Save it then slap your face, can’t escape the madness, bear attack, otters everywhere

Friday night I said to Cindy repeatedly how weird it felt to be the night before a running club race and I have absolutely nothing to do.  No equipment to charge, sort or pack in the truck.  No registration lists to finalize and print. None of the normal stress and anxiety that would precede every single race was present and it felt odd but in a good way.

On Saturday morning I headed outside to do yard work right about the time the race was scheduled to kick off.  When I came back inside I had a voicemail and something around 10 missed calls from the club treasurer who was on site at the race.  Obviously they were having some sort of problem.

So even though I made no arrangement with the club to be the race timing support line after my tenure was complete, I called back.  The woman that has assumed timing responsibilities was dead in the water because she couldn’t get into the software that is used to pull times from the timing hardware.  Evidently in the two weeks since I turned all the stuff over after the last race she had not tried to go into this software.  Since she was logging into the race laptop under a different user profile the timing program did not have the authentication information that is required to launch it for the first time.  If the software would have been started at any point prior to the race this problem would have been able to be handled at that point instead of race day.

So luckily I had installed remote control on that race laptop before turning it over to the club.  I was able to remote into the system and figure out which password it was looking for as there were several that are associated with the clubs MyLaps account.  Once I got into the timing software I saw that the runners times were sitting on the boxes.  I quickly configured the race and exported the files needed for the scoring software.  I asked Laurie if she wanted to take it from there or wanted me to do the rest.  She chose the latter.

By this time the race was long over so I tried to work fast.  As soon as I tried to import the times I saw there were a couple of things in the race that were misconfigured, one of which would have prevented any times from  being posted.  I corrected these things and after a few clicks we had some results on screen that looked to be correct.  I asked her if she was good to go from there.  She said she was and thanked me for the help.  Nothing like timing a race from your house.

So later in the day I heard some very insulting talk was going around the race where certain board members were suggesting that perhaps I intentionally sabotaged things so there would be a problem at the race.  I could hardly believe that after almost 10 years of club involvement and my generous three month/ 8 event notice of my leaving that the very first race I am gone, people would question my integrity in such a manner.  Now of course I was furious but I only heard it from one person so I wanted to wait until I got further confirmation which I received last night.  Not only did the discussion go around the race site, it continued at party held Saturday afternoon that a number of club members attended.

Well that was all I could tolerate.  It’s very disappointing and offended me personally.  I did the only logical thing and notified a couple key people that I am permanently on the DO NOT CALL list for any future race support needs.  I am normally a pretty laid back person but if you spit in my face there are going to be consequences.

Cindy and I worked on repairing the coop surveillance system.  I discovered that I would not be able to reliably splice together the chewed apart cables because one of them is a coaxial set up.  So instead I ripped out the damaged wires and ran two new wires that I had laying around as spares.  I need a total of three wires so for now we just left the camera under the deck disconnected.  I also drove a piece of schedule 40 conduit pipe through the hole in the coop floor and ran the ethernet cable through it, hopefully protecting it from future assaults by sharp toothed rodents.

On Saturday afternoon I met up with Chris at a track meet he was timing.  I wanted to get some more familiarity with set up of the camera based timing system that is used for track meets.  I am going to be helping him out with a couple events so I need to learn the set up.  I was only there for a little more than an hour as Cindy and I were going out for an early Valentine’s Day dinner and movie.

We did not pick out the restaurant ahead of time and decided we would just wing it, a dangerous choice on a Saturday night in snowbird season.  The first few places we were thinking about looked stupidly full.  We wound up eating at a place called Rosedale Brick Oven.  It was full as well, requiring us to stand around for maybe 20 minutes until we were seated.  It was small and cozy.  Our waitress was very friendly and Cindy and I both enjoyed our meals.  I cleaned my plate and helped Cindy dust off most of hers.

We were going to see The Revenant but we decided to do so at the Paragon theater, a venue I never frequented since it was converted into an upscale theater a couple years ago.  We were quite surprised when we stepped in the theater and found it had power recliner seats, holy shit.   We both found the seating to be very cool.

So it seems like the last 6 or 7 times we have gone to the theater we have had issues with ignorant, rude individuals that for whatever reason have no consideration of other theater patrons.  We have been not going to to the movies nearly as much recently as doing so in snowbird season greatly increases your odds of being nearby such an idiot.  On Saturday night we went even further, seeing a movie that was out for several weeks already and not going until the late 9:20PM showing.  Surely we should have minimal problems. Nope.

We had two sources of irritation the entire movie.  To our left was a couple.  The woman apparently found the movie too boring to merit her attention.  Instead she spent a large part of the two and a half hours scrolling through her Facebook feed on her phone.  Behind us there was some hispanic woman in blue pants that was talking off and on at normal conversation volume most of the film as well as fcking around on her phone, including texting and taking a phone call early on.    Cindy handed out a generous dosage of head turning stink eye but it did nothing to abate the bad behavior.

I am always conflicted in these situations. Of course I want to strangle these individuals but I try to keep my cool because I know if it gets to the point where I get up and go over there it is impossible for me to be anything close to polite or nice in my request for them to shut the fck up.  I then weigh in my mind in the big picture if it is worth creating a scene or not.  Most of the times it is not but Saturday night was getting close.

Well the movie was pretty freaking crazy.  It was like a hybrid between Castaway and Rambo.  I do understand why Leonardo was acclaimed for his performance.  The movie was filled with some brutal and very raw violence, some of it involving animals which of course made me cringe more than once.  It was one of those movies you think about after you leave the theater which is why I give it an A rating.  After having yet another poor movie theater experience Cindy and I are still considering ways to go to the movies when next to no other human beings are present.

We did not get home until after midnight.  On Sunday I felt like we never got out of first gear.  I was sleepy and generally unmotivated.  Later in the afternoon we decided to go over to the swamp with Sadie for a walk.  The weather on Sunday was perfect with temps in the 70’s with bright skies and low humidity.  The swamp is no longer a well kept secret, the parking lot was FULL.  The swamp itself was also full, of water, the most I ever saw.

Very early on in the path one section of the trail was cut by a 10 foot section of running water from the high levels.  Somebody threw a relatively small and shaky branch across the area to assist in crossing but it wasn’t very effective.  I made it most of the way across the branch but still wound up with one wet foot.  Cindy decided to just bite the bullet and walk through the water in her sneakers.

We had a very cool treat, coming across a group of four full sized otters on the path.  Sadie was EXTREMELY interested in them.  As we got closer they split with two going into the water on either side.  Once we got up to them they just stared at us from the water, making odd noises.  They were very cool.  As soon as we walked further up the trail they came back out of the water and started dancing around on the path.

By the time we got back it was almost 5:30.  Cindy made dinner for Sadie and then I took her back to Ali’s while Cindy made dinner for us.  Last night we just vegged and worked on plowing through our backlogged dvr content.  It wasn’t the most spectacular Valentine’s Day I’m sure for Cindy.  She did like the Garmin Vivo HR I bought her, a real time fitness tracker that includes a wrist based heart rate monitor. You can analyze yourself to death with the damn thing.