Super productive to super not, party’s over, cut me some slack, view from above

So Saturday it was cold, dreary and rainy pretty much all day.  I decided I was going to use the bad weather as a reason to get a lot of stuff done indoors.  I was a chore whirlwind, knocking out all cleaning, watering, laundry, dusting, vacuuming and any other indoor task that came to mind.  I finished up my marathon chore session late afternoon.  The Eagles didn’t play until 8 so I decided to run out to Target to get a couple things.

Once I was in Target I happened to walk by the remaining Xmas inventory that was marked down a ridiculous 90% to blow stuff out.  I couldn’t help myself but to take a look.  I wound up getting 4 rolls of Xmas wrapping paper for a crazy 25 cents per roll, score.

Well when I walked in the store I didn’t grab a cart since the items I was targeting were small.  Well the addition of 4 rolls of wrapping paper all of a sudden made going cart-less very difficult.  It was made more annoying by my inability to find calendars in the store.  Despite directions from different Target employees, telling me the calendars were in a certain area, I was unable to find them.  Looking for calendars while holding 4 rolls of wrapping paper, fish food, and a card really taxed my patience.  I was shifting my grip strategy every couple minutes.  I eventually gave up my calendar search and figured I could look in World Market a couple doors down.

So I walk in WM and see they do indeed have 2014 calendars AND they are 60% off! Sweet.  The selection wasn’t great but I snagged a Peanuts calendar for the kitchen and a french countryside photo calendar for the office.  So there were two lines open for checkout.  Both of them only had one customer in them but both of the cashiers seemed to be having some sort of complication while checking them out.  I picked the line with the young, mildly attractive girl.  Well, I chose poorly. I literally spent 15 minutes waiting.

The first problem was some stupid candy bar where she couldn’t read the bar code.  She scanned the thing 10 times without success.  She even had the customer try scanning it.  I was wondering why she couldn’t just manually punch in the numbers in the UPC code.  When she called a manager up front to help her, they did just that, punched in the numbers.

Ok great, I thought I was in the clear.  Well then the customer plops down some $10 off coupon.  Well again the coupon had the clerk baffled, she said it scanned ok but it was not applying the discount.  This delay went on forever.  This time the same manager chick came up and this time was unable to fix the issue.  Now if I was the customer I would have said 10 minutes ago, f the coupon, f the candy bar.  Evidently the sugar fix and $10 was really important to them.

Of course I was annoyed and I could have easily jumped into the other cashier line which had started moving.  For some reason I stayed put, thinking to myself it was a good test of patience.  In fact it almost became comical, just how insistent the customer was and how inept the clerk was.  Well the end result of all of this fcking around was the guy did not get his 10 bucks off, the coupon in fine print had an expiration date of 1/1/14.  Lol. When I finally got to check out I assured the girl I didn’t need any candy bars and had no expired coupons to present.

So before the Eagles game I got to take in about the last half of the Chiefs/Colts game.  I was amazed how badly the Chief were destroying the Colts, holding as much as a 38-10 lead in the early 3rd quarter.  I was them amazed as the Chiefs imploded allowing that lead to evaporate, giving the Colts the second largest comeback victory in the history of the NFL.

I had odd feelings as I watched Fat Andy walk off the field dejectedly.  I had seen this scenario play out so many times when he was wearing Midnight Green, big leads blown, shitty time management, team crumbling when the game is on the line, in a weird way I was glad to see it happen to another team instead of my beloved Eagles.  A small part of me felt badly but that part sat quietly in a corner.

So the Eagles game had a lot of hype focusing on the Saints poor performance on the road and their failure to ever win a road playoff game.  There was also talk of playing in the open air of Philly in January but that wasn’t a huge factor.  Temps in the mid-20’s with almost no wind didn’t really put a huge cramp in the Saints game plan.

The game was closely contested where a few key plays could have made a large difference.  I have to question Chip Kelly’s apparent like of going on it on 4th and short when the offense has proven repeatedly they aren’t good at it.  McCoy may be the leagues best rusher this year but must have short yardage plays are not his thing.  Conversely, the Saints DESTROYED the Eagles in short yardage.  Drew Brees did a number of QB sneaks where the entire offensive line steamrolled the Eagles D, getting 3-4 yards when they needed one.

Despite their problems the Eagles actually grabbed the lead with a few minutes to go with a late touchdown.  The first thought that went through my head was there is too much time left.  The special teams then fell on their face, allowing a big return punctuated with a horse collar tackle penalty that gave the Saints a ridiculous starting position of the Eagles 48 yard line, 20 yards from field goal range. To win the game, the Eagles defense had to come up huge with no room to spare.  Well they didn’t, allowing the Saints to move the sticks easily before they kicked a playoff ending field goal as time expired. Damn.

I was disappointed but not crushed by the loss.  It was way better than the way Andy’s Chiefs went down, snatching defeat from the jaws of 99% assured victory.  The Eagles turn around from the halfway point this year had been dramatic, so much so that perhaps I had drank just a little too much Kool Aid, thinking the team actually had a shot to go deeper in the playoffs.

The good news is the team seems to be on the right track now, but make no mistake they still have holes to fill, especially on defense and special teams.  All things considered, year one of the Chip Kelly era is definitely a success.

I did so much on Saturday around the house that Sunday it felt like I tons of time to spare.  We didn’t do our psuedo-normal Sunday bike ride because of a late morning brunch that was scheduled for Cindy’s daughters birthday. (which was later cancelled)  I started off my Sunday slow, playing a bunch of Hearthstone.  I used to start my weekend mornings off with WoW play all the time however if I do it now I almost feel guilty.

The slow start to the day seemed to carry through, it felt like I got little done.

There were things that happened of course.  I installed the slackline that I bought for Cindy for Xmas.  I strung it between two palm trees roughly 50 feet apart.  Obviously a slackline needs to be very tight to support a human beings weight.  I had no idea how to judge if I was exceeding the 85 pounds of torque that is established as the red line in the instructions.

Both Cindy and my initial attempts on the line were very, very short.  The instability of the line felt impossible to overcome.  Cindy was practicing much, much more than I was and did much better.

If you have 12 minutes to spare you can see how day one of slackline training went.

I also got my Phantom up in the air for some more aerial video.  I bought some moon gel, a substance that is used primarily by musicians for vibration dampening.  Well I read it also works well for absorbing vibration associated with aerial video.  My clumsy camera mount looked funny but definitely worked better than my first attempt.  Even without using YouTube stabilization, the video was noticeably less shaky.  Eventually I need to snag myself a used/cheap GoPro to use for aerial footage.  You can see the videos I shot here and here.  On the second video I pointed the camera more forward instead of straight down.

I did manage to rip the dash of the SSR off again to crank down the stereo volume gain.  I think I have found a decent balance point now.

I then got wrapped up in a very frustrating battle with Cindy’s old iPhone and her laptop.  I still had not successfully gotten her music collection pulled off the iPhone.  Itunes would not see the phone and as a result I could not see her music.  Before I knew it it was close to 7PM and Sunday had almost expired.  It felt like I wasted the day, even though I was busy doing various things as depicted here.  I told Cindy my mood almost felt full moonish, even though we are two weeks away from the next cycle.

Tonight I get to do the cold weather scramble.  A huge blast of icy air is coming our way, necessitating the aggravating and often fruitless task of trying to protect the garden and fragile landscape plants.  Thank goodness Cindy is off so she can help me.

The transplanted fish seem to be doing ok in their new surroundings although the pond water is already looking murkier than I recall it being before they moved in.  I went down to get the remaining fish from the foreclosed houses pond but came up empty.  On Saturday a crew was in there cleaning the landscape up, mowing the grass, weed whacking and trimming up plants.

Well one of the things they trimmed was bush that hung over the pond.  They trimmed it hard, leaving the pond wide open.  The water, sitting on top of the shit bottom was actually still and clear and devoid of any fish.  My guess is once it was opened up a hungry bird came in and helped themselves.  I felt like I failed the left over fish a bit, no fish left behind….