Done, tired, I need a new heritage, ADT afk

So as I indicated last week, the painting of the great room was scheduled to continue this weekend.  I wasn’t quite sure if we would get it all done or not.  At a minimum I wanted to get the left and back wall completed.  The small wall and area where the TV is nestled into was going to require some extra work that made me think that it might not get done.  I also envisioned the project spanning parts of both days of the weekend.  I’m happy to say I was wrong.

 We got started mid-morning Saturday.  Except for a short break for lunch we worked diligently for 5 or 6 hours.  By this time we have done enough painting that we are more efficient at it.  Not only did we get everything done, we got it all done Saturday which I was amazed by.

The most difficult part of the project was doing the area where the tv is.  The first challenge was getting the tv and it’s stand pulled out without having to disconnect everything.  Using the furniture sliders I was able to slide the entire unit out and then just disconnected the various plugs and cords from the wall.  Taping and painting the upper pocket above the tv was quite challenging as well.  If it wasn’t for my long arms and legs I am not sure how we would have managed it.

Ali and I were very pleased with ourselves.  Not only was the most difficult room in the house painted but we did a pretty damn nice job of making it look professional in the process.  We celebrated by having tacos and then geeking out on the computers until way too late, me playing WoW and Ali buried in a marathon Bejeweled session.  By the time we went to sleep it was close to midnight.

Even with the late bedtime I found myself up and about a little after 6am Sunday morning.  Ali’s preferred spinning instructor was not going to be there this week so we decided we would do something we hadn’t done in a long, long time, go for a run at the track.  I have been doing semi-regular running for a few months.  Ali is much less regular with running.  For that reason we decided we would just run at our own pace.  When we ran together in the past I would act as the pacer for Ali, pushing her to keep her pace up.  At this point she doesn’t want that so it’s better that we just run our own race.

All of my semi-regular running of the past few months has been the treadmill variety.  Even though I do my treadmill training at a 1% incline to compensate for the moving belt, it still is not the same as running outside on a track in the Florida elements.  Even though we got our on the track early, before 9am it already felt very warm and humid.  After just doing our two warm up walking laps I could feel the sweat building up on my back.

So we started running, I had the GPS watch on to track my stats.  I wasn’t out to set any world records.  I ran at a pace that was about 30 seconds per mile slower than my last treadmill run.  Running outside more than compensated for the slower pace, I was working plenty hard.  Many times in the past when we would do track running we would be hitting a strong head wind for one portion of the track, there was next to no wind on Sunday at least. In total I ran just over a 5K.  I was drenched with sweat as I hit the stop button on the watch.  I’m not quite sure how far Ali ran but I would estimate it was approximately half of that.

It felt good to get out there and do some “real” running.  I wasn’t sure how my knees would react to running on a hard track versus a somewhat softer treadmill, knock on wood, they feel fine as of now.  After a quick dip in the pool we were outside mowing the grass in the drenching humidity.  After grass maintenance it was lunch time.  After lunch I was so tired from the combination of the late night followed by running a few hours prior.  A nap would have certainly been welcomed but I fought the urge and instead got the rest of my home chores done before we had to pick up mom from the airport.

Mom had been up in PA for a few days visiting my brother and niece.  We decided to surprise her by piling us and the dogs into the party van to pick her up.  The ride up was barely bearable due to the marginal AC, my back was wet by the time we got there.   Mom was very happy to see us.  We advised her to sit up front where it was cooler but she insisted on sitting in the back.  Luckily by that time the AC had caught up enough that it was a few degrees cooler. 

On the ride back to her place we heard all about her trip. My brother threw a surprise party for mom where he invited over a bunch of her friends and former co-workers that she had not seen in at least 5 years.  Mom really enjoyed the party. Kudos to Todd for doing that.

We had a little surprise of our own for mom.  While she was gone I did some digging around in her place.  My mission was to find the account information for a loan she had taken out for some new appliances.  I had wanted to pay that off for her since she lost her job but I know mom would resist my doing so.  I figured this would be the easiest way.  It took some snooping but I found a paper that had her account number on it.  Using that number and some resourceful online digging I was able to create an account for mom for GE financing online and pay it off.  Mom was surprised and grateful that we did that but she also felt bad that we felt the need to do it.  On the positive side we got a call from mom later in the evening saying a former co-worker of hers that works at a different rug place called mom and said they were hiring.  It could be just what mom was looking for.  Hopefully it works out.

On Sunday evening I decided to watch one of the movies I had sitting on the Tivo, Pulp Fiction.  I was pretty sure I saw the movie years ago but I figured it was good enough to watch again.  Well as the film progressed I realized that I mustn’t have ever seen the film in it’s entirety, in fact I think I may have confused it with Get Shorty, which I definitely saw.  I’m sure I missed a bit of the bite from the film since this was the sanitized AMC channel version but I still found it quite entertaining.  Tarantino’s films all seem to be about personalities and Pulp Fiction is filled with them.  I enjoyed it a lot, I wish I knew what was in the briefcase though. A

I forgot to mention that when we went on the airboat ride last weekend the airboat captain said something I found pretty flabbergasting.  He was telling a story about how he is friends with several native americans in the Everglades area.  For some reason he talked about how his friends were basically rich because they were indians.  He said that one of his indian friends gets $8000 a month from the government.  The more kids they have, the more money they make.  This seemed incredulous to me and I wish I would have asked the boat captain for details about it after the ride was over but I forgot.  Evidently it has something to do with reparations for what the white man did 200 years ago. Do a Google search on the subject, you will be surprised at what you find.  Being an american indian nowadays, at least in some tribes seems to be a way to get  rich by simply living off the massive government teet, bizarre.

 If you want to see the pictures of the last leg of the painting project go here.  The last 20 or so are what you want.

I forgot to mention how ADT wasted most of Ali’s Friday. They were scheduled to come out between 8-12.  They even called to confirm the time earlier in the week.  Well I got a call from Ali after 1pm saying that nobody had shown up yet and nobody had called, lovely.  I told her I would call and raise hell.  I talked to someone in their office and asked what the hell was going on?  They apologized and said they would get a hold of the installer and have him call me.  After another half hour passed with no call I called back to the office even more annoyed. 

I told the woman that this was ridiculous.  There was no excuse to not at least receive a call from the installer telling us he would be late, it’s only common courtesy.  I continued ranting to the woman about how ADT has now basically wasted the day, keeping Ali chained to the house waiting for the mystery installer to arrive.  Again they apologized and said something about trying to get someone else there.  By this time it was close to 3pm, I told them we didn’t want to wait around longer, just reschedule the call.  So we rescheduled for a day next week when Ali is going to be home for something else already.  ADT assured me we would be the first call on the list for the day.  If there is a repeat scenario they will be done as far as I’m concerned.

I did some testing of my Sirius unit yesterday.  I hooked it up to the antennae I have in the party van.  You can imagine my surprise when I instantly got signal.  So somehow during my relocation of the antenna on the truck from the roof to the windshield I must have somehow damaged it.  The good news is I can simply move the antenna from the van to the truck, saving me from spending money unnecessarily on a new head unit.  I’m glad I figured out the source of the problem now instead of later.