Archives June 2007

So here is the ticket that was my closest sniff to millions of dollars.  All the circled numbers are hits.  Damn that would have been nice.

Ali and I have talked about what we would do if we hit it big.  Ali of course would immediately quit her job and never work again.  I don’t know that it would be such a no brainer for me. 

I may want to work in some regard to just make me feel worthwhile.  I think I would go crazy if I just sat home and counted my money all day.  Then again. maybe not. 🙂

A gym buddy of mine I used to talk to at the gym all the time had been MIA forever.  One day he just stopped showing up.  I bet I haven’t seen him in close to a year and a half.  Then out of the blue I see him yesterday, he’s back.  He has had a rollercoaster going in his personal life, venturing out into owning his own pool cage business, having the market dry up and at the same time buying a second home to “flip” and having that market dry up as well.  He is really getting financially squeezed.  Well anyway, it was good to see him at the gym again.  He is a Philly guy like me, we normally have a lot to talk about.

I felt so wiped out after my 300 workout yesterday.  Could you imagine the irony if I would drop over dead in the middle of it?  However that isn’t a bad way to check out, if you ask me.

Every week we play the Florida pick 6 lotto in the hope of hitting it big.  We drop 5 bucks and play 5 lines.  We are normally lucky if we have one or two numbers on the entire ticket.  Well I got groceries on Friday and got the ticket.  The first two lines I do are always the same, the other three I just make up.  Well Ali checked the ticket last night.  I had ALL SIX numbers.  The problem is I didn’t have all six on one line.  Holy shit. The odds of pulling that are very slim, certainly not like hitting them all at once , but still.  I did manage to get 3 numbers on three different lines so instead of 16 million, Ali and I get to split $10.50   🙁 

Ali is back home. Her flight back was uneventful. She was glad to be back in her normal surroundings.  Trips up north can be very stressful for various reasons.

Last night was another totally nonsensical dream.  I was at a beach with a boardwalk.  I was approached by some guy that gave me a big plastic jug filled with some sort of liquid that is used to make surfaces less slippery.  He told me that if I would go down the boardwalk and throw this stuff on the steps of all the hotels he would pay me.  It sounded good to me so off I went.

I did two hotels quickly.  I would just squeeze the jug and spray the junk out.  Then I would get on my knees and spread it around with my hands.  Then I got to a third hotel, a fancy one.  For some reason I didn’t use the direct approach.  Instead I went to the front desk and asked if I could check in.  I got a room but then immediately came down with my jug, walked out the door and started spraying down the steps.  The front steps of this place were covered with leather for some reason.  So as I was spraying and spreading, the front desk guy sees me and comes out furious, asking me what I was doing. 

I tell the guy to calm down, I am just applying something to make the leather steps less slippery.  I told him to feel the steps.  He would have none of it and called the police and continued yelling at me.  Instead of fleeing, I got in the guys face and was screaming back at him.  Eventually the cops came and told me that I could not spray this stuff on people’s steps.  I told the cop that it was only to make them safer and less slippery.  He wasn’t convinced.  He didn’t arrest me but instead took my chemicals and made me leave.  That was where the dream ended…..

My weekend alone with just me and the dog was fine, I had a relaxing time more or less.  On Friday I really appreciated that Ali gets stuff done during her day off.  After work I went to the bank, then went to Sam’s and then finally went to Publix.  By the time I got home it was close to 7.

I bought some fresh beer and a pizza at Sam’s to set me up for the weekend, allowing me to not have to cook very much.  It has become a mini-tradition that I normally get pretty drunk one night while Ali is gone.  I planned on continuing the tradition.  However the entire weekend I only had one beer and that was on Friday night as I watched 300 for the third time. (the dvd rip this time) I never tire of it.

So my plan was to bust my ass on Saturday so on Sunday I could have a more or less carefree day.  I was worried about the forecast which called for some heavy weather to come rolling in.  However, the entire day was dry and I was able to knock everything out.  Not having Ali around means there is a lot more work for me to do.  On top of my normal physical labor, I also have to do stuff like the laundry which is a drag.

There are several things I do differently when Ali isn’t around. I can listen to stuff louder.  The volume on the tv, in WoW, on the radio all go up a bit when I am by myself.  Ali says I must be hard of hearing but really I just like stuff louder.  When I am driving home from work I am able to listen to Bubba the Love Sponge on Sirius.  Ali can’t stand him, he crosses the vulgarity line for her too often.  I find him very funny.  Other than that there isn’t much difference, I still get up early, I still stay up later than I should, still push to finish “the list”

Like I said earlier, the rain held off during the day Saturday but we got hit hard over the rest of the weekend.  The weather center recorded almost 5 inches of rain over a 24 hour period.  It was enough rain that we actually had standing water around the property, although by this morning most of it had soaked in.

I watched a lot of movies while Ali was gone.  As mentioned earlier, my third 300 viewing was enjoyable as ever, it still gets an A.  On Saturday afternoon I watched Tekken the Movie.  I got this confused with the Street Fighter movie which had live actors in it.  Tekken was a one hour animated “movie”.  Ali would have hated it, I found it entertaining.  They even say the word “shit” in it several times and have an animated nude girl in it, freaky. I give it a B, although most would not.

I saw Scary Movie 4.  I have had this for a long time and pretty much forgot about it.  It was anything but scary, in fact it was very funny.  It used Airplane type humor throughout.  It even had Leslie Neilsen in it, the king of this movie genre.  I really liked it.  B+  I am hoping to get Ali to watch it with me when she gets back.

I also took in Scarface for the first time.  I have seen bits and pieces of it but never the whole thing.  It was a great movie although I would put Good Fellas ahead of it.  Now I have Godfather 1 and 2 to watch, I’m not gonna bother with Godfather 3, I heard it is very lame.

The fifth movie I took in last night was Blood Diamond.  It was a really good movie based on a really sickening situation.  Leonardo Dicaprio is great actor.  The movie was about the diamond trade in Africa and how the fight to control it results in endless violence.  If the brainless, animal-esque, f’ing that goes on in Africa that results in rampant HIV wasn’t bad enough.  Put guns in the hands of these same people and you have a whole new type of genocide.  If the movie was accurate in it’s portrayal of the situation, it is disgusting.  Seriously, so many of these people seem to be only slightly above primate status in their cognitive thinking.  They kill a person like they were swatting a fly, it is no different to them.  It’s amazing that in this day and age that these sort of situations exist, that mankind as a whole has learned nothing from their several thousand years on this planet.  It was a good movie about a terrible thing.  I would give it A.

On Sunday morning I took Nicki to the dog beach.  We had not taken her there in a long time.  The last time we were there the beach was covered with dog shit from careless owners and the tide was rolling in.   After that trip Nicki broke out in a rash on her belly. 

Well I decided it was time for her to go back.  She was skeptical and scared of the other dogs, as always but she had no problems going right back into the water.  It’s odd because she absolutely does not want to go in our pool but she will go into the water at a beach immediately.  I think it is the gentle slope that allows her to go in at her pace instead of having to jump right into a pool.

The weather looked like rain the entire time so there weren’t a ton of people/dogs there which was just as good.  For the most part Nicki and I were off on our own with me in the water up to my knees and her swimming circles around me, it was cute.  I took a bunch of pictures with my cell phone.  The quality isn’t great but it’s good enough.   We stayed at the beach for maybe an hour and that was enough.  I threw a big towel over the seat of the truck to try to contain the sandy wet mess from her.  It was only partially successful.

Once we got home I immediately put her in the tub and gave her a quick bath in an attempt to prevent any rashes from breaking out this time.  The beach was much cleaner than the last time though.  She had fun and I want to try to get there with her more often.

The rest of my Sunday was very low key.  I did some laundry, played WoW, ate pizza and looked forward to Ali’s arrival today.  I don’t mind being on my own but it is always nice to have things swing back to normal.  I pick Ali up at 2pm.

 The picture link posted above also has a few pictures from the Hollywood VB event, very few.  I didn’t feel very much like taking pictures.

My return to the 300 workout after an 11 day hiatus was difficult as expected.  It started out well with me finally getting the 20th pull up.  I think losing body weight definitely makes those easier.  I struggled through the rest of the workout but managed to go +4 in reps to 261.  During my floor wipers I had to rack the weights briefly after rep 25, I just was spent.  After maybe 10 or 15 seconds I pushed the barbell back up and did my last five reps.

I was spent. But as I am in my back room busting my ass to the verge of barfing, I was contrasted by one of the oddest things I ever saw at the gym, someone sleeping on an ab machine 10 feet away from me.  It was a black guy that I have seen there a few times before.  He was on an ab machine that reclines at an angle.  For the longest time I didn’t look directly at him but I knew he had been on the same machine for a very long time.  I figured he was just really lazy and took ridiculously long breaks in between exercises.  However after maybe 15 minutes of this guy being in the same spot, I looked closer, his eyes are closed and he is sleeping….  What the f??? 

Being in the middle of my self inflicted physical pain, I found this very annoying to have someone sleeping at the gym.  I muttered under my breath “… f’ing ridiculous”  After maybe 20 minutes or so, the Haitian woke up from nap time and resumed his low intensity, light weight ab routine.  Damn I wish I had a camera with me. I’ve seen lots of crazy things during twenty years of going to gyms but never someone sleeping on the equipment.

Wow not only did Tire Choice do a great job of exceeding all of my expectations with the tire transaction on my truck, they even followed up after the service.  Yesterday in the mail I got a little thank you letter along with coupons for service.  It seems so rare nowadays to stumble across a business that actually offers quality customer service.  They actually cared about what they did, amazing.  I was pleased to see they have a location in Naples, close to me, so if I have to get an issue addressed it will be quite easy. At least based on my experience, they are HIGHLY recommended.

Today I am doing my first 300 workout since two Mondays ago, over a week and a half.  I am worried I may have lost something by taking a break but hopefully I can at least equal my previous numbers.    I am interested in seeing if my 3 days of cardio in the middle will shave off a few pounds.  I think at 180 pounds I would be a lean, mean machine.  It’s only 5 pounds away.

My plans for the weekend include a bunch of outside work like spraying, weeding, mowing, and trimming.  However the weather forecast is looking like there will be some big time thunderstorms and rain moving in which could derail it.  I may have to break out of my normal first thing Saturday morning routine of playing WoW for two or three hours and instead try to get outside and knock the shit out before the skies open up.

I remember when my Saturday mornings consisted of nothing but eating pop tarts and watching Saturday morning cartoons from about 7am until just after noon, every single weekend.  The Saturday morning cartoons today seem so lame, hell half the networks don’t even show them anymore.

My first night alone was uneventful.  I played some WoW, tended to the dog, normal things.  When I was playing WoW I had a frustrating episode.  Me and another guy were in an area, minding our own business, trying to get quests done.  There were also three horde players there doing the quests in the area.  We ignored them.  Well they had to be pricks and started shit with us.  Killing us several times.  Some other alliance players showed up and we had some good mini-battles with us winning some of them.  However these guys wouldn’t leave good enough alone and just kept at it.  Eventually I said I had enough and logged on one of my high level characters and called on Charlie to bring his high level mage as well.  I wanted to make these bastards pay, big time.

Well by the time we got back to the spot the horde bullies had left and were nowhere to be found.  So I had no choice but to take out my anger on any horde that was seen, unfortunately we only saw one.  So we killed him and after circling and circling looking for more victims, gave up.  My thirst for revenge went unquenched.

I just dropped off Ali at the airport.  She comes back on Monday.  I don’t have anything thrilling planned.  I will be doing housework, yard work, watching movies, playing WoW, entertaining Nicki and maybe drinking some beer.  Other than that, nothing too thrilling is going on.

Ali still hasn’t received an official “yay” or “nay” regarding her employer picking her up as a consultant.  Either way we will work things out.  It’s a decision that is a good one no matter what the outcome is.  It was time for a change.

I am going to see if my neighbor will let me borrow his tractor for another few hours over the weekend so I can fill in more low areas.  It would probably take me a solid week of tractor time to do everything I would like to do.  The thing is I need to try to do what I can before rainy season hits hard, because once it does the pit will become a pond.

I decided I am going to try something a bit different in my gym routine in an attempt to address some of my joint issues.  Instead of doing normal lifting sandwiched between my Monday/Friday 300 workouts, I am going to do just non-impact cardio and stretching during the three in between days. Hopefully it will allow my knees and shoulders some extra rest time as well as further leaning me out a little bit.  Stretching is always a good thing. I’ll still do my normal, evening push up / ab mini-workout.  If I like the results after two weeks, maybe I will continue with it longer.

I swear, sometimes it seems like the diabetic cat, Buttons, sole purpose on this planet is to annoy the piss out of me.  Besides her copious amounts of barfing, her routine usage of the carpet as toilet paper and her incessant meowing when she decides her food supply is getting low, she has added another annoying trick to her bag.

Awhile back Ali bought one of those automatic litter pans.  The way it works is there is an electric eye in the box, about halfway in.  This eye senses movement and after 10 minutes it will fire off the rake that combs through the clumping litter and scoops the excrement into a container in the front.  It has worked surprisingly well.  Well it has until Buttons has found a way to circumvent it. 

What she does is not enter the box, instead she stands on the very front edge and pisses right there.  As a result the electric eye doesn’t trip and the rake doesn’t go.  After she does this a couple times, a big heavy piss ball forms at that spot.  When the other cat goes in and trips the eye, the rake tries to come through but gets stuck at the boulder Buttons has created so the whole system stops.  Once this happens, the only fix is for me to break up the disgusting accumulation by hand.  It is f’ing annoying as hell.

  This morning as I was breaking up Buttons creation she came sauntering into the utility room. I turn and yell at her “Why can’t you use a litter box like a normal cat!”  She sensed the anger in my voice and knowing that she could be launched after hearing that tone, she scurried away.  

I never really implemented this feature of the blog but it has some advantages.  Basically you become an official blog member by going here and filling out the info quickly. That will do a few things.  First, whenever you come back to here it will know who you are and allow you to add comments without having to enter email address and name information each time.  Second it will put you on a list so whenever a new entry is made, a notification will be mailed out to whatever email address you designate with your account.  So you would no longer have to come here looking for a new post only to be disappointed that my lazy ass hasn’t gotten around to it yet.  As soon as a post is made an email is sent out to you, along with a link to the entry.  It’s a no brainer.

Try it out and let me know how it goes! 

P.S. I also have a subscription link in the blogroll section to the right.

Here are my new, state of the art, nitrogen filled tires.  It’s extremely exciting.

After the huge, long entry yesterday, my brain feels a bit empty today.  I have to admit that I feel much better knowing that Paris Hilton has found God after a couple days in prison.  What a joke.

I have been trying to download a bunch of stuff for me to watch while Ali is away.  I grabbed Tekken the Movie, a film based on the video game! At the same time I have added Rocky Balboa, Flags of our Fathers and Eragon to my collection.  I also am in the process of getting the Godfather Trilogy.  In keeping with my current crime movie kick, I want to find Scarface as well. Who knows, I may watch 300 again, now that I have the DVD version!  I gave Randall 300 on Saturday and he watched it that night and loved it. Everyone loves 300.

Man the gym was rough yesterday.  I skipped the 300 workout and instead tried to do chest and back.  Chest was brutal.  There were only a couple angles I could do chest exercises without it hurting my left shoulder like crazy.  All my attention over the past decade has been on my shitty knees.  I think my shoulders are a real mess as well.  It would be a scary thing to get them checked out too.

Nicki is now officially dog door trained.  She will go back and forth through it without prompting by us although she still prefers to go through an open slider if it is available.  We still praise her big time each time she uses “her” door.

Wow there was a huge backlash about the final Sopranos episode.  Our friends loaned us their season 2 DVD set of the Sopranos which we watched a couple years ago, other than that I haven’t seen it since we don’t get HBO.  It is definitely a show I would be hooked into big time.  I heard all about the final episode and I can understand the anger with the way it ended.  As a viewer I wouldn’t want the ending of an 8 year run of shows to be left up to my imagination.  I heard people were so pissed they were cancelling their HBO.  That’s a little extreme, after all it is just a show. Although if they ended Heroes in a similar way I am sure I would be ranting for quite awhile.

A columnist in the local paper wrote this editorial in the Sunday paper.  He was talking about a story that appeared a few days earlier.  The story was about the daughter of two illegal aliens.  She was brought across when she was very young and has basically grown up in the US.    The story was about how this girl felt shafted because since she is technically an illegal alien, she is not able to get Florida resident tuition rates for college.  The story is her basically whining.  In the story, the girl’s Dad says he is so mad about it that he is contemplating moving the family back to Mexico! HAHAHAAHAHAHA. If only he was serious.

The columnist takes the story to task, pointing out how illegal aliens already get totally free K thru 12 education (that we foot the bill for) and how it is ludicrous to think that they deserve for US citizens to extend their generosity a step further and help fund their college educations. I agree with what the guy says, 100%. 

The scholarly “Randy Romero” made a comment on my baby bird interaction, however he somehow managed to attach it to the wrong entry.  Here is what this genius said, so nobody misses it.

“Again with the warped animal rescue adventures…Christ, birds are modern dinasours. If they could eat you they would….and feel nothing. jesus…”