Archives May 2014

This weekend the honorable Sir Randall will be gracing my estate with a visit.  He is part of our triathlon team for this Sunday’s Naples Fitness Challenge.  Cindy is doing the 5K run, Randall is doing the 15k bike ride and I am doing the final leg, a 1/4 mile swim in the Gulf.  I am far from a good swimmer, I am just better than Randall or Cindy in the water. I have been putting in some swim time in the 25 yard pool at the waterpark but I haven’t done any open water swimming since I did my last Naples Fitness challenge 3 years ago.  Despite my lack of time in salt water I am confident I can at least complete the swim without drowning.

Randall will be bringing along his new girlfriend whom we will be meeting for the first time.  They won’t be rolling in until Saturday afternoon so it will be a brief visit but I’m sure we will have a good time as always.

I brought Cindy’s Prius to work today for the first time.  I averaged over 50 mpg on the drive to work.  After filling the tank up I reset the trip computer and averaged a ridiculous 75 mpg for the 4-5 miles left to the office.  There is definitely a technique to maximizing mileage in a hybrid, something I mastered with the 2007 Camry Hybrid we owned for 5 years.

Basically you need to utilize steady speed whenever possible.  Doing so allows the car to kick in the electric motor assist more often.  If you are the type of driver that is off and on the gas and brakes constantly you are going to knock at least 10% off the advertised EPA mileage numbers.  My goal is to pull back into the driveway tonight still averaging 50mpg plus for the day.

Last night was consumed with two things connected with my getting to be more and more time consuming part time “job” as a race timer/webmaster/logistical coordinator/communicator.  After work we had a meeting regarding next year’s half marathon, talking about some changes for next year’s race based on the feedback we got from runners.  It was a good meeting that included the perk of a free meal (personal pizza for me).  Between the picnic which included all of that beer/calorie dense foods and chowing down on appetizers and pizza last night I feel the need to eat a squeaky clean diet the next few days.  It makes me feel gross when I consume too much shit.

As soon as I got home I fired up the computer to join a webinar being held by the author of the race timing software I use.  Even though I got into it about 15 minutes late I still was able to pick up some good pointers that could help me manage certain situations.

Cindy continues to heal from her eye surgery.  She is off this week due to lifting and other restrictions that would make her very physical job duties impossible.

I don’t have all that much flowing from my mind so take some time to watch one of my favorite internet personalities talk about the right way to approach life.

So Thursday I was doing all sorts of scrambling to try to get the Prius ownership transfer done.  The heat was getting turned up because the seller was ready to pull out for Idaho, waiting for the title to clear was one of the last details he needed to attend to.  The seller was suggesting that he could just mail us the title when it gets released but that was not going to fly with me as it literally could have taken WEEKS to get resolved that way.

As I was digging around for any answer, in between frustrating refreshes of the state title check web site, I stumbled across a possible solution, power of attorney.  Basically there is a form the seller could sign off on that gives me power of attorney over the vehicle, allowing me to sign it off to someone else. (Cindy)  Doing this would allow the seller to leave town, releasing the need for him to be geographically present for the transaction to transpire.  This wouldn’t make things necessarily move along any faster for Cindy, as we still needed the state to release the electronic lien, but at least we were removing one layer of complication.  After verifying with one of our MV clerks that what I was proposing would work and verifying the seller was cool with it we were good to go.

I skipped my lunch gym session to drive north to meet the seller to get his signature on the power of attorney form.  We met at a Staples so we could get copies made of the form for his records as well.  As we did we talked about his new truck he got for the trip, his prep, his dog, all sorts of things.  He is just the type of person I find easy to talk to.  I thanked him for his flexibility in getting this all done and wished him good luck on his new adventure.

I was shocked when mid-afternoon after another refresh of the state title site I saw the electronic lien status finally disappear, meaning the title could actually be printed and transferred.  I asked Cindy if she wanted to try to get it done after work but she had too heavy of a workload to make it on time.  We decided instead we would hit the Immokalee office first thing Friday morning before her Lasik surgery.

We hit the Immokalee office first thing, standing by the door waiting for the guard to open it.  We had the title that I signed off on transferred and registered quickly, getting out of the office by 8:15.  We headed back home, slapped the license plate on the Prius and took it for it’s first official drive under new ownership, to Cindy’s Lasik surgery in Fort Myers.

Cindy drove the first leg to Dunkin Donuts, I took over from there so she could do the eye drop regimen required leading up to the procedure.  The Prius drove great and averaged 46-47 mpg, even with driving 75 mph on the highway for 20 miles.

I had experience with being a Lasik surgery bystander as I took Ali for her procedure years ago.  The actually have a window where you can view the procedure from the waiting room.  I recall from the first time around that it was sort of freaky to watch.  The second time around it was much the same.  They have a big tv on the wall which shows the close up picture of the eye from the same perspective as the eye surgeon sees it.  As I watched the eye get pinned open I felt a bit unsettled.  Then when the lens is cut and flipped back I could feel the blood flush to my head, as I felt squeamish, a reflex reaction.  Thankfully the procedure is super quick, she was in and out in about 15 minutes.

Cindy emerged from the surgery area with a valium enhanced smile on her face and protective goggles on her face.  She said the procedure wasn’t bad, more weird as you can see layers being peeled away of your eye.  We carefully loaded her in the car and headed home.    I encouraged Cindy to take the advised nap Friday afternoon since the first few hours after surgery can be the most painful.  They give you one extra valium to help promote that nap.

I had to run out to do a couple errands while Cindy napped.  When she woke up she was feeling a lot of light sensitivity and pain in her eyes which is very normal.  She donned a set of my dark sunglasses to help knock down the sensitivity.  Despite the pain she said she already could notice an improvement in her vision.  As the evening went on she was having some lessening of the discomfort at least.

Cindy woke up Saturday morning feeling better, good enough that she was happy to head out on a pretty long drive that had us checking out Tractor World and Rural King, two similar stores in very dissimilar locations.  Tractor World is in extreme east Naples, Rural King is in Bonita Springs, a solid 40 miles away. We took the Prius once again, wanting to take advantage of the car’s gas sipping personality.  I am not sure why I had recollections of the car being uncomfortable for someone of  my height when I looked at buying one in 2006, I had no comfort issues in either the driver or passenger position with Cindy’s Prius.

So the purpose of this trip was chicken related.  We heard both stores had lots of farm animal supplies and that they may even have some live chickens for sale.  We visited Tractor World first.  The store was big and seemed to have everything a real farmer would need.  Cindy and I enjoyed just wandering the aisles and checking stuff out.  They did not have any live chickens however.  I asked a clerk if they ever carry them.  She said they do but only in April, rats. Cindy picked up a set of polarized sunglasses at TS and was very happy to see that the higher quality lens did a great job of knocking down the light sensitivity she was still dealing with.

Rural King was a new store that only opened up a few months ago.  It was HUGE, if I were to guess they had at least double the floor space of Tractor Supply.  They have just about anything to do with the outdoors inside the walls.  Unfortunately the one thing they lacked once again were chickens.  A clerk there told us they had chickens when they opened but the county came in and made the store remove the birds because of some concerns about their living conditions. Damn it.  We didn’t leave the store empty handed, Cindy bought some more plants for the pool border area.  Rural King is COOL, we will definitely be heading there more often.

Saturday night, despite being one day removed from eye surgery, Cindy and went to go see the new X-men movie.  Before going we had dinner at Iguana Mia, a pretty authentic Mexican place that I hadn’t eaten at in a long time.   We had a very nice waiter but had the visit a bit jaded by the chimichanga Cindy was served.  It was supposed to be heavy on the black beans and rice.  Instead it came out stuffed with nothing but peppers and onions.  When we told the waiter about it he said either we could wait for them to make another one or he could bring us a serving of black beans.  Cindy chose the latter and re-engineered the dish on the spot more or less.

I have always liked the X-men movie series and this latest version was great as well, I would rank it above Spiderman with a very solid A rating.  There are a LOT of characters in this film considering it deals with older and younger versions of heroes/villains.  I think they did a nice job of tying it all together, I enjoyed it.

On Sunday morning we picked up the dogs bright and early so they could spend the day out at the house.  Unfortunately it almost felt like mid-summer temperature and humidity-wise so the girls were not all that interested in extended periods of outdoor play.  Cindy and I worked on various things throughout the day before we left for the second Tarpons game of the season.  We took the Prius with the back seats folded down for dog accommodations.  They had plenty of space back there and seemed quite content on their ride back to Ali’s place to be dropped off.

The Tarpons this week were playing the Corpus Cristi Fury.  Cindy and I hoped that last week’s terrible performance by the Tarpons was only a fluke.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t.  Once again the home team got absolutely stomped, losing by something like 30 points.  It was pretty embarrassing.  Despite the poor performance on the field there is always some source of entertainment to be found.

For example, after the Tarpons scored a touchdown they lined up for an extra point attempt.  The snap was horrible and one hopped cleanly into the hands of the kicker who decides it would be a good idea to try to pass the ball, despite the rest of his team having no idea what was going on.  He cocks his arm to throw and promptly has the ball slip out of his hand.  He chases down the bouncing football and instead of just falling down, again tries to toss the ball wildly in the air to anyone wearing a Tarpon jersey.  Instead the ball wound up neatly in the hands of a Fury player who promptly ran the ball in for a touchdown.  It was an unbelievable display of poor athleticism, poor judgement, and rotten coaching.  Unfortunately all three of these characteristics seem to run rampant on the Tarpons roster.

Just observing the players on the field can be fun.  Cindy and found a few of the Fury players especially interesting. Evidently the Fury doesn’t have the budget to buy uniform tops that actually fit their larger players.  As a result several of their big guys had their jersey cut on both sides so it flapped around like a tabard in the front and cape in the back.  It was very funny.

During the game the owner of the team, whom I had talked to before, was talking to us about the sad state of affairs.  He is basically trying to give tickets away for free to games, just to get bodies in the seats.  The hope is if people see the game they will become interested in supporting it.  Unfortunately, with as poor as the team is this year,  I can’t imagine anyone walking away from a game saying “oh that was awesome, I need to see more”.  This year’s team is simply dreadful.

Thankfully the game Sunday night started early at 5:30 PM, giving me time to get home and packed for the race I was timing Monday morning.  I had the truck loaded and ready to go a little after 9PM.  The race Monday morning was hectic.  Because of some changes we were late getting the registration area up and running.  Once we did we were crushed with over 70 walk up participants.  I was buzzing around more than normal and had to hustle my ass off to get the start line up and running on time.  After the start things settled down for me thankfully.  The rest of the event went relatively smooth.

When we got home Cindy dove into preparing a ton of food for the club’s Memorial Day picnic later that afternoon.  I had a lot of race related work to keep me occupied for awhile before getting to finally relax for an hour or so playing some Hearthstone.  We pulled out for the party around 3PM with the back of the SSR loaded down with stuff including chairs, a cooler filled with alcohol and the four food items Cindy prepared.

The picnic was very well attended.  I spent the majority of my time there chilled in my beach chair drinking Miller Lites while I talked to various people.  I did take the copter up for one quick aerial photography sortie but other than that it was a pretty chill time which Cindy and I both enjoyed.

I was approaching double digits in beer consumption so I had no problem handing over the keys to the SSR to Cindy to transport both of us back home.  The picnic wrapped up a busy but very enjoyable four day weekend.  I wish I could find a way to make a three day work week a normal way of life.

So Cindy’s Prius has been sitting in my driveway collecting dust since last Friday.   The reason for this is she is not the legal owner of the vehicle yet.  You see the one, what we thought was minor bump in the sale was the seller owed money on the Prius yet so he did not have the title in hand.  We thought we had a good plan of action in place, the loan gets paid off, the car stays at my place until the title is cleared off the lien and then we complete the title work.  We figured since Florida went to electronic titling early last year the process should be real fast, bank pays off loan, notifies the state DMV, title cleared, bing bang boom.  Boy were we wrong.

The funds to pay off the loan were moved Friday, the bank officially marked the lien as paid and notified the state of Florida of this on Saturday.  As of of today the electronic title is still locked up tight, showing an outstanding lien, meaning it is unable to be printed or transferred.  Monday and Tuesday I was hoping the title status would flip since the state website says it could take up to 48 hours for the status to update.  It didn’t but I didn’t have much concern since we were still within the published time constraints.

When we went through the entire day yesterday with the status remaining unchanged my concern and aggravation started to pile up.  I was not alone in this concern.  The seller needs the deal to get wrapped up as well since he is relocating across country and was hoping to be on the road heading west by this point.  He and I both were rattling some chains to figure out why this was taking so long.  I called the state DMV customer service number.  After waiting at least 30 minutes on hold I finally spoke to some woman.  I told her the lien was satisfied on May 17th yet the online title check website still shows the title as having a lien on it.  The woman had nothing for me other than the lien satisfaction was not posted yet and that was all that she could tell me. Great.

I was texting back and forth with the seller.  He was on the phone with his bank several times trying to get some sort of answers.  The bank says they electronically sent the lien satisfaction notice as they should have.  The problem is there is no way for us to find out what the deal is in Florida DMV.  We don’t know when the lien will clear or if they even have it in their system to process.  It is very, very aggravating.

I suggested to the seller that maybe his bank could directly contact Florida DMV to either verify they received the communication about the lien or to directly communicate that the lien is now fulfilled.    He said he would give that a shot.  I was surprised when I got a call last night at home from Texas.  It was a rep from the seller’s bank, calling to fill me in on the situation.  She assured me the notification was sent to the DMV on Saturday and that whatever the hang up is, it’s in the DMV’s side.  She said it was possible that they only batch process lien releases a few times a week and we had to wait for the next run to go through.  I told her about the info on the DMV web site saying processing should only take 24-48 hours once the state is notified.  It was very nice of the bank to take the step to reach out to me but it didn’t really give me any more of a definitive answer of why this is taking so long.

You would think when the Florida DMV switched to an electronic only title system, that would mean an increase in efficiency and speed.  After all just clearing a field on a form and submitting it to any location around the globe via the internet takes a matter of seconds.  Why in the world there are days of time that pass before this change is reflected in the system is ridiculous and moronic.  It’s almost like the state has some schlub on a typewriter with a big can of white out that is making these changes manually.

So as of now we continue to be on the same holding pattern that we have been following all week long.  Lesson learned, when buying a vehicle privately, make sure the seller has the title in hand.

I am taking tomorrow off to be the shuttle for Cindy who is having eye surgery.  It will make for a nice 4 day weekend that has a number of activities planned including chores, race timing, and recreational, hopefully evenly balanced.

So last night I added a new dimension to my Diablo 3 play by doing some co-operative monster smashing with Cindy.  After loading up the game on my laptop she got into the game and started smashing face with her female monk, appropriately named Happy Feet.  It took Cindy a little while to get the hang of things but once she did she was having a lot of fun.  She especially enjoyed the constantly evolving weapon/armor upgrades, allowing her to make her character continually more bad ass.

My crusader is a higher level so I did a lot of hanging back and just letting Cindy destroy things, only stepping in if I was bored or if there were a lot of things to smash. She went from level 0 to 8 in 90 minutes or so that we played.  It was a lot of fun for both of us.  I’m hoping she is willing to do so more co-op play with me going forward.

After work I was in the bar park doing some stuff, the highlight being 3 muscle ups without coming off the bar, the first time I did that in quite some time.  Another move I pulled off  was my cool looking but not overly difficult pole hold.  When I came down out of it I somehow managed to drive the big toe on my left foot straight into the ground, jamming it badly.  By the end of the night it was swollen, sore to the touch and black and blue.

This morning I noticed another nasty looking bruise on my right forearm near the elbow.  I have absolutely no idea where this one came from.  From the looks of it I would have had to hit something or something hit me quite hard to cause it.  Of course with my memory nowadays who knows.

Speaking of memory, yesterday I had a ridiculous example of my brain locking up.  On one of the various tv’s at the gym ESPN was tuned in.  The show that was on had a guest panel member, Hugh Jackman, as part of the promo for the new X-men movie this weekend.  There was only one problem, I couldn’t remember Hugh’s name.  My brain was racing, “Wolverine Guy”, “Josh Eaton”, “What the fck is wrong with me…” were all things going through my head as I was desperately trying to recall the name.

The entire time I was at the gym I could not remember his name and I certainly wasn’t going to embarrass myself by asking someone there.  This is something that hits me now and then, names I should know and know easily suddenly become locked up in mental vault for no reason at all.  Later in the afternoon I thought about it again and his name came flowing easily to me this time.  I have had similar problems remembering the name of Samuel L Jackson, who may be in more movies than any other human being on the planet.

Old age isn’t for wimps.

Yesterday the chicken coop showed up at my front door in two boxes.  Since we don’t have chickens yet I wasn’t in a rush to get it put together ASAP.  Actually I am thinking we should wait to get the chickens until we return from our trip to PA in mid-June.  It may be a bit much to get chickens and then immediately ask one of our neighbors to look after them while we are out of town.  I would feel better if they had some more time to get acclimated to life in the back yard first.

I recently started playing the expansion to Diablo 3, named Reaper of Souls.  Blizzard somehow managed to make an incredibly polished and immersive game even more so.  The game manages to be simple yet complex at the same time.  Almost everything in the game is handled via left clicking the mouse, movement, fighting, picking up items, is all accomplished the same way.  Despite the simple controls, the game has a multitude of ways you can control how your character plays by mixing and matching a vast array of abilities.

The graphics, sound, animation and music in the game are some of the best I have ever seen.  The game makes you feel powerful, taking out a room full of  undead monstrosities with relative ease.  It’s just a fun, fun game.  I highly recommend it.

Facebook can be an interesting, funny, and fun place to hang out.  It also can be annoying, frustrating and downright stupid as well, just as often.  I don’t do a good job maintaining my “friends” on there as I should.  Facebook has a number of tools to allow you to filter out people you find annoying or distasteful.  These tools allow you to basically “unfriend” someone without actually actually doing it.  For some reason unfriending someone in Facebook is seen as a mean act where in reality it is just being honest, “I find you annoying and having you as a friend in Facebook does neither of us any good whatsoever so I am releasing you from these bonds”.  Makes sense to me. Anyway using stuff like UNFOLLOW or MAKE ACQUAINTANCE, you can enjoy the benefits of un-friending without the hurt feelings.

I have had people that show up on my FB feed that almost always post things that I find annoying and/or stupid.  For a long, long time I tolerated this annoyance and just scrolled by quickly as I shook my head in disapproval while thinking “what the fck is wrong with you…” in my mind.  Well yesterday I unfollowed some of these people, permanently freeing my wall from this pollution.  It was like picking up a bright shiny penny off the sidewalk.

Friday I left work early for two reasons.  During the day we had been working out logistics of Cindy’s Prius purchase.  The deal was complicated by the fact the seller had an outstanding loan on the car.  This means that Cindy can’t officially take ownership of the car until the seller’s bank releases the title so it can be transferred.

I made arrangements for the seller to drive the Prius out to the house, sign a bill of sale and then I took him back to his place, leaving the Prius in my driveway where it will sit until the title work is done.

On the drive back the seller and I talked non-stop, he has a very interesting background.  His stories of when he was deployed in Iraq as a transport driver were pretty amazing.  I dropped him off with the understanding I would let him know when the title was flagged as clear to be printed so we can get the transaction 100% wrapped up.

I had to haul ass back home to pick up Cindy.  We were supposed to go to the first Florida Tarpons game of the season.  With a 7:30 kick off I was worried we wouldn’t get there in time.  I was surprised that we walked in the door with 10-15 minutes to spare.

Regular blog readers may remember some of the trials and tribulations I went through last year with the Tarpons.  They moved around the dates of several games and outright cancelled 2-3 of them because one of the teams in the league disbanded.  It was pretty much a joke of a year.  At the end of the season, despite reassurances from team ownership, I was sure the team and the league were done.

Well to my surprise the Tarpons are still in business this year although a lot of things have changed.  They shifted the schedule around, instead of the season starting in March, it now starts in May, a dumb move if you ask me.  With a March start you had the opportunity to pull in some snowbirds to games, by May they have all flocked northward.  The league itself has seen a culling, now consisting of four, yes FOUR teams.  As a result the Tarpons play each team at least twice, some three times.

The Tarpons tweaked their uniforms slightly, they look worse than before, not sure who would have thought it was an improvement.  Finally, they no longer had cheerleaders, replaced with girls from the local casino that did no cheering, only throwing of  crappy merchandise into the stands.  (I was told later cheerleaders would be back next game)

Another change I was unaware of until the game started was the Tarpons evidently have a roster that is almost entirely different than last year, I only recognized one guy, the tall pencil thin wide receiver they call Optimus Prime.  Everyone else seemed new.  Sometimes change is good, sometimes it isn’t.  This years roster is definitely the latter.  Despite the league problems the last few years the Tarpons have always had a good team, getting to the championship game each year.  Well that appears to no longer be the case.

The most noticeable drop off in talent is at the QB position. They have some young, 20 year old kid playing QB that looks like he might not even weigh 160 pounds. His arms and legs seemed to be equal in circumference, about the size of a baseball bat.  Not only was he more built for basketball than football, he didn’t seem to have a lot of skills either.  His arm was weak, every single ball he threw had lots of air under it.  To make things worse he was inaccurate as well, consistently throwing balls behind, above or below the reach of receivers.  I felt bad for the kid, he was clearly overwhelmed.

The team the Tarpons were playing, the Miami Inferno, were a brand new team.  This was their first game ever.  Unfortunately they made it look like the roles were reversed, the Inferno beat the Tarpon’s ass, winning the game easily 58-35.  It was a disappointing start to the season.  The saving grace is the Tarpons gave all 2013 season ticket holders free season tickets to the 2014 season.  The best part of the game was our new seats are really, really nice, 4th row, a little past mid-field.

My Saturday morning got started bright and early.  I headed over to Ali’s new place to finish up replacing the bottom sections of screening on her lanai.  Sadie had punched through the brittle screening that was in place the first couple days they were in the new place.  Ali bought a bunch of pet resistant screening to replace it.  I told her I would put it in since I wanted to make sure Sadie stayed safely indoors unless supervised.

Installing the new screen was more challenging than normal  for several reasons.  Doing the panels by the ground are always a pain in the ass as it requires far more time on my knees than I prefer. The position was made more uncomfortable by the bushes poking me that ran along a good portion of the lanai.  The pet screening is much thicker than run of the mill screening, meaning it is a bit tougher to work with. Finally, Ali ordered rolls that were 36 inches wide, only a couple inches wider than the opening.  I should have advised her to get the 48 inch wide rolls.  With the 3 footers I had hardly any spare screen to grab onto and pull on to keep tension while inserting the spline.

It all added up to a frustrating couple hours but I eventually got the final two panels swapped out.  I would be totally fine never changing out another panel of screening in my life.

When I got home I dug into a fresh pile of to do’s.  One of those was to replace some of the defective sprinkler heads Cindy and I identified last weekend.  Before I started replacing heads I did another visual inspection, turning the system on and watching the spraying behavior.  It turned out that actually 6 of the 8 sprinklers in that zone were screwed up.  I only had bought 4 new heads so I prioritized which ones were most important, the heads hitting the garden and orchard.

Replacing sprinkler heads that have been in the ground for awhile can be a pain in the ass.  The St Augustine grass is thick and difficult to cut through.  Unfortunately the passage of time also dulled my recollection of where the main feed pipe for each sprinkler was coming from.  As a result I snapped one of the fittings while digging up one head.  Luckily I had one replacement fitting left over.  I got the new heads in the ground and adjusted.  I obviously have more sprinkler work ahead of me but it is lower priority.

I worked on another long overdue maintenance task Saturday afternoon, replacing the filters on my reverse osmosis system.  This job is actually a TON easier than it used to be.  The GE Profile system I have makes the physical act of replacing cartridges SO much easier than the ridiculous hassle I went through replacing filters with the original system.  There are three filters in the system, two filters used for pre and post filtration and a RO membrane filter in the middle.  The pre and post filters are supposed to be replaced roughly ever 6 months.  The RO filter is every one or two years depending on how much junk is taken out of your water.

It used to be the system would force me to change the filters.  When the filters were getting used up the flow of water out of the system would be drastically reduced.  However that has not been the case in recent years.  I am not sure if it is because I use less water now or if the water cleaner system that was installed 3-4 years ago does a better job of removing crap from the water before hits the RO.  Regardless, the RO system has been working fine.  I was probably at least 2 years past the recommended filter change interval.

Like I said, the physical act of swapping cartridges is very, very easy.  What is a pain is the stuff you have to do as part of the process.  You first need to sanitize the system using special empty canisters with bleach and let it circulate through the system for awhile.  After replacing the cartridges you have to let the system fill and then empty it a total of four times.  Considering filling the system can take 3-4 hours I wound up not doing the last drain until mid-afternoon Sunday.  At least I should be good to go for another 6 months (2 years).

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Godzilla.  You may find some of this a spoiler so feel free to jump to the next paragraph.  I liked the movie overall but there were a few things that I found annoying.  First the film is billed as starring Bryan Cranston, one of my favorite actors.  Well his character exits the film within the first 1/4 of the movie, leaving the story to be focused on the guy that played Kick Ass in Super Bad.  I felt a little bit cheated in the process.  Not only did I get shorted on the Cranston quota, there wasn’t enough of Godzilla himself in my opinion.  Even with these shortcomings I enjoyed the movie, the monster battles were epic as you would hope for.  I will give it an A- although it is teetering on B+ territory because of the things I mentioned.

I found myself also being distracted at the movie by someone behind us a few seats down.  They had their feet draped over the chair in front of them the entire movie which I guess is ok if noone is directly in front of you.  However they found it necessary to play with the seat periodically which would make noise and vibration that I felt/heard.  It became necessary to shoot them stink eye at one point which seemed to stop the shaking but not the sneaker hanging in my peripheral vision. Idiots.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got our endurance training in although we went in different directions.  I opted to just do swimming while Cindy opted to run .  I did a hard (for me) session breaking my 1600 yards into 400/800/400 segments, trying to make sure the 1/4 mile leg I have to swim in the tri should feel well within in my wheelhouse.  Cindy got a hard run session in, probably harder than I could keep up with at this point.

On the way home we made several stops, one of them was Pinch A Penny for pool supplies.  It was to help address another one of the things I worked on over the weekend, fighting my green pool.  My pool water is typically very easy to maintain.  Keep the chlorinator full, add liquid chlorine once a week, run the pool vacuum and I’m done.  Well after my last top off with well water my pool has not recovered from the greenness that is normal with adding dirty water like it normally does.  I have hit the pool with extra chlorine and it still looked like shit.

Well yesterday I realized that I have been forgetting to add the all-in-one algecide treatment that is supposed to go in every few weeks.  I dumped what I had left into the swampy looking mess.  I also discovered that one of the valves was restricting water flow through the filtration system.  Moving it a few degrees dramatically increased the flow of water.  This morning the pool is looking bluish green at least.  I think it’s on the road to recovery.

Sunday night Cindy and I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  It’s a movie produced, directed, and starred in by Ben Stiller.  I found the movie very enjoyable and would recommend it to anyone looking to get inspired to break out of a mundane existence and really experience life instead of being pulled along by it. A-

The chicken coop should show up today, cool.

Well we had an interesting evening last night.  The other day I just happened to be flipping through Craigslist after doing a search with the keyword of “prius”.  I was curious what the used Prius market looked like.  Well I stumbled across a very clean looking 2007 Prius, it got my mental wheels turning.

Cindy’s 1990 Miata is a pain in the ass, despite the top down fun factor it can offer.  Despite Cindy spending a lot of money fixing things on it and me spending a lot of time fixing things, it still has a lot of issues.

It has a leak in the power steering system, a leak in the AC system, a perennial check engine light problem, leaks when it rains, a glitchy radio, and a clutch that feels like it’s on it’s last legs.  Plus it’s tiny size and 2 seat configuration makes it very poor in auxiliary vehicle functions like transporting items, dogs or more than one additional human being.

So anyway my thought was a Prius would be a pretty sweet upgrade for Cindy in most ways imaginable.  Newer, safer, bigger, larger, tech-ier and around 50MPG to boot all sounded really good.  When I first mentioned the idea to her she wasn’t totally on board.  Despite it’s warts, she is fond of her Miata.  However as the idea had time to percolate, it sounded better and better.  By last night it sounded good enough that we went to check the car out.

The car looked very clean from the pictures I saw, I was glad to see in person it looked as good if not better.  It practically looked brand new.  The owner was actually working on his other vehicle, an old Honda Civic, when we pulled up.  He immediately struck me as someone I liked.  He just has a very good energy about him.  It didn’t take long until we found out more about him that made him even more likeable, he is conservancy biologist, is ex-air force, has a big loveable weinerammer named Icharus, and he plays rugby.

I drove a Prius years ago all around southern California so I sort of knew the deal.  I told Cindy she should do the driving since it would be her car.  I was surprised that I wasn’t as crowded in the passenger seat as I recall being before.  I was quite comfortable riding shotgun.  The Prius was as clean inside as it was outside.  Cindy did a decent length test drive around Bonita Springs and was impressed.  Despite more than 100k on the odometer the Toyota still drove great, something that doesn’t surprised me at all based on my experience with the Camry Hybrid I owned and the Tacoma I have been sporting for over a decade. The seller is only the second owner, which was cool.

I had done some research during the day on the value of the car and was surprised it was already priced below the suggested private party price I found on multiple web sites.  Despite that we had to the mandatory Craigslist price negotiation. We didn’t get the price down a lot, but enough to make what was already a well priced vehicle, really well priced.

There are some logistical hurdles to clear the next few days as the Prius has an outstanding loan on it which complicates title work.  Plus the seller is going to be moving to Idaho, pulling out sometime next week so time is at a premium.  If things go as I expect I would hope that Cindy will take ownership of the Prius on Monday.  That should be followed by the Miata getting plopped onto Craigslist, hopefully looking for the next in an already long string of owners.

Tonight we are attending the first Tarpons football game of the season.  This weekend we will be hitting Godzilla, doing chores and enjoying the predicted beautiful weather.

I have decided I officially have nothing to talk about again today other than I installed Waterfox yesterday, Mozilla’s 64 bit version of Firefox.  It seems noticeably faster.

Here is a fun topic, how my first experience with hemorrhoids has been.  This wonderful ailment started early last week, sort of out of the blue.  My run/bike training brick at the gym last Tuesday seemed to really get the ball rolling. Later in the week things seemed to be calming down but the run/swim training brick on Sunday seemed to do a nice job of pouring gas on the fire.  Lesson learned, shelve biking/running when dealing with this sort of pain in the ass.

I have begun using some over the counter items to try to deal with and heal the problem areas.  Of course utilizing any of these products is extremely awkward and gross to someone like me who prefers to make believe the anus does not exist.  Applying a “cooling gel” has the not so cool side effect of making your rear end feel like it was hit with a grease gun.  Dabbing the area with wet wipes is equally un-fun for me. I even sat in my bathtub for the first time in years last night, hoping an epsom salt bath might be beneficial.

The weird thing is I don’t have any of the things that a typical hemorrhoid sufferer has like constipation, a low fiber diet, lack of exercise, not drinking much water, etc…. I can only guess this is yet one more lovely side effect of the GI ailment that crushed me for a week.