Super prep, super party, super busy, super frustrating, super oily

My Saturday was pretty jam packed.  I first headed outside to work the normal outdoors maintenance which was sorely needed since the last two weekends race logistics and/or Randall housing kept me from my normal rounds.  The garden was pretty messy.  I spent time removing things that were killed or severely damaged from the cold few days we had the last couple weeks.  I walked around and picked up a lot of yard shrapnel and then made my rounds with the weed whacker, something that hasn’t been done in weeks.

I then moved inside where I cleaned and did additional prep for the party.  It just felt like there was tons to do even though in the back of my mind I realized I had most of the day Sunday to prep as well if needed. I just hate procrastinating.

One of the big things I needed to get knocked out on Saturday was making my chocolate birthday cake, as it was promised as one of the features of the SB party.  I once again filmed the cake creation process, this time being much more concise in documenting it.  The entire video is less than 5 minutes.  I think this cake turned out the best of any attempts I have done.  The cake itself was super moist and the icing turned out just about perfect in flavor and texture.

Cindy and I went to see I Frankenstein Saturday night.  The movie was dead smack in the middle for me.  It was fine but would have been equally fine viewing at home and definitely was not worth the premium to see it in 3D.  It gets a B.

So Sunday morning Cindy and I tossed around the idea of doing a DD bike ride however it was really foggy early on so we scrapped the idea in favor of getting a head start on party prep.  Cindy had planned on a nice varied selection of food items so her primary job was food prep although she had really put a lot of planning into other elements of the party as well.  Most of my contribution was technical and logistical, move that, set up this, etc…

One of the ideas I had was to set up a second tv on the pool deck so people could enjoy the game outdoors if seating got to be a pain indoors.  I had bought a cheap portable antenna to pull in the signal from the Ft Myers tower.  I set the tv up, attached the antenna and had a crystal clear HD picture.    Too bad it turned out that not a single person watched the game outside, instead the game was broadcast outdoors for whatever gnats were hanging around.  Part of my Sunday also included hopping on the tractor and quickly mowing the yard to compliment the weed whacking I performed the day before.

I had to do some work on a server at work from home Sunday.  At least it was supposed to be from home.  Unfortunately something went wrong with my remote control session and I had no choice but to haul ass into work to fix it and then haul ass back out to the house to help in the final prep.

While I was in the shower Randall had shown up, fresh off his first ever half marathon in Miami that morning. (grats dude)  It was VERY hot for early February, not a good day to run at all.  I was glad to see he survived it, that is all you are really trying to do your first time.

So surprisingly people did actual start showing up around 5 to take advantage of my backyard playground. Before we long we had 10 people+ outside taking turns on the slackline, flipping tires, and messing around on my pull up bars.  It was a fun way to start the event. I was the only one to successfully traverse the line the entire distance, twice, just saying. 😉

So the party then moved indoors and the drinking began in earnest.  I had planned for people bringing a lot of their own beer in addition to the 4 cases I bought.  I turned the utility sink into an auxiliary cooler by cleaning it up, lining it with a trash bag and dumping in a bag of ice.  It worked out pretty well.

With people bringing their own  adult beverages we just had a ridiculous amount of alcohol on hand, enough to fulfill the drinking needs of a group four times the size of what we had.  We were over provisioned for food as well but not to quite the same degree thank goodness.

So the game started and the fun ramped up.  Most of the room was pulling for the Broncos, my buddy Sean was really the only person really pulling for the Seahawks, and in a very demonstrative manner at that.  He was so into it that I grabbed my ancient number 55 Brian Bosworth Seahawks jersey that I bought for some odd reason two decades ago, and gave it to him. I even personalized the jersey with his name.

The game was surprising in many ways, starting with the Seahawks scoring a safety on the very first play of the game.  If someone would have picked SAFETY as the first type of score on the betting board they would have cleaned up.  The Seahawks absolutely demolished the Broncos from start to finish.  The number one defense versus number one offense match up was a clear beat down, something like the 2nd or third biggest blow out in Super Bowl (no I am not going to say the Big Game, fcking ridiculous) history.

I thought the commercials this year were very strong although because of the noise in the room I had a hard time hearing some of them from time to time.  I won’t bother reviewing them, my general opinion follows most others in what were the best.  There was some very creative and funny advertising genius on display for sure.

A group of people had to head out around halftime for various reasons but there was still a strong core group that lasted to the end of the game. Despite our encouragement for others to take food/drink with them, for the most part we wound up keeping enough food/beer to feed a small army.

All in all I think the party was a huge success, everyone appeared to have a lot of fun which is all you hope for when hosting something like this.  Heaping amounts of credit needs to go on Cindy’s back.  She really did a hell of a job making sure people were taken care of. After everyone left it was just Randall, Cindy and I.  Randall took Monday off so he could just crash at my place.  We stayed up for awhile trying to get as much cleaned up as possible.  There was quite a bit as you can imagine.

This morning I woke up not really feeling hung over at all, just tired.  Although I drank probably a six pack at the party or a little more, I shut it down pretty early instead of drinking right up to the bell which probably helped.

When Randall got up I fired up Season 2 of The Walking Dead video game.  I had bought the game a couple weeks ago but hadn’t tried playing it yet.  I bought it on the bedroom Xbox so I had to download it to the great room Xbox before I could play.

So I fire up the game and start playing.  After maybe 20 minutes of play I zig when I should have zagged and die.  No problem, the game does auto saves along the way so if you die you can jump back in close to that point.  Well on the death screen there is a prompt to hit the A button to continue.  I hit it, nothing, oh, maybe it’s doing something in the back ground. I wait some more and hit it again, nothing.  What the fck??

Ok well it appeared obvious the game was hung.  I assumed it was just a glitch so I exited the game and figured I would be back to my last save point.  Wrong.  I launched the game and was transported back to square one, well that is annoying as shit.  I handed the controller over to Randall so he could go through it the second time.  I wrote it off to the Xbox just fcking up.

So Randall does well and gets well past the point where I died before he bites the dust.  He put in at least a half hour of time in.  Again I am presented with hit A to continue screen and again it does nothing.  What the fck??????????!!!!!!  I had no option but to again exit the game and again we lost all progress, we now had put well over an hour into the damn game and our reward was to start over again.

Well before I got on the hamster wheel on more time I decided to check online to see if this annoying problem was isolated to me or not.  The answer was not.  Evidently the problem is the end result of Microsoft’s stupid licensing restrictions.  Basically, because I bought the game on my other Xbox, it wasn’t allowing me to save the game on another one.

This behavior is annoying enough as is.  To me, if I bought a game I should be able to download and play it on any Xbox I own.  But even if you set that belief aside, allowing me to install the game on another console with no warning of any sort alerting me to the fact that I will wind up wasting tons of time if I ever die, is ridiculous.

I did find a “fix” for the behavior.  Basically you do a license transfer of your downloaded content from one Xbox to another however this is a one way trip.  Now I can no longer play the game on my bedroom Xbox and Microsoft only allows you to do a license transfer once every 4 months.  This sort of restrictive use policy is bullshit in my opinion.  If I bought a hard disc copy of the game I could load and play it on either system without issue.  Just because I buy a copy of a game that is digital only format doesn’t mean that ability should be removed.

After Randall left I still had a number of to do’s.  I ran out to get supplies to change the oil in the SSR, Tacoma and Cindy’s Miata.  All three vehicles were overdue for an oil change.  Cindy’s won’t get done till this weekend but I knocked out the SSR and Tacoma this afternoon.  I also swapped out the air filters in both vehicles.

Overall things went well before I received a dirty oil facial while working on the Tacoma.  The truck was parked in the same direction as the wind was blowing rather strongly.  Once I removed the oil drain plug the stream of warm, dirty oil was immediately misdirected out of the oil catch pan and all over the driveway and my upper body.  It was a mess.

I had some ideas of installing the auxiliary trans cooler I bought for the Tacoma but I decided my time would be better spent putting the rest of the party hangover items away.  I repacked the unused beer in the boxes it came in.  I had a full case of Michelob Ultra and nearly full cases of Coors, Bud Light and Miller Lite when I was done.  During the afternoon I was able to give  away half of my beer surplus, donating the Coors to my neighbor next door and the Mich Ultra to my other neighbor across the street.  They both appreciated my Super Bowl party surplus.

About 4PM I finally had the house more or less back to the way it was prior to the party.

During the afternoon, the sandhill cranes that up until this point had been seen exclusively in my neighbors yard, decided to come check out things on the other side of the fence.  These birds are incredibly loud when they communicate, the loudest bird I ever heard first hand.  Today the were quiet as they walked around the yard.  I hope they decide to hang out more, they are a beautiful and awesome addition to the various wildlife that hangs out around the house.  Now if they only would scare off armadillos….

Tomorrow my normal routine returns although physically I don’t know if I am quite ready for it.  The combo of squatting and deadlifting followed by a day of ass to grass squat holds has really laid me out.  Even today, some 4 days later I have some very acute soreness from it in my legs.  Getting old isn’t for sissies.