3 hours, Pasta rambo with a side of vomit, Harry, Eagles free agent frenzy, Crack of dawn Craigslist transaction
On Friday night before bed I let the dogs out and was greeted by the customary shrieking of the neighbor’s chihuahuas. It was loud, long and persistent. I thought it would be a good time for me to grab the Iphone and record the barking if I need it for future reference. I recorded about a minute of the horrible noise. If you would like to hear why I find it so annoying you can hear it yourself here. Because of the location of the fenced area the dogs are in, their bark echoes and amplifies as it bounces between the two houses.
I was surprised when I came inside and saw Ali was on her phone. She said she was texting the neighbor about the noise as Ali could hear it clear as day inside the house. I had already gone the text message route with the neighbor multiple times in the past where I was promised all sorts of remediation, none of which has happened.
Well there was a long text message exchange where Ali was again given multiple excuses as well as a different core reason for the dogs being forced to live outside the majority of their existence. Evidently the new husband doesn’t like the dogs being inside. Before Ali read me the text messages after I took a shower she cautioned me that maybe she shouldn’t since she knew it would aggravate me. I assured her I wanted to hear it. I wish I didn’t.
I wound up lying in bed stewing for at least an hour before I could fall asleep if not longer. I was so frustrated that the woman that Ali and I went out of our way to make feel welcome and help when she moved in next door has repaid our efforts with 6 months of apathy towards our complaint.
I confirmed with Ali that her text message exchange qualified as her effort to keep the peace and that I had the green light to let the neighbor know that a nuisance barking complaint with county animal services was next on the agenda. Luckily for the neighbor, for the most part of the weekend she kept the dogs out of my sight at least while I was outdoors. I am pretty sure it will only be a temporary effort on her part as all of efforts thus far have proven to be.
The neighbor doesn’t quite understand that the barking is only the symptom of the true problem, keeping the dogs outside. Specifically dogs that absolutely should not be kept there primarily. Why she thinks that banishing them outside is better than letting them get adopted to a home that is better suited for them is beyond me. Chihuahuas are HIGH maintenance.
So on Saturday Ali was scheduled to do another hideously long training run of 17 miles. Ali and I agreed that we needed to get started earlier this time so we decided 6am would be the time. Christy said she would meet up with us and run the first 10K loop.
We were surprised when we arrived at the waterpark and found it’s gates closed. I’ve never seen those gates closed. I thought they were always open or at least open very early because of the gym on the property. Ali texted Christy and told her. We decided to meet up at the Target parking lot instead which is further up on the loop.
Instead of running the 10K loop I decided to stay on the bike for water support reasons. Running while carrying a water bottle for 6 miles is just a pain in the ass. Plus I figured I would get my running in on Sunday during our normal brick day.
Starting early helped avoid at least an hour or so of hot sun and humidity. Ali and Christy did a nice job on the first loop. When we got back to the car Christy headed out, I headed to the Burger King to take a leak and Ali headed back out on the road for me to catch up to.
The second loop was going to be a very long 11 miles. I had mounted a second water bottle holder to my bike plus I had a third bottle lying on my aero bars. I knew Ali would need all of it.
The run was not fun, for either of us. I was uncomfortable on the bike last week just spending 9 miles in water support duty. This time I was doubling that. Although Ali certainly wins in the misery department since she ran that distance, I was not enjoying myself in the least. I was constantly adjusting my position to relieve pain in multiple pressure points in my ass, feet and hands. I also had that nagging burning between the shoulder blades for most of the ride.
At one point during the ride I was trying to relieve some of that shoulder pain by grabbing the stem of my handlebars with my left hand. This hand switch inadvertently threw my balance left which promptly banged me into the guardrail. I was thrilled when one of the body parts that hit the guardrail was the same shin that I smashed on the parallel bars a few days prior.
Ali was really feeling it the last few miles. She was stopping for water frequently. Finally we finished up close to 3 hours after we started. We were both very glad to be done.
When we got back Ali took a quick ice bath and showered before taking a prolonged nap. Of course I had stuff to do.
After weeding and tending to the garden I pulled the Cub Cadet back up to the garage. Although during the week I replaced a pulley and got the tractor mowing again I knew the job was not totally done. You see I had ordered BOTH pulleys involved in the PTO system but only replaced one of them because the other looked like a pain in the ass to do.
Well after I did the initial repair and watched the deck in action I saw that there was a ton of vibration in that pulley area which would surely cause another failure sooner rather than later. Since I had decided the Cadet was going to be sold I didn’t want to sell it with something I knew I could fix with some more effort.
As expected, replacing the second pulley was indeed much more of a pain in the ass, especially since the bolt sleeve was somewhat seized, requiring some vigorous beating with the mini-sledge to free up. However after maybe an hour of labor I had the new pulley in place. The replacement took care of the nasty vibration I was seeing. I felt better knowing I would be selling the tractor with no known warts. We have spent over 300 hours on this tractor in the last 7 years, I was hoping it would continue to serve it’s new owner for a considerable period of time as well.
I then took to trimming the hibiscus bush that is on the left side of the garage. It had expanded in size to the point where it covered part of the entrance. When the Camaro shows up this will not be acceptable so I proactively trimmed it back hard with the loppers.
Ali was still asleep so I decided to keep my chore activities outside. The back section of the property needed to be mowed and I had a new tractor to tackle it with. The Craftsman mower did a fine job of mowing down the back area, even the very thick and high areas. With the Cub these areas would require me driving very slowly as well as hitting the spots multiple times in some situations. With the new tractor I could blow through the areas much faster and in only a few situations have to dust a few spots a second time where the grass was really high.
There was one negative to the job. The tractor rode like a sherman tank over the very bumpy areas of the yard. I got bounced around like mad. I am pretty sure this issue can be resolved by letting some air out of the tires which are inflated to full pressure right now.
By the time I finished up Ali had woke up and I was able to turn my attention to getting some of the indoor things done although I did not get done as much as I normally would inside on a Saturday. We had to hurry up since we had plans for the evening to go to dinner and then catch the final Harry Potter movie.
For the movie I used my Fandango discount I bought at Groupon a few weeks back. If I recall I paid 5 bucks for the code. The code saved me a total of $24 off the admission which is a very sweet deal.
For dinner we stopped at the Carraba’s in Bonita since it was on the way. We arrived around 5 and were happy to see there were a lot of empty tables at this early hour. After the meal I was suffering from my semi-normal post meal runny nose thing so I excused myself to the restroom to blow my nose.
As I was standing at the sink the door flies open and I see bodies fly by me. At the same time I feel something wet hit the back of my ankle as I see a young boy and I assume his father scurry into the stall followed by the unmistakable sound of projectile vomiting.
Instantly I realize I have been puked on. I then look to my right and witness more horror with splatters of puke on the other sink along with large amounts on the floor and the door. Wow. The smell of vomit started to hit me so I quickly wiped down my ankle with a wet paper towel and exited the bathroom, long stepping over the various piles that lead up to the men’s room. Man something hit the kid in a majorly bad way.
As I left I went right to the hostess and gave her the unpleasant news that there was a vomit fiesta awaiting someone in the bathroom area. Later we saw someone with a mop cleaning the floor all the way back to where the kids table was. He must have snail trailed it all the way to the door, poor kid.
We got to the theater with about 10 minutes to spare. Despite just having a full meal at Carraba’s both Ali and I opted to each get an oversized box of candy which was a mistake. It was pure gluttony, I didn’t need to eat M&M’s and felt like an absolute hog for doing so after easily consuming a 1000+ calorie dinner.
In normal Cocunut Point style, the theater was nearly empty. We opted to watch the 3D version of the film. You may recall in my review of Part 1 of series I was less than thrilled, I found the movie kind of boring and confusing. I was much more entertained during the finale.
The action and conflict was pretty epic although I still found myself getting confused by some of what went down. I suppose this is to be expected since I only read the the first two of the seven book series. Ali had heard that this movie was the best of them all and also was a big tear jerker. Neither of us found either of these to be true.
We estimated we would put the ending in the top 3 of the 8 total films and there was not a single tear jerked from my eye. The ending was somewhat surprising to me. It was well done and I would recommend checking it out in the theater before it leaves the rotation. It gets a solid A. Harry Potter has been a consistent source of cinematic enjoyment for me for the last decade. It’s sort of sad to see it all go away.
I had told Ali late Saturday that I was ok with skipping our normal training brick on Sunday at the water park. I knew she would appreciate being able to sleep in and that I would survive with not doing it for one weekend. Ali took full advantage of my offer, staying in bed till almost 9:30. I “slept in” till 7.
I found myself feeling guilty as I sat in front of my computer playing WoW, thinking how I would normally be out on the bike or running at that time. The negative feeling was compounded by pigging out so much the night before.
We worked on knocking out the remaining indoor chores. I then asked Ali if she could help me shuck the huge collection of black eyed peas I had harvested the last couple weeks. It was a huge job and best split between two people.
As we were dumping the dried beans into containers we noticed a couple little worms that I picked out. Then we noticed that a bunch of the beans had small holes in them, presumably remnants of current or past worm habitation.
Now if it was just me, I wouldn’t sweat it. I would throw the beans in water and cook them, cooking some worms along with the process. Ingesting tiny cooked worms isn’t going to harm anyone. However this idea did not sit well with Ali.
After we shucked all the black eyed peas Ali spread the several thousand of them on a towel. We then spent close to an hour doing extensive black eyed pea quality control. We would roll the beans around, carefully looking for any with worms or a worm hole in them and pulled them out. To say it was tedious would be a huge understatement. Hopefully the hard work will pay off in the form of some tasty meal involving the beans, sans worms.
Early in the afternoon we made a brief road trip in the party van to pick up some new RO filters as well as a pit stop at Pet Supermarket with the girls to take advantage of a 20% off coupon that was expiring. When we returned we spent some time going over our upcoming trip to NYC and Ireland. We don’t want to have anything planned out in a regimented way but we collected a number of possible activities and sights that we would like to see. I think being flexible will be a very good thing during this trip.
Ali spent a good portion of the evening cooking a quiche like dish that had a number of veggies in it including corn from our garden. It produced massive amounts of dishes. Ironically we didn’t actually eat the meal. Instead we worked on our remaining left overs so they would not go to waste. The huge quiche should provide dinners for us all week long more than likely.
I continued to feel out of sorts most of the day because of missing the morning brick along with having to do more housework than normal deep into the weekend. I tried to burn off some of that energy by doing some work on the rings along with handstand practice. Neither activity went particularly well.
Sunday evening I got around to posting a Carigslist ad for the tractor. Shortly afterward I got my first “offer” via email, a very spartan “Take$375?” To which I responded back even more concisely with “no” (I posted it at $575)
Then around 9 o’clock last night my cell phone rings and it is about the tractor. Again before any questions about the tractor are asked the financial negotiation begins, the guy on the other end of the phone sounded Haitian. He offer me $450. I said since I just listed the tractor a few hours ago I was not willing to discount it that much. Then he comes back with $480. I told him the least I would accept at this point was $500.
After he agreed on that price THEN a few specifics about the tractor were asked. The weird thing was the guy I was talking to was not the actual buyer. He was translating back and forth for his “uncle”. I thought great, the guy that actually wants to buy it doesn’t speak English.
At first there was some confusion about when the transaction would take place. At first they talked about coming right now but then I found out that Rodney, the actual buyer, who did speak English, works night shift and would not have time to come out to my place and back during his “lunch hour”.
He then asked if he could pick it up early this morning, like before 7. Most people would not be very agreeable to this time of day but it was fine with me. I told him I typically left around 7 so the earlier the better. We settled on him arriving sometime between 6:30 and 6:45am.
Ali had overheard my exchange with the potential buyer and was not pleased. She is not comfortable with strangers coming over to our house and she was even less pleased that I informed the guy that I leave for work at 7. In her normal overly cautious way, she was concerned this guy was a criminal and I was exposing the household to danger.
I explained to Ali that a tractor was not something that I could meet someone in a parking lot with to exchange. We also have had several other individuals come over to our house for CL transactions and Ali did not make as much of a fuss. Although I didn’t agree with Ali’s level of concern I followed the request she left for me via a note on the counter when it came to the transaction. She wanted me to have the tractor out front in the driveway with the garage closed and to not let the person inside.
So Rodney gave me a call this morning even earlier than I expected around 6:15. I was in the middle of packing lunches. He said he was at Randall Blvd and needed a clarification in directions which I gave to him. I had to start a quick scramble where I threw on shorts and drove the Cub Cadet from the shed to the driveway. Luckily I had more time than I expected when Rodney gave me a second call as he thought he had missed the turn.
Rodney was not what I expected him to be. The combination of being identified as someone’s uncle and the sound of his voice made me think he was an older guy. Instead he looked like he was in his early 30’s at most. I could instantly tell he was a good guy and Ali had nothing to fear from this encounter.
He told me literally was going to be using the tractor this morning for his side landscaping he does in addition to working 3rd shift at a local Wal-mart. I gave him a brief rundown of the controls before I started it up. His inspection of the tractor was surprisingly brief, he basically was taking my word for it’s condition. I included the original manuals so he has them for reference.
To get the tractor into the bed of his full size Ford pickup truck I had him back up in the grass in front of the house mound and used my loading ramps. We got the front two wheels on the bed of the truck via me driving the tractor. To get it all the way in I had to hop off and push the tractor with Rodney as the deck was getting hung up a bit.
I saw nothing else in the bed of the truck. I asked Rodney how he was going to get the tractor off? He said he might have to go buy a ramp set for himself. Ugh, hope he has help. Rodney handed me a wad of money which I quickly counted out before he hopped in his truck and was on his way. I thanked him and wished him a safe trip back.
It’s funny how what I thought a transaction was going to turn out to be a pain in the ass instead turned out to be quite pleasant. I hope my trusty Cub Cadet serves Rodney well. It made me feel even better about the effort I made to replace that second pulley. It is never a bad thing to make $500 before 7am.
Man the Eagles have been going nuts in player transactions. On top of the defensive back they traded for Kolb they also signed THE biggest name free agent out there Nnamdai Osumugha (quite the mouthful), an All-Pro d-back from the Raiders.
The didn’t stop there, signing Vince Young as Vick’s back up and also a couple high quality lineman. I mean just take a look at their recent transaction list. The player moves certainly have done a good job of spiking my excitement level for the upcoming season, despite the tiresome labor quagmire that preceded it. On paper the Birds should be lighting it up. Of course staying healthy is always the biggest obstacle each and every season. Hopefully the Eagles can navigate the season without any star players getting sidelined in a major way.