Archives 2011

So in prep for our trip we gave both of the dogs a bath.  They both dislike bath’s but I am not quite sure why.  It’s like getting a wet and warm massage.  There are negative aspects of bathing the dogs for different reasons.

Nicki tolerates the bathing process well enough.  After we are done I carry her out to lanai wrapped in a towel to try to dry her off.   However as soon as she goes back inside she instantly starts rolling around on the furniture and the carpet trying to get her “stink” back.  Of course this process gets wet, black dog hair all over everything, something I just love..

Sadie doesn’t do the post wash carpet dance like Nicki.  Instead her trick is to shake while we are washing her head in the tub, blasting us at point blank range with dirty dog water.  It’s just lovely.

I did more prep for the trip after work last night, doing a speed mowing session on the tractor as well as giving the house plants a quick dose of water to get them through the week.

Last night Ali sent me a link to Mick Jagger performing at the Grammy’s the other night.  She said it was visually disturbing.  I have not seen Mick for at least 5 years so I was interested to see what she meant.  Wow, it was freaky.  He almost looked like a marionette, he’s pencil thin with that big head bolted on.  His face was all sorts of weird looking.  He appears to be botoxed to the max.  Even though he was singing his heart out, you didn’t see a thing moving on his face except his mouth.  It was very odd.

Is it just me or is the level of hypocrisy in the Washington at new levels of ridiculousness?

The latest crowd of republicans are on the war path about spending and the deficit.  From the surface, we all want smaller deficits and balanced budgets right?  Forget the fact that the vast majority of the American public is in their own personal deficit nightmare, spending way more than they can afford to, living the American consumerism dream.

I find it laughable that NOW Republicans are concerned with spending after watching this go down during the previous republican presidency without a peep.

I find it equally annoying that the same talking heads that want to cut domestic programs by the bushel and leave their fat cat special interest unscathed are the same ones fighting tooth and nail for the Bush tax breaks for the rich to be continued indefinitely.

If you are TRULY concerned with narrowing the gap why not accelerate that process by trimming fat in the system reasonably AND expanding the tax base from the corporate giants and ultra-rich whom a small tax increase may annoy but will not affect their livelihood in any significant way.

So for Valentine’s day I tried to cover the bases.  I got Ali a card with a gift card to GAP, one her favorite places to shop, I picked up Hungry Howie’s pizza on the way home, her favorite meal and had flowers delivered by Proflowers.  When Ali got the flowers she texted me to thank me.  I told her there were supposed to be 100 flowers.  She told me the flowers were pretty but they weren’t 100 of them.

When I got home it was obvious there were nowhere near 100 flowers, I doubt there was half that.  So of course I was ready to contact the bait and switch masters, Proflowers.com,  instantly.  On their website, they have a nice big blurb about a 100% SATISFACTION GUARANTEE.  However nowhere on their site will you find a link that allows you to do anything if you aren’t satisfied, how convenient.

So I had no choice but to call up their 800 number where I got to sit on hold for at least 20 minutes.  I couldn’t help but think this was standard procedure with Proflowers. If you call in with an order problem, they throw you in a mandatory queue, hoping the impatient will just say “F it, and hang up” Well I wasn’t about to hang up considering my resentment from their deceptive marketing practices.  If I am going to get ridiculously overcharged for shipping on flowers, I expect to at least get the amount of flowers I paid for.

So finally, just as my ear was going numb and madness was setting in from hearing the same pre-recorded message 165 times, a pleasant woman answered the phone.  After giving her my order number she asked what the problem was.  I told her that my 100 bloom arrangement was somewhere around 50 blooms short.

The rep immediately apologized for the problem.  Her first remediation attempt was to send out another full arrangement at no charge.  The only problem was the earliest that would arrive is Thursday, when we will be out of town.  I then asked if they could be sent after we get back, for some reason that wasn’t possible.

Then the woman asked if I just wanted a partial refund.  She said she could take off the $20 in bullshit shipping charges. (I added the bullshit part)  That seemed fine to me.  After all the flowers themselves were quite nice, there just weren’t enough of them.  I hung up satisfied with the resolution.  Of course I also filed it away in my mental cabinet for future use.  I think I may be having more “problems” with my Proflowers orders in the future.

We got word of our expected tax refund yesterday, once again it is a sizable chunk of change.  The primary target for the money will be to finally pay off the Camry to clear the way for a Camaro purchase sometime in 2011.

Speaking of sizable, that is what my number on the scale is becoming.  I don’t quite get it, I have been running longer distance than ever before and still hitting the gym 5 times in a typical week as well as my various body weight routines at home.  The other night before my shower the scale actually clicked in at 190 lbs.

Now with my 6′ 3″ frame you would think 190 isn’t a bad number at all and to be honest I don’t think I have anything resembling a roll around my middle.  Still, that number set off the alarm, time to buckle down.  When I was hardcore into 300’s in the 2007-2008 timeframe my weight got down as low as 175 pounds.  15 pounds is a big jump.

Perhaps the gain is a result of falling into that classic trap, you do major exercise and use that as an excuse to eat more than normal.  You “earned” the gluttony.  Well perhaps that and the dreaded, inevitable metabolic slow down that occurs as you slowly fade away into the dark tunnel of old age.  Whatever the cause, I don’t plan to go down easily.  I will step up my efforts both physically and at the dinner table to stave off the effects of aging as long as possible.

I have a ton to get done before we head out, ugh.

Originally on Saturday morning I was supposed to go run with Ali at the same place I have been doing my 10 mile runs for the past month and a half. The forecast for Saturday morning was on the cold side.  I told Ali I was going to run around the water park area instead, starting around 8 am instead of 6am.  The extra time would allow for more sleep and slightly warmer temperatures.  Ali actually would have went with me if she hadn’t already committed to Michelle to do the 6am run.

I got a call from Ali on my way to the water park, saying it was pretty miserable.  Not only was it cold but they ran through periods of rain.  They wound up only doing 7 miles of the planned 10. It looks like my plan was the better option since by that time at least the precipitation was over with.

During the drive is when I started throwing around some ideas in my head about the run.  The night before Ali and I got into a small argument regarding running.  Ali was expressing dismay because there weren’t any near by half marathons a certain month.  She has set a goal for herself of running one half marathon every month in 2011.

I said to her, you don’t need a race to do a half marathon, just run the distance.  Well of course Ali didn’t like my suggestion, she rarely likes any of my suggestions.

Well that discussion was enough motivation for me to put my money where my mouth is.  I wanted to run the full 13.1 half marathon distance.

Now I knew that running the 2 mile perimeter around the park almost 7 times would be very annoying.  I decided to instead do a big square loop out onto the road, leaving the water park, heading north to Immokalee Road then tunring east until I reached Oakes, then right on Vanderbilt and finally another right onto Livingston and back to the park.

I had no idea how long this big square was distance-wise but it seemed like it would be pretty lengthy.  I then figured once I got back into the park I would do the 2 mile loop until I hit 13.1 miles, a solid plan.

Even though it was after 8 am, the weather still was not great with temps right around 50, damp and overcast.  It was the kind of weather that isn’t great for much but running.  The cool temps and lack of sun really are better for running distance.

So I headed out on the road for my big loop wearing just running shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt.  The air felt quite cold on my exposed skin but I knew I would warm up within a mile or so.  The loop was a nice run, especially the section on Oakes which is along a small walking path in front of homes in a pretty wooded section of the area.  I felt pretty good during most of the loop.  As I hit Livingston on the return leg my legs were starting to really feel heavy.

I had refused to look at the actual distance on my GPS I had run so far during the loop.  I glanced at my pace a few times but never at the distance covered.   Based on my level of tiredness when I reentered the park, I had hoped that I covered somewhere around 8 or 9 miles.  When I stopped at the truck to grab water I finally looked at the GPS, 6.84 miles…. ARGH.  Realizing that I still had roughly a 10k to cover inside the park was pretty disheartening, I really thought I had run further than I did so far. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to quit so after a quick stretch I began my first 2 mile trip around the park.

Each loop around was progressively higher on the misery chart.  My legs which started feeling heavy at the beginning of the water park loops felt like solid granite by the end of it.  After each loop I would stop briefly to drink some more water and stretch.  I was annoyed that I hadn’t thought of bringing anything to eat to help restore my rapidly depleting energy reserves.

Finally the last lap arrived, the low 9 minute mile pace I held easily during the big loop was ancient history.  I was now trudging along at 10-10:15 mile pace.  Finally, and I do mean finally, after two + hours of running, my goal was in sight.  I accelerated for maybe the last 50 yards with whatever I had left, which wasn’t much at all.  I stopped my watch at exactly 13.1 miles.

My time was actually pretty decent, it works out to a 9:40 ish pace.  However when you factor in my 3 water/stretching stops it would inflate this time. Still, for an unplanned effort I was pleased with it.

When you run that far odd things float through your head.  I did a lot of thinking about how good it was going to feel to put my long training pants and hooded sweatshirt on after I was done.  I also thought about being able to post the accomplishment online.  The mind games get pretty severe when you get to that level of endurance.

When I got home Ali was just getting ready to leave for a Phi Mu luncheon.  She congratulated me on my unexpected half marathon before she left.  She said I definitely should take a nap since we had the Pet Lover’s Ball that night.

I actually did lay down and try to nap but for most of the 90 minutes I was just laying there with my eyes closed, probably due to the DD coffee I grabbed on the way back home.

So that evening we headed out to the Pet Lover’s Ball.  I think this was the third year we have attended.  Ali pulled out her Vegas dress for the occasion and even curled her hair.  I appreciated the extra effort.

This ball is the Humane Society’s biggest fund raiser of the year and is attended by primarily very rich individuals, hence the $275 per head tickets. Thank goodness we got comped one of them due to our fund raising efforts with the Paws race.

When we walked into the Ritz we ran into one of two adult black lab mixes that we liked from the shelter, Sadie.  Sadie was very friendly and even gave Ali a kiss.  I find it hard to believe that she hasn’t been adopted.  She is now a Cider House dog which means she has been at the shelter for a long time, so long that her adoption fee is now next to nothing.

Ali said that adult, full size, black dogs are the hardest to adopt for some reason.  I don’t understand why.  Well of course Ali once again said we should adopt Sadie AND Twix and once again I had to be the voice of reason.  I don’t think Ali realizes how it could upset the balance of what we have at home right now not to mention doubling the already outrageous expenses we incur from feeding our dogs food that is better than what most humans get.

This year at the ball they actually allowed people to bring their dogs with. (for $50 a head)  Ali had said she wanted to bring our girls and I again had to be the gatekeeper, saying it would be a huge distraction.  Well once Ali saw some of the other people there with their pets she was mad that we didn’t bring ours.  Sure it was cute to see dogs in the Ritz but it didn’t make me question my decision.

Once I turned the corner and saw the silent auction / cocktail hour area I actually felt even better about leaving our dogs home.  The area was much too small for the amount of people jammed into it.  Trying to tow our dogs around in that sea of humanity would have been pretty miserable in my opinion.

There was another nice change in the ball this year.  They had an OPEN bar during the silent auction.  When I got my Bud Light and glass of wine I did a double take when the bartender said it was open, wow.  I guess the thinking is drunk people bid more money, I wonder how it worked out with the bottom line numbers.

Overall I wasn’t all that impressed by the silent auction items this year.  If you recall we won our Aspen trip during the silent auction at last year’s ball.  The crush of people around you didn’t do much to make you want to look at items either, as you were constantly being bumped into due to the lack of space.

Of course one of the highlights of the event are all the trophy wives primped, preened and lifted to the max all strutting around like peacocks.  It is just a great event for people watching.

The dinner this year was a sit down affair instead of buffet style as in years past.  Again they shoved alcohol at you, including free wine with the meal.  Despite my dislike of wine, I threw two glasses of it down my gullet.  The meal was quite good as well.

It seemed like the Humane Society was spending a lot more money on upgraded accommodations and free alcohol in the hope it will translate into bigger auction numbers.

Ali and I actually left rather early, a little after 9pm.  They were only 3 items deep into the live auction at that time.  The reason was I had to still finish up prep for the race I was timing Sunday plus the 4:45am wake up call that awaited me.

I told Ali she didn’t need to drag herself along to this race since it was small.  She had no problems taking me up on my offer of extended time in bed.

This race was a trail run in one of the state parks.  When I got on site it was COLD with temps in the mid 40’s.  This area had zero electricity so I had to handle things a bit differently.

The truck was my primary AC power source via a DC inverter.  I used it to power the laptop.  The laser printer requires far too much power for the inverter so we did things the old fashioned way, transcribing results from the laptop with pen and paper.

I managed to get my truck stuck early on in the process, backing into an area of soft sand.  Luckily one of the other club members had a heavy truck and chain to pull me out.

This was a long race, around 10 miles so I had an extended period of time to sit out in the cold air.  I took some breaks in the warm cab of the Tacoma a few times since it was running the entire race for power.  I was quite glad when the last runner crossed around the two and half hour mark.

The rest of my Sunday was very laborious.  I was sort of gimping around since my legs were sore from running so much the day before AND some hurting toes.  My crooked toes were bloody after the run, which is normal for me.  However I compounded the problem by accidentally kicking the treadmill Saturday night.  You can see the end result on the left.

This weekend I changed the oil on the van in prep for our trip.  In the process I noticed that the battery in the van appeared to be getting weak.  When I saw the manufacture date on it was 5 years ago I knew I should go replace it.  The cold temps in PA would be very likely to kill it completely.

I cleaned out the interior of the van but did not elect to go through the hassle of hand washing the outside since wintery roads are going to make the party van a crud-mobile in no time.  Instead I drove down to the car wash at Sam’s with the dogs along for the ride.

Sam’s is one of the few locations that I know of that actually has a “soft touch” unit.  A soft touch car wash actually has rubber “brushes” that are used to agitate the dirt off the vehicle.  Almost every car wash nowadays is touchless which should be renamed “Piss poor” because they leave a ton of dirt on the car.

I have always looked upon touchless car washes with disdain and viewed them as synonymous with the changes of society over the years.  25 years ago all car washes had brushes.  Yea sure once in awhile you would have a problem where a rotating brush could damage something on a vehicle.  However more than likely this damage was the result of the customer not reading/heeding the warnings on the car wash about certain precautions that should be taken.

Well like in so many things today, they neutered car washes for everyone to protect us from the few morons. This is born out of a few litigious opportunists that ruin things for the many.  So now everywhere you go, you are greeted with safe, sterile, touchless car washes, that suck.  I could give you example after example of this phenomenon.  It is so aggravating when life gets tailored for the dumbest, easiest offended, or squeakiest wheel, common denominator in society.

Ironically I was waiting in the long lines for both gas and the coveted soft touch car wash at Sam’s, I felt a bit disgusted with myself.  I was disappointed that I regularly frequent this business that represents so much of what is wrong with America.  Sam’s / Wal-mart are whores to China, pushing their shit upon us in volumes like no other.

In addition to filling their stores with low cost, low quality items from across the Pacific they have managed to obliterate a huge portion of small American business in the process, eliminating their competition wherever they spring up.  In return they offer shitty jobs with poor wages and benefits.

So despite my being fully aware of what this company represents, I frequent them on a regular basis.  Hell I got the van battery at Wal-mart.  I hate feeling like a hypocrite.

This weekend Ali had vowed to take care of the majority of the housework on HER schedule.  Unfortunately the way it worked out we were still doing housework late into the day Sunday which puts a pretty blah ending on a weekend.  I much prefer blowing all that shit out early and coasting through the end of my beloved two days off.

Ali put a lot of effort into a new vegetarian dish she never made before.  Unfortunately it didn’t turn out quite the way she wanted.  It was edible but I didn’t go back for seconds.  I don’t think we will actually consume the huge amount of it that is left over.

On the plus side she made some banana bread that was quite tasty.

This short week will be busy with pre-trip work.

The past couple days I had some pain in the lower left portion of my back.  By last evening the pain seemed to have migrated upward to just below my left shoulder blade.  It’s rather odd.  I woke up this morning in bed with that area hurting pretty damn bad.

Right now I have it under control with some Advil.  My immediate diagnosis would be I simply pulled something yesterday at the gym since I was doing a bunch of pull ups, including some different, more strenuous variations.  Hopefully it subsides quickly.

So next week is our scheduled trip to visit my dad in western PA.  One of the things that we were looking forward to is getting to see the dogs play in the snow.  Well we checked out the initial forecast for next week and this sounds weird,  but, it’s too warm.  The forecast temps all week look to be in the low 40’s, absolutely frigid by Florida standards but too toasty for snow to stick around.  I guess we’ll see how things look closer to our departure time.  Regardless of the temps it will be fun.

This weekend I have van maintenance to perform for the trip.  We also are going to the Pet Lover’s Ball again Saturday night.  This is the same event where we got the Aspen package last year.  Don’t look for a repeat performance this year.  It’s bad timing having a ball on Saturday night since I have to get up before the roosters Sunday morning to time another race.

Depending on how this pain in my back thing goes, I may or may not be doing a long training run again this weekend.  I would really like to up the distance to 11 miles so 13.1 doesn’t feel so hard when it comes.

Last night when I got home I headed immediately outside to work on setting up the two new raised beds in the garden.  I knew daylight was still at a premium.

Putting the beds together is a snap and requires no tools.  The recycled plastic material will basically last forever, another big plus.

Before doing anything I had to pop out the plants that were in the construction zone which included cauliflower, a bean and fiji plant.

Next I tried to more or less level the area where the beds were going using a rake and shovel.

After putting together each frame which is 3.5 feet wide by 7 feet long, I filled each with 360 quarts of top notch Miracle Gro garden soil, the same stuff that has worked so well in our other bed.

After some tamping and raking I was ready to put the popped out plants into their new, much improved accommodations.  By the time I was finishing up it was pretty much pitch dark outside.

I am looking forward to using the new beds to grow all sorts of stuff.  Not only should they help increase our yield, they will also cut down on the amount of weeding required in the garden which is always welcome.  Once the stuff on the right side of the garden has run it’s course I am looking forward to adding some more beds.

It looks like our trip up north to see my dad is going to have a brief detour.  We are going to stop by Ali’s brother’s place for a bit on Friday.  The girls are off school that day so it should work out pretty well.  The plan is to drive like a maniac on Thursday to maximize our available time on Friday.

This weekend I have to quickly give the van a once over to make sure it is ready to go for the trip.  The oil needs to be changed, anti-freeze topped off, bedding cleaned and a number of other small items to make sure the party van is ready for a journey into the frozen north.

Yesterday I had an odd injury at the gym, I felt like I bruised my chest.  The weird thing is I did it while working out my biceps.  You see Monday is my normal chest/back day at the gym.  This past Monday I worked my chest pretty hard and as a result had some residual muscle soreness.

Well part of my bicep routine yesterday was curls on the preacher bench.  During my last set I was curling 70 pounds.  The physics of the exercise puts pressure on the chest as it presses against the pad.  Well this pressure on top of the area already being sore resulted in me walking around the rest of the day feeling like somebody whacked me with a bat across the chest.

Last night after work I stopped at Home Depot to grab garden soil to fill the two additional raised beds I got for our garden.  It was a whopping 12 bags of dirt, each one holding 2 cubic feet of soil.  These suckers were heavy and did not feel good to lug around with a lower back that was sore.  The ass end of my Tacoma dropped down a good 8-12 inches once the bags were all loaded up. I have ambitions of putting the raised beds together after work tonight.

When Jeremy visited a couple weeks ago he brought with a cd that contained pictures he took of our pets the year before.  There are a bunch of really good ones but this is my favorite of all.

Yesterday I got my blog talking to Twitter once again.  It had been broken since Twitter moved to a more complex security scheme.  So now each post will be linked to Twitter.

Since I also just turned on FB/Twitter communication people may see the blog entries listed twice in FB, oh well.  Oddly the gateway between the services only appears to be working one way, the Twitter to Facebook direction.  I have not seen a FB status update hit my Twitter feed yet.

Over the past year or so I have had a bunch of people I know run into job issues where they wound up collecting unemployment.  What I find interesting is the hypocrisy involved in a few of these situations.  Some of these people were very hard right leaning individuals that looked down upon people that relied on the government to support them. However, when THEY found themselves without a job it suddenly became no problem to be given a handout, in some cases, for a very long time.

My point is, this is the case with so many things, unless you find yourself in the situation yourself, it is difficult to have compassion for those that are already there.  Health care is the perfect example.  You have good health care?  You are lucky enough to not be diagnosed with something like cancer?  Good for you.  Now let’s take away that health care and give you some cancer.  Let’s see how you reevaluate your position on the topic at that time.  Everyone is a hypocrite.

My blog to Twitter integration broke a few months back when Twitter hardened their authentication scheme.  This is a test to see if it is working again.

So it looks like the trip to western PA is a go. I got the time off from work, confirmed the dates with my dad and secured a bird sitter.  My dad and step mom are excited for us to come visit. Ali mentioned it would be cool if we could stop by at her brother’s place briefly to see our nieces.  I am trying to figure out scenarios to make that work since it is about 4 hours away from where my dad lives.

Last night I saw an amazing thing when I got home last night, the Camry was in the garage.  The fact that the car was in the garage wasn’t the amazing thing, what it represented was, Ali was actually home before me.  I can’t tell you the last time this happened.

Not only was she home, she was already working on the dog’s dinner and had harvested salad from the garden. It was great.  Originally when Ali started contracting this was the intended plan.  I had ideas of  how nice that would be for both Ali to work less hours for the same money and still be able to enjoy at least a partial housewife life style where she only was working two or three days a week.

For a short period of time after the transition things were pretty close to what we laid out.  However after not so long stuff morphed for various reasons.  For the last couple years I have been lucky to see Ali home before me one day a month.  I protested about it several times only to see things revert back in a short time period. I am hoping last night will become more routine instead of an annual event, it sure was nice.

Yesterday Ali took the dog’s in for their annual physical.  Sadie has turned into the little porker, tipping the scales at 59 pounds, a full 5 pounds heavier than Nicki.  To put this into perspective, when we adopted Sadie she was a scrawny 38 pounds.  Evidently she has found life in the Duffey household quite to her liking.

Last night I used a Zappos gift card to snag another pair of retro Adidas training pants.  I really like the other two pair I own.  After my gift card and a $4 credit I already on my account I wound up paying a whopping 90 cents for the pants, sweet!

Florida’s new governor has really been making headlines recently.  The other day he revealed his proposed changes to gut the Florida Retirement System, the state worker pension plan.  Yes this is one of my benefits as well.

Why he is targeting the pension plan in the first place is questionable.  The Florida pension system is one of the healthiest programs in the country, currently ranked at number 3 nationwide.  Ironically, it’s health may be why he see’s it as a fat juicy apple to pluck since there are literally billions of dollars in it.

Now on top of this he revealed plans for his budget in front of a pay per seat tea party gathering instead of announcing the budget in the state capital.  This is the same cowardly strategy he used when revealing his pension plans which was done in front of a local business that were strong backers of Scott’s campaign.  Tricky Rick likes to announce stuff only in front of the people that want to hear it.

Rick’s budget highlights include cutting taxes left and right, especially for businesses, and laying off around 7,000 state workers.  Local governments that are already spiraling from property values that have plummeted are besides themselves if faced with even slimmer revenue.

Scott is doing just what he did during the campaign, throw out highlight line items that sound good to the lightly informed.  PAY LESS TAXES, SCREW THE STATE GOVERNMENT WORKERS, it is the classic “me first” attitude that focuses on the short term and ignores the repercussions.

These same morons that cheer lower taxes will also be the first to complain when the various services provided by local governments are no longer available or are at a level less than the community has come to accept as the norm.  There is no free lunch.

The good news is Scott can not single handedly dismantle the state.  He would require the backing of the majority of legislature to do that.  Those legislators have already been besieged by people outraged by many of these proposals and have thus far demonstrated an awareness of the backlash.

Tricky Rick is acting like he was given some sort of enormous mandate this last election.  The reality was that despite the  70 million dollars of his own personal fortune that he spent to win the election, he only did so by less than 1% of the vote.

As aggravating as I find Rick’s ideas, there is one thing I find more aggravating.  It’s any state worker that actually voted for this guy (there are a lot of them) that are now whining because Ricky is now gunning for their retirement.  Scott made his intentions towards state employees well known during the election.  Don’t cry about the bed that you helped make.

So I started my 24 hours of epic exercise at noon on Friday with a version 2.0 300 work out at lunch.  Part two of the trilogy was Saturday morning we started running at a crazy 6am start time on a 10 mile jaunt.

Saturday morning was the most humid conditions I have attempted a 10 mile run in, it definitely had an effect on my performance.  The humid air did a good job of bringing fatigue around a little quicker than I would have liked.

I actually ran a decent portion of the route with Ali before I pulled ahead during the last few miles. Up until this 10 mile run, each subsequent attempt was a little more manageable than the previous.  That streak ended Saturday.  I covered the distance about a minute slower than my PB that I had set 2 weeks prior.

After the run they had a burrito breakfast set up.  I ate one of the burritos, something I regretted later as it felt like cement in my gut.

We drove back home since the pool wasn’t available until 10:30.  Ali was exhausted and immediately went to the bedroom to catch a mini-nap before we had to go right back out the door again. I was quite tired myself and was finding it hard to find the motivation to go swim.  Still, I woke up Ali and we piled back in the car to go swim.

We were swimming at a pool that is a full 50 meters long.  I was looking forward to swimming Olympic style laps.  Unfortunately they had the pool configured for 25 meter lanes to accommodate more people.  In retrospect it was good they did as there were probably 15-20 NATS members there swimming away.

When I swam around Christmas I was surprised how much my swimming endurance had faded in two months. At that time I did 500 meters and felt pretty spent.  I wanted to try to do better this time around.

In the lane next to me was a guy that made me look like I was treading water.  I would start my lap ahead of him and each time he would blow by me and finish 10 meters ahead.  I think he was actually enjoying blowing by me as he did this again and again and again.

I decided to do 1000 meters of swimming, it felt like a good number to go along with 10 miles of running work.  I did the laps at an 8:15 per 400 meter pace, about 15-20 seconds off what I was doing at my best a few months back. I was happy to compete my exercise trifecta.

When we got home Ali was even more exhausted and again retired for additional napping.  I certainly could have used a nap but I had stuff I wanted to get done, as always.

Saturday night we had a group couple dinner planned in downtown Naples.  It was with several women in Ali’s local sorority group along with their spouses. I was seated right next the elder member of the group and her husband.  She had a ton of interesting stories, the two biggest were her daughter was in the tsunami (and survived) and the Volvo new car buying experience.

Evidently when you buy a new Volvo you have the option of being flown over to Sweden on Volvo’s dime where you will take delivery of your new Volvo right at the factory doors.  They will then ship your car to the United States. No, I am not kidding.  I guess this speaks to the profit margin in these vehicles but hey that is pretty damn awesome none the less.

Dinner was nice but I got a bit of sticker shock when our portion of the bill arrived. Despite Ali and I both getting entree’s that were in the mid-$20 range our bill topped out at a pretty crazy $111.  I tried to keep my jaw in place as I quickly surveyed the bill, trying to find out how we managed to get up to such a high figure.  I saw such niceties as $10 salads, double digit glasses of wine, stadium beer pricing and a desert price (that we split) that could pay for meal for four people at McD’s.

I wish I kept the itemized bill because even with all those pricey add ons, $111 seems high.   I am suspect that since we had a party of 8 that they pulled they mandatory gratuity bolt on.  If so I really got screwed since I threw a $25 tip on top.

When I mentioned the extravagant bill to Ali after dinner she immediately dismissed it, saying that we very rarely go out for an expensive dinner so it isn’t a big deal.  Although I agreed with the basic premise there is a line where it crosses over from expensive to ridiculous.  For me, we crossed it.

By the time we got home I was utterly exhausted from my day of exercise, no naps, followed by a high calorie restaurant meal.  I was so tired it literally felt painful to be awake.  I fell asleep in no time at all.

Sunday morning Ali was meeting up with Christie to do some more swimming.  I stayed behind and did the majority of the house prep for our Superbowl party.  We had invited probably close to a dozen people but the invite didn’t go out until last weekend. As a result we wound up only having 3 people RSVP.

Despite the relatively small gathering we made enough food for many more mouths.  As a result our fridge is jammed with left overs today.  I think I will be eating bagel bites and spanikopita all week for dinner.

Despite the small attendance we once again set up the betting board where daring souls can place 50 cent bets on any/all of the 16 available wagers.  I made out surprisingly well, winning far more bets than I lost.

The game itself was entertaining although I really didn’t have a rooting interest despite wearing my number 83 Louis Lipps jersey.  I was really fine if either team won as I like them both to a degree.  The Steelers were my team when I was VERY young since they were so good at the time.  The Packers became more likable after Troy and my trip to Green Bay when we were exposed to  some of the nicest people in the country.

As a fan you can’t ask for much more than to have a team with a chance to win on the final drive.  Unfortunately for the Steelers , big creepy Ben just didn’t have any magic left this time around.

As always the commercials are one of the highlights of the event.  There are so many of them they become a bit of a blur.  I missed some of them, so I need to review a few.  Out of what I did see I had a few highlights/lowlights.

A lot of the the commercials relied on physical humor to get a laugh and it worked pretty much every time.  Someone getting hit in the head or plowed over just always seems funny.

The Kia commercial was pretty funny.  I had no idea what brand of car it was until the end.  My initial guesses were Saab (which makes no sense since they are out of business) and then Ford.  It’s a sweet looking car.  In the car genre I thought Chevy had some nice spots.  Of course I most appreciated the two Camaro ads. The Hyundai “Don’t Settle” spot was pretty damn creative too. The VW one where the kid is Darth Vader made everyone in the room laugh out loud, it was very cute.

There were a lot of movie trailers shown.  Of course I was all about the the action / super hero genre.  Cowboys & Aliens, Thor and Captain America are all on my “want to see in a theater” short list.

Of course the beer company ads were all funny, they almost always are.  Doritos once again had a strong showing too.  There were a bunch more creative/entertaining/good spots but you don’t need me to tell you that.

There were some fails of course.  I thought Coke’s spots were weak, very weak.  Also godaddy really needs to come up with a fresh idea.  What is this, the 5th year in a row where they tease you with T&A that is supposed to tantalize you into going to their website to see a totally lame conclusion to the the tv spot? I mean really, it has run it’s course.  There were other fails as well but with 91 commercials who has time to go in depth about them all.

If you would like to review all the spots yourself go here.

A few more random thoughts about the game….  Christina Agulierra f’d up the national anthem.  Sure there is a lot of pressure singing in a spot like that but wtf, she is a pro, there is no excuse for that in my book.

The half time show was a bit of a mess too.  It was amazing that they didn’t have Fergie’s mic turned on at the beginning and the lights on the V on the LOVE stage were 75% out.  How does that happen?  WTF was the point of bringing Slash and Usher in?  Slash to make the performance more manly and then Usher to appeal more to the urban crowd I guess? Odd.

All together it was an enjoyable evening although it was filled with far too much consumption of junk food.  I had the perfect storm of crap, salt, fat, sugar and alcohol.  No wonder I feel so rotten today.  I will be spending the week trying to beat that junk out of my system.