Archives 2014

Last night when I pulled up to the house the garage door was open and Cindy was inside of it holding a mop upright, an odd thing.  When I got out she said the reason for the mop was to try to coax a bird out that had flown in the garage when she opened it.  I didn’t expect to be involved in an animal project last night but of course I was obligated to.  This bird was of decent size, about the same as a mockingbird.  It apparently was not very bright.  Despite the garage door being fully open, offering a 20 foot wide escape route, when we would coax the bird from the back wall it would fly on top of the retracted door and hang out there.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the bird to simply fly out the door we started using additional tools including a towel, an empty plastic box and finally my big fish net from the shed.  No matter what the tool the result was the same, every time I would try to snag the bird he would simply fly to another part of the garage.  We even put the door down for a period of time hoping it would make it easier to capture the bird, that plan failed as well.

I was getting worried for the bird.  You could tell he was very scared and getting tired.  He had his beak open all the time, something birds do when overheated.  I stuck with the fish net.  I couldn’t get the bird to fly into it but I held it in front of him in a non-menacing way.  A few times he would step onto the frame of it for a couple seconds before flying off.  Finally, after somewhere around 15-20 minutes of attempts I got him to perch on the frame of the fish net while I very slowly lowered it and walked outside.  Ironically after all of that effort, once I got him safely outside he didn’t want to fly off the fish net immediately, he just sat there looking at me, probably due to exhaustion.  Finally he took off for a near by tree.  Another animal rescue mission was complete.

Cindy told me when she saw the bird she tried to put up the windows of the SSR up so the bird couldn’t go in it.  However when she turned the key it appeared to be dead.  I hopped in the truck and verified it was dead as a doornail.  The battery was just replaced last year so the odds of it being bad were slim.  My initial guess is when Cindy drove us home from the running club picnic on Memorial Day she  inadvertently left the ignition switch in the accessory position.  When I swapped out the ignition switch on the truck awhile back an unintended side effect was if you weren’t careful you are able to pull the key out of the ignition with it still being in the accessory detente.   It was raining last night so I didn’t bother to address it but tonight the plan will be to push the SSR out of the garage, jump it, and hope the battery is able to be revived via the alternator.

My brother-in-law who basically NEVER posts on Facebook was motivated to do so yesterday because of his own personal blowback from the Affordable Care Act.  His story followed what unfortunately is becoming a common narrative.  Since the ACA changes, his company, which by all accounts is doing fantastic financially, has told employees they are raising their portion of healthcare premiums drastically.  His current contribution of around $300 per month for his family of 4 could skyrocket to 1000 bucks a month.

I don’t think anyone that supports the concept of universal health care would see this as acceptable collateral damage.  However there are many facets to this situation.  The first thing I would question is just how honest my BIL’s company is in their accounting of the need to 100% pass increased health care costs entirely onto the back of their employees.  Like I said, from what he has told me, his company makes dump trucks full of money for what they do.  An unwillingness to split that pain more evenly with employees seems pretty shitty to me.

For every story like this you can also find someone with the exact opposite experience where the ACA was a godsend and for the first time in their life allowed them medical coverage for a pre-existing condition that in the past insurance companies could slam the door in your face for.  Of course these stories get much less coverage than the people that are getting the shaft like my BIL, whom are normally going to be much more vocal in expressing their outrage. My BIL puts most of the blame on Obama and the “ignorant” people that voted for him for this situation.  He feels bitterness and anger that he is being asked to pay a ton more for his premiums so that “beggers” can get coverage that in many situations is government subsidized based on income level. Although I don’t agree with the sweeping generalizations he uses to describe people that benefit from ACA I can understand his frustration.

I find myself in an odd position with this.  Although I have always supported the idea that a universal health care system is a good thing overall in a modern society, I think what was passed into law here was far too much of a byproduct of insurance company lobbyists.  The ACA act is making insurance companies a TON of money.  When the plan was pitched, part of the logic was distributing the cost of insurance amongst more people should overall lower the cost of coverage since you have more wallets supporting the load.  Obviously that has not been the case per my brother in law’s and many more examples.  And of course who can forget the now infamous Obama quote “if you like your current insurance coverage, you can keep it”.

The other smoking gun in addition to insurance companies is the medical profession itself and it’s RIDICULOUS costs.  What we are charged for medical care/procedures is nothing short of rape, it’s insanity.  Last week at the running club picnic I was talking to a fellow board member that had to go to the emergency room after laying down his scooter on some loose gravel.  He had a bad cut on his leg that required stitches.  While he was there the doctors insisted on taking an MRI of his head and a second one of his body.  Dave is a handyman/contractor that has no health insurance.  His bill for a few hours in the ER, $13,000.  Yes that is not a misprint.  To say he was furious would be a massive understatement.

My point is the health care and insurance industry gets you from both ends, insurance companies charging higher rates, using the ACA  as a catch all reason (despite it making them a fortune), and the medical profession that can easily bankrupt the average individual if they spend more than a couple days in a hospital.  It’s a horrible, horrible mess. Add big pharm into this equation as well, they may be the most evil of the three after all.

Just like so many of our countries largest problems, the core reason behind all of this is corporate greed.  Having individual health care being infinite profit centers for big businesses means things will never really fundamentally change because the money doesn’t want it to.

We are f’d.

On my way home from work Friday I took a detour up to exit 131 on I-75.  I was stopping by to see my accountants, a husband/wife team that had a second home down here for 5 or 6 years but still lived primarily in Douglassville in dreary PA.  They are hopefully going to be able to relocate to Florida full time soon.  They have been doing my taxes for years and years.  I met them when I was still working for Entre Computers/Ameridata and was sent out to their home office on a service call.  We always got along well from day one and have maintained a very friendly relationship over the years.

The reason I was heading up there was to pick up an old computer of theirs which was not booting.  Thye were hoping I could at least get some important files off the old box and move them to a new PC they just bought.  They live in a huge beautiful house in one of the many large communities that dot the SW Florida area like freckles.  I had not seen Tom or Sue in a long time, not since I left Pennsylvania for good back in 2000, meaning 14 years had flown by.

I was wondering how it would be reentering the space of someone that hadn’t seen each other for nearly a decade and a half.  The answer was, just fine.  Sue was really amazed, she said I didn’t look any different then when she last saw me.   Of course I know there are lots of small differences in how I look now versus 14 years ago but it was nice to know that as a whole, the wheels haven’t totally fallen off.

I sat down and talked to them for quite awhile, before I knew it I had spent an hour chatting.  Cindy was making dinner so I told them I needed to get going.  I grabbed the two computers and told them I would see what sort of progress I could make on them this week.

On Saturday morning Cindy was outside helping me knock out a number of outdoor to do’s before Randall and his girlfriend were scheduled to show up mid-afternoon.  After handling those chores and doing a quick run to Lowe’s I had to put on my baker’s hat.  Monday was Lily’s birthday and we thought making my kick ass chocolate birthday cake would be a nice surprise.  I have made the cake enough now that it is pretty easy.  Cindy for once actually picked up a few pointers in the cake prep from me, especially when it comes to the icing preparation which is the most important part of the while thing.   Randall and Lily pulled up shortly after I finished mixing the icing and was letting it cool.

This was the first time I met Lily, whom Randall had been dating for several months.  Like Randall she is an avid biker and works only a couple miles away from where he does.  It didn’t take long to get a good vibe about her.

We gave her the brief tour of the property and then just hung out for a little bit.  Cindy and Randall still had to pick up their race packets for Sunday’s triathlon so we figured we would combine that trip with going out to dinner for efficiency sake.  While we are at packet pick up Randall and Cindy spent some time at two of the on site tables, one guy was giving a free neural analysis and the other guy was like a sports rehab guy that was giving free rock tape applications.

Rock tape or stuff like it was first seen in the summer olympics several years ago.  Supposedly, by taping certain areas of your body you can have gains in power, endurance while helping to avoid injury.

I watched the guy apply the tape over Randall’s left knee,  when he was done in sort of looked like an open patella knee brace.  Personally I am quite skeptical if this sort of product offers anything beyond a placebo affect but I can verify that I see it in use more and more often.  The stuff seems to really adhere strongly to the skin.  I would imagine after removing it a few times you may start shaving whatever area you are regularly applying it to.

After heading out we decided to do dinner at Carraba’s despite it being around 6PM on a Saturday night, a day and time that you would NEVER entertain stepping foot into the place during season unless you liked 2 hour waits.  Our gamble paid off, only sitting through a pretty brief 20 or 25 minute wait before our seating buzzer flashed red.

While we were enjoying our drinks at the bar, I took notice that even though we were well within the happy hour time period which goes until 7PM, we weren’t being served 2 for 1 draft beers, a long standing Carrabas tradition.  I figured it was just the latest in a long line of changes Carrabas has made in the last 10 years that have lessened my enjoyment of the place.

I asked the bartender if they stopped the 2 for 1 deal.  He said that instead of doing 2 for 1, they now just charge half price on draft beers during happy hour.  Randall paid for the bar bill so I didn’t run the numbers to verify this.  I can tell you that the glasses they serve you draft beer in are at least a third smaller than they used to be.  The tall but very small diameter glasses are just the latest subtle change to pad the bottom line. The menu at Carrabas seemed to change a lot, they added a ton of new things.  It looked like they almost doubled the amount of entree choices.  I guess that is at least one thing to nudge the needle back in a positive direction.

We didn’t stay up very late on Saturday night due to the triathlon the next morning.  I got the van loaded up with as much as I could Saturday night so we could just jump in and roll by 4:45 am the next morning.  The van had Randall’s bike and accessories and the running club’s PA system, speaker stand and bull horn to be used at the race.

The 4:15 alarm was not welcomed but I did somehow wake up on my own a minute or two before it actually went off.  I had my customary Pop Tart breakfast and then followed up with my customary bathroom to trip to make sure the tank is empty.  This is one of the parts of being a race participant that I really dislike.  I fear the idea of being in the middle of a race and having some sort of bathroom emergency pop up.  I ALWAYS make sure to get things nailed down before leaving the house.  Sure, once I get on site I will need to take a leak once or twice but I absolutely do NOT want to have to deal with anything else once I walk out the door of my house.

Well despite attending to this need at home, shortly after getting on site I felt this need reenter my body.  I was not happy.  I can only attribute this to the additional anxiety of participating in my first event in over a year, even though my role only required a little over 10 minutes of total work.  Thankfully this race is based out of a hotel so I didn’t have to resort to port-o-potties but I still was very unhappy that my digestive system was giving me additional overhead to deal with.

As I was a couple miles from the hotel I had something else flash into my head that gave me additional distress.  Even though I remembered to bring the portable PA system and speaker stand which was to be used to start the race, I forgot to grab the Ziploc bag I have in one of the crates which includes the accessories for the set up, most importantly the microphone.  Without a mic the system was a paperweight.

I did not immediately panic, I though that I could utilize the mic from the large PA system that the club uses for the award ceremonies.  Shortly after getting on site I went down to the beach to grab the mic, hoping to be able to cover up my lack of planning.  When I got down there I saw the speakers and main box for the system but no cables used to connect it all together, rendering this system useless as well.

I immediately contacted the race director and several people in the club that dropped the PA system off for use.  The initial info I got was the cables and mic were left with the system in the conference room where early packet pick up was held.  I fast walked up to the hotel and walked around the area looking under tables to see if the red and black bag containing the cables was left behind.  The search came up empty.  I was starting to get very worried.  Imagine if we had no cables for either PA system, shit.

I made another call to the race director and described what the bag looked like.  A light bulb went on.  She said she had the bag, it was in her hotel room.  Evidently it was given to her because nobody knew what was inside of it.  Whew, crisis averted.  I met up with her and grabbed the bag, taking it down to the finish line.  I dumped the stuff on the table, interested in grabbing the mic to run it up to the start line.  As soon as I did the hope fo covering up my mistake vanished.  The connector the mic for the big sound system is not compatible with what my portable rig uses, damn it!  That meant for the start of the waves we were going to have to use the less powerful bull horn I brought along.  I was pissed at myself for not bringing all the stuff I needed.

So all that was left was to wait for the race to start.  Relay teams were in wave 2, starting two minutes after the first wave.  Cindy was nervous as she always is before every race.  She was worried she would let us down if she didn’t run fast enough.  I assured her no matter what time she ran it didn’t matter, we weren’t there to establish any world records.  After she took off running I returned the worthless portable PA system to the van before heading to the transition area to meet up with Randall.

They have very specific rules when it comes to handing off the timing device between team members during each transition.  There is a box on the ground defined by tape where the next leg of the team must stand.  The chip hand off has to happen inside that box.  We spotted Cindy come running into the area right around the 25 minute mark (24:35 official time).  She was exhausted, almost to the point of delirium.  Randall unstrapped the timing strap from her leg, slapped it on his and then grabbed his bike and was off.  Both Cindy and I expected Randall to make short work of the less than 10 mile bike course which he did, averaging close to 21 mph for the ride.

I had positioned myself in the chip hand off area a few minutes ahead of Randall’s return.  I had stripped down to my tri suit bottoms, had my ear plugs in, sneakers on and my goggles up on my forehead.  I elected to wear sneakers to make my roughly 1/4 mile run to the beach faster since it goes over a large section of hard surfaces and road.  After getting to the beach I could quickly strip the sneakers and head into the water.

Randall came steaming back into the transition area, threw his bike on the rack and came over to me so I could grab the chip.  I affixed the strap to my right leg and was off and running.  Since I got to skip the first two events I had an unfair advantage over the other participants I was passing on the way to the beach.  I was moving pretty quickly for me, enough that I was breathing heavy when I finally hit the sand.  After quickly removing my sneakers and pulling my goggles down I was into the water.

Even though the water wasn’t very deep for quite awhile, I didn’t waste much time before getting horizontal and swimming since you can always swim through water faster than you can trudge through it.  I modified my normally very deep stroke depth so I wasn’t hitting the bottom.  It didn’t take long till my first bump in the road came up.  My left goggle evidently did not have a good seal and filled up with salt water, enveloping my eye in a constant stinging misery.  I determined that although it was uncomfortable, it wasn’t worth my stopping and losing time to correct it.  I kept stroking.

I really hate swimming in open water, I hate swimming in open water with a bunch of people even more.  Throughout the swim I was dealing with bumping into people, people bumping into me and getting cut off several times.  I never really felt comfortable during the swim.  My pace was steady but not fast by any means.  Entering the water after running at a brisk pace seemed to put me at an oxygen deficit that I never really recovered from.  Plus swimming in a lap pool where you are pushing off the opposing wall every 30 seconds or so does not prepare you for open water swimming where it’s one long slog with nothing to push off of.  The 1/4 mile C in the gulf water felt like double that in a pool.

Coming back in I tried to swim as much as I could before emerging from the water to jog in the final few yards.  As soon as I stood up I felt disoriented and unbalanced, almost falling to my right side.  I caught myself and trudged up the beach and across the blue timing finish mats, sucking major wind.  I felt like I worked harder than I should have to considering I was only in the water for less than 10 minutes. Randall, Cindy and Lily all cheered my arrival from the water and joined me in collecting our race finisher medals.  I didn’t talk much until my breathing had slowed down after chugging about a half bottle of water.

I glanced at the race clock seeing it was 1:06 something when I finished, meaning our finish time was somewhere less than 1:05 because of our delayed wave start.  1:05 was the goal Randall, Cindy and I threw out there loosely before the race so to beat that was cool.  After emerging from the water I wanted to quickly exit the throng of people gathered around the finish chute, talking to herds of people is something I just don’t do well.  Cindy and I grabbed our stuff from transition while Randall and Lily snagged some food.  We returned and set up a blanket on the lawn to hang out.

In the more open setting I exchanged race stories with many of my friends from our local athletic community.  I almost felt dishonest claiming myself as a real race participant having only done the short swim.  The results for this race have always been slow to be posted, this year was the worst example of that to date.  It took forever for team results to start being posted and when they finally were it was only the cumulative time that was posted.  We managed to place 4th in the the mixed gender team division, meaning we actually received an award, which were being handed out to the top 5 in each category.  However even though we knew our finish place, the awards ceremony did not start until much, much later.  By this time it was hot and humid as hell, the main courtyard had no shade.  We retreated to a perimeter area to wait under some palm trees.

Evidently there were some scoring errors/omissions that were rather big, affecting the awards.  Being a timer myself I have had my feet to the fire like this so I did sympathize, however that sympathy eventually ran out when I just got sick and tired of waiting.  When the awards did finally start, they went at a pace that was too slow considering how many needed to be handed out.  To put the icing on the cake the team divisions awards were the last to be handed out.

The three of us went up to receive our awards, something I don’t know that any of us expected to receive before the day started.  The awards and the finisher medals that were handed out were not very impressive at all, especially considering the entry fee cost for the event.  Everyone, no matter 1st place or 5th got an identical frame with what looked to be a two sided post card in the center of it that just has the race name and logo.  There was nothing to designate it’s significance.  The finisher medal was tiny and noticeably smaller/cheaper than the events prior years medals.  As someone who is involved with putting on races, these sort of shortcuts stand out like a sore thumb to me.  Since this is a for profit race, these are clear moves to pad the bottom line.

Because of the turtle slow results/awards we did not get off site until shortly before noon, pretty insane for a race that started at 7:30 AM.  We piled in the van, glad to get out of the sun.  The Dunkin Donuts coffee we picked up on the way home felt good going down and helped soothe my inner rumblings about waiting around for 3 hours.

When we got back to the house everyone was anxious to hop in the shower before eating lunch to wash off the sweat, sand, and in my case, salt water off of them.  Cindy made us all a nice lunch that we enjoyed while catching one of the endless home improvement shows on HGTV.  After eating it didn’t take long for the early wake up call to mix in with the digesting food to bring on some extreme drowsiness.  Cindy and I retired for a nap, Randall and Lily followed suit.  We all didn’t emerge from the bedrooms until after 5pm.

I began looking online for the full event results to be posted.  They were nowhere to be found.  Even the cumulative times that we saw on site were not posted.  Again, my race timing background and efforts to make times available online nearly instantly make this sort of delay really annoying.  The results didn’t become available until early this morning.  If you want to see our team results you can look here.

Last night we all just relaxed except Cindy who was slaving in the kitchen making shrimp risotto.  We enjoyed it while watching my latest Netflix rental, Wolf of Wall Street.  I had heard a lot of things about this movie ahead of time, mostly bad.  The negative commentary however was focused on the sex, nudity, and the incredible amount of times the F word is used in the film.  I actually went into the movie thinking I wouldn’t come away with an overall positive view of the film.  Well I was very wrong.

Yes the movie had a ton of graphic sex scenes and adult language but for whatever reason it all seemed totally appropriate.  Supposedly the film is based on a true life story.  I have to assume a ton of artistic license was taken, I can hardly believe that any human being could live a life of excess to this degree.  If it is more or less true all I can say is wow.  I thought the acting in the movie was nothing short of brilliant.  Even though it was VERY long,  I had no issues with it.  If anything it could have kept on going. It was just the type of film that kept your attention non-stop.  If you are a bible thumping,  nudity hating, thin lipped prude, don’t even think about renting this movie for a second, you may go straight to hell.  Everyone else, A rating, see it.

After the movie I watched the end of the 3rd period of the Blackhawks – LA Kings game.  Lily is from Chicago and a big sports fan.  I retired to bed when the game was 4/4 at the end of regulation.  Unfortunately for her the Kings won the game in OT, advancing to the Stanley Cup finals.

I was up and out this morning before Randall and Lily got up.  Cindy is still off today so they are hanging out a bit until heading back eastward.  It was nice meeting Randall’s new girl, we loosely threw around plans for them to return for us to do some type of team arrangement for the Marco Island triathlon in the fall.

I have a busy week ahead which will be wrapped up with my picking up the dogs for another extended visit while Ali is in Costa Rica.

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.