Archives 2007

I had another bizarre, terrible dream last night.  I only remember bits and pieces of it.  Some how again it was criminal in nature but I’m not sure if I was the criminal or was trying to defend myself from criminal activity.  All I know is somehow I wound up shooting several people, including Rich.  I remember the terrible weight of the reality that I just ended the life for several people.  I felt like I wished it was all a dream.  Then I came to enough to realize it was actually a dream, which was an extreme relief.  Damn this shit has got to stop, it is disturbing.

The latest version of Heroes wasn’t that great for me.  The scene with Syler at his mom’s was a big waste of time and the rest of the episode not a whole hell of a lot happened.  There are only two episodes to go so there should be a snowball of action coming down the pipe.

On Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday they had Muhammad Ali in the audience watching his daughter.  I cringed when they announced he was there.  Throughout the show they mercilessly kept showing the poor guy unable to react, unable to stand, unable to clap for his daughter.   It is just so damn depressing to see him this way.

 Barry Gibb was the guest advisor on American Idol.  He is old and he talks funny, almost like his dentures were loose.  The show wasn’t great either.  Jordin was the best of the four.

This morning when I was doing my morning routine, I didn’t have the familiar, droning sound of Buttons meowing at my every move.  Instantly I went to the sliding door and sure enough she once again got locked out all night in the wilderness of the lanai.  She came prancing in, meowing her head off.  Maybe I can convert her into an outside cat and then she can get eaten by a snake.  Just kidding, just kidding…

Awhile ago I posted what my normal morning routine is and when I did I got a lot of comments about how crazy it was.  So I thought I would follow up with the normal evening routines.  The evening routine varies quite a bit more than the morning routine but there is still a core set of things that normally happens.

We get home and we hit the ground running.  Monday nights are the worst because we have to get the trash and recycling together to put out.  Also many times we run the dishwasher Sunday night so it has yet to be emptied out.  The same thing for Thursday nights but we only have trash that day, no recycling.  On Thursday nights we also normally make up our grocery list. 

The core parts of the routine go like this.  Pull in the garage, Ali goes inside and starts unloading the car while I walk around with Nicki.  If I didn’t get the mail from the car, we walk down to the mailbox and get it.  If it is trash day, I walk down with her and then roll the carts back up the driveway while holding on to her  leash, which can be a trick if Nicki is in the mood to pull me around.  Then we get inside.  I take Nicki off her leash and her first move is always to go into the middle of the great room floor and wiggle around on her back as she kicks her legs in the air.  I’m not sure if she is trying to get her dog smell onto the carpet or get the smell of the carpet onto her or it is just her way of celebrating being home. If Nicki went to the bathroom while I walked her around I toss her a treat from the kitchen. My goal is to have it land and stay on the big ottoman in the great room.  I would say I have a 50% success rate.

The mail we brought in is plopped on the counter and it is separated into Ali and Shawn piles.  My piles I normally go through immediately, throwing out the junk mail and putting any bills into the bill box.  Ali’s pile normally grows throughout the week until she goes through it.  The lunch boxes get plopped on the counter and then our gym bags go back to the bedroom.  I pull the stuff out of my gym bag and put the shorts and t-shirt back on while dumping my work clothes into our snazzy laundry sorting cabinet. 

Next we begin dinner preparations, well Ali does.  Normally she will start making us both salads, which she is very good at.  While she does this I do my quickie nighttime fitness routine.  I drop down and do my set of push ups and then flip onto my back and do a set of abs.  By the time I am done Ali normally has the salads done.  I get my big glass of ice water and plop down in front of the computer to read email, headlines, and the digital newspaper.  Ali does the same.  After I am done with my salad, I go back into the kitchen to decide which gourmet South Beach Diet frozen meal I am going to have.   I normally eat faster than Ali so I am always the first one to have the meal in the microwave.  Three minutes, stir and another two minutes and my meal is done.  Portion controlled with a good blend of meat and vegetables, high in protein, low in carbs.  Back to the desk. 

Normally by the time I am done with my meal I have caught up on my electronic correspondence.  At this point I will either take my dishes out and clean them all up while emptying my lunch box or I will just leave them out there and either Ali or myself will clean them a bit later.  Then if there is nothing else I need to get done, I will fire up WoW and play it for maybe and hour to an hour and a half.  The length of time varies depending on what time we get home and if there are any shows on the docket that night that I am going to watch with Ali.  Most nights there is a show we watch and we let it get approximately halfway into the broadcast before we start watching so we can ff through the commercials.

Sometime either right before or right after the shows, Nicki’s supper is prepared.  Normally it is a two person operation.  Ali does the the main prep which consists of mixing dry food with her two dollar a can wet food, along with various supplements.  After Ali plops that down my role is to take a can of wet cat food and take out about a third to give to the cats and then a couple forkfuls that I plop into the dog food.  Normally when I am done I bang the fork on the plate so Nicki knows that the final ingredient has been added.  It is also my job to give Tuki fresh water and food at night.  When I give him the food, I put a handful of peanuts into the crock and then put a scoop of food on top of it so he can dig for the peanut treasures.

I am responsible for Nicki’s nighttime walks.  Ali doesn’t like walking her in the dark.  It’s annoying at times for me because sometimes I am so tired that I just don’t feel like walking circles around the yard until Nicki decides to do her business.  This is the time of day that I can lose my patience with her dilly dallying.

  Normally Ali takes her shower at night before me.  While she does this I am normally on the bed, navigating through the bedroom Tivo, normally watching one of many UFC or other fighting related shows.  When she finishes her shower sometimes I will pause and take my mine right away.  Sometimes I will finish the show and then jump in. 

After my shower I brush my teeth and slap my retainers in.  Then depending on my level of tiredness, I will either go right to sleep (rare) or watch more stuff on TV until I pass out.  If Ali is awake and reading magazines I will watch tv with the volume up.  If she is trying to sleep I put on my wireless headphones and watch TV without bothering her. 

That about covers it. 

Over the weekend I had another weird dream, I think it was on Saturday night, after my police incident earlier in the day.  I was parked in a car and had drank one beer and was halfway through another one.  I wasn’t drunk though.  Anyway I got out of the car, with the half drank beer and started walking towards some building.  As I got out, there was a cop there and I knew this cop, like I had a run in with them before.  I knew that getting out of a car holding a beer bottle would not look good so I tried to sort of hide the beer by my side and then nonchalantly dumped it in an open trashcan.

This cop did not like me and was watching my every move.  He saw me ditch the beer bottle and immediately stopped me.  He verbally assaulted me and took me inside the police precinct.  I was in an interrogation room like you see on tv and in the movies.  It was just me and the cop that didn’t like me.  He was screaming at me about a DUI.  I was furious and was screaming back at him, daring him to give me a breathalyzer, knowing one and a half beers would not put me in the danger zone.  At one point I got so mad I jammed him in the chest with both hands and pushed him away.  After doing that he said I was in deep shit and acted like he was calling in other officers but they never came.  More arguing ensued and again I dared him to give me the test which he eventually did.  I blew long and hard into the straw and when the reading came back at half the allowed number, I started a wild, abusive, taunting of the cop, insulting him every way I knew how.  The dream ended there. 

The results from the Deerfield tourney are up. 

I applied for a World of Warcraft rewards Visa.  Yes it may be the ultimate geek move.  However to me it was sensible.  You earn money that can be applied to your monthly membership.  Since I got everything I neededed out of my Tivo rewards card, this made sense to me as a way to pay for the monthly fee.  I might only use it for internet or phone transactions.  I could be too embarassed to utilize it face to face. 🙂 

I love Wired magazine.  It has a ton of articles in it that interest me.  However this month they had a review of the mid-size hybrids, the Altima, the Accord and the Camry.  They shit all over the Camry, calling it dull and lacking gadgets.  When I looked at the price of the compared vehicles it became clear that they compared a bare bone Camry hybrid with loaded Altima and Accord models, there was a 5-6k price difference between them!  It annoyed me so much that I fired off this letter to them.  Perhaps it will show up in next month’s issue.

Wow, as a 6 month owner of a Camry hybrid, I strongly disagree with your review on many levels.  You didn’t do a very fair comparison.  Let me pick it apart for you.

You start off by calling the Camry dull.  I would agree that up until this model year, the Camry styling was it’s weak point, it was very plain.  However the 2007 model is a HUGE improvement in style.  The Altima design is very ho-hum as it has been out there for over a half decade.  The Accord looks basically the same as it has for the last 10 years. 

You described the interior of the Camry hybrid as plain, lacking “bells and whistles” .  Well perhaps if you ordered a Camry with the optional $1200 voice activated navigation package you would have changed your mind.  With that simple addition you get all the bells and whistles you could ask for and still come in significantly under the price of the Altima.

Your mileage numbers aren’t even close to what we have been getting using the car as a daily driver.  We average no less than 37 mpg per tank and if we are careful with our driving habits have clicked in over 40 mpg on several occasions.  To achieve the mileage numbers posted for a hybrid you need to modify your driving style a bit.   If you do find a need for immediate power, the car will pin you in your seat if you drop the pedal.

Pretty much the only part of your article I would agree with is there is a surge that can be felt at times when going from electric to gas mode.  It is a very minor gripe.

 Your review is highly inaccurate as you are comparing a bare bones Camry hybrid with loaded Nissan and Honda hybrids, costing 5k-6k more.  Next time I would suggest reviewing cars with similar equipment levels so you can provide the public with a more meaningful review.

Wow Friday was the day from hell.  You would think setting a one person office back up would be simple.  However this one person office had networks coming in from four different locations.  Having all of those entities converging at the same time was a recipe for chaos.  Issue after issue came up and was handled but it took all day long to do it.  I didn’t get back to the office until 6:30 that evening. 

This office was in Everglades City.  After hurricane Wilma the city hall building was severely damaged so our office temporarily moved to a FEMA trailer.  The building was restored and now we moved them back.  Everglades City is a very old fashioned Florida town.  Life moves at a whole different pace, a much slower one.  A perfect example occurred while I was there. 

There was a sign on the door saying the office did not open until Monday but a guy walked right by it and came in asking for a fishing license.  The clerk there told him she couldn’t get him one today.  The typical reaction you see in that situation is anger mixed with frustration of a wasted trip mixed in with a bit of resentment.  Not this guy, he was like oh well, I guess I’ll come back then, as he strolled out of the office not affected by the rejection in the least.  I am jealous of his ability to be so easy going.

As a result of getting stuck in the Everglades so long, my original plan to hit another branch got pushed off.  So I got to start out my weekend early Saturday morning by going to the branch, what fun.  Luckily I was in and out of there within a half hour.

Another by product of the Friday debacle was me missing another 300 workout which I wasn’t happy about.  I’ll be back at it hard and heavy today.

One of the things I asked Ali to do on Friday was make the arrangements for us to go to the timeshare for Mothers Day weekend.  We have a free voucher for two nights and figured it would be easy enough to book.  Well when Ali called she was told that they had nothing available, at all.  I guess my presumption was off.  As a matter of fact, they said they had nothing available for a Fri/Sat until August! So after an ass busting day at work all day Friday, I get home and have to start running alternate scenarios.  I certainly had no plans of cancelling the weekend, I was looking forward to it.  So I start crawling through expedia, looking at hotel rentals.

I spent a good hour looking at places ranging from Orlando, to Cocoa Beach, to Titusville, to Cape Canaveral.  There was a wide range of prices and those prices would be double if we wound up getting two rooms.  I was getting frustrated by the process.  What was supposed to be an easy, relatively inexpensive trip was looking to be the opposite now.  I called up my mom and told her about the issues and asked her about staying at a hotel instead.  She said I should just see how other weekends are.  Well after we found out the timeshare had nothing through August, we asked them about staying Sunday/Monday which they could accommodate.  So after several calls back and forth to my mom over the weekend, we finally got it straightened out.  We are officially going on Sunday and coming back Tuesday.

I did a bit of flipping through our Kennedy Space Center brochures, it looks REALLY cool.  I always have been fascinated with space.  In fact, astronomy was one of my early careers that I hoped to pursue.  The vastness of the universe is amazing and the technology that is used to explore it equally amazing.  I can’t wait to see it all.

After my Saturday branch visit, Ali and I busted ass around the house and knocked out chores both inside and out.  I performed my second money saving repair in the span of two weeks, following up the successful dryer repair with a replacement of the pressure switch that controls flow from the well.  The electrical contacts on the old one were burned to hell.  I was able to get an entire new unit for 20 bucks and had it installed in 20 minutes.  Having the well company come out to do it would have cost me at least 200 bucks for sure.  Score another one for the good guys.  Spring seems to be history, it has been hot and humid as hell already.  We even had a strong thunderstorm over the weekend.

After the chores were done, I wanted to take the party van out for a spin since it hasn’t moved since my dad and  Pat were down.  So I took it on a big square that brought me back out onto Immokalee Road.  This part of the road had been recently finished and the part I was on was two lanes both directions of divided roadway.  There was no one else near me as I was trucking up the road, happy that the party van seemed to be driving relatively well.  Then I spotted him.  Right by the fairgrounds entrance sign, a deputy with a speed gun pointed my way.  I immediately glanced at the speedometer that read a hair above 55.  Even though the road is divided highway, and even though when the road was just a shitty two lane road it had a 55 mph speed limit, the traffic gods deemed that the speed limit was now a measly 45 mph.  I didn’t jam on the brakes because I always feel that makes you look guilty as sin when the front nose of your vehicle dives downward. Instead I just got off the gas and hoped for the best. Well as I got up to the gun toting jerk I knew I was f’d when I saw him talk on his radio, surely giving my info to the trappers.

Sure enough, as I get up to the EMS station there is a deputy standing in the middle of the road waving me in.  This is just wonderful.  Immediately I am formulating what approach I should take.  Should I let them know I was a fellow county employee and in fact a tax collector employee.  Our boss is friendly with the sheriff’s office and in fact I know a number of deputies.  Should I expose the anger I was feeling about the bullshit of that stretch of road having a 45 mph speed limit?  I decided to just be casual.  The parking lot was JAMMED with other victims that they nailed, no one goes 45 there.  

One of the many deputies there came up and told me I was clocked doing 57.  “57??!!” I replied in disbelief, even though I knew that was probably accurate.  He asked for my license and registration.  I told him I didn’t have my license as I was just doing a quick drive and lived right up the street.  So I gave him what I had.  He asked if I had any recent tickets, I said no.  He then let me off the hook a bit and said that if everything checks out ok he will just issue me a warning.  So after 10 minutes or so all was clear.  I got my written warning and was back on my way.  Getting out of there was tough, maneuvering around the bunch of vehicles still waiting to be ticketed took some patience.  When I got home Ali was just getting to the worried stage, unsure if the van broke down or something else happened.  She saw the pink form at first and gasped.  I quickly told her it was just a warning.  What a fiasco.

  Well after my brush with the law, we went out to dinner with Taylor, Michelle and their baby boy, Parker.  We went to Tijuana Flats for the third time.  Before we made the plans we didn’t even think about how it was Cinco de Mayo.  They had some nice specials going on.  I slammed down three 22 ouncers in about an hour.  After the meal we went back to their house to hang out a bit.  I drank a couple more there.  I was silly drunk, running my mouth more than Ali would like I’m sure.  But it was funny.  We always enjoy hanging with them.

We stayed out longer than we planned.  Getting to bed early would have been a good idea since we had to get up at 5:30 Sunday morning to go volunteer at another race.  Ali feels compelled to volunteer at all of these races because other people from the club volunteered for her event.  I was a bit hazy still from the night before.  Getting up did not feel good.  Soon the cobwebs cleared and we made it out the door by 6:15.  The race went well.  My duties were to direct runner traffic at one of the corners.  I did little directing and basically was just a cheerleader.  With 270 runners going by, twice, it is hard to be very original with the words of encouragement.  I probably used “Good job, good job!” the most, followed by “Way to go!!” Most shouts would be accompanied by 3 to 5 claps.  After the running part of the race was done I moved to the food and drink table to make sure we didn’t run out of water or gatorade.  Everything was wrapped up and cleaned up by 9:15.

Ali suggested that after the race we go to the beach for a little to hang out.  We hardly get to the beach at all.  We had the majority of our weekend work done so I was game for it.  The gulf was EXTREMELY calm, it looked like a massive pond.  There were no waves at all.  Shortly after we got set up we saw the president of the running club.  He worked the race as well and came down to do one of his regular 25 minute swims. 

After he was done he came over and sat down and talked to us for awhile.  He is from South Africa and has a bunch of running related stories, he has done it all.  While we were sitting there I saw something I never saw before.  Old men with the metal detectors and head phones.  Of course everyone has seen these men that endlessly walk the beach in search of that lost quarter or dime, but what made these guys different was that they were wearing wetsuits and were in the water.  There were three or four of them within a 100 yards of each other, all walking in circles, all hoping to hit the jackpot.  I said to Ali how I never understood the point of all of the time these guys put into this ritual when all they would normally pocket is loose change.  I suppose they were hoping to find an expensive ring that slipped off some rich old broads finger.  To me, it seems like a total waste of time.

We left the beach a little after 11 and shoved off for home.   The rest of the day was extremely low key.  Ali napped for at least three hours while I worked on leveling my second character towards 70.  Sunday night we had a bit of a scare.  As we were sitting down to watch a movie, Ali pointed out how the sky looked weird outside.  I looked outside as well.  It was ominous.  The clouds were moving low and fast.  I stepped outside and was blasted by extremely strong wind.  It was strong enough that it was blowing the chairs around the lanai through the screen enclosure.  Ali quick jumped on a weather site and saw that our area was under a tornado warning.  It was pretty tense there for awhile.  The gusts of wind were VERY strong and I was constantly scanning the skyline looking for a funnel cloud forming.  Luckily, it passed.

The movie we watched was Night at the Museum.  It was a fun little movie that is the type that you forget about 15 minutes after watching it.  No complaints, it was entertaining and funny it just had nothing that made it stand out all that much either.  It receives a B.

My 300 workout today was a bit of a downer even though I hit some goals for certain exercises.  I did the full 50 pushups (and then some) as well as the full 50 clean and presses with a 35 pound dumbbell.  However I had to stop after my 9th box jump.  My left knee just hurt and instead of pushing through it and probably doing more damage , I cut it short.  To compensate for the lost reps I threw in a 20 rep set of pushups towards the end.  If you add reps up it comes out to 215 but that is a bit unrealistic.  20 pushups is far easier than 20 box jumps.  I am hoping the knee thing is only a short term thing.  I spent a lot of time Friday crawling around on my knees which never has good results.   Hopefully this Friday’s 300 effort is back to normal.

I am going to be on the run most of the day today.  It may force me to miss another 300 workout which I’m not happy about.

 For awhile now we have had a digital scale in the bathroom that also does body fat percentage.  It sends juice through your feet and spits out a number.  Who knows how accurate that number is.  Anyway, when we got it my number came back as 15.4% which always seemed high to me.  Over time I would check it periodically and even if I was 5 pounds heavier or lighter the fat % number never changed so I eventually just stopped checking it.  Well for whatever reason I decided to check it last night for the first time in probably a year.  The number actually changed, down to 14%.  I was surprised to see something other than 15.4 flash up there.  It was just another sign that my recent shift in fitness routines is paying off.

The weekend has nothing special on the calendar.  I would love to see Spiderman 3 but there is no way I want to be a part of the mob scene that is sure to follow it.  I bought a new well pump switch which I want to install.  The contacts on our old one are burned to hell which causes issues with the pump not turning on some times.  There is high voltage and high water pressure involved there which I need to be careful with. 

Last night I went on a virtual killing rampage in WoW.  I brought my high level warlock to the lower level area to help out Charlie who is leveling his rogue.  Well I couldn’t resist getting some payback for all the time the horde characters have made me miserable by grounding me into the dirt.  In the span of 15 minutes I killed 15 horde players, several multiple times.  After annihilating single players I actually got confident enough to take on a pair of horde players and killed them both as well.  I was drunk with power.  Maybe the full moon brought out the evil side of me, normally I won’t initiate in game conflict.  As a warlock, if you get the jump on a fight, your victim has very little chance for success.

Chris and Phil got the boot last night.  I was ok with it but would have preferred if it was Chris and Lakisha.  Even though Phil is dorky looking he did a great job on Tuesday night and he seems like about as nice of a guy as you can get.   It was ironic that he went down singing Blaze of Glory. His repeat performance was great.

During the show they had a band that was fronted by Alan Thicke’s son.  He looks like his dad.  However when he started to sing it was atrocious.  He sings in some high, made up sounding voice that is just ridiculous.  I told Ali he sounds like Stewart the man baby from the Mad TV skits.  It was soooo bad.  Supposedly the song he sung is topping the R&B charts.  I have no idea how.

I remembered a dream I had the other night.  I was at our old house in Gouglersville and there was no one else there but me.  I was my current day age but the house and land was in my childhood days state. No additions, big landscaped areas or renovations had occurred.  I was throwing and punting two footballs around, the ones we had as kids, a conventional one and the Wilson Indestructo. (that I still have to this day)  I just would throw the balls, walk to them and throw/kick them somewhere else.  It was late in the day and the house was dark.  I continued doing this all the way until there was only a trace of light in the sky.  That was it.   Who knows what it means.

Well my knees are still cracking as an aftermath to my vball tournament.  This is my theory.  The MRI I had said that the meniscus tear I had in my left knee was below the surface.  So I am assuming the healing process resulted in some sort of scarring.  Then when I do prolonged impact activity on it, it flares up again, swells and causes the very unnerving snapping sound when I stand up.  The thing is it really isn’t painful except for certain angles that I try to straighten from where it will almost feel like something is getting hung up and pinches.  So now it is a waiting game to see how long it takes for this to go away.

I migrated my volleyball tip list to a youtube video.  To go through them all takes almost 12 minutes.  The font got shrunk down during the conversion so if you have bad eyes or run at a real high resolution you will have a tough time reading some of it.  I know it is less than stellar but the primary objective of it is to direct people to my site where they can read them at their own pace.

We have a trip up to our timeshare planned for next weekend.  We are taking mom with.  I am hoping to check out Cape Canaveral and all the space related stuff while we are there.  I don’t think we will be doing a lot of Disney stuff though.  It would be cool with me to just have some down time as well.   It will be a cool, different way to spend Mother’s Day.    

Somehow my blog entry about the african situation must be hitting on some search engines.  I have gotten a couple comments from the outside world about it.  When I wrote it I expected to get flamed, instead all I have gotten are people in agreement. Oh and I also got linked somehow into this woman’s blog because of my affinity for pop tarts, funny.

Let’s see how far I can get with this.

I was nervous Friday night about the tournament on Saturday.  I had no idea how it would go, it’s been almost a full year since my first real tournament action.  I went through my night before ritual.  I pulled out my big volleyball bag and got everything ready.  I cleaned my decade old M-frames, I got my food supply together which consisted of some nutrigrain bars and a few slices of apples.  My hydration would consist of gatorade and red bull.  I packed towels, extra white socks (not for me, for people that never heard of sand socks) and enough changes of clothes for an entire weekend.

I actually woke up without the alarm Saturday morning at 5:15, guess I was ready to go.  I quickly slammed down a power breakfast consisting of chocolate fudge pop tarts, a zone bar and a glass of skim milk and then quickly whizzed through the normal morning routine.  I was on the road by 6:15.  The tournament was in Deerfield Beach which is north of Fort Lauderdale.  Even though I didn’t have any traffic issues, I didn’t arrive to the site until almost 8:30, it was a long haul.

I walked up to the beach and took a survey.  Deerfield Beach is nice, I had been there once or twice before.  They have a long fishing pier like Naples, except this one you have to pay to go out onto.  There is sort of a mini-boardwalk in front of the beach, minus the boards.  Instead it is a strip of bricks in front of a number of open air eating places.  Anyway, I quickly saw a couple familiar faces.  I didn’t see Randall however so I sat my stuff down.  I got out my sunblock and started applying it, something that is a must anymore since I have had two chunks cut out of my head now.  I spotted Jeremy and shortly after that, Randall walking down the sidewalk towards us.  I still had my shirt off from putting sunscreen on.  Both of them knew about my 300 workout thing and both of them who haven’t seen me since January said they noticed a transformation.   I was surprised they noticed anything but at the same time thought it was cool that the fruits of my labor in the gym are actually producing visual results.  It gives me good motivation to keep pushing.

Anyway, Randall and I caught up a bit and lugged our junk down to the far end where the lowly BB players play.  I pulled out my quickly deteriorating vintage XFL black football and we threw it around for awhile.  Randall has taken to a few of the weird volleyball tips/habits I have come up with over the years which I appreciate.  We set up his pop up shelter and got ready for the day of battle.  Earlier I was able to find one of the few vioxx pills I had left which I took to minimize swelling I was sure to encounter throughout the day in my knees.  It had an expiration date in 2004, I didn’t care.

The one team playing in our pool consisted of a guy from Poland and another guy that I had seen on the tournament message board but never met before.  I had posted a link on the message board linking to my list of over 200 funny volleyball tips.  I was surprised to hear that some of the guys took the time to read all of them, cool.

We played in the first match and it was against my least favorite type of team, kids.  Well they weren’t little kids but I doubt either of them was much over 16.  Playing a team where I am older than their combined age always bums me out.  They were both lanky kids with lots of energy.  They plain wore us out.  Even though it was the first game, the combination of blazing heat reflecting off the hot sand and trying to out scramble these kids had both Randall and I sucking wind.  We had a number of back and forth scrambles and the kids seemed to come out on top each time.  We wound up losing the game something like 21-15 or 21-16. 

Even though we lost, overall we didn’t play bad and physically I didn’t feel too bad.  The net on our court was a bit low and the sand wasn’t overly deep so I was able to actually do some hitting which felt real good.  After the match I didn’t do any sulking, I was just happy to be there.   I was on the beach playing ball and enjoying it, there was nothing to complain about.

Our second match was against the guys I described earlier, the polish guy and Tabby.  They have much less experience than Randall and I and we were able to win that game pretty easily.  Again I had some nice hits, even one that went off the guy’s chest. We were in the winning column.

Somewhere around that time a woman showed up that we assumed was Mac, the polish guy’s girlfriend.  We later found out they were just friends.  Her name was Magda and she was from Poland as well.  She has only been in the US for a couple years and her accent is very heavy.  However she had a great personality and cheered on Mac’s team as well as ours the rest of the day.  She was really cool.

Our third match was against Jeremy and his partner.  They had only played together once before but had good results when they did play.  However, today they weren’t having much success and we continued that trend beating them without much drama.  Ironically during the last two matches I felt less tired than the first one.  The sun was hiding behind some clouds now and then which cut us a bit of a break.  So now we were 2-1, our last match was against yet another young team that was undefeated.  We were already in the playoffs, even if we lost this last game.  Randall did some figuring before the match and said if we won the game and held them to 13 points or less we would take 1st off the net and also earn a first round playoff bye.  I thought that would be nice but didn’t hold out much hope of it becoming a reality.  These kids took care of everyone they played. 

Well the match started and we played good ball.  We started getting more hustle/scramble points and made very few unforced errors.  We somehow had them down like 19-11 or something like that.  Wow, we could actually do it.  We had a bit of a let down but still won easily, 21-14 but I thought that our dreams of 1st off the net had passed.  It turned out that Randall miscalculated and we still took first off the net, sweet!

Pool play had started to take it’s toll on me a bit.  My knees were feeling a bit sore but not bad enough to have a severe affect on my game.  The sand was scorching hot.  I had my sand socks on early, the second game.  Randall has sensitive feet and borrowed one of the pairs of white socks to wear under his sand socks.  I loaned out my other pair of white socks to Jeremy’s partner whom didn’t have any sand socks.

It had been a great day at the beach so far.  Our volleyball results had been good and the beach was full of activity and was good for people watching.  I had a funny thing going on with two women that were maybe 30 feet behind the court.  During the one match a ball rolled over and hit them, doing no harm, just startling them.  I went over and retrieved the ball and said “Sorry bout that..”  They said it was fine but I owed them a beer with a laugh and smiles.  I laughed back and said no problem, just playing along.  Later another ball came their way and they told me I was up to two beers, when it happened a third time it was up to a six pack.  Of course I never delivered any alcohol to their location but I knew the direction they were leading me to.  It was fun to at least play the role.

We referee’d the first playoff round.  After doing so it was our turn to play the winner’s of one of the matches. Of course it was yet another set of high school kids.  These kids were annoying.  For some reason they expected us to come up and play on their net.  Randall and I immediately corrected them and said they play on our net since we were the higher playoff seed.  They then went into a whine-fest complaining about our net, they wanted to play on theirs.  Again we firmly reiterated that we were playing on our net, that is how it works.   Randall even resorted to doing comparisons with pro sports scenarios to drive the point home.  Then after all of this explanation, the kid says “Ok Ok, but let me ask you this, why don’t you want to play on our net??” like he wasn’t even listening to what we just said.  Now I was angry and angrily said once again that the match was on our net.  Finally they begrudgingly complied and came down to our net.  While they warmed up they were laughing at how the net was low and how they could hit over it without jumping.  What had been a totally good natured day of volleyball had now in my mind flipped into a grudge match.  I wanted to beat these f’rs bad. And guess what, we did.

It was a tough back and forth match but in the end we nudged ahead and stayed there, winning by two or three points.  Of course as I slapped hands with them and said “good game” I internally was very smug and felt like saying “damn you couldn’t beat us old guys on a low net even….”  Back to school…

So now we were in the finals.  And once again, we are playing yet another team of high school kids! This time we were the lower seed so we had to go to one of their nets and unfortunately they picked the worst of the bunch.  It was one of the permanent courts that was severely bowled out and had a high net.  Both Randall and I were rather pooped out from our prior match against the smart ass kids.  Running up hill for every approach was not exactly what we were looking for at that point.  Well we gave it a go.

We got down a bit early.  Unlike earlier matches, we made more unforced errors. Between Randall and I, i think we hit 5 or 6 serves out.  The higher net and bowled out court also resulted in several hits into the net for both of us.  Even so, we battled back to near even several times throughout the match.  At the end we were serving, down 20-15 and I got a big block on the taller kid, rejecting it with authority.  On the next play, again he got the set, I went up again, unwilling to allow him to swing away on us, and this time he wimped out and dinked over me, out of Randall’s reach for the win.  It was a tough match but these kids were good.  For second place Randall and I received luxurious FBVT visors along with 20 dollar gift cards to some beach shop.

Through out the day I employed various tips from my list.  Each match I changed something about my appearance, different shirt, no shirt, baseball hat, visor, I had more costume changes than a showgirl.  Randall and I huddled up and acted like we were talking strategy when in reality we just mumbled and pointed.  I would ask for blocking calls and act surprised even though it would be the same thing that was called all day.  I was even considering putting in my fake earring.

After the match we hung out for a little while, enjoying the fruits of our efforts.  It was a good day of volleyball, something I had not had for quite a long time.  I was tired and a bit sore but certainly not devastated like I was after the Rumble.    Randall was going to a U of Miami baseball game that night so we packed up and shoved off.

Ideally, it would be nice if I was able to throw an ice pack on my knee right away to cut down on swelling.  Instead I sat in one position more or less for the 2 hour drive across the state which makes for stiff joints.  When I got home one of my first orders of business was to ice up.  Ali was proud of me for doing well after not playing for so long.  I was too.  I still got it, at least some of it.

My Sunday was low key.  Both my knees were cracking every time I stood up but they didn’t hurt terribly so I suppose that is a good thing.  I had a small list of things to get done, Ali had already did a good chunk of the housework during the day Saturday.  Later in the day I watched Hope Floats with Ali.  I downloaded it for her after I deleted it off the old Tivo prior to her watching it.  She had no intentions of me watching it with her since it is a hardcore chick flick.  However I offered to sit through it.  Ali certainly sits through enough movies with me.  Wow this certainly was not a very happy movie, it’s about an ugly divorce, adultery, dying, old age and other obstacles to happiness.  Sure they turn up the happy meter in the end but geez….  Ali cried several times throughout, I did not.  I guess it would get a B-.  

Over the weekend, I think it was Saturday night, I was awakened early in the AM by the joyous sounds of buttons heaving.  Instinctively I quickly reached around looking for a suitable projectile to throw in the direction of the sound but found none.  Buttons heard the movement in the bed and ran out of the room, but not before adding to the hundreds of stains on our carpet.  A few days later, one of the cats was nice enough to leave yet another pile of half digested food under my computer chair.  God I hate them.

On Monday, I was hoping to get another 300 workout in since I missed last Friday.  My knees were still cracking and my leg muscles were still very tired feeling from Saturday.  Initially I wrote it off and figured there was no way I could do it. As lunch time approached, I talked myself into trying it anyway.  I will give it a try and if I can’t do certain things, I can’t do them.  It was probably the toughest session yet.  The first leg/knee test were the deadlifts.  After the initial crack on the first trip down, my knees quieted down after that.  The box jumps were a very long road.  I managed 25 reps but that was with lots of pauses for the last 10-12.  Some exercises I stayed the same, I did one fewer wiper than the last time.  When it was all done I managed to break the 200 rep barrier, amassing 202 total reps.   I was so damn tired afterwards.

I was so tired Monday night that I didn’t even stay up to watch Heroes.  I saw it on Tivo last night.  It was f’ing awesome.  The writers on the show have just done an incredible job of writing a plot that is so compelling that the viewer laments the passing of each hour episode and craves the next one.  Last night’s episode put the timeline 5 years into the future.  This episode answered a lot of questions about a lot of things and opened up a whole lot more.  This may be the first show I would actually consider buying on DVD.

The NFL draft was this weekend.  I, like everyone else could not believe the Eagles picked a QB with thier first pick.  It didn’t make a lot of sense unless they know something we don’t regarding Donovan.  I never heard of any of the other draft picks either although supposedly, draft experts say they are decent.  It certainly didn’t excite me at all.

I know there were various other things that I was going to blog about, I can’t remember them.  Work is hellishly busy right now and will be for a good period of time to come.

I don’t have time for a regular entry even though I have lots to say.  Cliff notes version:

Got second in the vball tourney (very surprising) and came out of it hurting but not wrecked (more surprising) I should be able to give it another go.

Watched a movie, had a strange dream and various other thoughts danced through my increasingly confused mind. 

Did the 300 workout today even though I had two noisy knees, tired legs and aching shoulders.

I may not get a full entry in until mid-week.  Crazy busy right now.

My home number finally swapped over to Vonage yesterday.  That means I was finally able to sever the cord from Sprint (now known as Embarq)  It feels good.  Ever since I moved to Florida, Sprint local telephone service has been a thorn in my side.  It’s nice to not be financially contributing to their ineptitude any more.  Now instead of an answering machine we have voice mail for our home number.  If we get a message it gets emailed to us as a wav file which we can retrieve  and listen to wirelessly on our Treo’s, ultra-geek.

Since I am playing volleyball tomorrow I decided it would be wise to not do a 300 workout the day before.  I am a bit bummed about missing a day, especially since I am only two reps away from 200.  Hopefully I won’t be too beat up to resume on Monday.

I am both excited and apprehensive about returning to the volleyball court.  I really enjoy playing, I enjoy the people that play, enjoy competing and enjoy the whole feel of a tournament. I don’t enjoy getting hurt.  I am crossing my fingers that whatever has been nagging me deep inside my knees has healed.  Unlike the last time I played months ago, I haven’t been running to pile on the wear and tear.  This will be the first tournament I have played since last June in the Rumble, 10 months, wow.   Of course I have no false expectations of me playing anywhere near well.  This is more of a science experiment to see if I am physically able to get through a tournament at this point. 

The days of me staking my short term emotional happiness on the result of that weekend’s volleyball tournament are long gone.  Playing volleyball used to be a big part of how I defined myself.  From my late 20’s to early 30’s it was probably the primary focus in my life.  Even though I was never a great player, I took it seriously.

  I remember the one summer, Rich and I were on a tear.  I think during that stretch we lost only a handful of games while winning 30 or more.  We always clicked together well, but that year we clicked like never before.  Rich was a perfect compliment to me as a player.  I was more of the one dimensional player that tried to hit and serve hard.  Rich was more well rounded plus had the ability to scramble and chase down balls like few others.  The fact that we were both lefties used to confuse a lot of opponents.  However probably the best part of our time playing together was the time off the court when we would just be observing, joking and making nicknames for the other players on the court.  Our years of playing also resulted in a huge list of satirical volleyball “tips” that would make even a person that never played the game laugh. Since Rich stopped playing I have tried to keep adding to the nickname and tips list, but my heart just isn’t into it. It’s not the same.

Oh well, the point of this long diatribe is this weekend may be finally closing the book on 15 years of volleyball memories or perhaps extending it for just a little longer.

I had yet another big virtual achievement.  When they released the expansion pack to WoW, they raised the maximum level a player could reach from 60 to 70.  Well I got my first character to 70 earlier in the week.  Reaching 70 allows you to buy a new form of transportation, a FLYING mount.  Up until 70 you are relegated to only flying on locked in, pre-defined routes between different areas in the game.  But now you can fly anywhere, well anywhere in the expansion areas.  You can not fly in the original areas of WoW, which sucks.

   Well the ability to fly is definitely cool.  It allows you to reach areas that would be impossible otherwise.  Plus you have the advantage of straight line travel between points instead of having to follow twisting roads while avoiding bad guys.  Right now I only have the standard flying mount which is rather slow.  There is a super fast model that costs about 6000 gold.  In real world terms, compare it to saving for a Hyundai versus a Ferrari.  It takes a long time to amass 6000 gold. I’m working on it though.  I have been leveling various characters simultaneously so I should have two more level 70 characters shortly.  Impressive, huh?

You can add appliance repairman to my credentials for the resume.  The parts arrived on schedule yesterday.  Installation of the hi-temp thermostat and thermal fuse required a bit of dexterity but wasn’t too challenging.  I was nervous that I would get them installed, run the dryer and have them pop again right away.  I ran the dryer through about an hour and a half of testing and it seemed to be ok.  Mission accomplished.

Last night was the American Idol Gives Back two hour extravaganza.  They loosely rolled a results show into a two hour telethon that was focused on helping needy children in both the US and Africa.  The show featured a bunch of celebrities speaking, dancing and singing.  Let me first comment on the acts that I didn’t fast forward through.

El Divo.  This is a group of four guys that Simon Cowell supposedly scoured the globe looking for.  To me, they may be the most over-hyped group I have ever seen.  It’s almost people treat them as though they are elite singers because Simon thinks they are.  To me, using Simon’s words, they are rubbish.  Don’t get me wrong, they are entertaining to watch, not because I enjoy their singing, I enjoy the lunacy of their performances.  The funniest guy is the oldest one that has eyebrows that he can’t keep still.  His performance is so over the top it is ridiculous.  He loves himself very much.  Normally when you hear El Divo sing they are doing it in some foreign language.  For some reason this is supposed to add to their hipness factor.  Last night they actually sung in English. However, even though it was in my native language, I had a hell of a time making out what they were singing.  I think they suck, plain and simple.  Ali agrees.

I saw Kelly Clarkson for the first time in a long time.  The last time I saw her she seemed to be embracing her fame and as a result had started shaping up and was sporting a modern, hot hair style.  Last night she looked to have reverted to her roots.  She colored her hair mud brown and looked like she may be bigger than when we first were introduced to her during her Idol run. Too bad.  She still is a great singer.

The “television history” as they described it of Celine Dion performing with Elvis was incredibly moronic.  Yay, we saw this stuff in Forrest Gump, it’s not cool anymore. 

Most of the other performers we FF’d through.  The producers did a nice job of yanking our chain about a shocking result which they lead everyone to believe was the ousting of the best contestant left, Jordin Sparks.  The trick was on us though, they decided to not let anyone go this week.  Those rascals.

Ok so now let’s get to the reason for the show, the charity work.  The show was jammed full of video montage after video montage of children both home and abroad in horrible living conditions.  They basically featured, Katrina victims, redneck children from Kentucky (an odd choice) and kids in Africa. (biggest share)  As I saw scene after scene of the people in Africa living in filth, disease and desperation, of course my initial reaction is to feel bad for these children, they are the innocent victims of their parents ignorance.  You want to help them.

But then there is the logical, cold side of me.  I actually paused the show to talk to Ali about it.  At what point do we allow nature to take it’s course?  Aids is rampant in Africa.  The reason aids is rampant in Africa is because the people reproduce like animals, engaging in unprotected sex.  Ali said to me that is because they are uneducated and do not understand the repercussions of their actions.  I asked her if I was supposed to believe that the people in Africa do not know that they are dying of aids?  It isn’t like AIDS is some unknown secret, it has been around for almost 25 years, a full generation of Africans have come and gone in that time period.  Yet, ignorance is still the culprit? Either these people are incredibly ignorant or they just don’t care and choose to continue on their self destructive path.

It just doesn’t register with me.   If this collection of people are unable to comprehend the end result of reckless sexual activity then how are we supposed to save them?  Is it just nature thinning the herd?  Maybe it is.  There are woefully inadequate resources there to support the population.  Even with the huge human loss in Africa and disasters elsewhere in the world, as a whole, world population is exploding.  Something has got to give. 

I tried to run scenarios through my head.  How do you feel for a lifetime smoker that develops lung cancer?  Of course you feel bad for them for the suffering they endure but you certainly don’t think they didn’t map their own path to their demise.   Same goes for obese people that struggle with health issues, you made your bed, sleep in it.  Now of course these kids don’t have a choice in the matter, however it is these same kids that grow up and repeat the same behavior, continuing the suffering. 

Maybe I am just being too analytical about it.  I just can’t get past the idea that unless these people are willing to help themselves first (by not f’ing like rabbits) all we will ever be able to do is put a small band aid on a huge gushing wound.