RIP, on the wall, Pain-ful, too many trees, green thumb, handlebar

Over the weekend my grandmother, whom for the last decade has lived a miserable existence suffering from diabetes and Alzheimer’s, passed away, thankfully.  Although I never had a close relationship with my grandma, she was still my grandmother.  Regular blog readers may recall the last time I saw my grandmother and the emotional torture I felt seeing her in that state, having no idea who I was and reacting angrily to any attempts to communicate with her. It was horrible.

The news of her passing brought on feelings of sadness and remorse but they were quickly replaced with relief that her days of suffering have finally come to an end.  Wherever grandma is, hopefully she has a cat on her lap.

It’s stories like grandma’s and my grandfather before her that make me so unwilling to go down the same road myself, where the only reason you are kept alive is as a profit center for a nursing home.

I set up my three day Veterans Day weekend to be very labor intensive.  It was enough to do’s that I created one of my infamous to do lists to keep me on point.  I wasted no time getting started on the list, hanging a towel bar in the master bathroom somewhere around 8 o’clock Friday night.  On Saturday I was up early and again resumed labor almost immediately after eating breakfast, weeding and weed whacking the property, finishing up by 8:30 am.

I had hopes of getting half of the tree trimming project done on Saturday afternoon, taking advantage of overcast skies and mild temperatures.  Unfortunately those same clouds started dumping rain mid-afternoon.  I only got the front trees trimmed before I had to retreat inside due to wetness.

The rain stopped my tree trimming but not my conquest to defeat the list.  I immediately turned my attention to hanging the tv and sound bar on the wall in the master bedroom.  I had bought a cheap (less than $30) mount kit from Costco, two outlet boxes to route the cables into/out of the wall, and a drywall saw to help me cut out the wall.

As in most projects I tackle, I had loose outline in my head of how things will go but I a lot of it was just going with the flow.  Getting the TV on the wall wasn’t all that hard since I have basic math and measuring skills.  I used both of these to determine center point on the wall and then a level for the template and the brackets used to suspend the TV.

The bracket install hit a small snag when one of the mounting halls fell on top of a metal stud.  The instructions directed me to drill a 3/8″ inch hole into the metal stud and then use a self tapping PLASTIC mount into the stud.  Well the self tapping mount disintegrated when it hit the metal.  Instead I went and grabbed one of my drywall mounts/screws and managed to get a secure connection to the wall.

The toggle bolt things they include for plain drywall mount were surprisingly strong and secure.  When I saw on the box the kit supported a TV up to 80″ and/or 121 pounds on any wall surface I was skeptical.  After attaching the brackets I was a believer.  They felt well up to the task of holding my 47 inch LED on the wall. Unfortunately getting the TV on the wall was only the first part of this project.  I had my LG sound bar to get up there as well as cutting out and installing the two outlet boxes to hide the cables.

Mounting the sound bar was the simpler of the two remaining items, once again only requiring a measuring tape and a level after I marked where the bottom of the tv was on the wall.  The outlet boxes were more of a challenge.  The top box needed to be behind the tv, hidden from view.  Luckily, the outlet boxes I bought can literally be put anywhere on a wall, no stud required.  They use a cool setup to extend arms behind the drywall that locks the box in place when tightened.

I put the top box centered and above the bottom of the tv frame.  The second box was located about 6 inches below the top of the dresser.  Once the boxes were in place there was a tedious cable routing task that took awhile.  At first I thought I would need a longer HDMI cable for the Blu-ray player but I found a 6 footer that was just long enough.

So after about 3 hours of work I had everything in place and cleaned up.  I am very pleased with the outcome.  The TV and sound bar look awesome on the wall and the top of my dresser is no longer a cluttered mess.  It makes the room look significantly different for some reason.

You can see all of my pictures from the project here.  Yes, I made a video about the project as well, check it out here if you have a spare 10 minutes.

Saturday night we watched my latest Netflex rental, Pain Gain.  It was a disappointing way to test out my slick new TV install.  The movie was terrible.  It’s hard to believe it was based on a true story.  Michael Bay is quickly becoming another M. Night Shamaylan.  What is the last movie he did that people actually liked?  I’d give the movie a C-, clearly the worst film I have ever seen The Rock or Marky Mark ever take part of.

Sunday morning started off with a 20 mile DD ride.  The ride there was a wonderfully wind assisted stroll in the park. Of course that meant the ride back was the opposite, a full time, full wind that made maintaining 15 mph miserable.  Cindy insisted on being in the lead the entire way back saying it was good training for her half Ironman in January.

After getting back from the tiring ride we “rested” by resuming the tree trimming project.  Cindy was the limb removal crew, picking up and dumping the hundreds of palm fronds in the back fill pit while I worked high up in the tree tops.  Every year this job gets more and more dangerous due to a trees tendency to grow.  There are two trees in particular that are very high, so high that even with my 20 foot extension ladder and long arms I am hard pressed to reach everything.

This year I utilized the electric chainsaw/pole trimmer that Todd bought me for Xmas 2012 to get some of the tippy top branches.  The problem is trying to operate the pole saw while precariously balanced on a wobbly extension ladder is very difficult.  There were more than a few times that my balance point was dangerously close to the tipping point.  In total we spent 3 hours finishing up the project.  Having Cindy take branches back was a huge time saver. I told her when I did this job solo I could easily consume a solid 8 hours of grueling labor.

My reward for the tree trimming work was an Eagles win, and a convincing one at that against the Green Bay Packers, in Green Bay no less.  Granted, the Packers were sort of playing with one arm tied behind their back since Aaron Rodgers was out with an injury and their back up got hurt in the first series, leaving their 3rd stringer to guide the team.  Still, the Eagles offense played well, and the defense made big plays and stops when they needed to to keep the game from getting close.

However the most impressive thing I saw all game was at the very end when the Eagles ran the ball down the throat of the Packers to run out the clock.  I can’t recall the last time the Birds actually closed out a game convincingly in that manner.  It was a great win.

So the Eagles are now tied with the Cowboys in the lackluster NFC East with a 5-5 record.  Amazingly the Eagles are 5-0 on the road and 0-5 at home, a very baffling and aggravating trend.  Why the Eagles have never been a strong team at the Linc remains a mystery but I can only hope that trend starts reversing this week against the Redskins.

Sunday night Cindy and went to see the new Thor movie in 3D.  I liked the movie, probably as much as I liked the first version.  It gets a solid Marvel super hero flick A rating from me.  However almost every Marvel superhero movie gets an A from me.  They just know how to do it right.

After an ass busting first two days to the weekend I vowed to make Veterans Day much less laborious.  I sort of did.  The day started with a trip to Lowes to grab garden soil and some plants to get the Florida winter garden season kicked off.  On the way back we took the dogs to the swamp for a walk, a place I hadn’t been to in a long time.  Cindy had never been there.

Cindy immediately appreciated why I enjoyed my walks with the dogs there, it’s so remote, so peaceful, so quiet. The last time I went to the swamp with the dogs Nicki was EXTREMELY sore and stiff afterwards so I was very mindful of how far we went.  We turned back around a half mile from the boardwalk area not wanting to push Nicki too hard.  Her pace was slow and steady for the walk and despite her mobility issues she seemed to still enjoy sniffing the endless unique things the swamp offers. We had a couple wildlife encounters, seeing a small 3 foot gator on the way out and a larger, 6 foot gator that was half across the path on the way back.  The high water levels made Cindy a bit nervous since there was very little distance between the water and path you walk along.

Well despite the reduced distance and slow pace, Nicki again really struggled after the walk.  She seemed to be in a lot of pain.  The idea that that might have been her last walk in the swamp made me very sad.

Cindy once again helped in the garden prep.  I turned over, amended and tilled the soil.  Cindy was the raker/tamper.  After the beds were prepped, lettuce, cauliflower, tomato and pepper plants were put in the ground.  I actually have another two or three empty beds that I can put stuff in.  I’d like to fill them with perhaps some broccoli and kale plants.

The list, which I seriously doubted would be totally completed turned out to be a crossed out, a thing of a beauty, before Monday was done.

During the afternoon I took my two quad copters outside to fly, despite some serious wind.  I had not flown the Blade MQX since I bent and replaced one of the rotors.  Well my initial flight attempts with the copter clearly indicated I did something wrong.  As soon as I would try to launch the Blade it would immediately corkscrew into the ground.  After repeated attempts I figured I did something wrong when I replaced the prop, I did.

The Blade came with two additional black props (rear) and white props (front)  I figured both of the black props were the same, they aren’t.  I had stupidly put the wrong prop on, causing the crash and burn behavior.  After I swapped it out the Blade once again flew correctly.  I had a couple bad crashes that bent the pliable props in the same manner that caused me to replace the black one.  However instead of replacing these I simply bent the prop back in place so it was more or less straight.  Surprisingly the quadcopter seemed to fly just fine with the low tech repair, cool.

If you didn’t know, November is known in some circles as Movember, a play on words that is tied in with a testicular cancer awareness thing.  Basically men are encouraged to sport a mustache during the month to raise awareness.  Randall has participated in this movement for several years.  Since he is visiting this upcoming weekend I thought I should hop on board, despite not really being a fan of the look.

Yes, I made more Vines this weekend, most of them with a dog theme.