All posts by Duf

After work last night I went to Home Depot to pick up a couple things.  One of those things was a new air filter for the AC system.  You would think that after replacing this filter for more than 5 years, every 3 months, I would remember the size of it.  Nope I got a 20×24 filter and needed an 18×24.  F’in stupid.  I looked more at the sprinkler equipment aisle.  I snagged a little how to brochure put out by rain bird.  My next steps are to determine the flow rate of our well pump and call the electric company to ask how deep they bury their electric cable and if it is encased in pipe or not.  The way I am going to route the pipe will go right across the buried electrical, telephone and tv cable.

The state inspectors showed up at Ali’s work yesterday, which meant I was stranded there until she got done with her meetings.  I wasted the time entertaining Nicki and surfing on Ali’s work computer.  We didn’t leave there until like 7, a pain in the ass.  Today we drove separate.

I watched the new Apprentice last night.  Even though they shot this season over a year ago, it’s new to me.  They made a bunch of changes to freshen up the show.  This season is shot out in LA, a big change from NYC.  The winning team each week gets to stay in a luxurious mansion, the losers have to stay in the backyard in a TENT.  The winning project manager each week remains the project manager each week until they lose. Also, the winning project manager gets to sit on the other side of the table and help pepper the losing team with questions in the boardroom and offer Trump their opinions.  There is no more Caroline, instead she is replaced with Trumps daughter.  I think most of the moves are good ones and add to the show.  Yanking Caroline for Ivanca Trump is a bad move.  Noone takes Ivanca seriously, Caroline was much more of an authority figure and had a presence about her that demanded respect.  The show should be decent this year.

Wow the Gators beat Ohio State, who woulda thunk it?  I didn’t watch one second of the game.  Unless Penn State is involved, I just don’t get into college football at all.  I think it is because it is a pain in the ass for me to follow since college rosters roll over so much year to year.  It’s just annoying for me to follow.

Pretty much every Rocky movie featured some sort of bizarre or grueling training exercise all the way back to Rocky I with the raw egg drinking, meat punching and chicken chasing. I remember most of them like tying his left arm to his side, doing situps while some skinny little black guy was smacking the shit out of his stomach, wind sprints on the beach with Apollo Creed, lumberjack training in Siberia where he chopped wood, pressed horse carts, outran KGB cars in the snow, did pull downs with a net full of rocks and did a bizarre ab exercise where his body was totally straight but the only thing on the ground were his shoulder blades.  Sadly, Rocky V had nothing along these lines because Rocky wasn’t an active fighter in that flick. Just another reason it sucked.

Well Rocky VI got back to the tradition.  In this movie he did a lot of heavy lifting.  In one scene they show him pressing 315 above his head shortly after he squatted a ton more than that.  But my favorite training regimen from this one was where he took what looked like an empty beer keg and picked it up over his head and slammed the shit out of it into the ground.  It just looked and sounded cool.  Oh yea he punched meat again in this one. 

 Rich sent me this pic, pretty cool. Dawkins is nuts.

Wow only a two day weekend, how lame.  As predicted it was pretty busy but enjoyable all the same.  On Friday night after work I stopped at Home Depot to pick up some filters for our reverse osmosis system.  The water in the big jug I take to work everyday was stinky last week so I figured the filters were ready to be changed.  While I was there I meandered over to the lawn sprinkler system to check things out.  It was filled with all sorts of sprinklers, drippers, valves, connectors and tools used in installing a sprinkler system.  I was doing some very loose adding in my head and I figure I should be able to install a system from between 500-1000 bucks, closer to 500.  I really am excited about the prospect of getting one set up but hesitant to put the shovel in the ground.  It’s going to be a big job and will require a decent amount of planning to make sure it works.  Planning isn’t my forte.  Normally if I can’t draw the thing up and execute the plan from my brain I don’t do that well with it. Well I am pretty determined to make a go of this.

We had the neighbors dog Zoe all weekend and actually will be dogsitting her until Tuesday.  As usual, she was entertaining yet very needy as always.  She snuggled under the covers every night except last night for some reason.

Saturday we pulled down the decorations, mostly.  I pulled down all of the outside lights while Ali worked on the inside.  I commented to her how it seemed like such a shame to take down the Christmas tree, it’s still nice and greeen and still smells good.  Ali offered up a novel idea, don’t take it down.   Hmmm there is an idea.  So although we stripped all the ornaments and lights off of it, the xmas tree is still standing in our dining room.    I know the cats are quite happy we left it up, they love to lay around/under it. We will see how long it holds up, we are at about a month and counting.

Saturday night we finally got to see Rocky Balboa.  We didn’t even think about the lunacy of trying to go to the movies on a saturday night during season.  Wow what a mess.  The line for each ticket booth was at least 25 deep.  We had a thrifty night in store as we had a coupon from the entertainment  book that allowed us to get two tickets for 6 bucks each instead of the normal 9.50 and we brought our Regalator cup that lets us get a large drink that normally costs four or five bucks for one clam instead.  The long wait at the ticket booth meant a short wait inside the the theater waiting for the show to start.  We were lucky to snag the last empty pair of seats in the top row.

Wow did I love this movie.  It was what Rocky V should have been.  Rocky V was a very disappointing way to end the series, it was the worst film of the bunch by far.  However Rocky Balboa made up for it.  It is a throwback to the original movies where it was more about the story of Rocky and where he has been and how it got him to where he was now.  It was filled with great Rocky one liners along with simple truths that made you take pause.  I knew how it ended so it wasn’t a big deal to me and to my surprise, it was appropriate and a perfect fit.  Stallone did a good job of shaping up for the flick.  He was much more physically impressive than Antonio Tarver whom they got to play the role of the current champ.  Tarver was soft and doughy.  That was my ONLY complaint, they should have gotten a better champion for Rocky to redeem himself against.  They brought back Pauly and the black guy that was originally Apollo Creed’s trainer for this flick.  Pauly had some great lines in the movie.  The one line that made me laugh the most was when Rocky said something about preparing a nice italian meal for someone at the restaurant he own’s.  Pauly said “Rock, there ain’t anything that special about italian food made by a bunch of mexicans…”  Anyway, the movie was GREAT and it gets an A+.  Rocky rules and for all the abuse Stallone has taken over the years for some of the flicks he has done, he got it right with this one, which he wrote and directed.  Go see it.

Late Saturday night I got another treat when I got to witness the Cowboys go down in flames.  It was a weird game with all sorts of improbable plays and calls that were examined by replay.  Ali was seconds from sleep when Romo had the game winning field goal slip out of his hands.  All of a sudden she springs out from bed and leans towards the tv, amazed at what happened.  She was thrilled to see the Cowboys lose but felt bad for Romo, imagining how terrible he had to feel.  I’m sure he felt bad but tough shit.  He got way too much credit way too fast.  The fact that he is in the Pro Bowl is ridiculous.  Good ole TO hauled in all of two passes for twenty some yards.  I love it.

Sunday morning Ali and I did a two mile run.  We have not been enjoying typical beautiful Florida winter weather.  Instead it has been extra warm with temps brushing up against 85 degrees and humid.  To be honest, it is annoying, I am ready for some cooler weather but instead it has felt almost summerlike.  Well it made for a tough run.  Ali struggled through out but finished.  There is a 5k this Saturday that I would like to do, we’ll see if Ali is up for it.

We had friends of ours over to watch the Patriots/Jets game and part of the Eagles game.  They just had a baby boy 6 months ago.  Ali typically goes over to their place on Fridays to walk with the baby and mom.  Zoe was all about being right next to the baby.  She thought the baby toys were dog toys so we had to keep calling her away. 

I came into this Eagles playoff game with a different disposition than years past.  When the Birds were in their string of NFC championship failure runs, I expected them to get there, I expected them to perform and when they didn’t it was a severe let down.  This year, I wrote the season off after Donovan went down.  That loss to the Colts was so amazingly bad I had zero hope for a turn around.  So what has happened has been a complete surprise and a total bonus to me.  So even if they would have lost to the Giants, I would have been disappointed but not crushed as I had no thoughts of them even sniffing the playoffs a month ago.

 The game was a tight back and forth battle but you always had the impression that the Eagles were in control, well until they allowed the Giants to get a first down late in the game after being at 2nd and 30.  When they converted that first down after Sean Consadine whiffed on what should have been a sure tackle I was screaming.  The D just choked.  I was worried that it was setting up for defeat.  Even though I went into the game with a lax attitude, after investing emotionally in this game and knowing the Birds should win it, I was not ok with a loss at that point.  Luckily the Eagles methodically drove down the field and nailed a field goal in wet muddy conditions to end the Giants season.  I guess it pays off to have a sure handed kick holder huh?  It was a win that showed some character.  I think they have a good shot against the Saints.  When they played them earlier in the year, they had that game wrapped up but collapsed right at the end.  Hopefully they learned something and have a bit of a chip on their shoulder and play angry. 

When I was at the grocery store I saw they had Starbucks ground coffee.  Well I was almost out of my normal Dunkin Donuts grind.  I knew I liked Starbucks Cafe Mocha drinks so why not try some Starbucks coffee?  Well I like French Vanilla DD coffee.  Starbucks had a bag just  named “french” so I figured it was something similar.  Well when I cracked the bad this morning and took a whiff I knew it wasn’t french vanilla.  It didn’t smell good at all.  Well I held out hope it would taste better than it smelled, no such luck.  It tasted horrible.  I choked down a cup but already made a mental note to go to DD after work to get a bag.  The starbucks stuff is just horrid.  After drinking it I felt like a had breath that could melt paint, gross.

I just happened to punch c-1024 into ebay over the weekend and was thrilled to see it come up as one being for sale!  This little device would allow me to fully control everything with my new logitech remote.  The bad news is there are four days to go on the auction and there are three bids on it already.  From perusing message boards I know there are others that have been desperately seeking this discontinued product for their setup as well.  I have a feeling this little device is going to go for big money.  I am willing to pay handsomely for it, it is just a question of who blinks first.  I have a bid sniper order set up to come in with my bid with 5 seconds to go in the auction, I am just worried that the number won’t be high enough.  I will have to keep my eye on it. 

It’s amazing I get so much blog material from the gym.  At the gym there is an older, sorta stubby guy with thinning hair up top and facial hair to compensate.  He is nice guy and normally when I am in there he is always talking to someone.  One time I made the mistake of talking to him.  Don’t get me wrong, the guy is interesting to talk to and engaging but he is like a tractor beam once you speak to him.  He locks on and will not let go.  That one day I missed half my workout because of my inability to remove myself from conversation with the man.

Well today when I got in, the guy was there at the station right next to me.  Luckily he already ensnared someone else, a tall younger, almost Canadian lookin guy.  He had his ear for the ENTIRE 45 minutes I was there.  They did nothing besides mouth exercise the entire time.  As I walked out the door I looked back just to make sure, yep, still blabbing away.  I mean how does the guy get anything done with his life if he talks that much?

One of the annoying things about going to my little shithole gym is the shopping center I have to drive through to get to it.  I have to inch through a good 1/4 mile or more of stupid pedestrians performing repeated acts of daring/stupidity.  Today on my way back there was a woman that crossed in front of me.  She was a chubby hispanic woman with one kid on her hip and two more in tow.  The kid was on her right hip and I was approaching from her right. The kid on her hip blocked her view to the right.  She NEVER bothered to look my direction at all she just sauntered right across the road. It is one thing to be a stupid person and endanger your own life, but to endanger your kids lives by being too f’in lazy to turn your head 90 degrees is another level of idiocy.  Every single day I growl during that part of my tip.

My mother and father-in-law are pulling out this morning headed back to PA.  This week we didn’t see much of them as they were doing their own thing.  The one day they took a day trip to Key West and didn’t enjoy it.  Then Wednesday they went to the Edison Ford Estate in Fort Myers and loved it.  We met up with them for dinner after work.

We went to a newly opened Carraba’s.  I wanted to check it out.  We got there early, like 5:15.  We were a bit flabbergasted to see a big crowd of gray haired prunes already waiting outside.   Damn snowbirds have flocked back already.  I couldn’t believe it was that full on a Thursday at 5:15.  When we got inside it was snowbirds wall to wall.  Well even with the crowd they said it would be like a 35-40 minute wait, not horrible. 

Instead of giving out the standard pager thing to let you know when your table is ready, they hand you a little piece of paper with a number on it.  They have a few electronic boards spread around the place that flash the numbers up.  I thought that was a bit stupid.  You had to be constantly checking the number board to see if you are up, if you happen to miss it you could be sitting there forever.  This Carrabba’s was bigger than my favorite one and the layout was much more an open space.  It was nice but not as nice as the older location.

We passed the time indulging in the two for one happy hour.  Ali’s parents seemed to be the happiest we had seen them the entire trip.  They said how they really enjoyed their time down here and in fact may have been the best time they had in decades.  I was glad to hear they enjoyed things.  We had a good meal.  I picked up the check since Ali’s parents paid for nearly everything we did together.  I threw a 10 dollar tip on the 72 dollar meal.  After doing so I thought it may have been a bit light, a little under 15%, but our server was polite but not spectacular and I figured compared to the tips he gets from most of the snowbirds, I still would appear generous.

We went back to Ali’s work to pick up Nicki and said our goodbyes to Ali’s parents.  It could be awhile until we see them again.  If a year passed I would not be surprised.  All in all it worked out ok.

This weekend is gonna be busy for me.  I have to come in to a new branch to check up on a state install, take down the christmas decorations and various other to do’s.  The big Eagles game is late Sunday, I can’t wait.  Ali said yesterday she wanted to get to the beach but she may have to just settle for pool time instead until this branch install is done in a couple of weeks. I am starting to investigate the logistics with installing a lawn sprinkler setup. Oh we plan to go see the new Rocky movie this weekend too.

There is a woman that I see at the gym quite often.  I would place her age somewhere in her 40’s.  She is good looking, is in good shape and looks to have the mandatory fake boobs required for Naples trophy wives.  However the woman is always in a hurry.  She normally walks into the gym shortly after I get there.  She always walks at a blistering pace, into the lockerroom and back out in a flash.  Then she hops on a treadmill where she sometimes runs, sometimes walks fast.  She is on the treadmill usually no longer than 20-25 minutes, then sometimes she will quickly do abs or a machine or two.  Then it is back into the lockerroom, changed and shot back out the front door well before I am ready to go.  I have tried to engage her in conversation once or twice but she was very short and nervous in response so I have pretty much dropped it.  Well that is all and good but that isn’t the interesting part.

I am pretty sure she is involved with someone in a less than honorable fashion.  I started noticing months ago that although she would always leave before me, when I got out to the parking lot she was always parked next to a Chevy Blazer with a shaggy looking guy in it.  A few times I saw them embracing.  I am 95% sure one if not both of them are married/involved with someone else.  Perhaps it explains her nervous demeanor.  Then today on the way to the gym I saw her and him parked in a different spot, away from the main parking area, between buildings and then after I was done (and she had already walked out) again I saw her car hanging around in a different spot.  She is probably breaking some poor sucker’s heart.

It’s funny how you pick up elements of your parents personalities, even without trying.  I think most of my personality traits mimic my mom but I have a few from my dad for sure like my general annoyance with the world, full moon mood swings and a flash temper that can be quite ugly. 

When we were at my mom’s for New Year’s, I mentioned how once I wake up in the morning I have a hard time falling back to sleep.  My mom is the same way.  My mom generally likes to keep busy, as do I.  My “get whatever has to be done, done” attitude comes from her as well.  Neither of us like to put off a job that is at hand.  Get it done, then relax. There are many little quirks that I seem to have inherited from mom.

One thing mom and I do not share is the same viewpoint on health as she has been a smoker for as long as I can remember.  I remember trying to hide her cigarettes as a kid so she wouldn’t smoke.  In a weird way, her smoking is probably a big reason I never started because of how much I wanted her to stop.  Sadly my brother picked up smoking as well once he entered adulthood.

  She also is not a real believer in routine exercise outside of whatever she gets at work.  However when she was younger she was much more active, she used to run, farther than I can now and also do stuff like play tennis.  She developed some back problems and instead of  moving to different types of exercise that didn’t aggravate her back, she sort of resigned herself to just not exercising.  She always has been a pretty careful eater so she never fell into the oh so typical adult fat ass stage. 

It’s funny how I never really saw any similarities with my parents until I was well into adulthood.  Maybe you just don’t think about these thiings when you are younger, there are just better things to do. 

I saw in the news that Barry Zito, a pitcher that just signed with the Giants was paid an incredible 126 million, 7 year contract.  Wow that is a hell of a lot of money.  I hardly follow baseball anymore but I know who Zito is but what I didn’t know were his 2006 stats.  The guy was 16-10 with an ERA a little under 4 (3.83)!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What in the hell is going on?  How does a guy with those stats command that sort of money?  It is crazy what has happened to the salary structure.  Someone figured out that he will earn approximately 5,000 for each PITCH he throws.  That is just disgusting.  I rememeber when I followed baseball passionately in the 70’s and early 80’s, a “good” pitcher had an era of under 2.50 and had 20 wins.  I can’t believe this guy got paid so much.

My extended New Year’s holiday went well I would say.  Ali’s parents have been down for over a week so a lot of that time was spent doing stuff with them.  After work on Friday we ran home, dropped off the dog, and then went right back out to meet them at Watermark for dinner.  When we got there, there was a formidable crowd forming and we didn’t see Ali’s parents so we took a buzzer and sat down at the bar and ordered drinks.  Shortly after we got them, Ali’s phone rang, it was her parents.  They were already sitting down.  Haha, they got there 20 minutes earlier than us so they put our names in already, good timing.  I had the chicken stir fry.  I deemed it a healthy choice but by the end of it I wished I ordered something else.  It was good and everything but it basically was very similar to the South Beach Diet frozen meals I eat most nights of the week.  After dinner we stopped back briefly at the condo where they are staying to see it.

On Saturday I tried to do the majority of the chores I had planned.  Ali went into work for a few hours to try to get more on top of things.  I debated if I wanted to take down all the lights, tree and decorations over my four day holiday but decided to leave the stuff up for one more week.  Saturday night we had more plans with Ali’s parents, this time going to the Naples dinner theater to see a show called “Sugar”.  The food was good and all in all we only moderately gorged ourselves on it.  The show was surprisingly good as well.  It had a Bosom Buddies type element to it and I found myself laughing quite often.  The only complaint I had were the damn chairs.  They are just not meant to have a human beings ass sitting in them for the better part of 5 hours.  They are very uncomfortable and for at least two thirds of the show I was constantly adjusting to move pressure points around, I was really uncomfortable.  I remember having the same issue the last time I was there.  It was a late night and we didn’t get to bed till damn close to midnight.

New Year’s eve we originally had plans to go on a murder mystery train in Fort Myers but Ali’s mom wasn’t into staying up that late.  It was no skin off my back because the tickets were a ridiculous 125 a head anyway.  We didn’t need to burn more cash.  During the day, Ali, my mom and her mom went shopping while I sat home and geeked out for the majority of the day.  Her dad was driving around Fort Myers in the afternoon.  Then everyone except my mom came back to our house for pizza and to watch the Eagles play. 

Ali’s mom really like watching the Eagles play even though she doesn’t really understand much at all about football.  The game was entertaining to watch.  The pressure was off as the Cowboys blew a game to the stinky Lions earlier, locking up the division title for the Eagles.  As a result, Andy Reid sat the majority of his starters.  Even with doing so they STILL beat the Falcons.  It was an entertaining game.  Man, things are just going too damn well for the Birds.  I can only hope the roll continues this week against the Giants.

Well Ali’s parents weren’t into staying at our place to watch the ball drop, they pulled out around 8’ish.  Ali and I were both exhausted from staying up late the night before but we managed to stay up to watch the ball drop.  I was motivated to see how Dick Clark was this year after seeing his very sad showing last year after his stroke.  I was even sadder to see that he really was no different this year.  He just can’t talk anymore and sounds borderline retarded.  I understand that it is all because of his stroke and he is trying to prove something by continuing to do the New Years broadcast.  Personally I just wish he would bow out.  Dick Clark made his mark as being a dynamic and energetic speaker over the last 40 years or so.  To see him in his present state is just very depressing.  He should gracefully exit.  It sucks to see him like that.

New years day was pretty laid back.  After Ali got up we went to the track to do a quick 1.5 mile run.  Running on the track outdoors with wind is much more difficult than putting in time on the treadmill.  The run went well and according to the gps we did like a 9:39 pace, not bad. My knee felt a little tender yesterday but feels fine today. I would like to get my wind up so we can do the Tour de Cape 5k in two weekends but I’m not sure if that will fly or not.

I got a surprise call from the people that called me last week about the van.  Evidently even though I cancelled the ad weeks ago, it still is showing up online, oh well.  Well anyway, these people were in the area so they asked if they could swing by to see it.  They were very nice.  The guy was thorough, going over the party van with a fine tooth comb.  A little extreme for a vehicle that costs less than the downpayment a lot of people make on cars today.  I made no attempts to sugar coat things.  I told them what I had fixed on it, any warts I knew of and welcomed them to drive it, which they did.  When he came back he had some minor complaints but seemed to be more or less pleased with it.  Well then the wife notices some fluid on the driveway.  Closer inspection revealed it was red.  They guy peeked under and I joined him.  It looked like the fluid was coming from the steering box that was replaced twice in the span of a month.  I told the guy that it was replaced and I would certainly take it back to be fixed before selling it.  Well I think that fluid was enough to turn the tide.  He said it seemed like it was priced right and was nicer than others they had looked at but he said he would call me back if he wanted to pursue it further, which translated, probably means “Thank, but no thanks”  Oh well, regardless, I have an appointment to take it to the garage Friday to have the leak addressed.  There must be a bad batch of steering boxes out there.   

Later on New Years the whole gang met up at my mom’s for New Years day dinner.  Mom did the conventional pork and sauerkraut thing with some soy braut for Ali.  Mom’s place is small and it was surprising the 5 of us could fit around the table.  There was just enough room for the plates and silverware, most of the food was stationed on a nearby bakers rack.  It was a good meal.  Mom doesn’t have a dishwasher which would equate to a real pain in the ass cleanup in my eyes.  However mom ripped through the dishes and had most of everything done before we left.  We got back home and were exhausted from the 2 prior late nights.  I still stayed up late working on a couple things I wanted to get out of the way so my Tuesday chores were lighter.

On Tuesday Ali had to work but she left Nicki home with me.  I had a list of things to do, most of them involved running errands.  I figured Nicki would enjoy the ride so I brought her along.  It wasn’t hot out so she would be fine hanging in the truck for a little bit.  First we stopped at the gas station.  I needed to put air in my tires and I was lazy and didn’t feel like washing the truck by hand so I ran it through the carwash there.  Nicki gets a bit freaked out by the sights and sounds of the carwash and she hid behind the seats on the floor.  I didn’t realize that the station was a Mobil until we put the receipt into Quicken that night.  Exxon/Mobil is on the top our hit list as far as gas stations to never patronize.  They are as ungreen and greedy as you get in the oil business.

The next stop was the bank.  I needed to do something very simple, exchange a twenty dollar bill for smaller denominations for Ali to send to her best friend’s daughter for her birthday.  To go out and run my errands I simply threw on a baseball hat.  As I was standing in line becoming mildly annoyed when I realized they have ONE teller working, handling both the counter and drive up, I saw a sign posted in front of each teller station that went something like this:

In order to better assist our customers and provide better security we ask that you remove the following items when entering the bank.

– sunglasses

– hoods

– hats

also please do not use cell phones.

 I think I am missing one thing on the list, but of course my eyes focused in on hats since I was wearing one. I immediately got angry.  How is this serving me better by the bank making the assumption that I am there to rob them, so I need to remove my hat so they get a clear mug shot??  Of course I immediately felt like my dad when he had his personal crusade against teller rope systems.  He took offense to be routed like cattle and refused to frequent a bank that used them.  Well anyway I am running scenarios through my head.  Was the teller going to refuse to serve me until I removed my hat?  I had the speech mostly written in my head that was I going to use if she had the guts to ask me to remove my hat.  I finally got to the teller and all my angst was for nothing as she changed out my 20 and didn’t mention my hat.  It’s still a really stupid policy.  Next they will be telling you to turn your pant pockets inside out and stand in line with your hands over your head.

So I was off again.  After a quick pit stop to drop off one of the live Christmas trees at my mom’s I stopped at the dealership to cancel my extended warranty.  Again, I had some scenarios acted out internally where I would be interrogated about why I was cancelling and I would smugly reply that I never would have thought about until the dealership gave me a hard time about 76 bucks.  I would tell them to thank Miguel for opening up the possibility to me.  Instead, I found the woman I talked to last week about cancelling.  She was a nice young girl who was very polite and professional.  She asked why I was cancelling, I told her I could get it cheaper elsewhere and that was the end of it.  She filled out the cancellation paperwork while we made small talk and efficiently handled everything.  I was out of there and none of the original culprits were any wiser.  I am looking forward to their commission checks getting adjusted. I also discovered today that I can actually wait a couple years until I even have to worry about picking up the exteded warranty.  As long as I get it before the factory warranty expires, I am good to go.  So it is a win/win/win all the way around for us, thanks Miguel!!!

After a brief stop at Sam’s we were back on the road to home.  Once I was there I attended to the other things I wanted to get knocked out and then vegged most of the rest of the day playin wow.  Happy 2007.

I added more pictures to my December 06 pics page.  Christmas day, a hawk that was hanging out at our place, the Nicki blanket I got for Ali for her birthday and my mini tree farm can all be seen here. 

I have another 4 day weekend ahead of me, I could really get used to this.

Why did John Edwards decide to run for president?  I mean what a waste, no one is going to vote for the guy.  Watch him talk, he blinks 5 times a second when he speaks.  I think the guy is about as phony of a politician as you can imagine.

Well it’s that time again, the time where I wrap up the year with whatever highlights I can remember and look ahead to the year to come.  It’s always hard to figure out where to start with these posts so I suppose the easiest thing to do is examine the goals I set for 06 and see how I did.

Getting the pool cage rebuilt – mission accomplished, although it took much longer than expected and the company that did it was not very professional.

Replacing the water equipment and pool pump – yep

Travel more, go to Vegas with Keener – No and yes.  The Vegas trip with Troy was great, but other than that, the only notable travel was our extended trip to PA with Nicki in the party van in June for the Rumble and a trip to Orlando with Ali’s family.  Part of the reason for that is Ali made a lot of trips up north in 06 to visit Pop Pop so that cut into vacation time as well as bank accounts. 

Pay off the mortgage – nope.  That goal was based on the real estate market continuing to appreciate, allowing us to sell our two lots for enough to wipe out the mortgage.  Unfortunately, the prices have leveled or tailed off a bit.  To make matters worse, we have had our taxes on these two lots increase 1000% since we have owned them.

Run a 10k – The most I ran on a training run was like 5.75 miles, a bit under a 10k.  Ali ran more than a 10k on a few runs but it wasn’t non-stop.  Then in June after the rumble I wrecked my knees.  At the time I thought running was history for me.  Luckily I have healed up and have started up again.  However a 10k isn’t a big goal for me anymore.  Running fast 5k’s will do just fine thank you, and probably will keep me healthier.

Play volleyball – again, my injury resulted in only playing two tournaments all year and again I thought those were the last two I would ever play.  However I think I will be able to take the court once again, if I can run, I can play volleyball.

Jump out of a plane – I didn’t get around to it, for no particular reason.  I still want to do it.

Kid decision – a lot of our circle is having kids, both friends and family.  When I see them I think they are very cute and from all accounts I have gotten from each new parent, the experience is wonderful for the most part.  However if you put a gun to my head, my answer would still be no.  Everyone tells me I would be a great dad and I think I would do a decent job, but to me that isn’t a reason to have one.  I would almost feel hypocritical contributing to the ridiculous overpopulation issues the failing planet faces, plus my negative viewpoint of the future makes me feel like I wouldn’t be doing a kid a favor bringing him into this mess anyway.

Ok so let’s see, what else was 06 about?  Well it’s about being old. I can not believe I have been around for 39 years.  How did this happen?  I can remember clear as day sitting with my mom in Ocean City as a little kid asking her about getting old and dying and stuff.  My mom was probably 12 or 13 years younger than I am now when that took place.  Of course logically I know to complain about it is a waste of effort, a waste of thought since there is nothing I can do to slow down the process, yet, I do. 

In many regards I am holding up better than many people my age.  In a perverse way when I see someone who is a physical wreck that is my age or younger I sort of celebrate inside.  For the most part I am healthy although there is no escaping some of the joys of aging.  I already get these mysterious pains out of nowhere, I heal more slowly, and I hurt myself sometimes doing mundane, simple things. Every morning I slap this creme on my face to supposedly keep it looking healthier and younger. Eh I don’t see much difference. I really do try to fight my never ending sorrow about being firmly entrenched in middle age.  Sometimes I do a decent job of accepting it, but not often.

Speaking of physical well being, mine had some big potholes this year.  At the beginning of the year I was feeling as good as I had in years.  I could run, play volleyball, and go to the gym with very little physical issues.  Hell the one day I played in a volleyball tournament AND ran a 5k.  Then I got greedy.  I started supplementation with creatine again, thinking that I could run, play vball AND get bigger and stronger at the same time.  I wrote off the problems I had years ago after supplementing with creatine as just bad timing.  Well in short order after supplementing again the injuries returned.  I got stronger but it came with a price.  All my joints hurt from moving heavier weight and the extra body weight I gained was no good for my knees.  After playing the Rumble in June my one knee was practically immobile for almost a week.  It turned out I had a meniscus tear.

After that diagnosis I had the idea in my head to shelve impact activities forever and just get big and strong.  I continued pumping creatine and added Endothil to the routine.  My strength matched all-time highs with my bench again topping out at 275.  However the pains in my joints just kept getting worse and one day a light clicked on.  I decided that it was more important to me to be able to be active, to be able to run, play volleyball, rollerblade than be some muscled up guy that hurts all over, all the time.  So I cut out the creatine, cut out the endothil, cut back the weight and tried to get healthier.  I lost the 10 pounds or so I had put on and to my surprise my knees started to regain their pre-injury resilience.  I am pretty set on maintaining that perspective on my physical fitness.  I will always be in the gym but I am more worried about functional fitness/strength as opposed to big numbers.  I think my conversations with a chiropractor I know from the gym helped convince me what was the better path to take. 

Besides the knee problems my health wasn’t bad except for the flu/cold thing from hell that had me feeling bad for almost three weeks.  I am just getting back to normal now.  I should have gotten that flu shot. Oh and I had a weird strain that I thought was a hernia but was later diagnosed as a strain.  That is just finally going away as well.

Each year I am amazed when I go back to see all the financial expenditures that take place and this was no different and probably set new records in terms of personal spending.  Early in the year we picked up the party van, originally with the intention of using it to cart around Ali’s family in May when her family came down and then later in June for the Rumble.  The party van was a big 2006 money sink.  After the initial outlay of cash, it sucked close to another 3k out of our wallets for repairs.  I was looking to sell it and had what I thought was a serious buyer but through a comedic series of lies, excuses and bullshit from the buyer, the van is still in our possession and at this point is slated to takes us out west to see my dad/sister in 07.

The pool cage rebuilding process burned close to another seven thousand dollars from our coffers.  I think the cost to rebuild it was ridiculous and the fact that it took 9 months to get it back up even worse.  We dropped a lot of money on Ali’s trips back and forth to PA to visit her ailing grandfather but some of that got reimbursed.  My trip to Vegas cost some bucks but I did well enough gambling out there that I call it a wash. I put together a new computer in 2006 and got a hot 22 inch lcd monitor for my birthday, more $$.

  Then of course the biggest and most exciting expenditure of cash was for the 07 Camry hybrid.  For at least two years Ali talked about getting a hybrid, namely the Prius.  The Prius is cool but it is just damn small.  Well when the Camry hybrid came to be it really sparked my interest although the price tag shoved it to the back of my mind.  Well In November after a long, frustrating sale process we took ownership of one.  A combination of financial sacrifice and expected funds from the sale of the van (which never happened) was what made me pull the trigger on it.  It put a big dent in our reserve funds but we absolutely love the car and can see us owning it till it literally falls apart. Oh, we spent way too much at Christmas, just like every year.

Howard Stern came to Sirius this year.  The shows have been fantastic and having satellite radio has made all the time we spend driving much more enjoyable.  I discovered Bubba the Love Sponge as well.  He is actually dirtier than Howard but he can be damn funny as well. 

2006 was a rough year emotionally with Pop Pop getting ill and finally passing away in late November.  It was extremely difficult for Ali and hard for me as well.  He was my psuedo grandpa.  The last time I saw him was in June, however Ali was back and forth at least a half dozen times to see him in the last year and a half.  When we went up for his funeral it was brutally emotionally painful.  I broke down repeatedly, something I avoid as much as possible.  The images in my brain from that day will stay with me forever.  It was very admirable how Ali did EVERYTHING she could to comfort him as his time wound down. 

My hobbies for 06 remained the basically the same, WoW.  It is amazing to me that I am still playing this game, a solid two years now.  How can a game keep someones interest for so long?  Play it and you will see.  I generally have things toned down and stay up late far less than I did in the past but there are still times where I go into a WoW coma and play till my eyeballs fall out.  I still fly my rc planes a bit, play my xbox occasionally but WoW is basically it.  In a couple weeks the expansion to WoW comes out which will add another huge pile of things to do in game, I may play this till retirement.

My work situation is much the same as it has been for the past 6 years.  It’s stable, pays well, normal hours, low stress and for the most part, uneventful.  I feel a bit stagnated, off the leading edge of tech.  There just is no real need for me on the forefront of the latest and greatest anymore but I still feel I should be.  The last training class I went to was for Windows Server 2003.  Well I plan on taking some courses this year and there are a lot of things coming up at work in 07 that will keep me busy. My job is a big reason why some of my discontent with aspects of living here in Naples are mostly swept under the rug.

Ali’s job has been stressful for her as always, much more so lately.  She is looking forward to the day she can leave that place which may actually happen at the end of 2007.  She will be fully vested in her 401k contributions then.  After that we aren’t sure what her work situation will be.

In 06 we became closer with our neighbors.  They are good people and we are lucky to have them right next door.  Having a next door dog sitter has been a blessing on many occasions through out the year.

2006 was a light year for visitors, Ali’s brother was down for a bit and I can’t think of any besides that.  I think in 2007 we will have a lot more people coming down.

We lost a pet this year.  No, not Buttons, the diabetic cat that has nine lives, it was Maggie our cockatiel that I more or less hated.  Even though I thought I had no feelings for the annoying bird, I was very sad during her final hours.  It was very touching how she snuggled with Ali as she was dying.  In a weird way she lives on through Tuki who still mimics all of her sounds.

There were very few house projects going on this year.  I basically maintained what we have which would be more than enough for many people.  I feel kind of lazy for not doing more though. 

I FINALLY got done with my invisalign/braces this year.  I am pleased with the end result but not 100% satisfied.  It took twice as long as they said it would and the one tooth that I am most obsessed with has moved back a bit since the braces were taken off. 

Unlike 2005 which was hurricane hell, the predicted monster storm season of 2006 never materialized.  It was a very quiet season and we are both very thankful.

Ali took on organizing a race which is scheduled to go off in early 2007.  It will benefit the local humane society.  She has done a fantastic job of getting sponsors and putting a lot of thought into what will make for a good race.  I hope it all turns out well.

 I’ve had various crusades over the year against various businesses/individuals/things. The lunk alarm, time share assholes, car sales personnel, quick oil change shops, bullshit van buyers, and pool cage builders comes to mind.  It seems this is one aspect of my personality that I adopted from my dad who always had some business on his hit list.

On the technical side I snagged a Treo 650 from my brother-in-law.  It has put me onto a new level with being plugged in 24/7.  It is an awesome bit of tech.  I moved all my web sites to a new home this year which has opened up a lot of options for me hosting wise.  I am hosting/developing a site for the Naples Half Marathon, a pretty big deal.  The blog is closing in on 20,000 views.

So what are the goals for 2007, let’s see.  There are some home improvement goals, one old one new. I still want to get the counters in the kitchen redone to either Corian or Silestone.  I think it would make a big difference.  I also want to do some interior painting.  After 5 years it is time to get some color on our all white walls. Color can really transform the look and feel of a space. 

We plan on driving out west in the van, with Nicki hopefully early in 2007.  I would love to go to Vegas again but we also talked of doing another cruise.  It will probably have to be an either/or situation, not both.  We have tons of timeshare points to use.

From a fitness level, I am just hoping to get back to where I was in late 2005/early 2006 where I was able to basically do what I wanted without a huge fear of hurting myself.  I am close to getting back there.  No more numerical goals of pushing a certain poundage off my chest or over my head.  If I stay in good shape, don’t develop a belly and feel generally healthy that is good enough for me. I want to run 5k’s and play some volleyball.

I would like for us to get back into a financial pattern of slowly but consistently increasing our financial reserves instead of the steady bleed that happened this year.  We make plenty of money to do this, it just takes so conscious spending decision making.  I have no big “things” in my head to buy as of now.  I really need very little.

In conjunction with better financials, I hope by the end of 2007 Ali can walk way from the job she dislikes so much.  To me an ideal situation would be for her to become a contractor dietitian where she sets her schedule and works as she sees fit.  Her ideal situation would be to not work at all.  If we sell our land we could get into a situation where the need for her to earn a lot of money would be reduced a bunch.

I want to take more time out to do things out of our routine more often.  I want to go to the beach, walk a trail in the multitude of wilderness areas, see things I don’t see everyday.  I need to force myself to do these things, I always wind up appreciating it afterward.  It’s good for you.  Far too many of our weekends follow the same general guideline, do housework, hang at home. Jumping out of a plane is a good example.  The world surely looks different as it rushes at you from 10,000 feet.

Of course the most important goal is to continue to try to find that elusive path to contentment while balancing it with my need to keep moving.  It’s a precarious balance that I have yet to find, but I am always searching for.

I hope your 2007 is full of realized goals, satisfying relationships and new experiences.

I forgot to mention my gym results.  They weren’t bad.  Numbers-wise I am weak but I think that is more from being sick for almost three weeks and being creatine/endothil free.  I didn’t fatigue as fast as I did the last time I gave it a go so all in all it was a positive experience.  Now I need to get my running cranked up again.

There have been two funny gym characters I saw the last two days.  Yesterday there was visualization man.  He was tall, skinny, dorky lookin guy with a q-tip full of tight curly black hair.  He almost looked like one of the Brady kids.  Well anyway he was over at the squat rack.  He did very little squatting and a whole lot of preparation.  He was constantly closing his eyes and mimicking the exercise. Then he would bend over at the waist, hold his arms out at 90 degree angles and move them back and forth like he was doing the robot. He would hop back and forth on each foot like a boxer getting ready for a round.  It was really weird.  I mean the guy only had 135 on the bar, it hardly required a zen-like trance to accomplish.

Then today we had Sir Speedy.  He is an older guy, skinny, long mustache, longish straggly hair, late 40’s, early 50’s maybe.  He looks like he got off the time machine from 1974.  Well his thing is to do ridiculous looking, ultra fast exercises with weight so light women would laugh at him.  He does this hilarious move where he grabs a 5 pound plate in each hand and pumps his arms up and down with blinding speed.  He gets on the bench and bounces the empty bar up and down on his chest at least 25 times.  Everything he does is ultra-light, ultra-fast and ultra-silly looking.  Eh, he isn’t a fat ass so it must be workin for him.