All posts by Duf

I am very good about changing the oil in my vehicles. It’s always done every 3-4000 miles. I used to do it myself when money was tighter. However once I became more enviromentally conscious I started feeling bad about dumping the oil back behind the shed so I began having quick lube places do it. The last time I took my truck to the quick lube they showed me my transmission fluid. It was muddy in color. Trans fluid is usually reddish in color. Yuck. The truck has almost 60k on it and I never had the trans fluid touched. Well I plan to drive this truck into the ground so I want to keep things running well for as long as possible. So I went back yesterday to have them “flush” the trans.

The quick lube place makes me a bit nervous. Each time I go there it seems like nearly their entire workforce has turned over. I was greeted by a young guy with gold capped teeth. He actually was there 2 weeks ago so he must be one of the veterans. I told him I wanted the trans flushed. So the crew went into action and I could immediately tell then never flushed a toyota trans before. They struggled getting the skid plates off and fumbled around for awhile until they were actually ready to begin the flush. The flush machine has a little window where you can see the fluid through. When the flush started, the window was basically black. After about 15 minutes of flushing with fresh fluid, the window turned to a nice bright red. However after the flush, the boys were busy tag teaming an oil change on a full size dump truck in the next bay. As I was waiting, I was talking to the truck driver and got some interesting facts from him.

An oil change on the dump truck takes 40 quarts of oil, the oil gets changed every 10,000 miles and it costs about 300 dollars per change.

The truck is going to need a new set of back tires, they will cost approximately 2400 to replace. The front tires run 800 a pair.

He said the reason there are so many dump trucks lined up in the road on my commute is the ordinance that won’t allow the trucks onto the road until 7 am. After that they all pour out at once and create the mess. (made mental note to make sure I am out the door by 6:50 am every work day)

So anyway, eventually one of the service guys remembered I was standing there and came back over to disconnect the machine and put stuff back together. I drove off, content to finally address a service need of the truck that I had put off forever.

Yep I blogged about my trans flush, noone said blog entries had to be good.

More and more tsunami videos are popping up, these are just incredible. You need bittorrent to download most of these.

Nothing thrilling, insightful or captivating is coming to mind right now, so what else is new. Here is some big news, I added 2 more Hot Wheels cereal badged cars to my live web cam view. The Lucky Charms hot rod wagon and the Trix Rabbit convertible. They join an already crowded picture featuring my bobblehead Spidey.

Sometime this week I need to try to pull out and organize all of my unwanted stuff to be sold at a school based garage sale this Saturday. I am hoping for better results than last year when I sat out in the chilly weather for 6 hours to make 20 bucks. Everything will be firesale priced. I am assuming there will be a lot of sellers there so that should help generate better traffic.

Since I got my Sirius radio, my listening routine at work goes like this, listen to regular radio until Stern goes off the air between 10 and 11 then the regular radio gets shut off and I listen to the NFL station all day on Sirius. It’s hardcore NFL talk 24 hours a day and somehow I don’t tire of it. For some reason, it is more enjoyable for me to have talk radio on in the background instead of music, normally.

I haven’t flown my RC planes in months, maybe 6 months or more. I’m not sure why. It’s odd how a hobby can fall in and out of favor. I had no real negative experience with it and my last flights were aerial photography runs that generated some really cool pics. For whatever reason, I just have no inclination to charge up the batteries and go out and fly. I’m too busy leveling my WoW character anyway.

On the way home from work last night I was cursing a SUV that was just hanging in my blind spot as I wanted to pull out and pass. If you are in the passing lane, you are supposed to be passing cars, not trying to invent a new sport, synchronized driving. Well finally I slow down enough so I can get behind this dope and it becomes apparent why he is driving like he has blinders on with cruise control engaged. He’s talking on his cell phone paying no attention to the environment around him. Then as I swing behind him I see he has a Bush bumper sticker and a Jesus fish on the back. Ah a triple crown winner, annoying dope.

Since I raised the red flag last week when I noticed I gained a few pounds from my holiday cookie hoarding, I did additional cardio work at the gym, tried to resume a more normal eating pattern and expected my weigh in last night to show I knocked a number or two off the scale. Instead I gained another 2 pounds! 4 alarms, sound the siren, this is getting out of hand. So more severe measures have to be implemented. Just these few pounds make my clothes feel different and I don’t like the feel. By the end of the month I plan to be back to my pre-holiday fighting weight. It seems like the cookies apply weight in a delayed fashion that sneaks up on you, damn them to hell.

After scratching the surface of World of Warcraft I am discovering just how deep the rabbit hole goes. There are thousands of people whose reality is more grounded in a virtual kingdom than the here and now. Last week I found out that a common practice is selling “virtual” in game goods on ebay. For example, you can buy in game gold for real dollars. I saw tons of auctions selling 100 in game gold for 50 bucks. There are tons of auctions like this and tons of buyers for the auctions. People also sell in game characters that they spent countless hours creating. These sell for big bucks, 500 dollars is a median number. This phenomenom is amazing to me. Paying real dollars for virtual perks, unreal. Oh yea my warrior is up to Level 13 🙂

The weekend was ok. We did the Xmas undecorating on Saturday. As predicted, the tree removal was a bummer. As I carried it out to the ditch to it’s final resting place, I tried to not look at it as I tossed it. Yea it’s weird, stupid or whatever you want to call it but it’s just part of my quirks. I watched some of the playoff games. I never would have picked the Vikes to beat the Packers but their improbable win means they will be coming to Philly. I like the Eagles chances. Hopefully they are sharp and not rusty as I fear.

We saw Ocean’s 12 on Saturday as well. It was a good flick but I think I enjoyed the first one more. The novelty of having all those name actors together sort of wore off and there were more plot misdirections than I cared to make sense of. Just rent this one on DVD.

This is my first 5 day week of work since early December, bummer. We have next Monday off though, have to love government job’s.

As I am on the ARC swinger at the gym, I am watching one of the news channels. They intro a piece as an American woman who doesn’t know what happened to a family member in the tsunami. “Aw that is really tragic” I thought to myself, so I maintained my focus on tv number 5 out of 9 to see the interview. Well I figured it was the woman’s husband, brother, sister, kid or something like that. It’s her aunt. Ok, still sad. As the interview continues the following is revealed, this is an aunt the woman hasn’t talked to in years, the woman only knows she was in Phuket based on a postcard that was sent to her uncle before the tsunami. The aunt worked as a stewardess for an airline for years but the woman had no idea which one. They posted a pic of the aunt on a plane saying they hoped to have someone identify the airline company. My intrigue by the end of the story turned to contempt. To me, this woman simply wanted face time on national TV to lament the potential loss of an aunt she didn’t even communicate with on an annual basis. Ridiculous.

I’ve been plugging away at World of Warcraft this week. My human warrior character is up to Level 9 (out of 60 possible) I have never played this type of game and I am still undecided on my feeling about it. The game is incredibly complex, incredibly large and requires incredible amounts of time if you want to progess through it. Some aspects of it are a bit slow and boring for me. I’m doing a lot of repetitive killing right now and I didn’t enjoy having to walk 5 minutes to get back to my corpse and revive after I was killed by animals one time and a kobald miner another. However the interaction with literally thousands of players opens up a near infinite number of possibilities so I think that is the draw. I’ll keep plugging away and see if I drift closer or further away from it. The time requirements really can whack things out of balance, something I try pretty hard to maintain.

I just got finished watching some of Spiderman 2 on my Gameboy SP. My own personal, dvd viewer, NES and GBA game system. I almost want to go on some sort of trip where I can whip out my little pocket sized piece of entertainment power. Technology rocks.

I’m feeling a bit down. One of those periods that will pass but makes me feel negative about most things while I am in the middle of it. Perhaps it is a post holiday letdown, something I normally go through. All of the Xmas interior decorations are still up (will come down this weekend), including the tree. It’s just sitting there with nothing under it but the derailed train, just waiting to be stripped and tossed in the ditch. I hardly look at it now, knowing it will soon be disposed of like a piece of trash. I stopped watering it last week. It’s a strange feeling, coldly disposing of something that was chosen carefully, delicately decorated and then cherished till Christmas day. Now it has transformed into an eyesore. Somewhere in there, are some parallels with life that I’d rather not think about. It is depressing some how.

Fittingly, I forgot to mention a senior moment I had last week at the gym. At the gym they have paper towel dispensers along with a cleaning solution mounted on each pillar in the building to clean equipment after you sweat all over it. The holder for the cleaner is like a holster, sort of. Well after doing my last set on a machine, I grabbed a paper towel and the cleaner spray bottle, cleaned the equipment and as I was doing so I sat the cleaner bottle on the floor. I then proceeded to throw out the paper towel and put the cleaner back. However when I went to take a drink out of my water bottle and found the cleaner in my hand, I realized I had put my water bottle into the holster on the wall. I laughed out loud, and didn’t bother to look around to see if anyone noticed my screw up. This stuff happens more often than I am comfortable with.

Our New Years Eve was spent at a local dinner theater seeing 42nd street. Our table sat 8 and the other 2 couples there were another family. The one guy looked awfully familiar to me. I never got his last name although I found out he owns his own jet and pilots it back and forth from here to NYC. So he was uber-rich. We tried several times to get him to drop what he did for a living but were unsuccessful in doing so. I know I know his face. All I know is his name is Steve.

The show itself was very good, lots of cool tap dancing and singing. As a New Years eve bonus, the performers came out and did some cabaret style acts leading up to midnight. Then about quarter till midnight, something went wrong. I heard crowd noise up front. As I looked, I noticed some stuff falling from the ceiling. Not a lot but a piece here and there. Seconds later that mumbling gets loud and a few people stand up and start yelling FIRE, FIRE, kill the lights!!!! There is some panic as people realize that something with the lights has overheated and there were embers falling from the ceiling! The people right under it cleared out pronto and a number of them headed for the exits. I was nervous as images of that nightclub in Connecticut that went up in a flash, shot through my mind. However, we stayed put and watched anxiously as they killed all the lights, brought out a high ladder and shot a fire extinguisher into the ceiling panels, sending a cloud of smoke cascading down. Damn! After they were sure it was out they tried to restore order. Some people stayed out but they flicked on a different set of lights and finished the number that was playing and finished up just in time for the countdown. It was memorable. As we left, the fire department showed up just to make sure the building wouldn’t burn down.

My wife’s parents came down and as a surprise her 91 year old grandfather tagged along. It was huge surprise for Ali since he always said there was no way he would come to Florida. He has one of the most regimented routines I ever saw and has never been this far away from PA IN HIS LIFE, so this was a major thing for him to come down here. We went out to dinner everynight but one while they were down, which wears on me very quickly but it was the major form of entertainment for them. I like talking to Pop Pop, he has good stories and hearing his 91 year old opinion on things is funny and interesting for me. One of the things that he brought up several times was the idea that we should belong to a church. Normally I would dismiss that and even get angry if someone would tell me that I should go to a church but Pop Pop’s reasoning was too funny to get mad at. He said that when you join a church, they mention that you belong to the church in your obituary and it’s nice to see that listed. 🙂 Hahahahaha. The idea of joining a church so when I am dead I have a nice obit was insanely funny to me but when Pop Pop said it I just shook my head and said “Yep…”

By the end of their stay you could tell Pop Pop was very anxious to get back to what he is familiar with and I totally understood. 91 is an odd time to do something you never did before in your life but I was glad he did. They all came over to our place on Sunday, their last full day here and we had a big meal and watched the absolutely horrible Eagles game. I understand wanting to rest players but I question the wisdom of getting hammered by 2 inferior teams the last 2 games of the year. The players that are being rested will not have played for close to a month by the time the Birds start the playoffs. I think that goes from being “rested” to “rusty”. Plus losing and playing so badly can not do anything but erode your confidence, especially considering the couple wins they scratched out prior to the losses demonstrated increasingly anemic performances. If they come out and lay an egg in the first playoff game, Andy Reid will be CRUCIFIED. I just think they shut it down too early.

I am glad the holidays are winding down. I have eaten like a pig over the holidays (mostly xmas cookies) and my gluttony has put 4 or 5 pounds on me. I’ll resume my regular diet and crank up the gym intensity to help melt those pounds off ASAP. Even those few pounds make me feel like schlub. It helps motivate me to fix things before they get out of hand, a good thing.

The Tsunami news is just more disasterous everyday. I saw some GRUESOME pictures of the recovered bodies that give a hint to just horrible this is. Dying in water does horrendous things to the human body. I now wish I didn’t see them as they are burned into my memory.

I played a lot on my GameBoy this weekend. I am committed to getting through the NES version of Punchout. I used to LOVE that game and was able to get all the way through with ease before. I am struggling trying to emulate that performance again. Right now I am stuck trying to beat Bald Bull the 2nd time you face him. I also broke down and installed World of Warcraft. The game is HUGE. It took almost an hour to just install it. By the time I got it installed I only had an hour or so to actually play. Within in the first few minutes I was challenged to a battle by some guy that saw I was an obvious noob. He froze me in place and then turned me into a sheep, poof. After he had his fun with me he lead me around a bit and tried to offer me a few tips. I wound up in an area that was being attacked by high level Orcs that slaughtered me multiple times. So I laid down and signed off to fight another day. I am trying to run before I can walk, I need to learn more of the basics before I am taking on anything major. I can see how the game becomes so addicting for people. I think many of my upcoming evenings will be spent trying to “level up”.

2004 ends today. It has absolutley rocketed by. Let me start by listing our major purchases of the year:

Timeshare
88 Corvette (sold 6 months later)
2 pieces of investment land
Diamond Earrings
Gas powered generator
Pool Heater
2 Lawn Tractors (1 sold immediately)
Elliptical cardio machine

Damn you would think we were loaded. Hardly.

04 was also the year that I started playing volleyball tournaments on a regular basis again, something I hadn’t done since I lived in PA. It didn’t quite capture the glory of the past but was a satisfying season none the less.

The number of projects this year has been less than years past. The biggest by far was the tiling of the 2 bathrooms. Some of the other noteworthy projects were the weedblocking and mulching of all the landscaped areas, the addition of fill dirt to raise some low areas, installed a pot rack, planted a few new trees, set up a new mosquito trap, made our “laundry center“, put in a 3 foot rock border around the entire house, redid several landscape borders, built steps into the lanai doors, along with various smaller organizational projects. Hmmm, well it seemed like I did less.

04 was a hurricane nightmare. Having our first hurricane wasn’t enough, it was followed by 2 more within a month and a half. The experience was a bit scary and the panicking, hoarding mentality of the masses in such events is very frustrating. We spent 2 and a half days without power during the middle of summer. It was very stressful, very annoying yet very memorable. Certain moments stick out like sleeping in front of a fan, on the sofa bed that is powered by a dc inverter that is plugged into the Tacoma that is parked out back , running all night. The “shower” I took by getting in the pool to get wet, going into the shower, soaping up and then having Ali be my showerhead by dumping water on me with a plastic cup she filled with water from the tub. And most memorably, the 30 minutes when we got power pack midway through the outage in which we threw out all of our ice, emptied the tubs and undid most of our hurricane prep only to have the power click off again to set me off into a near uncontrollable obscenity filled rampage.

The hurricane trauma sparked a rash of hurricane prep spending. We now have a generator, a window AC unit and plywood window shutters for the next time big wind comes our way.

We had our first full year of dog ownership. We both love Nicki more than we thought we could any pet. However the other 4 pets we own have taken such a backseat I feel guilty about the lack of attention they receive.

We had a full year of being in Invisalign braces. By now, we were supposed to be close to being done with the treatment. Instead, we will be lucky to finish by the end of the upcoming year. It has been frustrating, yet my teeth are getting straighter, slowly.

My mom has spent her first full year living on her own in Florida. She is grinding out a living and continues to make minor steps towards more success at her job.

04 was the year I lost “Itchy”, my 36 year old blanket from childhood that I never got rid of. Ali’s efforts to find it were futile but amazing none the less. She was kind enough to create “Scratchy” in an attempt to fill the void.

We had a lot of visitors in the past year. My sis, my bro, Troy, Cheryl & Dave, Shannon, Alison’s parents, Alison’s Pop Pop, Mike, Suzanne and Lauren all have been down in the last calendar year.

My technology purchases continued in earnest this year. Topping the list are my Sirius satellite radio rig, the Roomba, the Sony all-in-one LCD remote, the 2nd hacked Tivo, the DVD/VCR combo, the new XBOX, the Gameboy along with numerous smaller things.

This year I really have been buying and selling a lot on Ebay. I am continually amazed at what I can unload online. I am hooked.

I picked up a number of regular readers of the blog, mostly friends and family but also a few that never actually met me. Gnome, Jenny, Keener, Mike, Torrin, Rich and Joe have made some interesting contributions in the comment sections. To date I am working towards 8000 views.

On a personal level I continue to work hard at staying as healthy as I can. I weigh close to 10 pounds less than I did last year. My fear of aging and death motivates me to hit the gym harder than ever before in my life. I try to be more introspective, more patient and more positive although I often fail to do this as consistently as I would like to. When I allow myself to slow down and take a look around, I realize how lucky I am and how far I have come from the kid that had no idea what was going to happen with his life and didn’t have a clue on how I would get by. I’m proud of what has been accomplished so far yet frustrated by my inability to decide what I want my next step to be. I love living in Florida but I am bummed out about my inability to create any close friendships with people down here. I continue to become increasingly sensitive to the world around me. I get emotionally involved with issues and things like the tsunami disaster really make me stop and take pause, where as 15 years ago I wouldn’t have given it 5 seconds thought. I actually read a few books now and then and ENJOY it.

For 05 I am unsure of what excitement will unfold. There are a few things I would like to have happen this upcoming year. I want go on another cruise. I really enjoyed the first one and have been itching to go again. Making dog arrangements is the biggest hurdle with that. I want to complete Nicki’s dog run and make that the last of the major projects for the forseeable future. I want to spend more time enjoying the fruits of my labor and less time laboring. A big goal is trying to get Ali working only part-time. Doing so would help some of the other goals, hurt some of the others but I think it would be a good thing for both of us in the long run. The idea of kids will probably be decided upon by the end of the year, one way or another.

Tonight we are ringing in the New Year at a dinner theater with Alison’s parents, a different way to do it. It’s too bad that Dick can’t make the call for the New Year’s Eve show but Regis is a good substitute. I hope everyone has a great upcoming New Year and thanks for taking the time to read this drivel once in awhile. Peace.