Archives 2024

My weekend kept me moving. I played pickleball both Saturday and Sunday, to excess. On Saturday I played roughly two hours which wasn’t bad. On Sunday I almost doubled that, playing just under four hours. It was too much. It was hot and humid and I was running on water alone, not bringing anything to eat. To make matters worse my last two games were full court singles which spent every last bit of energy I had remaining. It was fun for sure but it took a lot out of me.

On Friday after work I went to Bruninas to have a few beers. During that visit I found out that I was sitting two chairs over from Tom Berenger, yes the actor from Platoon and a number of other films. Evidently he lives in the area now and is a regular. He has aged a lot and if Meaghan did not tell me who it was I would not have realized it but once I looked again I recognized him. I did not say anything to Tom while I was there but I did interact with his wife a bit. I will have to see if I can get Tom into a conversation at some point.

I did some more testing of Tesla full self driving over the weekend, specifically the auto park and summon features. Summon does what it sounds like. You can be up to 200 feet away from the car and have it drive itself to you. This feature when I first tested it years ago was unreliable and slow. I was happy to see that just like the rest of FSD, the summon feature has improved as well, to the point where it is borderline usable.

Sunday was Mother’s Day. It made me sad to think about my mom and her passing which will have happened 10 years ago this August, which on it’s own seems impossible to believe. The speed time passes at the point is insane.

I was feeling less than happy most of the day which is possibly why I felt motivated to just keep playing pickleball for hours. When I am playing there is no room or time for my mind to dwell on unhappy thoughts.

Sunday evening I met up with my buddy I play VB with and his wife. They also played pickleball with me last Wednesday. He was amazed that I saw Tom Berenger on Friday and was curious if he would be there again on Sunday. He was. I drank, talked and ate dinner with them for a couple hours. They are fun to hang with. Brian and I traded crazy ex stories. I keep trying to push that circle outward.

I did yet another wheel impulse buy this weekend, another way I try to distract myself.

Last night was a mixed bag on the volleyball courts. It was windy which always adds additional challenges to play. It also was hot and humid as hell. It felt like I had a couple pounds of sand stuck to my body at times. I went into the night wanting to use a similar hitting strategy as last week but the wind made it tough, resulting in more balls going into the net, although I did manage to have a few clean hits during play. However the biggest challenge was just surviving.

In total we played 8 games and my legs were smoked by the end of six. We also were the oldest team on the courts if you go by average age. We were playing three’s so there was a lot of movement required. Despite the wind, old age, humidity, my erratic hitting and being tired as hell at the end we still managed to win six of our eight games, good enough. We were a very scrappy team.

Play ran too late to go have dinner at the bar with Meaghan so I decided to pop over to Tacos and Tequilla. It’s a great second choice since it’s close and open until 11. The two margaritas and tacos helped soothe my aching joints and tired muscles.

This weekend is fuzzy in it’s trajectory. It could wind up being a “standard” two days that includes pickleball, riding, video production, chores, alcohol consumption or something totally different. I don’t know for sure but I am learning to value that freedom of choice as well as freedom from drama more and more as time marches on.

Last year I was enjoying the glory of having the kitchen and master bathroom cabinets and counters completed. Also as I read the last year entries I recall some behind the scenes that were going on that was the beginning of the long descent 2023 followed.

Last night I had to hustle after work to get Elsa walked and fed so I could hop in my car to go meet up with the new group of people I met at the salsa class. We were playing at one of the ladies home courts in her development. Despite leaving at 5:30 I was still about 5 minutes late.

The courts were extremely nice. I didn’t do an exact count but I bet there 14-16 of them. I jumped into playing and never really stopped. I played with whomever wanted to play with me. The skill level of the people playing varied but it was competitive and fun. We played until the lights turned out at 8:15. It seemed like my feelings were echoed by others as there was immediate interest in making the play sessions a regular thing. The bigger your circle is the more opportunities it can bump into, can’t hurt.

When I got home yesterday I had not one but two gifts sitting by my front door. One was a cool Palm Beach Electric Rides shirt from George, whom was over a couple weekend ago to ride. The second was a box stuffed to the top with various spicy snacks from one of my YouTube subscribers that watches my live streams.

A few streams back when Dawn and Marty were on there was a somewhat extended discussion about spicy Doritos which I bought for Dawns visit. Well this subscriber mentioned some of his favorite spicy snacks and decided to send me this huge sampler which was very cool. I will definitely be sharing these with others.

So despite playing two sweaty pickleball sessions yesterday (lunch too) my body emerged intact enough for me to sign up for this weeks volleyball session. I have been trying to use my MMJ as a sleep aid but I think it also helps with all over body pain as well, or at least thats what I tell myself.

I recently heard news about a couple I know parting ways. It came as a big surprise for several reasons but reinforced how you really don’t know what is going on under the surface of a relationship compared to what is shown to the rest of the world. I speak from experience.

Last year the kitchen and master bathroom cabinet/counter work completed. I then went into another month or so of work/waiting until the guest bath was done.

The other day I had a deal pop up on Woot for one of the original Amazon Echo devices. I actually had this same model in black and wound up giving it to Christine. I like it because it has a very good speaker in it and has a cool analog volume control where the top of it rotates. It was only $30. I bought it without being sure where exactly I was going to put it.

After some brief pondering I came up with a spot, the master bathroom. I like listening to music while getting ready for work or for bed. The Echo I have in the bedroom can’t be heard very well in the bathroom so this sounded like a good fit. An unintended added bonus was the silver finish matches the brushed nickel fixtures in the master bath. I immediately put the speaker to use last night, it was great having music accompany my shower. Since I have become single once again I listen to music more than I have at any time during my adult life, for whatever reason.

Last night I jumped into WoW for the first time in quite awhile with a half hearted hope to be able to get more of my characters leveled up. In the roughly 90 minutes I played I gained almost three levels on my Unholy Death Knight. I enjoy playing when I get around to do it but it is going to be very tough for me to find the motivation to get all 11 or 12 of my personal army up to max level.

Today is going to be a pickleball double header. I am playing at lunch with my normal crew and then this evening I will be playing with the people I met at the salsa class. We are playing at the courts at a development one of the women lives in. I am looking forward to it and hope it opens more doors into a larger circle of friends.

Last year I was finally approaching the end of my cabinet/counter project in the kitchen and master bathroom as well as knocking out a number of other home improvement purchases and tasks.

Last night my major task I wanted to accomplish was getting the ET Max and a spare S22 motor boxed up and ready to ship out. The ET Max is a very heavy wheel so getting it back in the box was a bit of a challenge. I eventually muscled it in there and used half a roll of packing tape to make sure it was sealed up tight. The motor, which is going to my buddy in NYC was already in the box so it was much simpler to manage. I decided to live stream the process, for no significant reason.

I neglected to mention in my weekend recap that I did bag up a bunch of clothes that were nice but carried negative feelings with them so I never wore them. They nearly filled a kitchen trash bag which was later dropped off at Goodwill where they can hopefully get some use. I have gone through repeated purge and cleanse sessions over the last few months. I think I am finally reaching the bottom of the barrel although there will always be visual reminders that can’t be avoided.

Today I had my 6 month dentist visit. For the second visit in a row they said I have been showing more swelling in my gums than normal. My dental hygiene routine has been the same for a long time so I’m not sure why this has become an issue. Like most other things, I will attribute it to the wonders of old age.

Friday night I went to spend happy hour at the bar with Meaghan for the second week in a row. The amount of people there for a Friday hour were light, a testament to snowbird season being over. Much like last week I just drank there and then went home to make a frozen pizza for dinner. I ate it while I worked on editing the video that I shot on Wednesday.

Both Saturday morning and Sunday I played pickleball with my friend Sue, who recently moved out of Talis Park where I had been playing on weekends for most of prior year. We played at East Naples courts which are only a few minutes away. It makes weekend wake ups more casual as before I had to set a 6:30 alarm to be at Talis by 8. We now played at 9am instead so it is far easier for me. We had a lot of fun playing both days. It’s a good opportunity to play with a more diverse set of people.

Saturday I tended to a number of small tasks around the house. I went into the raised bed garden and did a lot of ripping out. Many of the things in there had become unruly and/or bolted. All that I left was several pepper plants which are doing well. I will have to reevaluate what I want to put in there next.

I decided to skip Carrabbas Saturday night and went to Tacos and Tequila instead, it’s only a few miles from my house and I like their food. I have never gone there solo, I went there quite often with Christine in the past. I think it will regain a regular spot in my rotation now that I am single. It’s a younger crowd, a bigger bar and they have good margaritas. I got to watch the Kentucky Derby while I was there, bonus. What a crazy close finish that was.

When I got home I fired up the YouTube app on my phone and did another unscheduled, spontaneous live stream that lasted over two and a half hours. The stream meandered back and forth between PEV and non-PEV talk and had over 1000 views while it was running.

After playing pickleball Sunday morning I had sort of a lazy afternoon where I watched some more of the OJ documentary on Netflix. It’s a five part series and each episode is around 90 minutes long. I just started the last episode. Although everyone knows about the OJ murders the series does a great job of getting into the minutia surrounding it.

The Cinco de Mayo / Salsa dancing class I was invited to was scheduled for 6. I made arrangements to meet up with a guy I play volleyball with and his wife around 5 so we could grab some food/drink prior. I knew I needed to pre-lubricate with some alcohol to get through this. After I was couple margaritas deep there was an incident that I don’t want to go into detail about other than to say the way the universe works sometimes is crazy. For my entire life I have subscribed to the “what goes around, comes around” concept which is just another way to describe karma. It appears to be once again working it’s magic. It has to be an awful thing to go around life having the truth be your mortal enemy.

So once that mini-drama passed the salsa class began. I have a rhythm, I can keep a beat all day long but when it comes to dancing it looks like I have hips made out of granite. The class started with showing a few basic steps of the salsa. The steps are not all that hard but when I was asked to put them together it was a bit of a shit show. Once the basics were explained the rotation started. Basically the men would stay put and all of the women would rotate around and dance with each man, going through the progression.

I found myself doing way too much thinking about the steps to really relax but luckily all of the women there were happy to help guide me and were patient. The woman that invited me is a high level dancer and one of the event organizers so I didn’t get to talk to her much but it was ok. I did get to talk to various women that were at our table and it turns out several of them are really into pickleball, so much so that we made arrangements for a group of us to get together to play this week.

I wound up staying there until after 9:30 before I called it quits. Even with the unanticipated drama and my clumsy dancing attempt I was glad I put forth the effort to go. I need to keep forcing myself into these unfamiliar situations to grow, learn, and expand my circle of friends.

Earlier in the week I was debating skipping volleyball this week to let my lower body heal up a bit. Yesterday I did a self injury inventory and determined I should be good enough to go. It was very warm and humid last night. The first time I hit the sand I turned into an instant corn dog. Last week I mentioned how I was unhappy with my hitting where I was hitting either into the net or out of bounds more often than not. This week I took a different approach.

When I am missing hits normally it’s because I am trying to hit hard, trying to fool myself into thinking I can still jump like I could 25 years ago. When I try to do this nowadays I need to try to get an aggressive approach just to get out of the sand even a little bit. When I team that with an aggressive swing there is just a very small window where it times up correctly. Last night I dialed back the aggression. Instead I would take a more casual approach and just try to hit the ball with a high hand and good wrist snap. I was much more consistent that way. No it doesn’t deliver the same dopamine as hitting a ball really hard but it’s better than serving up a ton of unforced errors.

I didn’t hit a ball out or into the net the entire night. In addition I did not miss a serve, I passed well and played solid defense. I was frustrating one of the guys on the other team. For whatever reason I was able to read his hits consistently and would dig them cleanly repeatedly. I could see the frustration on his face and I enjoyed it, if I am being honest. Our team won all five games. I think I will stick with this change as it also causes less trauma to my lower body and ego.

After play last night I went to Bruninas and had dinner at the bar with Meghan. One of the other guys at the bar used to play a lot of volleyball so it was nice chatting it up with him and his much younger girlfriend/wife who apparently used to be a Hooters Girl.

This weekend I have a few things I would like to do. I will be playing pickleball Sunday morning. I was invited Sunday evening to a Cinco de Mayo party by one of the women I play volleyball with. The catch is she wants me to do the salsa class she is teaching at the beginning of this party. I told her that would require considerable drinking up front which she said was fine. We will see if I feel like embarrassing myself or not.

I neglected to mention that one of the places I stopped at over the weekend was Johnston and Murphy at the Miromar Outlets. The reason I stopped was to get a pair of brown shoes similar to the pair of black ones I have. There was another reason for the purchase that I will cover down below.

Anyway, while I was there I saw they had a blue pair of the same shoes on sale. At the time I thought getting one pair of shoes was enough. Well after work last night I went back, thinking I should have grabbed them then but I can still grab them now. These shoes fit like sneakers, have a cool tread on the bottom and are waterproof.

Imagine my dismay when I walked in and saw the sale signs for these shoes had been removed. The guy said that sale ended over the weekend, damn it. I had already driven 30 minutes to get there so I bought the shoes anyway at their normal price. I even bought a second white pair that was on clearance. I have been paying more attention to how I dress and a decent pair of shoes are a keystone in that effort.

When I got home last night I ate dinner and then got a call from Gladys. We caught up on the latest and greatest. Afterwards I shot the wrap up video for the ET Max demo but did not have the time or energy to do the editing.

Last week I posted a short video to Instagram demonstrating how much the Tesla actually sees with FSD enabled. It’s like a 10 second clip that just shows the real time view at a busy intersection. For some reason this has been picking up steam and at this point has been viewed by thousands of people. You just never know when something will get legs on social media platforms.

So like I mentioned above I bought the shoes this weekend. I wanted some brown shoes to facilitate my throwing out the pair of brown shoes my ex bought me. I am going to expand on that effort.

Clothing she purchased for me was the one thing that I had not purged myself of since the final split late last year. However although some of the stuff is nice, I found myself not wanting to wear it anymore because of the stigma attached to it. So if I am not going to wear it, why keep it? It’s all going in a donation bag for Goodwill that I will drop off this weekend. Any sentimental value these objects once carried has been nuked into oblivion.

Last year I had sticker shock as I received my first water and sewer bill. The number has moderated down over time but is still large due to my sprinkler system using city water. I have learned to live with it, like many things.

Last night my primary goal was to get some bulk shopping done. I piled Elsa into the Tacoma to head to Costco and Trader Joe’s, in reverse order. Since I have become single Trader Joe’s has been my go to spot to load up on frozen meals that are ideal for one and can be prepared conventionally or in the microwave in most cases. They also are healthier than conventional big brand frozen meals you see in regular grocery stores. I walked out of there with two big paper bags stuffed with enough meals to last me a couple months probably.

I then hit Costco. I had been watching the clock to make sure I timed it well, getting there about 45 minutes before closing which greatly relieves the congestion that is normally found in the store pretty much any other time of the day. I grabbed my normal bulk items and was out of there in less than 30 minutes. By the time I got home and unpacked I was pushing 9pm. I spent the rest of my evening chilling.

Yesterday I got a reminder of why I am so lucky to be where I am right now. Despite all of the bullshit that has had to be climbed over and dealt with to reach this state of mind I am happy to not have to deal anymore with situations that do nothing but drain my energy and sabotage my trust. F that.

I have found myself very turned off by women that harvest male approval and adulation by the ton as well as the men that provide it, also known as simps. It’s a dynamic that leads to absolutely nothing substantial or real.

Last year I was doing a lot of talking about Christine and I in the blog. I thought I had turned the corner finally but instead wound up running into the weeds.

After nearly a month with no sales all of a sudden a couple sales came through on my 3D store that once again cleared out my inventory. Now it’s not very hard to do that since I typically carry less than 5 stands on hand nowadays but regardless, it’s time to get back to printing. I packed and shipped the orders last night as I always try to expedite the process whenever possible.

My newest paddle purchase arrived the other day, the Joola Perseus 3. This paddle has borderline illegal performance and joins an already ridiculously large collection of paddles in my bag. Do I need to stop buying paddles? Yes. Will I? Ummmmm….

When Enrique was over he made a comment about the neighborhood I live in saying it was so nice it reminded him of a commercial. I thanked him for the compliment but as I was walking Elsa last night after work I thought about it as I walked the street. It really is that nice. All of the houses are different yet well maintained. The diverse lots are all landscaped uniquely unlike the cookie cutter and compressed layout many modern developments utilize for maximum density. The area is safe and quiet.

I remember growing up seeing commercials on TV for household products and they normally took place in these angelic looking homes and neighborhoods. That is basically where I am now. The only major component of those pie in the sky TV commercial scenarios I am missing is the happy, beautiful and loving housewife that just loved the shit out of doing laundry with Tide.

Last night I hit the wall, presumably from a very busy weekend that included less than ideal amounts of sleep. I was watching the 5 part OJ documentary on Netflix and dozed off on the sofa for nearly an hour and a half. By the time I woke up it was 9:45. I hit the shower and dove into bed. I slept pretty well considering I did so without Unisom. I have been experimenting with trying to sleep without an assist from a sleep aid a few times in the last couple weeks. It seems to be more possible than it was before.

For a good portion of last year I had such turmoil in my relationships that if I woke up in the middle of the night to hit the bathroom or for any other reason my brain would not be able to quiet back down and instead would dwell mostly on that turmoil. Now that I have flushed that situation out of my life permanently it seems that I am mostly able to sleep normally without a Unisom kicker.

My lower body has been feeling beat up from the weekend as well. We rode probably 50-60 miles over those two days including a physically demanding full swamp loop. If I don’t feel significantly better I may skip volleyball this week to allow my body to heal up a little before I jump back into my what has become normal 7 day a week gym/sport schedule.