Alberto, weekend, Wag the bore, more
Tropical storm Alberto has been dumping a couple inches of rain on us over the past 2 days. It’s nice to see that the hurricane season wasted no time in hitting us. I hope it isn’t another year like last, it could be brutal.
The weekend was pretty busy. Friday night I was up till 1am trying to do some remote work on the servers at work and then went into the office for half a day on Saturday. After that I went home and was outside for 4 hours or so doing various chores I thought up while I was working on the servers Friday night.
I got some heavy duty pool shock stuff that I applied on Saturday. It worked great, the pool is nice and clear now. How long it stays that way with the daily dumping of debris into it is questionable. Speaking of the pool, Friday morning I scooped the little snake out once again. Then on Saturday he was in there again. Finally I had enough. I didn’t want to see the snake wind up dead in the pool skimmer because once he gets in he was too small to get out. So I scooped him up with the handheld pool skimmer and carried him 1000 feet or so all the way to the main canal that is behind our property. I sort of felt sad as I placed him in the water by the bank of the canal. He slid into a crevice and I walked back, hoping he would move on to a non-pool home.
In other pool related news, I once again called the pool contractor. The last time I talked to him he told me work could begin on my cage as early as late last week. No work has been done. So I called today. I got more talk of delays and more stories about the inability to get experienced help. I told him we were getting very frustrated with all the delays. He apologized but he said he was doing the best he could with the resources he has. If the guy hadn’t been sitting on a nearly 5k check of ours since January I probably would have dumped him by now. I told him how we would be gone for a week starting the 21st. He couldn’t guarantee they would be done by then. I don’t want work going on when we aren’t there. He told me that it definitely would be started the Monday after we get back. I’m holding him to that deadline, firmly.
Ali stopped at the library on Saturday and picked up 3 dvd’s. I had no desire to see any of them, Wag the Dog, Catch me if you Can, and Being Gilbert Grape. I asked her later what made her pick these movies and she said it was just because we hadn’t seen them before. Well I was trying to be the good husband and offered to watch whichever one she wanted Saturday night. Ali complains that 99% of the movies we see, I pick and they are normally all action/sci-fi stuff. Ironically she did not want to pick which of the 3 we watched either so I picked Wag the Dog. I saw it had Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman in it so it should be ok. What a borefest. It was a take off on the Clinton / Monica Lewinsky scandal. I think during the 90 minutes I smiled once and dozed off at least 10 times. This is why I pick the movies. 🙂
Sunday morning I saw that the rain from Alberto was starting to get close so I got Ali up to hit the track to get her run in before we got wet. We even had time after the run to do a high speed grass cutting buzz. Then the rain started and continued for most of the day. If you look at my weather magnet you’ll see we’ve had about a half inch of rain the past 24 hours.
The people that bought the house to the left of ours (but still live in Michigan) had been down since last Wednesday but I hadn’t done much more than a quick HI and quick yelling conversations from across the property line. I felt a bit bad about it but all week we were getting home late and then Saturday Ali and I both worked. I just didn’t have the energy to go over there and socialize. Well Sunday I finally walked over there and talked to them a bit. The guy asked me if I could help him move a heavy computer desk that was left by our old neighbors. As we moved parts of it away from the wall it revealed a tiny snake just like the one that has been living in my pool. It was still alive. The appearance of a live snake freaked them both out. At first I was trying to grab him with my bare hands. The snake coiled and was trying to bite me with his tiny mouth. Even though I know he couldn’t hurt really hurt me, I was hesitant to let him try. My neighbor had a pair of work gloves which I put on. I pinned the snake between my hands and carried him over to the trench on our property. I have a feeling if the snake was discovered without me present he would have been killed in short order. The computer desk was big and heavy. As we lifted the top part off we had to set it down to readjust the grip. The way I was positioned I had no easy way to set it down. It wound up sliding down the front of my shin, scraping off a nice thick layer of skin. It started oozing blood but I reassured them that I would be ok and we should just get the stuff moved. We pushed, pulled, slid, lifted and grunted the pieces over into the other room. It was tough. I made some small talk for a little while and then excused myself to go attend to my wound. I told them we would see them before they leave Tuesday evening. I’m not sure if we will or not. Until they actually move here they are kind of just the people that own the house that live in Michigan.
Ali helped bandage my wound like the good caretaker that she is. We finsihed up the chores I had left and then we sat down to watch a good movie, Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. I had gotten it for xmas but it was never opened. It was 3 hours and 10 minutes of great cinema. Watching it reminded me of how closely World of Warcraft is tied to LOTR. In the game there are many similarities. It has 6 races you can choose to be including humans, night elves, orcs, dwarfs, gnomes (hobbits) and undead, all races from LOTR. The time period is the same and the overall feel of the game makes you think the creators of the game are huge LOTR fans.