Archives 2007

First off, the weather this weekend was awesome.  Highs in the low to mid 70’s with tons of sunshine.  I snickered when on Friday my Vista weather widget showed 37 degrees and snow in Reading.

After work on Friday I went to Home Depot and loaded the truck up with 30 bags of mulch and 4 bags of stone.  It used to be easy to get big amounts of mulch at HD.  You would pay the cashier and then drive around to the big palettes they had outside and load up.  However they have abandoned that practice because of tons of scumbags taking advantage of Home Depot’s policy and ripping them off left and right.  So now you pay and then have to wait for someone to unlock a gate and then bring out a skid of mulch for you to unload from.

When I got home I parked the truck in the back and initially planned to dump the mulch early Saturday.  Well Ali pointed out that the sprinklers were going to fire off Saturday morning so I reconsidered and we wound up dumping the mulch Friday night.  I figured the 30 bags I got would be enough to do most of the mulched areas around the house.  Instead, it was just enough to finish the border around the pool, that’s it.  The area took a lot of mulch.  I hadn’t mulched in probably two years.  We already had planned to go back to Home Depot on Saturday to get other stuff and now we had to add a whole bunch more mulch to the list.

After we got done mulching, Ali made our Friday night frozen pizza and then we watched The Apprentice and Workout.  I am a closet Workout fan,  It is a reality show about an ultra-high end gym in Hollywood run by a very in shape lesbian.  A reality show all about people getting in shape is right up my alley.  Hell it may rank as my number two or three favorite show right now only trailing The Ultimate Fighter and Pros vs Joes.  Survivor, Apprentice, American Idol and ER are all looking up to these three in my book.

So once Ali got up Saturday morning we headed to Home Depot and loaded up.  25 more bags of mulch, three huge bags of potting soil, 3 more bags of rock, a floodlight for the side of the house, pool shock, a shower rod and about a dozen different flowers/plants.  The bed of the truck was barfing full and all of the plants were jammed behind the seats in the cab of the truck.  We stopped at a Subway on the way home for lunch so we could dig right into things when we got back. 

Dig into we did, we worked pretty much non-stop outside until around 5 o’clock.  Even with a total of 55 bags of mulch, I was still a bit short and need maybe a half dozen bags.  We threw down the stone, filled up the two big pots that we used to have little palm trees in, with flowers instead and planted everything.  I hooked up the spotlight in the corner of the garden so it lit up the side yard that Nicki uses for nighttime bathroom walks.  It all turned out very well.  I walked around and took a bunch of pictures which you can see here.

After our bust ass day we had to quickly prepare for our next door neighbors coming over for dinner.  I did a whirlwind vacuuming job of the whole house while Ali took a shower and prepared other stuff.  Rick’s Mom and sister are down visiting so they came along as well.  They had a nice visit that wrapped up relatively early.  Ali and I were both tired.

Easter Sunday arrived.  This was not going to be a regular Easter.  Ali had the dubious pleasure of having to be manager on duty at work on Sunday.   Our Easter was not very text book.  Although I took the time to color Easter eggs on Saturday, they were clinically stored in the refrigerator instead of populating a festive Easter basket.  Nothing was hidden about the house.  I had Easter roses sent to Ali on Friday so besides the exchange of cards before she left for work, that wrapped up our personal celebration.

Once she left for work I did a few chores and played WoW until I had to get ready to pick up Mom for our non-traditional Easter dinner at Carraba’s.  During the morning I got a call from my Dad and then got to talk to my sister who was at my Dad’s place as well.  Dad told me he finally got all the arrangements nailed down on the new place they are buying, albeit it sounded like a very bitter process.  Dad had a bunch of issues he wanted addressed by the seller or if they weren’t addressed he wanted a significant price reduction as compensation.  Well it sounds like the end result was the issues remain and my Dad only got a small discount.  It sounds like the sellers played hardball and Dad as a result was not happy with them at all.  He did a lot of grumbling about it.  He doesn’t like have things dictated to him, although as sellers, they certainly have the right to play hardball if they are willing to risk losing the sale.  It seems like that is what happened.

My chat with my sister was very brief.  She had just handed my niece Emily off to someone and shortly after she got on the phone with me she started to act up so after a couple minutes Torrin had to go, no big deal.

I left to get mom a little after 2.  When I got there she showed me the Easter plant I ordered for her.  It was a cool lily with purple rimmed flowers and leaves that are splashed with color.  Ali went directly from work to Carrabas to meet us.  I was surprised to see a parking lot that was hardly populated.  Inside it was maybe half full.  We got there a little ahead of Ali so mom and I sat down and got a drink.  The bartender there tried a little bit too hard to be personable, repeatedly interrupting conversation dropping in his one liners.  Ali showed up and we sat down immediately.  In true Carrabbas style we had an incredibly polite waitress although she was rather old compared to what you normally see there.  We all enjoyed our meals and were out of there in just under an hour.  We paid for the meal with gift cards mom and I both had so we got off very cheap. 

Our non-traditional Easter continued from there.  Instead of going home, Ali was now going to meet a friend of hers to go see some play.  I took Mom back home.  Ali is off from work today and her and mom are going shopping so I suggested to mom on the way home that it would make sense for her to just come back with me to our house and sleep over and then her and Ali could shove off together today to shop.  I suggested this already knowing what Mom’s answer would be.  For whatever reason she really has issues with coming out to our place, especially with no prior warning.  When I asked her about it she said how she would have to pack all sorts of junk and it would just be a pain.  When I asked again she said something about how she couldn’t watch her normal tv stuff.  I jokingly told her she could watch what she wanted, I could just play WoW and ignore her if she preferred. 🙂  I gave up knowing it was not a going to be a winning battle.  Mom just doesn’t like spur of the moment stuff.  I think she feels like when she is out at our place it is a big inconvenience for us which it never is.

So anyway, back home I went after picking up some baby trees and extra grapefruit Mom loaded me up with.  I had no big plans for what was left for the rest of Easter besides finishing up some laundry and playing WoW.  As I was playing WoW I was having internal discussions about calling my grandmother.  I have always tried to talk to her on the major holidays.  However my last call to her on Christmas was just brutal for me.  She basically didn’t seem to know who I was and the majority of the conversation was me asking her questions that she either asked me to repeat because she couldn’t hear me or just awkward pauses because she didn’t know the answer.

Well I knew earlier in the day my brother was there visiting her with my niece and my mom had called her as well.  Mom told me that grandma said something about breaking her leg and how a cast was just removed.  It made no sense since mom would be notified if something like that happened.  Well anyway after much back and forth inner dialogue I decided I would call her and use the things listed above as topics of conversation. 

If it is possible, this conversation was worse than the Christmas one.  I identify myself at the start of the call, I can tell she isn’t quite sure who I am.  I ask her if anybody visited her today. Nope.  I ask her if anyone called her today. Nope.  She has no recollection of anything.  Evidently she has zero short term memory anymore.  Then I try to ask her the standard questions like how is the cat that lives in the nursing home.  She asks me to repeat myself time and again even though I feel like I am speaking as loudly and clearly as I can without yelling.   I ask her about the broken leg thing and again she is confused and says something about she fell and broke it and had a cast on for a week. (which makes no sense)  Mom said that was how she wound up on the home originally and that she is maybe recalling that.  Anyway the conversation was basically three or four minutes of me repeating myself and scrambling for anything to say that would illicit more than a one or two word reply.  It was horrible.  I hung up, feeling very sad for Grandma.  What a terrible fate to be robbed of the knowledge of something as basic as who your family is.  I transport myself through time and can clearly see myself in such a state given some of the mental/memory issues I already struggle with.  I just don’t ever want to be there.

When I was playing WoW I also came up with another good idea since Ali wasn’t home.  I would watch 300 again!  This time I would watch it like it was meant to be watched, with the lights out and the surround sound system turned on and loud!  I don’t think I have ever watched a movie a second time so shortly after seeing it initially.  Ali asked me if I had man love for King Leonus.  Eh I don’t care, it was cool a second time and definitely enhanced by changes.  Ali actually got home a bit earlier than expected and got to see me in my element for the last 10 minutes of the flick.  It gave me some extra motivation for my next installment of the 300 workout today.

Well my second go round with the 300 workout was tougher than the first.  This time I made a few changes.  First off I got all the equipment set up before starting so I wouldn’t be taking 5 minutes in between certain exercises for set up.  I also noticed I messed up the order of things last time.  It is supposed to go pull ups, dead lifts, push ups, box jumps, floor wipers, one arm clean and presses and then pull ups.  On Monday I had the pull ups and push ups back to back, plus I threw in an extra set of 25 push ups.  This time I did one bigger set of 40 push ups. 

My total reps this time worked out to 2 less than Monday, 154 reps.  However I did this in around 18 minutes, much less time than I took on Monday and as a result it felt much more intense.  I felt closer to barfing.  I increased my first round of pull ups by one, my dead lifts by 1, my box jumps by 1 and my one arm C&P’s by a total of 4. 

When I did my last box jump my legs felt like they were locking up from the lactic acid.  When I was doing my last few floor wipers the nauseus feeling was the worst.  After I was done I spent a bunch of time in front of one of the big floor fans letting fresh air blow on my face to help settle things down.

 Damn this shit is hard but you really get a sense of accomplishment when you are done. 

 I threw together a little spreadsheet of my progress which you can view here. Nothing fancy, just the bare bones, just like the workout.

I have deemed myself physically able to go for round 2 of the “300” workout.  I am hoping to increase my reps/reduce my total time a bit each time.  Watching that video clip I posted of the 300 workout yesterday was interesting.  Unfortunately my gym doesn’t have a truck tire to flip and jump in and out of or a big ass bungee tied to a wall for me to run against.  I was reading more about the workout, evidently only one of the actors took the 300 challenge at the end of their fitness routine where you try to do the entire circuit as fast as possible.  The guy that did it completed the 300 reps in 18 minutes.  That is FLYING.    I’ll have to start more accurately timing how long I am taking.

Like I mentioned before, Easter weekend is no big deal to me.  When I was growing up my mom would do the traditional stuff like color eggs and make baskets.  I remember for a brief period Easter also was a JV version of Christmas with us getting some presents too. We did a couple Easter egg hunts around the house in Gouglersville.  Easter also meant eating.

For a long time we would go to my grandmother’s for Easter and then as she got older it turned into people coming to my mom’s place to eat instead.  I really don’t have a lot of big Easter memories.  For me it has always been a ho-hum holiday.

This Easter almost turned into the least memorable ever.  Since  Mom moved here we get together with her for Easter, sometimes she cooks, sometimes we go out.  When we approached Mom about it earlier in the week to set up what we were going to do, she said she would be ok if we just skipped it because she wasn’t feeling up to it.  Well of course I couldn’t let that slide so we convinced her into going out to Carraba’s. 

 Several years ago she was diagnosed with some sort of ailment that causes dizziness.  It had been better for quite awhile but in the last few months it has come back and is not going away.

  Mom is annoyed with it all which I can understand.  Not feeling 100% for a long period of time sucks.  I remember when I had the flu thing from hell last year that screwed me up for a month, I was miserable.  Well anyway I’m glad mom reconsidered and is going out with us.  We don’t get to see her a ton so we didn’t want to miss out on a visit.

Last night was an interesting evening in my household.  On the way home, we stopped at Publix to pick up some flowers for our neighbor’s mom who was down visiting.  She had a procedure done and we wanted to grab her get well flowers.  So we get home and Ali preps the flowers and has them ready to go.  She was going to just run them over, say Hi and then scoot back over so we could watch Survivor.  She went over around 8:30.

Well the quick trip obviously wasn’t so quick when it was just before 9 and there was no sign of her.  While I was out walking Nicki, she left a message on the answering machine saying that she was just hanging out, having fun and would be back soon.  Well I wrote her off for watching Survivor and knew what was probably going to happen so I also fed the pets and filled out the grocery list. 

9:30 came and I was annoyed.  Not all that annoyed that she was there, more annoyed by the call saying she would be back soon, yet she was still not back after more than an hour.  I transferred Survivor to the bedroom Tivo and jumped in the shower.  I hopped in my pajamas and started watching Survivor solo in bed, disgruntled.  If you want to annoy me, tell me you are going to do something and then don’t do it.  Ali is not very good at excusing herself from a social situation.  For some reason it is a very awkward thing for her to do.

Well anyway, 9:45 came and the phone rings.  Of course I know who it is.  She is having a great time, she says I should come over and bring Nicki.  I mask my annoyance in my voice and remind Ali that I had to work on Friday (unlike her) and that I was currently in bed, watching Survivor.  She once again says she will be home “shortly” and I hang up.

Well I got through Survivor and an episode of The Ultimate Fighter on the Tivo and she still was not home, it was after 11pm at this point.  I was tired but had a very difficult time settling down to fall asleep, surely because of my simmering anger about the situation.  If I would have gotten one call that said “Hey I am having fun and am going to stay here awhile since I don’t have to work tomorrow” that would have been fine by me.  The parameters would be laid and expectations would be set.  But by telling me twice she was going to be home soon and not doing that it kept poking my grumpy muscle and prevented me from falling asleep for a long time.

Oh well, it’s water under the bridge, just annoying.

I got a new computer chair for home that arrived yesterday.  For the last 5 or 6 years my computer chair has been a black “pleather” chair that had few adjustments and rock hard plastic armrests.  I bought a more modern chair, similar to what I have at work.  It has independent height, seat, back and arm rest adjustments.  Putting it together took me maybe 20 minutes.  The chair is definitely much more supportive and the soft armrests makes WoW sessions much more comfortable.  My only complaint is the cushioning is very firm compared to what I am used to.  I think I will get used to it and it will soften up a bit as I break it in.  For 100 bucks, I am pleased.  Ali was pleased with me for not getting a leather chair.

 Thrilling entry huh?  Oh well they can’t all be homeruns.

Yep the snowbirds should be going home this month.  Actually a lot should be pulling out this week before Easter with another big load creeping up our northern roadways right after the holiday.  It is always a pleasure to see them go. 

Don’t get me wrong, even out of season, Naples is jammed full of old people driving slow in the fast lane and  clogging roadways at 5pm when working folk get out so they can hit the early bird specials.  But during season this situation swells to gigantic proportions.  Trying to go out to eat or to the movies during season is routinely miserable with huge crowds at every turn.  Much of the year round population simply curtails much of this activity from January to April. 

However there is no getting around the fact that all these codgers bring their wallets with them and many businesses down here rely on the annual flock of old people from the north.  I know, I know, before I know it I will be among the old farts myself, cursing the young whippersnappers that have no patience and no courtesy.  Somehow, I hold out hope that that will never become a reality for me. 

Another beauty pageant winner got voted off of Dancing with the Stars.  I think they had another girl like that last year that didn’t do well.  Sure this girl was good looking but she was about as likable as wallpaper.  Her professional partner, even though he was from Philly was creepy looking and constantly wore a smile that looked like he was hiding something behind it.  Good riddance.

Wow Florida won the NCAA basketball championship.  It is a big deal on many levels.  They have won two years in a row which is almost unheard of anymore.  They faced off against Ohio State, whom they ALSO faced in the NCAA football championship.  I would be surprised if the same two teams met for the football and basketball championship the same year ever before.  Throw on top of it, the end result was the same.  Wild stuff.  I watched absolutely ZERO of the tourney though.  I never have been real big into college basketball.  The years that I followed the tourney a bit I was in a march madness pool so I had a vested interest.  Nope, no basketball for me last night, instead I was doing something much more compelling, watching Dancing with the Stars.  

I am sore today from yesterday’s workout but not as bad as I thought I may be.  Although I have noticed as I have become old, second day soreness is sometimes much worse.  But if I feel decent, I may be up for trying it again on Friday, it’s a challenge to see how quickly I can increase my reps with the more difficult exercises in the routine.

Easter is this weekend.  Easter has never been a huge deal for me since the religious aspect of it is pretty much lost on me.  There have been a few years where I have done fancy Easter baskets, colored eggs and all that jazz, but not many.  Although we may color eggs this year.  Not because I am feeling festive, but because we have a bunch of the eggs in the fridge that are going to go bad.  If we hard boil them we can use them in my salads. Great reason huh?

Paypal is something that is crucial for me to use since I do a decent amount of transactions on Ebay, it makes paying for stuff and receiving payment from buyers very fast and easy.  However Paypal is MISERABLE with customer support if you have a problem.

For Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law got both myself and Ali ebay gift certificates which in reality are paypal gift certificates.  For me, it worked out great since I am an active ebay member. Ali on the other hand, created her paypal account 5 years ago and hasn’t really used it since.  When she went to use the gift cert, she entered the wrong password for her paypal account enough times to disable the account.  Since that time, shortly after the holidays, she has been trying to get her account “fixed” so she could use the gift certificate.  It has been an incredibly frustrating and fruitless circle.

She has been through email correspondence and phone call hell with them.  She contacts them, does what they tell her to do and the problem isn’t fixed.  At one point they asked her to fax in a few financial documents to prove her identity so they would then unlock her account.  She faxed them, got a confirmation from Paypal that they received it and they STILL would not reset her password!  I can’t tell you how many times Ali went back and forth with these idiots that do nothing but work from canned scripts and don’t take the effort to engage their brain and actually address the issue.

The final chapter in the saga happened yesterday where Ali finally got a customer service rep to close the account.  Closing the account means the gift certificate goes back to the sender.  We could care less at this point.  Oh I forgot to mention, with as huge as Paypal is, they force customers to call in for support on a TOLL line, surely a tool to discourage any attempts at direct contact.  After all this drama, after her account has finally been closed, Ali receives another robot generated email from them, saying they were sorry that she closed her account and encouraged her to join again. Hah!   

Well I survived the workout.  I have been anticipating this workout for about a week.  Today I had some of the same anxiety I get before playing in a volleyball tournament or running a race.  It’s the unknown factor, attempting something that you can’t accurately predict the result of.

Anyway I brought a spare t-shirt cause I figured I would be quite sweaty when I was finished.  So after a quick 5 minute warm up on the recumbent bike I had at it.  I grinded out 13 pull ups.  The difficulty level of number 12 and 13 made me pretty confident that my last set of pull ups would be less.

Next it was on to push ups, I cranked out 25 of them easily as they are part of my daily routine.  Next up 25 135 pound dead lifts.  I had more of a break between exercises than I imagined because I had to get things set up for some of the exercises. 

I managed to do 25 of the dead lifts, from 20 on up it was rather tough and left me wondering how was going to be able to do the two other leg related exercises.  It wasn’t until after the dead lifts when I really started feeling it.  I was breathing hard but kept moving.  Again I had some extra time devising how to do my next exercise, the floor wipers.

The wiper is the exercise where you hold a barbell with 135 pounds on it over your chest as you lift both legs to one side and touch the plate, back to the floor and then back to the other side to touch the plate.  I wasn’t quite sure how to logistically set this up.  At first I put the bar with 45 pound plates on either side on the floor and tested to see how much of my body fit under it.  Well I could only roll it up to my ribcage, that wasn’t going to work.  I then came up with a pretty good set up.  I used the steps from a Reebok step bench as the supports.  I set up 5 on either side of the mat, without the top on and sat either side of the barbell on them.  It worked perfectly.

Now all that was left was the exercise.  It was awkward and very tough trying to stabilize the weight over head while bringing your legs up and down on each side.  I originally had hoped to do 25 reps but only managed to crank out 15 before I stopped.  I’m sure it will get easier as I do them more often.  I was a bit bummed that I missed my rep goal for that move and now it was on to another difficult exercise that I never do, box jumps.

I used every step they had in the place to make my “box”  I didn’t measure it but it looked close to two feet high.  So up and down I go.  This exercise in particular worried me due to it’s injury potential with my very flaky knees.  Again I fell short of my 25 rep goal, only getting to 17.  I may have been able to get a couple more but number 17 was rather shaky and I didn’t feel like jumping and coming up short, falling on my face and hurting more than just my pride.

I was really sucking wind at this point, it was tough as hell.  I decided to ad lib a bit.  The next scheduled exercise was the one arm clean and press dumbbell move.  However since I just got done doing a leg exercise and since I knew I was going to wind up short of my 150 rep goal, I cranked out another 25 push ups to pad my reps and give my legs a small break.

Then it was on to the clean and presses with a 35 pound dumbbell, 13 reps for each side.  Again I was pretty wiped.  I only had my finishing set of pull ups to do.  As predicted I fell short of my first sets reps and only managed to get 10 of them. 

I was spent.  I did all those reps (156 total) in around a half an hour.  Thinking about basically doubling the effort seems near impossible at this point.  It was the first time in years that I felt a little nauseous after a workout.  I was a bit bummed I didn’t hit all the numbers I hoped to but in all I think it was a decent starting point.  From here I have to decide how I want to progress.  I am thinking I will either do this kamikaze workout on Monday’s and do my normal routine the rest of the week or do it Mondays and Fridays, with the hope for quicker progression.  I guess I will see how my body feels tomorrow.  If my knees hold up to this I will be very happy and it will be a good sign that I could return to some of my former activities. 

Friday was the day the septic company was scheduled to come out to pump out our septic tank.  We weren’t having any problems with it but it hadn’t been touched since the house was built, it was way past time to have it done.  We told them anytime after 2pm on Friday was ok.  That wound up translating to 6pm Friday evening.

Before the truck even touched the driveway, the guy came up to the door and gave me a damage waiver to sign.  Evidently because the truck is quite heavy, there is the possibility that it could crack a driveway so if you want your tank pumped you have to release them from that liability.  I signed it and hoped the driveway would survive intact. (which it did)

Originally I thought that they were going into the access pipe that is visible right by the house, however when they threw some shovels in the yard we realized they were going to have to dig up where the concrete lids to the tank were.  It didn’t take them very long to find it.  The lid to the tank was right outside the window in our office so Ali and I got a front row seat to septic cleaning 101.

They pull off the lid which looked like a manhole cover.  The guy’s assistant looked like it was his son.  The son dipped a shovel into the tank and pulled it up.  It looked like he didn’t have to put it very far in until it hit water.  Dad lit up a cigarette and they threw the suction hose in.  As it was pumping away, they dug up at a second spot close by.  I wasn’t sure what they were doing.  However they soon had another lid pulled off and out came some sort of filter.  I wasn’t aware there was a filter in a septic tank.  the dad rinsed the filter out thoroughly with our hose.  I didn’t venture outside while the gunk was being pumped out, I was afraid of what smells would smack me in the face. 

After maybe 20-30 mins, the son knocked on the door and asked me to flush the toilets in the house so they could make sure everything was cool.  After doing that, maybe 10 minutes later they had the lids back in place and the dirt shoveled back.

  The dad knocked on the door and gave me the lowdown.  He said the level in the tank was actually quite high and said it was a good thing we called when we did, else in a few days we could have possibly had stuff backing int o the house.  He said the reason for the high level was that filter was clogged and was making the water drain very slowly.  He said once he cleaned the filter and put it back in, the water drained very quickly.  He said that filter should be cleaned roughly once a year, well it had gone six without a cleaning so I was glad it got done.  I asked him if the filter cleaning was something I could easily do myself.  he said it was, just dig, pull the lid and the filter out and hose it off.  As long as I can stomach the smells it should be a no-brainer.  The bill for the service was like 300 bucks and they were gone. 

The next morning when I was in the laundry room doing cat duties I heard this weird noise.  When I stopped and tried to focus in on it, I realized it was coming from the utility sink drain.  What I heard clear as day was the sound of water falling into a now mostly empty septic tank.  I had just flushed the toilet a minute ago and I was hearing the end result.  It’s kind of weird but a few times over the weekend I would go back to the sink to listen to the water flow into the tank.    

On Saturday I had a bunch of outside things I wanted to get done.  So while Ali cleaned the bathrooms I got started.  I weed whacked, weeded and started bringing more fill up front to raise up another low area of the yard.  When Ali got done cleaning she came out and helped me shovel.  It definitely goes much faster with two shovels filling the yard cart.  We also tackled another job, transplanting a small palm that has been residing in a huge pot in front of our house. 

Ali had the idea of putting it to the left of the front door and curving out the landscape border to accommodate it.  To be honest, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the idea but I also didn’t think the palm looked that great in the pot.  So we dug out a huge hole and put the dirt right into the yard cart, saving us from making a big dirt mess.  Getting the palm out of pot was a chore.  It was extremely pot bound and had a bunch of roots extending out the drain holes in the bottom of the huge pot. 

Initially I just tried banging on the sides of the pot and then pulling on the tree while Ali held the pot.  It didn’t budge.  So Ali cut the roots that were sticking out and I took my machete and ran it along the edge of the pot to free it up.  I picked up the big pot and shook it and finally the tree came sliding out.  The huge mass of roots kept almost all the dirt perfectly intact.  Ali pulled at the roots on the bottom to unknot them and to encourage growth once it gets settled into the hole. 

The tree and root ball was very heavy and this type of palm has huge spikes around the base of each frond so once it went in the hole there was no pulling it back out.  So I grabbed it by the root ball, lined it up over the hole the best I could eyeball it and let it plop into it’s new home.  Luckily it was oriented more or less how it should be.  We back filled the hole, dug out a new path for the landscape border, put down weedblock and stone on top.  I was surprisingly pleased with the end result.  Expanding that landscape border and connecting it to the area that surrounded the one topiary created a line that was pleasing to the eye.

After a couple more trips to the fill pit for dirt to finish levelling my low area, Ali took the tractor around and did some speed mowing.  There are very few spots that have high grass, but there were a lot of sections with high, dead weedy shit. 

On Saturday night I had plans to test out the new Tivo feature I signed up for, Amazon Unbox.   AU is a deal Amazon has with Tivo. Basically you browse movies on Amazon and then you can “rent” or buy them.  But what you are actually paying for is an electronic version of the title.  After you pay, the title is transferred to your Tivo over the internet.  If you “rent” a movie, you have a month to watch it until it will delete itself.  Once you actually start playing a movie, it will delete itself after 24 hours. If you buy a title, it downloads to the Tivo and remains available forever.

Anyway, Ali picked out what she wanted to see, I “rent” it and get a nice friendly message that I should see it showing up on my Now Playing list within 15 minutes, awesome!  I took that to mean that within 15 minutes we could start watching the movie.  Well I anxiously checked my playing list in 15 minutes and saw nothing.  Hmmm, must be a little slow…. Half hour later, nothing, damn…..  An hour later, nothing, what the hell????

I had spouted to Ali how cool this was and now had egg on my face cause I couldn’t get the damn movie to show up.  So I start f’ing with things and start researching on the internet.  I quickly find others that have had the same problem.  Pay for stuff and it never shows up.  I tried at least a half dozen little tweaks with no success.  Finally I came across the fix.

When you set up a Tivo to work on broadband, they recommend you just use DHCP default settings which sets the default gateway and dns server to the router.  This set up has worked just fine for me to pull down my daily Tivo updates forever.  However, evidently this setup does not work with Amazon Unbox.  To get things working I had to set my IP info for my Tivo manually and give it the ip address of a real dns server.  After doing that and resetting the Tivo, Ali told me she saw the movie show up in the list, finally.  However during my message board reading I found out another thing about the Unbox movies.  Unlike Tivo to Tivo transfers where you can start watching a program before it finishes transferring, with Unbox you have to wait until the movie completely finishes downloading.  Depending on your internet connection, this can take one, two or more hours to finish.  So it isn’t quite as convenient and spur of the moment as something like PPV on Satellite where you pick an upcoming showing, wait a bit and then watch it.  AU requires some planning and patience.  It is still a cool concept, just note quite as convenient as I first imagined. I have enough free credits to rent another two or three movies so I will surely try it out again.  It’s not a bargain if you are paying for it, they charge you the same amount as if you rent a ppv or go to the store, $3.99.

On Sunday we made our big trip to the Collier Seminole State Park.  I decided to go the back way to get there.  It took us by Ave Maria, the huge new university/town built literally in the middle of no where.  It has progressed quite a bit since we last drove by it.  there were tour buses going in and out and a good portion of the buildings in the main area look ready to go.  You can see pictures of what we saw at the link above. 

I also did a small detour to stop by the tiny post office that we have taken so many of our guests to see.  I was worried that it did not survive Hurricane Wilma.  I was relived to see it still standing.  However the big metal sign you see in the picture was all bent and beat up and just leaning up against the front of the building. 

The office wasn’t actually open for business.  It has very limited hours and is actually only actively manned during select months of the year.  After we pulled away I kicked myself for not taking an updated picture of it.  It was dumb of me.

The route I took was definitely out of the way.  By the time we pulled up to the park we had been on the road for an hour and a half. (the drive back only took 45 minutes)  We were greeted by a friendly woman at the park office building.  We told her we planned on hiking.  We asked her about the sign that said the big, 6.5 mile trail was closed.  She said they did a controlled burn in the area and a bridge on the trail was collapsed so they have it closed until further notice.  Luckily there are two other trails associated with the park, a 3.5 mile and .9 mile one.  We told her we would be doing the 3.5 mile one.  She gave us a form to fill out.  They like to keep track of people doing the trail so if they don’t check back in afterward they will have a heads up that someone could be out on the trail.

We also had interest in renting a canoe, she said they had one left but we were going to do that second so we just had to take our chances later.  We got a park info sheet and went in.  We drove to a picnic area by the water where they also launch the canoes and boats.  It was a beautiful day with blue sky everywhere, temps in the low 80’s and a steady breeze.  We sat down at a picnic bench and enjoyed our PB sandwiches we packed.  We both enjoyed the fact that we were out of the house doing something different.

We finished up lunch, both made quick bathroom breaks and then headed to the trail.  To get to the trail you actually pulled out of the main park area, hung a left and went down route 41 a bit.   The trail isn’t marked at all from the road but the 4 or 5 vehicles parked in the grass gave it away, many of the vehicles had bike racks.  This trail is a walking/biking one.

We made our way into the dense vegetation and started our hike.  It was very relaxing and interesting.  In some ways it reminded us of the walk around Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, the main differences you weren’t on a boardwalk and the environment wasn’t swampy.  Instead of tons of cypress trees that flourish in wet conditions, the path was flanked by huge oak, pine and palm trees.

The walk had a lot of open sandy areas that made for a bit of challenging hiking.  We took our time and took in the scenery and at various points just took in the sound of the absence of man made noise.  All you heard was the wind blowing through the trees, it was very cool and peaceful.

As the walk progressed we stopped less and walked more.  We both had a decent sweat worked up from hiking.  One of the more interesting things we saw was a small pond filled with alligators, one large adult one and five or six babies.  The big one was maybe the biggest I had seen in the wild.  It sat there motionless and stared at us for awhile and then suddenly moved forward and slipped under the water.  After a little bit we spotted it’s plant covered eyes poking up at us from a different spot in the lake.  Even though we were up a three or four foot embankment from the pond, Ali was nervous.  She had thoughts of the gator somehow springing out of the pond like Michael Jordan and attacking us.  Ali calmed down a bit when a bunch of people on bikes stopped as well to look at the gators.  Perhaps the fact that we had numbers on our side now if the gator attacked made her feel better.  The big gator went under water when all the other people showed up and stayed under water, we tired of trying to see it and took back off.

We finished the hike in approximately an hour and a half.  We were both a bit pooped but we both enjoyed it.  We hopped back in the truck and headed back to the main park, hoping that there would be a canoe left for rental.  We stopped back at the office, told them we had returned from our hike and asked about the canoes.  Yep, they had some available.  All they do is take your name, give you a whistle to use in an emergency and then direct you to a shed in the back where you pick up life jackets, seat pads and oars.

On our way over to the canoes, we stopped and took time to check out a huge machine that was on display.  This behemoth was a walking dredger.  It was built and used in the 20’s to help cut a trail through the Everglades to connect Naples and Miami via what is now known as the Tamiami Trail.  The machine was massive and when we read the information about it, it made the dredger even more impressive.  To move through the swamp it literally walked, 10 feet at a time.  The bucket on the front was used to both dig out a canal for drainage as well as provide fill to build the road upon.  Reading the history of the machine and the people that built the road in what had to be horrible conditions, was fascinating. 

The fact board said that in order to build the road, nearly three MILLION sticks of dynamite were used to bust up the ground to allow the dredger to scoop it up.  The ability of people in the 20’s to build such a piece of equipment for such a singular purpose was very impressive.  Ali and I climbed up into it and checked it all out.  It was just very cool.

We then headed over to the canoe area.  There was a huge group of Hispanic people both on the shore and taking out canoes.  In fact, the last of the newer, plastic canoes was getting put in the water.  Ali and I both suspected that a good chunk of these people weren’t paying to rent the canoes but were just using them anyway.  We were a bit annoyed as our only option was a big old metal canoe.  We hauled it over to the launch area.  I had Ali sit in the front so I could push the canoe in, hop in and then push us away from shore with my paddle. 

We got out into the water ok and started paddling.  It didn’t take long to realize this was going to be a struggle.  Having Ali at the front was tough for her.  We had a hard time staying straight for a couple reasons.  First it was windy and second when I paddled, I was doing it much harder and deeper than she was so the imbalance kept us veering left and right.  It went from bad to worse.  At one point we got off course and wound up crashing into the mangroves on either side of the water.  Sometimes when I would do moves with the paddle to try to correct our direction or if I would shift my position slightly the canoe would rock considerably which freaked Ali out.  She had no desire to fall into the water.  About 10 minutes into our canoe expedition it became apparent that it was going to be a short trip. 

Ali was a trooper and we paddled maybe 500 yards up the waterway but then after a few more rocking back and forth incidents Ali indicated beyond a shade of doubt that she had enough canoeing.  So we turned it around and headed back.  Paddling was not exactly fun for me.  My left shoulder was burning and the constant switching of sides resulted in a decent amount of water being accumulated in the bottom of the canoe. 

When we got back to dry land we noticed that there were now 5 of the plastic canoes available.  Evidently, most people had a similar experience as we did and tired of canoeing rather quickly.  I asked Ali if she was interested in taking one of the plastic canoes out, already knowing what her answer would be.   We pulled our aluminum canoe out of the water, returned our gear and then headed home.  Even with the less than ideal canoe trip, we had a great time.  The park allows dogs so we may bring Nicki along next time.

On Sunday night we finally got to watch my Amazon Unbox download on the Tivo.  Ali selected Little Miss Sunshine.  I knew very little about the movie but had heard others say it was very good.  They were right.  It was a very funny flick that in some ways reminded me of National Lampoons Vacation.  Ali and I both enjoyed it very much and laughed throughout.  I would highly recommend it, it gets an A from me. 

 Wow another long Monday entry.  I make my attempt at my 150 workout very shortly…