Japan, Weekend, bad info
Wow I don’t even know how to describe my feelings when it comes to the Japanese tsunami. The pictures and video coming out of the country are just incredible. I mean how do you even begin to address both the immediate emergency needs to make sure more people don’t die in the short term as well as formulate a plan for long term recovery? Overwhelming doesn’t begin to describe the task at hand.
The scenes looked straight out of a movie, it was just unbelievable. If a 9.0 earthquake and a hellacious tsunami wasn’t bad enough now they are trying to prevent several nuclear power plants from melting down. It is just an horrible calamity.
Ali told me she read that the quake literally moved the coastline of Japan 8 feet and altered the axis of the planet.
On Friday night Ali asked me if I was going to go do the early Saturday run and then go to work. I initially told her no, that the last thing I wanted to do was to go run and then go into work. However as the night went on I almost found myself feeling guilty since time wise it would work out about perfectly, run at 6, be at work by 8. I told Ali I changed my mind and that I would go do the run.
Saturday morning it was quite chilly when we got up with temps in the mid to upper 40’s. Ali had all of her skin covered except her face. I went the other direction, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and shorts. Although the air felt chilly when I first emerged from the truck once I got moving I felt just fine.
Ali prefers running in warmer weather, although I like warmer weather for most everything else, for running, I much prefer temps in the 50’s than the 80’s. I ran with George and some other club members the entire way while Ali ran with Christy and Michelle. I had a great run, feeling solid throughout. Running with others really helps settle a noisy mind and keep it from driving you insane. I finished 7.12 miles at a 9:20 something pace.
When Ali got back to the park she said she had an awful run. She later told me how she was freezing on the run back and how the headwind was really bothering her. I told her I honestly hadn’t even noticed a headwind coming back in. We had much different runs. Ali and I are supposed to run together after work tonight which should be good.
After the run I changed clothes and headed to work. I had a project going on that involved replacing all of the switches on our network as well as connecting everything in our NOC to brand new wiring that was installed a couple months back. We also replaced all of the patch cables at every patch panel in the building as well as in the NOC.
It was tedious work for sure. We had several rat nests of old cable piled through out the room. When I was removing old wire under the floor I resorted to just cutting a bunch of it out with scissors than try to untangle countless snags from years of neglect. I had two other guys in there helping me which was great. Originally I had ideas of taking on the entire project myself which would have taken FOREVER.
I left the office around 1:30. There are still some loose ends to clean up but for the most part the job was incident free. I have a second Saturday of work coming up sometime in the next few weeks. I want to totally gut our two server racks and redo them so everything is more functional, organized and aesthetically pleasing.
After work I headed right to mom’s place to pick her up. I decided to go straight up Tamiami Trail which was a big mistake. The road was just clogged with snowbirds, I swear at least half of the plates I saw were from non-Florida destinations. A drive that should have taken 25 minutes took 40.
On the way back to our place Mom and I stopped at Home Depot. The stop was so I could grab some more weed and feed to battle dollar weed in the yard as well as picking up some additional color swatches for potential exterior house colors. We wanted mom to help us in the process of picking out color combo’s since she is much better at that than either Ali or myself.
When we were there I told mom I wanted to grab a couple more things for the garden. Mom saw a mature tomato plant that already had a small cage on it and a few tomatoes starting. It was cheap, I told her to throw it on the flat bed. I then talked her into letting me get her more stuff to start her own mini-garden at home. When you are unemployed, growing your own food is a smart idea.
We got her two long and narrow rectangular planters, the type you could normally put on a window sill. Mom got some herbs, a pepper plant, lettuce, arugula and some spinach. She was excited about the idea of starting her own mini-garden. Over the years she did a lot of gardening, it was nice to see her eager to jump back into it.
Saturday night Ali prepared a good supper which we enjoyed while watching Grown Ups, my latest Netflix dvd delivery. It was a cute movie with lots of laugh out loud moments that everyone seemed to enjoy. I’d give it a solid B.
On Sunday morning I was greeted by the incessant yipping by one of the two new dogs our neighbor acquired a few months ago, a tiny chihuahua. Whenever I would go into the back yard the dog, which is smaller than most cats would bark constantly. The neighbor seemed to not notice at all as the dog was left outside for the majority of the day. If you ever heard a chihuahua bark, (Amy) you know how maddening it can become very quickly. I can see a conversation coming up sometime in the future with my neighbor if she allows it to continue unabated.
Originally we had planned to have mom come to the water park with us on Sunday while Ali and I did some swimming at the lap pool. However I called Saturday and after getting a run around a few times, I was told that the lap pool would be closed until later in the month. But, even with the lap pool being closed I still suggested to mom we go just hang out there and have lunch, it’s a nice relaxing way to spend a Sunday.
Well Sunday morning the temps started out cool even though the forecast high was in the 80’s. Mom said it was too cold for her to go to the water park so after a few attempts to change her mind I relented and agreed to take her home first and then Ali and I would go to the park.
Well by the time we got to the water park it was beautiful out, a perfect day to be there. As we approached the entrance I heard the splash of someone diving off the diving board, which is attached to the lap pool! Mother f, the lap pool is open! Ali was pissed as she hadn’t brought her stuff to swim laps. I did because I had a feeling that I got bad information from my call experience on Saturday which went like this.
I call the number on their website and get a recording. Odd, I thought, it is during hours the park is open so I hung up and called back. This time I got some young sounding girl on the phone. I asked her if the lap and diving pool were open again. She said in annoyed tone “What??!!” So I repeated the question a second time. She says “Please hold” and I am unceremoniously dumped to some guy’s voice mail.
Now I was pissed. I call right back and again get the pre-recorded message, F. I hang up and call again in a few minutes. It sounds like I get this same, phone challenged girl. I say “I just called a couple minutes ago and asked what should have been a pretty simple question and got dumped into voicemail. IS THE LAP POOL OPEN YET? I KNOW IT WAS BEING REPAIRED.”
“Oh” she said, “no the lap pool won’t be open until spring break for the schools” (later this month) Finally, an answer, although I was not surprised at all it turned out to be the wrong one. I just had a feeling.
So anyway, like I said, Ali was fuming that she didn’t have her swimming equipment with based on the bad information I was given the day before. I told Ali she could use my stuff, I would survive without it. Swimming in a heavily chlorinated pool with no goggles is not much fun, my eyes were burning like mad for a few laps. Eventually the burning subsided and I just dealt with the blurry view of the line on the floor of the pool. I put in a 1000 meters in the pool but it felt quite difficult. Hopefully this is the start to building my swimming endurance back up on a consistent basis.
After swimming we were ready for lunch, however one glance to the food area revealed two very long lines. I asked Ali if she was ok waiting a bit to eat to hopefully give the line time to die down, she was. I almost fell asleep on my lounge chair immediately, I was really tired. The only thing that kept me awake was the noise from the dancing fountain right in front of us.
Well after waiting maybe a half hour or so I looked at the line and it was still the same. I told Ali I would just bite the bullet and go wait, she could come up and join me when I made it to the front. Well wait I did, I was in the line for a good half hour. The wait was not without entertainment of course.
The line was divided in two by wood stands that had string running between them. Behind me in line there was a child that decided it would be fun to hang on the ropes. As she did this it was pulling the front wood stand backwards, almost tipping it. The two older ladies that the stand almost hit turned around and told the child to not do that.
Well of course the child ignored the women and the father seemed oblivious to what his daughter was doing. Again she hung on the rope and this time the women had to catch the support to keep it from tipping over completely. I knew I had to escalate the situation so I turned around and politely but firmly said to the father “Excuse me sir, if she keeps doing that she is going to pull the stands down” Well finally he paid attention although the child did not. She continued to try to hang on the rope despite his increasingly strong verbal warnings. Eventually he gave her a whack on the butt and picked her up which I am sure the PC’rs were appalled by. Oh well.
As I waited I overheard the conversation behind me of the guy that was ex-military (Air Force) who has been out of a job for a year. He was a generator and pc tech. I also found out he is divorced, 40 something years old and that he once considered getting into Florida Highway Patrol. He also was considering going BACK into the Air Force but he decided against it due to the age of his kid. Yea that is a lot to overhear huh? Hey I was in line a long time.
The rest of our Sunday was laid back. Ali and I finalized our new color scheme which will be Dapper Tan for the walls and Olivewood for the accents. I walked around the house and took various “before” pictures to document the transformation. You can see just bad the stucco is in some spots.