Archives April 2008

http://www.digthebeach.com/files/results/2008/siesta01.pdf

Barrack Obama knows this information yet he has refused to dig it up and chuck it out there despite Hilary Clinton slinging Rev Wright mud repeatedly over the last few months.  To me it speaks to Obama’s character and against Hilary’s.  Obama doesn’t make up “caught in sniper fire” stories either.

Finally, I want to say a word about the basic decency I have seen in Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton continues to throw the Rev. Wright up in his face as part of her mission to keep stoking the fears of White America. Every time she does this I shout at the TV, “Say it, Obama! Say that when she and her husband were having marital difficulties regarding Monica Lewinsky, who did she and Bill bring to the White House for ‘spiritual counseling?’ THE REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT!”

I heard on the Stern show all 3 candidates commercials that aired during a WWE broadcast (fake wrestling)  They were all silly with John McCain’s being the most over the top ridiculous followed by Hilary and then Obama.   McCain said he was going to unleash “The UnderTaker” (a wrestler) on bin Laden.  It was so ridiculous.  Are they all going to be guest judges on American Idol next?  Maybe the plot of Idiocracy isn’t all that far off after all….

Willie Aames is on this season’s version of celebrity fit club. You may remember Willie was one of the stars from the successful show of the 70’s, “Eight is Enough”  He was a teen heart throb for quite awhile.  Well I had never seen or heard from him after the show until he appeared on the second season of Celebrity Fit Club, nearly 30 years after the height of his fame.   In that show Willie had become the prototypical middle aged American.  He was overworked, stressed out, as well as being fat and dumpy.  Many times during the show he would snap and lash out at various cast members.  He just seemed like a very uptight and unhappy guy.  You can almost get that vibe from looking at this picture of him from the show. He was very unwilling to change and very lack luster with his commitment to losing weight.

 Well Willie has come back for this season’s version  of the show which features several “celebrities” from prior seasons that still have some weight to lose squaring off against other celebrities that are virgins to the CFC experience.  Well sometime in the past three years Willie has totally transformed.   

Take a look at the picture of him today below. He has turned from an uptight, boring, angry, guy into a laid back, likable and funny person.  Gone is the boring hair, boring clothes and boring appearance.  Willie has let his hair grow out and looks to have gone crazy with “Sun In” in the process.  He looks like he just walked off the beach instead of just walking out of a PTA meeting.  Along with the physical transformation, a complete mental change seems to have taken hold as well.  The guy is just laid back.  Very few things seem to bother him.  He laughs easily now.  Not coincidentally, he also is one of the top two performers on the show where the vast majority of the stars are too lazy or don’t care enough to obtain serious weight loss, Willie has been kicking ass and has lost nearly 25 pounds on the show and looks great.  He is now a fun guy to be with.  It’s hard to believe I am viewing the same person I saw 3 years ago. My hat is off to the guy.  He appears to have traded in the typical definition of success and instead has found a way to truly be happy. I should take a few notes.

https://blog.duf.net/helpwin.htm

227. When you find out that one of the players on the team you are playing in the finals is from France, ask him “Are you planning to surrender?”

228. Admit to your partner after a devastating loss in pool play that you feel depressed so he can crank up his level of play to carry you through the mini-playoff game.

229. Prepare for a tournament by playing various Wii Sports games the night before.

230. Conceal a pack of baby wipes in a towel and carry the towel with you to the public restroom to make sure you aren’t “up the creek without a paddle” when performing your customary pre-tournament bowel movement.

So Randall drove over Friday night to stay at our place before my first 2008 volleyball tournament up in Siesta Keys.  If Randall wouldn’t have stayed over he would have had a 3 1/2 hour one way commute to make.  Originally he was planning to get over to our place between 5 and 6 but got held up and rolled into our place a little after 7:30.  We enjoyed some pizza while we finished up watching Biggest Loser and then zipped through Hell’s Kitchen.

Even though it was after 9 I wanted to show Randall the power of Wii, something he never played before.  He was immediately hooked.  It’s hard not to be.  The Wii Sports games are very simplistic yet very enjoyable at the same time.  We played for quite awhile, not heading to bed until around 11, later than I would like on the night before a tourney.

I woke up on my own a little after 4am after a very disturbing dream.  I just laid in bed basically until the alarm went off at 5:20 or so.    I was hoping to be on the road by 6:30.  We missed the mark by 10 minutes or so.  I was a bit worried when we pulled into the parking lot by the beach at 8:35 that we might have missed sign in but we were ok.  Siesta Key is one of my favorite beaches to play at.  It’s wide, it has white powdery sand that is decently packed and it’s just very scenic.  The weather was great as well with temps that stayed mostly in the 70’s with low humidity and a decent breeze.

The beach was packed with nets.  In addition to our tournament, there were a bunch of women college volleyball players there playing in their own beach tourney.  We found our net and set up.  There were only two nets of 5 of BB.  In years past I would be a bit disappointed by only two nets of teams because it would mean less to me if we were only better than 9 other teams.  Since I’ve only managed to win two tournaments since 2002, I could care less at this point.  I’m just there to play and thankful that I am still able to.

So play begun and things went well.  Our first two games we won with out much fuss.  We didn’t do anything spectacular but instead just played smart and consistent.  I did no real hitting, I did more placement shots than anything.  Shortly into the first game I cranked my neck after looking up for a serve.  My neck and my hitting shoulder bothered me the most throughout the entire day, much more so than my knees.  The weakest part of my game was my hitting.  My timing was poor.  When I did intend to swing away I often would run under the set or just time it very poorly.  My setting was surprisingly good.  Even though I bump set the entire day I gave Randall a bunch of sweet balls to swing at, including a couple of my patented no look, backwards beauties.

After winning our second game we were pretty confident that we would be able to go undefeated in our pool.  We had seen the other two teams play and both Randall and I thought we should be able to handle them without much issue.  So we took the court for our next game which was against two younger guys that seemed like they were either in high school or college.  Their play seemed to indicate they were primarily indoor players giving it a go on the beach.  Well we somehow allowed these kids to stick around until late in the game.  At that point we had an untimely loss of consistency allowing the kids to win by three points.  It was disappointing and unexpected but both Randall and I more or less shook it off as a fluke.

Our last game was an important one.  It was against the team on our net that was undefeated.  If we won the game we would take first place on the net but if we lost we would be thrown into a 3 way tie for the two remaining playoff spots off our net.  Randall and I both said “Let’s just win and keep it simple”  We jumped out to a quick early lead and then saw it vanish after more unforced errors on our part.  The middle part of the game was a lot of back and forth siding out.  This team honestly shouldn’t be siding out against us.  Neither player was spectacular and both of them had 25 pounds to lose.  Well late in the game we made a surge and had them at the edge of defeat, i think it was 20-19.  Instead of closing them out though we instead collapsed, more specifically I collapsed.  On one play Randall had to chase down a ball that was heading pretty far out of bounds.  He made a great save and sent the ball on high arc back towards the net, a great opportunity for me to jump up and kill it for a point.  Instead I get under the ball, jump, time it badly and wind up totally wiffing on the ball.  Randall screamed in disgust.  I fell on the sand, landing on my back and caught the ball.  I laid there for a moment in disbelief on how lame my effort seconds ago was.  Then while still laying on my back I threw the ball up and over the net in total disgust.  My f up put us on the brink of defeat.  On the next play, Randall got served and got tied up a bit and popped the ball straight up only a few feet high.  It wasn’t a good pass but I normally would be able to get over to it easily.  However when I went to plant my foot to move I immediately stumbled and had to watch in despair as the ball hit the sand. 

Ugh, what a collapse.  It was a collapse that I felt 100% responsible for although during the game there were many opportunities that we both missed out on.  Even though we were not eliminated, I felt like we were.  My emotions went into the dump.  I felt defeated, I had no confidence in myself and I basically had given up.   I walked down to the water and stood knee deep in it, somehow hoping it would help wash some of the negativity away.  When I walked back up to the net I even admitted to Randall how shitty I felt. 

So our mini-playoff game was a game to 7 with rally scoring, meaning there was absolutely no room for a slow start. Luckily Randall cranked up his game to make up for my less than stellar mental disposition.  He served and hit the other team off the court.  It was the kids that gave us our first loss so it was nice to pay back the favor.  So we had squeaked into the real playoffs albeit as the lowest seeded team.

Even though I had little to do with it, winning the mini-playoff helped raise my spirits a bit.  Our first playoff game was against one of my least favorite teams to play in men’s BB, a co-ed team!  I HATE when a girl that typically plays A or AA teams up with a guy that plays A or better and somehow determine that equation works out to a BB skill level in men’s play.  I have always thought they should ban co-ed teams from playing in gender specific divisions.  It’s stupid.  Would I be able to team up with a girl and play in the women’s division, no.  So anyway, this team had taken second place off their net.

We had a long back and forth game with them.  Early on we didn’t take much advantage of the team being co-ed and served the guy.  Later on we decided to make them pay for bringing a female to the table and we served and hit at her more.  Even so the game was very tight.  Late in the game we had opened up a small lead and were close to closing them out.  Again we had a lapse in our play and allowed them to tie it up on unforced errors on our part.  I was thinking to myself “here we go again…”  But instead of folding once more we managed to win a couple hard fought scrambling points and win the match.  That win seemed to set the ball in motion, I once again had some confidence.

Our next playoff game was against the team that dealt us the morale crushing loss in the final game of pool play.  This time we repaid the favor and then some, crushing them and winning by double digits.  They were never in the game.  That felt good, real good.  All of a sudden we found ourselves in the finals, only an hour removed from me feeling like all was lost, it was sort of bizarre.

The finals was against a guy that was a coach of the some of the college girls that were playing in the other tournament and a young kid from France named Alexi.  Although Randall had never met the kid before, he got things off in a smack talking manner after finding out the kid was from France by asking him “So are you going to surrender?”  I couldn’t believe he said that.  The kid smiled and laughed but I am sure inside he was thinking “oh another American asshole…”

This team was solid, the most solid we played all day.  If we were playing a side out scoring game it would have easily went on for an hour as we both sided out at least the first 12 points.  Again Randall and I weren’t doing anything magical, instead just doing the basics, most importantly passing the ball well  which allowed us a good chance at putting the ball away on the hit.  Even though it was the finals I wasn’t keeping real close track of the score.  I was surprised when Randall told me we were up 23-20.  We were aided late in the game by a couple close calls where there was a dispute if the coach had hit the net or not.  Both times we played the point over and both times we won that point.  We got the last two points we needed and it was over, I had won my first BB tournament since December 2004. 

There was no loud vocal outburst after we won the game.  In fact there wasn’t much excessive celebration at all, more of just a quiet “wow, we did it” sort of vibe.  I certainly didn’t expect to win, hell it wasn’t that long before that I practically assumed we were done for.  Maybe I was just sort of shocked.  So anyway we walked up to the tent to collect our winnings.  We had a choice between a new $60 ball or a backpack.  I was half thinking about the backpack to replace the 10 year old Mid-Atlantic Volleyball bag that I won at the shore years ago.  I use that bag daily to lug my gym gear back and forth.  However I was unsure if a backpack would serve that duty as well as the bag does. Plus as always I am sentimental about things that have served me for so long, ie. my nearly 20 year old red lunch box, it would be hard for me to abandon the bag.  So I decided to go with the ball.  My current old Wilson outdoor ball is very rough on the arms, it’s heavy and hard.  So now I have an up to date Spalding with teal accents to carry around in my volleyball bag.

Before cleaning up our gear I gave a quick call to Ali to report of our success.  She was out mowing the grass so I just left a message.  We packed up and lugged the stuff out to the parking lot which was now jammed with vehicles.  People were circling the lot like sharks looking for people leaving so they could monger the spot.  I am sure I pissed people off as we loaded stuff in the truck but did not leave, Randall had to check with a girl about playing co-ed the next day.  So I just opened the passenger side door, turned the truck and the ac on and waited for him to return.  There was some idiot in a truck that must have waited at least 10 minutes for me to leave which I never did.  He finally realized he was wasting his time.

Randall returned and we made the drive home.  It went quicker than the ride there.  For whatever reason we were both more chatty on the return trip.  Physically my neck and shoulders topped the pain list.  I was starting to realize that I also had a very bad sunburn on my back.  I didn’t bother to put sunblock on my back because I assumed I would wear a shirt for most of the day.  I wound up playing shirtless more games than not.  The sun reflecting off the bright white sand really does a number on baking you.  The biggest physical positive was there really wasn’t a time during all of the games I felt winded.  I think between doing 300’s for a year, picking running back up and weighing a lot less I am able to go at a higher level without sucking wind terribly bad. I did have my fair share of outbursts although they were more physical that vocal.  Beside the new, laying on your back and throwing the ball over the net thing, I also used some of my old stand by methods to blow off steam.  I launched a ball high angrily with two hands after one mishit and slammed another ball down behind my back as I spun away after yet another hitting screw up.  I managed to keep most cursing at a low decibel level. 

So once we got home and getting congratulations from Ali for our performance we cleaned up to go to dinner at Carraba’s.  We have a ton of gift cards from there so we figured it would be a cheap way to have a meal out for all of us.  When we pulled up around 7:30 it was very full.  When Ali put our names in we were told it would be a 90 minute wait.  I was confident it wouldn’t be that long, I figured there would be a mass exodus of the normal dinnertime crowd shortly.  Unfortunately we missed the 2 for 1 happy hour deal so we milked our drinks at a small table while we basically did a lot of people watching which was surprisingly entertaining.  Luckily my hunch was right and after about an hour wait our buzzer lit up.

When we sat down we immediately noticed that Carraba’s seemed to have slimmed down the menu.  All of the entree’s were on a single page.  Ali noticed several entrees that were missing.  We thought it was an odd move to offer less.  Ali wasn’t thrilled with the pasta dish she ordered.  I liked the chicken and spinach canneloni I ordered and Randall’s clean plate meant he must have liked his as well.  It was a good dinner.  The few drinks I had coupled with my mildly dehydrated state resulted in me acting a bit silly which made for good entertainment.  By the time we got home Randall and I were beat, too tired to even consider playing the Wii.  Everyone headed to bed.

When I woke up Sunday morning I wasn’t sure what hurt more, my aching muscles or the burning skin on my back from the sunburn.  All the muscles and tendons from the knees down felt stretched and sore, my body just is not accustomed to moving around on sand quickly.  I stayed in bed till a little after 7am until Nicki insisted that I get up, a late morning for me.  Randall was smart and stayed in bed till around 9.   It didn’t take long for us to engage in more Wii Sports battles.  We played Wii all morning and into the early afternoon.  When Ali called me after her spinning class and asked if there was anything I needed for her to pick up I jokingly said she could pick up the Nerf Wii Sports pack that gives you miniature versions of a tennis racket, baseball bat and golf club to use with Wii Sports.  She happily agreed to pick it up, cool!

So once she returned we quickly ripped on the clam shell and tried out the accessories.  They definitely add to the realism of the experience.  My only complaint was that my hand got sweaty holding the plastic grip of the Nerf adapter.  You definitely need to ensure you have LOTS of space in front of the TV when using the Nerf add ons.  Several times I felt the WHOOSH of Randall’s tennis racket whistling by my ear.  Even though Randall was a Wii virgin he quickly picked up the games.  In fact he beat me in golf as well as pulling of 1 win in bowling and baseball.  I had him do the Wii Fitness test.  On Friday he checked in with a Wii age of 45, by Sunday he had lowered his Wii Fitness age to 34, his actual age ironically. (I checked in at 22 by the way)  We wrapped up our Wii olympics around 2pm and Randall headed out for his drive across the state.  It was fun having him around.

Ali had been nice enough to knock out the chores for the weekend.  She did however have one request, she wanted to go to Lowes to pick up some stuff.  Once Randall left my motivation to do much of anything left with him.  Increased soreness and pain from my sunburn arrived, further decreasing my desire to do ANYTHING.  However I piled in the truck and off we went.  We picked up dirt, compost, various plants and a few other things.  After Lowe’s we went to Wild Oats for Ali to get some more stuff and then she asked if we could go to Petco to get some ceramic dishes for Nicki.  I objected mildly to the additional Petco stop but Ali was quick to remind me how she worked hard while I was playing volleyball to minimize what was left for me to do. In Petco we saw a young couple carrying around a very cute German Shepard puppy.  We talked to them a bit and found out they had just adopted the puppy and were getting the necessities for it.  The guy was holding the dog like a baby across his shoulder, it was very cute.

Once we got home I unloaded all of the stuff off the truck.  By this time the soreness from playing the day before sucked all energy from my body.  Every movement felt labored and unwelcomed.  Originally Ali said all she needed me to do was lug the old nasty looking pots in the front of the house to the back.  However we wound up doing more than that.  I wasn’t into it in the least.  My mood for the rest of Sunday was not good.  The full moon did nothing to help my discomfort.  Even though what had been a pretty good weekend was winding down which included lots of Wii action as well as an unexpected volleyball victory, I felt blah,  I felt down, I felt like I just wanted to be left alone. To Ali’s credit she more or less left me be.  I took my shower and crawled into bed, shirtless, in an attempt to eliminate a t-shirt from rubbing up against my beet red back. 

You can see the pictures I took in Siesta Keys here. You can see my volleyball page and the associated updates here.

At work the other week they installed low water usage fixtures including toilets that use like a gallon per flush along with a WATERLESS urinal.  It uses no water whatsoever.  You basically take a leak into the thing and then under the drain is some sort of substance that is supposed to neutralize odor.  It’s sort of weird using the urinal, it sort of feels like going back in time and using the old piss troughs.  The chemical urinal does require maintenance.  Every month or so they have to come in and replenish whatever the chemical is.  You can tell when it is time to swap it out as the bathroom starts smelling like a truck stop.  Many employees don’t use the urinal anymore and instead use the conventional toilet for everything.

So tomorrow I am travelling up to Siesta Key to play in my first 2008 volleyball tournament with Randall.  Since Randall lives on the east coast he is going to drive over to my place tonight and stay there so we can simply drive up together tomorrow morning.  We should have fun playing in the tournament as well as playing some drunken Wii at my place. I have no expectations for the tournament.  Physically I am as ready as I have been in the past 3 years to play.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out with the end result.  Any skill I possess surely is diminished from the lack of any sort of practice or play in the months in between tournament appearances.  Oh well, it doesn’t bother me any more.  I’m just happy to be out there playing.

Knock on wood the automatic litter box has been working better since I cleaned out that switch.  I think I found the key to making the unit workable.  You HAVE to make sure that the lip of waste container is UNDERNEATH the edge of the main unit so excess litter goes into the receptacle instead of dropping on to the floor under the unit.  If excessive litter collects under the unit it eventually causes that switch to malfunction which will prevent the unit from cycling correctly when a cat uses it.

  I had placed an order for one of the old style Littermaid boxes on Amazon but cancelled it after seeing it would take a month until it shipped out.  Then I bought one on ebay and again was told it would take a month for it to ship so I cancelled that as well.  I will see if my better luck with the Elite model continues.  It seems like the cats, now that they have a choice between the automatic box and an old fashioned litter box,  prefer to use the automatic box almost exclusively.  They do however always use the old box at least once a day so it requires me to scoop it.  They couldn’t possibly make their care any easier for me by just using one box.

I have been continuing on the quest to spend our tax return on home improvement items.  I bought a replacement for our 7 year old pool cleaner that was on it’s last legs.  In conjunction I bought two drain covers that should allow the cleaner to smoothly pass over the floor drains instead of constantly getting hung up on them, requiring our intervention to free it.  I also bought a replacement fountain for our little pond.  The only other thing I am looking to get done with the tax return dough is get a new front door.  The builder did an A-1 shitty job with our front door.  It doesn’t fit right.  There are gaps all around it that are large enough to allow rain and insects through.  I’m not looking for something fancy, just one that fits right.  I plan on having someone install it for me to make sure it gets done right although I certainly have come to realize that paying someone to do a job doesn’t necessarily mean they will take pride in their work.  

I was surprised to read that Priscilla Presley got the boot on DWTS.  I figured all the Elvis maniacs would have propped her up for quite awhile yet.  I saw a few seconds of her dance this week.  It was pretty dreadful.  Well now she can go back to injecting things into various parts of her body full time.  It will be a relief to not see her on the show so we don’t have to bear witness to Lisa Marie in the audience.  Ugh, what a train wreck.

In the local paper there was a headline story about a bunch of old farts from some baptist church that attended a meeting to push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.  What a bunch of f’ing idiots.  With all the things that are wrong with the world, these people prefer to focus on sticking their noses into the middle of people’s personal relationships.  If two gay people get married exactly what harm does it do to anyone else?  All you need to know about the article is this quote from one of the attendees – ““This is a tremendous social crisis, greater even than the issue of slavery,” Wicker said.”  What in the F??  Read all of the idiocy here. 

So the new Pope is visiting America, yay.  This pope is a very creepy looking pope.  It appears that his actions match his looks.  He was second in command to the old pope for a long time.  Evidently when case after case of catholic church priests performing various sexual acts with mostly young boys reached epidemic proportions, Pope Creepy put out a memo instructing church officials to try to not address the claims until the statute of limitations had run out, smooth move.  Even with the churches attempts to sidestep the law they have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in an attempt to quietly settle these cases with minimal media attention.  The Catholic church to me is in a word, disgusting.  They are some of the biggest hypocrites walking the face of the planet.  To see people fill stadiums to see the ring leader of this gang of child molesters ride around in his modified Mercedes Popemobile is pathetic.  To me, religion in general is one of the biggest scams going on this planet. 

It’s time for a funny fat picture!  Note to self, if you weigh more than the motorcycle you are riding, don’t try to pop a wheelie…..

Way to go W, you monkey… what a brave stance to take, “Let’s curb CO2 when I am dead!”

Bush to urge halt of CO2 emission growth by 2025