Archives May 2009

The bad economy hit real close to home today. Mom got let go from her job due to lack of business.

It seems like Sadie has really been living high on the hog since we adopted her.  When we first took her to the vet shortly after adopting her she weighed in at a lean 38 pounds.  A couple weeks ago she went back to the vet.  In a period of around 2 months she had gained 11 pounds! Wow.  That is like a 200 pound man jumping to 250 in the same period of time. 

Well obviously we were surprised at the big gain.  We have started taking measures like cutting back on the amount of dry food she is getting, giving more healthy treats and trying to moderate their use.   When Sadie first showed up there was A LOT of running around the yard going on.  However now there is significantly less since Nicki has realized that she will never be able to catch Sadie.  Instead wrestling has taken over as the primary exercise they get.  They aren’t burning as many dog calories.  Ali and I both are conscious of Sadie’s new found heft so hopefully we can help her shave a few pounds off.

Last night I had my first, first hand work with EA Active.  I decided to do a “medium intensity” workout since Ali did the “low intensity” variety.  I found that my workout was basically identical to hers, I just had to do more repetitions of the same stuff.  The workout was varied and fast paced.  I used elastic bands and the Wii Fit board during the session.  By the time the 25 minutes was up I was sweated through my shirt. 

Unlike Wii Fit where I chose a female trainer I decided to go the male trainer route this time.  The graphics in the game are far better than in Wii Fit or My Personal Trainer. The variety in EA Active is impressive.  Incorporating the Wii controllers into the exercises is a welcomed addition as you get immediate visual feedback on screen that you are doing an exercise correctly or incorrectly.  After I finished the workout I dug into the screens to see all of the exercises and activities, wow.  There are a TON of different things in there.  I messed around briefly with the basketball and tennis drills.  So far EA Active gets two big thumbs up from me.

Yesterday after work I had to stop at Sam’s to get a few things, among them were various supplements that I take including glucosamine/chondrotin, fish oil capsules, and a big bottle of one a day multivitamins.  I also grabbed a double box of Zone bars as well as a couple bags of healthy dehydrated chicken breast treats for the dogs. Total bill, $138.  Add on top of that the 42 pack of Lean Body protein mix and the two bottles of flax seed oil I bought online last week and you can throw another $100 on top of the total.  Eating smart and supplementing is a smart thing to do if you value your health but there is no doubt that it is an expensive project. 

Even in the grocery store you will notice that there is a price penalty normally when buying the healthier items.  Want more fiber, fewer carbs and less calories?  Be ready to pony up a few extra bucks. You can survive on Taco Bell and McD’s for much less.

We just had another county employee die recently of lung cancer.  Since I have been working here there have been three or four people that have passed away from the deadly disease.  It’s very sad to see someones light extinguished before their time because of the deadly addiction to smoking.  I think there is a lot of momentum towards making smoking more and more inconvenient between taxing cigarettes through the roof and banning smoking not only indoors but in some outdoor areas as well.  Sadly you can never save people from themselves.

On the way back from the movies I spotted a Chevy SSR with a single bumper sticker on the back.  It read (in white letters) “Keep the WHITE House WHITE”

To me, somebody that would drive around with this on their vehicle may as well team it with a “Please ignore me, I am a moron” tattoo in the middle of their forehead. 

I am surprised there wasn’t a set of bull testicles hanging there as well.

Wow lots to cover, hopefully the details don’t fall through the cracks of my spotty memory. On Saturday we did a lot of stuff around the house.  Randall and his girlfriend were coming over on Sunday so we needed to get everything out of the way.  I skipped grass mowing so it saved a nice chunk of time. 

On Saturday night we watched Yes Man, the Jim Carey romantic comedy flick.  It was a typical feel good sort of time.  It was enjoyable and forgettable, a solid B performer.

Saturday night I was up late, hell I  have been up late for most of the past week and I can tell.  I have felt rather run down.  Well anyway, that particular night I was up late because of WoW.  I was asked to come along with the guild to do a new raid instance.  I generally dislike raid instances.  In my experience they always lead to more frustration than fruit.  Well this was no exception.  When I was recruited to assist a time frame for the encounter was estimated at an hour.  Well it seems like whenever I am involved in one of these situations it never goes as planned.  They never start on time, they never get done when they are supposed to and more often than not my reward at the end of them is residual stress, frustration and a large repair bill.  

It’s like a trap, you are in this encounter with 9 other people so even if you feel like leaving you feel obligated to stay till the end, else you could be giving the virtual shaft to the other 9 players.  Well in this situation I was clearly the weak link.  Since my gear was not as “epic” as everyone in the group I was not able to contribute equally.  After dying at least 10 times I had enough and just bailed shortly before midnight.  I just reached my limit.  I’m steering way clear of  raid instances.  I don’t think I ever came out of a raid feeling good about the time spent.

Sunday morning while Ali went to spinning class I finished up the work around the house.  I received an estimated ETA from Randall of  12:30 to 1 pm.  He called us during the trip saying he had hit a dead stop on Alligator Alley and wasn’t sure how late he would be.  It turned out that even with the delay he pulled into our place close to 1pm.

It was the first time Randall met Sadie.  Of course Sadie greeted Randall with much excitement.  It was also the first time he saw the new granite counters in person which he said looked great.   After Randall and Wendy ate lunch we talked about our game plan for the movies since that was the primary reason for his visit.  Randall had graciously volunteered to be my movie surrogate to watch the films that Ali decided she didn’t want to see.

So we formulated a plan to have Randall and I go watch Terminator while the girls would walk around Coconut Point.  I was surprised when we approached the theater and saw all of the Muvico branding had been removed and the place was now called “Hollywood Theater”  Evidently a huge new theater that only saw light use didn’t work out well in Muvico’s bottom line.  Since it was opening weekend for Terminator they were showing it every half hour.  Even though we arrived only 10-15 minutes before start time, the 250 seat theater had barely 50 people in it.  Randall and I were able to grab choice seats in the aisle that has limitless leg room.

So after sitting through double digit previews the film finally started.  I really was anxious to see the film, the previews for it looked simply fantastic.  Of course a film is rarely if ever as good as it’s previews.  Well once again Terminator somewhat missed my high expectations but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good.  It was very good for the most part.  The epic special effects, crazy action and suspense made the $7.50 ticket price well worth it.  The movie started to fall apart towards the end when a few rather ridiculous plot twists occur that just make you think they could have come up with a better way to do it.  I was surprised to see a CGI created Arnold appear in the flick.  They certainly didn’t use a modern day version of the Governor’s body which is rather dilapidated anymore.  This sort of reminded me of the way I felt about Iron Man, it was great movie with a silly ending. I’d give it an A, although on a Terminator scale I would probably rank it in third place behind the first two and ahead of the third installment.

After the movie we met back up with the girls.  Ali surprised me with a gift she bought for me from Best Buy, EA Active for the Wii. (more on that later)  We ate dinner at a small little place that had decent food.  After we got home it was time to fire up the Wii for some Wii Sports action.

The last time Randall was over we had some intense Wii Sports battles.  At that time I proved dominant in tennis and baseball, Randall took the bowling and golf crown.  Well I was hoping this time around I would pull a clean sweep, taking all 4 events.  Well instead things followed almost the exact same script.  I took tennis and baseball and Randall took the other two.  Wendy was a hell of a bowler as well, she rolled a 220 game in the process.  So I guess the lesson learned is I am better at sports where you hit a moving object and Randall prefers to hit stationary objects. 🙂

Randall brought his road bike with so we could do a ride sometime during the weekend.  We decided to get one in Monday morning before it got too hot.  Randall has a much higher end bike than I do.  He also aero bars to rest his forearms on as well as the cleat style pedals that locks you into the bike, allowing you to use your hamstrings on the up stroke instead of it being an all quad exercise.  We did the Publix ride,a 18.5 mile round trip.  Last week the ride took me 1:14.  Well having Randall in front as the pacer made a big difference in my speed.  Even on the ride back when we went into the wind I was going much faster than the week prior.

For most of the ride I was able to keep up with Randall however on the ride back I had to relent and drop a gear which made me fall back quite a way.  Randall eventually noticed I had faded and slowed down.  Even with my fading, overall we covered the distance much faster than my solo effort a week ago, a full 10 minutes faster. 

As we were getting home the girls were in the van getting ready to pull out which we didn’t expect.  They said they were going to go to the track to get a quick run in.  Cool, I am never one to gripe about exercise, go knock yourself out.  Randall and I jumped into the pool to cool off from the ride.  Sadie was thrilled to have two people in the pool at once to play the splash game.  Within a few minutes she was soaked from head to toe and loving it.  The girls came back and joined us pool side.

Ali initially was refusing to jump into the 80 degree pool water, claiming it was too cold.  Eventually she relented and jumped in for a couple minutes.  She admitted it wasn’t horribly cold but not warm enough for her to spend extended time in the water.  Wendy dove in as well for awhile.

I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do the rest of the day.  I didn’t know if Randall wanted to venture back out to the movies or not.  Well as we ate our Memorial Day burgers from the grill he said he would be down with going to see Star Trek, cool.  This time the girls stayed at home while we ventured back out solo.

This time we got there even later.  We learned our lesson from the day before and instead of dropping $5 for a bottle of water we smuggled water in.  Even though we arrived later we still had no problems getting good seats for Star Trek.  I was VERY tired and sleepy before the flick started from the late night of Wii Sports followed by the bike ride and pool time earlier in the day.

Much like Terminator, the new Star Trek prequel looked fantastic in the previews.  I have never been a hard core Trekkie but I always enjoyed both the original and Next Generation tv series as well as most of the movies.  The movie was once again good, not great but good.  The prequel format made for some interesting twists along the way as you are introduced to an array of actors playing  younger versions of the established characters.  I had heard Leonard Nimoy made a cameo.  Hell it was much more than a cameo, he was in many scenes and was sort of a crucial part of the plot.  Did I miss something along the way, since when did Spock ever have a romantic relationship with O’hura?  That was kind of weird.  The plot involved time travel where the future conflicts with the present which can lead to a lot of confusion trying to keep it all straight.  That is once again the case with this film.  The ending was a jumbled mess of improbable, borderline ridiculous events that all work out happily ever after.  Still, it was a good movie overall.  I would say I liked Terminator more though.  I’ll give this one an A-.

After the movie we headed over to the Trek bike store just to look around.  It was interesting to look at the $3000 – $4000 bikes, $400 bike shoes and various other very expensive, hard core cyclist gear.  There were a couple lower cost items there I have my eye on, a softer, more supportive seat as well as a rear rack.  A rear rack is generally frowned upon by road cycling purists.  You normally would see it on a mountain or hybrid style bike.  Oh well, I guess I will just be nontraditional.

I wasn’t sure how late Randall wanted to stay since he had the drive back across the state yet.  It turned out they stayed till almost 9pm.  I grabbed Hungry Howie’s pizza for dinner and we watched some of the Jon & Kate plus 8 marathon.  Wow that is a weird situation. 

Shortly before they left Ali was our guinea pig for the EA Active game she bought for me.  She went through an “low intensity” workout.  The game is pretty impressive.  Wii Fit’s biggest plus and minus is it’s simplicity.  It’s pretty basic which makes it easy for exercise novices to follow.  It also can get pretty repetitive after awhile.  There is absolutely no variety in music or scenery in the game.  My Fitness Coach which we bought a few months back had a lot more variety but it had no interactivity with the Wii controllers or Wii Fit board.  It basically was like a glorified exercise DVD, it had no confirmation that you actually were doing what was on screen.  Neither of us have used that game for a long time.

Well EA Active bridges that gap.  Not only does it use an innovative set up that utilizes the Wii controllers to monitor your movements, it also supports the Wii Fit board.  I was impressed by the 20 minute work out Ali went through. There is lots of variety in the music, scenery, activities and exercises.  I’m looking forward to giving it a go myself this week.  It seems to be very cool.

So like I said, Randall and Wendy pulled out around 9.  I thanked them both for coming and specifically Randall for being my movie date.  We had a great time.  I wound up once again staying up way late last night, 11:30 or so thanks to watching the John & Kate season premiere where they address all of the tabloid shit going on.  It seems pretty clear to me they are on the outs.  Kate seems to have a very controlling, entitled and annoying personality. John seems just plain worn out from dealing with her, 8 kids and being a reality tv family for the past 3 years.  The show holds added interest for us since J & K live in our old stomping grounds of Wernersville. 

I’m tired today.

I’m officially cool.

Earlier this week I got a surprise email from Randall asking if I wanted him to come over to watch some of the movies that Ali turns her nose up at.  At first I thought he was just kidding and was only playing along with my blog post.  However it turns out he had nothing  going on this weekend and was serious.  Cool!  So he is coming over on Sunday with his girlfriend and staying over till Memorial Day.  He also might bring his road bike along so we can do a ride.  Sound great to me, bike riding, Wii, a few beers and larger than life action on the big screen.  Maybe Randall can be my mistress. 🙂

We got another surprise last night when my mom called.  She is going to be out visiting my sister during the same time period that we will be out west.  That wasn’t a surprise, that sort of just worked out that way.  However the surprise is that my brother and niece just booked a last minute flight out there as well!  I had no idea this was happening.  So there were a bunch of dates thrown at us that we need to incorporate into our travel plans.  I’m sure it will be rather hectic getting it all worked out but a little hectic is a good thing once in awhile.

Ali got a welcomed call yesterday.  She had been doing some extra contracting work at another nursing home over the past few weeks.  The extra money was nice but she wasn’t enjoying not having as much free time as she has grown accustomed to over the past year or so.   So hopefully her schedule will normalize a bit more after cutting that extra work out of the week.  Personally it will be nice to have Ali at home a bit more.  For those weeks I came home to an empty house pretty much every single night of the week.

I have been working on a long term project in WoW for a few weeks.  I have been collecting raw materials and cash needed to build myself a rare in game mount, a motorcycle.  The hoops you have to jump through to get this mount are numerous.  In order to make the bike you have to be a level 450 engineer.  Just to attain 450 engineering is a large and very expensive undertaking. 

After reaching that you need to have enough reputation with the Alliance Vanguard in order to obtain the plans to make the bike.  Attaining the reputation means running endless quests and dungeons to raise you your level of reverence with that group.

  After that hurdle is cleared the money grind starts.  In addition to having to gather materials that require a lot of time and effort, you also have to come up with 12,000 gold to buy the parts needed to complete the construction of your chopper.  12,000 gold is a lot of scratch in WoW.  I have been doing basically nothing but generating gold for the last 3 weeks or so.

Well I am finally in the home stretch of this long term (in virtual time) goal.  Today I should finally have enough gold to complete the project.  Once I build my motorcycle I have plans to ride it all over the WoW continents for all to see.  There are very few motorcycles to be found on the realm due to the labor and money involved.   Count me among the few with sufficient determination and tunnel vision to get there. Yay.

Cris won, Adam didn’t who cares?

Alison’s brother Mike is in Fort Myers for a few days on a business trip.  He was able to swing down our way last night for a quick visit.  The last time I saw Mike was when we visited their place after the Rumble last summer.  Mike hasn’t been down at our place in a long time, close to 5 years I think. 

Obviously Mike never got to meet Sadie before.  Sadie was very excited to interact with him but Mike isn’t really an animal person so we did our best to keep her out of his face. We decided to order out from a nearby italian restaurant instead of going out.  As we ate we caught up on things.  Mike’s job takes him literally all over the world, he travels all the time.  In some ways it sounds exciting in some ways it sounds not so great, especially when you have two little girls at home. 

We gave Mike the brief tour of the house and property, pointing out the changes that have taken place since he was last there.  The grand finale was flipping on the 73 inch monster to show off all of it’s HDTV goodness.  Mike couldn’t stay very late since he had to be on site this morning at 6:00 am.  It was cool to see him.  Hopefully the whole gang can come back down for a visit soon.

 We’ve done more restaurant/junk eating in the past couple weeks than normal.  Without fail it alway makes me feel shitty afterwards.  Luckily I have a 300 scheduled today to inicinerate a bunch of calories. Bread, cheese, and pasta the 3 deadly sins.

We have a lot of birds that call our property home.  We have seen egrets, hawks, wood storks, woodpeckers, meadowlarks, bobwhites, doves and many more varieties hanging out at our place.  We also have kilderes and nighthawks.  These birds are interesting because they nest on the ground.  For the past few years we have stumbled across their eggs in our backyard. 

Well there were three kildere eggs in the back yard the last month or so that hatched.  We saw two little kilderes scurrying around but not a a third.  Well over the past weekend Sadie was barking at the garden.  I came over and took a look.  There huddled under the leaf of a squash plant was the third baby kildere, just hanging out.  I called Sadie away and told her to leave the little bird alone.  By the time I came back out to take a picture of it the bird had moved to somewhere else.

The parent birds don’t like having the dogs anywhere in the vicinity of their babies.  Whenever one of the dogs is in the area the parent birds will land close by and act injured so the dogs come over to them.  They keep up the act to lead the dogs away, it’s pretty amazing.

Fast forward to last night.  I let the dogs out to do their business.  At night often I will let them out and come inside until they are done running around the yard.  Well I was on my computer when I heard Ali screaming at Sadie outside.  It sounded bad as I heard Ali “Oh my God, oh my God!”  I ran out from the office to see what was going on.  I got outside just in time to see the baby kildere scurry away.  Ali was in the middle of giving Sadie holy hell.  Evidently Sadie had the baby bird in her mouth, luckily Sadie apparently didn’t try to use it as a chew toy.  The bird seemed to be ok from the brief view I had of it.

We both continued scolding Sadie as she slinked inside.  I’m sure from the dog’s standpoint she didn’t know what she did wrong.  When something runs she always chases it and we don’t care.  She just happened to be able to catch the bird this time.  Well Ali and I  were relieved that Sadie didn’t kill the bird.  Now any night time dog bathroom breaks are going to require close supervision until the baby birds have made it to flying age.