Archives 2012

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.

I was so shocked when I read that Dick Scott’s chief of staff resigned because he is accused of, gasp,  shady dealings when it comes to awarding state contracts.  How in the world could a man as honorable as Scott appoint someone that could do such things?

Ok let me wipe some of the dripping sarcasm off, of course I am not surprised to hear there is corruption in Dick’s administration.  It’s hard to avoid when the guy in charge is the king of slimy deals.

I am still quite confident that Rick Scott is solidly on course to become the worst governor this state has seen in the last 50 years.  This certainly will not be the last story of of corruption that will come from his administration.

Ali stopped by the house last night briefly to drop off the Scooba.  She was out that way for something else.  Tuki was quite excited to see her since Ali is the only one that is allowed to more or less pet him without fear of reprisal.

So Friday I had to haul ass.  I was doing work at our Immokalee branch but I had made arrangements to pick up my mom after work for an early Mother’s Day dinner and celebration.  I got out of the branch later than expected so I hauled ass back to the house, changed, grabbed some extra garden veggies and then hopped in the SSR to get mom.  I gave her a call once I was back out on the road so she knew I would be a little later than expected.  Mom hates if I am even 10 minutes later than I estimate.

I was a bit worried as I pulled out onto the main road with the top down.  There was a huge gray cloud near by that was obviously dumping precipitation.  I estimated with the direction the road curves I should just miss it.  I was mostly right, I drove through some drizzle but nothing serious.

So I get to mom’s place, hand her the veggies and am ready to go.  Mom stops me and asks if I could quickly reassemble her Roomba.  It ran over something which made the brushes pop out.

So we hopped in the SSR and were off.  Mom was concerned about her hair blowing around so I put up the side windows to minimize the wind in the cabin.  Mom definitely enjoys riding around in the SSR, who wouldn’t?

So originally I thought we could go to Watermark Grille, an old favorite of mom’s that we had not visited in awhile.  Mom actually had her own suggestion, PF Changs, another place I had not been to in ages.  Well that was fine with me.

I was sort of surprised when they said it would be a 20-25 minute wait.  I guess since we are firmly out of the dreaded snowbird season I assumed that we wouldn’t have to wait.  It was no big deal, I bought my mom and I something from the bar and we sat in the outside seating area until our buzzer lit up.

We had a nice meal.  We opted for a 39.95 dinner for 2 combo that included soup, a starter, the entre and mini-deserts.  Mom actually wound up getting an entire additional free meal.

As we were sitting there a server came out with a second plate of what mom ordered.  He said her original plate was a bit short on scallops so to compensate they were bringing out another whole serving.  Sweet.

After dinner I took mom over to Trader Joe’s which is part of the same shopping area.  By the time we got there it was after 8.  The parking lot was very empty which was wonderful.  Every time I have been there before it was crowded to the point of annoyance.

Mom and I walked the entire store.  Mom saw some things that were more expensive than she was used to from her years of grocery shopping but she also saw quite a few good deals.  Mom picked up a few items which I paid for along with the stuff I got, I told mom she could consider it part of her Mother’s Day present.

On the ride back to mom’s place she no longer cared about her hair so we put all the windows down.  Her mad scientist hair looked pretty funny.

I gave mom her Mother’s Day card and was on my way home shortly afterward.  It seemed like mom genuinely had a nice time which I was to happy to see.

Saturday morning Ali decided to do a sprint triathlon.  Sadie had an appointment at the vet for a booster for her Lyme Disease vaccination at 9:30 so Ali asked if I could take her.  In addition Ali had 3 or 4 other things she wanted checked out while I had the dogs there.  I also was on call for the upgrade that was being done at our remote branch.

I headed outside a little after 7, hoping to get all of my outside to do’s knocked out before the girls early 9:30 am appointment.  I had to hustle, by the time I came back inside it was almost 8:30.

I picked up the girls in the van and whisked them off to the vet.  Ali evidently did not let the vet know she wanted additional things done, they had only planned to give Sadie her booster shot which isn’t even administered by the vet.  I wound up sitting around for about 15 minutes until the vet was free.

While I was waiting a man and a woman came out of “the room”, the room where both of our cats were both put to sleep.  The couple was upset, the woman, almost uncontrollably so.  I felt bad for them, knowing all too well exactly what they were feeling, it’s horrible.

So the vet got free and took Sadie back first for her work which included the booster and the disgusting job of emptying anal glands.  Sadie was fine going back with the vet staff. Then it was Nicki’s turn.

Nicki HATES the vet.  She was cowering and shaking the entire time.  They had to basically drag her back to the exam room while I waited out front with Sadie.  Nicki had her glands squeezed and they also checked her out for a possible urinary infection.  After they brought Nicki back out they went over both dogs to check for ticks.  Luckily this time they came up clean.

I took the girls back to the house so they could hang with me during the day since Ali would surely be napping for awhile after her triathlon.

The girls were pretty mellow at the house, not doing a lot of running around and playing outside.  To be fair it was pretty much summertime hot and humid outside which probably cut down the fun quota a bit for them.

I attended to various things around the house including cleaning the inside and outside of the windows.  It was pretty amazing how my view of the outside world cleared up dramatically after I was finished.  I like clean windows.

At one point the dogs got another bonus ride in the van as I had to run out to the hardware store to grab a few nuts and lock washers to repair my Kreepy Krawler.

So later in the afternoon I took the girls back to Ali’s place.  Ali and I had planned to go see The Avengers Saturday night.  Part of that plan was to use a Fandango gift card Ali had to make for cheap entertainment, something we both can use due to our new financial realities.

Ali hopped on the Fandango site and tried to first book tickets for the 3D show since it showed at 6:45, a good time.  At the very last step of the process the site balked and said there were no tickets available.  DAMN, we both figured there must be a ton of people buying tickets up.  We then tried to get into the 2D show that was a half hour later, same deal, no tickets available.  Oh well.

I figured we better get up to Coconut Point with plenty of time to spare since apparently there is a huge demand for tickets.  I figured Fandango was only allocated a certain block of tickets for each show.  We left early to make sure we snagged a valuable and apparently hard to get ticket.  I was very surprised the movie would be THAT pre-sold considering it was at Coconut Point, a place that is traditionally very empty.

We got up there about 5:15.  We went right to the ticket booth prior to eating,  since I was worried about getting a ticket.  “Do you have any tickets left for the 6:45 3D show?” I asked nervously.  After a brief pause the clerk said she did, I happily handed her my credit card, whew, we managed to score tickets….

Our dinner was at Johnny Rocket’s, Ali had a free meal coupon that was supposed to be the cherry on our low cost evening out.  We had an average meal.  Our server was a bit awkward.

When we were done eating we still had like 45 minutes until showtime so I suggested we walk around a bit.  We made two geeky stops, the Apple store and Brookstone.  It was just window shopping though, no purchases were made.

So we go back to the theater and head inside.  After being handed our 3D glasses and grabbing our movie junk food, we head into the theater with about 30 minutes to go, nervous that even this early there may be an issue scoring a quality seat.  We turn the corner and look up at the rows of seats.  Not a single body is occupying any of them.  WOW, what luck, I guess we beat the HUGE rush that is surely going to come piling in at any moment.

Well that rush never came.  In total I don’t believe there were even 30 people in the theater.  Why the fck Fandango acted like it was sold out is beyond me.

So anyway, my anticipation for The Avengers was quite high, I was a comic book geek as a child.  I really was looking forward to this movie that ties together several prior super hero films that were all big hits on their own.  I was a bit worried that it would be impossible to adequately split the attention between so many characters in a way that felt right.  Well they did it.

The film was just great, just like everyone says it is.  I really enjoyed it from start to finish.  There were some really funny parts in there, the funniest of all were saved for the Hulk.  A couple of his scenes had me belly laughing, hard.

Ali and I were the only ones that sat through the entire credits to see the bonus/bonus footage.  I have to say, it really isn’t worth the wait but it did make me laugh.

We both agreed the movie was great. A+, see it, in a theater, tonight.

I dropped Ali off at her place and after helping her with walking the dogs, headed home.  I made plans to stop back at her place briefly on Sunday to pick up the Scooba she was borrowing and to help Ali pull the bed apart so she could vacuum under it for any potential tick visitors.

My plan for Sunday was to go do a full sprint tri (and then some).  I hadn’t done a brick, not to mention a 3 event brick in ages.  Other things have just taken priority.

Well originally I planned to throw the bike in the back of my Tacoma since that is what I normally would do.  As I pulled the bike off the wall I looked at the bed of the SSR, hmmm I wonder if I could get my bike in there??

Well it took removal of the front wheel and some careful manipulation but eventually I got my Trek in the back of the SSR, sweet!

The bike ride was the first event I tackled, doing the Livingston Road 12 + mile course.  It felt tough right from the get go, I struggled to maintain my mental minimum speed of 18 mph.

I had a funny moment after the turn around part of the ride.  In front me of was an obviously much older guy, I was making up ground on him very quickly even though I was still only going 18-19 mph.  As I got closer I saw he was wearing a FDNY t-shirt.  I gave the “on the left” warning and followed up with a “good morning” as I whisked by him.  I actually picked up the pace a bit from there to the traffic light on Immokalee Road, keeping my speed mostly between 19-20 mph.

Well I had a red light at Immokalee so I unclipped and stopped.  I was startled when I heard a voice behind me a couple seconds later, it was the old guy!  He said he wanted to thank me for the motivation.  Evidently once I blew past him he picked up his pace, caught me, and was drafting me.  I had no idea.  This guy was firmly into his late 60’s if not scraping the 70’s.  I was impressed he was able to catch up to me, good for him.

He said I was welcome to draft behind me for the next segment since he hitched a ride on me.  I told him it was fine I didn’t need to draft.  Well the old guy took off in front of me and stayed that way until I made the turn on Livingston to head back to the water park.  He was pacing 19-20 the entire way.  I was too gassed at that point to care all that much about passing someone that had 30 additional years on the odometer.  It did kind of put me in my place as a lukewarm average cyclist at the very best.

By the time I got back to the park I was really tired. The idea that I had two more events yet to complete did not fill my heart with joy.  After putting on my sneakers, stripping my shirt, drinking some water and sucking down a Goo I headed off for my planned 4 mile run, two laps around the outside of the park.

The first half mile or so of running after a bike ride is just very uncomfortable, especially if you haven’t done that transition in a long time.  I found myself early on giving myself excuses to only run two miles instead of the four I laid out because I felt crappy.  Eventually I settled in an was able to finish the 4 miles at an unspectacular but ok 9:12 per mile pace.

All that was left was the swim portion.  I went into the water park and hopped in the lap pool.  My first 400 meters was ROUGH.  Even though my time for it wasn’t horrible (8:45), I felt extremely tired.  My triceps were burning, a muscle group I normally don’t associate much with swimming.

However as I continued on the discomfort settled down, I pulled negative splits on my remaining two 400’s, racking up 1200 meters in 26:20, a good number considering the long, long lay off.

As I was swimming I was thinking about my chronic shoulder problems that have gotten worse over the last several months.  It then struck me that the increased shoulder problems coincided with the decrease in my time in the pool.  Swimming is a fantastic all around shoulder exercise.  I am hoping that my return to the pool will mean the departure of my aching shoulders.

After I was done I decided I would skip the pizza and fries water park lunch.  I figured I could grab a PB sandwich when I stopped at Ali’s, my next stop.

When I came rumbling into Ali’s place with the SSR she emerged from the front door in an obvious bad mood.  She evidently was in a tick induced rage after finding a couple more on the carpet, including one that was engorged with blood.

Ali is at her wit’s end with this tick problem and now suspects that her apartment itself could be the source of the little blood sucking bastards.  She was annoyed that apartment management told her they could do a tick treatment inside her place but it would be an extra cost item.  Ali’s reasoning was she paid a premium to have the dogs there and if the prior tenants had a dog (they did), part of what should have been included is complex management doing a full flea/tick treatment of the living space before she moved in.   I agree with her.

Anyway, Ali had not made the headway into her to do list by the time I arrived.  I offered to handle her grocery shopping at Target for her to lighten the load.  I grabbed her list and headed to Target down the street.  In addition to the groceries I was also charged with trying to find some flea/tick treatment for carpet.

I returned with the groceries and tick powder in hand.  Unfortunately after reading the directions it became clear that the treatment would be best performed with the dogs out of the apartment for a day or so.

I ate lunch at Ali’s and then helped her move the bed components around so she could sweep.  I then offered to handle the Dyson to sweep her steps since it is a bit cumbersome to do without some significant upper body strength.  After verifying there was nothing else she needed I headed home.

I had a VERY lazy Sunday afternoon.  I originally figured I would lay down in bed and take a nap.  Instead I laid there and got up to date with Fringe episodes via Hulu. I watched 4 or 5 of them back to back.

My Sunday evening followed much the same pattern.

Last night I stepped into the time machine and tried to get a good portion of the weekend stuff done ahead of time on a Thursday night.  I cleaned the bathrooms, swept the floors, started the laundry and the Scooba all in the span of 75 minutes.

I then headed to the grocery store to knock that out since tonight I will be going out to dinner with my mom.  I kept my streak of sub $60 grocery bills alive with a $48 effort this week.    To be fair I will be spending some more when I take mom to Trader Joe’s.

This weekend I hope to get back to my triathlon training, even if I have no triathlons scheduled. To be honest I enjoy the training more than the racing.  I’d like to do a swim/bike brick on Sunday.  I also plan to get out to see the Avenger’s, can’t wait.

Wow I couldn’t believe the Sixers eliminated the Bulls last night, the biggest upset thus far of the NBA playoffs.  I haven’t watched a Sixers game in half a decade at least.

Nothing substantial today, sorry.

My buddy at work asked me if I could help him do some furniture rearranging.  I headed over to his place after work last night.  He has a beautiful two story home in a very nice community. He has a sectional sofa both downstairs and upstairs.  He wanted to flip flop their location.

The first part of the job was to bring the upstairs unit downstairs.  The pieces of this unit weren’t heavy but one piece that incorporated a chaise lounge was very long.  We wound up putting a couple scratches in his wall which I felt bad about.

I realized that if we would have gone down the steps with the upholstered side towards the outer wall we could have avoided the collateral damage. For the subsequent pieces we used that strategy and it went much better.

My buddy who is in good overall shape was sucking wind and sweating quite a bit from the furniture moving.  He seemed somewhat surprised that I wasn’t breathing hard in the least and my t-shirt was dry.  I reminded him that I have run half marathons.

After moving the stuff we went over to South Street where he bought pizza for my efforts which wasn’t necessary but appreciated.  We hung out and talked for a bit before both heading out to our respective home bases.

So the headlines yesterday were filled with the news that Obama has officially endorsed gay marriage.  I have many thoughts on this, the most important of which is “good”.

Wow, Obama has really done an about face in the past few months in his willingness to get dirty.  Some of my harshest criticism of him was his not grabbing the horns of the mandate he was given when he first took office.  For me he was far too mindful of the kicking and screaming Republicans that were whining about his every move.  I would have much preferred if he basically said , “Listen Mother f’rs, you idiots are the reason the country is teetering on the edge of utter collapse.  I will do whatever the f I feel is best to get us out of this 8 year mess dumb ass George Jr created.”

Instead he tried to play a balancing act that resulted in a lot of compromise that contradicted the edicts he delivered during the campaign.  But let’s deal with exactly what yesterdays headline means.

Hate Obama or love Obama, unless you have nothing but air between your ears, you can’t deny this announcement took a very large set of balls.  By announcing you support gay marriage you instantly alienate the religious zealots that think they have the right to impose their beliefs about marriage onto others.  Of course Obama had little to no shot of getting these people’s votes anyway since many of them will still have you believe he is a socialist Muslim.

He is the first sitting president to ever publicly endorse gay marriage, up until this point the most previous presidents were willing to admit to is a support for civil unions, since that is a way to dip your toe into the issue without getting all wet.  His endorsement in that regard is a big deal.

However in the context of what is actually wrong with this country, for an opinion on gay marriage to be thrown about as an actual campaign issue is pretty disappointing.  I mean to me, it has always been a no brainer.  If two men or two women want to get married, great, who cares?  If being married leads to happiness in their lives why would I want to try to derail that?  It is utter lunacy.

Personally I have a feeling that years from now we will look back on the whole gay marriage debate in a similar way as we now look at allowing women to vote or segregation. Today those things seem so archaic, so ignorant, yet at that time there was a huge resistance to allowing those freedoms.  Hopefully once again history will prove more rational minds can take a hold on this issue as the years pass.

I heard certain people criticize the announcement since in the past Obama did not endorse gay marriage, calling him a dreaded, “flip flopper”.  I always lol at people that view changing your mind as a bad thing.  If the end result is a more progressive, advanced and evolved society then I don’t really care the road traveled to arrive at that decision.

It’s hard to say if this will hurt or help Obama in the big re-election picture.  It puts Mitt in perhaps a role he really would not rather play as the anti-gay candidate.

I have been feeling a bit down in the dumps this week.  To be expected of course but still not pleasant.  I have some maca root on the way.

Not much to report regarding last evening, I did my mini-workout when I got home which included crunches, static wall hand stand hold and elbow planche.  My dinner was some meatloaf mom kept for me and steamed broccoli from the garden.  After some WoW I watched some more Boardwalk Empire and the latest episode of Game of Thrones.  Both shows are very good in different ways.

I find it funny that my most favorite character on GoT is the dwarf.  This is the first show I can recall that has an adult little person in it as one of the lead roles.  The guy is damn good, I recognized him from Elf (dwarf child book author).

I forgot to mention that on Sunday I swapped out the ignition switch on my SSR.  Up until mid-model year of 2005, a defective version of this switch was put in the trucks.  The failure of these switches can cause any number of problems.  The general consensus is even if you haven’t had a problem yet, if your truck has one of the old switches in it, you should replace it anyway. So that is what I did.

Dicktator from SSRFantatics made a very good step by step how to on the procedure. Here is a link to a PDF version of the instructions that I made.  I decided to video tape the switch swap.  Other than my  successful, 60,000 view Tough Mudder video, my automotive maintenance videos are the most popular on my YouTube channel.

The most difficult part of the swap out was removing and re-installing the plastic cover that covers the lower half of the steering column.  I struggled quite a bit getting it off and on. It did not go back together cleanly, I have a small gap along the seam.  I think I may have damaged a tab when I pulled it off.

I also had the key, which is supposed to be in the RUN position for the entire procedure, in the wrong spot.  As a result when I first tested the switch everything was off by one click.  When I turned the truck off  it acted like the key was in the accessory position.  I fixed this by simply dropping the new switch down, putting the key in the proper run position and then clicking the switch back in place.

Anyway, if you are looking for the only known how to video on SSR ignition switch replacement, look no further.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FY7LuN_Z5I

So on Friday night the girls and I had a good night, I watched some Survivor while eating half of my $5 Papa John’s pizza. Hey $5 for 2 meals is hard to beat.  I also tried to get a jump on the weekend by going outside and getting the weeding done. I harvested a bunch from the garden including onions, leeks, tomatoes, and tons of broccoli.

On Saturday morning I told mom I wanted to bring the girls with to drop off the veggie surplus to her.  She was happy to both see the girls and relieve me of some of the excess harvest.

When I was mentally laying out the weekend I had planned on taking the girls to the dog beach sometime Saturday afternoon.  However I realized that mom’s place was over halfway there, it would be stupid and expensive gas-wise to drive all the way back home only to repeat the trip later on in the day.  The only problem was I hadn’t brought anything with me. I asked mom if I could borrow a couple towels and a bowl for water, that should cover it.

I made arrangements with mom to do an early Mother’s Day celebration this upcoming Friday.  I told her I would pick her up after work in the SSR, take her to dinner and then go to Trader Joe’s since she hasn’t been there yet.  She seemed to be into it.

So after a brief stay we pulled back out, destination, dog beach.

I hadn’t been to the dog beach in quite a long time.  We arrived around 9AM.  I had looked at the tide tables which showed high tide would hit around 11:30.  When high tide hits Lover’s Key there is basically no dry land left.

The dogs were instantly very excited when they saw the other dogs coming and leaving.  As soon as we hit the off leash area they were off and exploring, happily splashing in the water.  Even though both dogs absolutely want no part of swimming in the pool, they both seem to love wading into the gulf at the beach.  I set my flip flops and the dog leashes by a bush near the beach and headed up towards the other dogs.

Despite the relatively early time of day, there were a bunch of people there with their furry family members.  I bet there were at least 25 dogs there.  As we walked up the beach Nicki and Sadie interacted briefly with a number of dogs, exchanging quick sniff down sessions.

We headed up towards the north end of the beach since it was the least crowded.  There was a couple up at that end with their Golden Retriever named Rookie.  I talked to them off and on as I waded out into the water with the girls.

Like I mentioned earlier, I hadn’t originally planned to go to the dog beach at this time so I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit.  I did what I could to keep my cargo shorts dry at first but I soon realized it was a waste of time.

Since the tide was coming in there was quite a current in certain areas.  If I waded out into them the dogs would almost swim in place.  I tried to not stay in the deeper water too long so the girls wouldn’t get really tired from the swimming, something they certainly are not accustomed to.

The dogs were having a great time, it’s so cute how Nicki and Sadie for the most part stayed side by side as they swam around.  Sadie has a lower swimming profile than Nicki, just barely keeping her nose out of the water.  Nicki tries to lift her head up as she paddles around.

At one point Rob and Rookie tried to swim out towards an island that was maybe 50 yards away.  I was surprised that Sadie swam off to follow them with Nicki behind her.  Well the current was just too strong for Rob and Rookie so they turned around.  I called Sadie and Nicki back.  I was worried for a moment that I would have to wade out and assist them because of the current but both of them managed to get back to me intact.

I was at the beach for over an hour and I could have probably stayed another hour if it was up to the dogs.  I didn’t want to overdo it, I knew as is they were going to be exhausted.  Actually I was lucky to leave when I did.  By the time I got back to the spot where my flip flops and dog leashes were they were in the water.  If I waited much longer I would have been going home barefoot.

I toweled off the girls a bit but I didn’t worry about it much since I had the van.  I knew I would have to clean the bedding and vacuum it out regardless after the trip. As expected on the ride home the dogs were both passed out cold in the bed.  When we got back to the house neither of them were in any hurry to get out of the van.

If you want to see all the pictures I took at the dog beach, you can see them here.  There are some real cute ones in there.

Saturday afternoon my major chore was to get the grass mowed.  Typically this time of year mowing is not happening as we are in the midst of the longest and driest part of the year. However the past few weeks we have seen more rain than normal, necessitating the tractor time.

I decided to skip a number of my cleaning chores like vacuuming and Scoobaing the tile since I had the dogs.  I figured it would make more sense to worry about that stuff after they left.

Later on Saturday afternoon I headed down to the running store to pick up the paper entries that were received for Sunday’s race.  I decided to hop in the SSR with a laptop in the passenger seat and go down about an hour before the store closed.  I figured I could set up my laptop next door in the outdoor seating area of Friday’s and put the entries in on the spot while drinking a beer.

That was exactly what I did.  It made data entry enjoyable as I downed a couple Miller Lite’s.  There were less than 25 paper entries so it didn’t take me very long.  It was a beautiful day to drive the SSR around.  As I tooled around with my Linkin Park Pandora channel blaring on the stereo it made me forget the huge wad of cash I spent on the truck a couple weeks ago.  I was just glad to be back out on the road with it.  It’s just so much damn fun to drive.

Sunday morning I timed the race.  Thankfully the same guy that helped me at the last race helped me again since Ali was out of town, filling in on data entry duty.  I have tried to show a couple people some of the aspects of timing a race but none of them were all that suited for it.  This guy, since he already times cross country events has the aptitude needed for the job.  It is a real help having him around.

I had some strange issues with timing for this race.  First I had a bizarre issue where the chip start times appeared to be incomplete.  All the times I had appeared to from before the actual start of the race. After the race I connected to the timing box in a different manner and was able to retrieve the start times which were correct.

Then late in the race there was a 5 minute block of times that went MIA.  I recovered them by doing a manual import of the times from a file export.  I am not quite sure what caused either issue but hopefully it was a one time thing.

I got out of there early, a little after 9am.  I wanted to get home to let the girls out.

Early in the afternoon I headed outside to try hard mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge.  I came out of it with a number a little less than I hoped for and a ripped up right hand to boot.  Pull ups will be curtailed for awhile I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qv39bg_32E

If any of you don’t like spoliers, you may consider this a spolier, although I think the movie pretty much spoils itself.

On Sunday I decided to get around to watching Transformers 3 which has been sitting in a Netflix envelope for a week or two.  I saw the first two movies and was lukewarm about both however I decided to check out the third installment.  Well let me cover what I DID like about the movie.

The girl they got to replace Megan Fox is hot.  Lots of things blow up. I like the cars.  That’s about it.

To me, over all, this is one of the silliest movies I ever saw.

It was just filled with so much stupidity.  The dialogue was very odd.  Right in the middle of  high action/psuedo serious scenes they would be injecting one liners which felt totally log jammed in.  I laughed not because the lines were funny as much as they were just stupidly placed.

If I would actually try to write out a summary of the plot it would probably generate more laughs.

The funniest part of all to me was how they decided to turn Optimus Prime into a cross between Dirty Harry and Rambo.  All of a sudden the head good guy robot was no longer the, violence is the last resort, respected leader of the Autobots.  He was now the eye for an eye, “we will kill them all” bloodthirsty, tractor trailer from hell, bad ass.

When he ripped the head and spine out of Megatron, Predator style, near the end of the movie I almost choked on my water laughing.  I mean it was just so silly.  It was almost as silly as Megan Fox’s replacement goading Megatron into saving Optimus by name calling,  telling Megatron he was Sentinel Prime’s bitch.

The movie was just filled with ridiculous moment after ridiculous moment.  Thankfully, I think this may be the last of the series since Megatron is now dead.  I can only imagine how much money they spent to produce this turd.  It actually made more than a billion dollars worldwide somehow. I’ll give it a C based on impressive special effects alone.

My Monday was quite busy at work since I was at a remote branch most of the day squashing bugs after their computers were upgraded over the weekend.

Last night I picked up Ali at the airport with the dogs in the party van after her trip to PA to celebrate her Dad’s birthday.  She gave me a brief rundown of the trip on the way home. Somehow I totally forgot to ask her the details of her picture doing the yoga warrior pose across the seats of the cockpit of her plane.

I suggested she call ahead for a pizza that we could pick up for dinner since neither of us ate.

We had the pizza while watching the finale of Biggest Loser.  The winner lost an amazing 199 pounds.  I didn’t get home until close to 9.

As always I feel a bit sad when I say goodbye to the girls.  I was extra sad when I got home and saw Sadie left her squeaky bunny on the bed for me.

I had a nice night at home with the dogs last night.  They seem to have no issue bouncing back and forth between their dual homes, they seem to be comfortable in either.  When I picked them up at Ali’s place they were quite excited to walk on the leash around the lakes and they were equally excited when they got out to the backyard of the house, able to run around unencumbered.

I tried to get a jump start on my weekend work by doing the laundry and cleaning Tuki’s cage.  When it comes to doing laundry I buck the traditional guidelines of separating lights and darks. I just throw it all together, set it to speed wash and everything comes out just fine.  Thus far I have not had any issues with my simplified technique.

Ali on the other hand is the laundry separation queen.  Not only does she break apart darks from whites, she breaks the darks into two different shades of dark.  She also does the same deal for delicate items, hence why the laundry center has 6 baskets in it.  Well I only use one, two if there is overflow.

This weekend will busy between house chores, dog baths, a few automotive maintenance items and timing a race Sunday morning.  Plus I surely will take the time to go do something fun with the girls as well.

Ali’s flight to PA yesterday had a 90 minute delay at the gate.  I was very surprised when I saw this picture posted on her FB feed.  It is a picture of Ali doing the yoga warrior pose across the seats in the cockpit in the plane.  When I saw it, I was like, what the fck?

Another woman in the running club recently posted a picture of her doing a plank across the seats of another plane, so I suppose that is where the idea originated from.  I was just surprised that Ali would entertain the stunt, something I doubt I could have talked her into doing when we were together.  I am equally surprised that pilots are apparently ok with using cockpits as make shift yoga studios.

Maybe it was Ali just stepping out of the box, doing something she normally would not.  If so, bravo.

Ali had an event to go to after work last night.  She was going to roll the dice with the dogs, hoping they could hold it a couple extra hours.  I told her I would just stop by after work and let them out.

Of course the girls were very surprised and happy to see me.  I immediately leashed them up and took them outside.  I got to experience some of the fun Ali does each day when each dog took turns taking dumps.

Trying to hold two extend a leashes and pick up piles of dog shit requires some coordination.  Thankfully the girls seem to be starting to understand that when one of them dumps that is a sign that the other can’t go walking away until the clean up process completes.

When we got back I figured I might as well make their supper as well instead of making them wait a few more hours for it.  Both of them ate, Sadie doing so only once I sat down next to her food stand to “protect” her.  Yes she has some sort of dog dinner eating anxiety.

After they were finished I opened up the door to the porch and hung out there with them for a little while since I know they enjoy it.  Ali is thinking about the possibility of putting a different door there so the dogs could go out onto the patio themselves.  I am not sure if she would be allowed to do that or not since it would change the exterior appearance of her unit in a way that would stand out.

I told the dogs I would see them soon and headed out.

When we first announced our separation there was a lot of communication from both our friends and family offering up their support and well wishes.  When I was talking to Ali last weekend we commented that basically after that initial surge there has been a black hole of communication.

I told her that we really shouldn’t be surprised, it is no different than we would have acted if we heard someone split up.  You offer your support but you don’t call up every day to see how that person is doing.  Hell, it would get downright annoying after awhile.

Plus the simple fact is people are busy with their own lives.  Very few have such an empty plate that they can spend a lot of time focusing on the personal issues of others.

One thing that has been a bit weird was several times both Ali and I have heard different people inferring she was the initiator of the split.  Neither of us are quite sure where that got started or if it is just an assumption since I am such a monumental pain in the ass.