All posts by Duf

Ugh it is two weeks in and I am already sick of the show.  I am trying to be the good husband and watch it with Ali but sitting through two hours of it is approaching brutal for me.  Yea the stars for the most part are doing a good job but if I am being honest about it, I could care less.  By the time we enter the second hour of the show I am ready for it to end.

I scheduled for our septic tank to be pumped on Friday.  It is one of the things I was waiting for the tax return to hit.  It isn’t that expensive, about 300 bucks.  Since we moved in, in 2001, we have never had the tank pumped and although we aren’t having any apparent issues, we are going to have it done as a preventative measure.

There are a couple other things I was interested in doing with a portion of the return money.  We need to load up on mulch and fix up our landscaped areas.  Much of it has the weed block exposed and looks pretty shabby.  On the same Home Depot trip I would also like to get some more landscape stone as well as some compost and garden soil to refresh the garden area. 

The other thing I want to do is get the van back in the shop to address the braking and non-braking vibration issue as well as the right rear wheel getting hot thing.  Oh, and if I can find one I like, I would like to get a new office chair for my desk.  The one I have has rock hard plastic armrests that make my forearms hurt like hell during extended WoW playing sessions.

I noticed over the weekend how we never received credit for cancelling the extended warranty on the Camry yet so I called and left a message asking what was going on.  When I got home yesterday there was a message on the machine from the girl I dealt with.  She said she wasn’t sure why, but it showed that the warranty still was not cancelled!  My blood pressure instantly spiked and I picked up the phone immediately, ready to unleash some verbal hell to someone.  Ali pointed out it was after 6 so she more than likely wasn’t there.  I hung the phone back up but was bent out of shape about it all night.  It was just one more big f up, piled on top of the others I had with the dealership.  I made sure that I cancelled quickly because it cleared me of any “administration fees”  since it has not been cancelled I ran scenarios of them trying to hit me with that fee and me flipping out in response.

So I called back this morning and got to talk to the girl who cancelled the warranty.  She apologized and was not sure why it had not been cancelled.  She promised to look into and call me back, which she just did a few minutes ago.  She asked if I could fax her my copies of the cancellation form.  She said she contacted the warranty company and they would honor the original cancellation date.  She said it should be all taken care of today.  We will see….

It seems you ALWAYS have to follow up on people/businesses to make sure they do what they say they are going to do.  If I didn’t make the call it would have never been corrected.

We (I) had a pretty ambitious work schedule lined up.  We got it all done and even threw another large chore on the list.  Even so we had a good amount of leisure time left over.

On Friday when I got home, I sort of expected to be attacked since Ali left a comment on my blog entry regarding my theory that it isn’t easy for me to maintain my weight.  However I was pleasantly surprised that there was no animosity and instead, Ali was in a great mood, one of the best moods I have seen her in in a long time.  It was great.

Saturday morning Ali had to go help work a race.  I stayed home and started on my list.  I changed the oil and filter on both my truck and the tractor.  Both went well except for a small incident I had trying to free the drain bolt on the truck.  After pulling on the wrench mightily, it gave way and my wrist slammed into the surrounding metal, peeling a nice piece of skin off.  The bloody wound didn’t stop me from continuing on.

I did some little things around the yard like trimming back the topiary, hibiscus and bushes along the utility equipment.  I also took the loppers and trimmed back the palms in Nicki’s area and the many dead leaves on the banana trees.

 When Ali got home from the race she was very tired and took a couple hour nap after lunch.  I tried to stay quiet and just goofed on the computer.  I didn’t go to wake her up until around 3.  We called my mom at work and asked her if she wanted to go to dinner with us at Tijuana Flats.  She agreed and we said we would pick her up around 6. 

Well I still wanted to get the bedroom cleanup knocked out so I enlisted a still drowsy Ali to help me get it done.  We pulled most of the furniture away from the walls and swept behind it.  We dusted surfaces that normally wouldn’t see attention any other time of the year and we cleaned out and organized the upper cabinet in our laundry center and the big drawer under our bathroom counter.  Both of these areas were barfing with junk.  We moved through the process quickly and had everything done by 4:30 or so.  It gave us just enough time to clean up and take off to get mom.

Mom wasn’t nuts about going to Tijuana Flats, she isn’t real big into Mexican food.  I was a bit worried that it may be full since it was Saturday night.  It was a pleasant surprise to walk in and see plenty of tables available.   With me getting a beer and mom getting a glass of wine, the bill still was only 25 bucks.  This place rocks.  We all enjoyed our meals, even Mom.  She commented that she would come back again which I was glad to hear.  We dropped mom back off at home and then shot back home.

On Sunday all I had left on my list was to shampoo the carpets.  However, earlier in the weekend Ali mentioned she would like to pressure wash Tuki’s cage and then also pressure wash the shed which was coated with scum on the back and one side that see very little sun.  So I pulled the pressure washer out, hooked it up and Ali went at it.  After she was done with Tuki’s cage, I drug the rig down to the shed.  After showing her how it had to be done, I sort of figured I would see Ali coming inside shortly after starting, asking me to finish it.  Cleaning the shed is not easy.  You have to hold the pressure wand at weird angles and depending on the wind, you can get quite wet while doing it, something Ali hates. (getting wet)  However she stuck it out and did everything she could reach.  While she was doing that, I was doing the preliminary step for shampooing the rug, vacuuming it.

I finished vacuuming and then started the steam cleaner.  Steam cleaning is monotonous.  You have to go much slower than vacuuming because you want to make sure you pull out as much of the solution as possible.  My left shoulder was burning by the time I finished from pushing and pulling motion I repeated several hundred times.  It always amazes me how much dog hair comes up when I run the steam cleaner, even with sweeping immediately before.  The waste water I was dumping was quite dirty so it validated the effort I was putting into it as worthwhile.

As I finished up steam cleaning, Ali finished up what she could do with the shed.  I then moved outside, grabbed the ladder and did the higher parts of the shed and at the last minute decided to go all out and climbed on top of the shed and washed down the roof as well.  I figured all the shit was in place, why not just do it?  Washing on the roof is dangerous.  It’s slippery and steep.  If I let my balance get too far out from my middle I could have easily taken a header from 12 feet high.  I finished up after maybe an hour.

It was barely 1 oclock and we were pretty much done with the chores for the day.  We spent the rest of it doing what we felt like (well Ali worked on the bills too)  Our tax return hit our bank account on Saturday so that was a nice surprise.

Sunday evening we watched Casino Royale, the latest in the James Bond flicks.  This one has a brand new guy playing Bond and he is very good in the part.  He is much more of a bad ass than any prior Bond.  The film is very long but it is filled with tons of action and more double crossing than you could keep track of.  It had a torture scene in it that still makes me cringe. If you asked me to give you an in depth plot review where I was to explain exactly how each character was connected, I would be hard pressed to do so.  It didn’t matter, I found the movie very entertaining. It gets a solid A from me.

Our neighbors left last night for a cruise so we are dog sitting Zoe for the next 5 days.  She is so funny.  The dog is obsessed with food.  She thinks every movement you make could possible be food related.  She watches you like her life depended on it, hoping that every move you make could possibly result in you tossing her a morsel.  You just learn to ignore her but it doesn’t stop her from being your shadow.  Nicki likes to taunt Zoe into playing.  Zoe sometimes obliges but soon tires of it and goes back to staring at us.  It is definitely more work managing two dogs.  Double the potty runs, double the feeding and double the attention.  It’s fun in a way though too.

American express sucks. They are a bunch of rip off artists.  Let me tell you why.  Mom got me a gift card from American express for Christmas.  It is supposed to be the same as cash, use it anywhere.  However unlike a normal gift card where you say, here is 50 bucks, give me a gift card for 50 bucks, American Express charges the purchaser an “activation fee” so they are making money there.  Then if you try to use the card for anything less than the full amount, the fun begins. 

Say you have a 100 dollar gift card and you use it somewhere and use $74.56  on the purchase.  Ok let’s say a month passes and you want to use the remaining $26.44 toward a 50 dollar purchase.  If you simply hand the clerk the card and ask them to run it for whatever the remaining balance is they will be unable to do so. (like you can with normal store gift cards)  You have to know exactly how much is left on the card in order to use it.  If the clerk tries to run it for more than $26.44 it will come back declined instead of approving it for $26.44.  So if you plan to use the card in this manner, it requires you either calling, or going in through their website and finding out the balance.

 Of course American Express realizes this is a pain in the ass for the customer and is in fact banking on it, hoping that this protocol results in millions of dollars left over in gift cards never gets redeemed. And in fact, they have another policy in place to ensure this happens.  If someone tried to use their American Express gift card, had it declined because they didn’t know the exact balance left on it and shoved it back in their wallet, they assume that when they finally do get around to calling the number to get their balance, they will be able to spend it.

Well not if it has been in your wallet for more than a year.  After that period of time American Express starts sucking off an additional two dollars a month as some bullshit fee, like it costs them money somehow.  So on top of the initial fee they charge the purchaser, they make back additional money on the back end from their bullshit policies, in addition to whatever fee they charge the retailer.  It is a crock of shit.  Ironically we have received several pre-approved letters from American Express  over the last few weeks.  Needless to say they went immediately into the shredder.  Bunch of greedy bastards. 

I saw this exercise in Men’s Health that I decided to try at the gym today.  You put two twenty pound dumbbells on the floor, shoulder length apart and assume push up position, perched on the dumbbells.  You do a push up and then when you are at the top of the motion, you raise one of the dumbbells off the floors and pull it up like you are doing a mini-dumbbell row.   It didn’t look too bad but when I went to try it, it was extremely awkward.  I did one set and was only able to do six or seven reps.  You had to have your feet very wide to help counter the torque created by pulling one arm off the ground.  When I went to try a second set, on the very first pull, I felt a sharp pain shoot down the inside of right leg, across the knee so I immediately stopped.  I don’t think I will be trying that one again.  I am still planning on giving the “300” workout a shot next Monday.  God help me….

It feels weird to have a weekend coming up that doesn’t have to do with the sprinkler installation project like the last 5 or 6 of them have.  However I have plenty on my plate to keep me busy.  Enough items that I returned to the infamous list which I wrote up hurriedly last night.

Our March cleaning project is our bedroom, which also includes our bathroom.  It normally isn’t too bad.  We pull the bed and furniture out from the walls and sweep behind them, organize stuff and just clean every surface we can find.  I also want to drag the steam cleaner out of the closet.  With all the animal hair in our house and excrement on the rug, I should steam clean the rugs every month but wind up being lucky to do it two or three times a year.

The truck is due for an oil change and the Camry is dirty as shit, I need to wash it.  The pool filter needs to be rinsed out and I will do my normal scrubbing of the pool sides and let the pool vacuum scoot around. 

 If I bust it, I could get it all done by Saturday afternoon.  The question is how motivated I am come tomorrow morning.

 Ali has been complaining bitterly about her job again.  At times I just try to be quiet and listen, at other times, depending on my mood, I am not quite as understanding.  To me, working four day weeks with three day weekends sounds pretty awesome.  Plus she gets to take Nicki to work with her everyday which is unheard of. She gets paid decent money.  However dealing with some of the dolts at her facility stresses her out very easily.

Ali’s ideal situation is for her to just quit.  I told her many times she can quit but we are not in a position as of now where she can not do something to bring in some income.  So I did some digging around yesterday and found a website that was all about working from home, www.wahm.com  I was surprised to see just how many people were working from home and how many different ways it could be accomplished.  Anyway, I sent Ali a bunch of links to go look at.  I told her that one thing is for sure, if she continues to complain about her job but does nothing to look for an alternative, she can guarantee that nothing will change.  We will see what happens.  If we sold our two lots in Lehigh it would take a lot of financial pressure off and allow Ali to make significantly less income without significantly affecting our quality of life.

As I mentioned at the top, the sprinkler project is done, however I am still tweaking the watering schedule.  After doing some reading, I concluded that the the single 25 minute cycle I was putting the rotary sprinkler zones on was not enough.  Rotary sprinklers take roughly 3 hours to deliver one inch of water, running them a total of 40 minutes a week meant I would not be delivering enough water to keep the landscape very happy.  So I adjusted the schedule to do two cycles each time it runs, half hour per cycle.  This way the rotary zones will be running a total of 2 hours a week and that will deliver roughly 2/3 of an inch of water, which should work out much better.  With 6 zones, I have to start watering very early in the morning.  It now all kicks off at 4:30 am.

That is the amount of carbs in a packet of Pop Tarts, along with 400 calories.  Pop Tarts are one of the few total garbage foods that I still consume.  Ali sometimes will make a comment about how it is easy for me to be thin.   Every time she says that, it annoys me. 

I used to eat horribly for my first 30 years on the planet.  And for the most part it didn’t affect me.  Well there was a period of time during my first marriage that I joined in so much with the gluttony that my in-laws practiced that I ballooned up to a very doughy 210 pounds.  My wake up call came when during a vacation at the shore, I did one of those silly things where they take your picture and then super impose it on a magazine cover.  My pose was shirtless, with me making a muscle.  When I saw the end result, I was sickened by the love handles that were popping out of the picture and burning holes in my eyes.  I looked like I had a layer of jello under my skin.  That was the start of it.  I became more concerned about what I was eating and the amount of it.  Unfortunately, my ex-wife and her family never had such a revelation and continued on with their gluttony and that issue was one that drove a huge wedge into the relationship.

Anyway, the changes I made back then were minor, as I hit 30 I slowly made more changes.  I used to go to the gym 2 to 3 times a week, and looking back, my workouts were very limited in comparison to today.  I used to do the exact same thing week in and week out, not knowing that the repetition leads to diminishing returns.  I still didn’t eat great, I just tried to eat less.

As my thirties have progressed, I slowly have cut out things from my diet, I started reading nutrition labels and I started eating a lot of frozen meals that made portion control automatic.  I used to have applesauce with nearly every meal.  I would open the lid and pour a big pile of it on my plate.  Applesauce was a condiment for me.  It went with everything.  Applesauce and steak? No problem.  Applesauce and spaghetti? Yep did that too.  Applesauce and macaroni and cheese? The nearly perfect dish.  However one day I just quit cold turkey.  I identified apple sauce as totally empty calories, basically a soppy pile of sugar.  I haven’t had apple sauce for years.

I always have had a sweet tooth, I was a big cookie guy (still am)  Oreos (especially double stuffs) and Chips Ahoy used to be a regular grocery trip staple.  That changed too.  I went from Double Stuffs to regular Oreos.  I went from regular Oreos to the reduced fat Oreos that were much drier and less satisfying.  Then I eventually cut cookies out.  Instead for desert I have something like a Zone Bar that still is sweet but also has protein and other nutritional value to it.  Instead of drinking regular soda or Chocolate Ahhh with meals, I became accustomed to diet soda and nowadays I normally just have a glass of ice water with my dinner.

My workout routine changed greatly, especially when I moved to Florida.  My buddy that I work with is pretty huge and was close to body builder size.  When we first moved here, I used to work out with him at Gold’s Gym, doing so opened my eyes to the flaws of my exercise routine.  I learned to mix up my routine every week, keeping my body in constant guessing game.  I went from working out 2 or 3 days a week to working out 4 or 5 times a week.  I concentrated on what I was doing and for the most part tried to increase the intensity of what I was doing. 

The end result of my decade long effort has been maintaining my body weight right around the 190 mark.  A few times when I was on a kick to really lean out I was close to 180.  The few times I dabbled with creatine my weight inched across 200 but that was more muscle than fat. 

So what is the point of this lengthy rap?  Oh yea, when Ali tells me it is easy for me to be thin I get annoyed.  I suppose keeping my weight constant has nothing to do with working out 5 days a week and vastly modifying my eating habits.  It’s not rocket science, just motivation and a bit of hard work.  

The more I tinker with Vista at home, the more I like it.  Yesterday I was reading about a feature in Vista that can utilize inexpensive flash ram to act like additional system ram.  It is called ReadyBoost.  You can use USB drives or SD cards to do this as long as they are fast enough.  So last night when I got home I slapped in a spare 2 gig SD card I have.  A dialogue box opens asking what I wanted to do with it, one of the options being “Make my computer faster”  You tell Vista how much of the card you want to allocate for ReadyBoost and you are done.  Pretty damn sweet.

Vista also incorporates Shadow Copies like Windows Server 2003 does.  Shadow copy automatically makes copies of older versions of files as they change so if you accidentally modified a file and you want to go back to an older version of it, you can.  There are ton of new features in Vista I have only started to scratch the surface of.

My brain has always been wired in a weird way.  One prime example of it is my whacked out, pseudo ambidextrous abilities.  I am not strictly left or right handed, it varies.  I throw, bat, shoot a basketball, golf and bowl left handed.  I write, eat, play tennis and kick right handed/footed.  It’s very odd.  I am physically incapable of just closing my right eye while leaving the left one open.  I can close the left one, with the right one open but that is it.  Same thing if I try to raise eyebrows independently although it is reversed.  I can raise the right eyebrow by itself, but not the left.  I figure the same weird wiring is tied into how my words get scrambled on a regular basis.  It’s crazy.

For some odd reason, after my rant about the cats and their vet trip, I actually decided to follow through on the medicine for Buttons gingivitis treatment.  The treatment involves giving her 2 cc of this stuff, orally once a day for 10 days straight. It is physically impossible to administer liquid medication to a cat with one person.  Hell we don’t even do a decent job with two people.  Here is how it goes, I corral the cat and carry her over to the sofa.  She immediately starts meowing with disapproval, knowing whatever is going to happen isn’t good.  Ali fills the syringe with the junk and sits to my right on the sofa.  I administer an iron tight death grip on the cat, trying to keep her head and body still.  Then Ali attempts to pry the mouth open while injecting the liquid.  As soon as we start, the cat resists mightily, making horrible noises and acting like we were pouring battery acid in her mouth.  As hard as I am holding her, she still manages to squirm around a bit.  Her favorite technique is to push into my stomach with her back feet, which still have claws.  I have various battle wounds from her efforts.  Ali does the best she can to get the medicine down her throat but the cat makes no effort to swallow, with much of it just running out of her mouth onto me and her fur.  We are lucky if she actually gets half of the dosage.  Oh well, we are trying. Stupid cats.

Last night as I was trying to get comfortable in bed I was thinking about how lost I would be without my pillows.  We have a total of 10 pillows on the bed.  They vary greatly in size and shape.

We have the two conventional pillows, mine is almost as flat as a pancake and serves no real function.  Then we have two large king size pillows in shams.  This pillow serves different functions for me.  Sometimes I put it on top of the pancake pillow and rest my head on it.  Other times it winds up under or between my legs depending if I am sleeping on my back or my side.  Then we have two regular size pillows in shams.  This pillow can serve the same roles as the bigger sham pillow except for the under the leg support role, it is too small for that.  It also has an additional position where it will sit on my chest and I more or less hug it.

 We have two of those koosh pillows that feel like they are filled with beads and feel good to just squeeze.  These are normally used in auxiliary support roles, usually my supporting elbows or forearms.  We have a conventional size memory foam pillow that Ali uses exclusively for her head.  We have two custom pillows made by Ali.  One is almost hot dog shaped and again is used under arms to help relieve pressure points.  The other one is the massive pillow she made out of various old volleyball t-shirts.  This pillow is the best one for leg support and occasionally will be used between the legs once in awhile if I am on my side. (I can’t stand having my knees pressing together skin on skin)

The pillows are not all used every night.  In fact sometimes a lot of them wind up discarded on the floor.  I have a standby pillow wedged between the nightstand and the bed.  It actually is a pillow my grandfather made for my mom.  It doesn’t see much use as it is a bit too firm to be useful for much in bed besides propping me up if I am eating there.  However that pillow will undoubtedly be in my possession until I kick the bucket, just cause grandpa made it.

Since I was forced back to Powerhouse gym, I have been trying to keep a good attitude about it.  I knew it was a bare bones gym, run with a bare bones amount of effort.  However recently I have been getting more annoyed.  This is what happens.  The owner comes in at 6am.  At 6am it is nice and cool outside so he turns off the AC and opens the doors.  Great.  But the problem comes when 6 hours later, at noon, the temperature has shot up some 20 degrees and the doors are still wide open and the AC is off.  The place quickly becomes a sweat box.  The owner is either so damn cheap or so oblivious that he refuses to put the AC on once he has the doors open.  It really is annoying me now.  Unfortunately I have zero alternatives available to me.

One good thing at the gym is some of the people I get to talk to.  Today I saw a young black guy named Dwayne whom I hadn’t seen there for at least a couple months.  He is extremely smart, extremely motivated and extremely easy to talk to.  He is planning on going back to school shortly to get his Master’s but in the meantime, he took up a job at a Walgreen’s as an assistant manager.  I couldn’t believe some of the stories he was telling me.  I’ll try to recant them as accurately as possible.  Keep in mind, this guy is extremely polite and calm.

He said a lady came in for a refund on a prescription she paid for with her credit card.  Dwayne told her he needed the credit card she paid with and a driver’s license, standard procedure to prevent fraud.  Well for whatever reason this woman did not have the CC with that she used to pay and freaked out.  After blasting Dwayne, she calls her husband and then gives the phone to Dwayne.  the woman’s husband ripped Dwayne a new asshole about the situation although it was obvious all Dwayne was doing was using standard business practices when something is returned.  Well later, after the conversation, the husband comes into the store gets waited on by Dwayne and says “Are you the asshole I talked to on the phone??” Dwayne politely told him “Yes, I am…”  So after more insults from the customer, he finally presented all the stuff needed for the return and stormed out.  Ripping Dwayne was not enough, the asshole customer decided to call the Walgreen district office to complain about the incident (that was totally created by his wife and himself)  Well the DO contacts Dwayne and instructs him he has to call this idiot and apologize.  Dwayne complied.

Another time, a guy walks in with an electric toothbrush that supposedly he bought 3 weeks ago from Walgreens. He says it doesn’t work, he wants another one.  The guy had no receipt, no box, just a toothbrush.  Dwayne told the customer he needs a receipt or at least a box to take a return.  He had no way of knowing where this customer bought the item from.  Well the customer thinks this is very stupid and accuses Dwayne of calling him a liar.  Dwayne holds his ground and politely explains again why he needs something to prove he bought the item from Walgreens, a totally logical policy.  Well the customer again freaks out, storms out and once again a call is made to the district office.  Well once again, Dwayne is forced onto his knees and is told to exchange the toothbrush for the asshole.  Unbelievable.

The moral of story, if you are a big enough asshole, and go over a store manager’s head, there is a very good chance you will get what you want, no matter how unreasonable it is.

On Saturday, Ali and I worked on cleaning up the loose ends on the sprinkler project.  We did a little detour project first.  We brought up four loads of fill from the pit to raise the area outside of the flower bed next to the shed.  During the heart of rainy season, this area becomes pond-like and as a result, the bed gets flooded out and kills pretty much anything planted in it.  We are hoping the slope we built around the low end will help that problem.  I plan on pulling more fill as I have energy to slowly raise various low spot on the property.  It is hard work but not excruciatingly hard.  Here is a pic of the raised area.

After we got done by the shed, we moved over to the area in front of the distribution manifold.  In order to build the system, I ripped out the landscape timbers and patio stones that were in place there.  Ali and I rebuilt the area carefully and in not too much time I had it reconstructed.  The area is longer than before but looked good.  We needed some additional stone to fill it in but we planned to get that at Home Depot later in the day.

Then we focused on the huge dug out area in front of the manifold, we filled in the low spots the best we could.  It still was basically a large open sandbox. 

 After lunch I stuck Ali on a project should would excel at and I would despise.  Counting and organizing all of the left over pieces from the project to return to Home Depot.  She did a great job and in short order had all the parts separated into their own bag with a little slip of paper in each bag that contained the count of that type of part.  She was a bit annoyed after she got done separating and matching the parts to the various receipts, when I pointed out we had a few small boxes of parts out on the lanai as well.

We gathered all the returns into one big box and headed out to the store.  Ali’s organization made the return process go much quicker than if we just walked in and dumped a huge pile of pvc parts on the counter.  All those parts added up to a tidy 100 bucks we got back.  Ali did some figuring later in the day and came up with a grand total of $1400 we spent on the project, probably less than a third of what we would have spent to pay someone else to do it.  After we returned the parts, we headed out to the outside area and grabbed 10 bags of stones, some weed and feed and a few plants.  At the last minute I spotted a pile of cut sod pieces.  I thought that would be perfect to fill in the big sandy area in front of the manifold.  I snagged twenty pieces.

It was late afternoon by the time we got back but we wanted to get everything knocked out since Ali had to work on Sunday.  We dumped the stone in quickly, it really filled out nicely as you can see from this picture.  We put the sod in place and we were done with that area.  Ali and I quickly planted a flower and rose plant that she bought.  I turned on the sprinklers to water the areas where the sod and plants were placed.  The sprinkler project is officially complete in my book.  All that is left is for mother nature to fill in the dirt with grass growth.  Without a doubt it was the largest scale project we ever tackled.  It really turned out well.  The complete progress picture page can be seen here all 100+ pictures worth.

We were both pooped from a very laborious Saturday and relaxed by watching 300.  Not to say 300 was a relaxing movie, it was just the opposite.  300 is the ultimate guy movie, it is chock full of violence, glorified, blood spewing, head chopping, body piling violence.  Almost every single character in the movie was ripped to shreds physically, it was amazing.  I suspect that the wall to wall six pack abs were somewhat digitally enhanced.  I was surprised Ali stuck through the whole flick as violent as it was.  Needless to say, I enjoyed it, the action was pretty much non-stop, the special effects were very impressive and who can’t get behind a 300 versus a million storyline?  I would give it a B+.

Ironically, on Sunday when I was out in Nicki’s area reading my Men’s Health while she played, the cover story was about the guy that was the main character in the movie.  I hardly recognized him.  I was surprised to read he was only 37, he came off as older in the movie.  Although he was still in good shape, he was nowhere near as big and ripped as he appeared in the flick.  They described the workout routine the guy followed to prepare for the flick, it was staggering.  He did this transformation in four months time.  The routine went something like this (I may have the order slightly messed up), each exercise was one after another with no rest period.

25 pullups, 50 pushups, 50 deadlifts with 135 pounds, 50 wipes (a bizarre move where you lie on the floor, holding a 135 pound barbell overhead and then lift your legs up and touch the plates on each side), 50 one arm overhead lift and presses with a 36 pound kettle ball, 50 more pushups and then finish off with 25 more pullups.  I may have missed something in there but as you can see it is beyond grueling.  After shooting the movie, the guy was so broken down from the workouts and other training he had to do for the flick, he didn’t workout for 8 months straight.  He has ADD that makes him go hardcore on something and then just as suddenly go equally hardcore off.  Anyway, it was very interesting to me to see how hard he trained for this flick.  Next month I may try to do a much less impressive cycle, mimicking what he did to a much lesser scale, talk about shocking your body.

On Friday I received my new dual tuner Tivo and had it hooked up the same night.  I had some initial problems with the unit seeing the other Tivo on the network but that was fixed the next day after it took a software update.  So now I can browse the recordings on the bedroom Tivo from the sofa and browse the living room from bed.  Watching recordings from a different Tivo takes some planning.  What happens if you choose to view a recording on a remote Tivo, it actually transfers the show to the loal Tivo.  So once you initiate the transfer, if you don’t give it a few minutes to get ahead of your viewing, you will wind up not being able to zip through commercials because you will constantly be catching up to what is transferred so far.  (it allows you to watch the show as it is being transferred)  It’s a minor quirk.  

Right now in the bedroom, I actually have two Tivos piled on top of each other.  The reason is the original bedroom Tivo is a Series 1 model that doesn’t have the ability to communicate with the newer Series 2 models.  So the old one will stay in place until we view whatever is left on it that we wanted to see.  After that it will be wiped and sold on ebay.

My Sunday was pretty laid back.  Ali had to work so I hung out, watched some TV, played some WoW, played with Nicki and did some housework.  I did Mom’s taxes for her on Sunday.  Ali picked up her stuff on Friday for me to do it.  Mom was pleased with her refund, more than 4x what she got back last year.  there’s nothing like unexpected money to put a hop in your step. 

I’ve been pretty busy at work recently, hence the fewer than normal blog entries.

 There is nothing spectacular to report.  This weekend I plan to try to put the final touches on the sprinkler project.  Doing so will involve bringing more fill up front to fill in around the manifold area and then levelling and rebuilding the patio stones bordered with landscape timbers rig I had going before.

I downloaded 300 the other day, I can’t wait to see it.  It certainly looks like my sort of movie.

According to tracking information, my dual tuner Tivo is supposed to arrive today so I will have time this weekend to get everything all hooked up.

Eh just don’t have much more to say, nothing is really flowing, happens sometimes. Oh, here is something, the day after I got the cats back from the vet, there were two big piles of throw up on the carpet.  And for good measure, yesterday when I got home I got to clean up a skid mark from Buttons.  She enjoys pulling her ass across the rug. It was fantastic.

I finally have accumulated enough Tivo rewards points from using my Tivo Mastercard to get a new Tivo.  I ordered the 180 hour,  Dual Tuner model on Monday.  This will enable us to do some rocking TV tivo magic.  With two Series 2 Tivo’s we can let them talk to each other and transfer shows between them.  So if the bedroom Tivo snagged Survivor but I want to watch it out on the big screen in the living room I can transfer it over to the living room tivo and vice versa.

The DT Tivo has two built in tuners that allows you to tape two shows simultaneously, a handy feature when two of your favorite shows have overlapping time slots.  In theory you could be taping two shows while watching a third one live.  Yes you certainly are devoid of a life if this situation occurs often but knowing that capability is there is nice.  I can’t wait for it to show up.

 With my upgrade to Vista I got a hot interface and a truck load of new features.  I also got more than a fair share of broken applications.  Most of them are no big deal but one that I rely on pretty heavily is my VPN client that allows me to connect to our office network from home.  This client is not compatible with Vista and probably will not be until they release their next version which is months away.  So I am going to be trying a rig job solution. 

I downloaded Virtual PC 2007 from Microsoft (it’s free by the way)  Virtual PC allows you to make little virtual computers inside your computer that can be used to run multiple operating systems inside one another.  I had messed with it a few years back.  It downloaded and installed very easily.  The only drawback I saw so far is the virtual pc is not exactly speedy.  I took me over an hour to get Windows XP on it.  Tonight I am loading service pack 2 on it and then I will try my VPN client in the virtual PC.  I am crossing my fingers.  It would give me a nice workaround for any Vista-unfriendly apps I used before.

The gift certificate I got Ali for the dance studio is turning out to be one of the best gifts ever.  She is using the gift certificate to go to adult ballet classes once a week.  She loves it.  She bought some ballet dvd’s and a decent arsenal of ballet gear.  Every week when she comes home she is excited to show me what she learned that week.  I am thrilled she is enjoying it that much.  It keeps her happy and keeps my ass off the ballroom dancing floor. 🙂

I got an email from my Dad reporting that he arrived safely back in New Mexico.  He finally got to meet the latest addition to his family, a puppy my step mom picked up shortly after he left on his trip.  They now are a two dog family.  I saw pictures of the puppy, she is very cute and her name is Clara.

Ali took the two cats to the vet yesterday for their checkups.  At this point I would prefer to not even bother but Ali was being the responsible pet owner.  As always it was a mess.  Spook, just like she always does, puked and shit in her cat carrier on the way there.  I picked them up after work and paid the 200 dollar bill.  The health report, Buttons, who only has 4 complete teeth left has severe gingivitis (which she has had for a long time), she also has some bumps on her body (who cares) Spooky is 5 pounds overweight, she had a disgusting, matted, dandruff filled chunk of hair cut out and also has some plaque build up.

The clerk is telling me all this, as she is I am shaking my head like I care when I really don’t.  In the past they gave us this liquid for Button’s gingivitis.  We were supposed to give it to her by mouth.  Well after some ridiculous episodes of trying to force it down her throat where we wore much more than she swallowed we bagged it.  Trying to administer any sort of oral medicine to Spooky is a death wish, she would bite the F out of us. 

So I thanked the clerk and lugged the two cats home.  On the ride back Spooky was making sounds that sounded like they were from an alien and then proceeded to throw up, again, in her cage.  I just really want them to pass on.  After Ali told me of the excrement ordeal from the morning, she finally agreed with me that this was it for the vet trips for the cats, what is the point?  We are prolonging something we in reality want to come quick.   If there was such a thing as a cat retirement home, they would both be in it, and we probably wouldn’t visit much.