No, I’m not dead.
Hell I haven’t blogged in forever. We had a branch open and most of my time the last three or four working days have been dedicated to that. How am I supposed to remember back that long? Well here is what I can recall.
Last Thursday after work I went over to Sugden Park to run solo. I didn’t have our fancy GPS watch that I have become so accustomed to. It is awesome to know exactly how fast you are running and exactly how far you have run. So I roughed it and used the stopwatch function on my new manly G-shock watch and the distance markers that are along the running trail. The official measured trail is supposedly 1.25 miles so what I did was walk to the end the trail and started there. I ran to the beginning, turned around and ran back to the end so it gave me approximately a two and a half mile run.
Running by myself is tough, much tougher than when I run with Ali. The reason is without Ali there as my built in speed governor, I am at the mercy of my mind which tells me to push it, it’s even worse if I run a race solo. I covered the distance at about an 8:20 somethin pace, pretty fast for me and much faster than the 10 minute miles I log with Ali. Originally in my head I set a goal of 20 minutes to cover the run, instead I did it in a bit under 21:30. So in my mind, I missed my goal. Running that pace had some repercussions. For the next two or three days I had beyond what I would call normal discomfort in my left (good) knee. It was bad enough that I scrubbed plans to run a 5k race on Saturday. My knees feel better now but I have to be careful, the last thing I need is a relapse. Oh yea, I am playing in a volleyball tournament this Saturday. 🙂
The weekend had a decent amount of chores to be done. On Saturday we planted a couple plants we got from Ali’s mom in pots and the three remaining live christmas trees got relocated. Two of them went to two of the few remaining, open, somewhat high spots on our property and the other one got planted in a large pot and put on our lanai. The potted one I have hopes of sometime being our Xmas tree one year.
I did some preliminary work for my sprinkler project, namely figuring out the flow rate on my well pump which clocked in at roughly 18 gallons per minute. Depending on the type of sprinkler heads I use I can probably put 6 or 7 on each “circuit” Right now in my head I am figuring I need no more than 4 circuits. I only want to water the immediate mound the house is on and the associated landscaping including the orchard and garden areas. I need to do much more planning before I do any purchasing though.
Saturday night was the big Eagles game. It was disappointing that they lost. However I can’t really say I felt they should have won. Their defense was dominated by the Saints who ran the ball at will. Even with that being the case, the Birds had a shot at the end thanks to a Reggie Bush fumble. Then after an awesome drive extending 4th & 10 conversion by the Eagles, it was erased by a false start by some scrub offensive lineman. Instead of going for it on 4th & 15, fat Andy decided to punt the ball away and rely on the same defense that had been pushed around all game. Wouldn’t you know it, they were pushed around once again and were unable to stop the Saints, game over. Of course I was angry at the end, victory was attainable even with as poorly as the D played. However I got over it fast, reminding myself as I said before, this all has been a bonus. The playoffs were a pipe dream 6 weeks ago.
They have some real needs to fill next year. On offense they need to resign Stallworth, he is a bonafide number one receiver and if he can stay healthy, a great addition to the team. McNabb has to stay healthy but if he doesn’t keeping Garcia around would be a great safety net. On D the needs are large. Andy keeps drafting defensive lineman that to be honest, suck. Well wait, Trent Cole is good but for the most part, we have gotten next to nothing out of the draft with d-lineman. They need big strong lineman that dont get blown off the line, allowing teams to run over them at will. They also need to address linebacker. They just don’t make many plays, Trotter included. And finally I don’t know if Consadine is any better than Michael Lewis, he just sucks in different areas. We need a better safety back there and while you are at, some higher quality backups in the secondary than Assholio Hanson and Roderick Go Back to the Hood. With the Birds out of the playoffs I am pulling for either Indy or Chicago to win it all.
On Sunday we decided to tackle our cleanup job for January since the rest of the month was going to be hella-busy, cleaning out the shed. The shed had never been completely cleaned out since we got it four years ago or so. It was a mess. I brought over our big trash bin AND the neighbors who don’t live here trash bin as well as our recycle bin and pretty much filled em all. Plus I drug a bunch of unwanted shit out to the street for the vultures to snap up. I’d say the entire process took about 3 hours. We gutted it, swept it out and then carefully put stuff back in, organizing along the way. It looks way better.
Late Sunday afternoon we went towards town. First we made a pitstop at the office so we could print out a bunch of race forms for the race Ali is organizing. While they printed we went to Olive Garden for dinner. We had a gift card AND a three dollars off coupon, yahoo. When we were at the bar waiting, I looked down at a blond at the far end. She struck me as familiar but I couldn’t immediately place it. Then I realized it was the girl whom we bowled with , along with her fiance/husband who wasn’t there (don’t remember if they were married).
We bowled on a team with them during our first year of living in Florida. We did the bowling thing because we thought it would be a good way to meet people. We actually got along pretty well with him/her. They even invited us out to their family’s place for a Christmas visit. After the league was done we invited them out to our place to watch some playoff football. They wound up showing up over two hours late and never called to say what was up. When they did arrive they said nothing about the tardiness and there was a weird vibe in the air like they had been fighting or something. Anyway pretty much the entire time they were there, there was an awkward, uncomfortable feeling going on. They left and we never talked to them again.
Well anyway, she glanced at me but I don’t think she put it together, it’s been a long time. Well I didn’t say anything to Ali then because I know her first move would be to make an oh so obvious turn and stare. So once we sat down I told her about it. She did her obvious turn and stare as the woman was at a table maybe 30 feet away. I rolled around in my head if it would be a good idea to say “Hi”. Eh I didn’t. The idea of crafting small talk just wasn’t what I was looking to do. She was eating with a table full of women, wonder if her relationship status is still the same? Guess I will never know.
After a good dinner we headed back to the office to pick up what printed and then went home. We got home early enough to sit down and watch the second Pirates of the Carribean movie. It was a good flick. I dunno if it was worthy of the huge box office numbers it drew but it was good. It had a lot of “hey how did they do that” special effects and Johnny Depp is great in the role. One thing Ali and I both noticed was there were a lot of the dialogue that we just couldn’t make out. I’m not sure if it was the heavy accents many characters spoke with, poor dvd rip audio quality or a combo of the two. There were many moments where we turned to each other and said “What did they say??” It gets a solid B, I will definitely watch the third one. It was no Rocky Balboa though. 🙂
Monday Ali was gone for a good chunk of the day leaving me at home to play Warcraft and do chores. Early in the weekend I said something about us using this extra day off for me to do something like go to the beach or possibly walk Corkscrew sanctuary, it never materialized. So anyway, I spent copious amounts of time leveling my paladin as well as spot choring during the breaks. It was the sort of day that makes me feel worthless.
The big upgrade for WoW was released last night at midnight. I read stories of people by the hundreds lined up to get the game, unreal. That is one thermometer I use to gauge what is left of my sanity. The thought of waiting in line at midnight with a ton of other WoW geeks just to have the expansion pack the minute it was available never crossed my mind. My copy will arrive in the mail on Saturday, much more convenient. 🙂
Back to the grind, a busy few weeks are on the docket.