FGCU, Easter, Blinds, Rocks, Merle made me cry

So I did my best to watch at least some of the FGCU game which didn’t start until a ridiculously late 10:38 PM EST.  I watched a decent portion of the first half before passing out.  FGCU had jumped out to a strong start, up 9 or 10 points when I flipped the tv off.  I hoped to awake the next morning to news of yet another stunning upset for the local college.

Unfortunately from reading the recap of the game it looks like for a prolonged period of time FGCU simply stopped scoring and Florida went on a massive run.  Oh well it was still a fantastic season for the Eagles.  I am sure their success is going to have a massive positive impact on the school going forward.  Everyone in the country now knows who they are.  Who wouldn’t want to attend a college in South Florida with a top notch basketball team?

I continued utilizing the Volt throughout the weekend and I continued to enjoy not having to spend money on gas.  So far I am averaging somewhere around 135 miles per gallon.  If your driving patterns would allow you to do most of it in golf cart mode you really should think about a Volt.

On Saturday I tackled a few items along with my normal home chores.  I made a trip to Lowe’s.  While I was there I saw a new kick ass hybrid tractor that I never saw before (I should have taken a picture of it).

It looked more like a 4 wheeler than a yard tractor with a high suspension.  It had a metal cargo area in the back, a mowing deck underneath and also had an electric generator built in.  It looked like a hybrid between a Polaris Ranger and a Toro riding mower.  The $3000 price tag kept the idea of actually owning one safely in the “only if I win the lottery” category. I DID buy a generic garage door opener for the van, 6 bags of river rock. two LED flood lights and a new set of venetian blinds for the dining room.

Over the past several months I have slowly been installing LED lights in fixtures that see the most usage.  Compact fluorescent lights actually use less power than LED but have some drawbacks for me like, lower life span, containing toxic mercury and emitting a SHIT LOAD of EMF.  (Google CFL EMF)

LED’s last basically forever (the flood lights boasted a median life of 22 years on the packaging), are much more efficient than incandescent lighting, and emit a “cooler” temperature of lighting.  The floods I bought emit the equivalent of a 90 watt conventional bulb while utilizing less than 25% of the power. There is a price to pay for this high tech lighting, literally, the cost.  Each floodlight was $34.

The set of blinds was to finally replace the set in the dining room that were destroyed by the former cleaning ladies using a very rough hand when cleaning the blinds.

Not only did they destroy the blinds, the owner had the balls to tell me at first she didn’t think they were responsible.  For probably a year and a half my solution has been to just keep the blinds pulled all the way up to hide the damage. I’m not really sure why I kept putting off the replacement of the blinds since I basically could reuse the existing hardware.

For some reason, the windows in the front of the house are exactly one inch narrower than one of the standard width of blinds (52″)  So to make it work I took out the hacksaw to cut the top and bottom frame and a scissors to trim down the individual slats.  I didn’t use much precision when doing the width modification since there are curtains that cover both sides of the blinds anyway.

The total time I invested in the job might have been 15 minutes, a small price to pay to be able to cross another item off the fridge to do list.

My Easter Sunday started and ended with exercise. In the morning I paired a 10k run with a little more than a 10 mile ride.  The ride back again featured a head wind that absorbed any and all energy left in my legs.  I was pooped, so much so that I actually took a nap when I got home for a couple hours.

Later in the afternoon I headed over to Mom’s for a little bit for a brief Easter celebration where she made us pasta, salad and garlic bread.  The girls were quite happy to see grandma as always.  I gave mom two cards, one from me and one from the dogs.

When I got home I was still tired and worn out despite the nap.  I just happened to see in email that one of my female calisthenics buddies from the UK had posted her attempt at this month’s challenge and was bragging how she bested my time.  Her and I have a good natured rivalry when it comes to these competitions.  She is quite fit and the core holds featured in March were right up her alley.  She beat my posted time by 3 seconds and playfully teased me about her accomplishment.

Well the last thing I really felt like doing was holding my body out at a 45 degree angle for as long as I could but Fi left me no choice.  I went out in the yard and managed to keep myself up there for 28 seconds., 3 seconds past Fi’s hold. If someone throws down a gauntlet I will more than likely pick it up.

So last night, after owning the book for at least three years, I finished Merle’s Door, a gift my dad gave me.  I started reading it on the tail end of my visit to my dad’s place in January and have been working through it piece meal in bed since then.

Last night I had my longest unbroken reading session because I was right at the end, unfortunately it also was the saddest portion of the book.  As you would expect when a book is about a man’s life and interaction with his beloved dog, a sad ending is unavoidable as is the case with this book as well.

The description the author gave of Merle’s last few years really pulled hard on my heart as it reminded me of some of the things that are happening with Nicki.  It was a real struggle for me to get through some of the pages. I tried  unsuccessfully to stop my flow of tears by pressing my forearm firmly against my eyes repeatedly.

I just couldn’t help transferring Merle’s story to how I would feel when I have to endure the same process with my dogs.  The pain I felt was crushing.

So despite the water works ending, I liked the book a lot.  It made me appreciate even more just how special the bond between dogs and people can be.