Omissions, Into the Madness, hit for the excrement cycle

So as is often the case when I try to recall too long of a time period into a blog entry, I forgot a few things, like two movies that we saw over the 6 days off.

On Sunday night we went to see  Unbroken, a pretty amazing true story about an Olympic athlete that was stranded at sea for a month and a half while serving in the military during WW II only to be captured and tortured by the Japanese.  I don’t know how much embellishment was put into the movie version of the story but if it was mostly accurate, it was an incredible demonstration of human willpower.  To endure what that man went through is simply incredible and makes me want to punch myself in the face the next time I complain about a stubbed toe.  It was an inspirational movie that depicts both the worst and best parts of human beings at the same time.  I give it an A.

I also neglected to mention we saw November Man, a Pierce Brosnan action flick.  Overall the movie was enjoyable but there were these odd, awkward, and unnecessary insertions of close up violence like extreme head shots or a guys head crunching on the pavement after a fall.  There also were these scattered uses of slo-mo where it made no sense, it had both Cindy and I scratching our heads.  Despite these oddities, overall the movie was a fine B+ action rental.

Ok fast forward to New Years Eve.  Cindy and I didn’t even speak a word about New Years Eve plans until the day itself.  I saw on the blog that last year we went to the movies on New Years so I asked Cindy if she wanted to do it again.  I figured with my screwed up back sitting in a movie theater was about the only thing I could tolerate.  We decided to see Into the Woods, the previews looked cute although they totally hid one crucial bit of information about the film, it’s a musical.

I pretty much universally HATE musicals, so once the movie started out singing, I was internally saying “oh, no….”  I tried to remain upbeat for as long as I could but the 3 sung words for every spoken word ratio slowly was driving me insane.  On top of that there were some creepy and outright disturbing parts of the movie that didn’t seem like they fit in a Disney produced fairytale flick.

If I was alone, I would have walked out of the film halfway through, I was that sick of it.  However I assumed Cindy was enjoying it somewhat since she is a female. Well it turns out she thought the movie was as awful as I did and she would have been totally down with leaving early.

The movie sucked so bad it inspired 3 or 4 Into the Woods themed Vines on my twitter feed. This doesn’t happen often but I give the film a D, don’t see it unless there is a gun to your head.

After the movie neither of us had any desire to go somewhere to grab a drink to watch the New Year flip over. My back pain removed absolutely any need for alcohol.  I just wanted to crash in bed, luckily Cindy felt much the same.

Now I have never be one that really cared about partying on New Years or any other day for that matter but I have pretty much always at least seen the ball drop on TV to ring in the year.  Well that streak ended Wednesday night, once I laid in bed I dozed off probably 20 minutes till midnight, the excitement of a new year could not overcome the exhaustion I felt.  Cindy didn’t make it to midnight either although she probably lasted 10 minutes longer than I did.

On New Years Day Cindy and I headed down to the two events the running club puts on, a free 5K and a Polar Plunge.  My back was starting to feel better yesterday but I was still in no shape to run.  Instead I set up my GoPro at the finish line so the runners had some documentation of their finish since it is not a chip timed event.

Cindy and I did participate in the Polar Plunge although jumping into 71 degree water is hardly worthy of the name.  Cindy only went waist high since she is just coming off illness.  I did the full deal, diving into the Gulf of Mexico for a few moments.  In total I was probably in the water for less than two minutes.

When we got back home we worked some more on getting the pool deck back together, moving the freshly hammered black painted metal furniture onto the lanai.  The stuff looked good.

The painted furniture should complement the two PolyWood chaise lounges that are supposed to show up today.  They are replacing the cheap metal lounge chairs that I have now bought twice from Bed Bath and Beyond.  The metal chairs dont last all that long, either the webbing dry rots and/or the frame rusts.  This last pair had an additional very annoying problem of spilling rusty water onto the pool deck.  Somehow their design allowed for water to accumulate inside of the frame.

These Polywood chairs which are a mixture of plastic and wood composite should literally last forever.  The material is very similar to the composite lumber you see in a home improvement store.  They were expensive but thanks to the points my Amazon credit card accumulated over the Xmas shopping season my out of pocket expense was about what one cheap metal lounge chair would cost.

We had a spur of the moment visit from Cindy’ daughter, her boyfriend and their two young dogs. Hell one isn’t young, it’s still a puppy, only a few months old, it’s a catahula mix named Bowser.  Well as you would expect mixing in the two young dogs with my dogs was quite a handful.  At first Sadie was running around the yard with the two youngsters however it didn’t take long till she tired of their non-stop hi-jinx.   She growled and showed her teeth more than once, she wasn’t thrilled with sharing her living space with the pups.

Of course another issue with young dogs is housebreaking.  Evidently both dogs are still works in progress in this regard.  Bowser did a number one and two indoors while Tank took a leak a few inches behind where I was standing which I subsequently stepped in.  It was fun times.

After they left Sadie completed the excrement cycle by throwing up while laying in our bed.  She was so casual about it.  She was asleep on her side when it started.  She never moved off her side during the expulsion.  She threw up and didn’t move an inch.  She would have been content to just lay in front of it.  Even as Cindy performed clean up duty on the comforter and Sadie herself, she did not move an inch.

I watched my first college football of the year yesterday.  First I saw Baylor totally collapse at the end of a game to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  I then saw a good portion of Oregon dismantling Florida State, an outcome a few of my FSU alumni friends are surely not happy about.

I complete my two day work week today followed by another two days off.  This is a work schedule I could surely get used to.  The dogs go back to Ali today after her extended PA holiday visit.  As usual after we have the dogs for awhile, the house will feel a little bit empty tonight.  This weekend we will de-Christmas the interior of the house and work on a lot of loose ends that feel like are hanging out.