Non-stop 4

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.