Gimpy, rainy, lazy, Diablo dead

I decided to skip the club run Saturday morning, instead deciding I would roll some running into my Sunday brick.  I wanted to get an early start on the house chores.

As I was out front weeding I heard the gate of Thina’s house open followed a few seconds later by seeing something moving towards me out of my peripheral vision.  I glance up and see Thina sprinting towards me, almost like it was a jailbreak, which unfortunately for her, it probably was.

She runs to my side and immediately flops down, wanting me to rub her belly which of course I do.  I hear her dumb ass owner calling for her which of course she ignores.  I petted her for a few moments and told her she was a good girl.  I then scooped her up and carried her over to Jose (or whatever his name is).  I felt awful handing her over. Evidently they were going somewhere and they actually took Thina with, putting her in the back of the SUV.

So after I got my first round of chores done I went to go pick up the girls since Ali was going to be working.

This past week Ali has obtained pet insurance for both of the dogs.  I agreed to help split the cost of the insurance with her, it isn’t cheap.  The thought process is with Nicki getting older and us wanting to do everything possible to make sure she is with us as long as possible, surprise vet bills could be more and more frequent. Anyone that has pets knows that animal health care can be nearly as expensive as their human counterparts.

This insurance will allow Ali to budget in a set amount for the dogs health care each and every month.  The policy is a zero deductible plan.  Originally Ali had obtained a 200 dollar deductible policy but I convinced her that the extra monthly cost for zero deductible would probably work out better in the long run.

One of our fears is with Nicki and joint problems.  I have noticed in the past month or so that she has seemed increasingly gimpy.  I said to Ali that I suspect the two flights of stairs at her place could be contributing to the issue.  Labs are very prone to joint/hip problems.

When Nicki walks lately it is a very slow pace and she will not engage in anything beyond a few steps of jogging, even when Sadie wants to play.  I said something to Ali about trying to carry Nicki up and down her steps but it would be too dangerous for Ali to do so.  The last thing I need is for both of them to take a fall down the stairs.

It actually seems like one of the more painful things for Nicki is simply getting up.  She didn’t even want to stand up in the front seat of the van when I put the window down, something she normally will never pass up.  When we got to the house I actually lifted her out of the passenger seat down to the ground to make it easier for her.

I am going to have the dogs for almost an entire week when Ali leaves for PA later this week.  I will be curious to see if a week without steps improves Nicki’s condition.

I still had to mow the grass.  It was the first time mowing with the new blades.  There was a definite difference, the cut was much more even and efficient.  When you put new blades on the tractor you want to keep them pristine as possible for as long as you can.  Well that time period was very short as I inadvertently chopped up a piece of loose cement that was by the driveway.

So I finished up just as it looked like it was going to start raining.  I go inside and smell the unmistakable stench of dog shit, oh no…..  I knew it was somewhere in the house, I just had to track it down.  My search ended in the doorway of the guest bedroom.  From observation and dog reaction, I am 90% sure it was Nicki’s doing.

It made no sense to me, why would she shit in the house?  They both went for Ali earlier in the day and I had them outside a couple times at the house before I started mowing.  Nicki may have been in the house for 90 minutes.  I scolded Nicki, well actually I just talked to her in my disappointed voice as she laid in her dog bed giving me sad eyes.  I don’t get what that was about.  Hopefully we aren’t starting a new trend for their stay at the house later this week.

By later in the afternoon Saturday I basically had everything done that was going to get done around the house.  I had the rest of the weekend to myself, a feeling I always like, not that I had any exciting plans for that time.

One of the things I did was finally finish normal mode of Diablo 3.  I had stopped playing the game, and any games for that matter, for a couple weeks but a few days ago I picked it back up.  The A/V experience in Diablo 3 is some of the best I have ever experienced in gaming.  Unfortunately despite that, it is hard to ignore the repetitiveness of the actual game experience.

When you “beat” the game, your reward is to do it all over again at a harder difficulty level.   I don’t think I’ll do that but I might try to get a couple other classes to the end of normal mode.

Sunday morning I was out the door early to do a full brick of riding, running and swimming.  I threw my bike and other gear in the back of the SSR and took off.  My hope was after the training I could just hang out at the water park for awhile and relax.

On the last leg of my ride I saw Christy and Ali outside Christy’s apartment complex so I stopped, I knew Christy was supposed to run part of Ali’s 14 mile training run with her.  I found out Christy was done with her part but Ali still had almost 7 miles to go yet.  Ali asked if I wanted to do the running segment of my brick with her.  I said that was fine, I had about 10 minutes to go on the ride, she could meet me at the park.

We took off for what was about 5 miles for me.  The run was just not fun, by this time of day it felt oppressively warm and humid, even at 9 am.  My skin was pouring sweat by the gallon.  The run was an out and back.  On the way back right before a water stop Ali tripped and fell.  Luckily I think her slippery, sweaty skin helped her avoid major road/sidewalk rash although she did have marks on her left knee, hand and shoulder.

By this point she was exhausted and said she had to rest for a few minutes.  She told me I should just go.  At first I hung around for a bit but after Ali assured me she was fine I headed off solo for the last mile and a half.  I was glad to be done, it was so damn warm.

I then hopped in the pool for 1200 yards of swimming.  I hurt my left shoulder late last week at the gym.  The injury made swimming a bit difficult but I managed to get the laps in, albeit slower than I normally would.

My idea of just hanging out at the water park afterward was short lived.  I only hung around for maybe an hour before the skies looked like they were ready to open up.  It wasn’t all that fun to just sit there by myself anyway.  I think the water park is one of those things best experienced with somebody else, unless you are just swimming laps.

On the drive home the rain started and continued for the majority of the afternoon.  It felt like the weather absolutely sucked any motivation out of me.  Beyond putting chlorine in the pool, I did absolutely no chores on Sunday.  Instead I went into total lazy mode, buzzing through some shows on my Tivo as well as getting caught up with Falling Skies and working towards the end of season four of 24.  Despite completing my informal triathlon that morning, the afternoon and evening of laziness made me feel like I accomplished little for the day overall.

For obvious reasons I don’t detail any of my post split dating experiences here.  I certainly would like to at times.  Not because it is filled with any sort of tremendous success, just the opposite really.  It would make for some interesting/funny reading for sure.  At this point I just throw it all into the rather large and growing “learning experience” barrel.