Hurry up and wait

It was a long weekend. It was windy and/or raining Friday morning through last night. However we were lucky again in our area. I had some more trees get bent and we lost internet connectivity for a couple days but we didn’t lose power which was my primary concern. The winds were bad but not quite as strong as what we saw for Charley. However the strong winds went on for a good 24 hours as opposed to the 4 or 5 hours of bad stuff we got from Charley.

I had 4 days off and felt like I wasted most of it. I did some stuff around the house but was really unmotivated to do all that much. I did the normal cleaning routine, hung some shelves in the hobby bedroom and we also cleaned up that same bedroom as it had become a bit of a dumping ground. However the vast majority of the 4 days were spent doing a lot of indoor hanging out. I played a ton of tennis on the xbox, developing a new new super player to do battle with online. We were loaned the Sopranos first season on DVD and we got through the first 8 episodes. (damn that is a great show) Oh and we spent a lot of time watching reporters get blown around on the weather channel. Saturday and Sunday were the worst with us being cooped up exclusively. On Monday we got to go outside to do the outdoor work that was unable to be done the other 3 days.

I was really in a bad mood on Monday. I am thinking to myself as I am sloshing through the muddy ground , weed whacking, observing how the areas that I spent sweaty hours weeding last week had already filled in with a fresh set of “weedlings”, noticing how the palm trees are overgrown with vines and those mini ferns, and running through the check list in my head of shit that needed to be addressed sooner or later that I would never get to, how much a little house in a development with a tiny little yard sounded so attractive. (how is that for a run on sentence?)

Maybe as summer passes, so will these ill feelings I have about our house. Part of the difference this year is I have been playing more volleyball than I ever have before since moving to Florida which cuts those weekends in half. So I have been not devoting as much time to keeping up with things as in prior years, resulting in the property being more out of control than I like. Volleyball for me will be winding up in a couple weeks so maybe that will help settle me down as well.

After all the yardwork, Ali and I left the dog at home and went to eat lunch and pick up some items we needed. I commented to Ali while we were driving that as much as I love the dog, it was very enjoyable to have just her and I going out to do things. Suprisingly, she said she agreed with me, although in the back of my mind I had the feeling that she would still have preferred to have the mutt along. Our lunch and errands took 3 hours or so and we came back to find that the dog survived the separation just fine. We really need to do more of it. Ali spoils the dog so bad. It makes Nicki too dependent on us.

So I have a 3 day work week because I am off Friday to play in South Beach in a 2 day vball tournament. That is unless Mr Ivan decides to visit us. I can only hope we deserve a break this time.

Random things about the weekend:

I carried on like I won Wimbledon last night when while playing online, I beat a player that was ranked 3,000-something (I was ranked in the 30,000 range) My new super-player seems to be the perfect style for me. My celebration was just silly.

While watching the weather channel, they had a crawler going across the bottom with all the current bulletins. One of the said that water in Lake Okochobee would continue to “slosh around” for the next few hours. I kid you not.

I looked for bread for 4 days, there was none to be found. Lemming panic mentality. I exclude myself from those lemmings because I was just looking for a loaf as part of my normal weekly shopping trip. 🙂 No plywood and very little gas as well.

Once it becomes available, I will be buying 10 sheets of plywood and the necessary fasteners so I can baten down the hatches if need be. I’ve been saying I was going to do that for a long time. The past few weeks have given me the kick in the ass I needed.

Why do the tv stations find it necessary to put their reporters out in the middle of the storms to give their reports? Do they think we won’t believe them if they aren’t getting blown off their feet? I mean some of those reports were just ridiculous. I guess it brings good ratings.

I got back the Sentra for the 5th TIME from this water leak issue. If it leaks again I will be going ape shit.

The battery in the Vette is dead.

I had a bunch of stuff up for sale on ebay. I didn’t watch them close enough and some junk sold for the bare minimum, a buck. Normally I will have someone throw in a minimal bid for me to prevent this from happening. As a result, after the fees from ebay, paypal and shipping costs, some of these items are COSTING me money to sell them. Woops.