Archives October 2015

We started Saturday off with a trip to the track, I wanted to give a short run a try.  In general my IT band has been hurting less since the road trip so I wanted to see how I would feel.  For the first two or three laps the answer was not good as I felt pain in my right hip and knee.  Eventually as my body warmed up the pain faded.  We completed the 8 laps and I probably could have pushed to a 5K distance if I wanted to.  So far I haven’t had any serious blowback as far as follow up pain or soreness.

We headed out to Home Depot to grab sod and top soil needed to repair the now massive excavation the chickens have performed at various spots around the yard.  Cindy and I worked in tandem to complete the work.  The humidity in the air was noticeably less on Saturday.  The combo of cloudy skies, breezy conditions and temps in the low 80’s almost felt pleasant to work in. Cindy and I set up the inflatable Halloween cat by the front door to complete our decorations. (unless Cindy decides to decorate the coop)  We anchored the cat with opposing 35 pound dumbbells to keep it steady as much as possible.

We have had a wasp problem on the one side of the house that I mentioned last week.   I finally broke down and bought wasp spray although I don’t feel good about killing the insects, despite their aggressive intentions towards me.  The wasps had somehow survived a couple spraying sessions, one by Cindy and one by myself.  I eventually pulled the hose holder off the wall and soaked every inch of it with wasp spray, hopefully putting an end to their persistent unwelcome habitation.

Recently I saw a Lincoln commercial where it showed off the built in ground projection logo set up.  Basically you open the door and an LED projects a crystal clear image on the road.  It’s just a cool thing.  This reminded me that a couple years ago I had bought the hardware to do this for my SSR but never installed it.  I found the box in the garage and hooked one of the projectors up to my 12V DC power supply to verify it worked.  I showed Cindy the bright image it cast on the rug which she thought was cool.

I have two of them as I originally planned to install them as prescribed, in the bottom of both doors.  I have since changed direction.  I want to try to hook one up in the back of the vehicle under the rear bumper.  I am hoping to tap the back up light circuit for power.  When you unlock the truck the back up lights stay on for several seconds so I thought it would be cool to have a projector in the back. I haven’t gotten beyond the thought process stage of this.  I need to put the back of the truck on ramps so I can do some thorough investigation about mounting options.

Speaking of the SSR, I made another large payment on the loan for the truck this weekend during my bill paying session, leaving less than a thousand dollars to go before it’s paid off.  It will be nice to have my only existing vehicle payment evaporate although I still am a bit sad that for the most part the SSR is a much smaller focus of my entertainment sphere nowadays.

We did take the SSR to the movies Saturday night.  It was our first trip to the theater since before the road trip.  I bet it has been a month and a half since we went to the movies which is surely a record for us.  We went to see The Martian, both Cindy and I are big fans of sci fi/space flicks.  The movie theater was decently full, probably half the seats were occupied.

I thought the movie was great and extremely well done.  Really the only negative I can give is it’s long, if you are annoyed by lengthy movies.  Personally I don’t care if a movie is long as long as I find it entertaining and interesting (ie Lord of the Rings).  I felt like I just watched the best space themed movie since Apollo 13 by the end of it.  I give it an A+.  Cindy felt similarly.

Cindy and I had talked about doing the 20 mile DD ride on Sunday morning as a follow up to Saturday’s run.  However Cindy wasn’t feeling great and the skies looked very threatening so we bailed.  It turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain shortly thereafter.  The weather all day was very unstable with periods of sun and rain which I assume were the fringe effect from hurricane Joaquin.

After skipping the ride my day became very lazy.  We grabbed coffee and some gas for the mowers and I paid my bills, other than that I was in slug mode.  Part of the slogfest was watching the Eagles game which was so shitty for most of it that I split time watching it with playing Hearthstone on the iPad.  I really don’t enjoy watching this team play, let me break down the latest loss.

Chip Kelly seems to be a one trick pony.  His vaunted hurry up offense which seemed to frustrate defenses in his first couple years in the league now seems to be passe and easily addressed.  The only thing it seems to do consistently is tire out the Eagles defense since they spend so much time on the field.  In addition Chip’s personnel management skills are proving to be pretty damn awful.  We are seeing the end result of coring out the majority of a team and inserting a random cast of characters like it is fantasy football. The team has no character, no personality and no leaders.

I have not been impressed by Stafford, our new QB.  Yes the offensive line has been more or less horrible and the receivers have dropped some catchable balls but his accuracy is reminding me of Donovon McNabb.  I have seen him miss wide open receivers A LOT, something I did not expect.  So far I certainly don’t see his play as a step up from what Nick Foles could have done for us. It was nice to see Stafford complete a couple long balls.  I think I heard the announcer say yesterday was the first game the Eagles had a play over 20 yards.  If that is true it is a pretty damning stat considering the team used to lead the league in plays over 20 yards.

The running game continued to be awful, again in large part thanks to the shitty offensive line that Chip constructed in the offseason.  Their inability to create anything resembling a consistent running attack further cripples their ability to pass as play action fakes mean absolutely nothing.

Huge kudos to Chip for signing a kicker that obviously has a mental block, missing a short field goal and an extra point which would have changed the game outcome.  I expect Calebs stay with the team to be brief.

Even with the Eagles leading late I had a sickening feeling in my stomach they were going to collapse at the end, which they did, allowing the Redskins to mount a confidence crushing 15 play drive to score the winning touchdown.  The offense came out onto the field with roughly 25 seconds to go and promptly shit the bed, allowing two sacks before crawling off the field with their tail between their legs.

I have read some former Eagle coach comparisons for Chip Kelly, the most accurate one I saw was with Ray Rhodes who did well his first couple seasons until the wheels completely fell off.  At this point I can see this team of misfits scraping together 6 wins.  I am curious if double digit losses is enough to merit the end of Chip Kelly’s pro coaching career.  The miserable Eagles game did nothing to pick up my already gloomy mood which was enhanced by my lack of tangible productivity backed by off and on shitty weather all day long.

Despite us being well past the vaunted super moon my overall mood has not been great.  I am concerned that as I advance further into the depths of middle age that I am acquiring more of the traits I saw in my mom as she got older, beyond wrinkles.  I am lucky to have Cindy’s positive energy to slow my descent.  I just don’t feel like dealing with things a lot more often than I recall in the past.

Last night Cindy and I watched the Falling Skies finale which actually broadcast sometime during our road trip.  I have watched the show loosely for most of it’s 5 year run.  It seemed like it had rotating writers, sometimes the story was pretty compelling, other times it was ridiculously stupid.  Well unfortunately it seems the bad writers were tasked with creating the finale.

As good as the Ray Donovan season finale was is how bad the Falling Skies series finale was.   It was clunky, simplistic, hokey, and disappointing.  At least it’s termination leaves room on the DVR for better programming.

So yesterday there was another mass shooting at a college, this time in Oregon.  Much like soldier casualties in the middle east, domestic gun violence in public places is happening so frequently at this point that the public is becoming somewhat numb to it.

Of course the shooting incites another round of fighting between the gun zealots and the gun control factions.  The gun crazies like to throw out one liner rebuttals like “car accidents kill people, are we going to outlaw cars?”  Of course the answer is no but if you applied the same requirements needed to drive on owning a gun, people would have a shit fit.

I would never advocate that Americans should not be allowed to own guns, despite me not ever owning one in my lifetime.  Hell I never even shot an actual gun.  However I do think that tougher permitting that includes background checks should be a no brainer.  Of course this will not eradicate random gun violence but anything that filters/slows down the gun ownership process to catch the obvious loonies can not be viewed as a bad thing.  One thing I do not advocate are people that feel it is necessary to own sub machine guns or other assault type weapons.  If you want to fire those type of weapons join the military or go to mercenary school.

I just wonder exactly what size/frequency of mass killings it will take to finally implement any meaningful change in gun laws.  I doubt I will see it in my lifetime.

This weekend has some outdoor work on the docket including repairing the numerous chicken dug holes, so they can dig some new ones elsewhere.  Cindy was nice enough to do most of the Halloween decorating in the house yesterday.  There might be a few final additions we can put out as well.

Last night Cindy’s daughter came over to join us for dinner which was nice.  Cindy’s happiness level, which is normally high anyways, goes off the charts when Katie is around.

I kept myself busy with some stuff.  I first replaced the battery back up in the alarm system .  The low battery was causing the alarm system to spontaneously go off at random times which was rather annoying.

I then headed out to the driveway to do a test inflation of the used arch I bought. I wanted to see how difficult/easy it was and also wanted to get some measurements that we will need to rebrand the arch later.  As the arch inflated I was shocked at just how big it was, wider and higher than the arch the running club uses.  Despite it’s huge size, the stand alone blower inflated the arch quickly. It also became quickly apparent I needed a second set of hands to get the arch upright and secure in the windy conditions so I quickly asked Cindy to come out and help me.

Cindy couldn’t believe how big the arch was either as I quickly drove stakes into the ground that were attached to the built in tethers to secure it.  Once it was up we took some measurements.  The outside edges of the arch are 23-24 feet wide and it stands close to 16 feet tall, an impressive structure.  With the arch inflated the flaking paint on the green area John told me about was very evident.  The Prius had green dandruff on it.

Cindy is excited to see how she does at arch restoration which will involve removing as much of the flaking paint as possible and then repainting the area, once we find the right type of paint to use.  Rebranding the arch with new logos will probably be accomplished with a combo of vinyl signs combined with velcro/bungees. Taking down and repacking the arch was not a big deal either as I have experience doing the same with the running club arch.

Cindy went to the hairdresser yesterday and had a pretty major chop done, shortening her hair to around shoulder length.  It’s a cute cut and makes hair maintenance for her a much quicker affair.