Archives 2012

So yesterday I claimed I was 90% sure that my cleaning of the IAC valve on my Tacoma was going to take care of my warm starting problems once and for all.  Well I guess I am one of the 10% after all.  When leaving the gym yesterday I experienced the same issue and once again when I left early to go home  to meet the mattress delivery guys.

As you can imagine I was discouraged that the effort I put into cleaning the IAC appears to have been for naught.  My next plan is to disconnect the battery cable for an extended period of time to allow the engine computer to totally reset.  There is a remote chance that could work.

After that I could look at buying a replacement IAC which will run about $200.  There is a chance that the solenoid that actually opens and closes the valve (part of the IAC) is defective.  Of course if I spend the time and money on a new IAC and it still doesn’t fix the issue my frustration factor will be multiplied several times over. Either way I will wait till our tax refund hits to buy more parts for it.

Last night I seemed to arrive at a firm decision to perform the radio upgrade on the SSR myself.  The self doubt I was harboring about the project just felt less important than saving the money and the satisfaction of doing the job myself.  When you face something you don’t feel comfortable doing, 9 times out of 10 that is the signal that is exactly what you should be doing.  That is how you grow and learn.

So after repeated calls to the shipping location I finally got a delivery window of between 3PM and 7PM.  When I got home from work I got busy disassembling the old bed and dragging it out to the dining room, hoping the delivery service also included removing the old bedding. (I wasn’t sure)  It was a bit of a chore lugging the king size mattress around.  I also figured it would be nice to put clean sheets on a brand new bed so I threw the sheets in the wash.

I was feeling sort of blah since the gym where a three mile run on the treadmill after doing my GUTS routine really wore me out.  The idea of juicing seemed like entirely too much work.  I was very close to just throwing a Lean Cuisine meal in the microwave.  I decided to just suck it up and make the juice, adding beets to the mix.  Beets will dominate the color of any juice and their sweetness helps counteract stuff like spinach, celery, tomato and broccoli.  Ali liked the juice as well, she is a beets fan.

Well it was now 6:45 and still no delivery guy.  I called and left a message.  He called back a few minutes later and said they should be at our place in 20-30 minutes, we were the last stop of the day.

The truck arrived a few minutes before Ali got home from track practice.  It was good Ali got there so she could try to keep the dogs occupied.  They were both very interested in the delivery guys and were getting in the way.

The delivery guys were happy that I had everything totally ready to go.  All they had to do was drop the box springs and mattress on to the bed frame and they were done.  Evidently most people expect them to do more of the tear down.

The two guys seemed nice enough, especially considering they are based out of the Miami area.  They said they had to drive back across the state and then report to work at 6:30 AM to head towards the Keys today. I felt bad for them and had no issue handing them a $20 bill for their efforts, especially since they took the old bedding as well.

The first thing Ali and I noticed was the bed height was now significantly lower than it was with the old pillow top mattress.  I bet we are a good 6-8 inches closer to the floor which is fine, it makes it easier for the dogs to get on and off of.

This mattress was listed as a “firm” ,a dramatic departure from our old puffy mattress.  I had some worries about buying a mattress without ever laying on it, especially when changing the type of mattress.  Well the new mattress is dramatically harder than what we slept on for the last 7-8 years but with the two mattress toppers we have it took the edge off.

Ali and I both woke up this morning with no reported problems sleeping.  Ali, whom often woke up with a sore back because of the bowled out shape our old mattress developed, said she had absolutely no discomfort last night and felt great.

Yesterday I got a message from Autozone that my IAC gasket was in.  I was surprised because I was told it wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday.  I had to laugh out loud at the Vonage text translation of the voice mail. Here is what it thought it heard.   “This is Roy. I am calling from outdoor song to let you know about the car payment. Thank you”

I was worried when I stopped at Autozone on the way home and the guy walked out with a huge cardboard envelope that was at least a 2 foot square.  The part I ordered was all of 3 inches .  After he ripped open the cardboard and another smaller envelope inside I was relieved to see that the gasket was indeed what I needed.

When I got home I headed right out to the garage to try to put everything back together before I ran out of day light.  The new gasket fit exactly as it should.  Reassembling the throttle body and reattaching it to the truck went smoothly.  The truck fired right up although the real test is when I do my first warm start. I am 90% sure that I have squashed the problem.

I made a video outlining the steps I took to clean the IAC since I was unable to find any Tacoma IAC cleaning videos going into the project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-71hfgaxzc

So we are supposed to receive our new bed today.  Last week I was contacted by the company responsible for the delivery and set things up.  I was told the night before I would be receiving a call giving me a 4 hour delivery window.  Well I received no call.  I called and left a message, hoping someone calls me back to let me know when I can expect someone to show up.  I wouldn’t be surprised if my notice is the call that says “we are at your front door and no one is home”.  Oh well, I guess they will be waiting if that is the case.

Yesterday when I was using StumbleUpon I was directed to a pretty cool job search sight, simplyhired.com.  The site aggregates job listings across many sources and presents them in an easy to use interface.  Of course I did a few searches based on mom’s address and came back with a few interesting hits that I sent to her.

Last week a copy of Newsweek showed up in our mailbox with my name and address on it.  I was baffled.  I definitely did not subscribe to the weekly periodical that is typically found in doctor waiting rooms.   Hell the only subscription I have anymore is Wired and the paper version typically goes right in the recycle bin since I can read the enhanced electronic version on my Kindle Fire (or Ipad).

Maybe someone got a free subscription deal and put my name down as a joke.  Some FB friends said they too have started receiving magazines they didn’t order and heard it is a gimmick publishers have been trying to boost subscriptions.  Well I can assure you, it won’t work in this case.

I saw Rick “Anal Fluid” Santorum won three primaries, well not really, they were more like straw polls since no delegates were decided based on the results.  The election process is so needlessly complicated and stupid.  Anyway grats to the republican voters of Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri for firmly establishing that you are indeed first class ass hats.

In a story near and dear to Rick’s heart, since he thinks gayness can be cured and is somewhat similar to bestiality,  a California court ruled it was illegal for voters to overturn the gay marriage right (Prop 8). I think this is a great thing but of course Rick doesn’t or the religious marriage police.  I have yet to hear one logical explanation of how allowing two men or women to marry each other affects anybody else in a negative manner whatsoever.  Maybe that is because there is no logical explanation.

Last night we got our first taste of our home grown asparagus, the spears are still rather small at this point but that is because the plant is only going on it’s second year.  It tasted like asparagus, imagine that. 🙂

Yesterday we got a letter from our home owner’s insurance.  The letter said that they were contracting a company to redo the windstorm inspection on our home.

Several years ago as an effort to give homeowners some relief from outrageous insurance costs, the state sponsored free surveys of people’s homes to determine their ability to withstand hurricane force winds.  If your home met certain requirements after the survey you qualified for a discounted rate on your homeowner’s insurance.  Our house didn’t qualify for the top end of the discount level but it did qualify for some discount.

Well of course this letter is a huge red flag for me.  The insurance company is paying someone to reinspect homes because they don’t trust the inspection done by the state.  Of course it is quite easy to see the true intent.  They want these paid mercenaries to disavow the original inspections so the insurance company can in turn charge a higher rate.

This pisses me off, greatly.  I plan to be calling my agent today to raise hell about this.  I am generally displeased with what we are paying for insurance, especially car insurance.  We carry both home and car insurance under Allstate for some mysterious “umbrella discount” which seems to be vaporware in real dollars and cents.

If this new inspection results in a significant change in my home owner insurance I will be actively seeking alternatives.

I had another frustrating phone conversation with mom late yesterday afternoon.  She places a disproportionate amount of weight in things that don’t merit it and precious little in things that are crucial to her well being. Yes the old adage of “you can’t help someone that doesn’t want to help themselves” has come into play here for a long, long time.  However I think I would be skirting my responsibilities to just stand by like an innocent, ignorant bystander and watch it continue without trying to do something, anything to make her see the light. Of course mom hates when I point out the issues with her decision making and typically will try to just exit the conversation instead of talking about it.

Mom has told me in the past she has done a lot of feeling sorry for herself since she was laid off and she realized that has to change.  Well her attitude yesterday had no hints of change, just a stuck in granite resolution that she is helpless to make things better.

So I did indeed call Sirius on Friday and told them I was ready to cancel my subscription after seeing the latest rate increase.  The woman with an Indian accent wasted no time offering to renew my subscription minus the price increase.  Well that came way too easily, it was obvious there was more savings available.  I told her thanks but no thanks. I told her how the past few years I was on the fence if I wanted to renew at all since the only reason I have Sirius is for Howard Stern and he now only does three live shows a week and takes 2-3 months off a year on top of that.

Well this opened us up to the level 2 discount which is half price on the base subscription.  I am pretty sure I could have pushed for more like a discount on the online streaming portion or the bullshit music royalty fees but I called it as good enough and told the woman I guess I’ll renew.  Of course when next year rolls around the same song and dance will be repeated.

Originally the plan for Saturday morning was to run 10 miles at the normal club group run.  Ali got a message from Michelle saying she was going to be running around her neighborhood instead with a friend of hers.  She invited us to join them although she planned to only run 7 miles.  Friday afternoon my knees were a little painful after running on the treadmill Thursday, the idea of putting in less miles made more sense to me.

So we met up with Michelle and her friend whom also happens to be named Michelle.  We had a solid run, Michelle number two was obviously a good runner.  Ali was struggling a bit because she was starting to feel the onset of illness.  A couple times she scolded me because I dropped back to run with her, saying she doesn’t want me to slow down to run with her.  I told her it was no big deal and ran most of the last couple miles with her a little behind the two Michelle’s.

When we were done it struck me that it was ironic that running 7 miles is now viewed as a compromise for me where as for the first 42 years of my life 6 miles was a bucket list item.

After a well deserved stop at Dunkin Donuts the rest of my Saturday was non-stop work save the 40 minute Kitchen Nightmare show I watched over lunch.  Ali had busted ass on Friday getting a lot of the house work done which was nice.  After I finished up what was left to do I headed outside to start on the long awaited Tacoma idle air control valve cleaning project. Through various internet research I had determined this was the reason I was experiencing warm start problems with the truck where the engine sputters and barely wants to keep running.

Before heading out I located the forum post I found earlier that had pictures of another person taking his IAC off.  I reviewed the pictures to give me a bit of a visual road map.

The IAC is attached to the throttle body.  To clean it you need to remove the throttle body before you can remove the IAC.  Removing the throttle body wasn’t too bad.  After removing the intake hose and the cables attached to the linkage you had four bolts to remove to get the throttle body off.

Once you slide the throttle body off I got better access to the two coolant hoses on the bottom and was able to slip them off, allowing the throttle body to be completely removed.

I then moved to the work bench in the garage.  The IAC is attached to the throttle body with four brass screws.  I read several warnings about the potential pitfall these screws presented, evidently they are very easy to strip.  One recommendation I read to avoid this was to utilize an impact screwdriver, a tool I never used before.

An impact screwdriver is used in combination with a hammer.  Basically you strike the end of it.  The impact is transferred to sudden rotational energy which will break loose most frozen screws without damaging them.

Having never used the tool before it took some trial and error.  I practiced on a wood screw that was in the peg board.  I was quite pleased that the tool worked as advertised on the IAC screws.  All four of them broke loose with absolutely no problem.

Once I got the valve off the throttle body it confirmed what I suspected.  The valve was cruddy and covered in carbon deposits.  These deposits cause the valve to stick, causing the bad idle when things are warm.

So I got busy with the carb cleaner, giving the IAC a thorough bath in addition to using a small brush to help remove the deposits.  The ports are pretty small so it took some patience to get it cleaned up.  While I was at it I cleaned out the throttle body, cleaning areas I was unable to reach with it attached to the engine.

I also removed the solenoid on the side of the IAC so I was able to rotate the valve to make sure it was both clean and rotated without obstruction.  The solenoid was attached with two screws that had a rubber plug on top of them.  When I reattached the solenoid I replaced the rubber plugs with some silicone caulk I had hanging around.

So all that was left to do was put everything back together.  I also read on the internet that they highly recommend you replace the rubber gasket between the IAC and throttle body as part of the process to make sure there aren’t any vacuum leaks when it is put back together.  I prepared for this as well, ordering not one, but two of these gaskets, just in case I messed one up somehow.

So I pull out one of the new gaskets and immediately notice it is not even close to the right size/shape.  Well that is annoying, I know I was very careful selecting it online when I ordered it.  Well that is just great.

So I figure that I would just put the old gasket back on, as far as I could tell it seemed to be in decent shape.  So I lay the gasket into the slotted outline for it in the throttle body however it doesn’t want to quite fit.  I would press it into the slot on the bottom but then it would not quite line up at the top.  If I lined it up at the top the bottom would fall out.  WTF?

I f’d around with the gasket for a solid 15 minutes but regardless of what I did it would not seat itself correctly.  I thought this was odd since the gasket has resided in that slot for the last 13 years or so.  My only theory was when I pulled the gasket off I did not exercise much care in doing so, grabbing it by a corner and yanking since I thought I had brand new replacements. Perhaps the yank stretched the old gasket just enough that it no longer fit correctly.

Great. So I head inside to see if by some miracle I can secure a replacement gasket.  A quick check online revealed it was a special order item from Autozone which would take a few days to get. I then called up both local Toyota dealerships in the hope they may stock the little rubber part.  I struck out both times, they would have to order it as well.

I was frustrated.  I called up Autozone and had them order the part.  My order came out to $1.69. I was pissed my repair was derailed by a $2 part.  I told Ali the truck would be out of commission for a few days, at least I have two other vehicles that could fill the transportation void, the party van and the SSR.

If you want to see all of the pictures I took during the IAC project you can go here.  I also shot some video of the work and plan to utilize it to create the first YouTube 99 Tacoma IAC cleaning documentary.

After the Toyota work I turned my attention to the SSR.  It was still dirty from it’s unintended drive in the rain two Fridays ago.  I gave the truck a thorough bath both inside and out.  I snapped a pic after I was done.

So now that it was clean I wanted to finally install the “bling” I bought a few weeks back.  First I installed the chrome water pump pulley cover which is intended to cover up the only stand out ugly item in the engine compartment.  The stock pulley has a large threaded end that gets rusty.

The recommended install procedure including brushing the threads to remove the rust and then coating the threads with Vaseline.  Ali snickered when I came inside asking for vaseline to use on the SSR.

Installing the cover went ok although I was annoyed that some of the chrome flaked off on the big nut when I was tightening it with a pliers.  I had the jaws wrapped up in tape but evidently not thick enough, a couple teeth poked few and must have caused the damage.  Oh well the cover still looks decent.

Next I turned attention to my new license plate area chrome cover, the same one that Ali rolled her eyes at when I showed it to her.  To be honest ever since Ali ‘s reaction I have felt less enthused about my rear bling but I was certainly going to install it regardless.

The cover comes with red plastic inserts that can be cut as needed to cover the 3 cut out logos on either side of the cover.  I decided to make the Chevy logo and the R red and leave the SS uncovered.  These inserts were secured with the same silicone I used on the IAC work.

Installing the cover was easy.  After removing the factory black snap on license plate cover I simply removed the license plate and then reattached it behind the new cover, utilizing the 4 longer stainless steel screws it comes with.

I stood back and took a look at the end result.  I think I liked it.  Like I said I now had this seed of doubt in my head about it based on Ali’s initial reaction.  It helped add another degree of uniqueness to the exterior of the truck in addition to the lowered stance and custom pin striping.

I had Ali come out so she could take a picture of the plate when it lights up when the car is in reverse.  It will look cool at night although the coolness will only be in full effect when the truck is in reverse.

The last project I had for the day was to wash the party van, it was pretty grungy both inside and out.  I swept up the copious amounts of dog hair that was spread around the interior and scrubbed the exterior so certain spots no longer had a light green hue from algae/mildew.   With my dad, step mom, brother and their dogs coming down in a few weeks I figured it was good timing since the party van will be our primary mode of transportation with that many bodies.

In total my various vehicular labor kept me busy until after 5pm.  Ali, who was feeling worse as the day went on had taken several naps during the day.  She did come out later in the afternoon to work on two food projects.  She made some hearty bread that was modeled after something we had at Sweet Tomatoes.  She also made a soup that included strained juicing pulp, additional vegetables and pasta.  We had both for dinner.

The soup didn’t turn out that well, the pasta didn’t take as long to cook as Ali expected and wound up turning to mush, making the overall consistency of the soup not very desirable.  The overall taste wasn’t bad but it wasn’t the type of thing I would go looking for.  I always feel bad not always giving ringing endorsements to Ali’s cooking, especially in a case like this when I know she put a lot of effort into the process.  However I don’t think I would be doing anyone a favor by being dishonest about it either.

The bread Ali made was another story, that turned out really well.  You would think it was prepared in a real bakery.  We both had more than one serving.

I was walking around like an old man Saturday night.  Sometime during the various projects I must have pulled something in my back, right below my left shoulder blade.  I would get a sharp pain if I moved the wrong way and even if I breathed deeply.  I still can feel it a bit today but it the edge has worn off somewhat.

We watched Hangover 2 Saturday night, my most recent Netflix queue item.  I had been warned it wasn’t all that great and those warnings rang true.  It was more or less an instant replay of the first movie, only with less funny moments.  Maybe it felt less funny just because we had seen much of it before but I think it was more that it just wasn’t as well done.  Neither Ali or I were impressed.  I’d give it a pretty stinky B- rating.

Sunday morning I started it like I normally like to start them, with a DD run in the party van with the dogs in tow.  Well when I got to the second traffic light, about 2 miles from our house I hit a sudden red that necessitated me hitting the brakes hard.  After the initial sudden stopping surge the brake pedal unexpectedly gave way and headed towards the floor.  Thank goodness nobody was in front of me, I stopped a good 20 feet out into the intersection.

Well I instantly knew this was a problem and by the time I hit the next light I decided it was lunacy to try to drive with the van like this, my stopping power was almost non-existent.  I turned around and headed back home, knowing there had to be major leak in the brake system.  I also briefly pondered how lucky I was that the brakes didn’t fail at highway speeds in a situation where I had to stop.  It could have been very, very ugly.

So after I limped back home, I opened the hood and looked at the fluid level in the brake reservoir,  it still had plenty of fluid in it.  I then slid myself under the rear of the van and saw a stream of brake fluid dripping down.  It appeared that one of the metal brake lines in the back had ruptured, wonderful.

Well obviously this had to be fixed, replacing metal brake lines was definitely outside the boundaries of what I was equipped to fix myself.  I went inside and told Ali who was still in bed of the problem.  I asked her if she could follow me in the Camry to Tire Choice, the place that did the van front brake work a few months back.  My thought was Ali could provide me with a rear safety cushion and I would make sure I had plenty of stopping distance in front of me.

The drive to the garage was very slow and steady.  I got lucky in that I hit mostly green lights.  When I did need to stop I used the engine to assist by manually down shifting to burn off speed.  I managed to complete the roughly 15 miles without rear ending another vehicle and felt lucky to do.  The brakes were so weak.

After explaining what was wrong I handed over the keys and told the woman to call me when they had an estimate.  In my head I figured it might cost a couple hundred bucks.  Well when I got the call saying the estimate was $700 I swallowed hard.  The woman explained that all of brake lines in the back were a mess and badly rusted which I already knew.  I anticipated them all getting replaced in my prior mental estimate.

In my mental estimate I thought you could simply order rear brake lines for a 1996 Chevy van.  Well that is not the case.  She said the lines have to be custom fabricated to fit which is why the vast majority of that $700 is labor.  Well it was a problem that had to be addressed, you don’t just cross your fingers and hope that old brake lines won’t explode.  I told her to go ahead with the work.

I was at least pleased that I got the van back the same day without an appointment going in and that the woman honored a 10% discount that I thought I had a coupon for but later found I didn’t.

Over the weekend I noticed a new bag laying on the counters. We literally have dozens of bags/purses in the house so the fact that it was sitting on the counter wasn’t interesting.  The lululemon branding was what caught my interest.  I asked Ali about the bag of course since I had never seen it before.  She said she bought it at the store with the gift card I gave her for Christmas.

Well the gift card was only for $50.  I am far too lululemon savvy to think that the gift card covered the price of the bag, especially after she told me she bought a pair of running pants with the card as well the day before.

Since Ali was feeling sick I just lightly jabbed her about it, pointing out that we already have 345 bags in the house, why in the world would she need a lululemon bag?  Of course there is no logical explanation , she equates it to my SSR “bling” which is maybe 3 or 4 items, compared to the dozens of lulu branded clothing items and accessories that reside in our house that join an already immense supply of Nike, Reebok, and Under Armour items.  Of course this is always a no-win discussion but it still irks me that Ali has this sneaky secret shopper inside of her.

So this year we did not do a Super Bowl party, something we did for the last 4 or 5 years.  It never really came up for discussion for some reason.  With Ali not feeling well I guess it sort of worked out well timing wise.

For our SB meal we had vegetarian pigs in a blanket which I don’t mind in the least.  Our food was filled out with some Baked Lays and garlic bagel bites.  Eating the less than nutritionally stellar food combined with an entire exercise-free day immediately lead to the gluttonous feeling that makes me very uncomfortable.

So I flipped on the 73 inch tv and surround sound and took in the game.  Let’s get the game discussion out of the way since I didn’t have any real rooting interest although I did find myself pulling for the Patriots for some reason.  The game was a good one for sure were both teams missed some opportunities to dramatically change the outcome.

When Bradshaw mistakenly scored the TD when the Patriots didn’t even try to tackle him with time running out I thought Tom Brady might have a miracle left in him.  In their prior series the Pats lost a golden opportunity to seal the game when Wes Welker dropped what would have been a huge pass play which eventually lead to a punt instead of a score.

Well Brady ran out of miracles and for the second time in 4 years and the Giants beat him in the end, knocking down a last second hail mary in the end zone.  It was fitting end to a very up and down season.  For a large part of it the Giants were a mess, at one point sitting with a 7-7 record.  It was only fitting that this year, which seemed to be the year of inconsistency that a team that at points was really bad, wound up winning it at the end. Oh well.

So let’s talk about the other part of SB experience, the commercials and the half time show.  I had seen a few of the commercials online before the broadcast. For some reason they decided to make them available ahead of time.

I thought for the most part the commercials, especially early on when you expect the big hitters to really knock it out of the park, were weak.  I could not believe the very first Bud Light Platinum commercial.  It was as bland as bland could be.  Bud Light normally does a good job with their spots.  With a few exceptions, I thought most of the spots were just boring or dumb.

Of course I liked most dog themed commercials as expected but I think my favorite of all was the Jerry Seinfeld Audi commercial, the online extended version is even better.  There were a few others that were creative/good but for the most part they were weak.

GoDaddy really needs to get a clue.  Do they think that people don’t realize that the T&A tease to go to their website for “more” has long been revealed as a huge letdown? Their ads suck. Coke? Enough with the polar bears please.  Like I said there were a bunch more have nots than haves in my commercial scoreboard.

So the Madonna half time show had a lot of hype going in, after all it is Madonna, even if it is a 53 year old version of her.  After watching it and exchanging several confused looks and commentary with Ali we both agreed we were underwhelmed.

The portable stage and lighting effects were top notch, crazy good.  All of the props and supporting dancers in the performance were really cool.  How about that guy doing crazy stuff on that suspended wire?  However I though Madonna herself looked like she was performing in a haze, her energy level felt low for some reason. She looked to me like a 50 something year old woman trying to give a Lady Gaga type performance, it just didn’t work for me.

One thing obviously has had a lot of work is Madonna’s face.  There was not a wrinkle to be found on her 5 decade + old face courtesy of botox and whatever weird stuff she has had done.  I wasn’t nuts about her hair style either.

Of course the fact that she lip synched the entire performance annoyed me, just like it does Elton John. I know lip synching is very common at the Super Bowl, it doesn’t make me like it any more.  Sing for real please.

When I looked online I saw my opinion of the half time show was not echoed much.  For the most part my Facebook circle of 40 something’s  thought the show was good.  I guess I just watched a different performance than they did.

So I took my shower early and was back in the bedroom before 8:30 to pile drive through the remaining episodes of Dexter.  My co-worker warned me this season sort of tails off at the end. I saw exactly what he meant.  There were two major twists in the finale, one is creepy, uncomfortable and unwelcome, the other is interesting.

There are also a few other side plots with unresolved conclusions, only one of them holds any interest for me. Out of the 5 seasons of Dexter I have watched I would probably rank this one above last season but below the other three.  The show definitely has lost some luster.

I, like any other home owner, have certain home maintenance items that need to be attended to on a schedule.  I used to help keep these items in order with my weekend paper to do lists which Ali always used to complain about.  I abandoned the paper lists for the last couple years.  As expected there has been some slacking when it comes to staying on top of some of these items as a result.

Well last night I started entering some of these recurring items into my Outlook calendar, complete with reminders and a recurrence schedule.  With this set up I will be reminded of these items on both my pc and handheld smart devices when they come due.  I will continue to be reminded until I “dismiss” the task, ideally after I have completed it.

Some of the chores which Ali is also involved in I shared with her so she could add them to her calendar as well.  Well Ali rebelled against my idea, refusing to accept my calendar item.  It looks like Ali is an equal opportunity list hater whether they be of the paper or electronic variety, as long as they are created by me that is.

So in the mail yesterday I got my colorful subscription reminder from Sirius.  Inside was a “personal” letter from CEO Mel Karmazin, telling me how much he appreciates me sticking around for all of these years even with Sirius giving me and all of their customers the shaft repeatedly. As a token of his appreciation he also reminded me that Sirius was raising their prices.

I saw a press release when this price increase was announced several months ago where Mel was crowing how Sirius has not raised prices since they have been in business.  The amount of bullshit in that statement was overwhelming.

I must just be unlucky since despite there being “no price increases” what I pay for Sirius has gone up by close to 50% since I have been a customer.

Mel will tell you that the subscription fee has been exactly the same. What he won’t tell you is Sirius has removed items that you used to get included with that subscription and then fed them back to you for additional cost, like online streaming. He also forgets to mention the utter bullshit “music royalty fee” that was tacked on to everybody’s subscription a couple years back.

I find this disregard for customers intelligence insulting.

So anyway my plan is to call Sirius today and tell them I am cancelling my subscription, assuming they will offer me a substantial discount to stay.  If that discount is appreciable I will take my savings and continue being a customer solely to be able to listen to the ever dwindling amount of Stern live content.

If they offer me nothing or very little I am fully prepared to say thanks but no thanks.  I have enough other listening options available that cutting the cord from Sirius would be only mildly painful at best and only for a short time at that.  Like anything else, time makes most situations easier to deal with.

This weekend I have a lot of things I’d like to get done around the house in addition to the normal collection of to do’s.  I have had the parts/tools to clean the IAC valve on the Tacoma for a couple weeks now, I’d like to dive in and get it done.  Three of the vehicles are dirty, the party van to the point where algae is growing on the back corner.

The SSR also could use some attention.  The truck needs a bath after it’s unintentional rain exposure last week and the chrome accessories I bought need to be installed.

I am almost at the point where I am ready to pull the trigger on the radio upgrade for the SSR.  I still have been bumping back and forth as far as if I want to buy all of the stuff online at a discounted price and install it myself or pay an installer several hundred dollars extra to do it professionally.

I recently started considering a third option, buying the stuff at a not so discounted rate from Crutchfield whom will give you top notch installation assistance over the phone  which would offer me middle of the road savings, cutting out the installers labor rate.  I need to figure out which route I want to travel soon.

Since the half marathon I targeted is only a month away I need to get in a long run in tomorrow as well.  I actually have been questioning my desire to do the event the last couple days for some reason.

So last night I once again had juice for dinner.  I know there has been some curiosity about the process so I flipped on my JustinTV app on my Iphone to capture approximately 15 minutes of the juicing process.  I tried to narrate some of the process, unfortunately JTV’s somewhat spotty live recording ability dropped some of the commentary.  You will still get the drift.

I took a couple pictures of the finished product.  There is absolutely no denying it looks gross.  Luckily it doesn’t taste nearly as bad as it looks.

I also decided to take my first crack at the 5150 challenge.  I wore my Bar-barians shirt for the first time for the attempt, it fits well.

This was also the first time I tried using my new 1080P video recorder for an attempt.  The 1080P video did indeed look very sharp.  The downside is full HD video files are very, very big.  I am not sure if I am going to record everything in 1080P or drop back to 720P for most normal recording.

The attempt was difficult as expected.  I managed to complete 35 pull ups and 75 push ups before my 5 minutes ran out.  That leaves me 40 more reps I need to somehow jam into that same time if I want to successfully complete the challenge.

I’ll have to keep working at this one.  It is a great way to improve your ability to handle lactic acid build up.  Here is the attempt.

I just reached the portion of this season of Dexter that made me groan a bit. The big plot reveal/shift sort of made me think “Really??”.  When I apply the plot twist to past events in prior episodes it didn’t really make a ton of sense.  Oh well.

So Mitt coasted to an easy win in the Florida primary.  It’s hard to believe that he is going to wind up being what the republican throws out there as their candidate.  To me it seems like a horrible fit.  Not only does he have a track record that has more parallels to Obama than most conservatives would like he also represents exactly what so many in America are protesting against, the filthy, filthy rich elitists.  The cherry on top is he is a, GASP, MORMON!  The whacky religious conservatives aren’t going to like that either.

Yesterday I watched Obama’s YouTube town hall which was close to an hour of Q&A with regular people as well as questions collected leading up to the event.  The questions were diverse and solid, they weren’t simply tossing Obama softballs.  The President whom often gets mocked (falsely in my opinion) as being a great speaker only when the words are written down for him did a good job of fielding the questions and being honest in his responses with not a teleprompter in sight.

Despite his shortcomings of his term so far, mostly being too soft when it came to republican temper tantrums, I still like the man.  He is self deprecating, not afraid to admit he has made some mistakes unlike the prior babbling buffoon whom hid behind God mandates for his poor decisions and wars built on lies.

I have no doubt that Obama’s heart is in the right place. If you use an unbiased eye and take a logical look at what he was handed as an incoming President, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say it was the worst situation any President has inherited since WWII or maybe even the Depression era. Take a look at the video and see if you agree.

The January Bar-barian challenge came to a close yesterday.  It was quite the hectic month because Zef offered up Bar-barian t-shirts to the winners of the different competitions.  This month the challenge is to see if you can complete 50 pull ups and 100 push ups within 5 minutes.

Yesterday was my step mom’s birthday.  I gave her a call to wish her a happy one.  We were talking about a health issue she has been dealing with recently.  My step mom has always been very active and healthy, this is the first real major health issue she has faced.

She said it really made her appreciate the old adage “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything”  No matter what else you have going for you in the material world, if your health fails it all reveals itself as being built on paper foundations, it crumbles away in importance.

This lesson is something for some reason I have learned and lived by for a couple decades without requiring a health scare to turn on the light bulb, well that and a fear of old age and death if I am being totally honest.

I am just constantly amazed when I look around the world at how many people are completely oblivious to what traps they are placing in their future by continuing to abuse their health willingly at a break neck pace.  It is those people that I find myself unable to find hardly a speck of sympathy for when they start to complain of the results of their actions, or inaction more accurately.

I posted the pictures I took with my Camileo video cam(like a Flip) during the swamp ride.  The Camileo shoots full 1080P video and also boasts of being able to take 5MP stills.  Well I discovered that the pictures are indeed decent, as long as you don’t try to use the 10x zoom.  The zoom is purely digital so the further you zoom the more resolution you lose.  Some of the pics where I tried to zoom in tight look very shitty.

As you would expect, most of the pics are of gators since we saw so many of them. In the background of this picture with Randall is the big gator we came up to on the path.  All of the pics can be seen here.

Ali wound up staying home yesterday and spent some time out in the garden.  She pulled out 3 rutabagas, including a HUGE one.

We never tried to grow these before, evidently they like the growing conditions in our backyard garden.  Ali did some research and found that you can prepare rutabaga for the most part the same way you would do potatoes.

She decided to take the big one and cut it up, boil it and then mash it along with two heads of cauliflower from our garden, a pseudo mashed potatoes.  Ali added some margarine and almond milk during the process as well. The end result was surprisingly good.  I will never turn down a rutabaga/cauliflower mash from here on out.

In addition we had juice that included a crazy amount of ingredients including carrots, red lettuce, kale, broccoli, beets, spinach, tomatoes, celery, cucumber and apple.  It didn’t taste awful.

So last night as I was walking out to the parking lot a co-worker asked me why I had a crazy bitch magnet on the back of my truck. I had no idea what he was talking about until I looked at my tailgate.

Sure enough, there was the magnet.  At first I thought another co-worker may have slapped it on as a joke but then I realized this reeked of Randall shenanigan’s.

When I informed him I found the magnet he made a weak attempt to act like he had no idea what I was talking about.  He however was far too proud to carry on the charade for long.  He was thrilled I drove around all day with the magnet on my Tacoma.

I am hoping he will be equally thrilled once he receives his payback.  My creativity knows no bounds in this regard.

I left work a little early Friday to attend to the myriad of pre-race items.  Randall showed up around 6:30.  Jeremy, whom originally said something about arriving around 5:30 showed up closer to 8 instead, as expected.  We grabbed a couple pizza’s from the near by pizzeria and polished them off.

After I had all of the race prep done we had some time to crack the seal on Kinect Sports 2, a title I bought a couple weeks ago specifically for this weekend.  This latest version of the game adds a number of different sports to the Kinect library with varying degrees of success.

Tennis was pretty fun and well executed.  I think Randall and I just played singles matches against the computer, I don’t think we matched up head to head on that one.  Randall played a couple games of darts and that seemed pretty realistic as well.

We then loaded up baseball, I took on Jeremy.  I found the control in this game very awkward and dumb. Unlike Wii baseball where you at least have a controller to hold on to when swinging you are grabbing onto nothing in Kinect baseball, it’s not cool.  The timing when hitting also makes little sense. If you swing when you actually would in real life you will be lucky to hit a ball just inside the opposite field foul line.  Instead good hitting requires you to swing ridiculously early.

Pitching is equally dumb.  Sure you can easily throw fastballs and curveballs but they all wind up at the same spot, right over the middle of the plate. (unless there is an additional control detail I don’t know about)

Fielding is the triple header of dumbness.  Sometimes on a fly ball you have the opportunity to try to “catch” the ball.  The mechanic for doing so is clunky at best.  This opportunity seems totally random as there are times when a ball is hit right towards an outfielder yet you have no chance to catch the ball and the batter is awarded an automatic double.  The game just has all sorts of suck in it.

Well despite it’s flaws, Jeremy adopted well to the dumb game play, handing me an embarrassing 22-5 shellacking.  I redeemed myself somewhat with a come back victory over Randall in the next game.  Even with the positive result it didn’t change my opinion on the game, it’s dumb.

We then fired up a 3 player, 3 hole golf game.  I was not impressed with this either.  There are some cool gee whiz features like being able to say which club you want to use.  However when it came to actual game play the wheels kind of fell off.  Again not having anything to hold while swinging your “club” really takes away from the realism.  There also seemed to be a lack of control when it comes to directing your shot, other than the distance based on the club selected.

Despite only playing three holes the game seemed to take forever, thanks primarily to Randall.  Before almost every shot Randall would do an aerial view of the the shot as well as take a few practice swings.  In contrast Jeremy and I would just stand up in front of the tv and flail our arms, realizing quickly that what we do has very little effect on where the ball goes.  I cared so little about the game that I couldn’t even tell you who won.

Finally Randall took me on in football.  This game didn’t suck as much as baseball and golf but it certainly didn’t impress me overall.  I won the game with a field goal as time expired.  You can see my triumphant moment here.

By the end of the game it was after 11.  Considering we planned to be out the door by 5AM we needed to get to sleep.

Jeremy got to be the beta tester for our new queen size inflatable bed.  I was impressed with how easy the bed was to set up.  It was up and ready to go in 5 minutes or less.  Jeremy reported the comfort level of the bed wasn’t too bad at all, cool.

We took two vehicles Saturday morning.  Ali left earlier than we did so she could get a head start on setting up the course.  Randall, Jeremy and I piled into the party van a few minutes after 5 and headed out, stopping for a quick DD pitstop on the way.

When we got on site we got busy, there was already a bee hive of activity at 5:30 in the morning, a full two and a half hours before the race. Randall and Jeremy filled in where needed and I seemed to be bouncing between various things as required.  Once daylight hit Jeremy put on his event photographer hat and got busy.  Randall was stationed behind one of the laptops as the data entry guy.  By the time the last day of race sign up was entered we had set a new race record with 777 participants, an awesome number.

I once again set up the start mats for this race.  The layout of the event makes this a challenge because the start line is close to a half mile from the finish line.  About 15 minutes prior to the start of the race I walked down to the start line to get everything ready.  Once I was there I realized I forgot a very important thing, the laptop I use to capture the start times.  I was glad I had given a walkie talkie to Randall who was back at the finish line, I asked him to bring the laptop to me.  The race started a couple minutes after 8 AM as a result but it wasn’t a big deal.

The race timing went well.  I didn’t have the issue with start times like I did at the half marathon.  I put a cone on the left edge of the mats and stood there to provide an additional barrier, requiring runners to pass over the mats a bit further in.

It was great fun seeing the people finishing with their dogs, there were was an abundance of smiles everywhere.

Ali was in charge of running the awards ceremony and was on the mic.  She does exceptionally well in this role consistently.  Everybody seemed to be very happy with how the event turned out.  Despite the largest crowd ever we didn’t see any major logistical snafus.  This has been backed up with the post race survey results which have been overwhelmingly positive.

We had the race site pretty much all cleaned up a little after 10.  We headed up to the Humane Society to look at the animals and for Jeremy to take some more pictures, something we have done for the last few years.  For some odd reason, the Humane Society does not open up early on the day of this race so runners could tour the facility, instead they stick to their 11 am open time.  I really don’t get that.

Well anyway, we had like 20 minutes until we were actually allowed inside so I told Ali we would do a “quick” DD run to the location on Pine Ridge.  Well quick turned into 45 minutes thanks to traffic.

We had a good time looking at all the animals in the beautiful Humane Society facility.  Ali spent the majority of the time interacting with an adorable black little puppy named Pistachio.  Luckily for me Pistachio had an adoption pending.  If I gave the ok I am pretty sure we would be adopting cute puppies annually if it was up to Ali.

We wound up not getting home until after noon, almost a full 8 hours after we left the house.  Jeremy didn’t have much time before he had to head back to the east coast.  I said something about doing burgers for lunch however I also had to get the race results processed and online. Jeremy was nice enough to offer to prepare the burgers since he has some pretty solid grilling skills.

He wound up preparing some really good burgers, better prepared than anything I ever grilled.  Topping the burgers with fresh tomato and avocado made them even better.

Well Jeremy was just about at his departure time after lunch but we quickly went outside to my bar park.  I had told Jeremy that I was going to show him how to do a muscle up.  I hopped on the bar and did a few as an example.  A few of them were really solid with next to no intermediate pause during the transition.

Jeremy then grabbed a hold of the bar, swung a few times and then kipped up, awkwardly managing to get the bar under both of his arm pits.  He struggled to try to get to a position where he could press over the bar but couldn’t quite do it.

After I gave one more real world example of a muscle up Jeremy tried again.  Once again he got his body suspended via his armpits.  Again he struggled mightily to get all the way up.  Somehow through a combination of leg flailing and repositioning his arms he eventually got all the way up and over the bar.

Despite the blatant ugliness of the attempt it fulfilled the most basic premise of a muscle up, getting from fully extended under the bar to on top of it without your feet touching anything.  Going in I thought he had no shot to ever get on top of the bar in any manner.  Kudos to him for pulling it off.

Before he left I dumped the content of his camera memory cards onto my system.  He took something like 1300-1400 pictures of the event.  I thanked him for coming over.  It was too bad he couldn’t have stayed longer to join in the fun.

So once he left Ali and Randall hit the sack for a well deserved nap.  I still had some gas in the tank so I completed the remaining post race clean up before I laid down myself briefly for maybe an hour or so.

Saturday night Ali suggested we take Randall to her new favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes.  Randall had never been to one.  By the time we got there it was close to 7:30, after the time that the Q-tips will typically flock to eat.  As a result the place wasn’t as full as I thought it may be on a Saturday night. We all enjoyed our meals and Randall gave it his stamp of approval, saying he will have to visit the location which is very close to his condo.

Randall and I, despite starting our day 2 hours before the crack of dawn decided to watch Cowboys and Aliens when we got home.  Ali wasn’t interested in the movie and retired to the bedroom, she was exhausted even with her afternoon nap.

The movie was a disappointment, despite having Jon Faverau as director and Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford on the cast.  When I saw the previews I thought it looked quite entertaining.  I just never found myself very interested in what was going on. I’d have to give the film a B to B- unfortunately.

So we started off our Sunday with something I haven’t done in quite awhile, the DD 20 mile ride. We didn’t try to break any speed records but still averaged around 17 mph, which included a return trip that had a pretty decent headwind.

When we got back we made a recovery juice from items Randall brought with which included grapefruit, orange, pineapple, lemon and lime.  The grapefruit taste was a bit strong for me but it wasn’t a bad mixture overall.

Ali had made arrangements to go use my mistaken Groupon purchase to see One for the Money with Christy.  Randall and I had plans to do our second long bike ride of the day, this time using our mountain bikes to ride the 12-13 mile loop inside Bird Rookery Swamp. Randall had brought both his road bike and mountain bike for his visit.

My “mountain bike” is a bit of a joke.  It is a roughly 25 year old Huffy that I bought prior to my first marriage.  I have had this thing FOREVER.  The bike is in pretty poor shape as you can imagine.  The original tires are still on the bike.  The sidewalls are filled with cracks due to their age.  The shifter for the front gears is seized and no longer works.  The brakes are also horrible, I don’t think I would be able to stop if I was rolling down a hill.  I was skeptical if the bike would even survive the ride.  Well I put air in both of the totally flat tires and didn’t notice any immediate leak so that was a good start I guess.

We packed water and a couple sandwiches for the ride and threw them in the backpack I strapped on. I brought a long my newly received Camileo full HD video recorder I just received on Saturday.  It also supposedly had the ability to take 5 megapixel stills.

The ride to the swamp was close to 3 miles from our house.  Biking on the mountain bike feels eons different from a road bike.  The upright position, fat tires, heavy frame and slower speeds make for quite a different experience.  You are working much harder to maintain much less speed.

When we arrived at the parking lot there were a few cars parked there, maybe 4 or 5.  There was a small group of people there with bikes whom we found out were on their way out.  They said they took the bikes in  a way but found the terrain a bit too challenging and headed back.  Of course the woman telling us this looked like she had an easy 75 pounds she could lose.

The woman did clue us in to a group of baby gators maybe 50 yards from the parking lot on the left.  There were at least 10-15 of them in a small area of water.  This was the first of what turned out to be an incredible amount of gator sightings for the ride.

As we headed out the trail we were having very few issues with traversing the terrain, it wasn’t very tough at all.  I was surprised how quickly landmarks came up via bike compared to the pace we set when walking with the dogs.  We got to our picnic table lunch stop in no time at all.

Once we got out to the big 11 mile loop portion of the trail we started to see gators by the dozen, they were everywhere.  Winter must be gator spawning season because we saw clumps of baby gators all over the place.  You never saw just one.   The cutest sighting was when we saw three or four baby gators laying on the back of what I assume was their mother.

As we got further back into the loop we saw something large on the right edge of the trail.  We soon realized it was a gator, a very large one, that was just laying there hanging out.  This thing looked quite impressive.  Randall and I were not quite sure how it would react as we passed it so after taking a few pictures we hopped on our bikes and pedaled quickly by.  It didn’t flinch one bit as we passed by no more than 10-15 feet away from it’s tail. Wow, that was pretty damn cool.

It turned out that gators on the trail is evidently a pretty common occurrence as we passed by a number of them, just none quite as big as the first guy.  A few of them scampered into the water as we approached but for the most part they just laid there and watched us pass by, still as a statue.

At first I was stopping and taking pictures of every gator we saw.  Eventually we saw so many it was old hat so I only took pictures in special circumstances.  I was pissed when later reviewing the pics to see the only way the Camileo takes decent pictures is if you use it in it’s unzoomed state.  The zoom is a purely digital so you lose all resolution if you try to zoom in to the full advertised 10x amount.  I would have gotten much better pics with my Iphone.

So about half way into the loop Randall and I started to wonder why we decided to do the entire thing.  Although the terrain was not brutal by mountain bike standards it was still off road riding which requires more effort than casual sidewalk cruising.  In addition to that we were doing the ride in pretty much the lowest gear on the bikes meaning you are cranking revolutions like mad.

Randall’s mountain bike has a hard seat, not meant for long amounts of sitting.  His ass was killing him during the second half of the ride, despite the full suspension his mountain bike employs.  The one thing my old shitty bike had going for it was a bigger padded seat.  Even so, I was quite uncomfortable during the latter stages of the ride as well.

As we hit the last portion of the loop Randall and I were much more focused in just getting done than looking around.  Unfortunately the last part of the loop also had some of the more annoying terrain with soft, wet, rutty ground that required more pedaling effort.  The loop is actually more of a square with four long, straight as an arrow sides.  Seeing an endless straight line yet to traverse contributed to our mental fatigue at that point.

For the vast majority of the ride we did not encounter any other human beings, passing a few groups walking out very early and one family on bikes that were sucking major wind on the way out. Finally, finally, finally we exited the trail, some 3 hours after we entered it.  On the walkway back to the parking lot we saw a couple walking in with a HUGE Great Dane on leash.  I stopped and talked to them briefly and gave the dog, Elvis, a few pats on the head.

So all we had left was the roughly 3 mile ride back to our house on the road.  The trip to the swamp didn’t seem too bad at all.  The ride back simply sucked.  By this point in addition to our rear ends, multiple other parts of our bodies were sore or uncomfortable.  To make things more miserable we got to enjoy a headwind until we got back to Immokalee Road.  Both Randall and I were extremely happy to pull into the driveway some four hours after we left.

Despite the physical discomfort later in the ride we both really appreciated what we got to see out there.  Being that close to full size gators in the wild is something neither of us experienced before.  The beauty and isolation as we rode through the swamp alone was just a unique and very cool experience.  Maybe sometime Ali and I can go in there via bike although I would never encourage her to try to do that entire loop.

After we got back both Randall and I took showers.  Between the two bike rides I just felt totally out of gas, walking around in a zombie-like trance. In total we put in something like 37 miles on two wheels, half of that on mountain bikes.   After making the dogs supper I told Randall I was going to lay down for like an hour.  That hour turned to two when I woke up in the pitch dark at about 6:45.

Randall was originally going to drive back Sunday afternoon but he decided to just stay over Sunday night as well instead of driving across the alley being tired as hell.

I prepared dinner for the three of us, 3 cheese tortellini with garlic bread.  Ali was impressed that I handled all aspects of the meal without her assistance.

Sunday night everyone retired relatively early.  It was quite the busy weekend.

Randall was up early this morning and shoved off for the east coast when I left for work.  I thanked him for his help with the race and the other weekend activities.  It was a good time as always.

So we now have been doing the juice thing for around 2 weeks so I feel like I can give a report card thus far.  I just realized that besides the single slice of lunch meat I put on my daily sandwich for lunch at work I have also not eaten any other meat during these two weeks which wasn’t really a goal going in but a nice side benefit.  I could easily swap over to a PB sandwich instead and actually be taking in more protein.

If I would have decided to go with my original idea of a total juice fast I am sure the transition would have been more dramatic and harsh.  I’m glad we went down the road of moderation where I basically replaced my dinner with a juiced meal as well as fruit juice I have been downing after the gym as a recovery drink.

Physically I haven’t had any negative side effects that I have noticed.  In fact over these past two weeks I have set several PR’s in different areas, how much of that has to do with the concentrated nutrition I am getting via the juice is unknown.

So going forward I  intend to keep juicing as a permanent part of my diet, maybe just not my exclusive dinner.  I’d like to still mix in my tilapia once or twice a week but I am going to really try to stay away from the microwave meals that have been a staple of our diets for the last decade or more. Yes they are a good way to practice portion control and lower your caloric intake.  The trade off with preservatives, chemicals and sodium is not all that great. I also plan to continue consuming almond milk with my lunch instead of cow skim milk.

The other day I pulled up the results from my health screening I am required to take as part of our insurance plan.  They take body measurements, blood pressure and do extensive blood screening.

The first thing I noticed was they had my weight wrong.  When I was weighed the woman said I was 172, the report listed me at 192, maybe she has sloppy looking 7’s. My waist measurement was almost down to hot chick level, measuring in at 29 inches. My overall health score was 87 out of a possible 100, a good score but I was curious what would have cost me 13 points.

All of my blood numbers were all solidly in the good range, then I saw the culprit.  My blood pressure was listed as 114/94.  The 94 is outside the good range which is supposed to be 80. Hmm that’s odd.

When I was going through my thumb ailment I had my blood pressure read each time I was in the clinic and all three times by BP was right around 120/80 so I’m not really sure why my diastolic number would have been higher that particular morning.  I also wondered if the woman who evidently misrecorded my weight could have also flubbed my BP reading?  Who knows.

Ali whom underwent the same screening last year and scored 100 was very excited.  She crowed she must be healthier than I am, even going so far as to brag on FB about the score disparity. I had to laugh.  I’ll be happy to test my fitness/health against her in any way she would like, I won’t even post the result on FB.

I had some good numbers last night in my 2nd Bar-barian forums normal mode attempt.  I was a bit hesitant about doing it the day after trying the hard mode version the prior day.  I managed to increase my total amount of diamond push ups by 13 reps over the first attempt, netting 118 total over 5 sets. It’s a pretty good number that moved me up a few spots on this month’s scoreboard.  My GUTS routine surely helped me there.

This weekend will be a crazy one with Ali’s race going down tomorrow.  Sign ups for the event have been very strong, we will probably set a new record in attendance.  Both Randall and Jeremy are coming over for the event.  Jeremy will once again serve as event photographer, a role he has excelled at the past few years. Randall will just be helping us hold everything together as well as doing data entry for the runners entering the day of the race.

Randall will be staying over until Sunday.  We are talking about going biking at Bird Rookery Swamp which will be fun.  I also hope to crack the seal on Kinect Sports 2 and dominate as I normally do.