Archives 2006

I hit the treadmill again last night for week 2 of my running comeback.  I added one more lap to the run to bring it up to a still measly 1.25 miles.  I felt pretty similar to last week, a bit cranky at first but as I warmed up it felt better, in fact for the last lap I increased the speed from 6 mph to 6.5 mph.  Well when I got home I had some discomfort in both knees.  Last week my left knee felt unscathed and my right one was the problem.  This week my left one was probably more uncomfortable than the right, I could feel a pain deep in the knee which from my vast prior experience felt like meniscal pain.   So I popped my Aleve and iced both knees extensively. 

This morning neither knee felt great but I could walk normally and they don’t feel swollen.  I will have to see how I recover over the next week.  I certainly don’t want to take one step forward and five back so I will be very conservative. It’s not the type of thing I can afford to ignore. I also have some sort of pull / strain in my lower left side in an area that I would imagine hernias could be.  When I do abs I feel it pulling there to a point where I stop.  I looked it over to make sure I didn’t see any weird bulge developing.  I’m running out of fingers to plug all the leaks in the levy.  When one body part feels better, another flares up.

Ali and I decided we are going to put for sale signs on the two lots we own in Lehigh Acres to see if we can get lucky and sell them.  The market is soft but we may be fortunate and find someone that really is interested in one of them.  The prices for the lots have leveled off and in many situations dropped dramatically.  My theory is all the old people that have been holding onto the lots for 20 or 30 years have been getting these new huge tax bills just like I have and are deciding to bail.  I see quite a few sales in the 20-30k range.  So my hopes are not high that we will get the 50k plus that we would need to sell them but who knows.  If we manage to sell them we would be able to pay off the equity line and step into a hybrid without taking a loan if we wished.  Those two things would knock over a grand off our monthly expenses which would make a huge difference.   

The blog just turned over 18 thousand hits during the past day.  In internet terms, 18,000 hits is small and insignificant.  But for me it’s not bad for an unadvertised blog that is normally just stumbled upon by surfers.  I appreciate the few that stick around and come back to visit.

It seems my 60 minute daily lunch period always has some sort of incident, visual or thing that sticks out.  Yesterday I saw short hair, skinny, balding, smoking bike riding guy.  Yep he had his oversized button down short sleeve shirt, cigarette in hand and to mix things up, a Mountain Dew in the other hand.

Today as I was on my way over to the gym (which is in a strip mall) I was following behind a late 80’s Chevy Caprice that was pimped out with 22 inch rims and a jacked up suspension, of course it looked silly.  Well anyway I am maybe 15 feet behind this car, going maybe 10 miles an hour.  As we approached the entrance to Beal’s in the first parking spot to my right was an older woman that just finished putting her junk in the trunk and had the empty cart.  I could tell she had intentions of walking the cart back to the door but assumed she would wait until we both passed since we were so close together.  Well the Caprice passed before she closed the trunk but as soon as she did, she instantly made a move like she planned to just walk out in front of me, she never looked, she was just gonna go.  Well depending on my mood sometimes I will just grin and bear a pushy pedestrian, sometimes I won’t. 

 I know as a pedestrian I never play chicken with an automobile.  If a car is right there, I am certainly not going to stride right out, making the assumption that the driver is paying attention and not caring if he has to jam on the brakes to not hit me.  Well this woman seemed to be one of those type of people that didn’t care..  So I stared her down and kept trucking along at 10mph, making her delay all of 3 seconds until she could pass.  F her. After I passed I saw her giving me a look in the rear view mirror and shaking her head, I shook my head in return as I mumbled “Stupid old bitch…..”    If you are stupid enough to think it’s ok to wedge yourself in between 2 cars so close together I could care less about being courteous to you as you obviously are extending no courtesy to me.  If I was an rosy mood, perhaps I would have slammed on the brakes to let the old hag jump in front of me, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t.  I have to admit if she was an attractive younger woman I probably would have reacted differently.  It’s a knee jerk mental reaction that occurs before you can even think about it.

 Stumbled across this on You Tube, funny, funny stuff (unless your name is Mark Foley)  Here is more funny Foley You Tube stuff, this one has the full transcript.  Damn they pump it out fast.

Well my other Audiovox PNP 2 unit bit the dust yesterday.  The antenna connector on it degraded to the point where I had to continually press it back into place ad the slightest bump would break the connection.  So after the gym yesterday I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a Sirius One unit.  This model is the price leader of all the Sirius receivers because it is rather barebones.  It has a single line LED display, a reduced feature set and has no home kit option as it is designed to stay in a car.  As a result it is extremely inexpensive, I got it for $29.99!

It is extremely compact and as a result can be installed very easily.  Last night I installed it in the Sentra in 45 minutes.  I love it.  Instead of having a big gooseneck mount attached to the passenger seat with a big clunky unit attached to it, I have the Sirius One neatly installed using the included sun visor clip.  It’s up out of the way, functions just fine and looks much, much cleaner than the set up I had before.  The only glitch I had was when I first fired it up, it wouldn’t hold preset stations.  A quick search on the net showed many others having the same issue which apparently was a result of a software update.  Luckily they had an update to fix the update and when the unit downloaded it the problem was fixed.  It’s a great little unit.

  Even though it isn’t designed for home/office use, I have it hooked up at work right now using the power adapter and antenna for my Xact Replay unit.  One thing I have noticed throughout my recent radio merry go round is the power and antenna connections are universal.  The power adapter I used for my Audiovox PNP2 unit works with the Xact Replay and the Sirius One unit. 

I saw episode two of Heroes last night.  It is just awesome TV.  I sort of forget that there is non-reality based tv out there. It is the type of show that you wish was longer.  The hour just flies by. 

I am rather groggy this morning but witnessing a strong Eagles performance last night made it worth it.  After a mistake filled first half, most notably 2 fumbles inside the Packer 5 yard line, the Birds put it all together in the second half and coasted to a 31-9 win.  I felt bad for Farve in the second half.  He should have retired or signed on with a contender.  Wallowing along with a scrub team isn’t the way he should go out.

My biggest concern with the Eagles are the injuries that are snowballing every week.  Westbrook was a surprise scratch, they still are hurting in the secondary, Stallworth tweaked his hamstring more and late in the game Reggie Brown hurt his shoulder.  If any of these are prolonged, serious injuries they are in trouble.  The Cowboy game this weekend should be extremely interesting.

For whatever reason, I am having a hard time finding the full transcripts of the Mark Foley young boy IM love affairs.  If anyone has a link where I can see them drop it in here.  I have to admit I am pleased with the timing for the dropping of this bomb.  Anything that will help get more Republicans out of congress is great news.  It’s too bad it has to be as a result of yet another cover up, another example of ultimate hypocrisy.  Of course I would be ignorant to think such things are limited to one political party, the vast majority of them are hiding something I’m sure. ** Update, I found one of them here, creepy **

The world is just chock full of miserable news nowadays.  Yesterday, the second school shooting in the span of a week in of all places, an Amish school???  I mean it is just disgusting.  The world really is a scary place filled with ignorance, evil, greed and lunacy.  Does anyone really think it will get better over time?  Not a chance.  It will only get better once the “reset” button is pressed which will be whatever the next worldwide disaster is whether it be a pandemic disease, natural diasaster, nuclear exchange or enviromental failure.  The world is sick.

I don’t really feel much like blogging today for whatever reason.  The weekend went fine.  Saturday we did extensive mowing.  We had a rain-free week last week so all the standing water dried up.  We took the opportunity to mow down the 2 acres in the back of the house as well.

Saturday night we went to a baby party at our friends house.  Their daughter and other friends of ours just had babies around the same time and the party was for them.  It also was an opportunity for the females in attendence to grill me over when I was going to have a kid, which I artfully sidestepped or replied back that we have a black and furry kid at home already that keeps us busy.  We stayed later than I anticipated and didn’t get to bed till after 11.

Sunday we decided to do something we hadn’t done in who knows how long, go to the beach.  The Eagles play tonight so my Sunday was uncharacteristically free of football commitments, so we took advantage of it.  We drove down and spent maybe an hour and a half there.  When the sun was out it felt quite warm.  After we ate lunch there we sat back down for a little bit and then headed out.  As I was sitting there, I glanced down at my chest and saw one of my suspicious looking mole/freckle things on my chest  and thought about how it was rather dumb to be sitting out in the sun, sans sunblock considering I had two things cut out of my head in the past year.  I put my shirt back on.  I think I will need to be one of those old farts that sits on the beach under an umbrellla. I guess I could have just slapped 45 spf sunblock on too.  Well even so it was nice to hang at the beach for a little while, something that when we moved to Florida we thought would be a weekly thing.  Right now we are lucky if it is a semi-annual event, crazy.

The rest of the weekend was laid back. Well except the part where Ali did the bills.  The bill for the computer I built was in the CC bill for the month so that added a nice chunk to the already high bill.  After paying the bills, the idea of jumping into a hybrid has cooled considerably.  I got a second online number for the trade in value of the Sentra which was considerably lower than the one I saw last week, further dampening any enthusiasm for making a move now.

  I did do some more research online about the Camry and Prius Hybrid.  It amazes me that if I equip both vehicles as I would want, they are almost identical in price.  It makes no sense to me since the Prius is a much smaller car than the Camry.  The Camry appeals to me because it is a much roomier and stylish car.  I have been driving sub-compacts for over 10 years, and specifically some sort of Nissan Sentra since 98.  The only explanation I can get for the near equal cost is the Prius gets significantly better mileage than the Camry Hybrid. The Camry gets 38 highway/40 city (theoritically) while the Prius clocks in at 51 and 60 respectively, a big, nearly 40-50% difference in mileage.  I suppose that is the basis for the cost difference.  Well I think it is a mute point right now anyway.

I lost again in fantasy football, it is pissing me off.  My running backs, Edgerrin James and Jamal Lewis sucked.  Carson Palmer pumped in anemic 7 points against a shitty NE secondary.  FF causes me more stress than enjoyment.

That’s it.

When I took Nicki out this morning I felt the first hint of coolness in the air.  Normally temperatures here overnight never leave the 70’s during the prolonged summer season.  Well this morning the thermometer in the truck read 66.  It really felt good. 

I also totally missed the passing of the seasons last weekend.  I didn’t realize it was now fall.  Up north I always knew when fall hit.  I focused on the date as the beginning of the downfall that inevitably resulted in miserable winter weather.  I hated anticpating the bad weather.  I realized that in many ways my lamenting the onset of winter very much paralleled my fear and hangups about getting old.  The only difference is I was able to do something about the winter problem. I look forward to the winter weather here, it is awesome.

One of the contestants on Dancing with the Stars this season is Harry Hamlin, husband of Lisa Rinna (who was on the show last season and was great) He got kicked off this week.  My only exposure to Harry had been on LA Law, a show I watched religiously.  I always had the impression he was really a cool dude from the character he played.  Well his Dancing with the Stars run totally changed my opinion.  He now is just an old, dorky guy.  He totally seemed uncomfortable when speaking on camera.  His dancing improved somewhat over the 3 weeks but his persona never did.  Maybe he is just shy.  Well anyway, I would have preferred he would have stayed off the show so my LA Law facade would have remained intact.

Am I crazy for really looking forward to the new Rocky movie coming out at Christmas time?  How could I possibly be interested in seeing a 60 year old Stallone playing Rocky again?  How ridiculous is the plot that a fighter his age could possibly get back into the ring? Eh, who cares, I can not wait to see it!  I love Rocky…..  Stallone has gotten back into great shape for the role. 

I’m glad they woke up after Rocky V and realized that a Rocky movie HAS to focus on Rocky fighting.  Rocky V was the worst one by far because they focused on Rocky being a manager instead of a fighter.  It just didn’t work.  They made us wait until the very end to see him throw hands and it was lame exchange at that.

The weekend should be ok.  I have been looking more seriously into the Camry Hybrid.  I ran some numbers and we may be able to swing one sooner rather than later.  We’ll see.

I have had a long running dislike of Sprint which started when I moved to Florida.  They have screwed me over with local telephone issues more times than I can count.  They made me so mad that I registered the sprintblows.com domain name that I had up and active until recently.  Well within the past few months, Sprint divested itself of local telephone servie in our area and the chopped off arm was now known as Embarq.  It is basically the same people under a new name.  Well today I verified that they still suck.

We got a call late yesterday from our one branch that their line to us was down.  I looked at the router and verified it was down and had someone else in our department call  it in.  When I look at my work email the next morning I see a message saying the circuit was intentionally disconnected upon order of some Embarq engineer! WTF???  My boss is mad as hell when she hears this and calls them up to see what is going on.  The answer she got was unbelievable. It basically went like this “… we received a disconnect order on this circuit 3 YEARS ago from Joe Shmoe (a name noone knows) and we just got around to doing it. We were doing some “cleanup”  Oh my God.  I mean how can they even ADMIT to this?  They were just getting around to a disconnect order placed 3 years ago of our circuit by some person not affiliated with our office?  What a bunch of f’in morons.  Luckily the process got reversed quickly and the branch was back up by mid-morning.  Man I should have kept that site up, I wonder if EmbarqBlows.com is available?

Last night I finally got to see the interview Bill Clinton did with Chris Wallace of Fox Sunday News.  I saw brief clips of him getting in Chris’s face about how he handled Osama Bin Laden and terrorism in general during his term.  Watching the full interview really made me miss the days when we had an exetremly intelligent individual running our country.  It was amazing as he rattled off facts, names and numbers off the cuff throughout the interview.  He spoke with such confidence and assurance that it instantly commanded respect.  It was great seeing him call out Fox News for what it is, a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and it’s agenda.  Damn I wish there were no term limits.  And to imagine our biggest problem with him was getting some oral….. 

Last night I watched the first episode of Heroes on NBC.  It is a new series about a bunch of people that discover they have some sort of super human power.  It was great!  I really enjoyed it.  The premise is very appealing to me.  I, like most other kids I imagine, always dreamed of having super powers.  I remember imagining I had many powers such as flight, wrists that shot out webs, and super strength.  I remember drawing up and wearing my own super hero costumes and trying to engineer my own web shooters.  However the power I recall imagining I had the most often were eyes that were combination laser beam and tractor beam.  I had the ability to cut something out of the ground with my eyes and then lift it and put it anywhere I wanted.  Many, many times I imagined I cut Veterans Stadium out of the parking lot and flew it onto our property in Gouglersville.  Well anyway, if you like that sort of stuff, you will like Heroes.

The party van has been in the auto trader for 5 weeks + so far.  I have gotten zero calls.  The only action I received was an email off the site where someone asked me if I would be interested in doing a trade for a Harley, where I would give him the van AND cash in exchange. 🙂  A week or so ago I put a FOR SALE sign in the window of it that faces the road but still have had no action.  It’s a bit of a downer.

For the first time since around early May I ran a mile.  I ran it on the treadmill at the gym after work.  It didn’t go too badly.  Early on I could feel my body asking me what I was doing, it wasn’t used to the motion anymore.  I’d say about halfway in things felt better.  I ran it at a 6mph pace (10 minute mile) so I was far from setting the world on fire but it was fast enough.  Last night I could feel some minor tenderness in my right knee so as a precaution I popped an Aleve and iced it.  My left knee felt totally fine.

  Today, again I can feel it a bit in the right knee but nothing bad at all.  I am not going to push it, I will try to run once a week, increasing my distance a little bit each time as long as I am able to do so without feeling any major pain.  The advantage to running on a treadmill is if you feel a tweak you can instantly stop.  When you are out there hoofing it on the road you are more apt to try to push through it since you have to get back to where you started from.

  It felt good to run for the first time in 4 or 5 months.  For a first effort I think it went well.  My new routine has been to do weights over lunch and then do cardio after work while Ali hits the other gym.  It should help me carve off a few pounds to assist me in reintroducing impact to my activities. I will be very strict in listening to what my body tells me.  I just can’t ignore things and figure they will fix themselves anymore.

Pretty much everything went as planned this weekend.  Friday night I watched the tivo’d Dancing with the Stars shows.  The show is ok but I watch it primarily because Ali likes it.  Between the main show and result show it was 3 hours of ballroom dancing.  It was a bit much for me, by the end of the three hours I was totally tired of it.

   Saturday morning while Ali mowed on the tractor, I weeded.  I weeded and weeded and weeded some more.  I bet I was at it for close to an hour and a half.  I really hate weeding.  Even though I religiously do it every 2 weeks it doesn’t seem to reduce the amount of weeds over time. Since the ground is so wet, the mulch, which is supposed to block weeds, instead becomes a soggy spawning ground for more weeds to grow out of.

After all the outside work was done we spent about 4 hours cleaning up the office.  We moved a couple shelves around and did a lot of sorting and throwing out.  I now have huge piles of books and other stuff to list on half.com and ebay sitting by my desk.  You can see pictures of it all below. 

After busting ass for most of the day I thought Ali would enjoy going out to dinner.  Spur of the moment we also called my mom and invited her along.  Mom had mentioned a little while back how she hasn’t been to the Snook Inn since she moved to Florida so we went there.  It is located in Marco Island, right on the water.  It’s a great place and normally a location where we take most of our visitors.  It has a big outdoor seating area, live music, a thatched roof over the bar and just has a great, unique atmosphere. 

I figured on a Saturday night it would be quite full, even off season.  I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few spaces in the parking lot.  We didn’t have to wait at all to be seated.  We sat at a table in between the bar and the mini-stage.  It seemed like a good spot initially but it turned out to be not so great.  The music speakers were only several feet from us and as a result carrying on conversation was quite difficult, it was very hard to hear what each other was saying even across the table.  Even so we had a good time, the views were pretty, the food was good and we didn’t have to wait.

Sunday morning Ali had to crawl out of bed at 5am to help work a 20k race.  I stayed home but got out of bed myself before 6.  Later that morning I did the oil change on the Tacoma.  It went smoothly more or less.  I had a bit of oil that spilled but I think the next time I should be able to prevent most of that.  I also drained the radiator and added new coolant.  Even with the coolant work I finished up in a little more than a half an hour.  I kind of enjoyed it actually.

By the time Ali got back I had most of the remaining housework finished up.  We flipped on Fox pre-game to get ready for the Eagles 4:15 game.  During one of the commercials I changed over to CBS to see James Brown in action with his new network.  Hearing his voice really made me miss him on the Fox broadcast, it really did.  The Eagles game followed a similar script to last week, they steamrolled in the first half and then had a prolonged shaky period in the second half before they finally, (unlike last week) sealed the game.  They really need to figure out how to play a full 60 minutes of solid football.  Their secondary injuries are catching up to them, it seems like they just break down if a team forces them to make a play.  The 98 yard fumble return, Westbrook’s 70+ yard TD run and the opening play flea flicker were my favorite moments.  That Westbrook run really showed some heart and desire. Anyway, they snagged a needed win and play next Monday night at home against the Packers, they are the better team and need to win that game.