Firecats, DaVinci, pool snake, downtime
This weekend was pretty busy from an entertainment standpoint by my standards. On Saturday morning we knocked out the big chore for the weekend, mowing the grass. It’s amazing how quickly the grass has recovered after 3 or 4 nice rainfalls. What was a brown crunchy mess has now turned green again. Last weekend I changed the oil in the tractor and cleaned it up. I told Ali jokingly to keep it clean. As I was weed whacking I heard a big pop and spun to see a huge cloud of blue smoke in front of the tractor, like a big fart. I told Ali to shut it down. I checked the oil level, it was a bit high but seemed ok. We started it back up and it sounded fine. However the blue fart happened several more times. Soon it came to me that it was occuring whenever the tractor was at an angle on a hill. Evidently when I changed the oil I must have added a little too much and that excess oil was getting into the combustion chamber when the engine was tilted. Oh well it will burn off.
On Saturday night we planned to go to the Florida Firecats, the local arena football team. The first two years the team was in existence we had season tickets. Year one we went to every game, supporting the team religiously. Our seats were in the endzone and were obstructed by the bottom bar of the frame that holds the nets. In season two the luster faded. We moved to better seats but enjoyed each game less and less. The skill level overall was low, there were tons of penalties, there were very few big hits and it just fell short of capturing even a small feel of the NFL. About halfway through the season we started leaving before games were over and then we started giving some of our tickets away just because we would rather stay home and relax than go there to drop 30 bucks on 4 dollars worth of food. We didn’t renew our tickets for season 3 and haven’t been back to a game in 2 or 3 years.
Well we decided to go. I was excited when Ali presented me with a buy one ticket get one free coupon out of the local entertainment book. So we head up and pay our 5 bucks to park. We immediately notice that the lot is not very full at all. Evidently the near sellout crowds are no longer attending Firecat games. We walk up to the ticket window and tell the lady we want two tickets. She says “$17.50, $25 or $30” pointing to a stadium diagram with the different seat locations and accompanying prices. With the small crowd I figured I would be able to get the cheap seats and move down to the good ones later in the game. So I tell the lady I wanted the cheap tickets and give her the coupon. She immediately gets an aggravated look on her face and says “You can’t use that here” “Why not” I surprisingly replied. “That can only be used at the Firecats box office during the day” “It doesn’t say anything about that on the coupon” I angrily replied. She acknowledged that it wasn’t clear on the coupon but there was nothing she could do. So I slapped down the CC and paid double what I anticipated paying. A bad start to the night.
We found our seats and then went out to get some food. We saw no major changes to the place since we had been there last. Ali and I got a piece of pizza and drink, 14 bucks. We sat down and ate it while we watched the Firecats warm up. The were playing some hip hop, bass busting stuff way too loud. It made it hard to even hear the person next to you talk. Looking around, the seats were nearly empty, maybe a 6th full. Soon we went down for food run number two. We got two soft pretzels for 5 bucks. Then I got a 20 ounce soda to pour into my 32 ounce cup I got with the pizza. They put so much ice in the cup that a 20 ounce soda was way too much fluid, ripoff. Later on I got myself a 3 dollar hotdog. I wasn’t hungry but forced it down anyway. I felt like a pig.
Finally the game got ready to start. It started about 20 minutes late due to an unknown “technical difficulty” that they announced but didn’t give specifics about. The national anthem was sung by a girl named somethin Cruz from Tampa. She butchered the words 3 or 4 times and I saw she actually was holding a paper with the words on it. It wasn’t this bad but it was bad. I have no patience for that shit. If you are going to sing the national anthem, learn the words, it’s that simple. During the song I was bitching to Ali about it but she shushed me as she thought it was rude to talk during the anthem. I grumbled to Ali more about it and was appalled that you would carry the words out there with you. Ali thought it was less of a big deal than I did.
The game started and it was pretty much as I remembered. Arena football at this level has very little continuity of players. The roster turns over almost 100% each year. I think there were 2 names we remembered from our season ticket days. There was lots of passing, lots of penalties and lots of empty seats. Very quickly the novelty of the game wore off. We stayed to see the halftime entertainment which consisted of a humourously bad routine by the Fire Kittens, the team cheerleaders and the obligatory throw a ball throw a window, kick a field goal from far away stunts that noone ever wins. Then we left, both satisfied with the time we put in. I doubt we will be back for another 2 years.
Sunday morning Ali asked me to get her out of bed early to run. The heat has been oppressive and we were hoping an earlier start would result in more comfortable running conditions. When I got up at 7 it was a comfortable 77 outside. When we left at 8:30 it had jumped to 83. It still felt hot at the track. When the sun came out from behind the clouds it broiled you. Since I am sidelined from running (and pretty much anything else athletic) I came up with the idea of us taking Nicki with. As Ali walked to warm up, I followed with Nicki. Nicki was very excited and is not used to excessive exercise. She raced back and forth across the track, trying to sniff everything she could. However you could tell she was getting overheated fast. Once Ali started to run, Nicki wanted to still follow. It was a distraction to Ali as she was worried about the pooch. So eventually I took Nicki over to the shade and had her drink. Everytime Ali would round a corner and come into view Nicki would perk up and cry. There was another soccer game setting up to be played. A woman setting up the flags told me that dogs aren’t supposed to be on county property and how she was at a game the other day where a cop made a family with a dog there leave. I told her that when we arrived there was a cop parked right above the track and he said nothing and that if a cop said something to me I would deal with it. I’m not sure if she was trying to be helpful or a pain in the ass. Ali finished up, exhausted from running in the hot humid conditions. Even though Nicki was in the shade for the last half of the run she was still panting like mad. When we got home she flopped on the tile floor, obviously spent.
On Saturday when I was skimming the pool of the endless garbage that falls in it with no pool cage, I was startled to see one piece of debris that was moving. It wasn’t debris, it was a small snake. It was pencil thin and maybe a foot and a half long tops. It had some banding that I hadn’t seen before. It looked totally at home in the water, having no difficulty keeping afloat. I took the skimmer and scooped him up. He sat there calmly as I took him down to our little mini-pond and placed him in there, figuring he would enjoy that habitat much more than a pool. A few hours later I come back outside, he is back in the pool. I called Ali out to see that he had returned. I was really surprised. So once again I scoop him out. This time I carry him back to the fill bit at the rear of our property, a good 350 feet from the house. There was no water in the pit but lots of low vegetation he could hide in. He slithered away and I wished him well. Sunday morning I am once again skimming and once again I am scared by movement in my peripheral vision. The damn snake is back! How in the world he navigated his way back to the pool from the back of the property is beyond me but there he was, swimming away. I took him down to the fishpond again, this time he didn’t reappear in the pool. Maybe he took the hint.
Friday afternoon we finally saw DaVinci Code at a matinee. It was good, not great. If someone had not read the book they would be doing a lot of head scratching. Of course a movie can not go into the detail a book does but that lack of detail made the movie far less captivating than the book. There were maybe a half dozen things they changed in the movie from the book but all in all they got the gist of the story. Like I said it wasn’t bad but if I hadn’t read the book my interpretation would have been more negative. I would love to see a cinematic version of Angels and Demons, it would have to be a 4 hour movie though.
I paid for webspace on a new provider that I am using to host a website for the running club we are members of. I am also going to use the space to hold Duf’s web. So once again I will be beginning the tedious migration process. Over the next couple weeks I will be trudging through it. Blog updates will be few if any as I need to figure out how to get from point A to B with the new blog package. Wish me luck.