Archives March 2009

We got a call late last night from my dad saying that my sister had just given birth to their second child, a boy they named Griffin.  Torrin has had another tough pregnancy although she managed to carry Griffin longer than their first baby Emily.  I’m sure she is relieved to have it all be over with. Many congratulations to both Torrin and Damon.  I’ll see if I can get her on the phone today. 

In case you are keeping track, that is a total of 5 kids in the world that can call me Uncle Shawn.

I forgot to mention that last week when I was home sick on Wednesday I watched The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tome.  Ali deemed the movie as unwatchable by her since there are a couple scenes where you see Marissa Tome’s boobs.  Too bad for Ali, she missed a great movie. 

The movie tells the story of a wrestler that was popular during the hey day of wrestling in the mid to late 80’s and his struggles to continue earning a living doing the same thing with a 25 years older, broken down body.  The plot was compelling although very sad.    The story could apply to many situations where someone acheives great fame doing what they do for a short period of time and then they chase that feeling for the rest of their lives, trying to recapture it. It’s a great flick, A.

Sadie was left alone for two or three hours yesterday and managed to not destroy anything.  Maybe her dog brain is starting to get it.  Today will be a much bigger and longer test.

I am SLOWLY getting better.  At this point I have some coughing issues in the morning but I am sleeping fine. My energy level is still low, maybe 3/4 of what it normally is.  It’s been almost two full weeks of illness now.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to go time another race.  We decided to leave the dogs home this time since it was a small race and we would be home before 10 am.  The race had around 200 runners.  As usual we had a few chips that did not register as they crossed the timing lines.  Out of those only one was confirmed as being dead.  Other than that the operation went rather smooth.  I am familiar enough with the process that most things are starting to feel more or less routine.  We were all packed up and ready to leave by 9am.

When we got home we opened the door and were greeted by an immediate mess.  Sadie has continued her destructive behavior that started last week.  Not only has she continued it, she seems to be trying to set the bar higher on the destructo-meter each time she does it. First she somehow managed to get into the pantry where she pulled out a number of items from the recycling bin.  In the middle of the living room was a ripped up pack of UNO cards that she stole from the game basket in the dining room.  In the dining room she not only stole the cards but chewed on the basket that the games sit in.  Then for the grand finale she chewed on the legs of one of the dining room chairs. 

Of course we were PISSED.  We scolded her loudly and repeatedly.  The problem is that in a dogs mind she doesn’t know what she is being scolded for since the bad behavior occurred when we weren’t there.  They say that if you don’t correct the dog when they are in the act of the bad behavior they don’t really know what they did.  So I took the dogs out while Ali picked up the mess.  Ali had already started removing things of value from low areas around the house based on Sadie’s antics earlier in the week.  If it continues we  will have to further restrict her access to the house when we are gone.  Unfortunately doing that also means restricting Nicki’s access which is not fair.  If the bullshit doesn’t stop we may be forced to crate Sadie when we are gone.  I’m not going to allow her to destroy the house.

I kept busy for a good portion of Saturday doing various things around the house like hanging another solar light on the back of the shed and flushing out the water equipment and treating it with pool chlorine.  Ali took a nap in the afternoon for a little while to compensate for the early wake up call. We spent a lot of time over the weekend catching up on  a backlog of Tivo programming.

Sunday morning Ali went to spinning while I started on more chore work.   Later in the afternoon I thought we would do a “fun” thing.  I thought we would pile the dogs in the van and go for a drive.  The party van has been problematic again lately.  I think the starter which I had replaced two or three years ago is going bad again.  When you turn the key sometimes you just get a CLICK.  You turn it the next time and you may get another click or it may start normally.  I think I could handle replacing the starter on the party van myself.  There should be plenty of room to work under the big beast.  Well it only took two tries to get it started so we loaded up and took off for a short 20 minute drive.  Nicki went right back to the bed in the back and stayed there the entire time.  Sadie started back in the bed with Nicki but soon decided to join us up front.  She hopped up in Ali’s lap and hung out there for the rest of the drive.  She looked quite content just laying there looking out over the dash.

 The van was low on gas so we stopped to grab some on the way home.  Ali was paranoid that the party van would not start up again after I turned it off.  After dumping 20 bucks worth of gas in it I hopped back in and held my breath as I turned the key.  VRoom, it started right up, first time, good boy party van, good boy!

Sunday night I got an unexpected call from my brother-in-law in Arizona.  He asked if I wanted to hop on the Wii and play some Super Smash Brothers online.  We both bought the game a few months ago with the intention of playing online but we never have been able to coordinate anything.  My sister is just about ready to pop out their second kid in a few days and Damon has been under a ton of stress.  I got the feeling he just wanted to escape from it for a bit.  I told him I would call him back after dinner and we could hook it up. 

I called him back and we set ourselves up in the game as friends.  We kept our cell phone on as we played to act as our poor man’s voice ventrillo server.  Super Smash Brothers is a frantic fighting game that I absolutely suck at.  Damon was consistently kicking my ass round after round.  I was trying different characters each time to see if I had better luck.  Finally I found one that seemed to lend itself to people that basically didn’t know how to play the game.  I won a couple fights towards the end even though I think Damon was taking it easy on me.  After about 45 minutes of head bashing we called it a game.  It was a fun little break.

I was talking with Randall about maybe participating in a 150 mile ride down in the Keys to benefit MS.  However in order to do it I needed a road bike.  The only bike I own is a 20 year old Huffy mountain bike that is on it’s last legs.  I realized this weekend that I couldn’t do the event because I have to time a race that weekend.  However I still wanted to get an entry level road bike.

When I was a kid I loved to ride my bike.  I rode it everywhere.  As an adult I have drifted away from much bike riding for some reason.  Riding bike is much more agreeable with cranky knees than running is.  I have visions in my head of actually riding to and from work once in awhile just to say that I did it. (a nearly 50 mile round trip) So anyway I pulled the trigger and bought this bike off Ebay from a dealer that has a perfect feedback score.  It has good reviews and for the money it’s hard to beat.  I am looking forward to getting out on the road.  Yes I will even buy a nerdy helmet and bike pants.

Not much has been able to bring a smile to my face during my past week or so of illness.  However when I saw the Cowboys cut TO the other day a large grin formed immediately .  I LOVE it!

TO has managed to follow the same general script for all three teams he played for.  He starts out as a good citizen then in short order he starts complaining about not getting thrown to enough.  This then turns into taking shots at the team QB. It winds up with TO pissing off pretty much everyone on the team and becoming nothing but a cancer in the locker room. 

The guy is so talented yet such an asshole at the same time.  I wonder what team he will poison next?  My guess would be the Raiders. 

The only bad thing about piece of shit, me first, alligator armed, showboating, manic depressive, egomanical, press conference crying Terrell Owens getting cut is it gives me less of a reason to hate the Cowboys.

This weekend we have a race to time on Saturday.  I have plenty to keep me busy the rest of the weekend as well.  Again I slept pretty well last night.  My energy level is still way low though. 

The one thing good about being sick is it has given both my knees and tendonitis in my forearm lots of time to rest and heal.  Both things feel pretty good right now.

My symptoms amplified on Tuesday.  By Tuesday night I felt the worst I had during the past week.  I decided to go to my real doctor on Wednesday instead of the on site health care clinic.  I made an appointment for 10:15.

The place I go to recently moved to a huge fancy building that is much larger than what they had before.  Unfortunately the fancier accommodations didn’t mean more timely service.  I arrived for my appointment 5 or 10 minutes early.  The waiting room was not very full at all.  I sat there until 10:45.  I was rather annoyed, especially after seeing some guy that walked in the door after me get taken back ahead of me.

Once they took my vitals I was sitting in the room for at least another 15 minutes.  Thank goodness the Iphone is a great time waster.  I got a good session of Field Runners in.  The woman that came in I dealt with before, she is nice.  I explained my symptoms and how it had been going on for a week.  They stuck a swab up my nose to test for the flu virus.  That test came back negative which surprised me.  She felt and listened to various things.  She said she thinks I have some sort of bacterial infection.  She gave me prescriptions of antibiotics, decongestant and cough medicine. 

Ali picked up the prescriptions for me after work.  So far so good.  I was able to basically sleep through the night for the first time in 3 days and I am back at work today.  I certainly am far from 100% but at least I don’t feel like an invalid.

I haven’t been to the gym in over a week which of course bothers me.  However I have noticed that coughing 1000 times a day and being dehydrated really brings out your ab muscles.

Sadie made her first confirmed poop on Tuesday. Ali was very relieved.  She is a little devil though.  When I went to the doctor I left our bedroom door open.  When I came home there was a chewed up pen on the bed, tissues pulled out of the trash can, a half chewed up plastic grocery bag and another pen that looked like it was in the beginning stages of being eaten.  It was my fault for not closing the bedroom door and leaving the pantry doors partially open. 

 Later in the day I was making myself a piece of toast. I was in the office while it was heating up.  I heard the sound of a plate moving.  I come out to the kitchen and there is Sadie on her back legs with her front paws trying to pull the plate off the counter.  I scolded her loudly.  Hopefully she got the point.  As a precaution Ali and I really need to make sure there is nothing on the edges of counters within paws reach.

 Spook made my morning extra special.  I went into the utility room and saw a beautiful little snail trail of brown leading up to two turds in the middle of the floor.  If I were to guess I’d say they were stuck to her rear end and she drug it across the tile until she managed to grind them off.  It was like finding a pot of gold at the end of a feces rainbow.  I love cats.

I was up for about half the night coughing my lungs out.  Yesterday I went to the government complex health clinic.  They said that I may have had a flu like thing at the start but it seemed to be bronchitis now.  They gave me a prescription for some cough suppressant stuff that didn’t seem to help one bit.  I’m going to try good old Nyquil tonight. I feel exhausted.

Another crapless day for Sadie yesterday.

I had heard from a co-worker that Planet Fitness (aka. the gym that invented the Lunk Alarm) had changed their ways.  She said they pulled out the lunk alarm and all of the bullshit rules that they had come up with are no longer enforced.  She also said they added a bunch of new equipment.

Well I have been dealing with the filth, poor upkeep and general apathy that exists at  Powerhouse Gym, now known as Pure Fitness to save him franchise fees.  I went back to Powerhouse after the infamous lunk alarm was installed and they decided to pull out all weights heavier than 50 pounds.  Pure Fitness is a Pure Shithole.  Before doing any set with the dumbbells it is necessary to drop them on the floor and spin the weights to tighten them up, else they could fall right off.  Same deal with the benches, I often begin a set by reaching underneath the bench and tightening the screws the best I can by hand so the bench isn’t wobbling back and forth.  Seats and grips on the various exercise machines are ripped up, there are spider webs and dirt in every corner, the water fountain looks like someone threw up on it and the bathrooms are disgusting.  Oh and the owner does whatever he can to keep cooling charges down.  He keeps the thermostat at 80 degrees (very hot for a gym) and loves to open the doors instead of using the AC to save more money.  The gym crowd at Pure Fitness is 95% men and any women that do show up there are typically 65 years old or older. 

Planet Fitness on the other hand is very clean and has much newer and much better equipment.  I checked in at lunch to see if the Lunk Alarm was indeed gone.  It was gone from it’s original home.  However it was simply moved to a wall in the back where the free weights are now located.   I was assigned to tour with a guy named Jeremy.  I told him I was an original member there. He looked me up and my name was still in the computer.  I told him the reason I left was because of all the bullshit rules that were put in place.  I mentioned how a friend of mine told me the lunk alarm was gone and the long list of rules was no longer being enforced.  He told me about the lunk alarm simply being moved although he said it currently wasn’t working. He also said they still enforce the bullshit rules.

Surprisingly Jeremy was right on board with my opinion that all of the rules in place there were bullshit.  They annoyed him as well and he said the lunk alarm was the stupidest thing he ever saw in a gym.  He said that they did bring some heavier weights back in, now they cap at 75 pounds instead of 50 pounds.  They did not bring back any squat racks since those are only needed by “power lifters” which is ludicrous.  As I talked to Jeremy out on the gym floor you would have never guessed he was an employee, he hated the childish rules as much if not more than I did.  He told me how the corporate office will send plants into the gym to make sure that the staff is following the “rules”  If they are found to not be they are at risk for losing the franchise.  It is crazy.

I told Jeremy I had been at Powerhouse since leaving Planet Fitness.  He winced as he already knew that place was a dump.  He actually recommended the old Gold’s Gym that is under new ownership.  Unfortunately it is too far away to be useful for lunch time workouts.   I looked around some more before leaving.  The equipment except for the missing squat rack looked great.  There was a much more balanced crowd there gender-wise as well.  I told Jeremy I would think about my options.

It’s a tough decision.   Do I break my vow to never go back to a gym that has the lunk alarm, even a broken one?  Planet Fitness has no room to do a 300 workout.  In fact I am sure it would be frowned upon and discouraged  since it can get noisy.  I could get by with the 75 pound weight ceiling.  I don’t need to push anything much heavier than that nowadays.  The equipment is nice, the place is clean, and well maintained. The crowd in there has a much younger median age. 

Pure Fitness is the cesspool of gyms.  The owner has no interest in maintaining the place and cuts corners at every opportunity.  The equipment is ancient and falling apart in some cases. It’s incredibly dirty.  It’s hot. It smells.  On the plus side they have no problems with me doing a 300 workout there and have the space needed to do it.  Of course they probably wouldn’t notice or care if someone took a shit in the middle of the floor either.  Really the biggest drawback I have to leaving Pure Fitness is the core of 7 or 8 guys that I talk to on a regular basis.  I have some good relationships going there and I’d be reluctant to toss them aside.  Some of the guys came with me from Plant Fitness, perhaps they would follow me back.

Look at this article and video clip about Planet Fitness and their incredibly stupid “Lunk  Alarm”.

Ali talked to the vet.  She said that a couple days is not anything to get alarmed about.  If a couple more should pass without anything “passing” then we need to take Sadie back.  So that’s what we will do.

So Tuesday evening I started feeling off.  I was getting that weird feeling in my throat as well as feeling abnormally tired.  When I woke up Wednesday morning my throat hurt even worse and I was feeling achy.  I typically don’t take a lot of sick days so I didn’t feel bad about calling in.  If push came to shove I probably could have sat behind my desk at work, it’s not like I load trucks for a living.  Eh, I figured I would rest on Wednesday and be good as new for Thursday. It didn’t work out that way.

Instead of getting better I woke up on Thursday feeling worse.  My throat was more sore and the aches were more intense.  Friday it was no better so I stayed home once again.  During my time home I did some napping, some TV watching and a lot of WoW playing.   We also had some dog drama developing.  Sadie developed diarrhea, bad diarrhea.  On Thursday I went outside to let them out and saw that Sadie let loose with a huge pancake of runny shit on the pool deck.  With my physical condition hosing down shit was not high on my want to do list.  After the pool deck incident Sadie was a diarrhea machine.  Every time we went outside she was squatting multiple times and eventually was pushing out nothing but a watery mess.

Of course we were concerned.  Ali was so so concerned that she spent the better part of two nights out on the sofa bed with Sadie so she could let her out during the night as well as not wake me up in the process.  On Friday she took Sadie to the vet.  The vet said she had some sort of bacteria in her stool and that there was a lot of undigested food in it.  She gave us some medicine as well as advising us to give her a bland diet consisting of boiled chicken and rice till it clears up.

Friday night Sadie got through without having to go to the bathroom.  Ali and I were both happy the diarrhea seemed to be behind her.  Now we have a new problem.  She is not pooping at all.  Over the weekend she only made one tiny poop the entire time.  All Sunday we were on poop patrol anxiously awaiting a normal bowel movement.  It never came.  So now Sadie goes back to the vet.  Ali is worried that she has some sort of obstruction in her digestive system.  Last week she did devour half of a compressed raw hide bone in one sitting.  Ali has heard of that possibly causing blockages.  I’m hoping the vet can give us some solid answers today.

On Saturday the aches and pains subsided pretty much and my energy level felt high enough that I tried to tackle the household chores.  The aches were replaced with a very sore throat and a dry hacking cough that came and went.  We went out and got a bunch of stuff with some of our various gift cards to help light up the back yard.  I grabbed a couple solar floodlights as well as a wireless thing that supposedly allows you to turn regular floods into motion activated devices.  I got most of it installed and working.  The one solar spotlight was too small and I will be returning it.  We need the extra lighting since the dogs like to run around in the yard during both day and night time.  Without lighting it is very tough to see them.

I also grabbed a couple shepard hooks to hang our bird feeders off of.  Our old ones were all bent up and shitty looking.  When I grabbed the hooks at Home Depot I noticed they had a “Made in China” sticker on them.  I put them back and grabbed another one to see if I could find an American made model.  I looked at every single variation they had at the store.  Every single one was made in China.  We have been invaded and don’t even realize it, sad.

The rest of the weekend was understandably low key.  Between my not feeling well and the Sadie issues it added up to not a whole lot of fun. 

I watched an Oprah with Ali that had Eric from the Biggest Loser on it.  Eric was the winner 3 years ago.  He started out at 407 pounds and by the finale he got down to an AMAZING 197 pounds.  He lost something like 214 pounds total.  Well when I saw him on Oprah I audibly gasped.  After all of that work, all of that dedication, all of that praise and adulation for his accomplishment, the guy has let himself go.  He is back up to 315 pounds and looks like shit.

I give him credit for coming on Oprah and at least admitting his failure.  You could see the shame written all over his face.  He should be ashamed.  He basically won the lotto,  he got his life back, he was finally healthy and he pissed it away.  He said that seeing Oprah talk about how she has whaled out once again inspired him to come on the show. 

Oprah was very annoying during the interview.  She kept making Eric’s problem about her.  She kept repeating HER problems, HER issues and HER advice for beating it.  First of all Oprah is not qualified to give healthy living advice to anyone.  If anything she has set a terrible example of how to manage her weight.  With all the money she has that allows her to buy the best trainers, the best cooks, the best exercise equipment she still was unable to control what she shoved in her mouth.  In the field of healthy living she is the ultimate hypocrite. Shut the f up, lose weight and keep it off. Stop giving advice you don’t take yourself.

Anyway it was very disappointing for me to see that Eric fell off the wagon.  Unfortunately there are quite a few Biggest Loser contestants that made huge strides during the show only to fall right back into their dark hole of gluttony and inactivity afterwards.  The season 1 winner now weighs as much if not more than when he started the show as well.

We watched one movie during my illness, The Day the Earth Stood Still.  I had heard ahead of time it had bad reviews.  But hey it is sci-fi and has Keanu Reeves, how bad could it be?  It was bad.  The overall message was admirable, stop trashing the planet or someone will come along and trash the human race but the film was filled with just dumb moments that made little to no sense.  The ending was very anti-climactic and nonsensical to me as well. C+ at best.