Short weekend, short hair, short fuse

Friday night I had to do some after hours work out at our Immokalee branch.  After hours work with my job is pretty few and far between thank goodness.  The work involved rewiring the office to relocate some network equipment.  We had our wiring contractors there to do the work, I was just there to make sure everything worked when we were done.

The two guys doing the work I knew from way back when I started.  I hadn’t seen either of them for a couple years.  While we were waiting for the office to officially close we had time to shoot the shit a bit.  In the course of doing so I found out a couple things I didn’t expect.

One of the guys told me that he lost a child awhile ago. Shocked, I asked what happened.  My shock magnified several times over when he said their daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.  She was in the day care. Wow. I really didn’t know what to say.  He told me some of the details of the event, how originally he thought the building his wife was in  across the street was bombed.  It sounded truly horrific.

Later I was talking to the other guy who is a Haitian.  He mentioned how much of his family is still in Haiti.  Of course I asked if they were ok after the earthquake.  Luckily he said they all made it through the catastrophe ok.  He said however that his sister is STILL living in a tent some 8-9 months after the quake.

I told him that is amazing considering the massive amount of relief dollars that was collected for Haiti.  He said that they are still deciding what to do with most of it.  He said if the money is just given to the corrupt Haitian government they will steal most of it.

Needless to say I didn’t expect my Friday night to include being smacked in the face with the reality of two huge tragedies. It was kind of surreal. It made getting all bent out of shape over trivial stuff seem more trivial.

Since Ali was out of town I had to do all of the timing duties for the Saturday race which ironically was in Immokalee as well, myself.  Ali and I figured it wasn’t a big deal since the race was expected to have a small turn out.

For the most part it wasn’t too bad although the layout of the race logistically was a problem.  The finish line was on one side of the main road and the registration area was across the road in the casino parking lot.  I found myself having to go back and forth quite a bit which was a problem.

The race only had 135 entries but the race organizer was very pleased with that number.  Despite the small amount of runners, the race had a huge outpouring of support.  They had TONS of volunteers and the finish line energy was just great with the spectators cheering on the people finishing in 40 minutes as much as the sub 20 crowd.

Timing went ok with the normal amount of screw ups at the end related to human error. I had to listen to some women yell and complain at the end.  Evidently she showed up late.  There was some sort of communication breakdown where the registration people thought the woman wanted to sign up when in reality she had pre-registered and was just going to walk.

Anyway, this woman felt that the race staff was very rude to her and she proclaimed that she would never participate in one of our events again and she would tell all of her friends the same thing.  I tried to be polite and address her problems but she didn’t want to be consoled, she just wanted to be angry.  They crossed the finish line 75 minutes after the race started, a blistering 24-25 minute per mile pace, sheesh.  I was cleaned up and back on the road by 9:15.

Once I got back home I embarked on a blistering pace of housework both indoor and outdoor variety.  I worked non-stop until 4pm, trying to clear my Sunday slate for triathlon training and football.

When I finished I had a “fun” thing I wanted to get done, the September Bar-barian forum challenge.  I had planned to do it when Randall was over but we never found the time.  This month’s challenege is to do 100 reps of various exercises.  The goal is to mix up a variety of different exercises to get to that number.  Of course to make it challenging you should use good form and try to go from exercise to exercise with minimal rest.

As I was doing chores during the day I was trying to decide what exercises to do.  Because of my right elbow problem a lot of exercises are off the table right now. I decided to break my 100 reps into 25 push ups, 25 box jumps, 30 recline leg raises, 10 ring dips and 10 atomic push ups.

Of course the camera was rolling for the effort and it captured some funny moments, mostly of me failing. Failing at speaking, failing mid-set, lots of fail in there to make you laugh.  Take a look if you have 10 minutes or so.  Even with the failing it was a pretty tiring 100 reps, I was spent at the end.

Saturday night I shot my second video of the day, this time me shaving my head once again.  This time I upped the stakes further, going with the shortest attachment available, an 1/8th inch.  I figured it would work out well for the triathlon this upcoming weekend, low drag.  I am practically bald.

I went to bed Saturday night after 11, I was totally exhausted.

Sunday my plan was to do another brick at and around the water park.  Saturday I was debating throughout the day if I wanted to include running in the brick.  My hamstrings and knees were both feeling a bit sore.  That soreness was still present Sunday morning so running was dropped from the activity list.

I loaded up the bike and headed down to the park.  The ride was tough.  Heading north I hit a steady head wind that made maintaining 17 mph a challenge at times.  Heading south was just the opposite, I averaged a solid 20+ the entire leg.  Overall my gps said I averaged 18 mph, the mapmyride app had me down in the 16’s but I think that is deducting speed when I am stopped at a traffic light.

After the ride I headed in to swim.  Both Michelle and Christie, Ali’s training buddies were in there getting ready to swim laps.  I hopped in the pool and told them I would time a 400.  We all started together.

Michelle is a good swimmer, good enough that she was in front of me for almost the entire 400.  I only caught up and passed her during the last couple laps.  “Racing” against her knocked my swim time down to 7:30, a number I would have never thought I could hit two months ago.  Michelle finished only 5 or 6 seconds after me.

After a brief rest I did another 400 at a more leisurely 9 minute rate.  That was enough of a brick for me.  After drying off I hung out with Michelle and her family for a little bit before I grabbed myself a quick bite to eat.  After eating I headed right out to get home before the Eagles game.

I forgot to mention a funny Nicki moment.  When I left to go train I realized I forgot my GPS so I turned around and went home to get it.  I pulled up by the garage door, hopped out of the truck, leaving my door open and ran inside, leaving the door that leads to the garage cracked as well.

As I was getting ready to go back out I noticed that Nicki wasn’t anywhere to be seen.  I stepped out in the garage and see her in the truck, behind the steering wheel with a big, “let’s go on a ride!” dog smile.  It took me quite awhile to coax Nicki out of the truck.  I had to resort to bribing her with a piece of dried chicken breast.  She just hates being left behind.

I really didn’t know what to expect out of the Eagles this week against Detroit.  The Lions have been doormats of the league for several years now but the game was in Detroit, Mike Vick was starting and the Eagles showed week one that once again they are a very hot and cold team.

Things started out poorly with the Eagles allowing the Detroit rookie running back to gash them time and time again for huge yardage.  Running was all the Lions could do, their back up QB looked extremely average otherwise.

After allowing the Lions to get ahead 17-7 the Eagles came alive, both running and passing the ball.  Vick played very well, avoiding a consistent blitz time and again to turn nothing into something.  Going into the 4th quarter the Eagles now owned a commanding 35-17 lead.

Even though I knew what was coming, I hoped I was wrong, not the prevent, anything but the f’ing prevent.

Well true to form, the Birds wen into soft mode, playing off all receivers 10 yards and allowing huge chunks of yardage underneath.  All of a sudden the Lions shitty QB was transformed into an All-Pro thanks to this moronic strategy.  The Eagles allowed two touchdowns just like that.

I was enraged, furious with the team playing scared with a lead.  I had my phone by the recliner and went on a Facebook update rampage, expressing my feelings.

After losing an onside kick the Eagles were on the cusp of blowing what should have been a sure win.  Thank goodness the Lions failed while driving for the tying/winning score.

The monumental collapse almost entirely wiped out any good feeling about winning a game for me.  I absolutely can not stand the ignorance of a prevent defense strategy.  You abandon what has worked all game and hand the team charity yards/points?

Not only did the game leave a bad taste in my mouth on the screen, it also screwed me over virtually.  The Eagles defense went from scoring me a decent amount of points to scoring next to nothing after playing matador during the 4th quarter.  They let that scrub QB throw for something like 350 yards, almost all of it coming during the last quarter. F’in morons.

I have to say I am somewhat embarrassed by what I am reading on the Eagles message boards.  It’s all about the Vick / Kolb debate.  After one bad half by Kolb and a game and a half of solid play by Vick it seems like most fans are ready to declare Kevin Kolb a failure and Mike Vick the new messiah.  Yea Vick played well for sure and made plays with his feet that Kolb will never make. But WTF, you have to give Kolb a shot at least.

I have news for Eagles fans, this team isn’t that good.  The offensive line is a mess, the linebackers suck and the defensive coordinator is meek.  The Birds a re a young team that has to grow.  I want to give Kolb a chance to prove his worth, good or bad.  You can’t give him one half of football to do it.  I guess the quick fix mentality even permeates the ranks of Eagle fan-dom.

Sunday night I watched my latest Netflix rental, Valkyrie.  The premise of this movie always sounded interesting to me, assassinate Hitler.  Well for some reason the producers of this movie didn’t seem very concerned with believability when shooting this film.

Tom Cruise does not look like or sound like a German.  They made no attempt to add an element of realism to the movie by having any actor even use German accents.  In fact almost every notable character spoke with an English accent. It was really a dumb move and detracted from what otherwise could have been a strong movie. As is I’d only give it a B-.

This weekend I got to utilize Facetime on my Iphone 4 for the first time.  My nieces both just got new Iphone Touches that support Facetime.  For the most part it worked pretty well except for the occasional pause here and there.  I could see them, they could see me.

I have to say though I would not want to be a regular user of something like Facetime.  Sure it is nice to see the person on the other side some times but it makes you feel like you have to put on a show instead of just having your conversation. Plus some of the up nostril shots are less than appealing.

Geez a weekend solo and I didn’t have one drop of alcohol, I must be slipping.