The new rested is tired and sore, bait and switch, Tarpons terrible

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.