Weird to be still, work until wet, Eagles embarrassment
Every year after a road trip it feels strange to be home. The idea that a few days ago you were on the other side of the country and now find yourself back in familiar surroundings with familiar routines just screws with my head a little bit. When we got home on Friday about 5 of course one of the first things we did was head out back to say hi to the chickens. I guess they were as excited as chickens get which means not very.
We immediately worked on unloading the Prius whose interior looked like a homeless person was living it after 13 days on the road. I went back to front, systematically removing items, many of which first went into the middle of the garage for Cindy to sort and sanitize as needed. Cindy also was out in the coop tending to it since we told the chicken sitters we would handle cleaning it since we would be home. In total we were plugging away a solid couple hours until we actually settled down to enjoy our traditional Friday night pizza and start catching up on our huge backlog of dvr’d content.
Saturday I headed outside to start on what I knew would be a pretty miserable session of yard chores. Two weeks of it not being touched combined with heavy rainfall had left the grounds in a pretty jungle-like state. As the heat and humidity poured down on me I instantly yearned for the crisp, cool air we just experienced in Wyoming and Yellowstone. Florida wet season is really getting old.
After weeding the yard I hopped on the tractor and mowed the soppy grass wherever I could. A lot of areas were still too submerged to touch. Some of the areas I did mow were still very mucky resulting in the tractor looking like a swamp buggy when I was done with mud splattered everywhere, including on me. Cindy was busting ass during most of this time giving the coop a very thorough scrub down.
After taking a shower to get all the scuzz off me most of the rest of the day was spent inside tending to pulling and editing the various videos which is a lengthy process. You can catch what I published so far either on my YouTube channel or on Cindy’s channel. There is still more content for me to dig through.
On Sunday morning doing any endurance training was not even mentioned. Both Cindy and I were not feeling up to it plus it felt that there was still a ton of things that needed to get done. Among those things was the monumental task of auditing the trip where I had to reconcile a HUGE pile of credit card receipts and enter them into Quicken. As I did so I categorized the expenses into a few categories, gas, lodging, food, souvenirs, rides, and other. Seeing the final numbers were interesting.
Despite driving an additional 1600 miles this year we basically paid the same for gas as last year thanks to lower gas prices. Driving 6600 miles on $380 of gas is pretty amazing. Our average cost for lodging per night was $91. That number was inflated by two nights at Cody, Wyoming during our Yellowstone visit which cost more than $150 a night. Ironically during the entire trip we did not stay at a single La Quinta. On most prior road trips La Quintas were the destination of choice most nights. This time around they always seemed to be priced slightly higher than comparable chains. Since dog accommodations were not a concern it wasn’t a big deal.
Originally I had set a loose mental goal of us spending basically the same amount of money as we did last year. The final tally came in about $500 higher than last year but with one night and two extra days of travel which included Vegas I think we did ok. That final total is inclusive of cash I pulled out and money for two weeks of chicken sitting. I bet I spent well over 90 minutes getting everything accounted for.
After a quick trip in the SSR to blow out the cobwebs and grab some coffee I got back onto the tractor to mow most of the areas that were impassable on Saturday. A couple days of hot, bright sun had done a nice job of getting rid of a lot of the water. The tractor still required a thorough bath after mowing again.
So on both Saturday and Sunday I spent over 35 minutes on the phone with a Directv representative. This is something I go through every year and every year it annoys the shit out of me. I have Directv just for the Sunday Ticket, something they allowed me to do years ago when I dropped my main package. It is a non-standard configuration that they won’t allow a new customer to do. When the season concludes I suspend my service for 6 months and then have it reactivate when the season begins.
Well each year I have to call to get the Sunday ticket working again. They can’t simple turn it on since I have no normal package, it always requires the intervention of a supervisor. So on Saturday I call and explain to a guy the background of my situation. I told him that last year I specifically requested that the rep notes in my account what was done to get the service working so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel again. He said there were no notes about that on my account which pissed me off.
Despite my advice to get a supervisor involved he insists on going through vanilla troubleshooting steps like restarting the receiver (I already did that) and resending the authorization several times, which did nothing. He then tells me that we can’t really tell if the Sunday Ticket will work until Sunday, closer till game time. I told him that wasn’t true, even before the games there will be a placeholder image on the Sunday Ticket channels if you are authorized for them. The guy just seemed out of ideas and was trying to get me off the phone with “just wait to see what happens on Sunday” advice. I wasn’t accepting it. I kept pressing him to dig deeper as I knew there was more that was required. Well after 35-40 minutes I was abruptly disconnected which of course infuriated me but I had no time to sit on the phone another half hour again.
Fast forward to Sunday morning. I once again call and this time get an older sounding woman on the phone. I once again explain the background of the issue. The woman says that she doesn’t see my account as even having the Sunday Ticket included on my account, nor does she see record of my call from Saturday. Well that is just lovely. Since I do not have a basic programming package the woman was not able to add the Sunday Ticket to my service. However, after a long wait and some intervention by a supervisor, finally the channels started working. I once again asked the woman to please document exactly what was done so we don’t have to go through this again next year. Ironically, since the Eagles/Cowboys game was a national broadcast I couldn’t even use the Sunday ticket this weekend which blacks out locally broadcast games.
After bearing witness to the game, I almost wish it was blacked out entirely, it was that bad. In the offseason Chip Kelly came under a great deal of scrutiny based on his dismantling of the core of the team, especially on offense getting rid of our starting QB, RB, WR, and two offensive lineman. After the strong preseason performance by the Eagles a lot of those critics adopted a wait and see attitude, maybe Chip is not only a strategic but also a personnel genius? Well after two games of the regular season this outlook on Chip’s player decisions are looking much bleaker. The Cowboys game was an utter disaster.
The defense, surprisingly, were the far better of the two units, despite being out on the field for 40+ minutes thanks to the Eagles absolute failure to sustain any sort of offensive momentum. DeMarco Murray, the LeSean McCoy replacement ran for negative yardage overall for the entire game. The fault for this was largely the offensive line that seemed to routinely let D-lineman into the backfield every time Murray was handed the ball, it was miserable.
The receivers did little to help move the ball dropping a number of balls that a pro should normally pull in. Sam Bradford, who I assume was supposed to be a Nick Foles upgrade, looked flustered and confused in a manner that befit a rookie, not a guy that has been a starter in the league for a number of years. I really don’t like the passing game that has been in place for the first two games. I don’t think I have seen a single pass that has traveled in the air more than 20 yards down the field. I don’t know if it is because the Eagles have no receivers fast enough to beat anybody deep or Chip just wants to exclusively do dump and run pass plays.
There is nothing that will get Eagles fans to turn on you faster than coming up small against the Cowboys. If Chip hangs a couple more consecutive losses around his neck (he has lost 5 of last 6 games dating back to last year), there will be a roar of dissent calling for his head. It seems like the league has now figured out how to deal with his hurry up style of play. It scares no one. Chip’s style of viewing players as trading cards you can just plug into and out of a team without consideration of overall team chemistry is looking to be his fatal flaw. The team looked absolutely awful on Sunday.
As if the Eagles awful performance was not bad enough, my fantasy team is now in shambles as well. Two crucial parts of my team were Dez Bryant and Tony Romo, whom I spent high draft picks on, both are now going to be sidelined for months. I may as well raise the white flag now as my bench players are marginal at best.
Later yesterday and overnight there was another round of torrential rain and storms that made me very glad to have had the opportunity to knock down the grass over the weekend. It’s going to be an interesting week as I try to adapt back to the daily grind after two weeks of taking each day as it comes.