Archives 2014

Before I rack my brain trying to recap the last 365 days let me just recap the last 18 hours.  Cindy and I (much more Cindy) continued work on the deck project yesterday.  With my wrenched back the scope of work I was able to do was severely limited which was frustrating.

Cindy went around and painted the entire floor rail of the pool cage Rustoleum white and touched up the edge of the deck where some paint pulled off with the painters tape. In total I bet she spent 3 hours plus doing the tedious work. In addition she did the first coat of hammered black paint on the old lawn furniture as well as staining the two wood pieces on the deck with the same ebony color we used on the kitchen corner countertop. She busted her ass, plain and simple.

My contributions were minor.  I applied the second coat to the furniture, I replaced the broken outside receptacle cover and moved some stuff back onto the deck.  I felt like I was walking a tight rope, if I moved just a fraction of an inch the wrong way I was impaled with a spike of pain that took my breath away.  It was and is pretty miserable.

Sadie was absolutely thrilled when we allowed her out on her cherished pool deck.  It was the only birthday gift she needed although she of course enjoyed the homemade cupcake with cream cheese frosting that Cindy made both for her and for Nicki’s birthday which was on the 28th.

Ok so let’s get on to the moment you all have been waiting for, the 2014 recap, where I do a poor job of trying to summarize an entire year of my life in several paragraphs.

Of course as is customary, I first need to list my stated goals from the end of last year and see how well I did at accomplishing them.

Paint the garage – check courtesy of Cindy.  Cindy painted the garage herself in Eagles Midnight Green with matching silver accents.  It was just one of the countless examples of the acts of generosity that she bestows on me on a regular basis.

New appliances – nope, maybe this year

Fitness goals of 400 pound dead lift, 30 pull ups, 5 clean muscle ups, one arm pull up, blah blah, blah – all fails, all in a major way but I will be going into detail about my physical deterioration later

Expand my online presence/ ad revenue – Nope, things have pretty much stayed the same, I still have not captured that elusive viral video gold.  In general I have posted far fewer videos online this year, mostly due to my significant reduction in exercise at home.

More road trips – YES.  Cindy and I had a very memorable winter road trip to see my dad and step mom where we were knee deep in the birthing of three sheep. We followed up with the Durango trip in late summer which I will expand on later. We also flew up to PA in mid-summer for my sister Meghan’s wedding.

Continue good times with Cindy – Check.  Cindy moved in with me in late March and has brought unbelievable amounts of good energy and smiles into my life.

Ok let’s dive in.

In the past I used to go month by month and try to do a chronological recap but I think that is tedious both for me to do and for others to read so I will try to deal more with categories of things.

There have been several big things that went down in 2014, Cindy moving in, my health problems, and my mom passing away in August.  Let’s cover them in that order.

Cindy moving in was not something that was carefully planned out.  It was more of a reaction to some problems she was having with her daughter which just happened to coincide with the lease on her apartment coming up.  It just made sense from both of our perspectives.

Of course I had hesitation about having someone living with me full time, even someone that has treated me as wonderfully as Cindy does.  There was a part of me that had a chip on my shoulder and didn’t want to allow anyone into my life in such a permanent way as living together.  Although at first there was some speed bumps, quickly Cindy proved her moving in was a big positive all the way around.  Her willingness and happiness to help in any way possible made my day to day existence significantly better.  Nine months into her moving in I still feel very, very happy in our decision.

So in early April I developed some sort of awful GI disorder that resulted in more than a week of feeling miserable accompanied by debilitating diarrhea.  I went to the doctor hoping for some sort of relief.  The visit included me performing one of the most disgusting things I can ever remember, using a “hat” to collect samples for testing.  Despite having numerous testing, nothing definitive was determined as the cause of my illness.  Everything that was tested for came back negative.

The ailment just sort of faded but seemed to leave my body altered in a permanent way.  My body functions are different ever since the illness.  To make matters worse, for the first time in my life I had an issue with hemorrhoids even though I didn’t have the other factors that typically lead to that condition.  I more or less have had that under control for awhile but I have another annoying issue in the same region.

I didn’t put the correlation together for quite awhile but it seems like strenuous exercise has a direct effect on me being sore down there.  Well this is a major problem for someone like me who considers strenuous exercise as a basic building block of healthy living.

All year long I suffered frustration after frustration as I would try to restart tougher and more regular exercise and be punished for doing so.  It has affected every aspect of my exercise routine, strength, endurance, and calisthenics.  If you know me, you know I value what I have been able to do physically despite advancing up the years ladder.  2014 was the first year where there was a clear and steep drop off of what I could do and it all coincides with the illness in April. I have tried countless shifts in my diet and exercise choices to try to find my way back to normalcy.  Unfortunately now I am still lost in the weeds and hoping to find my way out in 2015.

With Cindy being in the house to happily help me we have tackled a number of projects this year.  I already mentioned how she painted the garage for me. In addition we recently made a kitchen corner countertop and just this past weekend completed repainting the pool deck after months of failed remediation promises by the Rhinoshield guy.

My race timing has undergone some changes in 2014.  After a big blowout with the running club president for a brief period of time I thought I was out of the timing business altogether. It would have felt good in a lot of ways as it would have pulled mountains of responsibility off my back.  After some reconsideration of the collateral damage it would cause along with a reconciliation I was back in the saddle with some changes implemented.  I am no longer a board member but still the timer for all of the running club events.

The shake up actually resulted in my taking steps to establish an official timing business outside of the boundaries of the running club, Green Machine Timing was born.  I bought my own timing box and logo’d shelter for the business.  I have no desire to fill every weekend with event timing but it could give me opportunities to take on some small events to help pay the bills.  I already have one employee named Cindy, that works for free.  🙂

Every year I have rants about various people/businesses that do me wrong in some way or another. This year the three that come to mind are Comcast, RhinoShield, and IX Webhosting.

Comcast has been more of a problem at work then at home.  I actually reinvested in cable tv once Cindy moved in, discarding my decade plus affiliation with Tivo in favor of the Xfinity X1 hardware platform which I generally am quite happy with.  Of course who can forget the installation of the equipment which included one of the installers spending more than 15 minutes in our bathroom doing presumably disgusting things.

Rhinoshield has been in my crosshairs all year long, trying to get them to honor the two year warranty on the painting of my pool deck which was performed in March of 2013.  The guy that did the work repeatedly would drop the lines of communication with getting the work done.  After more than 6 months of broken promises I had enough and contacted the main office.  The owner wrote me a $500, get out of my hair check, so I could have someone else do the repainting.  Little did he know that someone was me.

IX Webhosting has been a thorn in my side repeatedly over the years.  I have vowed repeatedly that I was going to get my site hosted elsewhere because of the problems.  Finally this year I took the steps to partially do so after they decided to move their phone support exclusively to an India help desk combined with one too many TOS (terms of service) warning email where they abruptly shut down access to my web sites.  I migrated all of my WordPress based sites to GoDaddy WP shared hosting and have been delighted thus far.  It has been an upgrade in every way imagineable.

2014 had it’s fair share of automotive repairs.  We said goodbye to Cindy’s Miata in 2014 which was chock full of problems, replacing it with a 2007 Prius which has been a simply wonderful vehicle.  I replaced the rear hatch actuator in the Prius and threw a set of tires on it, but that was all it has required.  There was a Tacoma front brake/disc swap video in there but all in all, Duf’s Garage had significantly less business in 2014 which I guess is a good thing.

The SSR once again spent most of it’s time sitting in my garage.  In total less than 2000 miles were put on the truck in 2014.  In some ways that is good and some ways it’s bad.  When I bought the truck it was definitely serving a role as a happiness supplement, something that was lacking in my life.  Since Cindy has entered my life the SSR no longer needs to fill that role.  It’s gotten to the point where I consider if I even need to own the truck at all from a cost/benefit perspective, something that three years ago would have been pure blasphemy.

We made an odd addition to the family in 2014, adding 3 buff orpington chickens to the backyard.  This was more Cindy’s idea than mine.  I really had no idea what I would be getting myself into. After buying a second coop when I overpaid for what was a glorified dollhouse we were officially in the chicken business.

I didn’t expect to enjoy having farm animals in my backyard as much as I have,  The chickens are funny and endearing in their chicken kind of way.  I love that the dogs and the chickens are able to mingle freely in the yard.  Each species seems to realize the other is part of the same extended family.

Cindy and I made three out of state trips this year.  The first was in the van with Sadie to the frozen tundra of western PA.  It was Cindy’s first exposure to real snow.  She loved the snow but also struggled with the bitter reality of single digit temperatures.    The unexpected birth of multiple sheep turned the trip into a barn animal centric experience where both Cindy and I helped my dad and stepmom deal with the needs of newborn lambs.  It was an unconventional but memorable visit.

The trip to PA for my sisters wedding was very brief but fun as well.  Meghan and Paul are a great couple whom seem to have a very bright future in front of them.  Both Cindy and I were very happy to be able to be part of them making their lifelong commitment to each other.

Our second western roads trip in as many years was epic and fun.  It was much different taking a long road trip in anything other than a conversion van.  I had big concerns that traveling 5000 miles in a Prius would be sort of miserable.  I was very happy it was not a big deal at all plus the incredible gas saving we reaped from driving the hybrid were HUGE.

Our trip included a very bizarre experience with edible marijuana products in Durango.  After feeling nothing from 420 gummy fish I over did it on pot granola squares and felt like I was transported to another universe.  We also had a very dangerous, unscripted climb while in Durango where Cindy thought we were literally facing possible death if we traversed any higher. (she may have been right) During the rest of the trip we had a ton of memorable experiences which further cemented our desire to make yearly road trips a staple of our existence.

I didn’t add a lot of tech to the household in 2014.  The new Neato BotVac 65 and my crazy LED pulsating Xmas trees are the only things that are coming to mind right now.   Of course I have bought lots of stuff this year but very little of it is the tech/geek variety.  Most of my dollars went into things that would be more categorized as home improvement items.

Cindy made a huge change this year, leaving the post office after nearly 20 years.  The job, while well paying, was making her miserable from dealing with horrible management and the repetitive movements it required was really taking a toll on her physically.  It was very brave of her to make the jump and I was happy to be able to encourage her to make the change.

So I wish I could say I was leaving the best for last, unfortunately it is the worst thing that occurred in 2014 and probably in my lifetime in terms of how it changes things.  When I got the call from the ER room that Sunday morning I felt like I was in a dream, a horrible dream.  Hearing the words that came out of the doctors mouth describing mom’s heart attack and the tone of voice he used when relaying the circumstances surrounding it instantly added boulders of weight to the news.

My lifelong fears of death and all that surrounds it were shoved inches from my face as I saw mom laying in the hospital, present in body alone.  I felt helpless, scared, and lost as I held mom’s hand, hoping to feel something, anything to indicate that she was still there.  I never did. Once the details of the timeline surrounding mom’s heart attack were more defined whatever miniscule amounts of hope I had evaporated.  You just don’t come back after being down for so long.

It was tragically ironic that mom’s passing was the first time in years that all three of her children were present at the same time.  I think she would have been happy we were all there helping to support each other, we all needed it in one way or another.  If there was anything positive about mom’s passing,  it was that it happened in the way she always desired, with no long and painful descent into an age where you no longer can perform even the most basic functions to support yourself.  She was here one moment and gone the next.

Of course I am still wading through the aftermath of mom’s death.  For the most part I sort of feel like I have put much of it behind lock and key, very rarely will I dwell on how I feel about everything surrounding it.  The raw emotion from those days is something that I just don’t like reliving in my head.

Sorting through the estate settlement part of this has been a learning experience as well which has been filled with hurdles since my mom did not have her finances set up in a way that was easily resolved in case of her death.  Of course this could be said of most people I assume.  Nobody really wants to think about what happens when your moments on this planet have come to an end. I assume I will be continuing to deal with the aftermath of mom’s death into 2015 and beyond.  It just is something my brain can only process in very small chunks at a time.

Ok now that I thoroughly bummed you out lets set some 2015 goals.

Physically I just want to be healthy, at least as healthy and active as a 47 year old can expect to be.  Aches and pains will always be my companion at this point in life but hopefully I can eliminate problems that have been dragging around my neck like a 200lb chain for most of 2014.  I’m not setting specific exercise goals for 15, I just want to be consistently active without having to pay a penalty that sidelines me for weeks at a time.

More road trips are hopefully on the docket for next year, when and where is yet to be determined.

As far as home projects go, new appliances would always be nice but I think new flooring in the house would offer more bang for the buck.  The original, shitty builders grade,  approaching 14 year old carpet should be replaced. Whether that would be a better grade carpet or some hard surface is up for debate.  I did see some kick ass high tech toilets the other day that would make a nice addition to my bathroom experience.

I am hoping 2015 will see the real launch of Green Machine Timing.  I already have one event that may be on board for early 2015.

There will be some significant changes going on at my regular job.  Just how those changes play out could be a significant part of the upcoming year.

I hope that Cindy and I can continue to grow and improve over the next 365 days.  We have a very symbiotic relationship where we each provide the things that the other likes/needs not out of obligation but out of love, respect and appreciation for the other.  Things just flow naturally between us.  We both consider ourselves lucky to have such a person in their life.

So although there were some significant downsides to my 2014, having someone in my life that is always pulling you upward makes even the darkest days a little brighter.

I hope you have a fun but safe New Years celebration and thank you for sharing my near daily glimpse into my corner of the world.

As I sit here with a wrenched back from four days of work on the pool deck I figured it was a good time to recant my extended time off which started last Thursday with Christmas day.  The longer I go without emptying my memory banks, the more detail is lost to the mists, never to be recalled again.

So Christmas Eve and Christmas day were good except for Cindy’s health, which was poor.  Unfortunately Christmas day she felt the worst.  Of course I could identify since I had been battling what I assume is the same strain of illness for nearly three weeks.  Since Cindy’s daughter and mom had already stopped by on Tuesday night Cindy and I had a very solo Christmas.  Of course mom’s absence added to the more isolating feel.  I did position her glasses overlooking the Christmas tree, as if that made a difference.

Thankfully we had the dogs who for whatever reason seem to understand and recognize that Christmas = fun for them.  Both Nicki and Sadie had big dog smiles most of the morning.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that we both went overboard on Christmas presents.  To have close to 40 presents (some were small of course) for just two people was a little crazy.  I just like getting stuff for Cindy, it’s a small token of how much I appreciate everything she does for me on a daily basis 365 days a year.  The ironic thing is although of course Cindy likes presents, it’s the last thing she really cares about.  She isn’t materialistic at all.

She was flabbergasted as I put box after box in front of her to rip apart.  For the most part I did a good job and a lot of the stuff I got had side benefits for me like cool kitchen items to assist Cindy in her fabulous food prep she does for me.  The Kindle Fire HD7 I got Cindy also was my ticket to being able to play Hearthstone on a tablet.  It won’t run well on the Galaxy Tab I got last year but seems to run pretty smoothly on the Fire.

Cindy got me way too much stuff as well.  Obviously she feels that my wardrobe is a bit dated as she hooked me up with a number of cool clothes.  She also got me some other cool little things that to be honest I haven’t gotten to dig into yet thanks to the deck project. On Christmas I got to talk to Todd, Torrin and my dad which was nice.  Those calls carry a bit more meaning now that mom is gone and I have no family in the area any longer.

During the day we worked mostly on clean up and consolidation of the huge influx of gifts into the household.  By 2 or 3PM we had most of the legwork completed.  I was feeling my seemingly unavoidable post-Christmas round of depression set in.  I can’t really explain why it happens.  I just know after all the presents are opened, the Christmas music is turned off and the clean up begins I feel down in the dumps. I think mom not being there made it a little more heavy this year.

For the past few years  I have attended the Christmas party that is held by the running club president and his wife in their beautiful home in Naples proper.  We were once again invited to go and originally planned to attend.  However Cindy was feeling pretty miserable and I just didn’t see the point of going with her being sick and me feeling 180 degrees away from the partying mood.  The dogs were happy we decided to stay home with them I’m sure.

So on Friday I had off but Cindy had to work.  My original plan was to go get all of the stuff needed to repaint the pool deck but it turned into a lot more driving than that.  One of the big things I got for Cindy for Christmas was a gift certificate to have all of the windows in her Prius tinted.  It’s something she had talked about wanting to get done from day one but didn’t get around to yet.

I called the shop I got the gift cert from on Friday, wanting to see if we could set up an appointment on Monday or Tuesday to get the work done since we were both off.  I was taken off guard when the owner said he can do it right now.  Ok, I said, I’ll get it there, even though I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make this work since Cindy took the Prius to work.

What followed was a probably close to a couple hundred miles of driving.  I told Cindy of the open slot to get the work done.  She was excited to get it done and said she could get out of the office for a few minutes.  I arranged to meet her at the window tint place and then drop her back off at her office which was about 10 minutes away.  I had the dogs along of course so they were quite happy to ride along for however long it would take.

When we dropped the Prius off the guy said it should only take a couple hours to do the work.  So I told Cindy maybe I could run my errands and then come back and drop her off to get the car.  After dropping her off I was all over the place including a stop at Lowes to get the supplies for the pool deck repaint.

I brought some of the left over paint from when the deck was done last and asked the paint guy if they could color match it.  Well their idea of color matching was taking a dab of the old paint, drying it and then holding it up to the color card for their pool deck product, looking for a close match.  I thought this was going to be a more exact thing where they tint and test to get an exact match.  The color I wound up with was called khaki which was close but definitely lighter than what was already on the deck.  Since we were doing a complete repaint I didn’t really care.  The lighter, brighter color would look good.

I also got two cans of primer designed for the pool deck paint.  I think this is where Rhinoshield botched the job, the guy half ass primed the deck by spraying stuff on in a way that did not cover the surface completely.  I would be rolling and brushing on the primer over every square inch of the deck.

I called the tint place and heard that the Prius was done.  Unfortunately Cindy had to wait for a girl to get back from her lunch break before she could be picked up.  I wasted the additional hour by returning an item to Sam’s, some 10 miles north of Cindy’s office, and dumping 20 gallons of gas into the party van before returning to pick her up.

The Prius looked sharp with the new tint.  The good looks will be backed up with the 80% light/heat blockage the top of the line ceramic tint will provide.  The guy that owns the 1-2 man shop was real laid back and nice.  It felt good to support a small business.  He also happens to be an avid swimmer.  He said he has logged something ridiculous like 4300 miles of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.

So I had spent much more of my day running around than I planned meaning I got home later than I wanted to.  I still needed to at least get something done for the pool deck project that was tangible.  I cleared off the deck of everything and put up the 100 feet of contractor barrier fencing around the perimeter of the pool cage to keep the chickens from kicking mulch onto it after it was cleaned.  Cindy was impressed how much I got done in the brief amount of time I had at home.

On Friday night we chilled and watched Into the Storm, a movie about super tornadoes.  The special effects alone were incredible.  They reproduced the utter destruction of the storm with incredible realism.  The story was just ok but you don’t see  movie like this for the plot.  It was a solid B+ rental for me.

So on Saturday the work on the deck ramped up since both Cindy and I were available to work on it for the next four days.  Unfortunately the dense morning fog that we have experienced every morning has not been helpful, leaving everything moist for half of the morning.  Cindy’s primary job was sweeping up the deck of loose particles with the ShopVac.  I followed behind with the pressure washer.

Since the deck was being repainted I used the pressure washer at point blank range, applying more washing power to the deck.  The additional pressure stripped a ton of the old shitty paint job off all over the place.  Maybe deck paint just isn’t made to withstand 3200 PSI? I also went around with a caulk gun and my index finger filling in the multitude of small hairline cracks that were “fixed” by Rhinoshield but reappeared only a few months later.  I am hoping using the flexible caulk will yield more long lasting results than the concrete patch material they used originally.

So unfortunately that was really all the deck work we could get done on Saturday as the surface had to be absolutely dry before moving to the next step of applying primer.

Saturday night we met up with Lily at Mercato.  Cindy had suggested that we meet up for dinner since Lily was in town visiting family.  I agreed that was a good idea until we pulled into the Mercato complex.  I had given no thought to how miserably full the place would be the Saturday night after Christmas.  We  circled for 20 minutes looking for a parking spot as we passed dozens of parking space mongers, a species I simply have no tolerance for.  By the time we parked on the top level of the parking deck I was annoyed to the max.

Luckily a few beers over dinner settled me down.  We sat at the bar of the Rusty Bucket, a place I got a gift card to for Xmas, and had nice meals while downing a few 20 once Miller Lites.  It was nice to catch up with Lily, Randall’s ex-girlfriend.  Even though their relationship hasn’t worked out we have kept in touch with Lily who is a sweetheart.  After dinner we made a beeline for home, we both have been sleep deprived from the poor sleep we seem to get when the dogs are around.  They seem far too eager to wake us up in the middle of the night.

The dogs, especially Sadie were quite unhappy with being blocked from the pool deck, one of their go to places to hang out at the house.  They camped by the sliding glass door endlessly, hoping to be able to quickly circumvent my leg blockade.

Sunday we again had to start later than we hoped due to the fog.  Once it lifted a bit we got busy spreading primer, a substance that looked and smelled like glue.  It was clear going on, making it a bit hard to tell where you did and did not cover.  Luckily as it dried it developed a white haze which made it easy for us to tell if we missed a spot.

I helped Cindy with the hand brushing of the edges of the pool cage while I let the coping to Cindy alone as she is better with precision painting.  I then grabbed the roller with a 4 foot extension pole and started rolling.  The work didn’t seem too bad at first but after awhile the movement got difficult as I tried to apply significant downward pressure with each stroke to press the primer into the nooks and crannies of the Spraykrete surface.  I systematically worked my way around the deck, finishing up the last few strokes as I stood in the great room, hanging out the sliding door.

Cindy came up with a great idea that I hadn’t thought about, touching up the rusty pool cage screws/bolts, which there are a ton of.  She used a can of white Rustoleum paint and a small brush to dramatically improve the appearance of these formerly rust encrusted bolts.  She figured if there was any time to do it, now would be the time.  She was right, I’m glad she thought of it. (and did the tedious work herself)  🙂

As if we hadn’t been doing enough this weekend, Cindy also started a side task of repairing the timing mats I bought for Green Machine Timing.  Both of the mats have rips in them.  Cindy is using backing material along with considerable hand sewing to fix and reenforce the mats, saving me potentially the $1200 it would cost to replace them.

During the down time over the weekend I shipped two very large boxes.  One was a 95 pound behemoth, containing two 5 meter Ipico mats that the club replaced years ago but were still sitting in my closet.  I sold them to help offset the expense of some new equipment the club bought for timing.  The other 60lb box was the spare tire kit I bought for Cindy’s daughter that it turned out she didn’t need.  I was glad that the place I bought it from agreed to let me return it.

So yesterday we got to the meat of the project, the painting itself.  Having just experienced a day of applying primer our game plan was much the same.  We did the edges, coping and then it was floor rolling time.  Unlike the primer that required a minimum of 8 hours dry time the pool deck paint was ready for a second coat after a couple of hours.  After applying the first coat we ran out to Lowes for a third gallon of paint as I suspected we would not have enough, my suspicion was correct.

By the time I was done rolling the second coat the sun was going down and my body was breaking down.  My back was killing me from the thousands of hunched over rolling strokes.  By the time I finished up I was physically and mentally done with the project, too bad we weren’t actually done in the true sense of the word.

Actually Monday night instead of ending, the project actually expanded. I bought two black PolyWood lounge chairs from Amazon to replace the cheap, shitty, rusty water expelling lounge chairs that have been on the deck for several years.

The purchase of two black chairs inspired some further renovations where Cindy suggested we repaint the brown metal patio furniture to match.  The furniture had some rust on it too so a repaint would make sense and changing the color would give things a fresh new look.  So now our Tuesday, which we originally hoped would be nothing but relaxation was instead loaded up with more to do’s.

When I awoke this morning I paid the price for the endless rolling.  It felt like I had a spear shoved in my back right below my right shoulder blade.  If I twisted the wrong way it brought stop you dead in your tracks, stabbing pain.  I was obviously going to be limited in my functionality.  We headed to Lowes once again, probably the 6th time in as many days I had visited a home improvement super store.  We got spray paint for the metal furniture, stain for the wood stuff along with a few other small items.

I did a few little things but the painting has been exclusively done by Cindy today.  She has been out there for a couple hours at least plugging along.  When all of this labor is done I am sure we will look back on it favorably and with pride, however at this moment, the only description that keeps coming to mind for the last four days has been, “pain in the ass”.

Saw The Giver last night, B+.

So my early Christmas gift to myself showed up yesterday along with several other boxes.  The big box contained a Neato Bot Vac 65.  Anyone that knows me knows that I have been a loooong time robotic vacuum enthusiast.  I got my first Roomba at least a dozen years ago.

A few years ago I got my first Neato, a robo-vac that uses more intelligence than a Roomba to clean a room, utilizing a scanning laser that identifies obstacles and maps a room.  The Neato also had far greater suction power than my Roombas, required far less maintenance and was just better tech.  Really the only negative I have had with them is the batteries can be a bit touchy but that is the case with Roombas as well.

The BotVac65 adds more features including a more modern design, better lcd screen, a larger dust bin, a rotating side edge brush and a quieter motor.  After letting it charge for a couple hours I set it loose on the house.  The less noisy vacuuming was something Cindy immediately noticed and liked. The Bot seemed to move a little faster than my older Signature XV bot while still doing a fine job of covering the floor space in an efficient and complete manner as opposed to the random bouncing a Roomba does.  So far I am quite pleased with my Neato upgrade.

One of the other boxes was from my brother Patrick.  It was a STAGGERING collection of candy and other quirky things from his recent travels to Japan and South Korea.  He knows how interesting I find far east food items.  The most intriguing item I saw in the box was green Kit Kats, yes GREEN.

We also got a box of homemade Xmas cookies from my step mom.  They were awesome as well.  It’s been a few years since I got to sample them.

Cindy was running around like mad trying to prepare food for the arrival of her mom, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend.  We were doing an early Christmas celebration.  We had all the decorations glowing and the Christmas music playing, the house seemed appropriately festive.

I rented a Christmas Story for us to sort of watch while eating dinner.  There were a lot of side convo’s going on that made the movie a distraction at best.  When Cindy and Katie get together it is normal for lots of sillyness to go down and last night was no different.  There were lots of laughs and smiles to go around.  I know that there is no better gift for Cindy than spending happy time with her daughter, something she just doesn’t get to do all that often anymore.

The celebration didn’t wrap up until close to 10.  To be honest the time passed quickly because we were all having fun.  Katie said she may try to stop by again later on Christmas day if she can, something I know Cindy would love.

So normally our office is closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  However because of Xmas falling on Thursday this year they decided to give us the day after Christmas off instead which is awesome.  I would always rather have it this way.  Having the day after Xmas off is great, it let’s me play with my “toys”.  Add in that I took off next Monday and Tuesday and I now have an EPIC 6 days off in a row.

So although in many ways this has been one of my more upbeat Christmas’s in decades, thanks to Cindy’s positive influence on my life, there is obviously is a large hole this year with my mom passing away.  As has been the case for most of the time since mom died, I have tried to not let myself get spun into a sorrow cycle about mom not being part of my Christmas for the first time in my life.  My Florida Xmas mornings have always included mom waking up with us and participating in the festivities. Waking up tomorrow with that bedroom unoccupied will be sad for sure.

I’ll continue to try to focus that mom got to leave this planet in a way she always wanted, without the prolonged suffering, mental deterioration and pain that accompanies far too many elderly people into their later years.  Even though she is gone, her love for us lives on.

Merry Christmas to my friends, family and other regular blog readers.  I appreciate you taking the time to digest my thoughts throughout the year, as silly as they may be at times.  I hope you have a great holiday.

For quite a long time I had wondered what my blog would be like if it was turned into a book. Well yesterday thanks to the free site, blogbooker.com, I was able to find out.  After exporting my site and feeding it into BlogBooker, I had a sequential pdf book of my blog, dating all the way back to it’s origin in 2002.

I expected 12+ years of blog entries to add up to a decent sized book.  I did not expect it to be 4972 pages long, holy shit.  I took some time to read the first 50 pages or so.  It’s interesting contrasting how and what I wrote about then versus now.  Obviously a lot of things can change over that period of time.  If you have a month or so to kill, you are welcome to try getting through the entire novel.

Last night was busy, I had a number of small things to attend to.  I got a little bit of a late start since I stopped at Ali’s place on the way home to pick up the pressure washer that she borrowed.  I felt bad seeing the girls so briefly but I assured them I would see them in two days for another fun extended visit.

One of those things I wanted to get done was to get the other corny Xmas decoration we bought at Lowes set up, Camo-Santa.  Camo-Santa is wearing camouflage appropriately and has a set of binoculars that he raises and lowers to his eyes.  It is absolutely tacky and silly which is perhaps why I liked it.

I set Santa up on the landing by the front door, hoping to avoid another fire ant attack similar to what killed my inflatable snowman last year. I can officially declare that this year the house is the most decorative ever.  I can only attribute this to Cindy who brings out and encourages my inner child who still remembers the fun part of Christmas.

Because of schedule conflicts, Cindy’s daughter and mom are supposed to come over tonight for an early Christmas celebration.  It’s too bad we couldn’t have done it Christmas Eve or on the big day itself but I guess you need to just go with the flow.

Saturday morning Cindy and I were out the door early to head down to Marco Island for the Hill Run.   Cindy was considering running this race as well but she has officially caught what I have had for 3 weeks and counting so she was feeling pretty lousy.

The race was small with numbers only in the low 200’s so timing it wasn’t a problem.  I had no weird glitches with the timing hardware this week.  The only failure I had was one timing bib that was dead as a doornail.  Since the race didn’t start until 8, was 5 miles long and was held in Marco, Cindy and I didn’t get back to the house until after 11am. After attending to post race work I headed outside to knock out a few chores before the Eagles game at 4:30.

So the Eagles were playing the 3-11 Washington Redskins, a team that has been in disarray all year long.  The Eagles had everything to play for since the only way they could ensure a playoff spot was to win their two remaining games against the lackluster Redskins and Giants, a challenging but totally doable scenario. So with it all on the line the Eagles came out and made a statement.  Unfortunately that statement was, “We suck”.

They played an incredibly sloppy game with double digit penalties, missed field goals, defensive backs left 1-1 in situations where they were overmatched and Mark Sanchez’s patented, “turn the ball over at the worst possible time” abilities. I found Chip Kelly’s stoic expression intensely aggravating as the game unraveled.  I was thoroughly disgusted as the ball sailed through the uprights after it left the Redskins kickers foot with 5 seconds remaining.

To make matters worse, one of the biggest reasons the Eagles lost was the Eagles defensive backs, particularly Bradley Fletcher was burned repeatedly by fcking Desean Jackson.  As much of an asshole as I think Jackson is, there is no doubt he is fast as hell and the Eagles just did not find a way to deal with it.

So when you pair the Eagles loss with the Cowboys surprising destruction of the Colts, the team is now officially eliminated from the playoffs. To be 9-3 at one point and not make the playoffs is really, really hard to do. Yet that is exactly what the team has done with this late season collapse. Ironically this is almost a complete reversal from last year where the team started slow but finished strong.

So where does this leave the team going forward?    Well the QB position should still be in the hands of Nick Foles.  Although statistically he was nowhere near as good as last year and he threw a lot of interceptions, at least the team was still finding ways to win.  With Sanchez the opposite has happened, they find ways to lose and many times it is connected to Sanchez turning the ball over in the clutch.  Most of his turnovers seem to be connected to him being indecisive in the pocket, taking just a moment too long to get rid of the ball.

The secondary pretty much sucks from what I can tell.  All season long they gave up 1st downs on 3rd and long far too routinely. This is hard to believe but the team gave up 1st downs on 3rd and 15 or greater an astonishing 33% of the time.  (the league average is 11%) The pressure the front 7 applied requires a a crew of D-backs adept at 1-1 coverage.  The team simply doesn’t have that.

In some ways the season was a bit misleading.  The Eagles wins were mostly built on the back of beating teams with losing records.  Except for a couple occasions, when they came up against the better teams in the league they went down in flames. With that being the case it probably meant that even if they made the playoffs the would have been one and doners once again.  The only positive I can take out of this is maybe this bitter disappointment and collapse will incite some greater change in the lineup next year. Oh well another year, another Eagles disappointment, I’m used to it.

Sunday morning I had it in my head to do a bike ride, Cindy was too sick to be out on the road so I planned flying solo.  For some reason I got it in my head that I should ride all the way out to Ave Maria even though it didn’t make sense based on my current state of wellness/endurance. I have done very minimal riding in the last few months, my last session being a pre-illness DD ride in early November.

In a way I think I wanted to do a long/hard ride just to prove I could still tackle something difficult after a 2014 that has been filled with much more fail than success from a physical standpoint.

Well as the ride began my inspiration eroded quickly.  After only 5 miles in my legs were feeling pretty shitty.  I started running contingency plans through my head like turning around at the 10 mile mark.  Well when I hit 10 miles it felt like I was almost there although it was another couple miles to the entrance, so I kept going.  I did compromise however, only going to the entrance of Ave Maria on Oil Well Road and not traversing the nearly 3 miles into town.  I was just happy to have made it to the sign.

So after chugging some water I reversed directions, content with returning at a significantly slower pace than I headed out at.   I dropped a gear so my cadence speed increased while decreasing the amount of torque I had to apply with each stroke.  Well the combination of the gear change and slightly more favorable wind conditions had a surprising effect, I actually was faster heading back.  The gear change made a big difference in the way my legs felt.  I was trucking 18-19mph much of the return ride.

During the last 25% of the trip a new problem arose, a nose that was flowing like a faucet.  Despite non-stop sniffling and forearm wiping I just could not get my nose under control.  It was maddening at times.  I sniffled my way into the driveway happy with my performance on the 24.25 mile ride and look forward to getting more into the swing of things as 2015 rolls in.

Shortly after I got back Cindy and I headed out to run some errands.  One of the stops was Lowes where I made a couple late additions to my Christmas decorations which were on clearance.  I grabbed a cool tree shaped LED thing which does all sorts of cool patterns, sort of the same way as my LED snowmen already do.  I also grabbed an inflatable, camouflaged Santa, for two reasons.  First I liked that he moves his arm which are holding binoculars up and down. Second, its tacky and silly, something that I don’t mind that much when it comes to holiday decorating.

Cindy was VERY busy on Sunday despite feeling bad, baking her ass off.  She made several cookie varieties as well as roasted pecans. The house smelled like the holidays all day. I am definitely the beneficiary of her love of cooking/baking.  She put our new corner cabinet/counter to good use in the process.

We saw the Hobbit at a very unconventional time for us, 3:15 on a Sunday afternoon.  We were rewarded with a theater that was nearly empty for the 3D showing.  I thought the movie was great just as I have thought every LOTR and Hobbit movie that preceded it was great.   I am a bit sad that the series now has officially run it’s course, great, great, great film making IMO.  It gets an A.

So I am officially the Buffalo Bills of my fantasy football league, losing in the finals for the third consecutive year.  Damn’s it’s frustrating.  Before I went to bed I had almost a 40 point lead despite Tom Brady and ironically the Bills defense underperforming greatly.  Well I awoke to see I had lost due to my opponent having Marshawn Lynch AND the Seahawks defense, both of which had big games.  I was very annoyed.  The annoyance was kicked up when I saw that if I started Tony Romo, who was predicted to score less points than Brady, I probably would have won the game since he outscored Brady 36-11. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I have a brief 3 day week followed by an awesome 6 days off in a row where I plan to tackle repainting the pool deck with Cindy’s help.

So as promised the other day, I followed up once again with Comcast and got some action finally.  The action didn’t come from me ranting and raving, it was more the result of me being fortunate enough to get a guy on the other end of the phone that actually gave a damn. I explained both the problem and my frustration with Comcast not doing anything tangible regarding it for four business days.

I just realized I didn’t outline the odd problem I was seeing.  Within the last couple weeks various people on the network were getting certificate errors when they would start Outlook.  When you would view the details of the certificate it would show it was coming from “CableLabs” aka, the Netgear CG3000DCR cable modem!

Now of course this made no sense so I went to Google to see if I was alone with this strange error. Initially I found tons of people complaining about this particular model of modem but not my specific scenario.  After some more specific search parameters I actually stumbled across a message board thread that outlined the same sort of problem, email certificate errors via the cable modem.  Unfortunately all the thread said was it resolved as a Netgear issue but with no further details.

When I contacted Comcast they were clueless as this was a very strange thing.  Logically it didn’t make sense how a cable modem could be presenting a SSL certificate into our back end Exchange email system.  The tech that I talked to last did a factory reset on our modem to see if that would clear things up.  It did not.

I finally convinced him to just send a tech out with a different modem. The guy showed up late yesterday afternoon with an older but less buggy SMC cable modem in hand.  After about 15 minutes he had the SMC box up and running.  Since the swap the certificate error has vanished from our network.  Yep I don’t get it either but I’m glad the ghost has been vanquished from the machine.

So tomorrow I have a race to time for the 3rd time in 4 weekends.  It’s down in Marco which is a pain in the ass.  On the plus side it does not start until 8 and there shouldn’t be more than 250 people participating so it shouldn’t be too hectic of a scene.

Being the last weekend before Christmas there will be tons of other things to keep Cindy and I busy as well however we definitely will make time for fun, including going to see the new Hobbit movie at some point.

This is a big weekend for me in the fantasy football league since I am competing in the league championship game for the third year in a row.  Unfortunately I have some pretty huge injury obstacles to overcome.  Two of my star players, Julio Jones and Demarco Murray are injured and might not play at all this week.  If they both sit out my odds of winning drop down next to zero.

So we are now at the one week from Christmas mark meaning there are a lot of things to do.   Last night Cindy and I were quite busy attending to a number of to do’s.  Despite working a full day and having her own list of things to do Cindy still whipped up eggplant parm from scratch.  She just loves to cook.

So I have been patiently waiting for Hearthstone to be released for Android devices, allowing me to play Hearthstone at place other than sitting in front of a computer.  The game has been out for the iPad for quite awhile  It’s easier to port a game like this to the iOS platform because of the standardized hardware Apple uses.

Well last night the game showed up on Google Play.  I eagerly awaited the 500 + meg download to complete on my Galaxy Tab 3.   I fired up the game and continued waiting, dismissing the warning that my device did not have the recommended minimum hardware requirements to run the game.  I’m sure it will be fine.

Well of course I was wrong.  The game ran like absolute shit, sputtering and pausing repeatedly and disconnecting when I tried to actually play a game.  It was disappointing of course but gives me reason to investigate tablet deals after the Christmas tidal wave passes.

It’s looking like 2015 is setting up to have some pretty significant shifts in what I have come to accept as status quo over the last nearly 15 years.  It’s too early to elaborate but the winds of change are blowing, not that they ever really stop.

So I have had a very odd issue at work that has been going on for over a week that involves our Comcast Business internet service.  I called in about it on Friday morning and was told the issue would be escalated to another group.  I was told I should definitely should get a call back by 3PM that day.  Of course no call came.

On Monday I called again, letting the phone rep know I was promised a Friday call back.  The rep said the ticket shows it is in the queue of this other group and he was sure I would hear back from them shortly.  I expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of urgency in attending to our issue but agreed to wait for the already previously promised call back.  Well the business day Monday came and went with no call.

So AGAIN, I call on Tuesday.  Much more irritated of course as nothing annoys me more than people making paper promises.  I talk to my 3rd support person in as many days and once again get the same basic bullshit.  He tells me he sees the ticket was moved into a different support groups queue this morning but that is the end of the information.  I told the guy this was ridiculous.

I asked him if he has anyway to tell  what action has been taken by these other groups that are now in possession of my ticket.  “No”.  I ask him how do I go about talking to somebody in these other support areas to push for resolution. “You can’t”

I sat there on the other line silent for a few moments as I gathered my thoughts and tried to disarm the verbal bomb that was burning on the tip of my tongue.  I wanted to just rip this guy apart for being part of the Comcast quagmire of poor customer support.  I took a breath and started again.  “You understand why this is so frustrating to me, right?  It seems insane that after three days there is absolutely no documented action taken besides a ticket being passed between queues”  The guy said to me “Tell me about it, I have been dealing with this for four years” indicating he at least understood just how fucked up this process is.

Covering the guy in verbal diarrhea wouldn’t have done me any good so I again agreed to wait one more business day for action to be taken.  Of course, nothing happened.  So today I will be rattling chains in a major way, I will be getting some action one way or another, bet on it.

Last night I had a great birthday evening with Cindy.  We went to the Naples Carrabbas, the restaurant I have frequented more than any other since moving to Florida in 2000. I really loved the lay out, mood and decor of the restaurant, hence why I patronized it so often.

I have lamented repeatedly over the years how they have been systematically changing/removing many of the things I liked about the place.  You can find rants about decor changes, smaller beer glasses, no italian tapes in the bathroom, cheaper bread baskets and many more things buried within the blog.

The last time Cindy and I were at Carrabbas was in June when Randall and Lily visited.  Since then I noticed that they refaced the front of the building, totally changing it’s appearance.  Well I did not realize that at the same time they TOTALLY gutted the interior.  It is 100% different and bears no semblance to the place I cherished a decade ago.

Now to be fair, it looks nice, modern and open.  It just is a totally different place now.  It’s interesting how they changed the eating arrangements.  As you walk in the conventional tables are on the right, on the left side next to the bar are a bunch of additional high top tables that are first come first serve.   Even though there were literally dozens of spots on the bar side to sit, we waited to get a seat on the conventional side since Cindy did call ahead reservations.

Another casualty is the 2 for 1 happy hour that I found so endearing.  There was nothing like having two draft beers shoved in front of you for the price of one.  Instead they now do half price drafts for happy hour which in theory is getting you the same thing without the same visual impact or fun factor.  I used the new system while consuming two Budweisers in the tall but painfully skinny beer glasses.

Throughout the meal I found myself looking around the space, amazed at just how complete the transformation was, it literally involved every square foot of floor space.  Both Cindy and I enjoyed our food and we had a cute, friendly little waitress that reminded both of us of Cindy Lou Who.  I enjoyed my meal at the completely renovated Carrabbas and of course will go there again but I couldn’t help feeling remorseful that my old familiar eating establishment had been completely obliterated, never to be seen again.

When we got home we enjoyed birthday cake and I opened my remaining gift. Cindy had already given me two in the morning, three was just way over the top.  So despite having to put in an 8-5 day at work, overall my birthday, even with it being my 47th, was quite enjoyable.   Of course that is all courtesy of Cindy.  Despite all of the good vibes there was a persistent sad pull on my heart strings not having mom involved in my birthday celebrations for the first time.  It just feels very odd.

Many thanks to all of the people that chirped in on FB as well with well wishes, I know a good portion of them read this drivel.

One side note, yesterday I finally confirmed that another cog in the process of unraveling my mom’s estate was finally put in place.  My beneficiary IRA has been set up and funded.  The only remaining piece are 32 stock certificates that Todd has been working on getting sold and split.  It sounds like we are close to having that wrapped up as well.  I guess four months in the big picture isn’t a bad time frame to get the estate resolved but it has felt like much longer.

Last night I spent over an hour tending to my bills.  Christmas time and all of the spending that surrounds it lends to lots of numbers to be reconciled.  My bill paying process has multiple layers and redundancy.  I record transactions in my checkbook ledger, I have a “budget book” where I have my money split into categories and finally I utilize Quicken to track it all.  Yes the combo can get a bit tedious but it allows me to have a firm grasp on my current and future financial needs in a pretty reliable manner.

Last night I got my branded pop up tent for GMT.  I think I scored quite the deal, getting a personalized canopy for a little more than $200 shipped to my door.

This morning on my way to work I dropped the girls back off at Ali’s place.  I always feel a little bad when doing so both for their sake and selfish reasons.  Of course I enjoy having the girls at the house, their presence makes the house really feel like a home.  On their part I feel bad that the freedom they have at the house is not available to them at the condo.  I think they get more stimulation at the house since Cindy and I are around more and we have Tuki and the chickens for additional entertainment.  The good news is we will have them from Christmas eve through New Years.

So yep today is my birthday, woop dee fricking doo.  It seems unimaginable that I can actually be 47 years old.  Mentally I certainly don’t feel or act in such a manner.  Physically I think the same holds true although this past year has definitely been the toughest in a long time in regards to health and nagging injuries.  Most people are surprised when I reveal my age to them which is a small victory at least.

Cindy and I are doing dinner tonight to celebrate at the Naples Carrabba’s, which is still my go to celebratory venue, despite all the changes for the worse that have gone down there over the years.  Cindy, who treats me like everyday is my birthday, started off my morning with a cooked breakfast and a couple nice presents.

Despite my overall grouchy disposition about birthdays and getting older in general, it helps having Cindy’s unwavering positive energy to help pull me back into the light.

On Friday night Randall didn’t show up until after 8PM but it didn’t really matter since I had race prep to work on anyway.  Randall showed up bearing gifts of beer which was very nice of him.  The dogs were THRILLED to see Uncle Randall, they both sat by his side happily as he petted them.

Randall talked Cindy into running the race on Saturday since he planned to do so.  That set Cindy into race prep mode which is a very complex process.  I decided to use the van for the race equipment since it would be three people plus equipment which just would not work in the Tacoma.

I decided to only load a couple things Friday night due to the cold temperatures.  I didn’t want the battery based electronics or the timing mats chilling in the van all night long so I just planned to get up 10 minutes earlier to do it in the morning.

I really bundled up for the race, wearing jeans, wool socks, a t-shirt, Under Armour Cold Gear long sleeves, and two sweatshirts to battle the temps in the mid to upper 40’s.  I needed every layer.  We were the first ones on site.  I got the gate code to let us in and was given permission to raise and fire up the light tower used to light up the registration area.  This event is a stark contrast to the Thanksgiving race where the club has soooo many responsibilities to handle.  For this race since it is done in coordination with a PGA golf event most of the planning and set up is done in advance by the tournament organizers.

I had Randall and Chris handling data entry for me as I attended to other details before the race started.  There were around 450 people for the race, a far cry from the 3000 plus we handled a couple weeks ago but it was still a good crowd.

The race was started by Greg Norman, the tournament organizer and the race had at least one of the PGA pros running which was cool as well.

I had some timing difficulties once again although luckily this time it didn’t result in any dropped times.  I had two timing boxes at the finish once again and for some reason could not get one of them online during the race.  I also had a number of participants that had bad/missing registration data since this race uses a rather klutzy in house registration web site that is not designed for taking race entries.  This bad data resulted in quite a few people being thrown into the wrong age group. However I had 356 chip start times and 355 chip finish times so that was the number I was most concerned with.

Both Randall and Cindy did well considering the circumstances.  Randall has not been doing any consistent running (despite having a half marathon coming up in January).  Cindy has still not gotten back on a consistent running schedule and HATES running in cold air as it makes her chest close up.  They both finished pretty high up in their age group rankings.

After the race we got cleaned up and off site by around 9:15 which is great.  On the way home we of course had to stop for celebratory coffee.

Once we got home I dug into post race tasks as Cindy worked on other stuff and Randall chilled with the chickens.  Randall seems to find the chickens interesting and liked interacting with them, petting and holding them routinely.

Once everything was done Cindy made us a special grilled cheese and tomato soup lunch designed to combat the chill we all felt most of the morning in our bones.

Cindy suggested that it would be a smart thing if we tried to take naps since we were planning to see Exodus Saturday night, a very long movie.  If we hit it napless there was a good chance we would be watching a lot of it with closed eyelids. All three of us laid down in our respective beds but I was the only one that actually fell asleep and only briefly at that.  Randall and Cindy reported no actual napping took place for them.

I suggested to Cindy it would be nice to give her a break from cooking and just eat at Stir Crazy up at Coconut Point.  Although Cindy really loves cooking she was down with the idea.  We all enjoyed our meals during pre-movie warm up.  Randall graciously but sneakily paid the check on the down low without my knowledge.

So we saw the 3D version of the film.  As I have professed for awhile now, 3D is pretty much a non-feature for me, not even worth the premium you pay to see it.  It just happened that we got done with dinner right around the 3D showing so that is what we saw.  It just doesn’t add anything to my enjoyment of most films.

So Exodus is basically a remake of the holiday classic, The 10 Commandments, starring Yule Brenner and Charlton Heston, a film I think I only watched in it’s entirety once without falling asleep, it’s something like 4 hours long. With Exodus they trimmed it’s length to under 3 hours but it still felt very long.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of naps or the movie itself but Randall spent a large portion of the movie with his eyes closed.  Cindy likewise had a lot of nod off moments.  I only had a few of them but there was no disputing the film had slow moments.

Just like the original 10 Commandments, I question why this story would be one that Christians would want to embellish.  God in this story, is in my opinion, depicted as more or less of an asshole that punishes the innocent for the actions of the guilty, a premise that seems more appropriate for Islamic extremists.

Even with it’s length, there seemed to be large fast forwards in the plot with unanswered questions, like why was it significant that Joshua felt no pain and all he did most of the movie was act like a peeping Tom when Moses talked to a God only visible to him. It was odd. Cindy said she thought the acting in the movie was really good.  I really didn’t feel the same.  As a whole the movie was a sleepy experience, only deserving of a B rating in my book.

On Sunday morning we started the day very slow.  With temps once again in the 40’s it was too cold to do an early bike ride with Randall.  We talked about doing one later in the day possibly since Randall lugged his bike across Alligator Alley.  Instead we relaxed a bit.  I downloaded the final episode of Season 2 of the Walking Dead video game and played through it to completion.  Much like the real series there are surprising outcomes, lots of people dying and tangible drama.  If there is a season three of the game I have no idea where it will go from here, almost the entire core of the group the story is based on is out of the picture in one way or another.

So we decided to head up to the outlets, something Randall and I have done quite a few times when he has visited during the holiday season.  He especially likes the Under Armour and Oakley outlets that are housed there.  Cindy was excited to go as well although excitement faded as she had multiple bad experiences with idiot, rude shoppers in several stores. I wound up buying several things from several stores.  Randall had a good haul as well including scoring two sets of Oakley sunglasses that were 40% off, something you rarely see.

We grabbed lunch at Naples Flatbread which was quite good.  As we sat there Randall spotted a black guy he recognized as the awful, Love Boat style singer that serenaded us at the same mall last year at a different establishment.  This was Cindy’s first time seeing/hearing the guys cheesy, out of tune performance.  She quickly confirmed Randall and my evaluation of this guys singing ability was accurate.  I recorded a brief 30 seconds for your enjoyment.

On the way home we had to make two more stops which  put us back in my driveway after 4PM, too late to fit a bike ride in which I felt a bit badly about.  Instead we headed outside with my Phantom.  I let Randall fly almost two complete battery packs himself which he did just fine except for a near miss with the smaller shed that had me concerned for a few moments.  While we were out there we did some tire flipping, some box jumping onto stacked tires and I even did a muscle up just to confirm I still had it in me.  The chickens and dogs were out there having fun with us as well.

While Randall and I were entertaining ourselves Cindy had begun an incredible food preparation challenge.  She was working on cooking the chicken for the dogs meals, dinner, my birthday cake AND Christmas cookies all at the same time.  It was a ton of work.  She did almost all of the work at our new kitchen corner cabinet/counter which was really cool.  She loves doing the prep there, making the time, money and effort we put into it feel well worth it.  Randall and I both appreciated her efforts greatly, everything tasted really good.

Randall rolled out around 9PM, it was another fun and festive visit, something Cindy and I come to count on when Randall is in the house.

The Eagles did not play until 8:30 against the hated Cowboys, a team they smashed a couple weeks ago on Thanksgiving, in Dallas.  Well the game started out terribly right from the opening kickoff that the Eagles totally botched allowing for a very quick Cowboys score.  The onslaught continued with the Cowboys jumping to a fast and easy 21-0 lead.

All of a sudden the Eagles seemed to get angry and aggressive, dominating the middle portion of the game, putting 24 unanswered points on the board to take the lead.  Unfortunately this seemed to be a game of thirds, the Cowboys came back and dominated the last third of the game, winning 38-27, the Eagles second consecutive home loss in as many weeks and their third loss in the last four games.

The Eagles, despite their still decent 9-5 record have shown a disturbing trend of coming up small when going up against good (winning record) teams and a more disturbing sputtering end to the season.  Last year was the opposite, the team gained momentum and confidence as the season progressed, this feels like the exact opposite.

There was some bitter irony going on for me during the game.  I felt some pangs of happiness as Demarco Murray, the Cowboys star running back was racking up the yards and touchdowns since he was on my fantasy team which was playing in the semi-finals of the league championship.  His solid game was actually responsible for my win, propelling me to the league championship game for the third consecutive year, a pretty amazing feat considering the lack of time, energy and effort I put into managing my squad.  So even though the final score of the Eagles game was depressing, my virtual outcome helped my mood greatly.

Believe it or not I am still hacking and blowing my nose almost two complete weeks after first becoming symptomatic.  I am so ready to be over this.  Oh tomorrow is my birthday, a date on the calendar that I have not looked forward to since the mid-90’s.