Over the four day holiday weekend there were many things that came to mind as bloggable but I wrote none of them down so my chances of remembering much will be very slim. One thing I do remember, late Saturday night we got a call from my brother-in-law that my sister just gave birth to a baby girl, Emily, their first child. Congrats to them. I am now an uncle two times over.
Our Thanksgiving was good. We picked up mom on the way home from work Wednesday night. When we got home, we went over to the neighbors and picked up their dog Zoe. Having Zoe and mom in the house added to the fun. Zoe is very high energy yet she took to snuggling with my mom right away. When my mom would be out on the lanai, Zoe would be sitting there with her, sometimes right under her legs. It’s also entertaining watching Nicki and Zoe chase each other around.
On Wednesday night we had no big plans but we did watch the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. I always enjoy it. The cold weather that made heating the pool a pointless act, made it really feel like Thanksgiving. Later in the night while Ali and my mom watched Desperate Housewives, I went out to the garage and played with the TCH, trying to figure out some of the features. I also installed the Sirius satellite in it. It was much simpler than I feared it would be. I wanted to make it as clean as possible. Instead of routing the antenna wire from the exterior of the car, I simply put it inside, on the dash by the corner of the windshield on the driver side. You hardly notice it. Routing the cables was easy and the trim pieces popped off and on easily. I have the unit placed in the compartment at the bottom of the center control cluster, hidden from view. The only thing I wish was different was if control of it could be handled through the LCD controls. But it sounds great and works well.
Thanksgiving went off just fine. Ali busted ass getting everything ready. She made a regular boneless turkey breast for mom and me and a Tofurkey for her. (tofu turkey) I actually like the tofurkey alot and I would be fine just having that, we may actually go that route next year. Everything tasted great although the amount of time spent enjoying the meal seemed disproportionally small compared to the time to prep and clean up afterwards. I think part of the issue is with only three people at the table, two of whom already spend each day together, it’s hard to drag the meal out very long.
While mom was there she tried to hang out outside for awhile to take in the sunshine. The problem was it was cool already, and a brisk wind made it uncomfortable to sit outside for very long. After clean up from the meal, mom was soon ready to go home so I ran her back. She thought the new car was extremely nice. For once we were kind of proud to show off our car.
On Friday morning, my buddy from work asked me to help him move. He said he only had a few things and I knew he was not a pack rat so it should be no big deal. He also asked John from work to help. I sort of assumed he would have asked some of his other buddies as well but was kind of surprised it was just us. The move was not easy. The old house had some challenging angles to tackle. The worst of it involved getting a sleeper sofa down from the upstairs. When I accepted the request to help, I didn’t even give thought to the hernia/strain thing I have going on. Although the pain is pretty much gone, I still feel tweaks down there on a pretty regular basis. During the moving, I felt lots of tweaks as I pushed, lifted, pulled and strained to move furniture. Oh well. Thankfully, the place he moved into was very easy to access. It had big double doors in the front and almost everything went on the first floor. I bet we had the truck unloaded in a little over a half hour. The entire move was only around 3 hours so it could have been much worse. I returned home feeling tired and a bit beat up.
For the Thanksgiving weekend, I had very little on my mind in regard to housework. No major projects and only a handful of small ones. In the back of my mind I was clearing room to play a lot of WoW. This weekend was a double honor Av weekend. No need to explain what that means, just say it meant that there was a virtual reason for me to be in game, a lot. And I did play, a lot. Starting Friday afternoon and through a big chunk of Saturday, I spent the lions share of my time in front of the computer, grinding out in game gold and reputation with the Stormpike Guard. I worked my chores around the game, if I was waiting to get into an instance (which had a Q time of about 45 minutes) I would knock out some chores in between.
It actually got to the point where Ali complained about me playing so much, something she hardly ever does. She knows that I normally bust my ass at home so she doesn’t care about me playing. But on Saturday she felt like I was slacking. While she mowed the grass in the field in the back I stayed inside, doing little else but emptying the dishwasher. Evidently she was annoyed that I didn’t change the laundry out as well which eventually lead to her comment. I knew that I was playing a whole bunch, more than I should but I also thought I deserved a free pass based on my normal track record. I let Ali stay in bed till almost 10 that day, she like to sleep. So I didn’t react favorably to her complaints but I still shut things down for the day and ceased from my WoW grind.
After stepping out of my virtual coma, I asked Ali if she wanted to watch a movie. I had downloaded The Departed and really wanted to watch it. However Ali, like she frequently does, went onto IMDB.com and read the review of the movie ahead of time and deemed she did not want to see it. WTF, it has a great cast, it’s supposed to be a great movie yet she doesn’t want to see it. Too much violence and she just wasn’t into it. Hell I can’t even get her to go see Borat even though it is supposed to be funny as hell.
So anyway I am going over the list of movies I have on my system to view, lots of awesome flick I haven’t seen yet like Transporter 2, Fast and Furious Tokoyo Drift, Jack Ass 2, Van Helsing and a few more, none of which she would watch with me…
So we finally agreed she would watch the new Poseidon flick that I downloaded awhile ago, it is a remake of the original Poseidon adventure with Ernest Borgnine that I think came out in the 70’s. I was surprised she agreed to watch that, it had lots of death and violence in it. The movie was ok. Early on you see the core group of people that are trying to escape and you are placing odds on who is gonna get bumped off. I was a bit surprised who made it to the very end. The film was filled with big time special effects, lots of action albeit it was borderline ridiculous at times, and lots and lots of things blowing up, people getting burned and drowned and a big boat going down. The guy that was one of the main bad guys in the Hulk was a main character. He performed ridiculous things throughout the movie, holding his breath like he was Aquaman and performing heroic acts non-stop. The move was eh, ok. I see why it flopped at the box office. I give it a C+.
On Sunday, we did something a bit different. Ali was scheduled to do a 5 mile run for her half marathon training regimen. Instead of running nearby, we loaded up the truck and decided to go have her run on Gulf Shore Blvd, right by the beach. We figured afterward we could spend some time on the beach. I wasn’t up to running 5 miles yet so I packed my rollerblades. The weather at our place was overcast and cool but at the shore it was sunny and warmer. During the run, I took a number of pictures with my cell phone. The run tooks us through the ultra-rich section of Naples, called Port Royale. The houses were incredible monuments to excess. I will post the pictures later.
I slapped on my rollerblades. If Satan designed a pair of rollerblades, I think I have them. I have had these rollerblades for over a decade easily and from day one they hurt my feet. They are solid molded plastic and use three plastic straps to hold your feet in place. I knew 5 miles was a long ass way to go in these blades so initially I tried to wear them a bit loose to slow down the pain process. Well it didn’t work, having them loose just made my feet hurt in a different way. After only a mile or so, my feet were already killing me. At the end of five miles it was close to unbearable. I HAVE to get a different set.
Ali pushed through the five miles but when she was done, she said her knee hurt badly. Once she finished running she was limping. I asked her if she wanted to just go home and ice it but she said no, that we could hang at the beach a bit. Once we set up on the sand, we went down into the chilly water and let her soak her knee in it for a bit. It seems like every time Ali starts bumping up the distance in her training, a knee injury always follows. She has resigned herself to not being able to run the half marathon, her joints just won’t hold up. I told her I was happier running shorter distances, faster anyway.
We only spent maybe an hour at the beach. I read a couple magazines, took in the sights and I was ready to go, mostly because I was hungry. We stopped at Subway on the way home.
Once we got home, Ali iced up her knee, popped an Aleve and laid down to take a nap for awhile. I knocked out whatever chores I could do quietly and f’d around in WoW again. The Eagles didn’t play until Sunday night so my afternoon was unusually free. They may as well have not played.
That game was horrid. Even though I figured they would lose, I held out hope they could pull out a miracle. It seems every week the NFL is filled with games with improbable outcomes. Well the Eagles ended any drama early. The defense in recent weeks has played like they have collectively blown out their ACL, they have been basically terrible and last night they turned it up a notch, sucking more than a turbo powered Hoover. I mean it was embarrassing. It looked like the Colts were playing a high school defense. I just don’t get it, when the season started, the defense was wreaking havoc, making big plays, leading the league in sacks and seemed to be a real strength of the team. The only significant injury is Kearse, but other than that, the D is intact from opening day. I am amazed that his loss could make that much of a difference. I don’t know what the problem is and I have no idea how to fix it. All I know is the defense looked absolutely putrid and I have little hope of the Eagles being better than a 7-9 team at this point. It’s a shame that a season that showed so much promise initially, has totally collapsed.
I am sick of hearing how good Andy Reid and Jim Johnson are as coaches. Either the talent on defense is severely lacking or the coaches lack the ability to adapt when offense figures out what the D is doing. Either way, the fat man and JJ are to blame. They lauded their defensive changes pre-season, telling us how good they were. Maybe the Eagles core D is just getting old. Whatever, I will continue to watch but just like the last half of last season, the expectation level is extremely low.
Ali started working on the Xmas shopping. For the past few years we have done the majority of our Christmas shopping online, mostly through Amazon.com. It seems each of the past few years we have had frustrating issues with Amazon yet we keep going back for some reason. This year is no different. Ali picked out a number of items in Amazon’s easy to use and massive web site. She figured shopping this early would allow us to use the “Super Saver” shipping. Low shipping costs are necessary if you want to actually save money shopping online. After she spent a long time picking everything out, she goes to checkout where it recaps your order. She was very annoyed to see that even though we were a month away from the big day, a number of the items would not be delivered before Christmas with “Super Saver” shipping. But, if you were willing to pay for two day shipping, everything would be fine and dandy. Yea ok, so if we spend another 70 bucks on shipping we can get the stuff on time? That is total bullshit. I told Ali it sounds like a way for Amazon to eek out some extra dollars by skimming some bucks off the inflated shipping charges. Even though it wasn’t Ali’s fault, I carried on how doing that totally negates any advantage of buying online. If they are going to kill you on shipping, it is cheaper to just go to a store and buy it. F’in Amazon pisses me off. It sucks that their site is so easy to navigate and has almost anything.
I was considering hanging the xmas lights this weekend but opted not to. Ali and I also have been throwing around the idea of getting a fake tree. Instead of contributing to cutting down millions of trees we could just have a reusable one to unpack each year. In some ways it sounds good, no cats trying to drink the water and then throwing up from it, no messy needles, no frustrating mounting process. But then there is a part of me that sees it as giving in, choosing convenience over authenticity. Every year of my existence that I can remember (well except the Christmas of my divorce) I have had a real tree in the house, filling the house with a smell that is unmistakable. It adds something to the the holiday, which already has been losing impact on me as I age. I think we will just wind up buying another live tree. The dead tree gives animals something to nest in.
Over the weekend, Joe Scott a longtime DJ in this area died. He was only 46. He had a long and tumultous track record with his radio station. He was hired and fired many times, mostly due to issues with drug and alcohol addiction. He also had weight issues, once being as much as 350 pounds. He later lost a ton of weight and actually was featured in Men’s Health for his weight loss. As f’d up as he was, I found him entertaining to listen to. News of his death hit me a bit. He has been off the air since March when he was fired for the final time.
On the fun topic of death, I saw a quote by Kurt Cobain, ironically while watching one of the “I Love the 90’s” shows on VH1. He basically said “…it is better to burn out than fade away”. I agree. I would much prefer a sudden, unexpected departure than a torturous, slow descent into an increasingly helpless, weak and confused state of being. But that’s just me.
