Left a little before 10, only got to Tallahassee, covered roughly 450 miles. Northern Florida looks like Pennsylvania.
Party van ran fine as long as I kept it under 71 mph, after that things get a little rough.
Staying at LaQuinta, they accept pets, free internet, can’t beat that!
We are in the final countdown for our departure out west. Last night we began preparations in earnest. I wanted to leave the pool cleaner running while we were gone however there is an issue. When the pool cleaner runs around it inevitably gets hung up on one of the two floor drains. (hence the reason for the drain blocking invention I talked about awhile back) Well I decided to create a crude version of my vision. I grabbed two empty pots from the shed along with 4 cinder blocks. I threw on my swimsuit and goggles and jumped in the pool, placing one pot over each drain and two blocks on top of each pot. I hooked up the pool cleaner and will let it run all day today to see if my redneck looking contraption will perform it’s intended purpose.
After the work in the pool I walked around and weeded the property. I pulled out the rake and fluffed the mulch in the orchard in an attempt to further retard weed growth while we are gone. After Ali got home we did more prep like gathering up electronics that are coming along, getting together stuff for Nicki’s meals and putting sheets on the “bed” in the van. Just before I was going to get ready for bed we remembered we wanted to wash Nicki last night so I scooped her up, threw her in the tub and we gave her a quick scrub down.
Today will be very crazy. I am leaving work early this afternoon so I can go home and continue the trip prep. I literally have double digit things on my mental list that I want to address before leaving which should keep me going pretty much non-stop until I hit the pillow. I plan on pulling out sometime tomorrow morning. Ideally I would like to leave early, but realistically I know the possibilities of that are slim to none.
We should have ample entertainment for the many hours we will be spending in the van. I copied over 5 movies to Ali’s laptop, threw a bunch of DVD’s in a bag and also have a stack of magazines along with the last Dan Brown book for me to read. Ali is bringing along her Pee Wee Herman show DVD collection she got for Christmas as well.
As we motor across the country I am hoping to remain pseudo-plugged in via either wifi at hotels or via my Treo acting as a wireless modem for the laptop. If I manage to get online I will try to drop in a few updates here if time allows. If I try to rely on my memory to recap two weeks of a road trip all at once there would surely be huge gaps.
I look forward to two weeks of unstructured new experiences. We have no strict schedules, no established expectations, just two weeks of taking it as it comes.
Yesterday when I got the mail I was puzzled when I saw there was an envelope from Ford Motor Company. When I opened it I was even more surprised. It was a recall notice for the party van, the 14 year old party van. At first I was puzzled how they even tracked me down as the owner of the van but I guess it really isn’t that hard since vehicle registrations are public information. Evidently there is an issue with one of the wiring harnesses that could potentially cause an engine fire. Of course when Ali heard this she was worried and suggested that maybe we should try to get it fixed before leaving. I however was pretty confident that if we made it through the last 14 years, 2 more weeks will probably be ok. I will take it in when we return. I have to admit the language in the letter certainly doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy , it said something like “don’t park the van underneath a structure” (to prevent the structure from catching on fire as well)
So I heard a few sound bites from the senator from Idaho that was arrested for solicting sex acts in the men’s bathroom of an airport, ironically to a plain clothes policeman. Evidently this guy is a hard line, anti-gay, right winger that just happens to enjoy sex with men. What a piece of shit hypocrite. It’s amazing that he almost managed to keep this buried and out of the public eye. WTF is it with politicians? It seems that every few months we are treated to story after story demonstrating just how dishonest the politicians we elect to represent us truly are.
I heard the funny audio clips of Craig proclaiming he wasn’t gay and how he even though he plead guilty he shouldn’t have. I also read the police report linked above. Yea, those certainly don’t seem like the actions of a guy looking for sex…. he just has a “wide stance” when going to the bathroom. (read the report)
Last night after work I stopped at the pet store and got some more bird food and also grabbed a new swinging toy for Tuki. When I got home I wanted to put the new toy in the cage. Tuki normally doesn’t take kindly to hands reaching inside of his cage so I opened the door of it to let him out. I then went back to collecting the trash and recycling as well as setting off my dual cleaning Roombas to vacuum.
I came back in from the garage and walked up towards the office to pick up the cardboard/paper recycling. I noticed that by the front door the small basket that normally hangs over the light switch was on the floor. I also noticed something else that was knocked over. Hmm that’s weird. The only way I could imagine that happening is if the front door is slammed real hard. So I bent over and started picking stuff up. As I did, a green blur comes into my field of vision and then I realize it is Tuki as he bangs into the front door. (his wings really need to be clipped) Anyway, I forgot how the Roomba’s freak him out. Evidently one of them got too close and he flew off his cage, around the house until crash landing by the front door. I’m just lucky Nicki or the cats didn’t go after him. I picked Tuki up and made sure he was ok. I put him back inside the cage and closed it.
Last night Ali and I got into an argument over money. I discovered that we weren’t budgeting for the home owner’s insurance bill. Ali paid the bill in full when we stopped doing escrow but forgot to budget that yearly amount into our books. I flipped out about it, more than I should have. I couldn’t get past the idea that she didn’t think to budget that expense in. Anyway, I ranted for awhile but then calmed down and apologized, saying the important thing is we caught it now so we can adjust for it. Yea, the moon is full.
On Saturday night before bed I stumbled upon the final for “America’s got Talent” man that is an awful show. I sat through the entire two hours of silliness. I think the end result, crowning a ventriloquist as the best new act is a testament to how dumb the show was. However there was an event right before the final announcement that was even funnier, David Hasselhoff, one of the three judges, performed. He sung some ridiculous song about how wonderful the moment was (This is the Moment). By the way he grandstanded and went over the top in his gesturing and attempts to portray emotion you would think he was singing about something really meaningful and important. On top of all that his singing was absolutely dreadful. Look (and listen) to this trainwreck yourself…
As predicted the weekend was pretty busy trying to get stuff in order for our two week departure from the Duffey estate. By the time I got around to working on pulling the seat from the van it was early afternoon and hot as hell. As I laid in the van trying to work a wrench under the seat, sweat was pouring off me like I was in a sauna. After some fiddling around I got the seat out and then pulled out the shop vac to vacuum the area exposed by the now missing seat. It should clear up some sizeable room for us to pile up our sizeable traveling luggage/equipment. In addition to our big bag that will have our clothes in it we will have at least one crate filled with dog supplies as well as various electronics, including Ali’s laptop which I will use to keep myself pseudo-plugged in as we travel the along the southern part of the United States.
In order to keep the computer computing and the cell phones charged I am bringing my DC to AC inverter that I bought during the 2005 hurricane season. It was used the one night to power a floor fan to blow on us to help us keep our sanity during one of the sweltering, powerless nights. After pulling the seat I attended to washing the party van. It’s funny, from 3 sides, the party van doesn’t look bad at all except for some rusted area on the drip well along the roof. However the passenger side is a freaking mess. The prior owner evidently had a run in with a pole or something that he scraped up against. That side has cracks, dents, bent things and some missing paint. This is also the side that had the big rust stain running down the back corner which I cleaned up a bit. The inside of the van is in relatively good shape as well. After clean up the van looked pretty presentable.
Ali was gone most of the day Saturday at work so that left me home to attend to my various chores. I kept busy for most of the afternoon, trying to keep in mind that things would not be tended to for an extended period of time. So I cleaned the water equipment and loaded the pool chlorinator to the top with tablets.
On Saturday night Ali and I watched Bourne Ultimatum. I enjoyed the first two Bourne movies so I assumed I would enjoy the third. I did enjoy it. It was filled with pretty non-stop action and suspense. My only gripe is the final resolution of the main storyline of the series, how Jason Bourne became Jason Bourne, wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. Well it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. But even with that bump in the road, it was a good flick. B+
Sunday morning while Ali was at the gym, I discovered a brown smelly surprise tucked away in the corner of the dining room. Yep Nicki snuck away during the night and shit in the house again! It wasn’t a big pile, in fact I at first was hoping it was just throw up. However a quick pass of the excrement by my nose confirmed it was indeed from the wrong end of the dog. Unlike some mornings when Nicki has done this, she didn’t give any prior indication of foul play like slinking around and hiding. However once I found it I scolded her loudly. Instantly the ears drop, the face goes sad and she scoots back to the bedroom to hide. I don’t know why at 4 years old we are reliving house breaking routines. My assumption is she still has something going on intestinally. She has been doing way too many number two’s, sometimes 5 a day and many times they are very small. Unfortunately with us leaving a few days and Ali being stuck working most of the week, we don’t really have the time to get her to the vet for more testing. Ali thinks it could possibly be a side effect of her coming off two antibiotic routines, which at least in humans, can cause diarrhea.
Well whatever the cause, I was not happy with the result. When Ali came out to talk to me after she got back from the gym I gave her the number two news. Ali then started quizzing me on if Nicki did a number two right before bed, saying she HAS to do one after she eats. I was already annoyed enough, Ali’s edict about Nicki ‘s crapping schedule was not well timed. I shot back that if Ali wants to make sure Nicki craps before bed she can walk around with her late at night in circles. When I took her out the night prior, she pee’d and walked herself right back to the door, showing no interest in anything further. For the past 3 and a half years this was never an issue, now it was. I punctuated my little outburst by pulling on the starter for the weedwhacker and buzzing away in anger.
I had started weedwhacking between 9 and 10. Even though it was relatively early in the morning, it already felt hot as hell. The sun warmed the very humid air quickly, making sweat form within 5 minutes of being out in the weather. During my weed whacking duties I found myself getting extremely annoyed. I was already annoyed enough with Nicki dumping in the house, the weedwhacking just added to it. The weed whacker was giving me issues with the cord feeding correctly so I had to go into the shed and pull the cord out and respool it. As I am in the shed with sweat rolling down my face little f’ing gnats are bombing at my ears, annoying me further. Then as I go back out to continue weed whacking I kept getting other organic material wrapped into the head of the trimmer, jamming it and pissing me off more. By the time I was all done I was in the foulest of moods. I stripped down, put on my bathing suit to cool off, both literally and figuratively. Nicki came out and expected me to play the splash game with her, a game where I splash around like a madman in the pool and she runs around and barks while she gets a little wet. I refused to entertain her, still angry about her bathroom behavior.
Mid afternoon I travelled to a guy’s house for our fantasy football draft. This year we had it at an owner’s house as opposed to in the conference room of an office as we had the two prior years. Our draft goes too damn long. It took three and half hours to plow through 14 rounds of picks. Our league turned into a keeper league this season. However the only guy I deemed worthy of keeping off my roster last year was Carson Palmer. But to keep him I would have had to sacrifice my first pick in the draft (number 5 spot) so that would have not been smart. As a result I wound up keeping no one.
My draft went well, I think, I didn’t make any outrageous picks based on position, generally picking the highest available player based pre-season rankings for whatever position I needed. I have yet to live down picking Julius Jones with my number one pick two season ago. Since then my picks have been much more by the book. Hey, I thought he was going to really bust out that year. Anyway, here is my roster as it stands.
Bulger, Marc QB STL
Favre, Brett QB GB
Barber, Marion RB DAL
Dunn, Warrick RB ATL
Parker, Willie RB PIT
Williams, Cadillac RB TB
Brown, Reggie WR PHI
Horn, Joe WR ATL
Mason, Derrick WR BAL
Wayne, Reggie WR IND
Cooley, Chris TE WAS
Witten, Jason TE DAL
Kaeding, Nate K SD
Eagles, DST DST PHI
A lot of the players I have had on my roster before including Nate Kaeding, Reggie Wayne, Cadillac Williams, Brett Farve, Marion Barber and the Eagles defense. I feel pretty good about my mix of players but you always feel good about your players before the season starts. Willie Parker was my number one pick. I am hoping he can do much more for me than last years number one pick, Edgerrain James, who sucked for me pretty much all year.
Our trip out west is going to interfere with me setting my lineups for the first two weeks, I am going to have to doing wirelessly from who knows where. The trip also is going to mean we will probably not be able to see the first two Eagles games, another very rare phenomena.
Over the weekend I was watching a show about Randy Couture, the current UFC heavyweight champion. The guy has been in the business forever, in fact he is 44 years old. A few months ago he came out of retirement to take the belt and I read he successfully defended the belt this weekend against a younger, bigger opponent. While we watched the show that outlined Randy’s grueling training regimen that allows him to compete with guys 15-20 years younger than him Ali said a simple but powerful statement to me. “Do you think he complains about his age?” That hit a chord because I know the answer was “no”. To Randy age is simply a number and that number doesn’t affect how hard you work. That number doesn’t mean you have to automatically check out of certain activities and certainly doesn’t mean you have to act “old”. I need to think more like Randy Couture.
I got to see my first live Eagles action Sunday night since the game was nationally televised on NBC. I wish I could be more upbeat about what I saw. On the positive, Donovan looked decent. He definitely looks significantly trimmed down. In years past he came into camp looking like he was pumped up with air, counter productive to the QB position if you ask me. The defense looked decent early on but not very good after that. They wound up losing unimpressively, 27-13. I kept reminding myself that the Eagles never look great in the pre-season under Andy, ever. I guess the biggest positive was no one came out of the game injured.
My Monday morning got off to a bad start. After staggering into the bathroom to relieve myself, still groggy as I am standing in front of the toilet, I notice an unnatural change in direction of the stream. I instantly know what has happened as it has happened before. My pajama pants inadvertently got in the way causing a deflection. I caught the issue almost immediately but of course could not avoid the end result, wet pants. I don’t remember this happening to me before the last two or three years. The spot was small enough that I just let it be until I changed for work when they went into the wash. I need to be observant that proper clearance is present before letting loose in the morning.
I am mixing up my 300 schedule since it is a short week. I am going to do one Thursday, my last gym day in who knows how long. I figured it would be a good send off.
Remember all that bullshit I said yesterday about me not feeling the need to get one of the new Roombas anytime soon? Remember how I said that they seemed cool but I didn’t feel compelled to get one since I like my new Pet model just fine? Um yea, scratch that. I have a new Roomba 535 on order from of all places Home Shopping Network! Ok let me back up a little and explain.
After I posted about the new Roomba I made the mistake of digging a little deeper into them. Then I saw the video of it in action. The second I heard it talking the hooks were in! So now my mind was racing, how can I swing this? I am not fiscally irresponsible enough to just throw dollars to the wind and charge it on my credit card with no thought of the 240 bucks I just dropped on the Pet model. However after pouring through my favorite Roomba support forum, I saw a post from someone saying how they just bought a Roomba a few weeks ago but they were returning it to get one of the new models. Irobot has a 30 day, no questions asked, return policy, if you aren’t satisfied for whatever reason, send it back. Pop, the light bulb went off in my head. This was my out.
Well the return along with a sweet deal that someone posted on the same Roomba site from HSN. The new model sells for 299 on the Irobot site but HSN was selling them for 249 with free shipping! Plus it actually was a special model, the 535 which has capabilities the 530 that is sold for 299 on the Irobot site does not have. Plus for 35 bucks I snagged an additional 2 year warranty on the unit. Anyone that owns a Roomba knows that this is a BARGAIN. So anyway, what this equated to was for about 50 bucks, I was able to exchange the Pet model for the new model and tack on a 3 year warranty to boot. Very sweet.
So what are these new features that made me crazy to get one? Let’s see, aside from the very cool voice demos and error reporting the Roomba 500 series is chock full of upgrades from the prior model, addressing the majority of the complaints we dedicated Roomba owners have been voicing.
It has a bigger, 6 legged corner brush instead of the small, two legged brush, allowing it to do a better job of cleaning along walls and into corners. It has a bigger dirt bin to hold more junk. The interior of it is sealed up now which does two things. It runs quieter and also prevents the area above the brushes from becoming an unintentional dustbin like the older models. Dust and hair would get up in this area and cause all sorts of problems with the Discovery models.
The parts are now modular and user replaceable. If something does break it is MUCH easier to fix. The brushes have been redesigned to do a better job and to be easier to clean. The vacuum part of the robot supposedly offers 100% more suction power, pulling more dirt from the floor.
The home base unit that the Roomba docks with to charge when the battery runs low is now found via RF instead of IR. What this means is if the Roomba is in another room or around the corner behind some furniture it still can find it’s way back home with the RF signals. The old IR home base required the Roomba to have a direct line of sight to “see” it.
The bumper system now has “sight”. The old Roomba would go full speed into obstacles and bump off it via sensors in it’s bumper. The new 500 series has IR eyes that can see upcoming obstacles and it slows down as it approaches it, reducing the chances of damaging the obstacle or the Roomba itself.
The brush system has been designed to no longer choke itself if it runs over tassels on a rug or cords on the floor. If something gets pulled up into the brushes, instead of spinning and further tangling the item, the brushes stop and the unit moves forward until it is clear and then it fires the brushes back up.
There are even more tech goodies included that I could go into but you get the point, this is some cool, cool tech. Did I mention it talks? 🙂
I found a way to make the 300 work out even more brutal, wear a watch. As I have been doing the routine for the last nearly 4 months I haven’t done any official timing. My breaks I counted off time in my head, I looked at the clock 80 feet away at the gym a couple times to get a rough idea of how long it was taking me but that was about it. Wow, what a difference running a timer makes.
The watch becomes your taskmaster, your personal trainer. Before I started today my goal was to finish everything in under 25 minutes. I just squeaked by, finishing the last pull up at 24:50. I quickly discovered the 1 minute or so breaks I thought I was taking between most exercises was actually significantly longer. The 10 second mini-breaks I would take were probably at least twice as long as I thought. I added all the time information to the workout progress page. Under each exercise is the time the exercise took followed by the amount of rest time I took before starting the next one, down to the second. It puts an entirely new perspective on things. I tried to generally keep the breaks at a minute. In between box jumps and wipers I had a full 2:30 break because I had to move equipment around, at that point I certainly can use the extra time. Going that fast took it’s toll on my final pull up set. Even getting 15 was a major struggle. My Timex watch is going to ramp things up to an entirely new level, now I am not only pushing for rep numbers but competing against the never yielding competitor, time.
This weekend will be quite busy as it is our last one before the trip. I have a bunch of things to get done and I will have a lot of things to do in the days leading up to the trip as well. Over the weekend I am going to give the party van a bath and also pull out one of the captain’s chairs in the second row to give us more room for “stuff”. Ali is going to have to go into work sometime this weekend and I have my fantasy football draft on Sunday afternoon so that will fragment up the time further. I am anxious for our trip, it will be cool to step out of the box for awhile, waaaaay out of the box.
The whole mining, blasting thing has come full circle. I sent out my nasty email to the commissioners asking that they don’t endorse the proposed expansion, I talked to a lady reporter at the local paper and then finally I talked to one of the managers at the mine. He was surprisingly friendly, surprisingly accomodating and amazingly interested in making sure he addressed any concerns I had. I talked with him on the phone for a good 25 minutes and afterwards I felt much better about the situation. I do plan to take a look at the pictures that were taken of the various cracks in the house before blasting commenced and compare them to today. The guy said he would be happy to come out and take a look at the house and also invited me to come check out the operation they were running myself. Supposedly there will be a story about this running in the August 31st edition of the paper, I believe I will be named and quoted in the article. Exciting. In retrospect if I talked to the mining guy first, the other two contacts would probably have never been made.
The trip out west is rapidly approaching. Ironically both my dad and sister called yesterday to touch base and confirm that everything was still a go. We are starting lists of things we need to remember to take as well as things we need to remember to do before we leave. Two weeks is a long time to be away.
We are still waiting for Ali to collect her first check as a consultant. This is getting a bit ridiculous. Her former employer is dragging it’s feet in making sure the paperwork is processed to enable the corporate office to start paying the invoices that Ali is submitting. If I was in Ali’s shoes I would be on the warpath at this point. I would get the number of the person at corporate that needs to process the paperwork and get them on the phone myself. It seems the people at the local facility aren’t able to perform this function.
It continues to be incredibly dry for “wet” season. The grass in the front of the house on the mound is turning brown! I actually had to add the areas around the house back into the sprinkler schedule. I have never seen it this dry during this time in summer since moving to Florida in 2000.
The other day I was reading about yet another awesome use of robotics, robotic lawn mowers! I have heard of these before but assumed they were basically a novelty, only suited for very small yards and very light duty.
That is not the case. I was directed to this web site where I read up on how far these devices have come. The top of the line model can do up to 1.25 acres on a single charge and has all sorts of cool intelligence built in that allows it to customize the mowing schedule based on how high the grass is! How cool is that? Getting your yard ready for a lawn robot requires some legwork. You have to bury a boundary cable around the entire property. When the robot hits this buried wire it “bounces” off it, much like a Roomba when it hits a wall. Now as you can imagine, this is an expensive product although in line with the cost of a decent lawn tractor. No I am not buying one now, it is on the radar, maybe, someday.
In other robotics news, Irobot announced the next generation of Roomba yesterday. They totally revamped the design as well as improving the performance of the unit. I like the new look, it’s modern looking. On the performance side they redesigned the brushes for better performance. 
Supposedly it does a better job of cleaning along walls and into corners and also has been redesigned so it doesn’t get stuck on the rug tassels or cords it may run over. The high end model has some fancy scheduling device which is nice but I would never use it. They also talk about “light house” walls that somehow will contain the Roomba in one room until it has been cleaned and then allow it to go into the next space, again neato but nothing that would serve my purpose.
It looks like they did a nice job with this but I am perfectly happy with my collection of robotic minions at this point and don’t plan on adding a Roomba 500 series anytime soon.
I have been watching soooo much Texas Hold Em. It has supplanted MMA fighting as my preferred pre-sleep tv viewing. I am starting to know players names and can actually question certain plays that are made during matches. It’s amazing that watching people play cards could be interesting at all, but it is. Hence the immense growth in popularity of the event over the last 5 years.
I set up a little section of my web site for contestants of the Spartan Halloween 07 challenge to interact. So far only one contestant has discovered it. It’s just more of my cyber silliness.
Ali booked the flights for Vegas so we are all set except for a rental car which can come later. We opted for a red eye back in order to save $250 off the cost. That is an extra 250 to gamble with! It will be cool seeing Vegas decked out for Christmas.
Somehow the page counter on my blog and main web page got reset to zero so I set them back to approximately what I think they were at, I didn’t quite remember.
I had two strange dreams last night and I actually remembered some of them. The first one involved me having to do a number two really bad. I was outside somewhere, it kind of seemed like a campground in the woods. The only bathrooms were in an outside stand alone building so I quickly headed towards it. However as I walked quickly towards the building there were many others also filing in the same direction, evidently all needing to lighten the load as well.
As I got close I saw an odd sight. There was what equated to a bathroom traffic cop in front of the building directing people to stand in line and then he would direct you to an open stall as they came available. I remember standing in line and hearing the sounds and smelling the smells of a bunch of men relieving themselves, it was disgusting. However my disgust soon turned to anger as I realized that this bathroom guard was skipping people in line and I was one of those skipped. I was very angry but had to go to the bathroom so badly that it eventually blocked out the anger. Finally I got to enter a stall. As I passed the toilet cop I gave him a seriously dirty stare. No, I didn’t shit the bed.
The second dream was equally odd. I was in a mall, walking around. As I walked by a chubby kid, maybe 14 or so, I felt some water hit me in the face. I figured it was some sort of fluke. Well I passed the kid again and again I got wet but this time I saw him flick water at me. My cork popped and I spin around, grab the kid’s shirt with both of my fists and start pushing him backwards while I verbally lashed him for doing something so stupid. Then all of a sudden a woman grabs me by my arm and starts yelling at me about grabbing her kid. I yell at the woman, screaming about her idiotic kid flicking water at me. Then I get even angrier as the woman continues to hold onto my arm.
I tell her angrily to get her hand off of me. She doesn’t comply, I say it again, this time yelling it and at the same time I rip my arm out of her grasp. Then her husband, the fat kid’s father, starts attacking me. His attacks take me by surprise and I just cover up to shield myself from the non-stop barrage of punches coming at me. Eventually he tires of beating on me and starts to walk away. As he does, the girlfriend/wife of one of my friends comes running up to the scene. As she approaches, the guy makes a comment about her being a “dog”. Well once he said that, it turned me into a madman. I instantly start sprinting after the guy threatening his life. He sees the rage on my face and starts running away. During the chase, somehow my buddy magically appeared and was helping me chase down this ass. We lost him in the mall crowd but kept going into various stores trying to find him so I could relieve my anger on his face. We looked and looked but had no luck. But then I spotted him behind the counter of a large store, working as a clerk, name tag and everything. I remember thinking it would be tough to engage him in that environment. End of dream.
The ride home last night was very annoying, case number 1. I stop for gas at a BP station to fill up the truck. It is a new station, only open for maybe 6 months or so. As I get out my ears are blasted with loud mexican music, really loud. I figure one of the several cars/trucks around has a mexican in it that thinks nothing of blaring his music. As I start filling the truck I look around to try to figure out which moron is doing this. I soon realize the sound is coming from above me slightly, it is being piped out through the stores PA system! This really annoyed me. I mean WTF, this isn’t Mexico, why are they piping a Mexican radio station out there??? It really irked me.
Ok case number two. As I am driving home, I am behind a late model Mercury. I see the driver side window go down and some sort of plastic wrapper go out the window. Then seconds later another, bigger piece comes out and actually wraps itself around the antenna of my truck. I am livid. I am running the possibility through my head of getting out when we hit a stoplight, walking up with the discarded wrapper and knocking on the window and throwing it back at them. However I realized by the casual observer, this could make me look like the crazy one. As I drove behind this asshole I realized it was a young girl, ear planted on her cellphone and what she threw out was the wrapper to her cigarette pack. I had to settle with shooting her a dirty look that she never received because she was too buried in her cell phone conversation. I should have yelled something at least.
The final episode in the triple header of annoyance was the flyer that was tucked under the flag on our mailbox. As I unfolded it and read it, I felt my blood pressure rise again. It was a notice about a meeting that was happening last night at 5:30. The meeting was about a proposed expansion of the mining operation that is right by us. Evidently some motivated neighbor put these on people’s mailboxes to get bodies at the meeting to oppose it. The neighbor added some footnotes, outlining the proposed expansion. The mining company wants greatly expand the area they mine and in conjunction increase the number of dynamite blasts they do from 6 to 8 per month to 18 per month. This also will bring an even larger fleet of dump trucks into the area as well as further adversely affecting aquifer that we pull water from and the environment around it.
The first bullshit part of this is the time of the meeting itself. Scheduling a meeting at 5:30 is a sure way to make it lowly attended since NOBODY that works a normal job and lives out there is home by 5:30. It was 5:50 when I was angrily reviewing the bulletin. The concept that the county commissioners would even consider allowing the mining company to expand operations when it is next door to around 250 homes seems ludicrous.
So now I have a new crusade. The county commissioners, the newspaper and the mining company itself will be receiving letters outlining my thoughts on this issue. Instead of designating another remote area of the county, not next to residential housing for mining, the band-aid approach is to allow the existing mine to dig deeper and bigger, in the process rocking houses with mini-earth quakes several times a month. My house is already riddled with numerous hairline cracks, 18 blasts a month will only throw gas on the fire.
F’in jerks.
While I am on an annoying rant, Amber from Big Brother 8 is the most annoying person on the cast bar none. She may be the most annoying person I have ever seen on BB. Her constant crying and constant one on one talks with God are driving me crazy. Last night she said God told her that she would win the power of veto. When she didn’t win it she just was floored and bawling uncontrollably. How could this be? God told her she would win! I have news for Amber. I don’t think God give two shits about her performance in veto competitions. Just look at this loon….
She almost seems as crazy as this guy.
I saw that Michael Vick finally decided to take the plea deal. It seems like his NFL career should be all but done. Of course he can’t even think about that until he serves his jail time. Hopefully if anything good is to come of this it is that a big spotlight has been put on the horrible “sport” of dogfighting as well as serving notice that the punishment for it if you get caught could be severe. Mikey just kissed away literally tens of millions of dollars.
Hurricane Dean is a monster storm and is probably coming shore right around now. Mexico is surely not anywhere near to the hurricane code that Florida is, I’m sure the damage is going to be crazy. I also read more bad news about the arctic melting at a rate even faster than previously thought. No big deal, right W? Surely three or four BILLION people can’t affect the environment.
I have a weird ritual as I get ready in the morning. After I wash my hair by leaning over the tub in the spare bathroom, drip my wet head on Buttons the diabetic cat, give Tuki his morning peanut and pick out my clothes for the day, I put my pants on. But when I put them on I leave them unbuttoned and unzipped until I am ready to put my shirt on which isn’t until after I brush my teeth, shave and put my old man face cream on. I tried to remember why I started doing this. I think I recalled why.
When I weighed around 200 pounds I had more chub hanging around my waistline. If I buttoned my pants with no shirt on, the waist of the pants would pinch the chub and become a visual that I didn’t enjoy watching in the mirror as I got ready. Leaving the pants unbuttoned and unzipped solved the issue. Now that I am some 15 pounds lighter it really isn’t an issue but I have done it for so long I continue to do it out of habit. Weird.