home in the car if she didn’t sleep a little.  So Ali laid back down and slept and I packed up little odds and ends the best I could but many things I needed some input from Ali before packing so I couldn’t do it all.  So after I did what I deemed I could I flipped on the TV.  For some reason I found myself glued to an infomercial for Appliance Direct.  The guy and woman that do these commercials are hilarious.  The infomercial simply repeated the same clips over and over.  In a half hour I probably saw the same clips 4 or 5 times but I kept watching.  It’s that funny.  You HAVE to see this for yourself.  Go here and view the commercials on the right side. 

After a couple hours Ali woke up and we got all the junk together.  Ali’s obsession with recycling meant we were filling the Sentra’s trunk with 6 bags of recyclable materials. I don’t even bother to suggest that it isn’t very practical to haul trash 200 miles so we could dispose of it at home, I guess I’m just used to it by now.  I drove the van and Ali followed in the car.  The drive back was long and more than afew times I found myself extremely drowsy.  I battled it one time by stopping and grabbing a cup of nasty coffee from a gas station.  Later in the trip after the coffee wore off I would stay awake by holding my breath.  Oxygen deprivation does a fine job of keeping the brain alert.

Finally we rolled into the driveway sometime around 1:15.  It felt good to be home but I was already gnawing at the bit to get stuff done, put away and back to normal.  After I unloaded everything from both vehicles I was off to the grocery store while Ali put away stuff inside.  After returning I ripped into the list that I created while at the grocery store.  I was outside until after 6pm doing chore after chore.

One of the big chores is watering.  We have had basically no rain for a couple months.  Our grass is a brown mess.  Last week I broke one of our two travelling sprinklers through some stupidity.  I needed to adjust the one sprinkler but it was running.  Instead of turning off the water source or simply grabbing the hose and pinching it I decided to walk up to the sprinkler and stick my foot out to stop the spinning arms.  The sudden stop was enough to break the sprinkler arm.  I cursed myself for my dumb move.  It left me with one sprinkler to cover the rest of the yard.

Well on Sunday my second travelling sprinkler died.  It was an old Thompson unit that I had gotten from our old neighbors.  The nylon worm gear had stripped, leaving it incapable of movement.  I could hardly believe that both of my sprinklers had bit the dust in the space of a week.  So now I need to find a replacement after not being able to find any replacement parts online for either unit. 

We had to wake up to the alarm once again Sunday morning for a race.  Because of my still ailing knee I was unable to run so I was relegated to being a cheerleader / picture taker.  I felt like a schlub not being able to run.  Ali finsihed in just under 31 minutes, a slow time for her but she said even though it was 7:30 am, the course was VERY hot.  I saw more than one person throw up after they crossed the finish line.  Being a spectator allowed me to closely watch the various running styles of people.  Some were quite odd.  One guy grunted loudly with every breat the ENTIRE race.  There is no way I would have been able to run close to the guy, it was so annoying.  He also carried his hands very high and made a motion that almost looked like he was rubbing his nipples.  Another old guy held his hands even higher and almost looked like he was waving bye bye to people.  A runner in his 70’s actually went down twice as he approached the finish line and had to literally be helped across the line.  I was worried he had a heart attck but he was just dehydrated.  I guess it was hot.

The rest of the day was fine with me knocking out a few more chores and playing WoW for the first time in 3 days.  I convince myself that my addiction to WoW isn’t too dangerous because I have the ability to push it away if need be, if I go a day without playing it isn’t the end of the world. 

Ali was playing this video last night.  It was a comedian who did an impromptu roast of W AS HE WAS SITTING THERE.  I mean it was cutting stuff, viciously brutal and honest about how much of a boob Bush is.  I could not believe he was present for the berating.  Once again you have to see this to believe it.

Ali has been up in Orlando since Saturday with her family.  Tomorrow morning I am driving up there with Nicki to spend a day with the gang.  Ali has filled me in and it sounds like the week has been tiring going from park to park with two little girls.  The party van has been performing like a champ and our timeshare has been getting glowing reviews.

Last night the neighbors invited me over for dinner.  I took Nicki over and she played with their dog, Zoe.  Zoe is a little Jack Russell and is the only dog friend Nicki has.  While I was there I saw my first full episode of Deal or No Deal.  I could easily get sucked into that show.  After I got back home I watched the American Idol result show.  I was glad to see Paris go.  Even though she is a very good singer and probably did the best job of mutating to the different styles of music, she just was annoying.  She always seemed like a little girl playing dress up and that little baby voice just grated on me.

My week or so of flying solo has been uneventful.  The house seems empty without Ali around and Nicki has done nothing but moped for most of the time. It will be good to get back to normal.  We will be driving back on Saturday.

On Monday they had another huge immigrant march in Orlando.  These demonstrations, at least in our area seem to have had the exact opposite effect they were intended to.  Instead of drumming up support for their cause, the majority of people here are outraged.  The concept of people that sneak into our country illegally demanding rights that legal citizens have is outrageous.  Even though most illegals are surely hard working people that are just looking to better their lives it doesn’t change the fact that they are breaking the law doing it and are trying to take a shortcut to something that legal immigrants have to work hard to attain.  That’s bullshit.  The fact that most Mexicans do not use contraception because it is a sin, adds to the problem drastically.  It’s true that illegal immigrant labor is a big advantage to many employers because they can pay them less money and no benefits which helps pad employers pockets.  Mexican workers surely do many jobs that most would not want to do but that does not excuse them being here illegally. Although the illegals save businesses money in labor costs, they cost this country billions by not paying income or social security taxes while taxing the medical system by utilizing hospital emergency rooms for any ailment down to the common cold.

  The catering to hispanics in our society is also very disturbing.  More and more businesses and services are offering things in English and Spanish, no longer making it a requirement for the immigrants to learn English.  I mean really, wtf?   I’m for active enforcement of immigration laws, better enforcement of the southern border and enforcement for people in this country learning the language and following the proper procedures to become american citizens.  I mean if you were standing in a line at the movies a hundred people deep and someone walked up and stepped in front of you because they didn’t feel like waiting in the long line, wouldn’t it infuriate you?  Yet this is exactly what is happening daily across the mexican border. 

Tim found an online test to determine how addicted to World of Warcraft you are.  I scored a 65.  Tim scored an 83 so I don’t feel quite so bad.  Check it out here.

I have been leveling some of my non-60 characters in the Tanaris area.  Tanaris is a large open desert region by the coast.  Repeatedly my characters have been jumped and killed by higher level horde players in this zone so last night I decided to take my 60 rogue out there and get some redemption.  There was a sandstorm going on so it cut down on visibilty considerably.  I went to an area where I had been ganked by horde often.  Once I arrived I immediately started in on the slaughter, dropping many horde, including several that were in the act of jumping another alliance player.  There is nothing better then jumping someone who is jumping someone else.  Some of the horde grouped up in an attempt to find safety in numbers from my relentless attacks.  I would stay invisible and wait for the moment where each target was in a vulnerable position and then drop them in less than 10 seconds.  I took out a group of 3 horde, one by one. 

After about an hour or so of killing every horde in sight I went back to the main town of Gadgetztan and annoyed the horde there.  In Gadgetztan you can’t attack the enemy, else the guards will attack and kill you.  So instead I would just hit them with stuns that left them incapicitated for 30 seconds or so.  It doesn’t damage them but it annoys the hell out of them.  Normally after I stun them I would laugh and point at them fanning the flames further.  Eventually many of them would crack and try to attack me which would result in the guards killing them instantly.  As they were being pummeled I would again laugh at them and wave goodbye.  By the time I was done all the horde in town hated me.  It’s all payback for the year plus of torment they have inflicted on me.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Most people say the Eagles had a good draft although I saw a Fox Sports guy that rated the Birds draft as 22nd.  It’s hard for me to get excited about a draft where lineman are the featured picks.  I guess Mike Mamula always weighs on my mind when it comes to lineman drafts.  I’m still pissed they didn’t pick up a name receiver in free agency.  I don’t have much hope for the WR’s they picked up late in the draft.  I’m hoping the additions on defense can help make the unit formidable once again.  The defense was uncharacteristically weak last year, they didn’t scare anyone.

Ali pulled out for Orlando to meet up with her family on Saturday.  She took the party van and headed up I-75.  I talked to her a few times along the way.  She said the drive was scary because the strong winds were buffeting the van back and forth.  She made it to the timeshare intact. 

On Saturday I knocked out the majority of my housework and then glued myself to the PC playing WoW of course.  On Sunday morning I had the idea to take Nicki to the dog park.  She hadn’t been there in a couple years.  When we took her there before she would just cower in fear and hide between my legs when approached by other dogs.  My mom had the day off so I asked her to come along.  Well it was pretty much the same deal.  These big, huge dogs came up and Nicki hid.  She wasn’t quite as timid as before but she’ll never be a social butterfly dog.  As I was watching the other dogs wrestle and play I wished Nicki would give it a try instead of only wrestling with me. 

I decided to get off the creatine once again.  For two years, including almost a year of running, my knees had been solid, only offering minimal problems now and then.  Well since I started on creatine again my knees once again have been painful.  The latest episode after running on Thursday was serious.  My bad knee has been sore ever since. After hearing Ali remind me that I had the exact same shit happening after I took it last time and me reading on the internet about others that had joint pain after supplementing with creatine, I decided to pull the plug.  In a weird way I could almost identify with someone like Barry Bonds.  Taking creatine makes me stronger and going to the gym each week and being able to do more than the week before is almost an intoxicating thing.  It motivates you, it makes you want to do more.  So my plan as of now is to be clean and see if my knee gets better.  If it does I will either try Kre-Alkalyn or Endothil CR and see how those products work with my body chemistry.

Speaking of my increased strength, I had yet another odd gym moment on Friday.  Friday is the day I try for one rep max on the bench.  Shortly after putting up 270, as I was sitting on the bench, an older guy came up to me, maybe in his 50’s.  I saw him a couple days prior and immediately pegged him as gay and I had the feeling he was “observing” me.  Anyway, he comes up to me and says, “Is your name Clark?”  I immediately sensed what he was implying but I just gave him a look.  He continued, “You know, Clark, like Clark Kent”  I said “as in Superman?” “Yes!” he says and then goes into some story about his son also being tall and strong. Evidently he was impressed by the iron I had just pushed off my chest.  He asked me how tall I was, he guessed I was 6’8″, I gave him my actual height as 4 inches shorter than that. It was very awkward and I just tried to exit the conversation as quickly as possible. Although I have to admit, the comment further solidified my desire to keep supplementing. Even though I weigh almost 200 pounds now, I still look pretty “skinny” so to some, it looks impressive to see this skinny guy lift some decent weight.