Archives 2013

This week has not been much fun.  I have a project at work that has not been going all that well.  Yesterday I did a preliminary demo of the product to my boss and others in the department and it was a mess.  I don’t like when something I am involved with starts to come loose at the ends.  I need to really focus on the project to get things back in line.  The problem in this particular case is it is something that requires the efforts of others as well, perhaps the reason I often prefer to just work alone.

I just sort of feel like I have too many rods in the fire currently and I can’t rotate through them quick enough to keep from getting burned.

On my way home last night I picked up a cheap used leather ottoman via Craigslist.  One of Nicki’s favorite spots to lounge around on is a leather ottoman that Ali took with her.  It’s low enough that Nicki can still climb up on it. She seems to enjoy laying in elevated comfort.  I thought it would be cool if I could once again have something like that at the house for her.

The ottoman I got is old and blue.  It feels sort of like leather but it might be the fake stuff, not that it matters.  I found it ironic that the girl I bought it from said she was an interior designer yet the house she was living in, at least from the outside was not very stylish, complete with Xmas lights still adorning the roof line of the garage and gaudy knick knacks lining the sidewalk..

The ottoman is an inch or two higher than what Ali has but the cushioned part compresses down quite a bit so I hope Nicki can manage.  It also is not as big as the one at the apartment but I think it should be just big enough to let her snooze in comfort.

I have the dogs for a few days early next week so I am hoping the ottoman gets a good field test.  Even if Nicki doesn’t like it I know Sadie will have no issue utilizing it.

I finally finished the Walking Dead game on the 360.  Wow what an epic and different gaming experience. It really felt like I was inside of the Walking Dead tv show.  I don’t think it is a spoiler to say almost everyone winds up dead in the game, after all it is the zombie apocalypse.

I went ahead and spent 5 bucks for the sequel, 400 Days, which I expect to be equally fun.

Last night I did my first Mazda auto repair video, replacing the driver side window regulator in Cindy’s Miata.  I had already been in and out of the door a number of times so I didn’t have much issue replacing the regulator.  I was in and out in less than an hour.

Next up is the Tacoma washer reservoir replacement.

So yesterday I decided to go to the after work club social run at the running store.  In theory it sounded like fun, do a short run (3 miles in my case) and then enjoy free food and beer for an hour or so.  Ali was there as well to handle membership duties as one of the purposes of the event is to drive membership.  She brought a laptop with to work directly with the membership database which I had just finished moving to a new location during the day.

So I returned from the run soaked with sweat and headed inside to see how things were going.  Ali was struggling because she wasn’t familiar with the new membership set up.  I wound up shadowing her the entire time, trying to work through certain problems.  Some of them were solvable, some of them would require me to do further digging.

Well the end result was I didn’t eat anything besides a nacho chip or two and didn’t even get a sip of free beer.  To be honest, there were too many people there, at least for that space.  All of the food was gone (besides nacho chips) in short order.  By the time I pulled out a little after 7:30 I was aggravated and hungry.  I would have been better served just going home and working on mowing the back of the property like I was thinking about doing.

Combined with other things from my Tuesday including work and other issues it added up to just be one of those shitty days.

My spirits were lifted slightly when I got home when I saw a box by the front door.  It was my replacement washer fluid reservoir for the Tacoma.  The factory tank is brittle, cracking and leaking. I hope to replace it soon.

I have an odd question to ask.  Do you go to bed dirty or clean?  For a long time I was a dirty bed person, meaning I would take a shower first thing in the morning but not before bed.  Sometime in the last 15 years I converted to a clean bed person, always taking a shower before going to sleep.

I don’t recall what was the impetus for the change but now, I really have no understanding of why you would want to go day to day any either way.

I mean think about it.  If you take a shower in the morning, by the time you go to bed some 18 hours later your body is coated in the sweat and oils that the human body secretes, not to mention what ever other auxiliary dirt, microbes, residue and bacteria you managed to pick up during the day.  Why would you want to lay in a bed and grind that shit into your sheets and pillow? Depending on how often you wash your bedding, this can attain varying levels of grossness.

On a typical weekday I take a shower at night and then the following morning I will just bend over the tub and wash/wet my hair.  It works for me.

Which are you, dirty or clean and why…..

So when I got home last night I looked around and noticed the standing water was gone except in the trenches by the road.  Evidently yesterday must have been a good evaporation day.  Well I figured I may as well take advantage of it and got out on the mower.

I knew the high grass was going to be chock full of mosquitoes.  I tried to prepare with a generous application of OFF as well as putting on sunglasses and my big, wide brimmed, funny looking hat.  Well it seems that unless I was going to jump into a bathtub full of mosquito repellent, there was no way to keep myself from being mosquito food.  I was constantly swatting.

As I was mowing Bill pulled up, the equipment manager for the running club.  He was dropping off something for me.  As he pulled up I smelled burning brakes.  Bill said that on his way there his brakes locked up.  He said both of his front brakes seemed to lock, he just tried to drive through it, stopping several times to let them cool off along the way.

He said he thought the problem might be electrical, specifically something with the ABS system that could be causing the brakes to apply.  He said he already had his wife on the way to meet him there.  He was actually on his way to go give a quote for some work near by.  I told him that he could borrow my van to do the quote but he said he would  either drive there or have his wife drive him there.

As we waited for her to show up Bill and I exchanged our fix it yourself stories.  Bill told me about his 20 year old lawn tractor that he has repaired countless times.  I knew how much I had to fix my 8 year old Cub Cadet, I can’t imagine trying to keep a 20 year old mower alive.

So Bill decided to try to drive to his appointment with his wife following behind just in case the wheels locked up tight.  I hope he made it.

I buzzed around the rest of the property and got my normal mowing zone knocked down.   The back of the property is badly in need of a haircut as well.  If  I get a few more days of light/no rain perhaps I will try to wedge that in one night after work this week.

What Bill dropped off was the club’s 20 year old Time Machine, a combination timing device and printer that was used to time races before we implemented chip timing 5 or 6 years ago.  I know little about how the box works but I want to get it up and running.  My intentions are to utilize this as a last resort safety net at races.

It is basically a manual system where as a runner comes across you hit a button to indicate a finisher and the time they crossed.  You can also type in the runners bib number to give you more meaningful info.  Right now, if my timing box or the main laptop would blow up on race day I would basically be f’d.

If I have someone manning the time machine during the race at least I would have a crude and less accurate way to scratch some results together.  It also will come in handy in those situations where someone does not get a finish time recorded either due to human or equipment error.

So Thursday was the club’s big holiday 5K, our biggest 5K of the year.  I knew it was going to be a mad house so I wanted to get on site extra early, not that it did me much good.  I was on site about 4:25 am but the equipment truck didn’t get there until closer to 5.  I made the use of my alone time dropping off my timing/registration equipment at their respective locations since the registration area, the start and finish line were in three different spots, each several hundred yards apart.

The night before I had sent out an email asking the board members to try to get there as early as possible and they answered the call.  We had many more bodies on site at 5AM than normal, we put them to good use.  We got the registration area up and ready to receive the roughly 1000 participants that were going to be converging shortly. As expected the parking lot became a beehive of humanity.

Ali and I were swamped with people signing up that morning, we had something like 120 entries to type in before the race.  Ali finished up the data entry as I hurried to the start line.  The starting line crowd extended down the street close to 100 yards, it was quite the scene.

Timing the race had a potentially big bump in the road.  While I was running the finish line Ali was also updating some of the participant information in the system which in theory, should have been ok.  While I was in the system checking a couple things I noticed I wasn’t seeing an average pace number for some of the finished runners.  I thought it was odd but printed out a stack of results to have someone post for me anyway.

Well as I looked more at the results I saw something was f’d up.  A bunch of the women were all showing the same finish time, oh geezus.  This is the sort of issue that crops up time to time and the kind of issue that can only be handled via experience.  Without dropping a bead of sweat I erased all of the results from the race and imported them via a secondary method, hoping it would correct the problem.  Luckily it did.

I could only assume that having the participant data modified while results were coming in caused the problem somehow so I had Ali stop the work.  The rest of the race the times flowed in normally.  All in all for being the largest 5K the club has ever put on, things went very smoothly.

I was both the first one on site and last one to leave as I recollected my equipment from it’s various collection points.  I didn’t mind at all, it gave me a moment to reflect on how cool it is that I witnessed the venue go from empty, to crushed with people, back to empty with hardly a hiccup.

Some guy was flying around his quad copter with a HD camera mounted to it during the race.  Check out the video he compiled here, it’s pretty cool.

I was quite pooped the rest of the 4th of July and didn’t even entertain dragging myself out to see any fireworks shows.  There were a few houses close by that provided mini-versions of pyrotechnics that was enough for me.

On Friday I fast forwarded my weekend chore list, trying to get everything done ahead of time.  Part of that list included my two headed grocery shopping at both Costco and Publix.  I took the SSR out for the errands to make them a lot more fun.

On Saturday morning I decided to go to do the normal club group run.  I wanted to try to do the 7 mile route, a distance I have not covered since I did the stupidly long 16 mile jaunt with Tracy several months ago.

When I walked out the door at 5:20 am I noticed my weather station showed an outdoor humidity level of 99.7%.  I felt every point of it during the run.  All in all, I held up ok to the longer distance run.  I ran it with Mitch, the club president, and Steve.  Luckily neither of them was looking to push pace as we averaged around a 9:20 mile which was plenty for me at that distance.

By the time the run was over my cotton shirt was absolutely drenched.  Thank goodness I have some water proof slip covers in the back of the SSR to accommodate such a situation.

Early Saturday afternoon Ali stopped out with the dogs.  She brought a bunch of empty bins with her.  The purpose of her visit was to collect various dinnerware/bakeware items that have remained at the house.  They stayed there because Alison didn’t have a place to keep them.  Since we set her up with the big Ikea shelving set that was no longer the case.

Ali had not been out to the house in a long time, at least a month, maybe even closer to two.  As we went through the house collecting various things for the bins there were various swells of emotion that rolled in, something that I think is unavoidable, regardless of how much time has passed since the separation.

We hung out with the dogs in the back yard for a bit during a break in the process and Nicki seemed quite content as she laid sprawled out on the carpet with mommy and daddy under the roof of where she spent that majority of her life. It made me smile but feel sad at the same time as I looked at her.

There were too many crates to all fit in Ali’s Volt so I threw the excess and the dogs in the van and went back to her place to help her unload.  Some of the crates had enough weight in them that she would have struggled hauling them up two flights of stairs.

The property has remained bogged down from excessive rain.  Despite the various bodies of water around the yard I tried to at least cut a small portion of the increasingly ratty looking grass, basically mowing the mound the house is built on.  I am hoping for a solid 2-3 rainless days so I can get out there to knock the rest down.

I saw a couple movies over the weekend.  The first one was Life of Pi, a movie I knew little about but had heard was quite good.  I knew it involved animals and little more.  Very early on I got a sense the movie was a Forrest Gump / Castaway hybrid although as things rolled along I realized the film had a personality all of it’s own.

I became very attached to Richard Parker, the tiger, despite his ornery ways and inclination to kill things.  Speaking of killing, there were several scenes of animals, albeit make believe CGI versions of animals, getting killed in ways that I found disturbing.   If you are an animal lover like I am you might want to have your finger close to the fast forward button for a few scenes.

All in all I found the movie touching, deep and meaningful.  It gets a very solid A in my book.  This appeared to be a film that would have been worth seeing the 3D version in theaters.

Last night I watched Jack Reacher on the Xbox, yet another Tom Cruise action film, a role that no one can dispute he excels at.  Despite seeing Tom in this sort of role again and again, I never seem to tire of it.  I enjoyed the film and was ok overlooking a few moments of absolute sillyness.  I’ll give it an A-.

Yesterday morning I went to a duathalon/triathlon but not as a participant.  My initial goal was to go there to talk to and shadow the guy that times their events, John from Endurance Sports Timing.  John and I are in contact a bunch since we both time races and use identical hardware and software to do it.  We often will compare notes, trying to help each other when needed. Cindy decided to sign up for the run/bike/run duathlon since I was going to be there anyway.

The race was staged by Elite Events a father/son team that started putting on events in our area couple years ago.  I had heard various things about their events, mostly negative but never had seen anything first hand.

It was interesting being on the sidelines of a race, observing the loosely controlled chaos instead of being in the middle of it.  I could see where some of the complaints about their events were coming from.  The race started late, there seemed to be inadequate race staff directing participants at key areas of the course and the race results were delayed and had a number of errors.

The registration and finish line area had no bathroom facilities at all.  If you had to relieve yourself you either went in the woods or walked around 3/4 of a mile to the other side of the park, a major f up.  You needed to have at least a couple port-o-potties out there.

On the plus side, the organizer has some good equipment to make the race come off as more professional with nicely branded signage and equipment.  They had a nice PA system with a wireless mic that allowed a lot of flexibility.  I can tell that they have good intentions but perhaps lack the manpower to address the needs to pull off all aspects of a race successfully.  Having races that combine duathalons and triathlons lends itself to scoring problems.  I think simpler would be far better in their case.

On a positive note, Cindy had a great race, winning the masters division, something she never did before.  For her efforts she received a personalized beer glass and a finisher medal.  Unfortunately she was one of the victims of the scoring problems and did not get announced as the masters winner.

During Sunday afternoon I headed outside for a prolonged outdoor workout session, my best outdoor session in months, despite the blazing sun and thick, muggy air.  I knocked out 100 pull ups, 100 push ups along with a number of other calisthenics training on both the bars and my set of rings.

During the workout we had to be very aware of fire ants.  Because of the wet ground they have been migrating closer to the house and it’s higher ground.

I decided to do my first set of push ups in the grass.  Prior to getting into the plank starting position I inspected the spots where my hands and feet were going to be, making sure they were ant free.

As I got to around rep 20 of 25 I started feeling burning on my stomach.  I ignored it and quickly pumped out the last 5 reps.  Well when I glanced down, my white shirt had a couple hundred ants on it and the burning on my abs grew rapidly.  I ripped off my shirt and start swatting and plucking the bastard ants from my mid-section.  I was quite thankful that the elastic band on my shorts was tight enough to discourage the ants from traveling south before chomping down on me.  The rest of the push up sets were performed on the dog deck for safety sake.

All in all I bet the outdoor workout was close to an hour.  I felt tired but accomplished at the same time.  The dip in the pool felt fantastic.

I got my electric bill in the mail.  It was much higher than I have become accustomed to, around $165.  When I looked at the average daily kilowatt usage it was something like 7 units higher per day than the same month last year, which didn’t make any sense, until I thought about it.

There are two possible explanations I can come up with.  Last week I noticed that one of the off stops on my timer for the pool pump had fallen off.  That means instead of running 3 hours a day it was running more like 14-15 hours a day.  I am not sure how long it was screwed up.  If it was for a couple weeks that would be a pretty solid explanation.

The other suspect is my AC system.  A few times I have noticed that the outdoor compressor is making an electrical buzzing/humming noise, a noise I don’t recall hearing before.  The AC system however seems to be functioning otherwise, the house is being kept cool overall.  What I am wondering is if the low speed/power part of the compressor is not working.  The low speed feature of the two speed compressor is a big energy saver, if that is screwed up I would imagine my electric usage could creep up considerably.

I am going to have someone come out to check it.

Last night after work I was at a meeting at the running club president’s house to talk about club business.  The last time I was at his place was Christmas night for a party he held.  At the party I met the dog he had recently adopted, Diesel.    Well in the 6 months since I last saw Diesel he looked like he doubled in size, he was huge, nearly great dane size.

Diesel is super friendly and was instantly all over me, something that some people might mind but of course I welcomed his friendliness.  He doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on just how big of a dog he is.   When he bumps into you, you wind up getting propelled the other direction.

Diesel is also a canine wood chipper.  He has an incredible skill for destroying items with his powerful jaws.  He is only around a year old so he hasn’t gotten out of the chewing stage yet.  As we were meeting I watched the dog turn a large foam covered bat into shrapnel in the space of 5 minutes.   Despite his destructive tendencies you can’t help but love him.

After the meeting I had to head right home to put a large pile of paper entries for tomorrow’s 4th of July race into the system, which is shaping up to be the largest 5K ever put on by the club.

Keeping with the dog theme, however in a much sadder and tragic manner, I saw the story about the LA cop that shot a guys Rottweiler  on video.  The shooting was completely unnecessary and a prime example of shoot first mentality that plagues law enforcement.

The circumstances leading up to the shooting make the dog’s death even more tragic.  The dog’s owner was accosted by police for playing loud music and being a nuisance while they were investigating a robbery.  The guy put his dog, which was on a leash, in his car, albeit with the windows down.  He then willingly returned to the officers and allowed them to handcuff him.

Well the dog didn’t like what was going on and started barking.  It then jumped out of the window, with it’s leash dragging behind it and ran over towards it’s owner.  So there are now 3 officers standing there, two “restraining” the man that poses no threat and then a third, the asshole that decided trying to restrain the dog safely was too much trouble.  It was far more convenient to simply shoot the innocent animal that was just trying to come to it’s owner because it sensed the trouble.

I saw many stills from the video and that was upsetting enough for me.  I didn’t watch the gruesome video, I just don’t need that visual imprinted on my brain.

Of course there has been an uproar regarding the shooting and rightfully so.   Shooting the dog should have been a last resort, not the first choice.  I hope the officer that pulled the trigger is punished in the fullest manner possible.

I took off Friday as well so I am hoping after what is going to be a very hectic next 24 hours I can settle in for an enjoyable extended weekend.

Oh, last night I had fire ants swarming in my mailbox.  It’s the end result of the days of rain that has saturated the ground.  The bastard ants head for high ground when this happens, I never have seen them head this high however.

Last night I wanted to do something productive.  I was feeling too beat up to bother with a mini-workout at home so I decided I would focus on tractor maintenance instead.   On Sunday I wanted to change the oil and sharpen the blades on the tractor but the rain washed away those plans.  Yesterday was wet as well but there was  a small break in the precipitation when I headed outside.

When I went in the backyard I scratched my head.  One of the shitty plasticAdirondack chairs was at least 200 feet away from the deck it normally sits.   These things get blown off the deck all the time but to get that far would require VERY strong sustained wind.

If you click on the picture to see it full size and look to the left of the well plumbing and the right of bird feeders you will see the chair off in the distance.

Both of these chairs are basically junk and need to be replaced anyway.  Perhaps I can get something a little heavier to take their place.

So I mentioned that I had just sharpened the blades on the tractor using my dremel a couple weeks ago however the results from using a small grinding wheel are spotty at best.  At Sears I bought a tool specifically made for sharpening mower blades.  It’s a a beveled grinding stone combined with a flat guide.  It does a much better than my tiny dremel.  It will be interesting to see how the sharpened blades perform whenever the grass dries out enough to be cut again.

Changing the oil was overdue, the oil I drained was super dirty.  The foam wrap that goes around the air filter is falling apart, something else for me to pick up I guess.

Getting these two things done made my Monday evening feel productive enough.  It’s a good thing because the rest of my night totally lacked productivity as I watched the premiere of Dexter, watched more Soprano episodes and played a little bit of Skyrim on the Xbox.

Friday night I threw in my Netflix DVD, a movie named Primer.  This was an 8 or 9 year old low budget movie.  I am pretty sure I added it to my rental queue based on a recommendation of one of the hosts of a WoW podcast I listen to.   They said it was excellent but you had to pay attention.

Well when I hit the play button I was already drowsy.  I was drifting in and out throughout the movie.  As a result I basically I had no fcking idea what was going on.  The movie is very dialogue heavy and since I missed tons of it I was just lost.  I can tell you the movie involves time travel created in a garage and the complications that arise from it.  Other than that, I got nothing.  I can’t even give it an accurate rating but unless you are going to be laser focused on what is going on through out the flick you may want to take a pass.

On Saturday I met Ali early to go buy hardware to hang her three bikes in her garage.  I needed some stuff at Lowes myself so it worked out.  Of course hanging the bike racks had complications as most projects I am involved with do.  The tapcon screws I bought were nice and long to ensure a secure attachment to the cinder blocks.  The problem is the threads on the screw only extend halfway up the screw itself.

Since the cinderblock of the garage walls was not filled with poured concrete, once the wall of the block was punched through there was nothing but air waiting behind.  So if I turned the Tapcon all the way in the threads had nothing left to grab onto.  Luckily I had brought some of my shorter concrete screws that saved the day.

Ali thanked me for the work and I loaded up the girls to hang out at the house while I worked outside, working with the stuff I bought at Lowes.  I was basically doing a lot of reshuffling, the intense humidity and heat made it not much fun.

First I moved the boring ornamental grass that was in two boring/beat up pots in the front of the house. For a couple years I thought these things were an eye sore but I never got around to doing anything about it.  I wasn’t quite sure where to repurpose them but wound up putting one on either side of the small shed ramp.

I was utilizing similar procrastination with two small trees that had been wasting away in pots by the house for at least 3-4 years.  Ali and I never could decide exactly where to put them and I just didn’t give any further thought to it once I started running things solo.  Finally, after much walking around, trying to decide what spots would be visually acceptable while remaining in the sprinkler zone, I put both trees in the ground, one to the left of the small shed and another to the left of the big one.

In front of the house I replaced the boring grass with some new pots with colorful plants.  That area needed something visually interesting to counter the native, but very boring green bushy things that inhabit the small strip between the sidewalk and house.

I also put two new plants in front of the main supports by the front door.  That area had been barren for several months after I ripped out plants that spread unevenly and looked ratty.  The replacement won’t spread and if it thrives will add additional color with it’s dark purplish “leaves”.

I also did some work in the garden.  I amended 4 or 5 beds with fresh bags of garden soil and then planted 7 or 8 rows of different seeds.  Summer is a rough time to get much garden productivity in Florida, at least for me.  I figured I had nothing to lose by throwing some seeds in to see if I get lucky. I planted, spinach, carrot, beet, bush beans, and broccoli.

I even addressed some indoor plant issues, dumping the one big pot and filling it with a much healthier and colorful plant.  I didn’t drink much during all the of the body melting labor besides chugging a beer.  I felt thirsty most of the rest of the day.  It was so damn hot out there, I was spent.

You can see all the pictures from the day here.

Saturday night I did something I had not done in years, went bowling.  Growing up I was an avid bowler, bowling in a Saturday morning league as a kid and even bowling for my team in high school although I was pretty much regulated to JV.

I also bowled in adult leagues for a good part of my 20’s and even bowled in a league down here in Florida for one year back in the early 2000’s.  Since then I can count the times I have bowled on one hand, probably two fingers actually.  Bowling, despite the added bonus of the lanes no longer being smoke choked, just fell out of the the circle of things I would do regularly.

So the alley we bowled at was the one I had not been to before, it was not huge but cozy.  I was a bit taken back when I saw the per game prices, a pretty ridiculous in my mind $4.75 a pop per person.  However I also saw the alley had a flat rate deal where you could rent a lane for a period of time.  Since we were having 5 people bowl this was the obvious way to go.  $37 for two hours of lane time seemed like a good value.

We were put in a lane to the right of what seemed like a big family group utilizing two lanes.  The family included one very old man although I had no idea just how old.  It turns out he was 94.

I was wondering what the big metal ramp thing was that was straddling the ball return.  When it was the old dudes turn I quickly figured it out.  You take this contraption up to the lane, point it and then push the ball down the ramp.  It is evidently something designed to help both ends of the human age group, the very young and the very old.

The ramp turns bowling into more like a big game of skee ball but hey, if it lets the old guy get out for a night of fun with the family, great.

Now of course when you are right next to gramps when he is bowling it is distracting.  The problem was made worse by some rather  oblivious females in the family that were helping him.  They would bring the ramp up to the line and place the ball for the old guy, which was fine.  But what wasn’t fine was after placing the ball they would stand to his right, in our approach lane, the entire time his ball slowly rolled towards the pins.  Several times the women noticed their bad positioning yet they continued to do it.

After pulling this bonehead move time and time again a young guy in their party that was actually paying attention helped out grandpa and stayed to the left.  If someone was really thinking, since the two lanes the group were occupying were the two left most lanes, they would have simply set up gramps on the left lane instead of the right. No one in our group made a big stink about it.  Everyone realized that above all it was great he was out there trying to participate.

I was not very happy with my bowling performance.  Early on my 1o year old bowling shoes were sticking like mad, making almost every shot veer to the right.  I didn’t start really feeling comfortable until game 2.  Then just as the old bowling muscle memory was kicking in the lanes went into Saturday night party mode.

They turned off the lights, turned on the video screens playing music videos and filled the lanes with various color lights shooting patterns all over the floor.  Well once they did that my game once again went south.  Not being able to see the floor removed the normal visual reference I use.  I was all over the place once disco mode was initiated.

I did manage to roll a few of those satisfying strikes where the pins are obliterated into the pit.  I always enjoyed that feeling. It is right up there with a called strike 3 when a fastball cracks into the catcher’s glove.

The scoring of bowling has come a long way from my hey day.  Gone are the clear score sheets on a projector that you filled in with a wax pencil.  Everything is computerized with video screens that keep score, give you visual feedback on your efforts, advice on shooting spares and even a radar gun telling you how fast your ball is heading towards the pins.  Others in my party were impressed I was consistently clocking in at 19mph + on a typical roll.

In total we spent 3 hours at the bowling alley.  It was a lot of fun, assisted by a steady flow of beer.

On Sunday morning I got up for a running/swimming brick.  I only ran 4 miles but it was one of the most uncomfortable 4 miles I can recall .  Early on everything felt tight and rigid.  My legs just were not interested in running.  Even my breathing, which is normally not an issue was labored, amplified again by the very sticky air and hot temps.

I really felt like bailing after the first 2 mile loop, I was that miserable.  I continued on anyway, knowing the disappointment in myself for quitting would be greater than the physical discomfort in the run.  The overall pace was actually on the quick side for me, just under a 9 minute mile but I felt every single stride of it.  I was REALLY beat at the end of it.  Of course running the morning after a late night of bowling/drinking typically is not a blue print for success, at least not for me.

The run, after a sizable breather, was followed up with 1200 yards in the water park lap pool.  By the time I was done I was a click over zombie mode. I was really beat.

I had plans to get some more stuff done outdoors during the day Sunday but the weather did not cooperate.  It was a bizarre rain pattern.  At least a dozen times the weather swung between blue sky and hard rain.  By the time I woke up this morning there was standing water adorning the yard, very early on the calendar for this to be happening already.  It could mean I am in for a very swampy summer.

This will be a short but busy week for me.

So after work yesterday I headed over to the local Sears, I wanted to pick up a new set of mower blades.  Sears, a retail juggernaut for many decades  has been taking quite a beating for a long time.  Retailers like Target and Wal-mart have pushed Sears into the background. Sears has tried to reinvent itself, although not all that successfully.  I mean how smart was it to buy K-mart?

Well anyway, the state of Sears seemed pretty apparent when I approached the door to the hardware department and saw one of the handles was being held together by large amounts of duct tape.  It seemed sadly appropriate.

While I was there I also grabbed a tool that is specifically designed to sharpen mower blades.  It should help me extend the life of blades going forward.  Glancing at the instructions surprised me, it said you should only sharpen the outer 3″-4″ of the blade and not touch anything else.  I guess it makes sense when I think about it but up until this point I have tried to restore the edge on the entire beveled edge of the blades.

I also picked up a corded drill, mine had died around a year ago and I never replaced it.  I am going to need the added power to mount some bike racks in cinder block in Ali’s garage this weekend.  When I looked at the instructions for the new drill, a Dewalt, it made me realize that my old drill i threw out , also a Dewalt, was probably not dead.  I did not realize that the brushes in the motor of the Dewalt drills are replaceable and once they wear out the drill will stop working as a safety feature.  Oh well, now I know.

The checkout process at Sears was like a collision between decades.  There was something wrong with the registers online credit card system so the guy actually had to pull out the old CC imprint tool to imprint my CC onto the receipt.  Yet, I also was able to have my receipt emailed to me instead of printed out.  Old tech awkwardly mixed with a new world, much like Sears itself.

Since separating I have changed my routine a bit to cut back on my weekend work.  Most Thursday evenings I will clean Tuki’s cage and do all of the laundry that has accumulated.  Well last night I took the head start further, heading outside to get the weeding done as well.  The overcast skies and cooler temps made it seem like a good time to do it.

I finished up the work a little after 7 and spent the rest of the evening getting current with Falling Skies and working on season 2 of Sopranos.

This weekend has no hallmark events although there will be no lack of things to do.

Yesterday I was very happy that the Supreme Court ruled against the Defense of Marriage Act from a federal level, making the concept of equal marital rights being offered to all gay individuals one step closer to reality.  This doesn’t green light gay marriage nationwide however.  Our wonderfully hated governor already made a point of reiterating that Florida’s 2008 legislation defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman will continue to be in effect, regardless of the Supreme Court ruling.

On Facebook I mentioned my support for the ruling and how I hoped someday the discrimination against gays will look similar to other things in US history like allowing women to vote and abolishing slavery.  My point was throughout history, civilization has evolved.  Many things that people would not lift an eyebrow about 100 years ago seem beyond comprehension today.  Evolution is a good thing.

To me, allowing gay people the same marital rights/benefits as everyone else seems like a total no brainer.  Who exactly does it harm if two people of the same gender decide to marry each other?  I have yet to hear any logical argument against it that makes any sense.  The only argument that is thrown against gay marriage is based on religion, normally that the bible explicitly is against marriage being anything but a man/woman union.

My personal opinions on religion aside, I would instead like to point out the inconsistency of using the bible as the foundation of this belief.  If the you are going to say that what is in the bible is what should be the law of the land in 2013, then I think it is reasonable that ALL things in the bible should be followed as well.

Take a look at these 13 things that are also directives out of the bible, I am pretty certain that anyone reading this has broken many of these tenants, many times.  My point is selectively using the bible as justification for a stance where convenient is hypocritical.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too. More scary bible directives can be found here.

Last night my neighbor called me to ask if I was having phone problems.  Evidently there were a number of lightning hits in our neighborhood yesterday and they lost their phone and a number of other electronic items were messed up.  I was worried my house which is teeming with electronic items would sustain heavy losses.

Unlike my neighbor, I no longer have a hard line phone connected to my house, a common pathway for lightning to get into your place.  As far as I can tell, all of my stuff was unscathed besides having to set the time on a couple digital clocks.

Both my neighbor and I escaped the bad storm much better than a construction worker that was working on a house on our very same street.  He was struck by lightning while getting down from a scaffolding.  It took him out.

Having someone die in such close proximity to the house from the lightning that is so common place in Florida was a bit of a wake up call.  I have had many sessions of working around the house outdoors when storms were on top of me.  In a weird way I always have thought that going down in a flash of white light would not be all that bad of a way to go.

So the eating issues with Nicki were still front and center last night.  When my mom arrived yesterday she put back down Nicki’s untouched breakfast and it remained untouched the entire 4 hours my mom was there.  When I got home the plate was clean but I am sure that was due to Sadie swooping in.

So I figured last night Nicki would be famished.  I put down her food which was a mix of her hyopallergenic stuff and the Merrick she used to get.  She ate all of the Merrick chunks but left the other stuff alone.  Eating roughly half a can of dog food a day (plus treats) just isn’t going to get the job done.

Nicki and her mental hangups about various things can be extremely frustrating to try to untangle.  For months she has been totally fine eating the vet food and now out of the blue she acts like it is poison.  Ali is back today so hopefully Nicki will settle back into normal eating.  She seems to be more out of sorts than normal when Ali isn’t around now.

Last night after work, despite menacing skies I headed out to the bar park for a little work.  First I did another attempt at this month’s BB challenge, then another try at elbow planching on the pull up bar and finally some silly things with one of my big tires.

Last night when I was out with the girls I was stopped in my tracks by just how beautiful the skies looked.  The storm clouds had started to break up and the awesome sunset colors were poking through in such a way that made me just stand there and admire the awesomeness for a good long while.  This morning I was treated an almost equally incredible sunrise.  Although there are a number of disadvantages to the location of the house, being able to enjoy such awesome sights with nothing but the sounds of birds in the background is something I truly appreciate.

I have managed to plow through all of season one of the Sopranos in less than a week.  Season two here I come.