Archives 2006

Well yesterday was my surgeon appointment.  It may go down as my most annoying doctor visit ever.  Ali was off yesterday so I was fortunate that she was there to field a call from the doctor office saying the surgeon was delayed in surgery so they asked if I could push back my appointment a half hour to 1:30.  Ok sure no problem, I’d rather not show up there and sit a half hour if I don’t have to.  So I show up right on time at 1:30.

As I walked towards the office door there was a small crowd of 5 or 6 people in front of me who went to the same office, just in front of me.  The office was empty before we all entered so I figured the wait won’t be bad.  I gave my name and they handed me these forms I had to fill out.  They also asked for my insurance card AND my driver’s license.  If I was in a cantankerous mood I would have stopped and asked them why they needed my driver’s license for a doctor appointment.  After all it is personal information and I didn’t really appreciate giving it out unnecessarily.  But I didn’t and instead started working on the ridiculously long forms.  They asked things like personal hobbies which I was thought was dumb, wtf do they care what my hobbies are.

As I was filling it out, more people came in, most early for their appointment.  I heard the girl behind the desk telling them they may have to wait awhile because the doctor still was not back from surgery.  Odd they didn’t say that to me but maybe they figure I wouldn’t have to wait that long. I was patient for a loooong time.  I read magazines, lots of magazines.  I even thumbed through a spanish version of Sports Illustrated and looked at the pictures.  It was uncomfortably warm in there, probably largely in part to the growing number of disgruntled people waiting for the still missing doctor.  I closed my eyes and half dozed off in my chair for awhile.

Finally around 2:45 or 3 I reached the end of my patience and asked the receptionist in an obviously annoyed tone if they had any idea when the doctor was coming back.  She said no and said if I liked she could take my cell number and call me when my turn was getting close.  I accidentally left my cell phone at work so that was not an option.  She asked if I wanted to reschedule.  If I wan’t so anxious to get the whole ordeal over with, I would gladly do so but I told her I would wait a little while yet. 

Finally the doctor arrived shortly after 3 and they took a few people back so they could wait more in the exam rooms.  The first person they took back was a 1pm appointment so since my original appointment was 1:15  I figured I should be called back in short order.  I sat and watched while another half dozen people went in ahead of me. I held out for another hour before my anger lifted me from my seat once again. I again approach the receptionist, again I have an angry look to me for sure and she does nothing to disarm me, she is basically a bitch.  I said “Why is it that the first person taken in was a 1 o’clock appointment, mine was at 1:15, yet all these people are being seen ahead of me?”  The woman says that those people were all post-op people that normally don’t take long to see.  They normally schedule them all tightly.  “So all these people were scheduled in the 15 minute block between 1 and 1:15?”  Yes, she replies.  I shake my head and sit back down.  I was f’ing annoyed.  When I finally got called to the exam room it was 4:15.  The same bitchy woman was the one who beckoned me, I gave her a blank look and said nothing as she directed me to the room.

So again I wait, I see the doctor scurrying back and forth by the door attending to the various people.  A couple times he blurted out he would be right with me and apologized for the delay, at least he acknowledged the wait unlike his staff.

Finally he comes in with an intern dude and glances at the chart and starts asking me questions.  He said ‘So you have a bulge,  this, that, the other thing…”  All of which I said no to, but I have pain.  I started to explain the background hurriedly as the doc was obviously being pulled a dozen ways at once.  In the middle of the explanation he stops me and has to step out to take a call and then returns.

His quick pace set me off into one of my uncommunicative funks where I allow situations to dictate what I say as opposed to making sure I thoroughly explain myself.  I get out how the pain randomly radiates into the family jewels and how I can even feel some pulling on the right side as well at times.  “uh huh, uh huh” he spits out quickly, clearly indicating that he wasn’t really listening to me.

Well it was time for another groping.  I had to drop my pants again, this time in front of the doc and his intern.  I am really getting sick of this.  Again I could feel the heat on my face and again my embarrassment from the situation further retards my ability to speak what is on mind.  He feels around, a bit more thoroughly than the woman doctor did.  He tests both sides (the woman only did the left side) Then he is pulling and feeling the 2 buddies which was somewhat painful which I indicated to him.  He authoritatively says “You do not have a hernia on either side”  Huh?  I was a bit flabbergasted by the seemingly rock solid tone he used while delivering the news.

I asked if it wasn’t a hernia what is it?  He pulled out a pamphlet while I happily pulled my pants back up.  He showed me a what a hernia was and what he was feeling for.  He said he felt nothing that would indicate a hernia.  He said I probably have a strain in that area.  I asked why that would cause pain down below and he said because of where it is, the swelling associated with a strain could be causing irritation on the thing your nuts are suspended by. Just thinking about it makes me ill.  His suggestion, take some ibuprofen to reduce any inflammation and lay off the ab exercises.  I was not very satisfied with what felt like a bang bang diagnosis.  The entire process was rushed and although the prospect of not having a hernia was good, my symptoms made me feel like he was missing something.  He shakes my hand which I didn’t realize was sweat covered until he shook it, surely a side effect of the situation.  Even though I felt like the diagnosis was done very quickly and the treatment plan almost seemed flippant, I let him off the hook as he whisked away to his next piece of meat.  I grumpily pay 25 dollars for the pleasure of rotting in their waiting room for 3 hours, followed by a quick groping and diagnosis session.  I walk out of the office incredibly angry at the entire process, including my lack of action in calling out the long wait as inconsiderate and the quick exam as inadequate. 

So on the way home I placed a call with the original doctor’s office, asking for the doctor to call me so I could discuss what this guy told me. I would like to get some feedback.  As far as actions go, I am going to take ibubrofen and pay extra care to avoid things that are painful down there.  I’ll give it a week or so.  If I see no improvement I will probably begin the process over again with a different doctor.  I hate the medical system.

 We left the light on at home for trick or treaters but we had no expectation of receiving any.  We haven’t had any for the last 2 years.  Imagine our surprise when the doorbell rang and we saw three kids by the door.  We gave them a good stash of candy and thanked them for stopping.  I wonder if my gawdy illuminated pumpkins over the door were too inviting to resist? 

I have been hit or miss as far as dressing up for Halloween but I would say it has been much more miss than hit.  Most years I don’t even give dressing up any thought. Well for whatever reason this year I decided to put on a Jason mask, my Eagles beanie and my camoflauge t-shirt I have owned since 7th grade.  It’s an interesting look.  I don’t know how long I can keep it on.  It’s rather warm and the pressure of the mask on my face is giving me a headache.  Check in on the web cam during the day to see if I am donning the mask or not.

Once again the party van has not changed hands.  Once again I sat all night until after 8 with no contact from the buyer.  I called multiple times only to be greeted by a fax machine.  Finally she calls around 8:30 with the latest chapter in the story.  Still an issue with getting her last check from her old boss, forgot Monday was Halloween Eve and she was carving pumpkins and Tuesday night she would be out trick or treating with the kids.  However she does offer to give me a 500 dollar deposit Wednesday on it to hold it until she gets her money thing straightened out.  Well it’s not like I have people knocking down the door to buy the thing so of course I had to agree with whatever she wanted to do.

Today is my surgeon consult, who knows what will go down.  I am not looking forward to it.  I just want the situation to get tied up asap so I can get back to normal. 

Yesterday my G15 keyboard arrived.  It is the ultimate gaming keyboard.  It has 18 macro keys that have 3 sets each, giving you up to 54 macros.  The keys are backlit with a cool blue glow and the coolest part, the lcd screen that can run a number of little mini-apps and is directly supported by a number of games, including WoW.  When you launch WoW it displays different information right on the LCD, instead of having to navigate screens in WoW to find it.  It is way cool.  My only gripes about it are with the extra macro keys, I need to have the keyboard off-center from the monitor (shifted to the left) to keep my hands in normal posisition.  The other gripe is the legs on it don’t raise the keyboard to enough of an angle.  I remedied this situation by putting two cd cases under each leg.  It takes a bit of getting used to but it is a very cool addition to my computing arsenal.  I can’t wait till I have some macros pounded out to make my in-game experience less carpal-tunnelish through fewer keystrokes.

That is the best adjective to describe my mood of late. The hernia diagnosis set off another round of me feeling old, weak and rundown.  However, the weekend itself was very low key and lazy which probably contributes to my mental state of being.  Although in a way it feels good to have a weekend with little to do, at least for me, after them I normally feel sort of worthless.

We had the good fortune of getting about an inch of rain which meant I was relieved of landscape watering duty.  The prolonged drought still had most of the grass in a stationary state so we didn’t have to mow either.  It wasn’t a cleaning weekend so we basically just had laundry and a few odds and ends to do.  

The weather this weekend was great, temps overnight around 60 and low humidity days in the 70’s.  I had the lanai door open for a good chunk of the weekend.  It was perfect weather once the rain cleared out. I watched the third quarter of the Eagles game out on the lanai.

Friday night the party van was supposed to be a done deal.  Well once again, it’s departure has been delayed.  The prospective buyer told me that she was in the middle of changing jobs and her prior employer was giving her a hard time, withholding her final pay.  She said it should be all straightened out by Saturday and she would be out tonight(Monday) to get it. Um ok, I sure hope so.  It gives me an uneasy feeling that she requires her most recent paycheck to complete the transaction.  I can only hope it all goes through.  If I get another excuse tonight it won’t be good.  I tried to call her number a couple times today to confirm we were all set for tonight but a fax machine picked up…

Over the weekend I got my first 2 calls on our lots in Lehigh that are for sale.  I got one call on each.  The one call was a realtor just doing his homework, the other one was some hispanic guy with a thick accent.  Neither call lead to anything.

Saturday night we had the neighbors over for dinner.  We haven’t seen them very much recently for no particular reason other than we both have been busy with something. A lot of the conversation was about Ali’s Pop Pop, old age, dying, all stuff I try to avoid thinking about as much as possible.  To escape I gladly assumed dinner clean up duty.

  After a good dinner we watched one of my many downloaded movies, “Over the Hedge”.  It’s one of what has become common place today, computer animated flicks.  It was short, funny and entertaining, a good combo.  We all enjoyed it. B+

Sunday Ali had to work.  I got up early on Sunday just like Saturday (up at 5:30).  I decided to take Nicki for her walk nice and early and we got back before Ali left for work.  I spent most of the morning playing WoW and then took a break to watch the Eagles game.  I wish I kept playing WoW…

That game was horrible.  Unlike the other three losses where they shoulda/coulda easily won any of the games, this one was lopsided, much more than the score indicated.  The Jaguars, who just lost to the Houston Texans the week before by 20 points and were playing their backup QB, DOMINATED, IN Philly.  They ran the ball at will, their defense kept the Eagles from doing much of anything. They made the Birds look like shit.  I never thought the Eagles had a chance to win the game once the second half rolled around.  Once again there was bad clock management, bad decision making, bushels of dropped passes and more stupid penalties.  Of course Andy took all the blame as he always does and as always, everyone is sick of hearing it.  For once we would love to hear him call his players out, chastise them for playing ignorantly and without heart but that will never happen. They go into the bye week 4-4 and now have the harder half of their schedule to go.

Even though I was told I have a small hernia and have my surgeon appointment tomorrow, I still have been going to the gym, just trying to take it easier.  I really feel defeated when I step in there.  Stuff just feels heavy, I just feel uninspired and I leave there feeling like I went through the motions instead of feeling like I accomplished something.  If I have surgery I assume I will be on a no exercise edict for some period of time, I will be crawling out of my skin by the time that is done.  I really want to work on getting my running back to where I can at least do 5k’s with Ali and my volleyball back to where I can play here and there. Before the hernia stuff I felt like I was making some decent progress towards both goals, now who knows.

 Hopefully this entry gave you the government recommended daily dose of whining…. 

Well it’s Friday, that is always good.  If all goes as planned, the people will be picking up the van tonight and we will have 3k to put towards the Camry Hybrid.  I spoke to the dealer and we came to an agreement on numbers.  We worked the deal on a car they won’t even have until early November.  We are both excited about getting into a Camry hybrid but won’t believe it’s true until before it is sitting in our garage.  I sort of look at it as finally being established enough to get a nice set of wheels.  Unlike the Sentra, we won’t be financially upside down in this car.  I have no issues holding onto a car like this for a long time.  My 99 Tacoma has been bulletproof since I picked it up in 2001, no major problems.  I will drive that for years to come yet.

I have to be on call this weekend for more installs of motor vehicle equipment.  If I wanted to be very dedicated I could go out to these branches and supervise the installs but it would eat up my weekend for no real benefit, screw that.

 Last night Survivor had the recap show which I always thought was stupid but watched anyway. It is just a way for them to stick an additional episode in the series. Well for the first time in my Survivor viewing history, we said F it and didn’t watch it and deleted it off the Tivo.  It’s a sure sign that this season of Survivor is weak.

I made my surgeon consult appointment for Tuesday.  I am thinking I may get my stuff felt up once again but am hoping I am wrong.

I had a disgusting dream on Wednesday night, if you are eating or drinking right now you may want to stop. In my dream, I was eating a bowl of chocolate cereal, either Count Chocula or Cocoa Crispies.  Mixed in with the cereal were these large dark pieces of stuff.  I ate one or two of them and thought they tasted odd.  Then I realized in horror that the chunks were actually logs of cat shit.  I instantly woke up feeling sick to my stomach.  I still feel nauseous even recalling it.  Where in the F that would come from I don’t know.

Last night the lady was supposed to come out to complete the van transaction.  After work, Ali and I cleaned out all of our stuff from it, I removed the license plate and internally said my goodbyes to the party van.  Earlier in the day I cancelled the insurance on it.

Well it was 8:45 and I was getting paranoid.  I thought the deal burped. “Burping” is a term we used in car sales to describe a situation where a person puts a deposit on a car but then later the deal falls through either because they changed their mind or could not get financing.  Burp deals sucked, it was like getting the rug pulled out from under you.  Well I was afraid my deal was burping so I called at 8:45 and got her voicemail, great, she isn’t answering the phone.  Well I left a nice message just asking if she still planned to come out and telling her I hoped everything was ok.  I was starting to resign myself to holding onto the PV for awhile yet, when a little after 9 my cell phone rang.  It was the buyer.  She was very apologetic, she got wrapped up in something and didn’t get a chance to call till then.  She definitely wants the van still and asked if she could pick it up Friday.  Sure thing.  I felt better after the call.

Well I had my hernia exam.  I really don’t like this place I go to.  It is a walk in place that I first went to when I got sick shortly after moving to Florida and I just never bothered to find somewhere else.  When you check in you almost feel like you are seeing a loan shark.  They totally focus on your financials and insurance up front, making sure that they will get money before they take a look at you.  It really gets things off on the wrong foot.

As I am sitting there, I hear a rough, hard to understand, heavily accented, male voice call what I think is my last name.  I poke my head around the corner and see a guy that looks like her should be driving taxi or working a newspaper stand.  He sort of looked like crazy Jim from Taxi, but shorter.  I couldn’t place his accent.  Well he was my “nurse”. 

He weighs me, takes me to the exam room, asks me a few questions about it, takes my blood pressure and temperature and then tells me I can hop off the exam table and sit in the chair.  I was supposed to be seeing a nurse practicioner that I saw before.  She helped me when my head was stuffed with ear wax a couple years ago.  So at least I knew her kind of.  So I sat there, fully dressed just waiting for the fun to begin.  The male nurse pops his head back in and says I should put on a gown he hands me and “Just take the pants off.   Oh and the opening goes in the back…”  Great…. 

So I take off my pants but leave my boxers on.  I figure they are loose enough that if she needs to cop a feel she can just move the boxers.  So I am sitting back down in the chair in my gown which is untied in the back, I couldn’t reach around to tie it.  In comes a woman in a white coat, I didn’t recognize her.  She said she was Dr whatever.  Oh, I said that she must be new, I hadn’t seen her before.  I could tell immediately that she was a bit uncomfortable from the get go because she knew where this was all leading.  I matched her discomfort easily. 

I explained to her how I thought I hurt it in the gym and how it has gotten a bit worse over time.  So she says she will do the exam.  But wait, she needs to call in a witness!  I am thinking to myself “This is just peachy”  So in walks a nurse to amplify my embarrassment level.  I stand up in front of both of them and say “Ok well I have my boxers still on, is that ok?”  She says I need to take the boxers off as well.  So now I get to sheepishly take my boxers off in front of these two women, under the gown.  Ok so I step back towards the doc, she is sitting on a stool.  You could tell every person in the room was uncomfortable with the situation, me being at the top of the list.  I could feel my face was warm, meaning it was red, leaving no doubt to how weird I felt.  Well for some reason I figured she would just reach under the gown and feel whatever she had to feel.  Instead she yanks the gown to the side and starts manipulating my junk.  She feels around and then moves stuff to the side and presses while she has me cough three times.  She tells me I have a small hernia.  Wonderful. She told the nurse witness she could leave.

 I slid my boxers back on and sat down as she told me about how they will refer me to a surgeon as that is the only way to fix it.  During the conversation the vibe was still very awkward.  She said I could put my pants on and she left.  I wondered what sort of conversations will happen as a result of my hernia exam.  I was very happy to get the hell out of there but now I have the fun of a potential hernia surgery looming.  I haven’t called the surgeon’s office yet. 

I will not deal with this very well.  Even hearing people talking about stuff like vasectomies makes me ill at times.  The idea of someone messing around with anything located between my belly button and upper thighs just goes through me. 

I keep wondering how this exam is going to go tomorrow with the nurse practicioner.  Is she going to have me strip naked and stand there, humiliated, Abu Gahrib style?  Will she coldly command me to drop my drawers and then execute the exam with same, frigid, clinical disposistion?  Or will it go as I hope, I will be able to get examined with my boxers on and the whole thing will not be a big deal with no awkward glances or moments?  That is probably too much to ask, but I can only hope it goes that well.

I have had the party van up for sale for close to 2 months in the auto trader with basically no response.  The only call I got was from a guy that asked if I was interested in trading the van for a Harley AND me giving him cash.  Well out of the blue I got a call yesterday from a woman that saw the ad.  I gave her a bit of a sales pitch on the phone and she sounded interested.  She said she would call back to schedule to come out and look at it.  I was hopeful to hear back from her but certainly didn’t count on it.  Well then last night around 7, I got another call from her asking if she could come out and see it. “Of course!” I excitedly told her.  I went out and cleaned it out and fired it up for a little bit in anticipation of her arrival.

She showed up around around 8:30 with her boyfriend/husband, I didn’t ask the relation.  They have four kids so they need a lot of room.  I felt a bit bad about them seeing it in the dark as you can’t tell much about the exterior in the dark. I did tell her the one side had some scrapes and dents from when the prior owner misjudged the proximity of the pole at the drive-thru. I started it up, lit it up inside, turned on the gadgets and showed them it all worked.  I was up front about what I have done and what warts it has, none of which they seemed to care about.  I strongly encouraged them to take it out and drive it but she didn’t want to because her kids were in the car.  The guy turned the steering wheel back and forth a few times, stepped on the brake pedal, commented on how quiet the motor sounded and said he trusts it.  Um ok, well that’s fine I guess.  I would never buy something I didn’t drive, not that it hasn’t prevented me from getting some clunkers over the years…

So they both liked it, both were excited about it so she asks me about price.  She saw the ad said O.B.O. and wanted to know what my best offer was.  Again I was honest, I said the only offer was the Harley barter deal where I would be shelling out cash.  She laughed and asked if I would consider 3k cash?  After an intentional brief pause and some exterior consternation, I said that would be fine.  At this point, 3k was a grand slam for me since I was considering just turning the van in to a charity or letting the Toyota dealer steal it towards the Camry hybrid transaction. It’s funny how expectations change.  Originally I started at 4495 as a price.  Considering I spent 3500 for the van and put at least 2500 into repairs, I am taking a major bath on this, yet I am happy. 🙂

  So they said we would do the deal today, probably after work.  They are supposed to call me to set it up.  I took no cash from them as a deposit so who knows, it isn’t a done deal till it is out of my driveway so I am not going to get too excited until that happens.  The sale of it will definitely put the purchase of the Camry hybrid back into the realm of possibilities although I still plan to try to work the dealer to get the best deal we can. (which to this point hasn’t been very good) I have to admit I have had visions of how cool it would be to be cruising to work in the Camry everyday, playing with the gadgets, using my Treo via the bluetooth interface and having the doors open just by the car knowing I was approaching. 

Have you seen those commercials of those new Lexus parallel parking themselves??  Wow that is just incredible.  I am sure the cars cost a small fortune but damn how cool would that be to have it robopark itself?

I had a strong week in fantasy football, scoring 122 points.  If I had 3 points more I would have high score for the week and won 50 bucks.  I would have done it easily if Edgerrain James performed even remotely up to par.  He has done very little for me all season but I have stuck with him.  This week he pumped in a pathetic three points.  I am just about ready to sit his ass.   

I just downloaded and installed IE7.  I like it.  The tabbed browsing, although something that has been around for awhile, is new to me since I never run Firefox.  The true test is if this version has security fix after security fix pumped out for it like IE6.  I can hardly believe that Microsoft is going to push this out as an automatic update.  I would imagine it could break a lot of stuff.  However in the quick testing I have done, all my stuff still works just fine.  As a precaution, I blocked it from getting pushed out throughout our network here.

We had our first chilly night here last night with a low in the low 50’s.  It felt good to me.  Ali didn’t agree.  She is hyper sensitive to cold anymore. 

I am doing the coutdown to my hernia exam on Thursday with dread.  I just hate doctors.  My exam is going to be done by a nurse practioner.  In a weird way I would rather have a woman do it than a man.

I knew this past weekend was going to be a pain in the ass and it lived up to my expectations.  I had to work this weekend because the state was sending some installers in to replace the pc’s that are used for motor vehicle transactions.  We had 26 machines to be migrated and they were only sending three people which seemed a bit light to me.  Well after watching this crew in action for a bit, I knew we were in trouble.

One of the guys on this crew was the geekiest looking guy I may have ever seen in person.  I can’t hardly describe his looks besides saying he would be Napoleon Dynamite’s ugly brother.  There was one woman whom appeared big enough to kick the two guy’s asses.  All three of the installers were smokers and they smoked, a lot.  They quickly developed a pattern of stopping everything and going outside as a unit for smoke breaks every 20-30 minutes.  The people from our office found this annoying as we were inside busting our ass, pulling out old equipment, unboxing and placing new equipment all the while the people that were supposed to be doing it were sucking down cancer sticks.  We worked until 8:30 Friday night and arrived at a stopping point.  Throughout that time the 3 amigos never once acted like they had any interest in expediting this process, it was like a day in the park for them and I am sure that they caught on that the less they did the faster we worked to pick up the slack.  Pretty much everyone from our office that was helping was very annoyed with these poeple by this time.  They said they would be back at 9am Saturday and said it could be “the long day” of 12 hours or so.  Hearing that freaked a bunch of people out, including myself.  We had no expectations of spending that long to get stuff done.

Several of us arrived early on Saturday so we could get a jump on stuff.  I decided to bring Nicki with to work at the last minute. She looked so pathetic when I was ready to go, so I brought her along.  I figured with as much as I had to do, I didn’t want to have to take an hour and a half off to drive home and back.  She followed me around like a shadow all day, it was so funny.

 We jumped right in on doing more of the installers jobs, unboxing stuff, taking out trash and getting more annoyed by the minute.  The installers showed up about 9:15 and didn’t come inside until they all met for a kickoff smoke break outside the door.

The lead installer’s main responsibility was to get the new server online but he was having various issues getting it up.  It was obvious to me that these people had a very limited technical background and work off of a script.  If the script doesn’t go as planned they are pretty much clueless.  The new server was not coming to the sign on screen but instead just hung at preparing network connections forever.  However I discovered I could reach the server from the workstations.  This guy just waited and waited and waited for the server to come online, thinking that it was just slow.  It had been sitting at the same spot for a good 2 hours when he decided that his crew would go do lunch.  All morning they had continued their same casual pace, filled with double digit smoke breaks throughout the morning, it was f’ing ridiculous.  Instead of going out to lunch, we had one guy go and pick up lunch for us and bring it back so we could keep working.

Well while the installers were out dining, I managed to climb into the state network another way and create the user account that was necessary for us to continue to deploy workstations (something the installers had no idea how to do)  After I got this going we were a good hour and half into the 3 musketeers lunch break with no sign of them.  I called the guy up and asked him where they were, I told him I found a way around the current issue and we would appreciate them getting back to the office asap.  He said their food hadn’t come out yet but would try to hurry up.

  Well by the time they pulled back into the parking lot, they had been gone over TWO AND A HALF HOURS.  I was pushing along with the installs, doing what they were supposed to be doing, getting angrier with each passing moment that went by.  They had the balls to once again stop outside and take another smoke break before entering the building.  I let the lead installer get settled in front of his still screwed up server and then I blasted them all.  I told him it was total bullshit for them to take a two and a half hour lunch while we are here busting our ass trying to get this stuff done, I said we already put in our 40 hours and don’t need to work another 25 this weekend because his crew is screwing around, I mentioned how the constant smoke breaks and casual work pace was extremly annoying.  He replied back that the tax collector is supposed to allocate 10 hours for them Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  He said that is where he gets his 40 hours.  I said, so, you are telling me you are deliberately trying to stretch this out to take longer?  Then he backtracked and said he gets paid the same if it takes 10 hours or 40.  The entire time I was on him he refused to look at me.  I was really hot and demanded to know who was responsible for telling us to expect to put in 10 hours a day over the weekend.  He said I should call the project manager (whom I know from previous installs) and I angrily assured him I would.  I went right over to the phone and called him.

I recapped the scenario to the PM, my voice was very angry and he did his best to reassure me that he would handle it.  He said the installers were not handling things as they are supposed to.  The lead tech got a call a few minutes later and low and behold after that the amount of smoke breaks dramatically decreased and their pace quickened.  Sometimes I guess it just pays to just blast someone that is not pulling their weight.. Afterward it felt good to hear the compliments from my co-workers for hammering the installers for f’ing off.  Even with the quicker work pace from the installers, the 12 hour work day predication came true, I didn’t pull out of the office until 7:30 pm, just enough time to go straight to the airport to pick up Ali. Nicki was exhausted from walking after me all day.

Ali was spent from her emotional week with Pop Pop, of course  Nicki was thrilled to see her.  I strategically parked the truck so Nicki couldn’t see Ali. Then I let her out so she could pee in excitement on the concrete instead of on my interior.  Both Ali and I were exhausted from our days and we were both happy to back at home together.

Sunday I busted hump to get 2 days of chores done in a few hours so I could watch the Eagles.  I also had to make a grocery run since I hadn’t had time to do it up to that point.  Before that I stopped for a quick visit with my mom.  By the time I got home I had missed the first 10 minutes of the game and what a game it was.

 For the third time this year, the Eagles suffered a gut wrenching loss.  Before the game I assumed the Birds would be able to handle the Bucs, after all they are 1-4 and are starting a rookie QB.  The Eagles D should have him for dinner.  Well the game did not go as planned.  Donovan buried the team early throwing two horrible int’s that got returned for touchdowns.  Then at the end of the half, with 10 seconds to go, the Eagles had no timeouts but they had time to run one pass into the endzone and if it doesn’t work, kick a field goal. Well instead, Donovan throws the ball to the receiver on the 2 or 3 yard line, he is tackled and the clock runs out, no points. Those points would have won the game in the end.

Fast forward to the fourth quarter.  Donovan has been busting his ass to attone for his terrible int’s by running the ball more than he has in a long time.  They get the score to 17-14, only trailing by 3.  There is is about 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter.  Once again it looks like the defense is going to come up empty.  They can’t stop the Bucs and in fact help push them down the field when Jerome “Bust” McDougle FINALLY does something you never see him do, sack the QB.  But wait, the dumb ass grabbed the face mask of the QB, 15 yard penalty, what is that?  The asshole went and kicked the officials flag and got another 15 yards tacked on???  The Eagles D moved the anemic Bucs offense 30 yards thanks to that big dummies play, putting them in field goal range which the Bucs converted for a 20-14 lead, forcing the Eagles to score a TD to win.

The offense started slowly, doing very short pass plays that did not seem appropriate with less than two minutes to go.  On a third down they throw yet another short pass, at the ankles to Westbrook.  He scoops it up and I am worried that he is going to get tackled short of the first down marker.  He makes a guy miss and passes the marker.  I blurt out, “Thank God for Westbrook”  he makes another guy miss “Thank GOD for Westbrook!”  He makes a few more miss and scores a touchdown “THANK GOD FOR WESTBROOK!”, I scream as he prances in.  I was estatic that the Eagles finally delivered in the clutch, what a great comeback.  I saw there was like 30 seconds on the clock but eh, who cares, the Bucs have that shitty rookie QB that hasn’t done shit all day.

Well the special teams, that used to be good, once again came up small letting Tampa run the kickoff out to the 36.  Then the QB ran for some yards and completed a short pass to get them a little past mid-field.  On a crucial play with time running out he threw an incompletion, leaving only time for one more play.  I assumed it would be hail mary time since the field goal attempt would be a ridiculous 62 yards.  What? They are sending out the kicker?  Ah ok, whatever, they showed Gruden on the sidelines and he has an expression like he knew there was no f’in chance they were making this.  Their kicker had been maligned for being shitty.  As a matter of fact up until this game, the longest field goal he made this year was a lousy 29 yards.  His career long was only 50 yards.  62 yards? Yea right, give me a break. 

Well even though I knew he would be way short, I held Ali’s hand like I normally do when there is a big moment in a game.  We held our breath as the kick was away, waiting for it to fall many yards short.  We watched in horror as the kick sailed low and fast, what the hell, no, it can’t be, it’s GOOD?????  WHAT THE HELL??????????  This guy hasn’t kicked more than a 29 yard field goal this year and he decides he is going to kick the 2nd longest field goal in NFL HISTORY to win the game?????  Unf’ingbelievable.  Ali and sat there stunned, in disbelief that the Eagles actually lost this game that we thought they snatched back.  It was horrible.  It just isn’t their year.  You don’t lose games like that.

My key points from the game:

Ronde Barber made Donovan look like a first class chump.  He played him like a puppet. Giving a team that could generate no offense, 14 points directly off turnovers is inexcusable.  Granted he went all out to get them back in the second half, as he should have.  He doesn’t handle playin in heat well, once again reliving his Superbowl performance with 3 picks and throwing up in between.

Jerome McDougle is a grade A bust.  He was a first round pick a few years ago and has done ZERO for this team.  He has either been injured or inept the entire time.  I heard glowing reviews this preseason about how good he looked, ready to live up to his potential. Hah, he still sucks and had a big part in losing that game with his ridiculous penalty.

The Eagles as a whole just have an undisciplined feel to them.  They make mistakes that a team under the same coach for more than a half decade just shouldn’t do.  The stupid penalties, bad clock mangement, not getting points in a situation where you absolutely have to.  It really is frustrating.

 Their defense is developing a repuatation for coming up small when the pressure is on.  It seems at the end when it counts they get cautious and/or commit a stupid penalty to allow teams to extend drives.

These were 3 bad losses.  All three games were easily in their grasp and they let each one slip through their fingers.  It is very frustrating but I will be cheering them on again regardless next weekend.

Today at work was hectic as I expected it to be.  Lots of little issues to address related to the upgrades but they all got handled. I was looking forward to getting back to the gym for the first time in over a week.  Blow of some steam, get back into my routine, cool.  Well about halfway in , my suspected hernia was really starting to hurt.  I was talking to the one guy that works out there that is a chiropractor.  I described my symptoms and he said he was pretty sure it was a hernia.  There was pretty much nothing I did for the rest of my workout where I couldn’t feel the pain so I quit early.  I made an appointment to go get it checked this Thursday morning.  I can hardly wait… 

I haven’t gone to the gym all week but yesterday I decided to leave work a few minutes early to at least run on the treadmill a bit.  It is the first time I have been to the gym since they closed for three days for improvements. They laid down some vinyl floor tile and painted the walls that were black a light tan color.  Those simple changes made a huge difference in the feel of the place.  The space seemed dark and almost dungeon-like before with the black walls.  Now all of a sudden it seems fresher and open.  It’s amazing what paint can do.  We really need to do some painting around our house.

Well anyway, I forgot my socks so I threw my running sneakers on my bare feet, unsure how it would feel.  It wasn’t that bad.  I had visions of my feet getting rubbed raw but the sweat on your feet takes care of that problem.  I did the most mileage since my knees got toasted, a mile and a half.  I still have some discomfort when running but today I feel pretty unscathed except….

I think I may have a hernia.  For a few weeks I have a weird pain in the area I would imagine a hernia would be.  I thought taking a week off from the gym may help but it hurts a little worse.  I think running aggravates it.  That is the LAST thing I need.  I already am dreading the possibility of having that conversation and subsequent examination by a doctor.  God I hope it just goes away.

I am so glad I steam cleaned the carpets so the animals can immediately soil it.  Yesterday was not a good day.  When I woke up yesterday morning I was startled in horror as I flicked on the lights by a huge pile of something on the carpet next to the kitchen island.  At first I thought it was shit but then after some more examination and the absence of shit smell, I determined it was a big pile of dog puke.  Evidently in the middle of the night Nicki came out and left me a big barf pile.  Just how I like to start my day, cleaning up puke.  For whatever reason, dog puke seems to stain the carpet more than cat puke.  We have various permanent stains throughout the house from Nicki letting loose.  Well I hit it with various carpet cleaners and then sucked up the gunk with the little hand held carpet vac thing we have.  I was not in a good mood.

I drove home again at lunch yesterday and let Nicki out.  She did both a 1 and 2 and I figured all was well.  When I got home after work I got an even more horrible surprise, a nice pile of dog shit within 3 feet of the puke spot.  Nicki was running around in her normal excited manner when someone comes home.  When I spotted the pile, I called her over, pointed to it and said NAUGHTY in my stern voice.  She immediately put her tail between her legs and ran back to the bedroom to hide, knowing she did a bad thing. So I held my breath as I picked up the stinking mess and after throwing it away, lit a scented candle to hopefully remove the stench that wafted throughout the house.  More scrubbing, more wiping and more vacuuming ensued.

  I picked up some pumpkin lights at Walgreens.  Ali mentioned how she wanted to do more Halloween decorations so I thought I would surprise her by hanging these out front.  I hung them up but am not very impressed with how they look.  They probably scream, “white trash” for most people that see them but maybe that is just me.  We’ll see what she thinks.

Speaking of Ali, we are hoping she will be flying back on Sunday.  Pop Pop has pulled through this latest episode and is doing better.  However instead of assisted living he will have to go to a nursing home which neither of us are thrilled about.  I’m sure Pop Pop won’t be thrilled either.

Last night I watched some of the baseball playoff game.  It was the first I watched baseball this year.  I only watched 20 minutes before I couldn’t stay awake.  Ironically I saw the awesome catch the Met outfielder made on what would have been a two run homerun.  What a play.  Then he had the awareness to get the ball back in and double up the base runner.  I was a bit disappointed to see the Mets lost this morning.  It would have been a storybook ending for them to come back and win it after that catch.  Baseball just doesn’t hold my interest at all anymore.  If the Phils were in the playoffs I would watch but otherwise I just don’t give a damn.

It seems like all I watch anymore back in the bedroom is either UFC or Pride Fighting.  Man I just love that stuff.  It is so awesome that they started showing UFC on free tv, a brilliant move.  UFC is now what the WWF used to be and it is much better IMO because it is real.  I would imagine the WWE people are worried and they should be.  UFC is a much better product.  I don’t like Pride Fighting quite as much.  Maybe because it is held in Japan, maybe because they fight in a regular boxing ring instead of a steel cage, I don’t know.  It’s good, but UFC is GREAT.   

Another sign that my WoW addiction is a bit more under control.  In the past when Ali would be away, I would use it as an opportunity to OD on WoW.  I would stay up till midnight or later each night, punishing my body with lack of sleep so I could get a few thousand more XP.  Well this week I think the latest I played was 9:30.  I felt tired, so I went to bed.  I think I have it much more compartmentalized.  If I get to play it, I enjoy it and still like it.  If I don’t, it’s ok, it will be there tomorrow.