Before I forget

I figured I should do a blog entry to relieve the strain on my memory.

Mom came over Christmas Eve afternoon as planned so I could do some work on her Rav 4.  The first to do was to reattach her bumper to the fender lining, it was knocked loose when the dummy in the truck hit her.  This repair took all of two minutes as I used left over self tapping drywall anchor to take care of the problem.

Next up was washing the Rav 4, something mom refuses to do herself outside of allowing the vehicle to sit out in the rain on occasion.  After washing the scuzz off the exterior I took aim at the faded rubber/plastic/vinyl panels that adorn the lower half of the vehicle.

I had a good amount of Forever Black left, stuff I used to blacken the rubber inserts on the SSR running boards.  The stuff comes in a bottle with an applicator similar to shoe shine, it isn’t very big.

I had a lot of real estate to cover between the side panels along with the front and rear bumper.  It also required two coats to look more even.  All in all I was probably applying Forever Black for 90 minutes or more.  The end result was good at least, the blackened up trim along with the car wash made the Rav 4 look pretty decent.

It was looking like rain outside.  I didn’t want jeopardize the still drying Forever Black treatment so I moved the SSR over and then pulled the Rav 4 in next to it in the garage.  It was a tight fit.  A 250 pounder would have been stuck.

Cindy had to work Christmas Eve and didn’t get out until around 6.  Luckily she had already cooked the main entree the night before, faux chicken parm.  Mom and I worked on getting some of the sides prepared.

I laid out a Xmas drinking challenge for myself, it was to drink the wine bottle sized beer that Randall and I bought from Trader Joe’s.  Not only was the bottle big, the beer in it was strong, 9% alcohol.  It was a dark ale that I typically don’t like.  This was again the case but it didn’t stop me from choking down the entire bottle and feeling quite tipsy as a result.

Dinner, which we enjoyed in the dining room by the illuminated Christmas tree was really good.  After cleaning up we sat down to watch an Xmas movie.  Now in years past I always have preferred to watch one of my all-time favs like Xmas Vacation, Christmas Story, Charlie Brown or one of the old Rankin Bass specials.

Mom isn’t a big fan of watching these for the 20th time so I suggested we watch something neither of us saw before, Jingle All the Way with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I was drunk and open to anything.

Well even though I probably was only awake for 25% of the movie, I can tell you very assuredly that the movie is dumb, very dumb.  There are no worries of it ever getting into my Christmas Eve viewing rotation.  It gets a C.

Christmas morning I woke up somewhere around 6:30.  Mom didn’t rise until closer to 8. We had a massive collection of presents.  Even though mom’s gifts were not massive in physical size, she was the clear leader in number of gifts to unwrap thanks to my efforts wrapping roughly 25 lottery scratch off cards individually in addition to her other gifts.

  I split the gifts into Shawn, Cindy, Mom, Tuki, Nicki & Sadie piles.  It was clear that gift buying this year had returned with a vengeance compared to 2012 when I bought my own presents.

The dogs were only moderately excited this year to open presents.  Each time I would open a toy or food item Sadie wanted to claim them for her own.

Mom got to work on unwrapping her many gifts.  She got to one of her gift cards, from Publix, that I enclosed in a special 2 layer maze box.  There is a small ball in the box that needs to be navigated to a certain spot in order to release the card.  Mom of course immediately rolled her eyes at the gift as I already knew she would.  Mom isn’t a big fan of figuring things out.  I had already solved the maze multiple times so I knew I could always do it again if need be.  I had hopes that mom would actually solve the maze herself but after 5 minutes she gave up, Cindy later solved it for her.

Cindy and I both were guilty of over buying for each other.  She was quite surprised and happy with her gifts which included some unusual items like a 50 foot slack line, portable ping pong set and even an RC off road car.  She got me a lot of cool things too, topped off by a Galaxy Tab 3 and a DJI Phantom, the high end copter I have talked about getting for the last 6 months.   My pile of gifts included a bunch of stuff I could install/configure/play with, which always makes me happy.

After the gift giving was concluded, which took quite awhile because of the volume, mom made her traditional french toast breakfast which we again enjoyed in the dining room surrounded by the mound of opened presents.  After breakfast she took aim at scratching off her massive pile of lottery tickets.  I got her a variety of types to add to the fun.

Mom was less than thrilled that all of those cards and her labor opening/scratching them only resulted in net winnings of around $40.  Sure it would have been nice if mom got lucky and scratched a card that netted her 4 figures but to me it would just be a bonus as I already had tried to take care of mom with her other gifts.  Mom seemed genuinely disappointed that she didn’t win more off the cards which was a bit of a bummer for me.

We had a first this year, a Skype Christmas call from my sister and her family.  It was actually pretty cool.  The video quality was great and we could see everything the kids got like we were sitting in their living room.  It was the first time my mom had face to face time with her grandkids(virtually) in quite a long time so that was a bonus.

Shortly after the Skype call and all of the scratching and losing was done mom packed up her stuff to head home.  We loaded up her Rav4 and thanked her for coming.  If you want to see all of my Xmas 13 related pics, look here.

Once she left I started on the initial stages of post-Xmas duties like collecting trash, sorting things into piles and things of that nature.  Cindy had mentioned something about us possibly doing an Xmas bike ride, noting it would be good to get some exercise in.  Even though if I was by myself I would have never done a ride myself, I appreciated Cindy’s suggestion and initiative.  We decided to do the 20 mile round trip Dunkin Donut ride.

The ride there was wind assisted as we held 20 mph+ for almost the entire first 10 miles.  We were disappointed when we saw the DD was dark, they were open 7AM to 1PM on Xmas day, we rode in mid-afternoon.  Oh well, we hopped back on our bikes and endured a pretty brutal return trip, battling a persistent headwind that kept our speed mostly in the 15-16mph range.

Shortly after I got back another challenge popped into my head, jumping into the pool on Xmas day.  I have NEVER jumped into the pool on Christmas except for those early days where I ran the now broken pool heater for several days straight to warm it up beforehand.  I didn’t do a toe touch ahead of time to gauge just how cold the water was.

I had Cindy shoot video on my phone of the plunge as I jumped in with Sadie standing close by.  The water felt quite cold for the first 10 seconds although 69 degrees is a far cry from the Tough Mudder Arctic Enema water Cindy and I endured back in November.  I only stayed in the pool for less than a minute as i quickly gave Sadie a few never seen before December pool splashes.  I emerged from the pool victorious and cold.

On Christmas night we attended a Xmas party at the running club president’s beautiful home.  It was my second consecutive year of attending and for the second consecutive year I was glad I went.  I had a good mix of helping, drinking, socializing, and eating.  We didn’t stay quite as late as I did last year because of having to get home to the girls.  It was a fun time.

Cindy worked the day after Christmas, I did not.  I utilized the day to really dig hard into Christmas recovery efforts, getting things cleaned up for the most part.  I also put together and flew my DJI Phantom for the first time.

Wow, that thing is freaking awesome!  Compared to the smaller Blade MQX and Syma X-1 I have been cutting my teeth on, the Phantom is a dream to fly.  It is rock solid stable, even in the relatively windy conditions I was flying in.

I felt so comfortable with it that by my third flight I had already strapped my Flipcam to the camera mount and shot about 6 minutes of aerial video. I also made a video of my assembly and first test flight.

After flying the Phantom I realize I had no need at all for the two smaller quad copters as primers.  The Phantom when flying in GPS mode can literally be flown by a child.

On Friday Cindy was off so we spent the day together doing various things, including another backyard workout session.  All I did was deadlifting.  Cindy did a mix of things which was AFTER she already ran 5 miles around the backyard.

My goal was to see how much I could pull in a 1 rep max utilizing lifting straps.  I had gone out on Thursday and bought an additional 50 pounds of weight towards this goal.

After pulling 375 pounds, my old max, I loaded the bar up with 400 pounds, hoping I could pull for a new personal best.  I got 400 off the ground for a moment but could not get it going.  A few minutes later I did manage to lockout with 390 pounds after struggling mightily to get upright.  It was actually enough weight to put a slight bend in the olympic bar which was a nice feather in my man cap.

Last night we enjoyed pizza while watching Grown Ups 2.  I thought the movie relied far too much on physical humor and childish stupidity.  I told Cindy I felt like I just watched something written by a 14 year old.  It was cool seeing so many name actors/celebrities in one film.  I lost count after 20.  It’s an average B rated rental for me.  The first Grown Ups seemed to not have as much of the Adam Sandler stupidity that most of his other films suffer from.  I enjoyed that one more.

Today I have some more chores on tap although thanks to Cindy most of the mundane ones are already taken care of.  My afternoon should consist of mowing the backyard for hopefully the last time in 3 months and then doing some work on the SSR.  Tonight we are catching Ronin in 3D.

I received some sad news that Randall and Tracy had split up recently.  It was quite surprising since it seemed they were practically married without the rings.  I’m holding out hope that they reconsider and kickstart things again.  I think Tracy is awesome and as Randall’s friend, I want her positive influence in his life.

Today is Nicki’s 11th birthday.  It’s hard to believe I have been blessed with her existence for over a decade.  She will be getting her traditional birthday vanilla cupcake tonight.