Wet work
This weekend was another filled with non-stop stuff. The weekend was also extremely wet, unbelievably so for April. April is normally the middle of drought season. It is the heart of brush fire season. Well I don’t think we need to worry about brush fires anytime soon. It rained on both Saturday and Sunday. The picture on the left was taken Sunday afternoon. The past 6 months of weather here in SW FL has been totally turned on it’s side compared to the norm.
Saturday I busted ass while Ali was out doing a swim/run with her friends. I knocked out a bunch of house maintenance including mowing the grass. By the time Ali got back I had moved on to replacing two panels of screen on the lanai that were torn along the spline. In the past we always did screen replacement together. This time I did most of the replacement myself, I seem to have mastered the technique. One thing I learned from past experience was to tighten up the wires that hold the cage down before fully attaching the screen. In the past I neglected to do that and it caused the screen to develop a small roll almost like a fat girl muffin top. Both sections turned out well, probably my best replacement to date.
Just as I finished the second screen it started to rain, hard. I still had all of my tools and materials out. I had other things I wanted to get done yet but I didn’t want to leave all of the stuff outside in the rain. I decided to grab one of our umbrellas and clean up the yard one arm full at a time.
I filled out all of the rebate paperwork for the appliances we bought. I brought it into work today to mail it. However I pulled it out of the mail bin when my co-worker, who also bought a washer / dryer Friday mentioned that you are supposed to have the serial number of the new appliance on the form. Shit. Well since my stuff isn’t delivered yet I have to wait till it is all under roof before submitting the form. All of the 17 million that was allocated to the program was spent by Saturday.
On Saturday night Ali and I went to the movies. I decided to finally use a gift card I had to a new high end movie theater in Naples called Silverspot. Silverspot is unique as it has a small restaurant inside where they serve real meals as well as alcohol. You can even take a lot of the food as well as alcohol into the theater. Ali and I had a nice meal in the restaurant. It was very convenient to have it right there. Ali then took some wine with more conventional movie snacks into the theater.
The theater itself is very comfortable. The seats are big, wide, reclining leather chairs that are very comfortable. There is a ton of leg room and the theater is pitched at a very high angle so unless you have Manute Bol in front of you, you are guaranteed to have an unobstructed seat. Even if every seat in the theater was taken you still would have no problem being absolutely comfortable. The entire facility is very high end with marble everywhere, including the bathrooms. I can’t tell you if I ever looked at marble while taking a leak at a movie theater before.
We went to go see Date Night, a movie that was recommended to me by a co-worker as being one of the funniest movies he ever saw. Ali would agree with that review, she was laughing her ass off the entire film. I think her enjoyment of the movie may have been slightly enhanced by the two glasses of wine. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the movie, I thought it was funny too, just not a side splitting guffaw-fest. I’d probably rate it as a B+.
Both Ali and I were very pleased with our Silverspot movie experience. Now of course all of this luxury comes at a price, $15 a head to be exact.
Sunday morning it was raining lightly on and off. Despite the wet conditions, I wanted to take a bike ride to test out my bike shoes / cleats. Originally I had ideas of doing the 17.25 mile Publix ride. It didn’t take long until that changed. Riding was pretty miserable. Wet roads are not fun to bike on. The water was spraying me from the tires and it started to rain while I was riding, adding to the wetness. I decided to turn around at Wilson Boulevard which made the ride somewhere between 6 and 7 miles.
It seemed like riding with my feet locked into the bike definitely helped with my average speed. Being able to utilize your hamstrings on the upstroke allows more power to be put to the road. That power doesn’t come without a price. Using more of my leg muscles seemed to ramp up my energy expenditure significantly. Despite the ride being 10 miles shorter than my goal I was pretty damn tired by the time I pulled back into the driveway.
After doing some more housework I piled the dogs and tools into the van to go to my mom’s new place. She needed a second wire shelf installed above her washer and dryer. After picking up some materials at Home Depot I headed over there. Almost on queue it started to POUR as I approached mom’s place. By the time I had the dogs and the tools inside I was soaked.
Installing the shelf was pretty straight forward. A level is your best friend when installing a shelf. After about 45 minutes or so I had the shelf up. Mom had also asked me to check out her tv’s. She said she was only getting up to channel 37. Across the parking lot she was getting up to channel 99.
I reran the auto setup routine and still the tv’s only got up to channel 37. That’s odd. I called Comcast for mom. I found out that the owner of the place only has the bare bones cable package hence the limited selection. Mom was missing some of her most favorite channels, including the Weather Channel. We found out what has to be done to get the additional channels but it is going to require the owner to jump through some hoops which mom isn’t thrilled to request.
I waited for a break in the rain to throw the stuff back in the van. By the time I got home the rain was picking up again. It intensified through the remainder of the afternoon.
Sunday evening we finally sat down and did some work planning our trip out west. If it goes as planned it will be quite the undertaking. As it stands now we would be on the road for a total of 18 days! We have a ton of mileage to cover and there are a ton of things to see along the way. We tried to avoid incredibly brutal driving days like the 900 mile day we pulled last year. Now I need to make sure I have enough vacation days to cover it all.
I still am not sleeping well. Every single night since the concert my nights have been filled with the type of sleep that leaves you tired when you wake up. I found myself sleeping later than normal yet waking up feeling several notches below normal. Last night was no exception. Before I got up to take a leak I recall closing my eyes and seeing images of an evil looking black swirly thing. The other night I had a vivid dream where I got into a very loud, vocal argument with members of the running club which resulted in my telling them they could f themselves and I quit.
I’m not quite sure what the root of this shitty sleep is from but I certainly hope it dissipates soon.