Busy, busy, Maggie, SB
It was a busy weekend, busier than I prefer. We went to the neighbors place Saturday night and then to a Super Bowl Party Sunday night which compressed the time frame for everything else.
We finally got substantial rain this weekend, the first major rain we have gotten in a couple of months. It was nice to have to not spend an hour to an hour and a half watering the landscape. My mom’s mailbox got knocked off last week and she asked if I could replace it. I went there armed with all the supplies I thought I needed but when I arrived I found that the piece of 2×6 that is used to mount the box was missing. I scoured my mom’s place looking for some suitable wood, I even went to a couple of her neighbors houses looking for wood. No luck, I had to go to Home Depot and have them cut a 1 foot section off an 8 foot board. The bad weather meant that most people decided to spend the dreary day shopping, driving, and eating making traffic miserable. Most parking lots looked like it was Christmas, they were that full.
After I got the mailbox installed we had a stop planned at the Wal-mart supercenter. I don’t know why I do this to myself. I knew it would be insane, I knew it would be filled with hordes of people, most of whom will annoy me, yet I parked the party van and ventured inside. This place is huge, yet with all of the space and wide aisles every corner and aisle still was busy, it is amazing and disgusting at the same time. Every time I leave that place I somehow feel dirty for contributing to the madness. I sort of felt bad, at one point we were in yet another crowded aisle and an older woman moved her cart to the side of the clogged aisle so Ali and I could squeeze by. As we walked by she said “YOUR WELCOME!” At first I had an urge to fire back some smart ass comment but I just kept quiet as I realized I deserved the comment, it was rude of me to not acknowledge her simple act. Somehow the dark light Wal-mart put on my mood made me not care enough to exhibit common courtesy. I complained to Ali how ridiculous the scene was, repeatedly. Soon she tired of my complaining and developed her own bad mood. We got what we came for and finally headed home, a couple hours later than we planned and late enough that we had to clean up and get ready to go to the neighbors shortly after getting back home, adding to the stress. I was less than energetic at the neighbors place, we played some game called Cranium Turbo. It was a game that required much more personal involvement than I was willing to invest at that point. I had a few beers that amplified the drowsiness from minimal sleep. I collapsed into bed around midnight.
We did our Sunday run although Ali felt pretty low energy. She really struggles with Sunday morning runs in comparison to evening runs. Part of it is her morning lethargy, part of it was she drank considerable amounts of wine Saturday night. On runs like this I normally keep any communication to a minimum, otherwise if I say something that requires her to say much she gets very annoyed and we have a quick, breathless, angry exchange of a few words. Even so, we put in a half hour of running time. For the prior week we did over 9 miles of running, this week if all goes to plan we will be well over 10. After yesterday my bad knee was feeling a bit tender, I hope I can keep going.
I spent a good block of time pressure washing the bird cages and then washing the car and party van. I spent a lot of time on the interior of the van. I got a portable dvd player hooked up to the tv, reinstalled the arm rest on the driver’s seat and really cleaned the interior to the point where it looked 100% better inside. Now I just need a long road trip.
One of the things I did over the weekend was pressure clean Maggie’s cage one last time. It has been surprisingly difficult post-Maggie. We realized how quiet the house is now. For 10 years we have grown accustomed to her repeated chirps and noises. The feeling of having her there one day and gone the next repeatedly struck me, making me feel the sting from the finality of it all. Tuki has learned all of Ali’s noises which he continues to do, casting even more sadness when I occasionally hear Maggie’s sounds even though she is gone. I am amazed I have felt this degree of sadness from the loss of a pet that I really didn’t care for. Since Maggie died we have been making an effort to be much more interactive with Tuki. We worry that he doesn’t understand why his buddy that had been there all of his life is not there anymore.
Originally we were going to host another Super Bowl party at our house but then decided to go to someone else’s house for the big game. Their house was beautiful and big. One downside was they had hard surfaces everywhere, tile floors, granite counters which made everything seem loud. Trying to watch the game and/or commercials was not exactly easy do with the constant background noise going on. Even though I was rooting for the Steelers, I wore my Seahawks jersey and let Ali wear my only Steelers jersey. I got the Seahawks jersey back in the 80’s, it is a number 55 Brian Bosworth jersey. I figured I wouldn’t have many opportunities where wearing it would make much sense so I threw it on. The game itself was not very memorable. It was weird the way it played out because in most facets, the Seahawks outplayed the Steelers. They moved the ball rather easily but kept sputtering when they got close to the endzone and had a few bad breaks go against them. The Steelers simply made 2 big plays and that was more or less it. During the second half, after drinking more beer I was so damn tired I just wanted to close my eyes. However I was happy to see Bill Cowher finally win one and for my team of choice when I was a child to return to the top.
Some more notes from the party. The national anthem was terrible, embarrassingly bad. Don’t make the song “your own”, sing it the way it is supposed to be sung for Christ’s sake, stupid. I thought the half time show sucked. If you get past how ugly of a man Mick Jagger is, you realize he doesn’t sing very well anymore either. I didn’t think it was good at all. Because of all of the distractions I had a hard time paying attention to all of the commercials, although I saw some good and bad. The Burger King human burger and the Diet Pepsi commercials were stupid. I liked the Career Builder ones, the Ameriquest ones and a few others. Ali and I made a betting board again which was a popular part of the party. After it was all said and done we finished $1.75 up. The main food item at the party was chili. Jessie warned me that it would come back to bite me later as it was rather spicy. Wow he wasn’t kidding, my stomach was churning most of the night and I feel like toxic waste today. I’ll skip the chili next time….