Archives February 2012

So yesterday I finally signed up for this Sunday’s Hooter’s Half Marathon. I did so with some trepidation.  As I described previously I have had some issue with my left calf/knee although today was the first morning I woke up without feeling that cramping sensation which is a positive.

I also have not trained as much for the race as I did last year.  Last year I did a number of 10 mile training runs and even the full 13.1 distance once before doing the race.  This year I have run 10 miles a couple times and several 7 milers.  I am going to have to rely on my lighter body weight, higher overall fitness level and some mental toughness to pull me through the event.  I still have a less than two hour goal in my mind, I wish I had someone like Matt or Patrick doing the race so they could help keep me on point.

Last night we heated up the last of the spaghetti we had left over from the weekend.  There was a little left over so I decided to give the dogs their first taste of pasta.  I am not sure how we never gave them spaghetti before.  Anyway Nicki definitely approved, gobbling down a couple forkfuls in no time at all and was looking for more. Sadie was funny when she ate hers.  She sort of sucked it down like a little kid would do.

Today is leap day.  I don’t have anything witty or unique to say about this day that happens only once every four years.  Personally I plan to utilize the extra day to make one more attempt at the February Bar-barian challenge.

I checked in with both my brother Patrick and my dad yesterday  on their respective journeys home.  Pat said he got back to his place around 1Am (had to work the same day).  Dad’s drive north had an unexpected detour when all of the idiot lights on his brand new Subaru started flashing unexplainably. A trip to the dealer revealed the problem to be a defective gas cap which seemed odd to me.

I have heard of gas caps that aren’t on all the way throwing a check engine light but I have never heard of it causing a Christmas Tree of lights on the dash.  After he got a new cap he was on his way.

Dad also spent about an hour on the side of the road arguing on a conference call with reps from the insurance and drug company over some prescription snafu.  Dad evidently introduced obscenities into the stream of discussion which is never a good thing.  With as mad as I have gotten on the phone with various inept businesses I have never started swearing at them, it is outside the lines of reasonable behavior in that situation to me. It also will do very little to make your ultimate goal be realized and in fact may instead have the exact opposite effect.

 

 

So my family cleared out late morning yesterday.  Ali was off yesterday so she got to see them off.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got home last night after work to see that Ali had been busy getting the house cleaned back up.  Nearly a week of 2 additional dogs and 4 additional people can make things a bit chaotic as you can imagine.  I really appreciated that Ali took the initiative to do that,  I wasn’t looking forward to having to do it myself.

It felt sort of weird as I sat on the couch with Nicki and Sadie, the lack of noise/activity felt foreign.  For the past week or so the 4 dogs were a near constant source of entertainment.

Sadie definitely seems a bit mopey since her dog and human friends left.  She just LOVED having so many options to interact/play with.   I think she snuggled up to everyone at one point or another.

So I had committed to just doing the damn half marathon a couple days ago.  However I still have this weird left calf ailment going on.  Once I get up and going it feels ok but when I wake up first thing in the morning it feels like I have a strain right in the middle of it.  It would really suck to do something like tear a calf muscle during the race.

On the plus side, the pain each subsequent morning has been slightly less so I am hoping by race day (Sunday) it will be good to go.  I will probably bite the bullet and sign up today.

This morning I woke up when Ali got up to do her early AM swim practice.  It’s amazing how much you can get done before work if you get up at 4:30 AM.  Hell I even had time to shave my head.

The head shave timing served two purposes.  I have a dermatologist appointment this week. A shaved head makes it easier to examine my cranium since I have had 3 problem spots in my scalp so far.  Secondly a high and tight hair cut works out well for sweaty endurance events like a half marathon.  My hair will look the same at the finish as it does at the start.

Now that we have a number associated with my tax refund I can start pulling the trigger on a few items.  Unlike many years past where the refund went toward home projects or to pay off loans, this year we don’t have any big ticket intentions which is kind of nice.

The list of things I need to buy is pretty mild, including some maintenance items for the Scooba and the pool cleaner.  A replacement IAC for the Tacoma and the 90,000 dealer service for the Camry Hybrid.

The Camry service will be the biggest chunk but I will be doing some investigation/negotiation to get those costs down.  I think they try to steal close to $1000 from the average Joe for that service.  There are a lot of things they do and since we have no plans on getting rid of the car, which has been bullet proof so far, I figure it is smart to get the maintenance done.  I will be getting a list of what exactly is scheduled to be done and analyzing it line by line.  If a lot of it is “fluff” that I can easily do myself I might take the car somewhere else to get the more involved things done and still come out many dollars ahead.

As promised, here is my experience installing my Pioneer AVIC-X930BT radio in my 2005 6 speed Chevy SSR. DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional car audio installer.  In fact this was the first radio I have installed in a vehicle in at least 25 years.  I have some decent technical ability and didn’t feel like forking over $500 extra to an installer to put the radio in.

My SSR had the factory Bose Premium sound system in it.  Although this radio worked fine I wanted the techo-geek features like GPS, Bluetooth support, Iphone integration and a rear back up camera.

I did a lot of reading leading up to the purchase and install of the equipment, especially on SSRFanatics.  Some people advised to rip out the existing Bose amp/speakers since they don’t have the best sound quality.  Not being an audiophile, I thought the existing system sounded just fine so I decided to leave the amp/speakers intact.

So with that being the case, here is the list of items I purchased from SonixElectronix.

1. Pioneer AVIC-X930BT (head unit)
2. Axxess GMOS-04 (wiring harness adapter designed for systems that include the Bose amp)
3. Metra 95-2009 (generic mounting plate/adapter)
4. Metra 40-GM10 (antenna adpater)
5. Pioneer ND-BC20PA (rear back up camera with parking assist)
6. Axxess ASWC (universal steering wheel controls adapter)

I already had the Ipod interface cable for the 930BT which I received as a Xmas present.

Now in addition to this I purchased several other items for the install like a set of nylon prying tools to prevent damaging the trim as well as some connectors for the various wires that will need to be connected between the radio harness and the GMOS-04.

The first order of business was getting the old radio out of the truck.  The first thing I did was pull a few fuses.

The first two I pulled were the radio and amp fuses located in the fuse box behind the passenger seat.  The third fuse was the air bag fuse which is located in the fuse box in the engine compartment.

Next up was to start the front dash disassembly. I removed the center silver trim piece using my nylon tools, it simply snaps out.

Once that was off there are 5 screws that need to be removed, 4 on the right of the steering wheel, one on the left of it.  You don’t need to remove the screws that connect to the lower dash.  It is pretty easy to tell which is which by looking at them.

Now comes the fun part, getting the dash panel popped off from the passenger air bag area.  This quite simply is a large pain in the ass.  At first I tried using my prying tools to help me but I eventually relied on simple hand strength to bend the corners of the air bag cover in such a way that they would pop through the dash opening.  The corners of the cover are pretty flexible but it still takes some serious work to get them through the opening.

I have read some suggestions that once you get the dash cover off you shave down the lip that the air bag cover sits in front of to make future reassembly and disassembly much easier.  Unfortunately I didn’t read that suggestion until after I had it back together.

In the picture to the left you can see the dash with the front panel completely removed.  Once the air bag cover is popped through the dash the rest of the removal is pretty easy.  The only other part that was a bit difficult to get off was the area around the steering wheel.  Dropping the tilt steering all the way down helped here.

All that remains is to remove the three screws that hold the factory radio in, slide the radio out and disconnect the wiring harness and antenna cable from the back of it. You are left with a nice clean hole to slide your new radio into.

So next I gathered up my GMOS-04 wiring harness (already did the parking brake bypass mod) and my factory Pioneer harness and did some reading.  To be quite honest, I felt quite overwhelmed at first, don’t be surprised if you feel the same way.  Relax, it will get better.

I was particularly confused by the GMOS-04 harness, it had a total of 5 wire connectors on it but I could only figure out where three of them went.  At first I thought somehow I ordered the wrong thing.

Slowly I started to figure out what went where.  One of the connectors was indeed unused, the gray one that only has two pins in it.  I have no idea what it’s intended use was.  The other small black connector turns out to be a quick and easy way to tie in the Axxess ASWC steering wheel control module.  I was confused by this because the AWSC comes with it’s own connector harness which I realized I simply didn’t need.

So I started going through the connections between the GMOS-04 and the Pioneer harness one by one, twisting the wires together but not crimping them until I knew everything was working.

For a ground I used a bare metal spot with a screw to the left and below the radio mounting location on the dash.  It was relatively close.

Eventually I got everything that was supposed to be connected, connected, or so I hoped.  I had a huge mess of wire in my hand that looked like shit.  I was not quite sure how I was going to transform it into a more organized mess.

I plugged all the harnesses in, put the fuses back in and nervously turned the key.  I was happy to see the radio light up and hear static from the speakers.  I tuned the radio to a local station and heard music.  Ok well that meant that I had the basic functions working.

I further tested the unit by stretching the GPS antenna and laying it on the ground in front of the truck so I could see if it picked up satellites, it did.  I also sloppily connected the rear camera just to see if that worked as well.  It did although it didn’t seem to have any connection to the truck being put in reverse. Oh well I can figure that out later.

Programming the AWSC was pretty easy once I realized I could use the built in connector on the GMOS-o4 to tie it in.  You basically just keep hitting the up volume button while turning on the car until the light stops flashing on the AWSC.  After that there are a series of flashes and if all goes well a solid red light at the end of the sequence, indicating the unit is now synched to your car and the new radio.

Ok so now I knew that everything more or less worked.  I took the harness back out and worked on securing the connections and cleaning up the wires the best that I could.  I read that some places recommend soldering the wire connections together.  I didn’t go this route, I just twisted the wires together and crimped them together securely with my bell connectors.

Even with a considerable amount of time spent cleaning everything up I wasn’t all that pleased with the end result.  You are shoving a lot more junk into the dash than what was in there originally.  I would be curious to see what a “pro” installation looks like in comparison.

So finally I was ready to put the radio in for “real”.  I mounted the GPS antenna up under the dash on top of a metallic cross brace that the magnetic antenna snapped on to securely.  I had read elsewhere this was a nice out of the way to do it instead of slapping it somewhere on the exterior of the truck.

I also fed up all of the various external connections that would connect to the radio from the floor up through the radio opening.  These included the wires for the back up camera, Bluetooth mic, and the Ipod interface cable.

I connected the GMOS-04 harness to the factory harness, the antenna to the antenna adapter, slid the AWSC onto a piece of metal that looked like a good resting place and tried to slide the 930BT back into the slot.  Oh I forgot to mention that of course I had already attached the generic mounting plate to the new radio so the tabs line up with the factory mounting holes.

Well I felt resistance as I tried to steer the radio in place.  Of course I knew the resistance was from the huge collection of stuff that is behind it.  I jammed my hand uncomfortably into the hole where the right air vent is normally located and got my fingers under the wires behind the radio to lift them up and out of the way so they aren’t pinned behind the radio.  It took a lot of frustrating manipulation but eventually I got the radio fully seated.

Ok so now I needed to make sure the radio still works with it mounted in place.  Guess what? It didn’t.  The thing was dead a s a doornail, I was pissed.  At first I just hoped I simply didn’t push one of the fuses back in but they were all snugly inserted.

Out came the multimeter and I started to troubleshoot where I was losing juice.  It took me a long time to figure out the problem and I was getting increasingly despondent before I did.  On the GMOS-04 the pin for the yellow wire, which is used for accessory power was pushed back a bit for some reason.  I pushed it from behind so it snapped firmly back in place.  Imagine my relief when everything fired up normally, whew.

Ok I thought the hardest part was behind me, putting the dash back together shouldn’t be that bad, right? Wrong.

If I did that little mod I mentioned around the air bag opening I am sure this would have went better.  I determined the air bag going back through the hole was the first step in getting everything else back together.  Doing so again was tough as hell, requiring even more vigorous hand manipulation than required to remove it.  I was quite frustrated but eventually persistence won out and I forced the cover back through the hole in the dash.  I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

In addition to getting the air bag cover back through the hole, you also have the difficult task of getting the dash air vents lined up with the ducts behind them.  It was tough as well.

Then I ran into another issue, the dash didn’t seem to want to snap back together a 100%.  Eventually with some vigorous pounding with the heel of my hand it did appear to snap into place but then I noticed the radio was sitting oddly.  Well of course I couldn’t have this and was dejected knowing that it meant I had to pull the dash cover all the way off again.

Once I did I saw that my pounding had snapped one of the plastic mounting tabs on the mounting kit, shit. I also realized that I must have had the radio mounted more forward than the factory radio, causing the tight fit.  The sides of the 930 BT have a number of mounting holes with different letters next to them but I just used what looked right.

So I had to run off to Best Buy to get another mount kit.  Putting it on meant I had to slide the radio out and then repeat the incredibly annoying process of getting everything shoved back in there.  I was pretty damn miserable at this point.

After some more futzing around I got the radio and dash back on albeit not perfectly.  There is still some slight issues with the fit and finish.  The radio still seems to protrude a fraction of an inch too far, causing the silver trim piece to be shifted down just enough that it causes some drag on the climate controls which will need to be addressed.

To the casual observer/rider they won’t notice the wart but I know it’s there.

I didn’t mount the camera in the license plate area yet, that shouldn’t be too tough to handle.

I didn’t try to be very fancy with my Ipod cable routing.  I have seen some guys modify their ash tray or glove box so it can house their Iphone.  I simply ran the wire along the passenger side of the center console and ended it in the parking brake area so I can just plop my phone there.  Since the radio supports Bluetooth streaming the cable isn’t really needed for a lot of stuff anyway.

I decided to mount the mic for my Bluetooth up to the driver side visor.  I have seen some guys mount the mic on the steering column but I think up on the visor is less obtrusive while being more effective since it is closer to your mouth.

There are some outstanding bug/question/issues I have with the radio which I have yet to address.

They are the following.

The rear backup camera does not flip over to the rear view automatically when the truck is put into reverse. (six speed manual) I triple checked that I had the correct wires connected between the GMOS-04 and the Pioneer wiring harness to support this but it still doesn’t work.

The voice guidance volume level seems too low even with having it configured to max volume.  It also doesn’t seem to cut out the music source when it gives guidance which makes no sense.  I will need to play with it some more I suppose.  The cabin noise in an SSR could make hearing the voice guidance tough I guess.

I think it’s weird that the standard map display does not have an option to display vehicle speed.  That is kind of annoying.

When I first tried the radio on a test drive I noticed my tach was “sticking”, reading about 1500 rpm’s higher than normal.  Luckily that problem seemed to fix itself.  I can only guess it was related to the banging to get the dash back together.

Be careful when banging on the dash.  I inadvertently knocked out some fins on the air vents.  I didn’t find all of them.

Other than those few items I am very pleased overall with the radio.  The GPS works well, the Iphone integration is pretty damn slick and I find the overall radio user interface visually pleasing and easy to use.  In fact it makes me want another one to put in my daily driving 99 Tacoma but that would be too financially painful at the moment.

As I address my remaining issues and complete my camera installation I will report back with more results.  I hope you found this somewhat helpful.  I may look into removing the top dash pad to make guiding the harness and wires back into the mounting location cleaner.

If you would like to see all of the pictures I took during the install you can see them here.

 

 

 

 

So Dad and I left late on Thursday morning to go pick up Patrick and his girlfriend Maureen at the Fort Lauderdale airport.  He was able to save nearly 50% off his fare flying there instead of the Fort Myers airport.  I didn’t mind doing the drive to go get him.

On the drive over Dad and I got to shoot the breeze about a number of topics.  Many of them revolved around the state of the world and just how exquisitely f’d up it all is.  Even though my dad’s financial situation would make most people assume he would be cast in the conservative, me first mold, he actually has a lot of similar thoughts about what is actually going on as I do.

Despite despising freeloading scum that waste countless taxpayer dollars due to nothing more then unabashed laziness, he too does not see throwing out the baby with the bathwater as an intelligent solution or just praying to something/someone that it gets better.

We arrived around 45 minutes early at the airport so instead of sitting in the car at the cell phone lot dad suggested we just go inside and wait.  We went to a Chile’s where dad had a beer while I sucked down a Diet Coke, anticipating I would be doing the driving back across the alley.

Pat and Maureen’s flight arrived on time and we greeted them as they exited the security screening area. They both traveled extremely light. Maureen had a small rolling piece of luggage and Pat only had something that looked like a slightly oversized gym bag.

After getting Maureen’s bag we headed back up to Chile’s to eat lunch since everyone had varying degrees of hunger.  After the meal I followed up with a cup of DD coffee to help me stay alert for the trek back across the state.

On the ride back I asked if anyone was interested in seeing Catholic Town (Ave Maria) since we were literally driving right past it.  I got lukewarm response from Pat and Maureen but dad was interested in seeing this monstrous ghost town in the middle of nowhere.

As we navigated the long 2 mile winding entrance to the town I gave some background on this (to this point) failed attempt to create a town around old school religious values.  At this point the founders of the town expected to have roughly 5100 residences occupied, instead they have 374.

We drove by the monster church in the middle of the town and then parked so dad could grab coffee at the only coffee shop in town.  I was surprised there were actually a decent amount of bodies in the shop, maybe 15 or so.  As dad enjoyed his coffee out outside in the nice sitting area he engaged a young girl that walked by carrying her laptop, he was curious about how many students were actually enrolled at Ave Maria.

The girl, who we found out was a freshman, was happy to engage us and told us they have around 700 students right now but they only had 200 last year.  The 500 student bump in one year, tripling the enrollment, seems a bit odd/unbelievable.

We noticed this girl’s friend was playing an instrument which we found was a dulcimer. The friend came over and told us a little bit about it which was interesting.  Dad found the whole Ave Maria thing intriguing and I think he may stop there to show my step mom on their way back across the state this afternoon.

Thursday evening was laid back.  We caught up on stuff with Pat and Maureen and enjoyed warming up some of the food that was left over from the meal my step mom made the night before.  We enjoyed it out on the lanai.  Ali was away at a meeting.

Later that night I flipped on Netflix looking for a movie we could watch.  Maureen suggested a documentary called Buck.  She had actually seen it before but liked it enough that she didn’t mind seeing it again.  To be honest I was a bit skeptical if I would find the movie interesting since it is about a guy that trains horses.  Buck is the name of the trainer.

Well I found the movie actually to be quite good.  The methods he utilizes to train horses have applications beyond the world of equines.  On top of that he is just an interesting person with a background that you would think would preclude him from being what he is today.  If you like animals I am confident you will like this film, add it to your queue. I’d give it an A.

So we were trying to loosely formulate a game plan for my family’s visit.  Quite often when you have visitors you wind up in that no man’s land where no one is quite sure what they do and don’t want to do. As the host you always feel the need to steer the group out of that quagmire. We came up with several action items, a visit to the beach, going to the swamp with the dogs, going to the Naples Art Festival, and maybe a visit to the water park.

Initially we were thinking about doing the swamp on Friday and the beach on Saturday but after viewing the weather forecast it seemed clear that Friday would be a better beach day.

Friday morning Patrick, who is very fit and a great athlete,  indicated he would be into trying this month’s Bar-barian 5150 challenge.   Pat had a few form issues but still put together a very solid effort, especially considering this isn’t the type of work out he focuses on normally.  He was well spent by the end of the 5 minutes. I did an attempt after him but didn’t best last week’s effort so I didn’t bother to post it.

Ali got up and did her early AM swim and then picked up groceries on the way home.  By the time we got out the door it was around 11AM which I didn’t really give much consideration to.  Even though we are in the midst of snowbird season I thought a a mid-day Friday trip to the beach wouldn’t be too horribly crowded.  Wow, was I wrong.

As we swung into the Lowdermilk Park parking lot we became the caboose on a several person train of vehicles that were mongering for a parking spot, a practice I simply refuse to participate in.  After our first loop I headed back out on Gulfshore heading south and north, hoping to spot a spare space relatively nearby.  Well it seemed any space I had in mind was already being patrolled by other eager parking space seekers.

I was in no mood to keep circling, it drives me insane to have to be a parking spot lemming.  I told the crew I would simply drop them and the beach gear off.  I would then park farther away and walk back.  Well farther away turned out to be a mile and a half away back up at route 41.  Oh well , I would wind up with 3 miles of extra cardio time although I wish I wasn’t doing it in my flip flops, my left knee was aching by the time I got back to the beach.

Before I walked to the beach I had to piss like crazy thanks to the cup of coffee I slammed on the way there.  I was desperately looking for a place to relieve myself.  The bright daylight and vehicles motoring by from all directions made a hedge or bush an unwise option.

Luckily I discovered that the Office Depot in the shopping center had public restrooms.  I was about ready to explode by the time I made it to the urinal.

The beach was packed with people.  It was wall to wall tourists and snowbirds.  By the time I got back the gang had the chairs, towels and umbrellas set up, including the brand new one I bought on the way there.  Both my step mom and I needed to not sit in the sun any more directly than necessary.

We ate lunch at the snack shack in the pavilion at the beach.  I found it odd that this stand is manned by one person considering the amount of people this food window could potentially service.  At first I thought he just happened to be short handed that day.  It turns out this is the way he likes to roll.  I am sure it helps his bottom line but having one guy take orders and do all the cooking on the grill is obviously not all that efficient.  We were lucky the line wasn’t very long when we got to it.

The gulf water was still “chilly” by Florida standards, clicking in at 71 or 72 degrees.  This was no obstacle of course to Patrick, who braved water temps in the 50’s over in Ireland to all of our disbelief.  Maureen had no issue going in either.

I later decided to join them even though I don’t believe I have ever submerged myself in the gulf in February.  The water felt a bit severe for the first minute or so but I quickly adjusted.  All I had to do was remind myself of the Chernobyl Jacuzzi obstacle at the Tough Mudder to convince myself that hitting 72 degree water was chicken shit in comparison.

Something incredible happened, Ali actually went into the water and dove in.  If you know Ali’s background with water temp you would know why this is incredible.  This is the same person that used to tell me our pool at 84 degrees was just too cold.

I would attribute the change to Ali’s experiences with swimming through the winter months where some of the mornings included air temps in the 40’s when she was jumping in the pool.  Ali stayed out there with me for a little while and even did a little test swim in the gulf.

We hung out at the beach for maybe two and a half hours before I made the long walk back to retrieve the van. Dad, who doesn’t “believe” in sunblock, was red as a lobster from lying in the sun just for a couple hours.  He said he wanted to make sure he returned to gray and gloomy western PA with proof he had been vacationing in Florida.

Friday evening we went to Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, a place nobody else had been to before.  I was worried that on a Friday evening it would be just mobbed.  It was indeed quite busy but we were able to find a table to accommodate the six of us easily.

Evidently I wasn’t clear explaining to my dad that Sweet Tomatoes was more than a salad bar, he thought that was all the food they had.  As a result he created a MASSIVE salad, unaware there was a large selection of other food items as well.

Dining at Sweet Tomatoes has some pluses and minuses.  On the plus side, as long as you can find an empty table, them being busy does not really affect you since you are serving yourself.  The food as well is always good, everyone at our table seemed to enjoy what they picked out.

On the downside, it doesn’t have much of a restaurant atmosphere, it is more of a feeding trough feel as you shuffle around the other bodies all with plates in their hands.  Because of the good prices at ST there are also a lot of families that choose to dine there.  Families often equal lots of loud kids.  At times it was borderline impossible to hear what anyone was saying at our table.

I guess the best comparison would be it is a cafeteria-like atmosphere.  It gets the job done and the food is good but don’t expect much beyond that.  By the time we got home we were all pretty damn tired from stuffing ourselves and our day of activities, everyone retreated to bed relatively early.

Pat and his girlfriend indicated they would be interested in going with Ali and I to the 6AM GCR training run Saturday morning.  As I have documented here before, Pat is a great runner, turning in an unbelievable time of 3:08 in last year’s Pittsburgh Marathon. When we arrived I introduced him to a few of the club members.

Ali had plans to run with Christy, who was running late, so Pat, Maureen and I took off together.  We were running at a fast pace for me, 8 minute something miles, it was probably just coasting for Pat.  Before long we were joined by my sometime run pacer, Matt who did the majority of the 7 mile run with us.

I was surprised Maureen kept up with us as she doesn’t do much running during the Pittsburgh winters. Hell when she saw we were approaching the end of the run she said she wanted to finish strong and sped up, requiring me to really stretch things out to stay ahead of her.

It was a good run.  I was sort of using it as a litmus test to see how my left knee felt which was bothering me after the 8.5 mile run from hell the week before.  It felt ok during the run although once again afterward I had some pain.  I think at this point I am just going to throw caution to the wind and run the half marathon, despite my several concerns.  The bottom line is if I don’t do it I will feel like a pussy.

So we had a busy day planned for Saturday.  The overcast sky meant a swamp walk with the dogs would work out better.  We headed over there mid-morning.  Our visit got off to a cool start when we spotted a bunch of deer to the right of the parking lot when we arrived, our first swamp deer sighting ever.

As expected the dogs were all very excited for their adventure. I am sure our group of 6 humans and 4 canines looked funny to the other people we ran into during our hike.  I had Sadie’s leash for the walk out and of course that meant we had to be in the lead the majority of the time, she just hates when other dogs are in front.

We had a decent amount of wildlife sightings during the picnic table and back walk including three or four snakes and about the same amount of gators, a couple of which were only a foot off the path.  Luckily they were smaller sized gators, the longest of which may have been 5 or 6 feet.

I think my family enjoyed the hike but we didn’t go real deep.  Dad was hobbling along on his two aching knees so it didn’t make much sense to go nuts since we had more walking scheduled down at the Naples Art Festival.

Ali and I were really, REALLY tired since we got up at 4:30 for the run.  Heading right back down to Naples did not sound like a good idea.  So after lunch we all agreed that we would lay down for a quick hour long power nap before heading to the festival.

The nap helped clear the cob webs a bit but I was still quite pooped when I hopped behind the wheel to resume my tour bus driver duties.  As was the case repeatedly during the visit, Dunkin Donuts was called into action to supplement my energy level.

We arrived mid-afternoon, a time I thought maybe the crowd for the show would have died down a bit since it only ran until 5PM.  Once again my hopes were dashed as I slowly climbed a nearby parking garage and was rewarded with nothing except idiotic drivers/mongers.  Luckily I didn’t have to park a mile and a half away this time, finding a spot in a nearby school parking lot.

I had been to this art thing once before a few years back when Ali’s ballet group was doing a performance there.  Generally speaking, my interest in such an event is pretty minimal however I knew my dad, Teresa and Ali were into it.   I think Maureen, who has a lot of interest in fashion was pretty into it as well.

There were a few exhibits that caught my eye. Even though I find looking at art generally boring I still appreciate the talent that goes into creating the objects.  The patience, creativity and detail in some of what we saw was very impressive.

My dad has this weird thing where he like to buy cd’s he hears when he is out at these sort of things.  My step mom said often these cd’s just join the collection but are never really listened to.  The funniest addition on Saturday was from some guy that sung exclusively in french.  Why dad would buy it I have no idea.

Ali and I saw one piece that we were seriously considering for our house.  It was a combination of painting/woodwork where the artist uses a router to create the image and then paints it.  The piece was a sea turtle utilizing colors that would match in with our decor.

I told Ali I was fine with getting it and left the decision up to her.  In the end she balked at the purchase, saying she liked it but didn’t like it enough to be on a wall of the house she looks at every single day.  Oh well, if she wasn’t sold then I had no problem walking away.

Dad then got the idea in his head that he wanted to have a beer at the Irish themed restaurant in the downtown area.  Well this wasn’t the place where you just grabbed a beer, you had to sit at a table which none of us were all that into.

We were lead to a table outside and sat down.  The predicted cold front had started to roll in and everyone was cold.  So after sitting there for maybe 60 seconds we all got up and walked off.  Dad still had this idea in his head about just enjoying a beer but didn’t know where he wanted to do it.

I suggested that we stop at South Street, the place we had our GCR Xmas party at.  I knew they had a very large beer selection that should satisfy his desire.  We got there right around 5 and decided it made sense to just have dinner while we were there.  I had a grouper sandwich that was quite good and we all had a decent time there.

I forgot that during the day Saturday Patrick had a big accomplishment, getting his first ever muscle up. He had tried a few times before and just missed, getting stuck at the transition point.  I told him he should try moving his hands closer together on the bar to force his elbows to be more in front of his body.  That small tip did the trick, he got up and over pretty easily, even stringing a couple reps together.  I was proud of him.

Saturday night we watched Moneyball, my latest Netflix mail dvd.  It was a good flick, I enjoyed it quite a bit, despite being drop dead tired, I’d give it an A-.  I am not sure if there has ever been a Brad Pitt movie that I didn’t enjoy.

Sunday I originally had pegged as the day we could go hang at the water park.  I thought it would be a fun way to spend some time.  Imagine going back to PA in February and telling people you were just on water slides a couple days ago.  Well for some reason there wasn’t much interest in going there from my step mom, Pat or Maureen.  Part of the reason was because despite a predicted high in the low 80’s, early in the morning it was still somewhat chilly, overcast with high winds.

I didn’t have a Plan B immediately available so we were stuck in one of those indecision snafus where no one is sure what we wanted to do.  Ali had taken her bike out to go ride so that left me alone to be the rudder.  Eventually we came up with a plan of action, we went to Pet Supermarket so dad could grab some dog food for his girls.  The pet store was nearby a miniature golf course, something Patrick had talked about doing earlier in the visit, ok great.

So after grabbing the dog supplies we pulled up to the miniature golf place which wasn’t super busy.  I hadn’t played mini-golf in a while, I wasn’t sure what the going rate was.  I got a bit of sticker shock when I saw $10.50 a head, obviously their snowbird price gouging rate.  I bet it costs half that or less during the summer.  Oh well, we all swallowed hard and forked over the money.

The course for the most part was too easy with many of the holes being far too simple.  The very nicely done landscaping that was embedded into the course helped to make up for the less than challenging play.  I wound up being the mini-golf champion by 3 or 4 strokes.  Patrick, who is not found of losing, wound up tied for last but took it well.

Ali met up with us at the course just as we were finishing up so she could join us for lunch which we had at the near by Mel’s Diner.  Once again the snowbird scourge reared it’s ugly head when we were told there would be a 15 minute wait for LUNCH, sigh.

Oh well this is the reality if you try to go out in public during this time of year, complaining about it does little.  We at least got to enjoy a good meal, everybody’s food was quite good and the prices were very reasonable.  Everybody was STUFFED.

I wanted to offset the gluttony a bit so shortly after I got home I asked Pat if he wanted to try a another challenge, this time the February 20 by 12 variety.  He was game and Maureen said she would come out as well and do a modified version of the circuit. Of course we were joined bu the dogs.

What ensued was 15-20 minutes of non-stop work out action with all three of us rotating through the exercises taking small time outs to throw the ball for Maggie. It’s pretty funny to watch.

Having Patrick doing the challenge with me definitely helped push me even with my feeling sort of weak going into it.  I did the circuit in a little over 15 minutes, a good 3 minutes plus faster than my first attempt.  Pat did quite well too, finishing about 30 seconds after me.

Patrick and I had more fun playing with the Xbox Kinect, specifically the sports game.  Pat beat me pretty easily in track and field.  The most amazing feat was his throw of 111 meters in the javelin which was clear off the field.

We really had fun playing doubles volleyball, especially when we hooked up with another pair of human beings via Xbox Live.   The guy we were playing had a rating of 11 and I was rated 2.  Well despite the disparity in skill rating we gave them some good matches, in fact I believe we wound up winning more games against them than we lost.

Of course the best part of the games were the few seconds you get to taunt the other team after each point you win.  Pat and I were laughing our asses off at some of the insulting gestures we got our on screen avatars to perform.  Of course the other team returned the favor whenever they scored a point.  It was good fun.

Sunday night Ali prepared a pasta meal that was quite good.  Too bad most of us were still sort of full from the big Mel’s meal earlier.  After dinner Ali, Maureen, Teresa and Patrick watched the Oscars while I edited the footage from our 20by12 work out.  I watched a little of the end of the show but really could care less about it.

This morning Patrick and dad woke up before I had to head out to work.  They were heading out later in the day to take Pat back to the airport before dad and Teresa start their return trip home.  I thanked Pat for being my running, workout and video game partner and encouraged him to come back anytime.  I honestly can’t recall anytime in my life that I did not enjoy Patrick’s company.  He is such a good kid.

I wished dad a safe journey.  It seemed to me that he enjoyed his time in the sun and warmth of Florida which I was happy about.  Ali, who is off today, said they pulled out around 11 to go sight see a little bit around olde Naples before they hit the highway.

I know I am going to have two depressed dogs when I get home.  They had so much fun playing with Maggie and Clara, especially Sadie, who also took turns snuggling with pretty much every one of our guests.  I have a feeling they will be walking over to the guest bedrooms repeatedly over the next few days wondering where their buddies went.

From my perspective I thought the visit went well.  Sometimes playing the role of tour director can get difficult but I think all in all we filled their time here with a good variety of fun activities without spending an arm and a leg to do so.  Hopefully it won’t be another two years until they decide to come back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dad, Teresa and the dogs arrived right around 5 on Tuesday afternoon.  Their arrival was delayed by dad’s drowsiness, he actually stopped at a rest stop and took a nap on a bench.  It was no big deal to me since I had spent the majority of the day working on the SSR radio upgrade which will be receiving it’s own dedicated blog entry at some point.    Let’s just say it has been as challenging as I expected. For now if you would like to see the pictures of the install you can see them here.

The dogs took next to no time to become re-acclimated, they immediately  took off running around the yard, it was very cute.  Clara also wasted no time getting re-acclimated with our pond, jumping into it within the first 10 minutes.

Tuesday evening Ali made nice salads and we reheated some of the rice pilaf and sweet potato patties that she also made a couple days ago.

Yesterday I again spent a considerable amount of time out in the garage with the SSR with my dad offering an assist during certain points of the install.  We broke it up with a trip out in the party van with all four dogs.  We had lunch at Panera and I needed to stop at Best Buy to buy another radio mounting kit after we accidentally snapped a bracket on the old kit via pushing on the dash too hard.

Teresa bought food to make a really nice meal that we enjoyed out on the lanai last night after Ali got home from track practice.

Today dad and I will be driving over to Fort Lauderdale to pick up Patrick and his girlfriend Maureen.  He is flying in from Pittsburgh.  Once they get here we will start doing more sight seeing and tourist stuff.

 

My Presidents Day got off to a frustrating start yesterday.  I thought I would head out early to Tire Choice and get a nail removed from the tire of the Tacoma that has been there for awhile, it was causing a slow leak.  I originally bought the tires at Tire Choice and when I did I also purchased the road hazard coverage.

So I get down there a little after 8:15 and see a couple people in the waiting room, not bad.  I tell them I need a nail removed and also I would like to have the tires rotated and balanced, another thing I paid for when I bought the tires (lifetime balance and rotate) but has never been done.  A couple times I have stopped by TC over the years to have them do it but it always was met with “you’ll have to wait two hours” or something along those lines.

I was told there was only one person back in the shop right now (something I seem to hear a lot at this location) it should take about 90 minutes, ok, fine.

I walked down to the near by Dunkin Donuts and fueled up.  On the way I went by one of our local Crossfit gyms, they were out running as part of their WOD.  I have been thinking about buying Ali a trial membership there.  I have a feeling she would really enjoy the team atmosphere and everyone knows that strong is the new skinny.

So I walked back to the garage and began what was a marathon wait.  At around the 90 minute mark when my truck had still not moved from the parking lot and I saw there were many more than just one person back in the garage I got annoyed enough to ask what was going on.

They said they were just about to take the truck back now, which they did a couple minutes later.  They took it back, put it on the lift and then it sat there instead, untouched for a good 20 minutes.  I could see it from the waiting room.

Eventually I see a guy working on the problem tire but then I also notice that he puts the tire back on the same spot on the truck.  Obviously if he was rotating the tires that wouldn’t be the case.  I just shook my head as he brought the truck back out front.

I told the counter person that the mechanic did not rotate or balance the tires as I asked but at this point I was done wasting my time, it was almost 11 AM at this point.  The clerk shrugged his shoulders and said he guesses the woman that did my work order did not include the rotate and balance on there.  Yea whatever, great.  So I wound up spending almost 3 hours at Tire Choice and got one third of the work done.  I was sure to utilize their feedback email address I saw in the store.  I think I will be getting a call today.

So next I went down to Sam’s to get gas and run the truck through the car wash.  More frustration awaited with lines at the pump and even longer lines for the wash as the snowbirds had inundated the place.  Lovely.

So I finally get back home, annoyed I wasted most of the morning doing something that should have taken a half hour.  Ali had texted me earlier saying when she came out Sadie was outside.  Well that’s odd, I didn’t let her outside before I left.  Ali said she made sure she hadn’t punched out another screen.  Well she hadn’t punched out a screen but there were two claw rips in the screen door.  I think she pushed on the door and perhaps it wasn’t latched securely and she punched through.  I wasn’t planning on doing screen repair as well yesterday but suddenly that was now on the to do list.

So then I go outside and see the hole that Nicki dug, right in the area I just resodded the day before.  Ali told me how cute it was that Nicki was digging, something she used to do pretty regularly but not anymore.  I told Ali it was not cute that she did it right there.  Ali did not agree that she should have scolded Nicki for digging.  I repeated I don’t care if she digs but there are 3 other acres she can dig at.  I told her she just will confuse Nicki by encouraging her to dig at the same spot where I will scold her for doing the same.  More frustration.

So finally we were taking out some of the indoor plants to the shed to transplant and combine with some of the new houseplants we bought.  The one plant I got down had some standing water on the top of it.  I evidently added too much water on Friday night.  Well Ali did not notice the water and threw the pot up on her shoulder, trying to be efficient so she would have another hand free to grab another one.

Well within a few seconds she had a muddy stream flowing down her arm and onto the carpet.  She blamed me for overfilling the pot with water.  I blamed her for not noticing the lake in the pot before she picked it up since I saw it right away.  Cleaning the mess up required use of the Dyson and SpotBot.  Yes, it was frustrating.

Luckily for both Ali and I, she had a dentist appointment in the afternoon so we got a much needed break from each other.

While she was gone the equipment for my SSR upgrade came.  Once Ali got back I headed right out in the SSR to Best Buy, I wanted to buy some high grade wire connector for the install.  While I was out I got a call from my Dad with an updated status.  He was stopping for the day just inside the Florida border.  He and my step mom have been making the trip south pretty slowly but they should finally arrive later this afternoon.

During the day yesterday our neighbors across the street dropped off two boxes of dog supplies.  They had just recently had to put BOTH of their older dogs down, each had their own set of health issues.  We felt so bad for them as we knew how much they loved their dogs, just like we do.  I could see the pain in Steve’s face as we tried to offer our condolences.  It has to be an absolutely awful thing to deal with.

While Ali was away I figured I would try to burn off some of the frustration of the day with another crack at this month’s forum challenge.  I improved my numbers from my first try by 3 pull ups and 9 push ups, a decent improvement but I was actually hoping for a bit more.

Ali made a really good rice pilaf last night.  She also reheated the left over sweet potato patties in the frying pan, it made a ton of difference, they tasted much better to me now with no additional seasoning.

 

 

I am not sure how much I will get to blog once my dad shows up so I figure I’ll do what I can now.

Saturday morning we timed a race.  It was our first time timing this particular race, they held it last year as an untimed “fun run”.   We ran into a few issues as is normal the first time the club does a race.  The parking area, registration area, start line and finish line were all a considerable distance away from each other making the race logistically difficult.  I only had a few minutes to get the finish line timing equipment running before the first runner crossed because of the long walk from the start line.

We also seemed to be short of hands to both set up everything and tear it down which is never a good thing.  We worked through the issues and pulled off a decent event I think.

Ali again on Friday made a strong effort to get a lot of stuff done around the house.  We had more than usual to attend to since I also wanted to give the grass a once over so it looked decent for our visitors.  Saturday afternoon we finished up the cleaning, mowing and weed whacking.  We had a compressed schedule because of attending the Pet Lover’s Ball.

They were having the ball at yet another location this year, they seem to move it around yearly for some reason.  It didn’t take long till we saw the first dogs accompanying their owners into the hotel.  Ali has bugged me about bringing our girls for a few years and I always didn’t want to because I thought it would be too big of a distraction.  Nicki would want constant protection/reassurance and Sadie would be like a bull in a china shop.

Well this year it might have not been too bad.  They had a much larger area designated for the silent auction unlike last year where you felt like a sardine jammed into a much too small room.

The silent auction didn’t have too many items that excited me.  We did actually bid on one item, a private box suite for an Everblades hockey game.  The suite would hold up to 10 people.  It also included a hockey stick autographed by the team.  We were in the bidding up until the last minute or so but the dollar figure went above what I considered reasonable for the package so we backed out.

This year was a sit down dinner with assigned tables.  I got stuck sitting next to an old lady who was a freelance writer for the newspaper.  I found her annoying as she was constantly trying to wedge herself into conversation with me and as the night wore on I got really tired of her unflattering remarks about the gay couple that was at our table. Old coot.

We almost had a meal issue.  Ali said she made a verbal reservation with one of the Humane Society staff so she didn’t get to officially chose the vegetarian dinner option.  She figured she could just request it.  She told the server she was a vegetarian and needed the all veggie plate.  The server said she wasn’t sure if they had any of the vegetarian meals left but she would check.

Well out comes Ali’s meal, a piece of steak and some scallops.  The server said they didn’t have any veggie dinners left which made no sense.  Unless these were tv dinners made in a microwave it should not be too hard to throw some vegetables on a plate.  So Ali sat there with a plate in front of her she wouldn’t eat.  For what each ticket to this thing costs it seemed pretty ridiculous that they couldn’t accommodate her.

Well just as Ali was chowing down on a roll which she thought would be her meal the server comes back out with a vegetarian plate for Ali.  Crisis averted.

The best part of the meal was the desert.  The service overall was disappointing.  Before the meal they came around with wine.  They served everyone but two people at our table but then emptied a bottle and didn’t come back until like a half hour later.  At the end of the meal they asked if I wanted coffee, which I did.  They gave me a cup, cream and sugar but never came back with the actual coffee.  It was pretty lame.

The live auction items didn’t seem to draw the big bucks I am used to seeing.  I bet the 5 items that went up didn’t raise 20k between them.  I left the ball thinking that this year’s event overall would probably be at the bottom of the list for me.

Sunday morning I wanted to get a long 10 mile run in.  Ali planned to bring her bike and ride while I was running.  My plan was to run an even bigger outside loop this time, pushing my cross over road up to Logan Blvd instead of Oakes.  On the way there we dropped a bottle of water at the intersection of Logan and Vanderbilt Beach Road, thinking that was approximately the half way point.

I wasn’t real happy on the way there when I saw the car outside thermometer was already reading in the mid-70’s.  The higher temps paired with what felt to be decent humidity was going to make for a difficult run.

So I headed out, not feeling very into the run.  It was one of those days that running with someone would definitely help.  Nonetheless I tried to push my pace,  with the idea of what is required for a two hour half marathon in my head.

Right from the get go the run was uncomfortable. The bright sun and rising temps made me heat up quickly.  I still managed to hit the bottle drop spot which was around 4.75 miles in a little over 40 minutes. Once I stopped to drink I realized I felt a strong urge to pee.  I tried to casually walk over behind a row of hedges where I dropped to my knees and then bent over at the waist to conceal my urination from cars that were driving by.  I am sure it looked ridiculous.

I chugged the small 12 ounce bottle of water until it was empty.  I was a bit concerned that was the only hydration I would have for the rest of the run.  I also downed the first of the two energy Goo packets I brought along.

So I took off again.  After stopping to drink my body was not real happy with running again, I was feeling more drained than I would like to be at the 5 mile mark.  Eventually the water and Goo kicked in and helped me push on.

This loop is tough mentally because it is just a big huge rectangle.  You would see your turning points far off in the distance but they looked so far away that it was discouraging.  I tried to combat that by using short term visual markers, in my case light poles, each of which may have been a couple hundred feet apart.

So as I was running long, feeling more miserable as I went, I was trying to figure out how far I would have to run yet once I got back to the water park.  My rough math said if half way was a little less than 4.75 miles then I should have somewhere between a half and three quarters of a mile to go once I get back to the park.  Ok, I can do that regardless I thought to myself.

So as I am back on Livingston I keep pushing through the discomfort, pushing to keep my pace up since I knew I only had a short distance to go once I reentered the park.  So I turn in the driveway look at my GPS and see 8.34 miles.  The shock of that number instantly short circuited my mental toughness and I stopped instantly, the idea of trudging close to another two miles shut me down.  As I stood there I wondered how the F I could have misjudged the distance so badly.  I realized if I would have continued back to Immokalee Road I would have then hit the true halfway point.

I was pissed.  Once I stopped my legs turned into cement and felt like they wanted to cramp, I was severely short on the amount of hydration I needed to run in those conditions.  Twice I started to run, trying to just suck it up and run to get my intended 10 miles and twice I stopped less than a 1/4 mile after starting.  My legs felt awful, my mind felt awful, I pulled the plug.

I saw Ali who was riding her bike around the park and told her I was done.  I trudged back to the truck and drank whatever water we had there.

It was a very disappointing run overall even if I did manage a 8:55 pace for the 8.5 miles I wound up running.

After the run we ran into Michelle and the kids. We also saw Matt and his little boy Zach.  I told Matt I could have used him out there as a running partner.

Inside the pool we hung with Michelle and the kids a bit.  We sat at the bottom of the waterslide as Parker got to take his first ride ever, he was finally tall enough. He was so excited.   After Michelle went down with him the first time, I took him up the second time.  His excitement made me remember how I too thought water slides were the coolest thing on Earth when we first got to try them out at Rehoboth Beach many decades ago.

Ali and I got some swimming in.  Ali swims 3 times a week but I have not done any swimming since the water park closed in September.  Ali’s practice has definitely made her a much better swimmer.  Her and I were doing pretty much a similar pace for most of the laps although of course in the end I always made sure I finished slightly ahead.  I put in a 1000 meters total at around an 8:30 per 400 pace.

After the water park we made a pit stop at Lowes.  I needed sod to repair the circle around the one landscaped areas.  The dogs love to run around this spot and in doing so they destroyed the grass, it was bare sand.  We also picked up a few other items.  When we got home I quickly placed the sod, took a shower and we were right back out the door to go to the outlets.  I wanted to get pants that fit as I mentioned earlier last week.

I scored 4 pair of pants at Gap.  32 x 34’s were actually long enough although the 32 inch waist is rather big on me believe it or not.  I noticed all of the pants fabric felt much thinner than my older khaki’s.  I can only assume this is intentional so they wear out faster.  Oh well, it’s nice to have pants that don’t look like I am wearing a sack.

We scored a couple clothing items for Ali so her shopping itch got scratched as well.

When we got home I was so tired it was ridiculous.  While Ali made supper I laid down for a mini-nap.  Ali was making a vegan recipe I found for sweet potato burgers.  She also made some “chips” out of one of our rutabagas.  She had mixed results.  The chips tasted decent but baking them in the oven didn’t give them a chip texture, they were mostly soft and mushy.

Ali said she really liked the sweet potato burger but for me it seemed to lack flavor for some reason.

We both were in bed shortly after 9, exhausted.

Dad called me and pushed back his ETA by a day, he should be showing up Tuesday instead of today.  He doesn’t like to push pace when driving and driving in the dark for him is very difficult at this point.  He was only in North Carolina as of 3pm yesterday and he was planning to stop driving around 5.

We got word back about our tax return.  We are getting a decent number back but not nearly as much as last year as a result of the unexpected running club 1099.

Last night after work I finally got to try the February 20 by 12 Challenge.  This is a pretty intense routine consisting of 4 rounds of 5 different exercises.  If you want to read more detail about it, jump over to Dufisthenics, I’ll go into detail about it .  Here is the video of the attempt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCuE81jmWvI

Because of doing the workout it was getting late, I didn’t feel like taking the time to juice myself.  Instead I tried some of the Bolthouse juice I picked up at Sam’s. The stuff looked just as gross as anything I have made myself.  I am happy to report the taste was quite pleasant, better than any veggie based juice I made myself.

I kind of wish I had knew there were these decent pre-made juicing options before buying the juicer.  Sure this is not AS good as making it yourself.  Fresher is always better.  But these juices include a lot more fruit and vegetable ingredients then what I make myself.  Plus the Naked brand infuses some of their stuff with extra good stuff like flax seed, potassium, etc…..

When I factor cost/convenience/time these already in the bottle options may be a little ahead in the real world practicality scale for me.

Last night I went on a Breaking Bad binge, watching the remaining five and a half episodes I had remaining in season 4.  I just couldn’t stop watching.  I didn’t finish up until 2 AM….  I would get to the end of an episode, look at the clock and the weigh my need for a decent amount of sleep versus being able to find out what happens next.  Obviously, “next” won out every time.

It is SUCH a good show and this season was the best of the four probably which is damn hard to do considering the other three seasons are stellar.  The ending of this season was just a masterpiece. I simply can’t imagine it being done any better.

If you aren’t watching the show and you have a Netflix account, add it to your queue, now.  Comparing this season of Breaking Bad to this season of Dexter is like comparing the minor leagues to the majors.  The show was that damn good.

I woke up this morning exhausted but with not a speck of regret for staying up so late.  It was well worth the trade off.

I had mentioned yesterday that I wanted to grab some new pants this weekend.  I have also been wanting to go to one of the local minor league hockey games as well for a little while.  The outlets are right next to the sports arena.  I found out the Everblades have a home game Saturday night.  Even though I am not remotely a hockey fan it is fun to attend a game every now and then.

I told Ali last night that we could make it a tandem deal, go shopping at the outlets and then go to the game on Saturday night.  Ali immediately threw cold water on my face, telling me we were already going to the Pet Lover’s Ball Saturday night, shit.

Yea the Pet Lover’s Ball is not a bad time but if I was given a choice to go to the outlets & hockey or the ball, I would definitely take the former.  Rubbing elbows with the ultra-rich at the Pet Ball is interesting for a short while but then gets old for me quickly.  I really don’t like acting like I am part of the elitist crowd.

I had no idea that we were going to the Ball until Ali said something last night.  She assured me she has said something to me about it in the past week or so.  I assured her she did not.  When it comes to remembering details about what I have been told I am pretty sure I will outscore Ali on a consistent basis.  There is a chance she said something, thinking I was listening to her but I doubt that as well.  Going to the Ball isn’t something I wouldn’t gloss over.

I am off all next week for my family’s visit which include my dad, step mom, brother, his girlfriend and the two dogs.  Ali and I will be quite busy doing prep around the house this weekend.  There is a lot to do.

To complicate matters we have a race to time on Saturday morning which will eat up about half of the day.  I also really need to get a long run in this weekend since I have now made a firm mental commitment to do the Hooters Half Marathon.

I am now three or four days into my WD-40 toenail treatment and I can report it is definitely doing something.  Every morning and night I am filing the affected nails with an emery board (new board each day) and then soaking them in WD-40.  The big toe, which is the worst of the three, has started to lose some of the damaged portion of the nail as it is supposed to.

It will be something else if the solution to a decade of toe woes was sitting on a shelf in my garage all this time.

 

So I contacted Sirius yesterday regarding my 2nd bill in as many weeks.  I decided to try out the online chat version of their support.  I figured I could avoid the language/accent barrier that often occurs on SiriusXM customer service calls.  It didn’t take long until I was virtually greeted by “Cary”.

I gave her my account info and recapped the situation, explaining I just renewed two weeks ago but for some reason received another bill.  Before I started the chat session I had gone into my account online and compared the radio ID to the ID listed on this latest bill.  They were different ID’s which further reenforced the idea that they were charging me for a radio that was already cancelled.

So Cary asked me what the ID was on the radio I was using.  I told her it was the Xact PnP model, Sirius should already know what the ID is since I have had it in service for years.  Well this started a circle jerk of confusion.  To the rep it looked like the ID number on this second bill was indeed the correct ID for my Xact radio.

I wanted to make sure so I went out to my truck and retrieved the radio.  The ID number was indeed the same number that was on the second bill. So now I was more confused and annoyed.

So if this bill is for my current radio, what exactly did I pay to renew on February 3rd?

The rep said she looked at my account and said that my Xact radio did show it was renewed on 2/3/12 and that I can disregard the second bill.  Hah!  I have been told this several times over the years by Sirius when I received suspect bill notification and every single time when they tell me to ignore a bill I wind up being billed for it anyway and have to waste more time calling them back to correct it.

I looked again at my online account.  The main radio ID that is listed is something different than my Xact radio.  However when I looked at a detailed account summary I saw the transaction that supposedly renewed the Xact unit on 2/3.

I pointed out this discrepancy to the rep and asked for an explanation.  She had none forthcoming and instead again just assured me that I can disregard the bill that was in front of me.

I told “Cary” I was going to be extremely annoyed if I see that Sirius goes ahead and charges me a second time on the date listed on the new bill.  I asked for her full name and some sort of reference number I could refer to if this occurs, which I assured her was very probable.

“Cary” said I could keep a copy of the chat transcript as my record and was unable to provide me a reference number.  Well that sounded idiotic and I let her know as much.  She had no further answers for me and asked if there was anything else she could do for me.

I can almost assure you I will be billed again by Sirius, despite their assurances I will not.

Last night we had our monthly running club meeting.  It was pretty mild and short in comparison to some meetings we have had in the past year.  Typically I am one of the few board members that have regular action items to go over, most of them related to race logistics.

Last night I only had one item.  It had to do with the club starting a new retroactive policy of making what they pay Ali and I to time races, maintain the web site and all other organizational/IT functions we perform, as reported income.

I was a bit blindsided when I found out this was going to be the case for the prior tax year, which inadvertently meant that in 2011 we took more or less a 30% cut to do what we do for the club because of the tax burden.  I wasn’t real happy about that obviously, who would be?

So anyway my proposal was pretty simple, from here on out our fee goes up 30% to basically absorb the tax hit.  The board realized my point without issue although there was some discussion about how to best handle the tax burden reimbursement.

In the end the treasurer and I agreed just doing a flat 30% bump would keep things simple for all parties involved. I could have been more aggressive and pushed to get reimbursed for the tax hit I will be incurring for last year but I decided not to.

I’m glad there was no big fuss raised about the increase.  There are times when the hassle associated with my responsibilities to the club outweighs what I am reimbursed to do so.  The idea of getting a 30% cut to perform those duties would probably been enough to tip the scales the other way. I already have been dealing with coming up on a half decade of stagnant pay at my real job (actually a decrease in net pay this year), I am a bit sensitive in this area as a result.

I started watching the last of my second 4 episode AVI block of Breaking Bad last night.  I was annoyed to see that for some reason this last episode had the audio and video track badly misaligned.  The audio was lagging behind the video by a good 3 or 4 seconds.  Well I didn’t feel like waiting until I re-encoded the DVD to watch the episode so I just dealt with it.  To say it is mildly distracting would be an understatement.

I think this weekend I am going to suggest to Ali that she comes with me to the outlets, I am sure I will have to twist her arm to do so.  I need to get some pants that fit.  The majority of the khaki’s I wear for work are the same ones I wore when I was close to 200 pounds.  They literally look like sacks on me and require a belt to stay on my waist. Plus a bunch of them are just old and worn out, suffering from fraying at the cuff and some of the seams.

 

You may recall a couple weeks ago I ranted about my SiriusXM renewal that came in the mail.  I called them up and told them I would rather cancel my subscription than pay their bullshit price increase.  Well my cancellation threat triggered an instant 50% discount for my subscription so I decided to renew.

Well imagine my joy when I receive ANOTHER renewal notice in the mail yesterday.  I wish I could say I was surprised but this is par for the course with SiriusXM, if there is any possible way they can f something up, they will.

When I went online to look at my account activity I saw that I was indeed charged for my renewal at the beginning of the month as I agreed to.  When I looked at the new bill I realized Sirius was trying to bill me for the radio I cancelled almost a year ago!  I have no idea how they are so amazingly consistent with their ineptness.

So now I get to waste more of my time calling them up to ensure that they do not try to bill me for an already cancelled radio.  I can hardly wait to hear what the excuse is this time.

Since we did our official Valentine’s Day dinner last Saturday last night we had a less formal celebration yesterday evening.  I gave Ali a card, a movie gift card that I indicated was good for one, gasp, chick flick of her choice, and the small box of chocolates.

I typically would not buy Ali chocolates but the cute puppy that looked exactly like a puppy version of Nicki sealed the deal.

I picked up the Hungry Howie’s pizza as promised.  We enjoyed it while watching episodes of The Office.  I think the one episode we watched last night might have made me laugh more than any others to date.  It featured the Rabies Awareness 5K.

When reviewing last year’s blog post I saw I made mention of how my body weight had hit the 190lb mark at this time last year. I had almost forgotten that I allowed myself to bounce back that high.  I do recall Randall, who at that time was high on the hog for breaking the Mendoza line for the first time in years, jokingly calling me a “fatty”.

Well anyway, that day was the start of me applying more discipline to my diet and exercise routine.  Around that time I was in the middle of doing the long distance run training for the half marathon last year.  I think I probably fell into that classic trap where you think that because you burned 1000 calories on a run it green lights eating  poorly, in many cases consuming even more than you burned.

Since this time last year I am down a full 20 pounds and have stayed that way for quite awhile.