Back running/riding, leaking, bird in hand, mouse in dirt, one down, don’t take no for an answer, Eagles embarrassed

So Saturday morning I got up very early to go do the club run.  As I was leaving my house I saw a pile of roadkill right in front of the driveway.  It looked like an armadillo.  Then, I saw another armadillo along the neighbors fence line.  I can only assume this one and it’s smashed counterpart are the culprit for the many holes in both my and the neighbors property.  I have to admit, I did not feel my normal level of remorse when I saw the dead dillo in the road.  If I wasn’t pressed for time I would have tried to catch the other one.

So I went into the club run with conservative numbers in mind.  My right knee has been troublesome since the KOB vball tourney in mid-August.  I have run one three mile session on the treadmill in the last 6 weeks, that has basically been it.

Taking that into account, I figured it would be smart to only shoot for 4 or 5 miles.  I needed to get my running ramped up for the Tough Mudder but I don’t need to aggravate the injury. So not only did I plan to keep the distance down, I was looking for a rather leisurely pace so I could get my body acclimated again to distance.

Well the slower pace thing didn’t last very long.  My natural instinct to want to pass people took over almost immediately.  I moved up through the large group of runners and then came upon Matt who was running and talking to someone else.  Well Matt accelerated and hooked up with me.  I knew at that point my pre-run intentions were officially scuttled.  I would be running 7 miles and it would be at a decent clip.

Honestly I was kind of surprised that I was able to do 7 miles at a 9 minute mile pace without MAJOR complications. Yea I was tired but not gassed. The knee had some discomfort but not bad pain.

I picked up the dogs on the way home as Ali was going to work.  I had a number of things to address at home.  One of those things was going to be mowing but after another deluge Friday night the land was too swampy to bother.  I decided to just wait until things dry out later this week.

One of the things outside of normal chores I wanted to look at/fix was the battery in the Tacoma.  You may recall that after I replaced the starter I had some mysterious battery charging light issues that went away.  When I was looking into them I noticed the positive battery terminal had a TON of shit accumulated on it, despite the battery only being a year old.  At that time I gave the terminal and connectors a thorough cleaning and applied stuff that is supposed to prevent the corrosion from returning.

Well when I last changed the oil in the Tacoma I noticed the shit had returned in short notice.  I cleaned it off again.  The last time I had the hood open a week ago I noticed the corrosion returned AGAIN.  I also started seeing the battery light flicker off and on last week once again.  Ok I needed to look into this closer.  Under normal circumstances a battery should not corrode the terminals that quickly.

Getting the positive terminal off the battery was tough.  The corrosion had eaten into the nut and bolt that secures it, it was quite tough to break it free.

Well once I got it off I noticed something.  It looked like the positive terminal was loose, there was a crack around it’s base that leads into the battery.  It made sense.  This kind of corrosion is normally caused by leaking battery acid.  It seemed obvious that the acid could leak from the cracked casing.

I threw the battery into the van and took it back to Wal-mart where I bought it to get it replaced for free.  It was actually the second time I had been to the store I love to hate in a few hours.  I stopped there initially to grab more battery cleaning supplies.  While I was there I grabbed a new battery terminal to replace the badly corroded original.

I have to tell you, every time I go to the local Super Wal-mart, I feel like a hypocrite. The store represents everything that is wrong with America, as it sells dirt cheap made in China shit to an all consuming, fat, lazy, american population that stuff the aisles like mindless cattle.

As I walked around the store I found myself involuntarily just shaking my head at the humanity I was observing.  Maybe much like my slow transformation to a meatless diet, I can finally proclaim once and for all I will not buy another item from Wal-mart, ever.

So anyway, I got my new battery and battery terminal installed without issue.  I am hoping that is the end of my battery idiot light.

Saturday night I took my mom out to dinner at a place called the Fish House.  It was maybe 5 minutes away from mom’s place.  The nice thing about eating with mom is she typically wants to eat dinner early, meaning for the most part you miss the core of the dinner crowd.

The restaurant had a very casual feel, it kind of reminded a bit of the Snook Inn with outdoor seating, a seafood heavy menu and a relaxed atmosphere.  Mom and I sat in the covered sunroom style area. The restaurant is right on the water so you have a relaxing view as you wine and dine.  Both mom and I enjoyed our meals.  I would definitely take someone back there.

Over the weekend I had a couple odd wildlife sightings (besides the one alive and one dead armadillo).

When I was weeding the garden I pulled aside a 2×6 that is used to sit on while working.  To my amazement I was looking back at the face of a little mouse that had moved in to one of the raised beds during the last week.

After staring at me for a few moments he slowly backed down into his nest out of sight.  I put the board back in place as it was his makeshift roof.  Lucky for him, I currently have a lot of unused garden real estate until the winter planting season hits.

The other sighting was a small, young bird on the dash of the SSR.  The bird had somehow found itself on the dash of the truck (the top was down) and kept trying to escape through the windshield.

I was able to snap a picture shortly before he realized that flying the opposite direction was the ticket to freedom.

I also had a lot of buzzard visitors that came to dispose of the armadillo carcass.  I had no less than 20 of them hanging around.  These suckers are huge.  I could hear them hopping around the roof of the house while I was inside.

Sunday morning I did my second day of endurance work, riding 12.25 miles at a brisk pace (for me) and following up with 1200 in the pool.  Unlike the last time I swam at the water park in bathtub warm water, the temps were more suitable this time around.

The water park closes for the season next weekend. It sucks they close so early.  The weather here could easily support the place staying open into November but economics dictate otherwise.

The Eagles didn’t play until 4pm so that gave me some extra time to of course get things done.  After paying the bills I set the Scoobas loose on the hard surfaces while I used the carpet cleaner on the rest of the house.  After the dog excrement heavy prior weekend I figured a thorough cleaning would be a good idea.

I asked Ali if she wanted to bring the dogs over to watch the Eagles game which she did.  When she arrived I was on the phone with DirecTv.  When I flipped on the game I noticed that I was only getting the standard def broadcast, not the crystal clear HD that I normally receive.  When I tuned to the HD channels I was receiving a prompt to BUY the HD game for the low, low price of 44.99, WTF?  Well this surely had to be a mistake since everything worked just fine the first two weeks of the season.

The first person I spoke to had very limited power in the system besides being able to send a reset to the receiver.  She was not able to help me so she forwarded me to tech support.  This was another woman that seemed like she knew her stuff.  She joked about my issue and assured me she should be able to get me up and running shortly.  That’s great, except she didn’t.

She was dumbfounded for awhile, not sure why she could not get HD working on my account.  After putting me on hold several times she came back and gave me the very annoying news.  She said that because of my bastardized package, where I just have the Sunday Ticket but no regular DirecTv programming, she said that they no longer can include HD access.

I said “What are you talking about?  This worked 7 days ago and has worked for the last 5 years why would it just stop working?”  All the girl could say was they don’t offer the HD option anymore if I just get Sunday Ticket.

Well I certainly wasn’t going to take this as an answer.  I have had similar run ins with DirecTV when it comes to my package where I was told I couldn’t have certain things where eventually I could, if I pressed hard enough.  So I started the press.

I told the girl this was asinine that I am paying 300 for the Ticket, something they are giving away for free to new subscribers and I can no longer get it in HD.  I reminded her it was 2012, to make HD optional is ridiculous in the first place.  I used my normally successful tactic of asking her to put herself in my shoes.  I have been a customer for 12 years and this is how I am rewarded?

Well regardless of what I was saying, the girl said she is nothing she can do.  She said the option to add HD back into my account “was grayed out” because of my lack of a normal subscription.  Ok well then it was time to turn to common tactic two, “let me speak to your supervisor”.

The woman obviously was not pleased by my request and my belief that I would get further with someone of greater authority.  In fact she told me that although she can connect me with a supervisor, I will be told the exact same thing.  I told her I want to talk to her anyway.  She was an unhappy camper with me but I didn’t care.

So after a few minute wait (at this point the call was over 30 minutes long) I get another woman with a pleasant sounding southern accent.  She asks me what is going on although I certainly assumed she had an idea.  I recapped the scenario, basically no HD now, had HD before, fix it.

Initially the woman did do what the prior support agent indicated, said there was nothing she could do, the option wasn’t available.  Despite hearing this 7 or 8 times now, I persisted.  I told her that as a long time customer I find this very disappointing and if I it wasn’t resolved I would just cancel and be sure to let someone at DirecTV higher up the chain know why I cancelled.

Well that statement apparently got the woman to dig a little deeper.  On digging she saw that I stopped being charged an additional $10 a month for “HD access” in October 2011. Despite it’s removal 11 months ago, I had HD versions of the games until yesterday which she could not explain.  She put me on hold several times trying to figure it out.  Then all of a sudden the HD version of the game popped on the screen, it’s back.

I told her it was now working.  She was glad.  She said the trick was although she could not add HD back to the account, she did have the option to re-activate it.  Evidently that is different in the DirecTv world.  So anyway all was well again although I asked her if I was going to see this problem reoccur when I go to watch next weeks game.  She said it “shouldn’t”.  Of course I know that means it probably will. Oh well at least I had the game back in a format suitable for the 73 inch TV.

As I hung up I put an imaginary notch in my belt as I snickered mentally at the tech that said transferring me to the supervisor would be worthless.  Worthless, my ass.  Not taking no for an answer in certain situations is a valuable lesson.  I was told there was absolutely nothing could be done about the situation, but in there end, there was.

After all that effort to get the game on, it would have been nice if the Eagles put on a performance worth watching.  Unfortunately it was the exact opposite.  The Birds got smashed by the Cardinals 27-6.  Once again the Eagles and Vick had big turnover problems, the most horrific was a fumble at the end of the half when the team was ready to score.  Instead the Cardinals ran the fumble back the length of the field, a huge 14 point swing.

Once again Vick seemed to be getting smacked more plays than he wasn’t.  Some of it was his fault, some of it wasn’t.  He doesn’t seem to respond well at all when the defense dictates a quick throw to beat the rush.  Instead he holds the ball and more often than not makes a bad decision in addition to taking a physical beating.  Unless they find a way to change this trend there is no way Vick is going to make it through the season.

The game was ugly from start to finish.  At least this wasn’t one of those games that we can lament the team “should have won”.  This was a no doubt about it ass kicking.

It had to be sweet revenge for Kevin Kolb whom was traded away after Andy decided to bet the farm on Vick.  Kolb had a very solid game and was clearly the better QB yesterday.  Other than his torrid run in 2010 when he became the starter, Vick’s numbers have been middle of the pack at best.  His performance/numbers are nowhere close to the level his astronomical contract would dictate.