Friday was the day the septic company was scheduled to come out to pump out our septic tank. We weren’t having any problems with it but it hadn’t been touched since the house was built, it was way past time to have it done. We told them anytime after 2pm on Friday was ok. That wound up translating to 6pm Friday evening.
Before the truck even touched the driveway, the guy came up to the door and gave me a damage waiver to sign. Evidently because the truck is quite heavy, there is the possibility that it could crack a driveway so if you want your tank pumped you have to release them from that liability. I signed it and hoped the driveway would survive intact. (which it did)
Originally I thought that they were going into the access pipe that is visible right by the house, however when they threw some shovels in the yard we realized they were going to have to dig up where the concrete lids to the tank were. It didn’t take them very long to find it. The lid to the tank was right outside the window in our office so Ali and I got a front row seat to septic cleaning 101.
They pull off the lid which looked like a manhole cover. The guy’s assistant looked like it was his son. The son dipped a shovel into the tank and pulled it up. It looked like he didn’t have to put it very far in until it hit water. Dad lit up a cigarette and they threw the suction hose in. As it was pumping away, they dug up at a second spot close by. I wasn’t sure what they were doing. However they soon had another lid pulled off and out came some sort of filter. I wasn’t aware there was a filter in a septic tank. the dad rinsed the filter out thoroughly with our hose. I didn’t venture outside while the gunk was being pumped out, I was afraid of what smells would smack me in the face.
After maybe 20-30 mins, the son knocked on the door and asked me to flush the toilets in the house so they could make sure everything was cool. After doing that, maybe 10 minutes later they had the lids back in place and the dirt shoveled back.
The dad knocked on the door and gave me the lowdown. He said the level in the tank was actually quite high and said it was a good thing we called when we did, else in a few days we could have possibly had stuff backing int o the house. He said the reason for the high level was that filter was clogged and was making the water drain very slowly. He said once he cleaned the filter and put it back in, the water drained very quickly. He said that filter should be cleaned roughly once a year, well it had gone six without a cleaning so I was glad it got done. I asked him if the filter cleaning was something I could easily do myself. he said it was, just dig, pull the lid and the filter out and hose it off. As long as I can stomach the smells it should be a no-brainer. The bill for the service was like 300 bucks and they were gone.
The next morning when I was in the laundry room doing cat duties I heard this weird noise. When I stopped and tried to focus in on it, I realized it was coming from the utility sink drain. What I heard clear as day was the sound of water falling into a now mostly empty septic tank. I had just flushed the toilet a minute ago and I was hearing the end result. It’s kind of weird but a few times over the weekend I would go back to the sink to listen to the water flow into the tank.
On Saturday I had a bunch of outside things I wanted to get done. So while Ali cleaned the bathrooms I got started. I weed whacked, weeded and started bringing more fill up front to raise up another low area of the yard. When Ali got done cleaning she came out and helped me shovel. It definitely goes much faster with two shovels filling the yard cart. We also tackled another job, transplanting a small palm that has been residing in a huge pot in front of our house.
Ali had the idea of putting it to the left of the front door and curving out the landscape border to accommodate it. To be honest, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea but I also didn’t think the palm looked that great in the pot. So we dug out a huge hole and put the dirt right into the yard cart, saving us from making a big dirt mess. Getting the palm out of pot was a chore. It was extremely pot bound and had a bunch of roots extending out the drain holes in the bottom of the huge pot.
Initially I just tried banging on the sides of the pot and then pulling on the tree while Ali held the pot. It didn’t budge. So Ali cut the roots that were sticking out and I took my machete and ran it along the edge of the pot to free it up. I picked up the big pot and shook it and finally the tree came sliding out. The huge mass of roots kept almost all the dirt perfectly intact. Ali pulled at the roots on the bottom to unknot them and to encourage growth once it gets settled into the hole.
The tree and root ball was very heavy and this type of palm has huge spikes around the base of each frond so once it went in the hole there was no pulling it back out. So I grabbed it by the root ball, lined it up over the hole the best I could eyeball it and let it plop into it’s new home. Luckily it was oriented more or less how it should be. We back filled the hole, dug out a new path for the landscape border, put down weedblock and stone on top. I was surprisingly pleased with the end result. Expanding that landscape border and connecting it to the area that surrounded the one topiary created a line that was pleasing to the eye.
After a couple more trips to the fill pit for dirt to finish levelling my low area, Ali took the tractor around and did some speed mowing. There are very few spots that have high grass, but there were a lot of sections with high, dead weedy shit.
On Saturday night I had plans to test out the new Tivo feature I signed up for, Amazon Unbox. AU is a deal Amazon has with Tivo. Basically you browse movies on Amazon and then you can “rent” or buy them. But what you are actually paying for is an electronic version of the title. After you pay, the title is transferred to your Tivo over the internet. If you “rent” a movie, you have a month to watch it until it will delete itself. Once you actually start playing a movie, it will delete itself after 24 hours. If you buy a title, it downloads to the Tivo and remains available forever.
Anyway, Ali picked out what she wanted to see, I “rent” it and get a nice friendly message that I should see it showing up on my Now Playing list within 15 minutes, awesome! I took that to mean that within 15 minutes we could start watching the movie. Well I anxiously checked my playing list in 15 minutes and saw nothing. Hmmm, must be a little slow…. Half hour later, nothing, damn….. An hour later, nothing, what the hell????
I had spouted to Ali how cool this was and now had egg on my face cause I couldn’t get the damn movie to show up. So I start f’ing with things and start researching on the internet. I quickly find others that have had the same problem. Pay for stuff and it never shows up. I tried at least a half dozen little tweaks with no success. Finally I came across the fix.
When you set up a Tivo to work on broadband, they recommend you just use DHCP default settings which sets the default gateway and dns server to the router. This set up has worked just fine for me to pull down my daily Tivo updates forever. However, evidently this setup does not work with Amazon Unbox. To get things working I had to set my IP info for my Tivo manually and give it the ip address of a real dns server. After doing that and resetting the Tivo, Ali told me she saw the movie show up in the list, finally. However during my message board reading I found out another thing about the Unbox movies. Unlike Tivo to Tivo transfers where you can start watching a program before it finishes transferring, with Unbox you have to wait until the movie completely finishes downloading. Depending on your internet connection, this can take one, two or more hours to finish. So it isn’t quite as convenient and spur of the moment as something like PPV on Satellite where you pick an upcoming showing, wait a bit and then watch it. AU requires some planning and patience. It is still a cool concept, just note quite as convenient as I first imagined. I have enough free credits to rent another two or three movies so I will surely try it out again. It’s not a bargain if you are paying for it, they charge you the same amount as if you rent a ppv or go to the store, $3.99.
On Sunday we made our big trip to the Collier Seminole State Park. I decided to go the back way to get there. It took us by Ave Maria, the huge new university/town built literally in the middle of no where. It has progressed quite a bit since we last drove by it. there were tour buses going in and out and a good portion of the buildings in the main area look ready to go. You can see pictures of what we saw at the link above.
I also did a small detour to stop by the tiny post office that we have taken so many of our guests to see. I was worried that it did not survive Hurricane Wilma. 
I was relived to see it still standing. However the big metal sign you see in the picture was all bent and beat up and just leaning up against the front of the building.
The office wasn’t actually open for business. It has very limited hours and is actually only actively manned during select months of the year. After we pulled away I kicked myself for not taking an updated picture of it. It was dumb of me.
The route I took was definitely out of the way. By the time we pulled up to the park we had been on the road for an hour and a half. (the drive back only took 45 minutes) We were greeted by a friendly woman at the park office building. We told her we planned on hiking. We asked her about the sign that said the big, 6.5 mile trail was closed. She said they did a controlled burn in the area and a bridge on the trail was collapsed so they have it closed until further notice. Luckily there are two other trails associated with the park, a 3.5 mile and .9 mile one. We told her we would be doing the 3.5 mile one. She gave us a form to fill out. They like to keep track of people doing the trail so if they don’t check back in afterward they will have a heads up that someone could be out on the trail.
We also had interest in renting a canoe, she said they had one left but we were going to do that second so we just had to take our chances later. We got a park info sheet and went in. We drove to a picnic area by the water where they also launch the canoes and boats. It was a beautiful day with blue sky everywhere, temps in the low 80’s and a steady breeze. We sat down at a picnic bench and enjoyed our PB sandwiches we packed. We both enjoyed the fact that we were out of the house doing something different.
We finished up lunch, both made quick bathroom breaks and then headed to the trail. To get to the trail you actually pulled out of the main park area, hung a left and went down route 41 a bit. The trail isn’t marked at all from the road but the 4 or 5 vehicles parked in the grass gave it away, many of the vehicles had bike racks. This trail is a walking/biking one.
We made our way into the dense vegetation and started our hike. It was very relaxing and interesting. In some ways it reminded us of the walk around Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the main differences you weren’t on a boardwalk and the environment wasn’t swampy. Instead of tons of cypress trees that flourish in wet conditions, the path was flanked by huge oak, pine and palm trees. 
The walk had a lot of open sandy areas that made for a bit of challenging hiking. We took our time and took in the scenery and at various points just took in the sound of the absence of man made noise. All you heard was the wind blowing through the trees, it was very cool and peaceful.
As the walk progressed we stopped less and walked more. We both had a decent sweat worked up from hiking. One of the more interesting things we saw was a small pond filled with alligators, one large adult one and five or six babies. The big one was maybe the biggest I had seen in the wild. 
It sat there motionless and stared at us for awhile and then suddenly moved forward and slipped under the water. After a little bit we spotted it’s plant covered eyes poking up at us from a different spot in the lake. Even though we were up a three or four foot embankment from the pond, Ali was nervous. She had thoughts of the gator somehow springing out of the pond like Michael Jordan and attacking us. Ali calmed down a bit when a bunch of people on bikes stopped as well to look at the gators. Perhaps the fact that we had numbers on our side now if the gator attacked made her feel better. The big gator went under water when all the other people showed up and stayed under water, we tired of trying to see it and took back off.
We finished the hike in approximately an hour and a half. We were both a bit pooped but we both enjoyed it. We hopped back in the truck and headed back to the main park, hoping that there would be a canoe left for rental. We stopped back at the office, told them we had returned from our hike and asked about the canoes. Yep, they had some available. All they do is take your name, give you a whistle to use in an emergency and then direct you to a shed in the back where you pick up life jackets, seat pads and oars.
On our way over to the canoes, we stopped and took time to check out a huge machine that was on display. 
This behemoth was a walking dredger. It was built and used in the 20’s to help cut a trail through the Everglades to connect Naples and Miami via what is now known as the Tamiami Trail. The machine was massive and when we read the information about it, it made the dredger even more impressive. To move through the swamp it literally walked, 10 feet at a time. The bucket on the front was used to both dig out a canal for drainage as well as provide fill to build the road upon. Reading the history of the machine and the people that built the road in what had to be horrible conditions, was fascinating.
The fact board said that in order to build the road, nearly three MILLION sticks of dynamite were used to bust up the ground to allow the dredger to scoop it up. The ability of people in the 20’s to build such a piece of equipment for such a singular purpose was very impressive. Ali and I climbed up into it and checked it all out. It was just very cool.
We then headed over to the canoe area. There was a huge group of Hispanic people both on the shore and taking out canoes. In fact, the last of the newer, plastic canoes was getting put in the water. Ali and I both suspected that a good chunk of these people weren’t paying to rent the canoes but were just using them anyway. We were a bit annoyed as our only option was a big old metal canoe. We hauled it over to the launch area. I had Ali sit in the front so I could push the canoe in, hop in and then push us away from shore with my paddle.
We got out into the water ok and started paddling. It didn’t take long to realize this was going to be a struggle. Having Ali at the front was tough for her. We had a hard time staying straight for a couple reasons. First it was windy and second when I paddled, I was doing it much harder and deeper than she was so the imbalance kept us veering left and right. It went from bad to worse. At one point we got off course and wound up crashing into the mangroves on either side of the water. Sometimes when I would do moves with the paddle to try to correct our direction or if I would shift my position slightly the canoe would rock considerably which freaked Ali out. She had no desire to fall into the water. About 10 minutes into our canoe expedition it became apparent that it was going to be a short trip.
Ali was a trooper and we paddled maybe 500 yards up the waterway but then after a few more rocking back and forth incidents Ali indicated beyond a shade of doubt that she had enough canoeing.
So we turned it around and headed back. Paddling was not exactly fun for me. My left shoulder was burning and the constant switching of sides resulted in a decent amount of water being accumulated in the bottom of the canoe.
When we got back to dry land we noticed that there were now 5 of the plastic canoes available. Evidently, most people had a similar experience as we did and tired of canoeing rather quickly. I asked Ali if she was interested in taking one of the plastic canoes out, already knowing what her answer would be. We pulled our aluminum canoe out of the water, returned our gear and then headed home. Even with the less than ideal canoe trip, we had a great time. The park allows dogs so we may bring Nicki along next time.
On Sunday night we finally got to watch my Amazon Unbox download on the Tivo. Ali selected Little Miss Sunshine. I knew very little about the movie but had heard others say it was very good. They were right. It was a very funny flick that in some ways reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation. Ali and I both enjoyed it very much and laughed throughout. I would highly recommend it, it gets an A from me.
Wow another long Monday entry. I make my attempt at my 150 workout very shortly…
