Archives October 2011

So instead visual entertainment

Ali went running Saturday morning with Michelle.  I started working on the chores early, once again wanting to finish up so I could play amateur mechanic in the afternoon.  When Ali came home she went out on the mower while I did all of indoor to do’s.

After lunch I headed out to get the supplies I needed for the car work.  I first stopped at the Super Wal-mart to dump old oil and pick up supplies to change the oil in the party van.  I then headed to Auto Zone where I bought rear brake pads for the Camry, some tail lights for the van, and a few other odds and ends.

Replacing the rear brake pads on the Camry went smoothly.  Like the front pads, there was still a lot of life in the old rear pads although they were considerably dirtier than what I pulled from the front.  I finished up the work in around an hour.

I then headed to the van.  I had a driver last week tell me that 3 of my 4 brake lights were out, I had no idea.  When I pulled the old lights a couple of them looked like they literally flamed out with visual evidence of high heat.  I called Ali out to be my brake pedal pusher to help me verify the new lights work.

Time was running tight.  I had bought tickets to see Real Steel in Imax on Fandango for our belated anniversary plans.  We agreed we would go to the Carraba’s up there before hand.  Since the movie was at 7 I hoped to get to dinner around 5:15 or so.  Even though we didn’t leave the house until around 4:45 we got there pretty much on time.

We had a good dinner.  I slammed down 4 Bud Lights in short order and was feeling it a bit.  I was acting kind of silly as we drove over to the theater. We actually had a bit of time to kill before the movie so we walked around in the Petco next door.

I had seen that Real Steel had favorable reviews on Fandango with an average rating of 7.5 out of 10.  Watching robots fight should be a fun time.  I even sprung to see it in Imax which wound up costing just shy of $40 when you add in Fandango fees. Well it was not money well spent.

The only cool thing about the movie was seeing the robot fights.  Anything that involved human beings was pretty damn stupid.  The dialogue and plot seemed like it was written to appeal to  3rd graders, it was really bad.  Hugh Jackman who stars in the film plays a character that is basically an asshole for 85% of the movie, he doesn’t come off as likeable at all really.  The Rocky IV type ending was over the top, even for a hardcore Rocky fan as myself.

My eyes were sore from rolling them around in my head so many times.  The flick would be fine as a streaming Netflix title but to pay $40 to see it was a monumental fail.  I’ll give it a B- to be nice.

During Ali’s run on Saturday she fell and banged herself up.  She had a swollen knee among other injuries.  As a result I wound up doing my Sunday morning bike ride solo, it turns out that was a good thing.

On the ride to DD I again averaged over 20 mph, making my best time by a few seconds.  Although I definitely didn’t have a head wind, it didn’t feel like I had a big push from behind either.  Well the ride back was pure hell.

I had a head wind and tons of it.  At certain points there were gusts that felt capabale of almost stopping me in my tracks.  I dropped gears and was going hard to maintain 14mph, it was ridiculous.  A couple miles into the return ride after a particularly strong gust of wind I stopped my bike and while I was panting for air I started cursing at the wind, loudly.  What is the point of the swearing at an act of nature you may ask?  Well of course there is no point.  In fact if anything it seemed like I pissed the wind off.  The rest of the ride I just grabbed onto my drops, pedaled hard and kept my mouth shut.  My legs were jello when I got to our driveway.

After a dip in the somewhat chilly pool (77 degrees) I headed out in the driveway to change the oil in the van before the Eagles game.  While I was under there I admired the new brake line and calipers that were installed a few weeks ago to the tune of almost $600.  I wondered if I could have performed that work as well and knocked half off the bill.

Hey the Eagles won a game, how awesome.  In the first half of the game they played well on both sides of the ball, building a 20-0 lead.  The defense it particular played much better, stopping the run and actually tackling.  I even saw a few hard hits, something that has been MIA around here pretty much since Brian Dawkins headed to Denver.  The secondary also made plays, pulling down 4 interceptions.

Unfortunately the Birds have yet to put together a complete game.  The offense went 0 for the second half scoring no points.  The defense also started to break down.  If the Eagles didn’t make that 3rd and short play I saw nightmares of the Skins driving down the field to tie the game up.  Thankfully it didn’t happen.

Sure there are still warts on the team but at least this was a win, a division win no less.  Luckily for the Eagles the division looks pretty mundane this year.  Even at 2-4 the Eagles are in the thick of things.

Despite riding a hard 20 miles in the morning and changing the oil in the van I was feeling sort of down after the game.  Maybe it was the overcast conditions that hung around uncharacteristically all day long. Well anyway I thought I could help my state of mind by heading outside and trying to best my consecutive muscle up total.

It had actually started to rain lightly shortly before I went outside but I didn’t care.  I figured the gloves I was wearing would help me hold the bar.  I managed to get out four consecutive reps and narrowly missed a 5th rep.  I was happy for the improvement but I wasn’t real happy with the form.  Just like Friday at the gym, for some reason my body was defaulting to doing a one over method where the one arm leads in front of the other. After my four in a row I did 6 single reps where I tried to focus on doing cleaner reps and was able to do so.

So I started watching another AMC show that I heard was good over the weekend, The Walking Dead.  Yes it is a show about zombies.  I was skeptical if I would actually enjoy the show after the novelty of zombies wears off.  Well the answer is, yes.  The storyline and characters in the show are very good, I have already gotten through 3 episodes of the tragically short 6 episode first season run.

I had heard from Jeremy that it was a good show but it wasn’t until I heard it was streamable via Netflix that I decided to jump in.  When it comes to watching tv series streaming is really THE only way to go.  The only negative is Ali has no desire to watch / listen to the exploits of the living dead so I have to watch the show with my headphones on.  It’s a small price to pay.

If you have Netflix, add this to your queue.

Well that was tough.  I completed all of the reps for the bar-barian requirements.  I came nowhere close to meeting the time limit of 6 minutes.  My last muscle up was completed somewhere between the 22 and 23 minute mark.

My observations from the effort:

The muscle ups consumed well over half of the time.  To get 10 total muscle ups required me to make 15-16 attempts.  Every successful rep was a one hand over technique, not the ugly type where my forearm goes down.  Both hands stayed planted on the “bar”  The MU’s definitely would have gone smoother on my home bar.

My dip sets were split into 30 and then 15

The pull ups went 13-9-3 (the 3 after like a 10 second break) I may have been able to hang on the bar to get all 12 on the 2nd set but I didn’t want to totally gas myself.

The push ups were tough.  They went 30-15-10  I expected my triceps to be the painful part from all of the dips but it was my pecs that burned out first which I thought was odd.

The last 5 muscle ups were very difficult as you can imagine but I eventually knocked them out.  I never have done 10 muscle ups of any variation in one session, a little feather in the cap.

It was a good starting point and ruler for me to judge my progress by.  I will probably alternate between this and my 300’s on Fridays.

Last night after work was quite busy.  I did my normal post work mini-workout including some more muscle ups outside on the bar.  I tried the Bar-baric muscle up variation during the session and failed pretty badly.  I found with my arms crossed my body wanted to twist drastically on the way up which made it impossible for me to get on top.  That will move will take some more experimentation.

After heading inside and preparing dinner for our hungry girls I started to prepare my dinner, with a twist.

My dinner preparation always involves the microwave, either heating up a frozen dinner or reheating warm ups that Ali prepared earlier.  Well last night the microwave was not used, wow.

I made myself tilipia and macaroni and cheese.  Now of course I don’t think that putting a couple pre-seasoned frozen fish filets in the oven for 20 minutes and making mac n cheese out of the box is any great culinary feat.  But for me, it was a start.  The fish definitely turned out way better in the oven than it does if it is nuked.  The mac n cheese was a bit runny because of me adding milk via feel instead of via a measuring cup but it still tasted fine.  Ali was quite surprised when she came home to see pots and pans out.

While the oven was preheating and the fish was baking I continued my productivity.  I threw a load of laundry in and then cleaned both of the bathrooms, knocking off one item from the list of things that we should do this weekend.  Ali appreciated the effort.

Knock on wood, so far my knee hasn’t felt too bad since my 1.5 miles on the treadmill on Wednesday.  I am hoping to build on it with maybe another 2 miles either this weekend or early next week.

At the gym today I plan to give my knees a break and swap out my 300 2.0 program.  Instead my plan is to try to do the Bar-barian requirements.  The Bar-barian requirements are as follows, 5 muscle ups, 45 dips, 25 pull ups, 55 push ups, 5 more muscle ups all completed within 6 minutes.

My attempt is throwing out the time stipulation as well as throwing out that all of the sets are required to be continuous.  I simply can’t do that yet.  In fact my muscle ups will be 1 at a time with me resetting on the ground between each attempt. Even doing it that way I am not sure if I can get a total of 10.

I will be tracking my total time to do all of the reps and use that as my yardstick for improvement.  I also will be making sure my range of motion is good.  In a lot of attempts I see of the requirements ROM is often not great as people concentrate more on speed than form.

Other than my muscle ups, I hope to break the other movements into nothing more than two sets.  I hope I can pull it off.

This weekend Ali and I are doing our belated anniversary celebration.  We will be going out to dinner Saturday night and then going to see Real Steel in Imax.  Hugh Jackman is on Ali’s “list” so it was an easy sell.

QR codes have been around for several years.  They are basically new and improved bar codes.  Most smart phones have the ability to take a picture of a QR code and then translate it into a website address, an email, phone number or a number of other things.

Yesterday I made my blog QR compliant.  You will now notice to the right of every post is a QR code.  If you shoot it with your smart phone you will load up that post of the blog on your device.  Does it have any real practical use in this application?  Um probably not, but it’s still geeky cool.

Yesterday at the gym I did my first ever squanning session. Squanning is a word I made up when you combine squats with running.  After doing 4 sets of squats I hopped on the treadmill and ran a mile and a half at a mundane 9:13 pace.  It was the first extended running I have done in weeks due to my prolonged right knee pain.

In early December I have the 12 mile long Tough Mudder race.  I HAVE to start getting my cardio level up.  I figure a good way to test the knee out would be a short run on the treadmill which is generally less destructive on the joints than sidewalk/road running.  My knee felt ok during the run but the true test is in the next couple days to see if the chronic deep ache and soreness returns.  Crossing my fingers it doesn’t.  I’d hate to miss the race, I paid a big fee to enter it.

Last night I made my first attempt at this month’s Bar-barian normal mode challenge, max chin up reps.  I elected to do it indoors on the iron gym.  Doing the reps on a doorway is a bit annoying because of the way I have to keep my legs retracted to keep my feet from hitting the ground. However I still prefer doing these type of max rep challenges on the IG because the foam grips really help me hold on to the bar better which becomes quite challenging deeper into the set.

I managed to squeeze out 20 reps, the first time hitting 20 with chin ups (hit 22 with pull ups).  I generally dislike chin ups, with my gorilla length arms I just find them more uncomfortable than pull ups. Regardless I was happy to hit another personal best.

For the first time I may actually be able to participate in the Bar-baric mode of this month’s challenge which are cross grip muscle ups.  It’s a tough move but I might be able to get one of them.

I think I have mentioned before how Hulu has this annoying WEB ONLY restriction on some of their content. It’s stupid, basically even though I am paying for Hulu Plus, which allows me to watch content on stuff like Ipads, Iphones and Xbox 360’s, there is a good chunk of stuff that you can ONLY watch if you are sitting in front of your pc and accessing Hulu via a web browser. It’s f’ing annoying.

Well I wanted to watch Fringe via Hulu last night and was displeased to see the WEB ONLY flag on it.  Well I remembered I had a way around this, playon.tv to the rescue.  Since Playon accesses content in a similar manner as sitting in front of your PC I was able to stream Fringe through my 360 through playon which is running on my home Windows 2008 server. Problem solved.

I had been laying off muscle ups for a few days.  Late last week I did a few rough reps at the gym “cold” which was stupid.  The muscle up puts a lot of stresses on various parts of your body, attempting one without being properly warmed up is not smart.

I have this weird fear that I am going to wake up one day and no longer be able to do a muscle up so I don’t want to go very long without mentally reenforcing my ability to do so.  So last night I finished up my post work mini-workout outside on the bar.

I did a total of 6 muscle ups in multiple sets.  I wanted to see how many I could get consecutively.  That number was two.  Both times I got stuck with my chest right at the sticking point up on the bar but couldn’t quite snag a third rep.

It’s odd but the first rep where my feet start on the ground are actually easier than the reps coming down off the bar.  The reps off the bar should benefit from the downward momentum getting bounced back into upward momentum.  In my case I think the variable angle at the bottom of those reps makes it more difficult.

Whatever the case I was happy I didn’t forget how to do them.  My short term goal is to get 5 in a row.

Last night I once again spent the majority of my evening doing race related work, this time for a cross country event I am timing in a couple weeks.  There is no online registration for this event.  Instead I have to massage numbers I get via spreadsheet into a format I can pull into the timing system.  It is a pretty big pain in the ass since there are upwards of 25 teams.  I have about half of the rosters entered and we are already pushing 500 kids.

So I watched episode 3 of Terra Nova last night.   I’m sorry but it officially sucks.  I may force myself to sit through one more episode but maybe not.  After watching something as well done as Breaking Bad, I just have no patience for shows with such bad writing and main characters I don’t give two shits about.

I wanted to post this the other day but forgot.  This should just reenforce one of the multiple facets of living in America that is f’d up beyond belief.

“In 2007, CEOs in the S&P 500, averaged $10.5 million annually, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. This was a drop in ratio from 2000, when they averaged 525 times the average pay.”

So I left work early yesterday to go pick up Ali at the airport.  I also picked up Beverly who ran the marathon with Ali & Michelle as well as shacking up in the hotel room.  Her apartment was on the way home so I was happy to provide shuttle service.

Ali filled me in on some more details of the trip during the commute home.  When we got home she was of course greeted very enthusiastically by two very happy dogs.

Like I mentioned yesterday, it was our 13th wedding anniversary.  Now of course we weren’t going to go out and do anything major last night considering Ali just got back.  Ali had mentioned about grabbing a pizza on the way home for a little informal celebration.

On Ali’s desk I had a little congratulatory poster I made for her marathon accomplishment along with an anniversary card.   I told Ali to just unpack while I took out the trash, made the dogs dinner and threw the pizza in the oven.

Before we sat down for our belated Friday pizza and tivo session we opened each others cards.  There were no gifts exchanged this year, going out to dinner will be enough.

So after taking in last week’s Biggest Loser we were in the office doing some things on our computers.  I mentioned something to Ali about the Amazon Visa card I applied for to save $40 off a purchase and how it might wind up being  more advantageous in the big picture if we pump all of our purchases through it.  Ali didn’t offer much thought on the subject.

A couple minutes later I asked if Ali if we could start depositing the funds I get from timing races into the budget column that used to be for Camry payments that now has been transformed into a Camaro savings column.

Well Ali exhales loudly, expressing her frustration that I insist on talking. She follows up by basically telling me that she was FOCUSING on her email and can’t do two things at once.  In other words, shut the f up, reading my email is more important.

Well this came out of left field and of course I was immediately angered by such a response, my feelings of resentment being amplified by the day of the year it was.  I angrily asked Ali what is so difficult about FOCUSING her attention on me while I am talking and then returning her focus to email when I was finished?

Of course there is no viable excuse for her reaction but Ali is not the type to readily admit wrong doing, especially right away. A very fast, “I don’t know why I said that,  I’m sorry” would have diffused the situation.  Instead we spent the rest of anniversary evening not communicating, what a nice way to celebrate lucky number 13.

I spent all remaining hours of Monday night into early Tuesday morning pile driving through the remaining episodes of season 3 of Breaking Bad.  The plot was building to such a climax that I HAD to keep going.  The last two episodes of season 3 are just amazing,  crazy, crazy good.  Unfortunately, much like what happened with Lost and Dexter, now I am held hostage until the next season is released on DVD.  I already have heard from multiple people that this years season finale of the series is fantastic.

So this morning Howard was actually on air for one of his hellishly long 3 day work weeks.  The subject came up about Scott the Engineer, one of the staff that has been a perennial whipping boy, wanting to take some of his own personal time off to participate in a PBA bowling event for the second year in a row after Howard declined to make it a show sponsored thing.  Scott is an avid bowler who happens to be pretty damn good.  Him getting to do this would be like the Phillies asking me to suit up for a series.

Well Howard proceeds to make a huge issue about this because it would require Scott missing time when the show is actually on the air.  Howard’s acting like the show is still so important to him comes across as total fakery.

If it is important why is he perfectly happy to be off the air more than he is on at this point with 3 day work weeks and more vacation days yearly than most people get in a decade combined.  To chastise Scott for wanting to miss 3 days was totally hypocritical.

Howard then had the balls to actually complain about the time he DOES actually spend on the air, saying he would rather be doing something else, he would like more time off.  I loved that Scott called him out on it saying “You actually think you need MORE time off?” , something no other staff member has ever voiced on the air, expressing the thoughts of millions of an increasingly annoyed and disenchanted fan base.

Robin, who has become insanely annoying since they moved to Sirius chimed in how she makes sacrifices for the show.  For example, she has not been able to attend the Australian Open because if falls on a “show” week.  I laughed out loud before I turned off the radio in disgust.

Robin flies all over the world constantly, spending her Howard coat tail money almost as fast as she gets it.  For her to say her “sacrifice” is not going to Australia is a sign of just how disconnected from reality she has become.  She could leave the show tomorrow and I wouldn’t give a shit.

Friday night after work I hit the grocery store on the way home, the non-Catholic town Publix.  By the time I got home, put the groceries away and fed the girls it was getting too dark to go out and get the weeding done.  It was just as well I didn’t really feel like doing it anyway. I didn’t feel like playing WoW either so instead I watched my latest Netflix dvd, Black Swan.

When I told Ali I rented the movie she was surprised since the film is a story about ballet.  Well yea it is, but it is a DARK film about ballet.  It took a little while for me to see why my buddy Don recommended the film to me but about halfway in things started kicking into gear.  If you are looking for a feel good, puts a spring in your step movie, you are looking in the wrong place.  It gets a solid B+ from me.

The movie finished up just as the Phillies game 5 was getting started.  Since the game was on TBS and I don’t have cable I had to make other arrangements.  My first attempt was using playon.tv through my 360.  I knew that there was a TBS channel on there.  Unfortunately the only thing on it were old Conan episodes.

Ok well then I figured good old atdhenet.tv would have the game for sure since they seem to broadcast almost every major live sporting event.  I was amazed the game was not there, shit.  What I wound up with was having a laptop connected to the bedroom tv with the ESPN radio stream playing and the mlb.tv play by play tracker displayed.  No it wasn’t ideal but whatever.

I was bummed that by the time I got everything up and running the Phils were already down 1-0 in the first inning.  Oh well it’s early.  Well as I laid in bed reading a magazine while I was listening/half watching I started to get extremely tired.  I just could not stay awake.  I fell asleep in maybe the 5th inning with the score still the same.

Well when I woke up Saturday morning the laptop was still turned on with the game tracker displayed.  When I saw that the score never changed my heart sunk.  Wow, what a disappointment.  This was arguably the best Phillies team ever on paper and at least during the regular season, on the field, amassing the most wins in franchise history.  To go out in the first round of the playoffs is a major under achievement to say the least.

I didn’t waste much time Saturday before I dug into the housework.  Doing everything in the house myself demands even more time than normal so I responded by picking up the pace.  I was scurrying about both inside and outside the house doing various chores in rapid fire order.  I wanted to have my afternoon mostly free so I could work on the Camry.

I decided that I wanted to shoot a video of the Camry brake pad procedure.  Leading up to the replacement I had watched a couple other videos that outlined replacing the pads/discs on the Camry but none of them dealt with the hybrid model.  From what I could tell in my research, the procedure shouldn’t be dramatically different but I wasn’t quite sure.

Early in the process the skies opened up, getting me slightly damp as I worked.  Once again, much as it was with the Tacoma, I didn’t see any visual problem with the old pads.  They were nowhere close to the wear markers yet.  Well I had everything apart so I was going to put the new pads in regardless.  This however made me think that the rear disc pads might be the source of the noise I was hearing.

I was a bit disappointed in the replacement pads I bought over the internet.  All that was in the box were just the pads.  From what I understand, most Camry brake pads will include the replacement metal clips that are used to hold the pads in the bracket.  These pads did not so I had to reuse the old clips instead, not a huge deal but annoying based on what I paid for the pads.

There is a funny moment in the video where I point out that you should make sure to take notice of how the clips are installed before you pull them off.  What is funny is I didn’t take my own advice and as a result spent 10 minutes trying to jam the pads back in place because I had one set of clips reversed.  What a dummy.

Other than that little snafu the rest of the procedure went fine.  Like I said, I think I will be repeating it on the rear brakes in the near future.  If you would like to see the one and only Camry Hybrid brake pad replacement video (as far as I know), you can see it here, or scroll down. 🙂

After I was done with the brakes I loaded up the girls in the van for a quick ride back to Publix.  I wanted to grab myself a frozen pizza for dinner and some car wax for the Camry.

Now typically I am a good old fashioned Turtle Wax guy, you know the stuff in a round green tub that you apply with the included circular sponge applicator.  You rub the stuff on, wait till it hazes over and then you rub it off.

They had Turtle Wax there but they also had an Armor All product called Butter Wax.  On the packaging it touted how this product was much easier to apply since you don’t have to wait for it to dry, basically wipe it and then wipe it off.  It was also more expensive than Turtle Wax, hmmm maybe it is actually better.  I grabbed it off the shelf.

So when I got home I gave the Camry a good bath first.  After drying it off I used some Scratch-X on a couple paint scratches that needed to be attended to for a long time.  Then it was time for the butter wax.

Well from the first squirt I was not impressed.  First the product looks like slimy snot.  I dripped some on the roof and started rubbing it in.  With normal wax, it has some degree of polishing capability, meaning if there are surface blemishes in the paint you can get them out with some elbow grease.  Well butter wax didn’t appear to have any polishing functionality at all.  You could rub until your elbow dislocates, it isn’t going to get the remnants of that bird shit off your clear coat.

I was immediately regretting my decision to abandon Turtle Wax but I didn’t feel like going back to the store to buy it. Instead I angrily applied the slimy butter wax on the Camry. The car looked ok when I was done but I am sure any protective properties it offers will be very short lived. After I was done I threw the almost full bottle right in the trash.

So I woke up Sunday morning and immediately had thoughts of Ali being in the starting corral for the Chicago Marathon.  She had called me Saturday night and was obviously very anxiety ridden.  I had signed up for text messaging updates of her race so I would know how it was going.

When I first got up it was raining lightly.  I thought the rain might cancel the DD bike ride I had in mind. The rain stopped so I decided to give it a go even though the roads were still quite wet.

I pulled down another good time for the first 10 miles of the ride, cracking the 20 mph pace average for the second time is as many weeks.  It was tougher than last week because of the wet roads and higher humidity.

The ride back was in a word brutal.  I had a constant head wind that was miserable.  I didn’t get out of the 17’s and there were various times where keeping my pace over 15 mph was exhausting.  Despite my rapidly depleting energy reserves, about halfway back I came up with the idea of turning the ride into a tribute for Ali and Michelle’s marathon, I would ride 26.2 miles.

When I got close to our house I turned around and headed west again to get the extra distance.  The last 8 or 9 miles the discomfort in my legs was eclipsed by the discomfort in my rear end, I was getting up off the seat on a regular basis.

I stopped my watch at exactly 26.2 miles.  Man I was glad to get off the damn bike.  After the ride I jumped in the pool and was surprised at how cold it was.  Evidently the night of rain dropped the water temp quite a few degrees.

So I started getting updates on the marathon.  I signed up to track both Ali and Michelle.  I saw at the 10k split Michelle was about a minute in front of Ali which surprised me.  I thought they would be running together to help push each other.

Ali finished up the race just under the 5 hour mark at 4:59:07.  I knew she was hoping for a better time but I found out later her time was retarded by a couple “events” that probably chewed up close to 15 minutes of clock time. Michelle clocked in at 4:37 and change, a great time for her.

Ali called me shortly after she finished.  I told her I was proud of her for accomplishing her goal.  She sounded relieved it was all over.  I talked to her again later when she was out of the noisy finish area and heard more details of the day.  I am sure I will hear much more when I pick her up from the airport later today.

Before the Eagles game I took the girls on one of their favorite rides, to Pet Supermarket.  Trying to handle two dogs on leashes while attempting to load up a couple cases of dog food and pay for them is a bit of a challenge.  Normally both dogs are pulling me somewhere trying to inhale the endless smells the store offers.

So this was the second MUST WIN game in a row for the Eagles.  Since they lost last week’s must win game I guess this was a REALLY must win game.  Well, they lost.

This team is just so frustrating to watch.  You can see the talent is there despite their inability to function as a team most of the time.  The offense drove the ball up and down the field all day but again sputtered in the red zone settling for a field goal one time and turning the ball over on a couple other occasions.  You hardly ever see the Eagles punt, they drive the field and then fail.

The one place you really don’t see the talent is on defense.  The defense was again woeful, allowing the Bills to jump out to a huge lead, having no answer for the short passing and running that was getting crammed down their throat.  Ironically in the second half the D actually made some stops by abandoning the swiss cheese wide 9 alignment.

Mike Vick had big numbers on the ground and in the air but he also had 4 interceptions, two of which were the result of tipped balls or receivers getting the ball ripped out of their hands like bitches (yes you Avant)  Even with Vick’s big stats the turnovers are a killer.  He also potentially took 3 points of the board by not using his head on the last play of the first half.

The Eagles had 8 seconds left and no time outs.  They were between the 20 and 30 yard line of the Bills, easily in field goal range.  They had time for one quick shot to the end zone and nothing else.  Well Vick takes the snap and dances around in the pocket for a long time, waiting for someone to come open.  By the time he finally threw the ball away time had expired.  It was a total brain dead play and very reflective of exactly what is wrong with the team.  They just play dumb.

Of course there was nothing dumber than the play at the end of the game.  After losing a golden opportunity to tie the game up on Jason Avant’s second strip fumble of the game, the Birds still had a shot to get the ball back one more time.  The Bills had the ball midfield, 4th and less than a yard to go.

The Bills lined up like they were actually going to go for it.  Although if they did get the first down, the game was over, there is no coach that would actually go for it because if you fail, the other team only has half a field to go to score.  The intent was to try to pull the defense off sides, one of the oldest tricks in the book.

All the Eagles had to do was just stand there and wait for the Bills to take the delay of game penalty.  Well they failed at that. Juqua Parker came across on the hard count like a f’ing idiot, 5 yard penalty, game over.  If anything it was an appropriate way for the game to end, putting a nice pretty bow on exactly why this team is 1-4, they find ways to lose.

The only thing positive is with each consecutive loss the expectation level for this team full of high paid underachievers keeps going down.  It’s become comedic.

Juan Castillo sucks, plain and simple.  He is too much of a cheerleader and not enough of a tactician.  Put on a skirt and here are your pom poms buddy. Of course my desire for the end of the Fat Man era is well documented.

It turns out Netflix DOES have someone with a brain there.

Today is my 13 year wedding anniversary.  Wow, doing anything for 13 years just sounds crazy although at my present age it seems to be happening on several fronts.  13 isn’t the kind of number that calls for a crazy celebration.  Instead I figure we will go out on a date this weekend to somewhere nice.

So last night was my one and only evening timing gig of the year.  We had a little over 400 people registered for the event.  For the most part things went fine, including using the 10 meter timing mats at the start.  For the second race in a row I successfully captured runners start times.  It was a wide start with a ton of simultaneous feet crossing at the same time, it seemed to work just fine.

I was home in the driveway by around 8pm which wasn’t bad at all considering the race was at 6:15.  Of course I had more to do yet unloading the truck, posting the results, updating the website and organizing and putting away the equipment afterward.

This weekend since Ali will be away I figured it is the perfect time to reopen Duf’s Brake Shop and replace the front brake pads on the Camry.  I watched a 20 minute video demonstrating the procedure on a non-hybrid Camry.  I am hoping the procedure is identical on our hybrid.  I may video the procedure myself so it can be  thrown on YouTube as the first Camry Hybrid brake pad replacement example.

So like I said Ali is gone this weekend, she is flying to Chicago with Michelle where they will be participating in their first ever marathon.  Michelle was at the race last night and I asked her how she was feeling about the upcoming race.  It seemed like she had a somewhat negative outlook on the race, setting low expectations.

Now I have seen Michelle in race situations enough to know that she is too much of a competitor to not go all out.  She did quite well running the 23 miles I bike supported her on, I have no doubt in race conditions with thousands of people cheering her on she will be able to perform well.

The mind is such a powerful tool when it comes to endurance activities like this.  Positive thoughts manifest into positive outcomes.  I have encouraged Ali to shoot high as well.  Of course the primary goal is to finish above all else in your first marathon.

Regardless, I am proud of both of them for even taking on such a challenge, I excited to hear how it all turns out. Run, Ali, run….