Melted, Pressured, THE cake, bad birds, Hobbit, Wile E.

So I got home from work on Friday night and immediately noticed the absence of my lit up, blown up 7 foot snowman which was added to the Xmas display this year.  Everything else outside was lit up as it normally is, weird.

So I walked over to it and first verified the extension cord was plugged into the front of the house, which it was.  I then walked over to the tree the snowman is fastened to to check the plug for the inflator fan.  I reach down for the transformer in the dark and notice it is sitting in a lot of sand.  The stinging on my hand confirmed the plug was sitting in the middle of a fresh fire ant mound. Son of a bitch.

My hatred for fireants grew beyond it’s normal lofty levels.  How dare they attack my snowman…  The next day when I had daylight I saw just how huge the mound was.  It was like the fire ants made a nest directly under my new favorite holiday decoration, like a big FCK YOU to me.  I sprinkled the mound with Amdro to hopefully kill the bastards or at least get them to relocate.  I am hoping they just popped some sort of replaceable fuse instead of destroying the inflatable totally. Bastards.

Saturday morning I was up at 3:45 am to get to the race site by 5.  The 7 am race start time necessitates the earlier alarm time.  They start it early because of the golf tournament the race is affiliated with.  I didn’t expect many volunteers to be there as early as I was but hardly anyone was there.  Cindy and set up the registration stuff pretty much by ourselves.

We had runners starting to show up at 6AM and still had no volunteers to man the tables, it was pretty nuts.  Later I found out that security guards were not allowing the volunteers to park on site as they were supposed to, instead turning them away and making them park at the remote lots which require buses to bring you in, how nice.

In addition to doing my normal race duties, which are numerous, I am also the pseudo GCR point man for the event as well.  As a result I was buzzing around non-stop for the two hours before the race, so much so that I didn’t have a chance to help Ali at all with the race day registrations.  As I was setting up the finish line equipment I glanced at my watch and saw it was only 20 minutes till race time, holy shit.  I could hardly believe it was that late.

I kicked my set up speed into overdrive as I had to get to the start line to set up that equipment as well.  I got the start line timing mats up and running with about two minutes to spare before Greg Norman started the runners.  It was a whirlwind morning.  Luckily after the hectic start, timing the race went smoothly except for some human error related items.

I got home exhausted but had a large DD coffee to help me combat it.  I just had no time to be tired. After completing my post race chores and eating lunch I headed outside.

After doing some minor items it was time for THE project of the weekend, pressure washing the pool area.  Even though it is shitty work I was looking forward to getting it done as the pool cage was disgusting by my standards.

The new pressure washer makes the job slightly less cumbersome since it has a higher PSI rating.  I started off by doing anything I could reach on the cage with just the normal wand.  After doing that it was time to do the higher portions of the cage that are over the pool. Doing these sections is tedious and painful as I try to extend my reach as far as possible while supporting the weight of the wand and various extensions.

So I go to get my washer extensions and realize I am missing one.  Surely it was in the shed where I always leave the extensions?  I triple checked both sheds and even the garage.  The extension was MIA.  WTF?  Great.  So this meant a trip to Home Depot to replace an extension wand I know I have somewhere.  While I was there I grabbed a replacement battery for the dead one that was in the tractor and a new doorbell button to replace the shitty, plastic, builder grade button that imploded a long time ago.

I actually got an extension piece 1 foot longer than the one I lost, a three footer instead of a two footer.  When it comes to pressure washing a pool cage it’s all about length of wand.

The new extension made the job both easier and harder at the same time.  Being able to get the nozzle closer to the high frame sections meant they got cleaned better.  However holding nearly 8 feet of wand spraying at 3600 PSI with extended arms for any period of time is rather challenging.  The bottom line is the added length helped me do a better job.

I am sure I was responsible for the death of hundreds of spiders during the pressure washing.  The week before I went around with a broom and knocked down whatever I could.  Unfortunately for whatever spiders remained they met a high pressure demise on Saturday.

At first, with as long as I spent cleaning the pool cage, I thought I had no shot of finishing washing the pool deck before sunlight expired.  I was happy to see that the paint job on the deck that was completed in March meant that the surface was less intent on holding onto dirt.  I was able to blast away the decking in probably half the time it used to take me.

The pressure washing also revealed some more shoddiness in the painting that was done in March.  A few spots now are showing the original paint below, where Rhinoshield did not properly prepare the surface.  Hitting the deck with a 25 degree pressure washer nozzle from 12 inches away should not strip paint.  I suppose I will be sending some more pictures their way with requests for remediation.

So anyway, the pool area looked 100% better when I was complete and I finished with daylight to spare. You can see the various pics from the project here. I used those extra minutes to quickly try to get Cindy’s Miata fuel pump working.  It had cut out once again on Saturday morning.  I was not successful.

On Saturday night Cindy and I watched two animated Xmas specials.  One was a “All I want for Christmas is a Dog, Charlie Brown” which was made in the 2000’s.  It was cute but obviously not as good as the original.  Then I fired up a South park Xmas special that was made in 2004.  It was incredibly offensive even on a South park graded scale.  I was close to clicking it off.  Hopefully I get to watch a t least 1 or 2 of my favorite specials before Xmas comes and goes.

Sunday morning I was once again screwing around with Cindy’s fuel pump.  When I got the car running months ago with the same symptoms I did so by pulling the pump out, jostling it around and reinstalling it.  The pump has obviously been an issue in the past as some prior owner had it rigged, with a spliced ground wire that bypasses the factory connector and is jacked directly to the pump in the tank.

Well this time my jostling had no effect.  I ordered a used fuel pump/sender assembly which will allow me to remove the rig job that is in place.  It’s a better long term solution.

Sunday morning Cindy and I made my birthday cake.  I was mainly in charge of the frosting.  It turned out well, at least it looks like I did.  I held off on having a piece until it was officially my birthday. (today)

The Eagles game didn’t turn out well.  I should have known that when I was feeling good about the game, since Adrian Peterson was out, I was setting myself up for a letdown.  The Eagles defense was marauded by the Vikings and I thought Chip Kelly did a pretty lousy job coaching the game.

First they decided they weren’t going to kick the ball to one of the Viking return men who is very good.  Instead, each and every kick they would kick the ball incredibly short, allowing the Vikings tremendous starting field position the entire game.  I mean wtf, you are in a dome with no wind.  If Alex Henry can’t kick the ball deep into or through the end zone in those conditions then lets get someone that can.  I mean Chip must think his special team coverage is absolutely awful to come up with a stupid strategy like that.

Some of his other decisions were idiotic.  For example going for it on 4th an 1 from their own 25 yard line with 8 minutes left in the third quarter.  I was like “what the fck is he doing…”  of course if McCoy could have managed to gain a measly yard nobody would remember it but he didn’t and it allowed the Vikings another easy 3 points.

Then when the Eagle players were getting called for repeated taunting/unsportsman like conduct penalties that again were giving the Vikings more gift touchdowns, Kelly was just standing their with a blank look on his face.  Again, wtf!??  Pull the defensive players together and scream at them to knock it the fck off!  It was aggravating as shit.

So anyway, the team just played very poorly.  Hopefully it was their one step backward before resuming their charge to win the division which was aided by the Cowboys collapsing last night against the Packers.

Speaking of the Cowboys, I had Tony Romo as my starting QB on my FF team.  He rewarded me with 30+ points, helping me build a 30 point lead over my conference finals opponent with 1 player left to play for each of us.  He has the Ravens defense tonight and I have the Raven kicker.  Considering the Ravens are playing the high powered Lions offense I am looking pretty good for making my second fantasy football championship game for the second year in a row.  Crossing my fingers.

Last night I did an early Carrabas birthday dinner with my mom and Cindy.  We went to the Naples location which wa s my original favorite.  For many years I have complained how they have stripped out much of what I liked about this venue, removing some of the unique styling it once had, instead choosing to strip it down and make it more uniform with the newer locations.  I lamented the removal of learn to speak Italian tapes in the bathroom, the smaller beer glasses, the shittier bread and round robin cast of staff that replaced what used to be a pretty regular crew.  Well last night they added one more thing to the “don’t do anymore” list.

Anyone that has gone to Carrabbas in the past 10 years has probably heard the waiters gather around a table to sing Happy Birthday in Italian to a patron.  It was quite normal to have that go down two or three times during a visit to the restaurant.  Well evidently they can’t even be bothered to do that any longer.

Cindy must have informed the waitress it was my birthday while I was in the bathroom.  When I sat down our young, pleasant, but non-descript waitress put down a plate of two scoops of ice cream with a candle and some nuts.  “Happy Birthday!” she said as she moved on.  That’s it?  Where is the group singing??!!

It’s funny.  To be honest I never really liked the attention being brought on to my birthday since I really don’t view it as something I like to celebrate.  However despite my personal feelings, the lack of Carrabbas observing a long standing Italian singing tradition bothered me.  At least the ice cream was good.

We dropped mom back off at her place before heading to the movies.  When I asked mom what she wanted for Xmas I got the answer I expected but not hoped for.  Unfortunately what I would really like to get for my mom is not available for sale and only self produced.

Cindy and I were looking forward to seeing the second Hobbit film for quite awhile.  Unfortunately the only 3D showing they had which would work out time-wise was 8:30 which is awful late for a film that is 2:40 in length.  I had prepared myself for the situation by downing a 5 hour energy after dinner to ward off drowsiness.  Unfortunately my weekend of light sleep, combined with the big meal meant I still found myself lifting my eyelids from time to time.

In addition to being sleepy, the theater was on the cold side.  Cindy was glad I talked her into buying a small towel for her legs when we stopped in Target before the movie.

My drowsiness was no fault of the movie itself which was great.  The nearly 3 hours passed by quickly.  The movie was filled with the epic storytelling and action I have come to expect from anything with Peter Jackson’s name on it.  It gets a shiny A from me.

When we were pulling out of the movies I saw what at first glance I thought was a dog on the far side of the road.  When I looked closer I realized it was a coyote and a big one at that.  I turned the van left and slowly followed him.  For a good period of time he actually stopped, turned and looked at us, long enough for Cindy to get this grainy pic.

I thought it was weird the coyote was by itself.  I followed him for a couple minutes more before he crossed the street and went behind a row of bushes behind target.  I think that is the first time I have seen a coyote in person, pretty cool.

So today is my 46th birthday, yay.  As many of you know, I am no fan of growing older and do my best to combat the process both physically and mentally.  Despite my efforts there is no denying father time is creeping up on me.  As I was getting ready last night I noticed the gray hairs that like to populate my chin in large numbers when I don’t shave have begun migrating more and more to the top of my head as well.  I hadn’t really noticed the amount until recently.

I am celebrating the event by working/training from home all week.  Should be fun.