Archives May 2012

Last night at home was ok.  I made my 2nd attempt at hard mode for this month’s challenge.  This was the same exercise, flying pull ups, that ripped open my right hand earlier in the month.  I managed to add a couple reps to my prior total so I was ok with that.

During the evening I received consecutive phone calls from my dad and then Ali.  Dad was just kind of checking in, seeing what was up.  Before Ali and I split we were talking about driving up to his place over the summer with the dogs for a visit as part of a larger, northeastern route.

Obviously those plans have changed but I told him that I still have interest in maybe just driving up there myself with the dogs if I can make the numbers work out.  It would be a different feeling trip for sure but I think it could still be fun.

Ali called because she was annoyed she spotted another tick after a nearly week long hiatus.  She is now thinking about setting off a tick bomb in her place while I have the dogs this weekend.  I understand her frustration.

Well my plans to play volleyball this weekend with Randall got scuttled because Randall hurt himself over the holiday weekend.  I tried to get Tabby and Jeremy as last minute replacements but neither of them were available.  Tabby did say he was available for the following weekend’s tourney in Siesta Key so I might take him up on that, we won BB up there last year after all.

I finally got around to rolling out the lower half of my body on the new roller.  Rolling out the IT band is the absolute worst but it did feel better afterward.

I watched several episodes of Jmo’s World on the big tv last night.  It inspired me to make a new one.

So when I asked to take Tuesday off last week I was doing so in the hopes that the extra day off would help tack on to a nice holiday weekend.  Well it certainly didn’t work out that way.  By the time my 4 day hiatus was coming to an end I was still trudging around the yard, practically ready to melt away into a pool of sweat.  It sucked.

On Saturday morning I decided to bypass the club run since my hip was still hurting from my Wednesday squat session.  Instead I decided to get busy on what was turning out to be a very chore intensive weekend.

Now typically, I have a track record of busting through chores very efficiently, usually with a few hours of work I can have all of my must do’s for the weekend done.  Well for some reason either I was inefficient or I just had too much to do.

During the afternoon I headed to Lowe’s, I had a number of thing I needed for various home repairs/maintenance.  While I was grabbing stuff I wound up picking up something I didn’t expect to, 15 concrete castle stones.  One of the items on my new project list is to replace the already twice replaced rotted landscape timbers that create the border around the pool and the pond.  Well Lowes was running a sale on all concrete landscape items, a considerable, flat 20% off.  On top of that I had a 10% off coupon Ali gave me which she received when she moved into her new place.

I realized I was opening up Pandora’s box by buying the blocks, knowing getting 15 laid down is only going to make me want to get more to complete the long overdue project.  I did it anyway.

One of the other things I got was stuff to amend the garden.  I cleared out a total of 7 beds to use for planting.  I spent A LOT of time in there, turning over the soil with both a pitch fork and the roto-tiller attachment for my weed whacker.  I mixed in both compost and some fresh bags of Miracle-Gro garden soil to give my new crop a good chance at success.  I bet I spent at least two hours in there farting around.

I planted both seeds and veggies I bought at Lowes.  Corn, tomatoes, squash, leeks, kale, spinach, carrots, beets, bush beans and artichoke went in the ground.  Summer in Florida is typically not a great growing season but I am going to give it a go anyway.

My dinner needs on Saturday were taken care of at TGI Friday’s.  I drank beer and ate dinner while punching in the paper entries that were collected at the running store.

So when I got home I wasn’t done.  Originally I had a loose idea to go to the Tarpon’s arena football game Saturday night but since I was still feeling behind the 8 ball with my to do list I decided my time would be better spent mowing the grass. I was out on the mower until after 8pm. What an exciting Saturday night.

On Sunday, despite knowing I had a lot I wanted to still get done I decided to still get in a biking/swimming brick.  I left early with the intent of dropping off excess vegetables at my mom’s before she went it to work.  I arrived at her place before 9am but saw her vehicle was not there.  I recalled mom saying something to me a couple weeks ago about her starting work earlier during the summer, I figured that had started.

Ok well I knew I had a key to her place, I would just throw the veggies in her fridge and leave a note.  Well my key didn’t work.  It occurred to me that I had never received a new key after my mom moved the last time, I still had the key from her old place.  Damn it.  I threw the veggies back in my truck, frustrated I wasted the trip.

By the time I got my bike out on the road at 9:30 or so it was already getting very warm and humid.  We seem to have hit the fast forward button and jumped into the heart of summer in the uncomfortable scale.  I had a pretty strong ride, averaging just under 19 mph for the 12 mile plus ride, my second straight week of speed improvement.

At the water park I put in another 1600, averaging about the same time as the week before.  I didn’t stick around to relax at all, I had too much to do.  By the time I left the park around 11:30 the line to get in was ridiculous, at least 100 people long.  I was quite glad I got in (and out) before the huge holiday crowd hit.

My next stop was Ali’s place to pick up the dogs.  Ali decided to go into work on Sunday so I said the dogs could come hang with me.  Once I got them back to the house I got busy outside.  I decided I was going to first take on the unpleasant job of mowing the back of the property.  Mowing that large square is typically something that only got done 5 or 6 times a year and when it was done it typically was done by Ali.  It just isn’t much fun.

The back of the property has a lot of uneven areas that are not at all fun to roll across on the tractor, it is like one long non stop series of speed bumps.  You are constantly getting bounced around on the seat of the tractor.   After I got done mowing the area I decided to up the misery quotient, firing up the weed whacker for an even less frequent chore, whacking the entire fence perimeter on both sides.

This chore has it’s own set of frustrations.  Weed whacking a fence line is a weed whacker line destroyer.  I went through more than a full spool of line doing the job.  Plus since I do the entire fence so rarely, the vegetation that accumulates can be quite substantial, slowing down the process.  I really should just hit the entire fence line with Round Up.

Finally I began work on the landscape timber replacement project.  Ripping out the old pressure treated timbers was very easy since they were mostly a rotten mess.  I hardly needed my pry bar, most of it I could just grab on to and rip it out with my hands. I chose to work on the shortest of the 3 sides, figuring the 15 blocks I grabbed would be almost enough for that area.

Once the wood was ripped out I used mostly my gloved hands as the primary excavation tool, pushing back the mulch, pulling up the weed block and smoothing/leveling the dirt underneath.  I liked the end result although I later went back and flipped the blocks so the smooth side was up.

I made plans with Ali to accompany her to Target when I brought the dogs back Sunday evening.  She wanted to buy her own furniture for her deck, she was using one of the two chaise lounges from the house.

So we jumped in the van and headed up the street to the store.  I had a list of things I was looking for as well so we grabbed two shopping carts.  Ali got a new chaise along with a matching chair and table.  We precariously balanced the furniture on top of the carts after we grabbed everything else.

I carried the new stuff up to Ali’s apartment and lugged the old chaise out to the van and stuffed it in.  I wound up eating pizza at Ali’s for dinner and then helped her with the late night dog walk.  I wound up staying a bit later than I expected.  I wanted to get back since I was timing the Memorial Day race and had not loaded up any of the equipment in the truck yet.  Once I got home I quickly attended to race details and got the truck loaded in about a half hour.  I knew I had to get up early so I tried to go to sleep pretty early, around 10.

Well for some reason, I found myself wide awake at 2:30 AM.  Despite my efforts, I could not make myself fall back asleep so I said f it, and got up.  I spent the time in the middle of the night playing some Diablo 3.  It was weird and I knew would pay for it later if I didn’t get a nap in.

Timing the race was pretty uneventful, it was a relatively small event with less than 300 runners.  I managed to get out of there nice and early, shortly after 9.  I had received a text from Christy, who lives near by, asking if I could come jump her Jeep, her battery died and they did not own a set of jumper cables.  I said sure, no problem.

So I swung over there, hooked up the cables and told her to crank it.  The Jeep started but as soon as she took her foot off the gas it would die.  I then told her to hold the gas pedal down to keep the RPM’s up, hoping once the engine warmed a bit it would stabilize.  Well that didn’t seem to work either.  Even after a few minutes it was still dying.

I told her she would have to “two foot” it to the store to get the new battery.  That idea did not sound appealing or safe to her.  I told her I didn’t mind driving her Jeep there for her since I am experienced at this driving technique as a result of the Tacoma problems I had recently.  She felt bad that she would be taking up more of my time but accepted the offer.  I didn’t mind.

We drove over to Advance Auto and dealt with a woman that was super nice and helpful.  Not only did they install the battery (after testing the old one to make sure it was bad), they put a tester on the car to make sure there wasn’t a problem with the starter or alternator.  Plus, the battery had a kick ass three year full replacement cost warranty and a pro-rated warranty after that.

I noticed that after the new battery was put in, the car was holding idle on it’s own so I told Christy she could drive back.  As a token of her appreciation she drove through DD (she is a fellow enthusiast) and bought me an XL coffee (my second of the day).  It was much appreciated.

So once I got back home I had to dig into all of my post race work which took me up to 1PM.  I wanted to go to Lowe’s to grab a bunch more landscape blocks since Memorial Day was the last day of their sale.  I knew doing so would scuttle any chance of a nap before the running club picnic at 4.  Oh well, the nap was sacrificed.

I bought 60 blocks.  I was more efficient this time, asking if they could use a skid loader to bring a pallet out to my truck so I could load them directly instead of loading them to a flat bed and loading them a second time on to the truck.  They said that would be no problem, awesome.

I capped it at 60 blocks just because of weight concerns.  As is, the front end of the Tacoma was pointing up on the way home.   I parked it in the backyard and left it there, planning to lay down the additional blocks on Tuesday.

I was so tired/sleepy at this point.  My 2:30 wake up time was hitting me hard. As I laid on my bed with my eyes closed, I was half considering telling Ali (we were going to carpool) that I was just going to bag going to the picnic.  I decided to just grin and bear it.

On the way to pick up Ali I grabbed myself a 5 hour energy, something I only utilized once before during one of our western road trips.  I don’t recall it helping me all that much back then but I figured it was worth a shot.  I chose the Berry “extra strength” variety.

Well you know what, I think it worked.  I actually felt human, despite 4 hours of sleep.

We drove to the picnic in the SSR with the top up.  It was so damn hot and humid that I didn’t feel like sweating my ass off.

The picnic was held at Cutlass Cove, a beautiful beach side park in the exclusive Port Royal neighborhood.  There was a good turn out of people, most of which brought their own food items to compliment the hot dogs and hamburgers provided by the club.

I actually had a really nice time.  In years past I would typically be sticking by Ali most of the time at the event but I thought it was important that I made sure to venture out socially on my own now based on our new realities.

Later in the party Ali asked me if I wanted to walk down to Gordon Pass, where the Gordon River empties into the gulf.  I said sure.  By the time we got back the amount of people had thinned dramatically, I bet at least 75% of them had vanished in that half hour period.

Well most of whom was left were the more hard core partying part of the club so the fun continued.  I started juggling some coconuts and discovered another club member was a juggler.  We did some tandem juggling that had a lot of fail in it.  I also played with my juggling partners little daughter, she is very cute.

Finally there was a lot of yoga posing going on, my main contribution was doing elbow planches at various spots and trying to instruct others on how to do them.

We wound up staying much later than I expected, staying until after sunset.  Not having to work the next day made doing so much more palatable.

I dropped off Ali and helped her walk the dogs again.  I made arrangements to pick them up during the day Tuesday to hang out.  I also agreed to take them to the vet for an appointment for Nicki to have some gross discharge problem looked at.  By the time I got home, the 5 hour energy was now in it’s 7th hour, I was dead.

So as arranged, I went and picked up the girls on Tuesday after grabbing some DD.  I was not looking forward to another day laboring out in the hot sun but in my mind, I had no choice.  The 60 blocks in the bed of the truck aren’t going to unload themselves.

It was so hot that the dogs didn’t even want to stay outside with me.  Once they came out they wanted to go right back inside within a few minutes.

I resumed my pool border replacement project, starting on the other side by the far door.  I decided today I was going to utilize more precision when laying down the blocks, using my 4 foot level to make sure the blocks are level.  Well evidently, the ground has a slight downward angle.  I found the further I went the more fill I had to put under the blocks until I got to the point where I was using a second block underneath.  Well by the time I got to to the corner the border looked ridiculously high.

When I compared it to the stones on the other side there was a huge height difference.  I later decided to just rip that section down and redo it as just a single layer.  It looked better and would save me money by not requiring as many blocks.

I got a small break in labor mid-afternoon when I took the dogs to the vet where I picked up some antibiotics.  After dropping them back off at Ali’s I was right back in the border building soup, working until relatively late in the evening. I was just miserable by the end of it, all of that time on my knees was not a good thing and my hands/forearms were killing me from using them as human backhoes for hours.

My 60 blocks covered a good portion of the pool border.  I need roughly 25 stones to finish it. Since Randall had to bow out of volleyball this weekend, perhaps I will complete the ass busting project then.

I was frustrated with myself Sunday night, amazed and annoyed that I spent the vast majority of my waking Memorial Day weekend hours busting my ass.  Sure it is nice to get so much done but damn, the work/play ratio was definitely out of whack this time around.

So last night I was watching some episodes of Boardwalk Empire when there was a knock at the door.  I had seen that my neighbors, whom I was collecting mail for while they were away, had returned a day earlier than planned.  I assumed it was one of them coming for their mail.

Well when I stood up and turned the corner instead I saw a sheriff’s deputy at the door.  Instantly I was thrown off balance, why was a cop at my door??  My confusion increased when I opened the door, said hi, and the deputy asks me if I have a black dog?

Um, my mind was really stumbling now. I say to the guy “Um yea, I have two black dogs, well, uh, my wife does actually.  Um why?”  For an instant I was actually thinking that somehow Nicki or Sadie had wandered 12 miles to the house, which of course is ridiculous.  Like I said, I was really caught off guard.

The deputy says he has a black dog he just picked up in the back of his car.  He asked then if I knew of anyone in the area that may have a black dog that gets loose.  I asked him more about what the dog looked like, he said it has pointy ears and a choke collar.  Well I told him it definitely wasn’t one of my dogs, I asked if I could see the dog.

We walked down to his police car and I saw the happy looking dog in the back seat.  He almost looked like a black lab/doberman mix.  I told the deputy that I know up on 10th street there are a couple dogs that have gotten loose on a semi-regular basis.  I told him he could check up there.  He thanked me for the possible lead and headed out.

Hopefully he found the owners, otherwise the dog will be heading to DAS.

As I walked back to the front door I shook my head as I realized I had to come off to the deputy as strange based on the confusion and awkwardness I displayed when asked about the dog.

Yesterday as the day wore on my right hip was hurting more and more, to the point where I couldn’t walk without a limp.  It’s the end result of squatting heavy (for me) on Wednesday.  It feels a bit better today but I think doing the club run tomorrow morning is probably off the table.

So we have a three day holiday weekend ahead, how nice.  I am timing a race on Monday and there is a running club Memorial Day picnic that I haven’t decided if I want to attend or not.  It doesn’t start until 4PM.  I really dislike doing social things or housework at the tail end of a weekend for some reason.  A noon or 1PM start would make the event much more attractive to me.

Other than those two items my weekend is pretty open ended although I do have a full plate of home to do’s to attend to including cleaning, mowing and all of the other little fun items in between.  There is another Tarpon arena football game Saturday night that I may or may not check out.

I was surprised that I went through the entire day yesterday without hitting the expected wall due to my lack of sleep the night before.  Sure there were some yawns here and there but nothing much above the ordinary.  I went to bed at my normal time.  Getting up this morning however was a bit more challenging than normal.

Last night I watched this week’s AGT episodes.  Thankfully they seem a bit easier to swallow in 1 hour chunks.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some very interesting and entertaining acts on the show, I just hate the editing style they have chosen to display it.

I have to laugh a little bit at all of the controversy about the Facebook IPO.  Evidently there was some inconsistent release of earning numbers leading up to the IPO which had a few people crying foul.  I wouldn’t be surprised if something somewhat shady went down. Even after all of the financial chaos that almost destroyed the US economy a couple years ago, it seems clear that all the industry has received thus far was a light rap on the hands.  I am sure abuse of the system is still the status quo.

What I think is funny is how the lemming mentality has now taken hold.  Every Tom, Dick and Harry that bought Facebook stock and feels jilted that they didn’t double their money on the first day is on a “me too” rampage even if they had absolutely no connection to the misinformation that is reported. (they weren’t getting any calls from Morgan Stanley anyway) They just wanted to get rich quick.

As I recall, FB’s down quarterly earnings was announced before the IPO was released.  If you rolled the dice, ignoring that indicator of possible rough waters, don’t go looking to blame someone else for the end result. The stock market after all is high level gambling when you strip it all down.

Hey I use Facebook every day and generally like the services they provide.  Would I invest my retirement money in it? Not a chance.

I left work mid-afternoon yesterday to head over to the new Marlins Ballpark which resides in the location of the old Orange Bowl.  I allotted myself roughly two and a half hours for the drive.  I probably should have given myself a bit more slack.

As I drove across the alley I came across some storms, some severe enough to knock my speed down to 60 mph or so, adding time to my ETA.  As I approached the stadium I expected to be able to swing into one of the multiple parking garages that surround it.   Well every garage said it was for prepaid passes only, something I was not given. Damn it.

By this time it was almost 5pm, the scheduled time for the seminar so I was getting desperate.  I ALMOST pulled into the front yard of someone holding a $10 parking sign.  However before I did  I asked a cop if there were any garages that allowed you to pay to park, a novel concept.  He said there was one, the center field garage, he said it was just around the corner.  I swung in, handed over my $15 and fast stepped it down the stairs and towards the stadium.

Not only did the seminar invite not tell you where to park, it also didn’t tell you what entrance to use in the stadium.  I walked up to the first entrance I found and asked a guy where I should go.  He wasn’t sure but he suggested I try the Diamond Club entrance which is on the other side of the stadium.  Great.

So I fast walked around the perimeter and located the Diamond Club doors.  Luckily the people there did not give me strange looks when I showed them my invite.  I was directed to follow a woman who took me upstairs to the executive conference room.  I stepped in the door about 5:10.  I was happy to see that despite being late, nothing had started, they actually didn’t start until 5:40 or so because others arrived late after encountering similar difficulties as I did.

The office area and conference rooms were beautiful and ultra-modern as you would expect of a brand new facility.

The seminar itself was informative with reps from EMC and VMware attending.  There were tech acronyms flying left and right.  Some I knew, some I acted like I knew.

The main subjects covered were virtualization and the cloud, two things that have the ability to simplify your administration and lower your TCO. (had to throw an acronym in there)

A little before 7 we were taken up to our suite to watch the game.  Wow, the suite was just awesome.  It was big, beautiful, filled with all you can eat food and drink (including alcohol) and had a great view of the field, just a little off center from home plate.

The field and seating area looked quite nice except for two things. They have this ugly, ugly, ugly animatronic thing in centerfield that comes to life when the Marlins hit a homerun.  I don’t know whose idea that was but it was a bad one, they should tear that out asap.

I also am not a big fan of the green color of the walls surrounding the field, it just looks bad.  That would be an easy fix as well.

Other than that everything looked great.  I love the view of the city in the outfield, the huge video screens, fish tanks behind the batting box and the size of the seating area.  It now feels like a real baseball stadium.

I was a bit bummed the roof was closed, I’d like to see what it looks like when it is open.  Even cooler would be seeing it open first hand.

I was a bit surprised by the turn out, which was light.  There were some legitimate reasons though.  The Heat had a home playoff game last night and the Marlins were playing the Rockies, not a team that is going to pull in many non-Marlin fans.

Even though I had no rooting interest in the game I still enjoyed sitting there chowing down on the food.  They had no vegetarian choices but I was honestly too hungry to care, my apologies to any animals that went down to satisfy my appetite last night.

The game itself was pretty entertaining with a lot of runs being scored.  Around the 5th inning the Suite Street desert cart pulled up outside our area.  It was a rolling cart filled with off the chart deserts.  Despite already consuming  many calories, I chose an oversized chocolate chunk cookie for desert, it was awesome.

After my cookie I decided to take a stroll around the entire concourse to get a better feel for the stadium.  As I made my journey I took some pictures to document the trip.  I looked at a couple of Marlin souvenir stands, thinking I wouldn’t mind grabbing a Marlins sleeveless T-shirt.  However nothing had prices on it, no prices meant prices that were going to be higher than I was willing to spend so I just moved on.

Sprinkled across the concourse were a number of bars near the seating areas that would allow you to grab a beer and stand at high tables while catching the action.  As I circled I verified that I really did not see a bad seat in the place.

I eventually made my way back to the suite and hung around until the end of the 7th inning.  It was almost 10 at this point. I thanked the hosts of the event for the invite and headed out.

As I was walking outside the left field area I saw the night club that exists in the left field wall, complete with dancing girls on a stage.  I had to take a pic of that.

Getting out of the city wasn’t too bad although the traffic was pretty heavy.  I made a stop at the first rest stop once I got back on the alley to grab some gross vending machine coffee to help me stay lucid for the drive.

I didn’t get home until a little before 1 am and my eyes didn’t close until after 1:30.  Surprisingly, at this moment I don’t feel too awful but I have a feeling the sledgehammer will hit me later this afternoon. My second weeknight coast to coast to coast trip in a little more than a month was worth the effort, once again.

If you want to see all the pics I took from the game look here.

Last night after work I was debating if I wanted to go out to my backyard bar park and try to do the 1/2 BBR set that got rained out Sunday.  I wasn’t feeling all that positive mentally. Just eating dinner and sitting down at the computer was sounding like a very attractive alternative.

Well after some angry self talk from my inner task master I eventually grabbed my gear and headed outside.

I’ll cover details of the attempt in Dufisthenics, but let’s just say I was not successful in hitting my goal.  The funniest part of it was after I was too tired to complete even one of the required three muscle ups at the end, I clapped my hands together in frustration so hard that it sounded like a gunshot.

It is a move I usually reserve for the volleyball court.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7qq9SOmLKY

For dinner I went the healthy route, making another wrap stuffed with good stuff like tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, spinach, hummus, carrots, swiss cheese and mushrooms.  My biggest problem with the wraps are they are a mess to eat.  I pile so much stuff in them that when I go to eat it, half of it falls out.  Oh well, that’s what forks are for.

Today should be a fun day.  I get to drive over to the new Marlins Stadium for a tech seminar.  (like last year) After the seminar I get to watch the game from one of the suites.  I am looking forward to seeing the new ballpark.  I have heard mixed reviews about it, some saying it is great, others calling it hideous.  I will offer up my opinion tomorrow.

It will wind up being another late night drive across the alley but it’s nothing a cup or two of coffee can’t handle.

So I was back and forth if I wanted to get up to do the club run Saturday morning.  My legs and rear end were still both quite sore from my leg work on Wednesday at the gym.  Well my exercise guilt won out and I drug myself out of bed to go to the run.

There was a big crowd at the club run this week, possibly the biggest I have seen to date.  Ali, Christy and Michelle were there as well.  I once again paired up with Matt and despite my legs feeling shitty, he drug me along to what I believe was my best time for the 7 mile route which surprised me.

I asked Ali if she minded if I picked up the dogs on the way home so they could spend the day out at the house, she said it was fine.  I had a productive day at home getting everything I wanted done, done.  For most of my time outside the dogs hung out there with me, laying in various shady spots.  It felt damn close to summertime hot out there.

After I got done I jumped in the pool and gave Sadie her first splashy splash session in a long time, she loved it of course.

I also gave the Tacoma a bath for the first in many months.  The truck does not get cleaned very often anymore since the exterior finish is a mess at this point from a decade plus in the Florida elements.  Even so, it did look a little better when I was finished.

I went an extra step and finally got around to using the headlight renewal stuff I bought months back.  The headlights on the Tacoma had that dull glaze that is so common.  After about 15 minutes of work I had both headlights looking significantly better.

On the way to drop the dogs off we made a pit stop at Pet Supermarket to get them some food.  In addition I couldn’t help myself, I had to buy the stuffed tick dog toy I walked by.  Ali laughed when I showed it to her.

When I dropped the dogs off it was right around 5:30. Ali said she bought the stuff to make some pesto pasta thing, so  she asked if I wanted to stick around for dinner.  I didn’t have anything planned for my Saturday night beside some Diablo 3 sessions so I said sure.  Ali said it was the first “dinner” she has actually prepared since living there. It was quite good.

After eating dinner I didn’t stick around too long.  I have been conscious of how much time Ali and I have been spending together thus far since we split up and although it is still quite comfortable for me to just hang out with her I don’t think it helps either of us do much moving forward.  So even though I would have been fine to hang around and watch some stuff on her DVR and hang with the dogs, I headed home.

Sunday morning I once again had another exercise session, this time doing a biking/swimming brick.  My average bike pace was a 1/2 mile faster than the week prior.   I increased the distance of my swimming from 1200 to 1600 meters.  I was happy with both of those results.

Once again I took the SSR and once again I was happy I did.

After I finished my swimming I hung out at the water park for a little bit, reading one of my magazines.  I peppered in people watching as well.

When I got home I was feeling really sleepy.  After I got done paying the bills I succumbed and laid down for a 2 hour + nap.

Sunday evening I made a lackluster attempt at the normal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge. I then threw in my current Netflix dvd rental, I Am Number Four.  I don’t recall what triggered me to put this in my queue but I had no big expectations for the flick.

Well it turned out to be something I really liked, hell I’d give it a solid A.  It has several elements that appeal to me, aliens, super hero powers, good looking women and a revenge storyline.  Rent it, you won’t be sorry.

As I am sure you have heard, Howard Stern, whom I have been a big fan of for over 20 years, and the only reason I endure shitty Sirius/XM radio,has joined America’s Got Talent as a new judge this season.

When the show first came out a few years ago I checked it out since it was getting big ratings.  I didn’t get it, I found the show INCREDIBLY annoying and overproduced.  After watching three or four episodes I never went back.

Well since Howard is now a judge I thought it had to be better, surely by now they got smart and made the show less annoying.  I set the show up for a season pass on my Tivo.  Well I barely made it through the two episodes so far, it is just awful, let me see if I can explain why.

The way they piece the show together is dreadful.  They do so many cut away shots between the judges, the host, the act and the audience you hardly ever get to just watch an act and make your own assessment.  Most of the acts they only show some brief highlights wedged in between the endless cut aways.  They have so many music beds playing on top of the judge comments and even the acts themselves that they could open up a hotel with them. They will also apply a video filter to certain aspects of the show to give it an epic, movie look which seems totally out of place.

I hoped that having Howard on the show would help negate all of this but his commentary was  butchered up and fragmented by the idiots in the editing room.  I found that he added very little to my enjoyment of the show.  I will suffer through a couple more episodes but I have a feeling even with Stern on, AGT it will be short lived in my season pass list.  I have too many potential good things to watch to waste my time watching that piece of shit.

It feels like it is produced for the absolutely dumbest segment of the American tv audience.

This past weekend has probably been my roughest emotionally since Ali moved out.  Why this would occur 6 weeks after her move out date is beyond me. I just felt sad, like I was mourning everything that had become routine and familiar over the past 15 years.    It seemed like everything I saw as I walked around the house triggered a “that was when Ali and I did this or that” response.  I just couldn’t get my mind out of that mode.

I know that wallowing in sorrow doesn’t do any good.  I just need to keep trying to reach outward and forward instead of retracting inward.   Isolating myself would be a very easy course of action after all.

I really miss the dogs.

Earlier this week I used some of my Amazon spiff points to buy a couple pieces of fitness gear.

The first item was something called Fat Gripz.  These hard pieces of blue rubber are designed to be used with barbells, dumbbells and pull up bars to make the grip area significantly bigger.

What is the point you ask?  Hand, forearm, and grip strength.  These things have tremendous reviews from pretty much everyone that uses them.  A fat grip equates to much more difficulty.  If you do a set of curls with 30 pound dumbbells and then do another set after slapping the Fat Gripz on you will be amazed at the additional effort required.

I will be using the Gripz primarily on my pull up bar but I will try them out for different movements as well.

The other item I got was a dip belt.  The belt will make doing weighted dips and pull ups much easier instead of holding a dumbbell between my knees.  It will be accompanying me to the gym today.

Last night I decided I wanted to take a chunk out of my weekend workload by mowing and weed whacking the property.  Since summer/wet season seems to have gotten an early start this year the grass needed full grooming.  I didn’t get done until after 8.  I threw together a wrap for dinner that included hard boiled eggs, tomato, carrots, hummus  and swiss cheese.

So I have now had a chance to play three different classes in Diablo 3, the barbarian, the witch doctor and the monk.  All three are a lot of fun in different ways.

The barbarian and his brute force, in your face smash mouth style of play is great for stress relief.  The witch doctor with his zombie dogs, endless jars of spiders and assortment of spells are just eye candy to watch.  The monk utilizes a Bruce Lee fists of fury play style that is fast paced and devastating.

If I had to pick a favorite out of the 3 so far I would probably take the monk by a slim margin.  I always did like Bruce Lee.

Yesterday I saw a video that outlined the procedure to replace a broken ceramic tile.  I have had a broken tile in front of the fridge for a few years that I first just covered with a throw rug and later tried to fill with some similar color grout filler.

Well after watching the video I realized I should just replace the damn tile, it isn’t rocket science.

This weekend I have several things I’d like to get knocked out but nothing set in stone.  Speaking of the tile replacement, I am going to rebuilding my home project list which was ripped off the fridge awhile ago.  I find having that list in front of me serves me well as motivation to eliminate items from it instead of having things drag on forever without ever getting done.

That list will have several items on it in addition to the tile replacement. Painting the bedroom, master bath, and garage will be on there.  I also am looking to replace the twice replaced landscape timber border around the pool with concrete landscape blocks.  Wood rots, concrete doesn’t.

As part of painting the bathroom, I am hoping to score a left over piece of granite/Corian from someplace that I can use to cover the big flat surface in the bathroom next to the sink.  Right now it is just white drywall that looks like shit.

Of course projects cost money so besides the tile replacement, most of these will be delayed until I have some more time to get a solid feel for what my new financial thresholds will be.

So yesterday I got a call from insurance agent’s office from a woman named Kim.  She wanted to go over my options for my soon to renew home owners insurance.  You may recall that I have had a bit of an ordeal dealing with my agent, getting very poor response to a request to make some changes to both my homeowner’s and auto insurance policies.  I am looking to save my money on my insurance costs as part of my overall slimming of expenses plan.

Well Kim gave me what the cost would be for the next policy year if I kept my coverages the same with Castle Key, which is another name for All State down here.  I almost shit my pants when she said it would be about $2200.  Castle Key had just raised my rates 30% last year.  To follow that up with another roughly 20% increase the following year is insanity.

When I commented to Kim about how ridiculous this sounded she said that all home owner insurance companies have been jacking their rates by similar percentages.  She cited some change in the way insurance companies need to guarantee they have funds available to insure in catastrophic circumstances (hurricanes).  Yea ok whatever, I have seen profit reports for insurance companies, I don’t care what excuse they provide, raising rates 50% in two years is insane.

So I told Kim I needed some alternatives.  I told her how I already asked about getting the replacement value of the home reduced.  She said they have some standard formula they go by which they won’t change unless you want to pay for an appraisal and even then they probably won’t reduce it.

She said for the coverage I was getting the Castle Key rate was competitive.  She gave me some quotes from other companies they represent, the best number was still just under 2K.  I told Kim I would call her back and let her know if I wanted to stay with Castle Key or pay less of an increase by going with one of the other companies.

I was very annoyed after I hung up the phone and vented to my buddy at work.  I asked him what his home owner’s insurance was.  He said he just renewed in March and his rate was less than $1200. WTF???!!  My buddy’s house is newer, bigger and worth significantly more money than my place, how could he be paying almost half of what I am being quoted??  I thought ALL insurance companies were raising their rates???

I asked him for some details about how he managed this.  He said he changed a few options that most insurance agents won’t even tell you are options. The first thing he did was waived the replacement value option for his personal property.  Basically what that means is if your house and everything in it is wiped out, you only get depreciated value for your items, not new replacement cost.

He also opted to exclude his pool cage from his policy.  Since pool cages are one of the most probable things to fail in a hurricane (as I know first hand), insurance companies will knock a good chunk off your policy if you are willing to exclude that from coverage.

Finally, my policy had an extra layer of cost because the house was built in 2001, before the latest and greatest building code changes were enacted. This coverage is called Ordinance and Law.  What it basically means is if some part of your house needs to be repaired/rebuilt and additional measures/costs are necessary to bring the structure up to current building codes/regulations this coverage handles that.  Otherwise you are on the hook for the difference.

Well I found all of this info very interesting and I immediately called Kim back since she didn’t present these coverages as optional.  I was a bit confused about how it all worked.

For example I said to her, suppose my house has damage, the roof needs to be replaced.  The repair cost is way under the 235,000 replacement value of the house.  If the repair includes upgrades to meet current code, would they  be covered?  Evidently not, regardless of what my replacement value for the home or personal property is, you would not be covered for code upgrades or replacement cost on personal property.

So I asked Kim to send me a few quotes from a few companies with various options.  Now all of  a sudden I had a price range that was $2200 at the high end and $1279 on the low end! Wow.

The $1279 quote would include the Law and Ordinance clause but would not include pool cage coverage or personal property replacement value.  The knee jerk reaction of course is just to take the lowest premium, especially in the cost cutting frenzy I find myself in.  I am rational enough to realize that doing so is rolling the dice that the house doesn’t blow up.  I feel pretty secure in that bet but it is a bit unsettling.

Regardless, I am annoyed that these options were not made readily available to me until I pulled teeth to pursue them.  Agents of course can hide behind the line that they are just looking out for their customers, making sure they are covered in the remote chance they are struck by a disaster.  Of course they can never admit that these options are in there primarily because they are huge money makers since it is a safe bet most homeowners will never utilize the extra security those add on’s offer at a stiff price.

Last night after the running club board meeting I once again headed over to South Street with a few board members to drink a few beers. Once again I stayed out very late for me on a Wednesday night.  I laid down in bed shortly after midnight.

Awhile back I signed up for the WoW annual pass.  Part of the reason I did it was because they were giving people Diablo 3 for free as part of the promotion.  Well the game was released yesterday.

This is the third installment in the series.  I was never a huge fan of the prior games.  I played a decent amount of the first Diablo and I didn’t play Diablo 2 at all.

Well there has been a ton of hype and anticipation for D3 and since I was getting it for free I certainly was going to check it out.

Just like most of my computer game purchases in the past few years, installing D3 required nothing but an internet connection although the roughly 8 gig download took quite awhile to complete.

I fired up the game and created my first character, a Barbarian of course.  Their “Hulk Smash” style of play appeals to me.  The game opens with a cinematic, an incredibly realistic cinematic.  It is simply amazing what they can do with computer animation, the detail was fantastic.

When I jumped into the game itself the visual orgasm continued, the graphics and character animations are just top notch.  Unlike WoW which can seem hopelessly complicated to the novice, Diablo 3 doesn’t have anywhere close to the same learning curve.  The controls are much simpler and moving around the environment is made intuitive by the helpers Blizzard built into the game.

It just so happened that as I was creating my first character my buddy Charlie had just logged on to the game.  D3 makes it stupidly easy to team up with your buddies for some monster smashing fun.  Within seconds Charlie and I were marching around together raising hell.

The game is just flat out fun.  At least initially, you feel God-like as you can smash through a pack of 15 bad guys with little consequence.  I have a feeling as the game progresses the margin for error will get slimmer.

Diablo shares the gear concept with WoW.  As you kill things and progress through the game, upgraded armor and weapons drop which you can pick up and use to make yourself even more bad ass.

Blizzard took a bold new step with Diablo 3, introducing an in game virtual auction house that can have financial rewards in the real world.  Players can spend real cash for virtual goods.  That concept is not new.  However they can also sell virtual goods for real cash, that, is new.

One of the big problems in WoW is the huge underground in-game gold market.  Basically there are businesses that are built upon the backs of virtual slaves that do nothing but collect gold in the game and then sell that gold to other people that don’t want to spend the time to accumulate it conventionally.  This trade is huge in China, hence the term “Chinese gold farmers” .

Well a few years back the gold farming industry got nasty.  Greedy farmers figured out there was a much faster way to collect gold to resell for profit, steal accounts.  They developed and introduced trapdoor websites and keyloggers that were specifically designed to steal your WoW account logon information.  Once they obtained it they would log on as you, sell everything you have and empty out your virtual bank. It has been a HUGE issue in WoW.

Well Blizzard decided to eliminate that market in Diablo 3 by creating their own virtual to real currency auction house.  It will be interesting to see how it works out.  I haven’t played around in that part of the game yet.

The game just seems to be so well done and I have only scratched the surface of what it has to offer at this point.  I look forward to digging deeper in the upcoming weeks.

In a recent edition of Newsweek (yes I am still receiving it for free) there was an article regarding the obesity epidemic.  I found it interesting that the article focused on the “wheat belly” effect I talked about a few months back.

Over the years the public has been fed many magic bullets that were the cause of obesity.  First is was food that was high in fat so food companies pumped out “low fat” versions of their products that always cost more than the regular variety.

Then it was all about carbs, carbs are bad.  This lead to stupid diets like Atkins that made you lose weight while you stuck to it but the moment you resumed a moderately normal diet you would blow up to dimensions bigger than before.

Well within these fads there remained a pretty solid health plan, eat less calories and exercise more.  That always works, right?  Well yes, but there is an asterisk.

For decades the established principal in nutrition has been a calorie is a calorie.  Whether you consume that calorie via a milkshake or via a piece of broccoli, it is burned by your body for energy the same way.

Well the wheat belly principal bucks that trend in a big way.  Now people are looking more at how certain types of foods interact with the body’s processes, in this case, whole grains in particular.  Foods that spike insulin production are the ones that are most responsible for fat production.  Well guess what, wheat/whole grains are one of these foods.

A more accurate and effective measurement of a foods fat potential on the body is it’s glycemic value, which is indicative of that food’s effect on insulin production.  I found it shocking that a piece of wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than granulated sugar.

In addition, in many people’s bodies, gluten is treated as an irritant which contributes to a large number of other problems.

If you look at our food chain, it is just bursting at the seams with “whole grain” foods that have been sold as a healthy alternative when the exact opposite may be true.

I have heard/read repeatedly how a gluten free diet (absence of wheat/grain products) is the best thing you can do for yourself if you are trying to clean up your diet/lose weight.  I myself have been quite guilty of jumping on the whole wheat train for the last decade or so.  I am now going to be starting to moderate that as well.

For the most part since Ali moved out I haven’t spent much time moping around and dwelling on it, knowing that in the big picture it won’t help me move ahead.  However at times I will find myself triggered randomly into sad thoughts.

One of those times was this morning when I was getting ready to leave for work.  I glanced at the Peanuts calendar that is hanging on the wall I saw it was still on April.  As I turned the calendar to the current month I thought about how Ali always would get a Peanuts calendar every year and then carefully go through it, marking important dates and accenting them with cute Peanuts stickers that were included.

At that moment, the realization that 2012 was the last year such a calendar would be adorning my wall made me sad.