Ikea in place, high 5, great game

Friday night I was at Ali’s place until almost 10 o’clock.  I wanted to get a head start on the various handyman duties I had to do there, the biggest of which was assembling her four pieces of Ikea furniture, which were three book shelves and one glass door cabinet.

We actually got more done than I expected, completing the assembly of three of the book shelves.  After doing the first one, each subsequent unit took less time.  The biggest time sink is hammering in the 500 nails in the rear that hold the press board backing in place.

Despite getting to bed after 11 Friday night I had it in my head that I wanted to run 10 miles Saturday morning at the 6am club run.  I drug myself out of bed and into the cold air.  The temp was right around 50, cold if you are standing around but great to run in.

I ran most of the 10 miles by myself, only hooking up with a nice woman for the last 3.5 miles, that I found out later is friends with Alison.  My average pace for the run was right around 9:15, not fast, but at this point I just want to get my legs/knees ok with carrying me for that period of time.  I’d like to get one or two more 10 milers under my belt if I am going to do the Hooters half marathon.

I went straight from running, back to Ali’s apartment to resume the projects.  Assembling the cabinet was very similar to constructing the bookshelves, the biggest challenge was adjusting the hinges so the doors closed well.

So before buying the furniture Ali had done some measurements and determined that the cabinet and two bookshelves would fit on the wall in front of the staircase.  I did some quick eyeballing of the furniture and realized the three units would consume far too much real estate to fit.  A new layout was needed.

Alison had a hair appointment at 11 so before she left we talked about various arrangements but didn’t firmly decide on one.  I told her I would work on the arrangement and other tasks that were left while she was gone.  I first attended to the other, non-furniture related tasks which were hanging an overhead light in the office and hanging a drying rack in the small utility room.

I then returned to the main living space to sort it out.  I wound up relocating a large chest to the office where it barely fit underneath the sewing table.  I then centered the remaining bookshelf on the shorter wall, put the dog eating tables where the chest was and moved the old existing book shelf to the top of the stairs.  I even got rid of the mountain of empty cardboard boxes, put the bedroom furniture back in order (we had started moving that around too), and even swept the steps with the Dyson.

Ali returned to her place surprised to find I had made order out of the mild chaos she left in a little more than 2 hours.  It’s a skill I have always been good at.

She was appreciative of my efforts as she checked out the end result of the labor.  Unfortunately I was not done, we wanted to head to the Apple store and upgrade both of our Iphones.  I had plans for Saturday night so I was worried that the Apple store would be SWAMPED on a Saturday afternoon.

Alison and I could hardly believe when we turned the corner and saw all the blue shirts.  They had a TON of staff on the floor, I didn’t count but I bet there were at least 30 employees on the floor.  Despite there being a large amount of customers on the floor as well, we had an Apple guy immediately available to help us.

We already knew what we wanted, Iphone 5’s, the only thing to be determined was how much memory we wanted in the new phones and the color (black or white).  Ali went with a 32 gig white phone and I did the same thing in black.

The efficiency of the store is pretty damn amazing.   By using a wireless iTouch device the entire transaction for two phones was completed in minutes.  In total I am not sure if we were in the store for even 20 minutes.  I seriously expected to be in there at least an hour and a half.

We got done so fast that we had time to stop in Best Buy to pick up cases for the phones.  Ali likes the Lifeproof cases that are very expensive but are like encasing your phone in a big bulletproof condom.  I went with a simpler but effective silicon case that protects the phone from impact.  I got a high end screen protector as well although I felt disgusted with myself for forking over 25 bucks for it, more than I paid for the case.

I didn’t have a lot of time to play with the phone before heading out but I did like the larger screen, the faster performance of not only the hardware but also the LTE network the phone can hook into and the talk to text feature which is pretty damn handy for on the go communication.  I also asked Siri a couple questions and I liked the answers she gave me.

Since my Friday night and Saturday were eaten up I didn’t get started on stuff around the house till Sunday.  Since I am going to be gone a good chunk of this upcoming weekend it was important that I get some stuff done.  I picked up the dogs and had them hang out with me while I worked.

The weather at least was awesome while I toiled, the cool morning temps evolved into pretty much perfect temps as the day went on.  I had almost every opening in the house wide open to take advantage of it.

Late in the afternoon I had my immediate list done so I turned to ancillary items.  One of those items was installing some hooks onto my pull up station.

This idea came into my head last week for some reason.  I thought that if I mounted some sort of anchoring system on either pull up bar support I would be able to utilize rubber resistance bands to add a new dimension to my work outs.

The hooks I installed were bought at Home Depot.  The only challenging part of the install was using a tape measure to ensure both hooks were mounted more or less parallel to each other.  Once the hooks were mounted I simply strung one of my bands across, slapped it over my shoulders and did a few reps.  It worked just as I hoped.  If you want to see my two minute explanation you can see it here.

So since Ali was coming out to pick up the dogs anyway I suggested she just stays and watches the Super Bowl.  She stopped at the grocery store and picked up some food that we always would generally reserve for the big game, stuff to make pigs in a blanket (veggie dogs of course), spanikopita and bagel bites. Food that is wonderfully awful for you but is that is totally in bounds by Super Bowl standards.

Regular blog readers will know that for most of the last 6 or 7 years we would host a small party at the house with the famous betting board which would be stacked with dozens of quarters.  Obviously there was none of that fun this year.  It felt both familiar and awkward to have Ali and the dogs hanging out in our new situation as we watched the game.

The game itself was very, very good.  One of the best I can recall with a big comeback by the Niners falling short with less than two minutes to go in the game.  Despite the excitement I was so tired I found my eyes drifting closed time and again.

The 35 minute power outage was pretty interesting.  Since I was watching the game time shifted on the Tivo I was able to thankfully fast forward past a lot of the filler CBS had to do until the lights were back on.

The half time show I guess was ok, if you really like Beyonce.  For me however I thought it was kind of blah.  I told Ali I always like when a Super Bowl halftime show has a bunch of performers you never see performing together, performing together.

I thought the commercials this year had the normal amount of laugh out loud moments along with the spots that leave you scratching your head.   I don’t really have any specific commentary about them although the Clydesdale being reunited with his trainer was very touching.

By the time Ali and the dogs left it was after 11.  I woke up this morning REALLY wishing the day after the Super Bowl was a national holiday.