All posts by Duf

I already posted my wacky dream and that is on top of an already busy weekend. Let me first mention that I am glad Ronald Reagan finally passed away. His last 10 years were an Alzheimer’s hell that he didn’t deserve to endure. He was the first american president I remember that actually got my attention and made me care about things. He served us well. Rest in peace.

This Saturday I again traveled to the east coast for another volleyball tournament. This time it was Deerfield beach, maybe a half hour away from Singer Island. Again the sand was dark but it was less coarse than Singer so it didn’t rip the feet as much but it was even hotter. When the heat of the afternoon arrived, I STILL felt the heat even through my sand socks. I had some minor blistering, nothing nearly as bad as Singer Island. It was a great beach with nice facilities. We played right next to the fishing pier. Our pool was tough, probably the toughest we have played so far. Our first match was over an hour long. We played younger guys. We were up 13 or 14 to 7. (game to 15) The final score of the game was 16-14. We barely hung on. In a nutshell they wore us out, it was 10 am and already hot as hell.

After the game I heard thunder and looked back towards the shore. There was a HUGE gray cloud forming right off the beach. One of the residents referred to it as the “Deerfield Dome”. Luckily the shore breeze kept it inland and we only got a little rain out of it. I have some pictures of it that I’ll post soon.

We had a 4 team pool so only 3 games were played. Our second match was another marathon where we got down big early to a couple of 16 year olds that were high school indoor players on their state champion team. They both could hit, dig, set, and pass with hardly an error. They were very tough. We battled back slowly and lost what turned out to be a tight game 15-13. So it came down to our last game, if we won we were in the playoffs, if we lost we might be out. We played a team that had a brazillian guy that wore speedos to play, it was visually disturbing but he explained that is the way everyone plays in Brazil, it was no big deal. Well we played well that game and took it. We were in the playoffs.

Our first playoff game we played a team that had one blatantly weaker, shorter player. We served him almost everytime. Plus, they served me a lot which helped us. We hammered them 11-2 in about 15 minutes. We felt confident and strong for the next game. Our semi-final put us back against the high school kids. Again we got down big early, and this time there was no come back. They killed us 11-2. I hardly saw any serves and my partner and I took turns making unforced error after unforced error. That trend continued in the 3/4 playoff game which we again lost badly 11-4 or 11-5. It was a disappointing way to end it but still 4th place wasn’t a bad finish out of 19 teams, can’t complain much.

Afterwards we grabbed a burger at a beachside grill and watched the Belmont. Everyone was shocked that Smarty lost. My partner noticed that down the stretch, Smarty’s jockey wasn’t whipping Smarty at all where as the horse that won was. Hmmmmm conspiracy theory creeps into my mind. There was so much money on Smarty, there was a fortune to be made if you bet against him. Who knows?

The drive back to the west coast was very scenic. Coming back across Alligator Alley there were huge thundercaps scattered across the horizon with various holes in the clouds that allowed all sorts of light to poke through. With the sun setting it threw all sorts of colors up into the clouds making it look as beautiful as any picture I have seen. One of those “I’m glad I live in Florida” moments.

Sunday, Nicki woke me up early as normal. I used the early start to knock out some of my to do list. We wanted to go see Shrek 2 in the afternoon, but there was a bunch of stuff that needed to get done before we could go. Before Ali rolled out of bed I had several things taken care of already. I was feeling a bit sore from playing the day before but not as bad as I thought I might. By mid afternoon everything was taken care of so we cleaned up and headed to the theater.

Shrek 2 was cute. I enjoyed it, some good moments but nothing that stood out from the original. The previews showed a number of animated flicks on the schedule. They all look very entertaining. I want to see The Day after Tomorrow and the new Harry Potter flick in the near future.

On Friday we picked up a used elliptical exercise machine from some rich lady that advertised it in the paper. It’s a nice Nordic Track unit. It takes up a good chunk of our bedroom but it will let us do cardio workouts while catching up on our Tivo recordings, kills 2 birds with one stone.

I actually think there are a few other things I wanted to mention that are escaping me at the moment. Look for some pics later.

Nicki woke me up a few minutes before the alarm went off, I was in the middle of a wacky dream that I wanted to record before I forgot it. It went something like this.

First part I remember, some old pristine muscle car I had (think it was a Nova) was sold to some guy by me. For some reason I was back at this guys garage. He had transformed it into a freakish ugly contraption. It was now 3 colors, had 2 mototrs inline towards the back of the car. One of the motors was not complete and was just sitting there but it did have a dual carb setup. The car itself looked like it came from a junkyard. The guy made more modifications like where the wheels used to be, he welded on some homemade supports and had mini spare tires on some shafts and one wheel was actually made of wood branches tied together into a wheel like thing. I think the car had 6 wheels altogether. He had added one thing that I did like. On the trunk there was a button you could press to make the trunk open and another one to press to make it close. The trunk itself was filled with a bunch of junk spare parts. When I sat in the car I noticed that the odometer had been changed. I confronted the guy and asked him if he switched odometers, he sheepishly said yes. I said “Ah so you are are trying to cover up the fact that it had a salvage title…” Then I drove the car a little bit while the guy was walking beside me. The car ran like an out of tune tractor. I got out and again made mention of how shady it was to switch odometers. The guy asked me if I wanted to buy the car back. I scoffed at the idea at first. But then thinking how the guy paid me 5 grand for it, I threw out a number in jest. 500 bucks, I offered kiddingly. “Ok” the guy said. I was astonished he accepted. I looked at Ali (who just showed up somehow) She shook her head no. She said “200” The guy heard it and came back and said I’ll do it for 300. Deal. I had my old Nova back now with 2 extra wheels, a mid-dual engine design, a wood wheel and an automatic trunk. Scene 2

I am in my 6 wheeled Nova with a friend of mine, I can’t quite place who he is. The car feels very unstable because of the wood wheel so I am driving very slowly. We are on a high mountain road that is narrow and twisting. I tell my buddy the car has the wood wheel and feels unstable. Shortly afterward a blue chevette and some truck come rolling down the mountain and just miss hitting us as they roll over the guardrail and down the hill. I went even slower then. My friend and I agreed that for 300 bucks it was still a good deal. We could take the car down to the Immokalee drag strip and beat the hell out of it.
Scene 3

I am back in high school, not my high school but some high school. It is the first day of school. For some reason before school even starts, I am in the gym locker room getting ready. Everyone else was there too getting ready. I showered and put on an oversized Denver Broncos football jersey and a pair off zoobas pants. I didn’t shave and also put on a baseball cap down low over my eyes, gangsta style. I drove the Nova to school. I was running late and couldn’t find my homeroom. I was walking the halls by myself looking at a map. Finally I found a list that had my name listed. I was on the 4th floor. I quietly entered homeroom. The woman teacher chastised me for being late. I found my seat and was seated next to an attractive girl. She immediately started talking to me. She said that I had really changed and looked cute, she said I looked real “sporty” She then said her name was Helen I think. She said I probably didn’t recognize her from last year because she had plastic surgery over the summer. I told her that it turned out well cause she looked hot.
Scene4

Somehow next I am in the school auditorium watching some sort of talent show. The first act I see is a bunch of guys wearing matching purple outfits with hats dancing and singing around the stage. I focus in on a couple of them that are really bad singers and have no rhythm and think to myself how karaoke is best done in groups because you can hide how bad you are easily.

Nicki wakes me up, end of story. No analysis necessary, just wanted to share. 🙂

This weekend I am again traveling to the east coast to play in another tournament. It would be nice to go over the night before again but that would get too expensive if I made it a regular habit. I picked up my sand socks so I should be able to avoid frying my feet this time. The forecast calls for very hot and humid conditions with a good chance for thunderstorms so I may get a bit wet as well. Even though these tournaments take up half of my weekend and cut into my ability to get stuff done around the house, I really enjoy playing them. Probably the biggest reason for that is I know there is a train at the end of the tunnel coming in regard to my ability to keep playing. So I appreciate playing more now than in the past. It would be sweet if we would be able to win it all once this season. After this weekend, the next 2 weeks we have visitors, then up to PA to play in the Rumble.

I never did get a callback from the idiotic dog owners. However I did notice last night after work that the dog was not outside which rarely occurs. So maybe my call was enough to let her know that others are paying attention to her BS. We’ll see.

Our neighbors, 2 doors down are assholes. When we first moved in we tried to befriend them and realized over time they are just basically strange losers, ESPECIALLY the wife. They have had several dogs since we moved in. The first one basically was kept tied to something inside the garage 24 hours a day. They would have the garage partially open so it could go inside and out but it stayed tied up always. The poor thing would bark and carry on all the time, I felt bad for it. Thankfully they got rid of it (hopefully they put it up for adoption) Then these idiots decided to sort of adopt these little dogs but didn’t restrain them at all and simply let them wander about where we eventually found them and turned them to domestic animal services. We told these losers after we found the dogs that we had them and where the dogs were and they didn’t bother to go get them. Just as well, I wouldn’t want any animal to live with these morons anyway. Then a few months ago, what do I see? Another f’in dog at their place!! Great. This is what I am imagining is going on down there. The 2 kids want a dog. The idiotic mother doesn’t want a dog and in order for them to have a dog it has to stay outside. But this dog they don’t bother to restrain either, I see it walking all over the place, on our next door neighbor’s property, near the road, ON the road. However I never have seen the parents our kids outside when the dog was roaming freely so I was giving them the benefit of the doubt and figuring that maybe the dog is just mischevious and keeps getting out accidentally. Well last night I could not believe what I saw. The wife and the son walked out of the house, the dog was sitting right in the middle of the next door yard. The woman clearly saw it and got in her jeep anyway. Then, the dog sees them and runs over to the jeep all excited and is following the car as it is going out the driveway. The woman sees this clear as day as she is going slowly to not run over the dog (surprising) Then she is out on the STREET, as she is driving away, the dog is in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD, running behind the Jeep, I can see her watching the dog in her rearview mirror as she is pulling away. She LEAVES. The dog is in the middle of the road. I was by my truck, with my eyes locked on her as she drove by, hoping she would look at me so she could catch the laser beams that were coming out of my eyes. I was furious.

I had their phone number from way back when we were trying be good neighbors. The first number I had was disconnected. So I looked online for it. Another weird thing, I found their listing. It was for their address, their last name but both of the first names were different than what they told us their names were. What the F? Well anyway, I call the number, get one of those generic answering machines with a robotic voice. I leave a nasty message, repeating what I just saw and how I wanted them to call me to let me know what the deal was. I said I couldn’t believe they would exhibit such blatant disregard for the dog’s well being. Of course I did not get a callback. So the next time I see it happen I will walk the dog down there myself and confront them in person. If that doesn’t change things I’ll have them warned by domestic animal service. It is just insane that these people have a dog.

Our invisalign experience has soured. My wife has had the same set on for at least 2 months and everytime she goes back the ortho puts some more dimples in the aligners and tells her to come back in another 2 weeks. Alison’s supposed 18 month treatment plan will now be at least 2 years since she is so far behind. She went back today and again, more dimples, back in 2 weeks. She was very upset. So I called and talked to the guy. I basically asked him when do we get to the point where we stop doing the same thing repeatedly and try something else? He said if there is no progress at the next visit he thinks they will have to do something different. Something different means first recasting her teeth and sending out for an entire new set of aligners which will add at least another 6 weeks to the plan where nothing is happening. If that fails she could wind up with metal braces. But if it gets to that point her treatment plan could be extended even further. It really is becoming a fiasco. Luckily mine haven’t been as troublesome but I have been held back a bit on my plan as well.

There has been a wildfire burning out of control for about 5 or 6 days down here. It is close enough that at night I can see the orange from the flames lighting up the smoke. On the way home last night I had a flake of something land on my windshield, odd. As I continued there were more and more. I soon realized what was falling was debris from the fire. It’s a bit unnerving. It has been super dry down here. Luckily, the next 4 or 5 days have a good chance of rain. Most of our lawn is straw at this point.

We’ve had probably close to a dozen visitors since we have been down in Florida. Usually they stay a long weekend, 4 days or so. Other than my mom, I don’t believe anyone has been down longer than my brother and sister-in-law. They were here from Wednesday to Wednesday. In that span of 7 days or so I believe we saw them a total of maybe 5 or 6 hours. Pretty disappointing. I knew ahead of time that because of the way they scheduled to see my sister-in-laws parents the 3 days we were off work would result in us not seeing them much. I guess what really irked me was yesterday we had made tentative plans to meet them for dinner since it was their last night in Florida. I spoke to my sister-in-law in the morning and we went over several options so we could get Ali to dinner with us before she had to go to dog class with Nicki later that night. My mom and them were going to talk it over and get back to me soon. They wanted to go to downtown Naples and shop during the afternoon and then we would meet them after work somewhere. Well I never got a call back. Finally at 3 on a whim I called my mom’s place. Evidently they instead went to the beach and hadn’t even gone to Naples yet. So they would not be ready to eat dinner until late so that ruled out Ali from attending anything. I was frustrated and left it with my brother to call me back and let me know what they wanted to do. Shortly afterward my mom calls me and says they hadn’t even gotten ready yet, they ate a late lunch and they were just going to go to downtown Naples and shop and pick something up whenever they got hungry. That got me mad, first that they basically totally disregarded us and second Todd didn’t call me back, mom did. From what I gather, my brother basically refuses to question anything my sister-in-law wants because she is pregnant. She was steering the ship throughout the trip and if she wanted to do something evidently Todd felt powerless to question it.

Oh well today they fly back. I guess I am not all that surprised it all went down as it did. It’s just too bad.

My gym performance in recent weeks has been pretty anemic. I judge my entire physical strength on only one thing, bench press. I am a good 20lbs off my max of a few months ago. I am not sure if it has been my juggling of gym routines, my summertime vball schedule or just a cyclical thing that I feel off right now. It’s frustrating.

We had a new wildlife sighting this morning out at our place. Nicki was looking out the back door growling. I figured one of those bastard rabbits was sitting out there. To my surprise it was a baby fox. It was just standing about 10 feet outside the lanai, staring at me. It was very cute and no bigger than a small dog. By the time I got Ali up to show her, Nicki’s barking had scared the fox farther into the backyard so Ali couldn’t get a very good look. I heard there are a few bears out my way as well. Maybe that is next.

All weekends should be 3 days long. It just is the right amount of time. 3 days is long enough that you can do work on a weekend and still have plenty of time to relax. We need to pass a law.

On Saturday I played in a scramble golf tournament. It was hot as hell, mid 90’s and humid. I didn’t play well at all. The one enjoyment I get out of golf is hitting the ball hard off the tee. The rest of my game pretty much sucks. I hit very few clean shots all day. The few I did hit long were O.B. I hit nothing but irons at this point. For some reason I lost the ability to hit woods and have not spent the time at the range to fix it. I had a couple noteworthy moments. On a short par 3 hole, I was standing at about a 45 degree angle from the guy that was hitting, about 10 yards away. He hits and BAM, shanks the drive right off my chest! It scared me a bit but luckily he isn’t a hard hitter so no real damage was done. It was my fault I shouldn’t have been that close. Then later, around hole 16 I was just frustrated beyond words, I was hot, sweating like a pig and was just ready to get it over with. I tee’d up the ball and took an extra hard swing as a sort of stress reliever. At the point of contact, CRACK. The ball goes shooting off and so does the club head! These are new clubs, less than a year old. I didn’t drag the club on the ground, I hit it clean and it snapped clean off. The club head flew off about 50 yards ahead making a noise like a mini-propellor. It was a fitting conclusion to my golf day. No wonder I only play a handful of times a year.

On Saturday night Ali and I finally got to go to the beach theater, something we talked about doing for at least 2 years. It is located in Fort Myers beach. The reason we wanted to travel 45 minutes to go to a movie theater is because the beach theater is a movie theater/dining experience. You get to the theater 20 minutes before showtime and then a waitress takes your order and brings you your food. The theater we were in was small, maybe it held 50 people at most. There were a few tables and chairs set up in the back, then a bar-like row next and then finally a row of seats that have pull up tables like an airline seat. We sat at one of the tables in the back. The menu was decent, with food like burgers, fajitas, salads, sandwiches, deserts and even beer and wine. The food was overpriced which I guess should be expected but it was good. For the 2 of us, we spent 40 bucks not including the price of admission to the movie. Drinks were where they hammered you the worst. A pitcher of diet soda cost almost 9 bucks. However the experience was really cool. It was very different to be sitting there eating your meal, while watching a movie in a real theater. We both enjoyed it. A regular theater will forever seem shitty in comparison.

The movie we saw was Troy. It reminded me somewhat of Gladiator in the emotions it invokes. It was a well done movie that kept me thouroughly entertained even though it was more than 2 and a half hours long. My knowledge of Greek history is sparce at best so I found it very interesting to have the blanks filled in by watching the story unfold. The battle/fight scenes in the movie were outstanding. Brad Pitt’s physical transformation is pretty impressive. He always was in decent shape but he really bulked up for this role. I always hear people say that Pitt isn’t a great actor. I disagree. He has played so many different roles and I never saw him do a bad job with any of them. I think the best roles I saw him in were the 12 Monkeys, A River runs Through It and now, Troy.

On Sunday I did a bunch of stuff around the house and late in the afternoon we took Nicki to the dog beach. She did some more swimming and was spent afterward. On Monday I tried to keep it casual. We had burgers on the grill, spent some quality time by/in the pool, worked on the Vette a bit, did computer work and caught up on my magazine reading backlog.

I had a minor Tivo emergency over the weekend. My bedroom hacked Tivo popped up a message stating it only had a couple days of program data left, oh oh. Normally it has almost 2 weeks of data at all times. I jumped on a support group and found out there has been some changes that broke my setup. However after a few hours of research and updating I was able to get it functional again, whew crisis averted.

Can you believe it is June 1st already? I swear I just opened up my Christmas presents. Argh.

I have seen a lot of strange things for sale on ebay. This may be one of strangest. This is a CEREAL BOX from 1988! Who in the world would keep a cereal box for 16 years and more importantly, why would they do it??? Is there a secret underground cereal box trading community I am unaware of? 10 bucks for it, sooooo funny.

Companies shouldn’t outsource their helpdesk support to India. 🙂 (Actual call we got in our office years back)

It’s finally over. It seemed like American Idol has been going on forever, maybe that is because it has. Fantasia won and she deserved to. Her “yea, yea, yeas…” that she works into every song is annoying and having a 19 year old with a 3 or 4 year old kid isn’t exactly textbook for what we would want kids to aspire to. But she is a good performer and sings great so she deserved to win. Every year they squeeze more and more shows out of the process, I wonder when it is going to crest and lose it’s popularity. I think as long as they keep the same judges it will remain popular. The 2 hour show was ok. One of the most memorable moments for me was seeing the Fonz sitting in the audience. He looked like shit. Seeing the Fonz with a triple chin, gray, receding hair and all fat sucks.

I mention Tivo on here often. It really is an awesome device. Let me give some examples from last night alone. The AI finale started at 8. We had it set to record on Tivo. So instead of having to stop what we were doing right at 8 we let the Tivo get a headstart. Then around 8:45 or so we start watching. Giving it a headstart allows us to zip right through the commercials and/or boring parts and spend a little more than an hour watching a 2 hour show. It actually enables you to spend LESS time watching TV. Instant replay is useful. During one part of the show Simon said something that appeared to be funny but we couldn’t make it out. No problem, pause it, rewind a few secs and play it again. This also is a great thing for sporting events, no need to rely on the network to give you an instant replay. During the show someone calls, argh, how annoying! Not with Tivo, hit the pause button and whatever is on will freeze. You can freeze it for up to a half an hour and not lose a beat. Finally there is the set it and forget aspect of recording. The Tivo updates it’s schedules nightly so if an episode is scheduled to start at an odd time, the Tivo knows it and will adjust itself. Finally, the Tivo also uses the stuff you watch normally to help it record things on it’s own that you may also find interesting. For example if you are into cars and have previously watched or recorded some car shows, the tivo will search the listings to find similar shows and record them for you if it is not busy. You can also manually give certain shows thumbs up or thumbs down ratings to further tailor what the Tivo records.

Now on the downside, of course all this stuff isn’t free (unless you hack one) You can get a brand new box for around 150 bucks, you can get a used for less off ebay. The service costs either 12.95 a month or a one time 299 charge that covers the subscription for the life of the unit. Sometimes the Tivo can be too much of a good thing. For example my wife has too many shows set to record than she can reasonably watch, so our living room tivo is full of shows she will never get around to viewing. But the bottom line is even if you only watch a relatively small amount of TV, the Tivo can give you flexibility that is otherwise impossible. I have never heard of anyone that got a Tivo that was disappointed. End of infomercial. 🙂

Remember Adrienne Barbeau? Back in the 70’s and early 80’s she was a sex symbol. I remember thinking she was extremely hot. My co-worker gave me a copy of Swamp Thing where she had a starring role. It was an incredibly silly movie. But what I noticed was how she didn’t seem that hot. That afro hair was nasty and she wasn’t incredibly pretty. Apparently it was all about her body. Just like the Fonz, the years have been rough on her, check out a picture from then and now. Here is one from way back, not bad there. I think the movie that she looked the best to me was Cannonball Run.