The bowels of hell, Spidey Two 2.0, Look Up

Friday afternoon work was pretty quiet so I asked if I could head out a bit early.  I had a bunch of stops to make and I also stopped at Ali’s new place to get a few more things accomplished.  Even though she has a ton of stuff to unpack, her garage has enough room that she can actually park the Volt inside so she can recharge it nightly.  I got a good chunk of things done.

Friday night I was quite pissed off at myself when I knocked a Mexican Coke off the counter and had it explode all over the kitchen floor.  Somehow the exploding Coke bottle shrapnel managed to cut my left ankle as well.  Cindy handled the lionshare of the clean up duties.

On Saturday morning I was up and working outside early wanting to get a jump start on the day.  I knocked out at least a half dozen tasks before 10AM.  One of those tasks was especially disgusting.  I have an LG front loading wash machine that I like.  For a little while I have had an issue where the laundry sometimes had a bit of an unpleasant smell to it, despite my effort to always leave the front door of the unit open when not in use to make sure it drys out to prevent mildew. There is another maintenance task that I have not been doing, cleaning the pump screen.  I last did this 2-3 years ago at least.  Cleaning the pump screen is an easy task but one I have let slip, perhaps because when I checked it before it was fine and didn’t need any cleaning.

Well for whatever reason I finally decided to pull out the pump screen Saturday morning.  As I loosened the fixture a small amount of water started to spill out which is normal.  What wasn’t normal was the stench that hit my nostrils.  It was like I pulled the plug on a septic tank, the smell was that bad.  I threw a towel on the floor to catch the disgusting water.  When I pulled the filter from the body of the washer the true horror show began.

The plastic filter body was covered in some some of slimy substance that instantly turned me into a mouth breather to keep me from vomiting.  I had no idea what type of organic matter I was looking at, I just knew I was looking at the source of my stinky laundry.  I took the filter to the sink and blew off the slime with hot water and then sprayed both the filter and the the hole in the washer it resides with bleach.  I reinstalled the now disinfected filter into the washer with a new mental commitment to clean it monthly.  I noticed the laundry that was done over the weekend was missing that tinge of sewage stench.

Once I got all of my home chores done I was once again off to Ali’s new place to get her computer equipment back online.  Ali was told by Comcast that her service was all migrated to her new address and all she should have to do is plug stuff back in and it will work.  Well of course this was not the case.  A call to them was required to get Ali’s cable modem working again at it’s new location. Ali’s computer stuff is temporarily housed on top of a folding table until she is able to buy an Ikea computer desk to match the Ikea shelves she already has in her new office.

Almost everything is out of Ali’s old apartment at this point.  Sometime this week she should be handing in her keys and will be 100% moved.  It will be awhile until everything finds its place at the new townhouse.

After getting done at Ali’s I headed down to the running store to handle the race entries that came in that day.  I had the laptop with me so I could do it on the spot instead of having to do the data entry at home later.  I got there earlier than I needed to so I had more sit around with nothing to do time than I prefer.  Saturday night race prep ensued culminated with setting the alarm for 3:45 AM Sunday morning.

So Cindy and I were the first ones on the race site Sunday, a little after 5AM.  We immediately spotted a big problem, there were no port-o-potties on site.  Port-o-potties are a pretty crucial part of any race as most runners want to make sure the tank is empty before hitting the road.  A text to the race director indicated this responsibility was not supervised as it should have been and instead was assumed to be handled.  You can not make assumptions in this role.

So now we had to come up with some sort of alternative.  Cindy scouted the area and identified a 7-11 two blocks away and the public bathrooms at the Naples Pier three blocks away that could be used.  Yes it was incredibly inconvenient for runners but it was the only solution we had.  To try to head off a million “Where are the bathrooms?” questions we printed out a bunch of signs that indicated the two options and posted them around the registration area.  I was surprised that the signs actually did seem to work for the most part.  I didn’t hear much public griping about the huge hole of no on site restroom facilities although I am sure nobody was happy about it.

This was the first race that I was utilizing the new equipment I bought, three laptops and a new printer.  I had set up everything at home but did not totally simulate race day conditions which was dumb.  As a result I had a couple issues on site that I had to work around unexpectedly.  A lot of them turned out to be related to the way Windows 7 will automatically restrict communication when you don’t define an  IP address as non-public.

After overcoming those early issues the race timing went smoothly. We once again used the race bibs with an integrated timing device  and once again they performed very well.  Utilizing this type of timing device adds cost to every race but it streamlines the process greatly for both us and the runners, making it an overall win.

Cindy ran the race in addition to volunteering beforehand.  Despite her predictions of a poor performance ahead of time due to her lack of consistent running lately, she got third place in her age group. She was only 10 seconds behind the second place finisher and only a couple seconds off her personal 5K best.  I told her ahead of time she would do well, her competitive nature really helps her in a race environment.

When we got back to the house I had an hour or two of work doing post race processing and figuring out the issues I had on site with the laptops.  After I got that handled Cindy and I headed outside for some tandem gardening.  I had picked up some stuff for the garden at Lowes on Saturday, some basil, spearmint and two red peppers.  In addition we had the mail order sweet potatoes to get in the ground and a couple climbing plants that Cindy bought a couple weeks ago.

It was very relaxing and enjoyable to work together getting stuff in the ground.  For the sweet potatoes I dug a trench through the middle of two raised beds to create two raised mounds along either side.  I put 6 or 7 plants in each bed.  I have grown regular potatoes before with varying success but never sweet potatoes.  I am hoping they do well.  One thing that is doing well are the Cubanelle peppers, we have harvested at least a couple dozen so far and there are a bunch more in the pipeline.

Cindy and I went to a late afternoon showing of Spiderman 2.  Well it’s actually Spiderman 2 2 since this is the second iteration of the rebooted Spiderman series.  It was funny that as we were getting our tickets. our friend Deb from the running club walked up behind us with her daughter to see the same movie.  They wound up sitting with us to watch the movie.

I liked the first Spiderman reboot movie(which I saw by myself), more than I expected.  From the previews of Spiderman 2 I was worried the series was fast forwarding to the original Spiderman 3 which jumped the shark for me.  Spiderman 3 had just too much shit going on.  Too many enemies, too much ridiculous heroics and not enough story.  Well unfortunately I think Spiderman 2/2 has already reached Spidey 3 status.

The movie had several things that bugged me, too campy, too far outside the boundaries of remote possibility , and too predictable.  The efforts to log jam in a second arch enemy followed by an oh by the way third just didn’t work for me.  The main villain’s hatred of Spiderman didn’t hold any water either to be honest.  The movie was entertaining but not great.  For instance I think the recent Captain America was a lot better.  I’d give Spidey 2 a B+ rating.  I would be fine if they phased the current iteration of the franchise out.   After seeing all 5 Spiderman movies I am quite positive I prefer the Toby McGuire version of my favorite childhood superhero.

After the movie Cindy and I grabbed dinner at a nearby restaurant.  As we enjoyed our meal I witnessed a phenomena that was depicted brilliantly here in this video. The subject was how the world now spends a ridiculous amount of time looking down, at their smart phones.  It is something I notice all the time and something I find myself doing more often that I like.  At dinner there were two women and a young boy eating outside.  The two women spent the vast majority of their time at the table with their faces buried in their smart phones.  The little boy was standing behind the one woman, who I assume was his mother, looking somewhat sad that his mother was ignoring his existence, preferring to scroll through endless status updates of people she rarely if ever sees in real life.

The developed world really has become a slave to their phones.  It is morphing adults into iZombies and inflicting a permanent disability  on today’s youth who will be void of the ability to communicate conventionally, relegating them to communicating in electronic acronyms, incomplete sentences and “likes”.   Children are being turned into “screen addicts”, not being able to go on a 10 minute car ride without having a video screen of some type in front of them to pacify their raging ADD.  Simply looking out the window at the passing scenery is treated like minor child abuse.

If you step back, put down the phone and think about the path this is leading to it is easy to see what is so wrong about it.  Yet we all continue down this path, not thinking about the eventual outcome of it all which can be nothing but bad.

So the next time you exit the movie theater, are stopped at a red light, or sitting at the dinner table, suppress the urge to check in with your connected device that disconnects you from the world immediately around you.