Category Anything and Everything

As I mentioned Friday I had 3 offers on the sale of my house.  During the day the potential buyers submitted their “highest/best” offers as requested.  I was pleasantly surprised when I saw them.  Two of them were 5K OVER my listing price.  After comparing the two I signed off on one of them which has a mortgage rate tie in that is likely to be satisfied, so bam, my house was tentatively sold after being on the market for something like 4 or 5 days.  The one thing I did request in my counter was changing their proposed settle date two weeks later.  By doing this is it should allow me a 10 day period after closing on my new place to make the magic happen, moving my life 22 miles closer to my office.  I was happy about the sale of course but not ecstatic, something I will talk about more later.

I got requests for more showings on Friday for Saturday.  I asked my realtor if I should accept them.  She said it cant hurt as they could potentially wind up being back up offers.  I shrugged my shoulders and hit the ACCEPT button on both, one was Saturday morning and the other Saturday afternoon.  In between the showings I took my Sherman S out for a long ride from the house to North Collier Park and back.  I have not done that route in a couple years at least.  The primary intent was to gauge the comfort of the new pedals I installed on the Sherman last weekend.  During the ride I talked about the house transaction and a number of other things.

On Saturday night I started watching Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime.  I have had a number of people recommend the series to me since it launched and I just never got around to it.  I really like it so far, it almost reminds me of 24 in some ways or Homeland.

My Sunday was super, super lazy.  It may have been the laziest day I have allowed myself to have in many, many months. I binge watched something like 5 or 6 Jack Ryan episodes.  Since I have now become a short timer at my house it has shifted my perspective.  For the last 21 years I had a revolving list of things that could/should be done at the house because I was going to be living there for a long, long time.  Now that that time is finite, the list of must do’s sooner or later has dissolved for the most part.  Part of this has also been due to a marked change in me where I sort of just don’t give a damn about a lot of things that I once did.

In some ways it ties in with my embrace of change in the last year.  Things that once were a substantive part of my reality either are or will be gone.  To make that mental shift has required me to deaden certain parts of my reality.  The end result of this has been my saying in a lot more situations, “I don’t give a f…”  In some ways it is freeing and in other regards it’s sort of sad, if I’m being honest.

Ali, Shugs, and Ferdie showed up for our small and cozy Super Bowl celebration. It was the first time they have seen the painted and depersonalized version of the house.  The visual impact on both of them was significant  Ali went out of her way to make my mom’s chocolate cake, complete with EAGLES written on the top of it.  It had been probably 10 years since I had her version of the cake and she again did a great job with it.  It was so good I got a second piece.  My contribution to the “party” was making two Costco pizzas and providing chips, salsa, pretzels and alcohol. I drank maybe four or five beers along with some wine that was shared with both of them.

The game was exciting and close.  The Eagles defense really had no answers though for the Chiefs who did not punt a single time in the second half.  They couldn’t even register a sack on Mahomes, despite being the team with the most sacks in the league this year.  The way the game ended was pretty disappointing where a penalty was called that allowed the Chiefs to run the clock down to basically zero before kicking the game winning field goal.  Technically it was defensive holding but there are far more egregious violations where the flag would stay in the ref’s pocket.  It changed the potential outcome of the game.  You never want a ref’s call to do that, especially in the last two minutes of the Super Bowl.

Of course I was disappointed in the result but I was not devastated or distraught like I would have been in prior years.  I think the lack of having F’s to give was in play here as well.  It was a great season and I think the team has a bright future, I’m good with that.

I thanked Ali and Shugs for making the long drive to hang with me for the game.  It will likely be the last time the house will be used for entertainment.  There are a lot of lasts coming up, along with a lot of firsts.  I’ll try to focus more on the latter.

I have always considered myself for the most part to not have an addictive personality. I never smoked, only occasionally drink and never was interested in other drug use.  I eat reasonably (except when bulking), exercise routinely and try to make good choices. Although I don’t think I am an addict by nature, I think there have certainly been periods of my life when I exhibited addictive behaviors.  To me an addictive behavior is doing something repeatedly you know in the big picture is not good for you.

One example I can think of is all the time I spent with video games throughout my life.  There are certainly examples of playing games addictively, the most recent example being World of Warcraft the first couple years after it came out in the mid-2000’s.  I think addiction to technology is a real thing that I certainly have slipped in and out of during my life.  One other thing that I think I had become addicted to were relationships.

I have spent so much of my time since I was 17 years old in long term relationships at times I have felt like I don’t know how to function comfortably without being in one.  I think in it’s own way it is an addiction which could be good or bad, depending on who the partner is you are dealing with.  I have felt myself feeling like an addict where I am knowingly doing or thinking things that I know in the big picture or long term are not good for me. My inner sergeant eventually will grab me by the neck and scream enough until the course or behavior has been corrected.  It is an important thing to “maintain your frame” as a human being which basically means sticking by your core boundaries. If these boundaries are violated by others or even yourself, action must be taken.

Once again yesterday I had to leave work early to grab Elsa for another showing.  This time we filled up the Tacoma as well as grabbing coffee while we wasted time.  As usual I used my Ring cameras to let me know what was going on.  This man spent a TON of time at the house so I was pretty certain we would get an offer from him.  When I talked to my realtor later she confirmed that his agent said they would be submitting an offer.  The showing from this morning also submitted an offer although it was on a variety of contract that I wasn’t interested in.  So out of the five showings I have had, four offers have/will be made which is a good thing for me.  My realtor is supposed to let all four possible buyers know that they should submit their “best/highest” offer by 5PM today.  I would love to get a full asking price offer without any weird contingencies.

By the time I got back home and ate dinner it was obviously dark.  I sat down and played a bit of WoW, something I have been trying to do here and there as time allows. After playing maybe an hour I got a weird impulse to work on an EUC project I started over the weekend.  The new pedals I got for my Sherman S have removable front and rear angle pieces that were yellow.  I wanted them to be orange, one of my two favorite colors.

This was an odd impulse because it was already dark but I am determined you know.  I decided to take everything I needed out to the chicken coop area.  The bright flood light I have out there should be enough lighting.  I brought out a bag of zip ties so I could hang each piece while I shot it with orange spray paint.  I’m sure it looked ridiculous if the neighbors were watching.  I let the pieces hung out there overnight.  I am hoping I can come home tonight and reattach the parts to the pedals.  I think it should look sharp.

This weekend is the Super Bowl where my Eagles will take on the Chiefs.  Over the years I have hosted a number of Super Bowl parties with my significant others.  There were times when I had a dozen or more people in the house.  With this being a special season since the Birds are in I really wanted to watch the game with other people but throwing a party was out of the question.  The house is not party ready in it’s stripped down state and my brain is not in conventional party mentality by any stretch of the imagination.

I did however ask Ali if her and Shugs would like to watch the game with me.  They were both present during the Eagles first Super Bowl win in 2018 when I DID have a party. I was happy to hear that they would come to watch the game with me.  It will be a small and cozy celebration of hopefully the Eagles second championship.

Yesterday was kind of crazy with a series of three showing requests coming in.  One of them I was luckily able to reschedule so all three of the showings were in close proximity to each other.  Because any showing requires me getting Elsa out of the house it’s going to require a fire drill for each and every showing unless it’s on a weekend.  Yesterday I flew out of work around 3, quickly fed Elsa, picked up the house and headed out.

Elsa and I grabbed coffee and then went to visit Gladys’s family for several hours which was really nice.  I had not seen them since before the holidays so it was great to catch up and hang out.  Of course I got to spend a lot of time with sweet Leilani who has had her third birthday come and go since I saw her last, which made me a little sad.  I used my Ring cameras to monitor the activity at the house, it was weird seeing people roaming your home.

The last showing cleared out around 7PM so Elsa and I said our goodbye’s and pushed back towards the homestead.  I quickly made my dinner and ate it in front of the computer, something that is happening more frequently.  I wound up having an unexpected 90 minute plus conversation with my buddy Troy last night.  We basically never talk on the phone so it was unusual but welcomed at the same time.  As much as I hate to admit it, there is something to be gained by voice communication that electronic communication can not replicate. We covered many topics.

This morning I got to sleep in a little bit since there was another showing at 9:15.  Elsa and I piled in the truck shortly after 9AM to go grab coffee and hang out.  My Ring cameras were once again my friend, letting me know they arrived late and left a little bit late as well.  I got a call from realtor this morning telling me that two of the three buyers from last night actually submitted offers.  The bottom line price they offered is something I would agree to but the terms of the agreement on both of them are not ideal for different reasons.  I expect to make a counter offer on both however with the amount of interest that is going on, I am not very apt to give a ton away unnecessarily.  I JUST got another showing request for this afternoon.  The fire drill continues.

When my house went live on the market I got an email instructing me to sign up for some service that is used to receive and confirm showing requests. I signed up, no problem.  So yesterday about 1PM I get an email and text message saying that someone wants to do a showing at 1:50PM that I needed to confirm, WTF??  My level of WTF went up way more when a couple minutes later I get a text/email saying the appointment was now CONFIRMED. What the hell?

So I immediately try reaching out to my realtor and her assistant.  I get a hold of the assistant. I asked her how this appointment got confirmed without me doing anything?  She said she confirmed it.  Now I was angry.  I told the realtor when I filled out the questionnaire regarding listing availability that I needed a minimum of 4 hour notice.  Sandra, the assistant, said she sees that.  I also reminded her that I work downtown, the house isn’t picked up and I need to get my dog out before a showing.  I asked her why she would confirm a showing without contacting me. She didn’t answer that question.

So she said she could reschedule the appointment but that it was important to not outright decline any showing requests, which makes sense.  If a request comes in that I can’t honor I will contact her and she will reschedule.  So as of now I have two showings scheduled for this evening and another one tomorrow morning.  It is of course not convenient but it’s a good problem to have, the more interest the better.

Last night after work I got to play organized volleyball for a solid two hours.  Most of the players were pretty novice in their skills but to be honest with as rusty as I am, I looked pretty unskilled at times as well.  There were a handful of old men, much older men out there, one was 77 and another was 80.  It was amazing they were even out there.  We had 9-10 people so we played a combo of 5 on 5 and 4 on 5 which was fine for me.  This was basically an experiment.  I wanted to see how my body would react to playing sand volleyball at this point in time.

My play was ok at best, I made a lot of errors but also was able to make some decent plays as well.  I at least didn’t hit one serve out or into the net all night.  As expected trying to jump out of the sand is sort of a joke but would get better with time.  I had the expected ouch moments when my body wound up in odd positions, primarily my knees.  Overall I liked everyone in the group and I was glad I got out there.  I am walking around today sore but not limping so I take that as a win.  My short term plan is to try to get out there every Tuesday night to see if I can progress towards at least a small semblance of what I used to be on the court, which was never spectacular in the first place.

My Unisom arrived on Monday.  I have switched over to using it instead of Nyquil.  I’m happy to report that it seems equally effective in allowing me to sleep solidly through the night.  Even if I have to get up to pee in the middle of the night, which quite often would result in not being able to go back to sleep in the past, I can now fall back to sleep quickly.  It’s like all of those thoughts that were running wild in my brain are instead shoved into a closet, out of sight and out of mind, at least until I wake up.

I arrived at home last night with a For Sale sign in the yard marking my home officially being on the market.  It felt a bit strange to be sure but I have had a lot of exposure to strange and different situations recently so the impact was somewhat dulled.  It will be interesting to see what sort of interest may or may not be out there.  I need to make an effort to keep the house on the tidy side more or less at all times in case a request for a showing pops up.

I celebrated the house for sale sign with a quick calisthenics session in the bar park.  I once again pushed to get 20 pull ups.  I also got on the parallel bars and knocked out a set of 20 dips, another feat I had not accomplished in quite awhile.  It feels good to be pushing my limits again.

One thing that has become quite apparent is my living expenses are going to increase dramatically with this move.  I have become somewhat spoiled in my current situation where my primary mortgage is paid off, leaving me only a HELOC loan to worry about.  The mortgage payment on the new home is going to be huge in comparison although once equity from the sale of my house is applied the impact will soften significantly but still overall, my monthly nut will wind up being bigger.  I can swing it of course but it will require yet another mental shift in where my dollars go since now ancillary spending is something I never think about.

Tonight I have plans to go play some sand volleyball with a group I found on Meetup.  I have absolutely no clue how viable playing volleyball will be on my 55 year old body but if you don’t try you never know the answer.  The collection of friends and memories I gathered over my roughly 10 years of serious playing both in PA and Florida are very dear to me.  It would be awesome to start a new set of volleyball memories down here with a group of good people.  Advil will be a core part of this experiment.

So I recently made a significant change to access to the blog, making a user require to register if they want to access the content instead of it being available anonymously.  This change was made after thinking about why I share what I do and the impact it potentially has on both myself and others.  That thought process has expanded further into my thinking about why I share as much as I do in social media in general.  Is it because I am seeking approval from others, is it for adulation, is it to make my life seem more interesting or better than it actually is? The answer if I am being honest with myself is, maybe.

Like many things, sharing on social media has become a reflex reaction that I don’t even think about.  When I took the picture above my first impulse was to post it to social media, but I stopped myself.  Do I need to post large chunks of my day to day existence online to feel worthy, viable or sufficient? Of course not yet that is what I have conditioned myself to do.  The end result of this thought shift is going to be making a concerted effort to drastically reduce what I put on social media.  Even the blog itself will see further impact.

My normal routine has always been to put links to the most recent blog entry on Facebook, announcing it’s availability.  Again it was just what I have always done for a decade and a half.  That practice has come to an end as well.  If you want to read the blog you are welcome to do so but you will have to pull it, it will no longer be pushed.

So far 2023 has been all about change and self examination/analysis.  Just because certain things have been a certain way for a very long time does not mean they should continue to be that way indefinitely.  If you miss me on social media and wondering what the hell is going on, reach out and I’ll tell you.

Like I mentioned yesterday, since I have resolved to change my living arrangements of the last 21 years I have needed to have a significant change in my mental perspective about things. I have always been a sentimental person, I attach memories to things and because of that sometimes I may feel like disposing of the thing is akin to tossing away the memory. An example from the weekend occurred out in the yard.  When my mom moved out of her place in Naples Park I was given a small variety of pine tree she had in a pot.  I took this tree and plopped it in the yard probably 15 years ago.

The tree has never done well and I don’t think it has grown more than a foot during that time period.  It looked out of place and sickly but I let it be because it was at my mom’s place.  I felt like getting rid of it would somehow be disrespectful of my mom.  Well as I was going around the yard Saturday removing things that were either dead or unattractive this pine tree was cut to the ground with my loppers.  Mom wouldn’t care, I am assured of that.  It was just another mental chain I had thrown around myself.

To do the work I have done the last 6 weeks has required me to rewire this portion of my brain and focus on the feeling of lightness associated with having less “stuff”.  Walking around the house with a fraction of what was in there a month ago is something I have adjusted to. I need to keep this process going.  Sometimes subtraction is actually addition in the end, it just doesn’t always feel that way in the moment.

I have talked in here about the difficulty I have been having for quite awhile getting quality sleep.  On Friday evening I was in my cabinet grabbing something when I saw a couple Nyquil sitting there.  I figured it was worth a shot.  When I’m sick Nyquil does a great job of knocking me out, it should do the same when healthy right?  It worked.  I had my my most solid sleep in weeks.  I recall waking up briefly but instead of my mind wanting to go off to the races I instead just drifted right back off to slumber, it was awesome.  It was like all of the things that have been poking me like a rose’s thorns all of a sudden fell off into insignificance.

I did read up and Googled about using Nyquil as a regular sleep aid.  It’s not recommended because of the other ingredients involved, but, you can buy products that have just the drowsiness ingredient in it, doxlamine, BINGO.  I ordered some Unisom but have used Nyquil the last couple nights until it arrives.  Getting out of bed is a little more difficult, but once you are up the fog clears pretty quickly.  Getting a solid 7-8 hours of sleep consistently would be a game changer for me.

On Saturday I tended to a few tasks around the yard.  I fixed the one screen door that got inadvertently broken by the exterior painters a couple weeks ago.  I then walked the landscaped areas and got rid of plants/trees.  Some of the stuff was damaged from the cold, some of the stuff were in pots that I didn’t want anymore and some of the stuff just looked like shit so I ripped it out.  My sentimental side has definitely been pushed to the back seat for at least the immediate time being.  I just don’t care about a lot of things that I once did.

Saturday night I finally got to see the second Black Panther movie on Disney+.  They went out of their way to pay homage to Chadwick Boseman. That being said, I wasn’t blown away by the movie.  It was very long at almost 2:45 and I just didn’t find myself feeling as into it as I do with normal Marvel films.  It was good and worth seeing but I would only go B+ on it overall.

Before bed I snapped this adorable picture of Elsa.  Once again she was lying on my side of the bed and did not want to move.  I actually angled my body at 45 degrees and slept with my Eagles blanket as my cover so I wouldn’t have to disturb her.  She eventually moved in the middle of the night.

Today I set out on my new Sherman S to do some high speed riding.  I normally do this with all new wheels to see how they feel at high speeds.  My ride today had a number of annoyances.  I actually was using three cameras and my phone for this video.  Unfortunately my 360 camera, which was supposed to be the main camera did not record video which I only discovered afterward.

I also had an old hispanic couple pic up my GoPro 7 that I had roadside to get drive by footage.  I saw them grab it and ran them down immediately.  When I asked for it back he dropped it in the process of handing it to me, letting the camera hit the ground and break the back glass.  I don’t think the guy even spoke english so I just took the camera and placed it elsewhere. Finally I had an unrestricted dog dart out on the street and chase me.  The dog was small and I could easily outrun it but it still had all sorts of dangerous potential if it would have cut in front of me.

Despite all the negatives I did wind up clocking some fast runs, the fastest of which was 44.2 MPH, a new speed record for me on an electric unicycle. Going that fast on one wheel is slightly terrifying but the adrenaline rush isn’t bad either.  I felt fortunate to escape the high speed riding without incident, at least without a physical injury. I had to do a hack edit on the footage since my main camera was out.

I was going to go visit Monique and her family late afternoon but that got rescheduled.  Instead I installed upgraded pedals on the Sherman S.  They are much better quality than the stock unit, I wish I had them on for the speed runs.

I wound up my Sunday getting a couple spare keys made for the realtor as my house should be officially listed this week.  Home Depot actually has a self service kiosk which makes key duplication incredibly easy.  In less than 5 minutes I had two spares made, which worked perfectly.  It’s soon time to go pop a couple more Nyquil to make reality fade into background noise.  It’s a welcome feeling.

Yesterday I got a link from my realtor for the pictures/video they shot of my house for the listing.  I could hardly believe it was my place.  Between the staging, lighting and color grading of the photos it made my house look amazing if I do say so myself.  I was really blown away.  I can only hope that perspective buyers have a similar feeling when they see it.

I took a minute or two to just think about how much of a transformation that the house has been put through in a little more than a month.  The sweat, financial and emotional equity I have invested during that time period has been high, I am hoping to reap some benefits from all of that work sooner rather than later. If you want to see all of the pics/video click here.

I talked last week I believe about how my strength has been feeling better which seems to coincide with bulking efforts.  I also talked about how I have been feeling some of that old fire from 10-12 years ago that was fueled by emotion, a powerful tool in my mental tool bag.  Yesterday on the way home a challenge popped into my head, I wanted to do 20 pull ups in one set.

I have not done a 20 pull up set in at least year, maybe more. When I am doing my daily set of pull ups at the gym I usually tap out at 16.  To get to a number like 20 requires me to endure more discomfort than I have been willing to deal with for awhile.  You have to hold in dead hang position for the last several reps while your grip is weakening from being on the bar for a long time, it’s not fun.  Up until last night I had not found myself in the mental mind frame to extend myself to get to the end.

So I grabbed my backyard bar with a bit of anger in my grip, knocked out the first 15 reps continuously and then got the last 5 with increasingly longer dead hangs on the bar in between. Grinding out that 20th rep was tough but great at the same time.  I dropped off the bar with a FU attitude, even though I had no one specifically to be mad at.  Flipping that switch felt good and I plan to weld it to the ON position for the foreseeable future.

For the first time in a long time my weekend is not overshadowed by things that need to be done for house prep although there are a small collection of related to do’s I will be working on.  I plan to finally see Black Panther 2 this weekend.  I never got out to see it in theaters (havent been to a theater in months) but it comes out on Disney + this weekend so that will be cool to finally catch. With no football this weekend I hope to do whatever else I damn well feel like.

Yesterday morning I met my realtor and building inspector at the new house to go over anything noteworthy from his report.  Luckily anything he came up with was minor and things that I could likely address myself if needed.  It was nice to get a second visit to the place to further reassure that I feel good about my decision to move forward with this purchase.  I think I will be happy there. It took 7 minutes to get there from my office, amazing.

The cleaning crew finished up my house mid-morning.  They had a total of four women busting the work out.  When I got home is it was sort of amazing.  My home has never been so clean.  It makes me much more open to the idea of maybe having them come into my new place once a month to get things sparkling.

During the afternoon the photographer for the realtor was at the house taking a ton of photos in preparation for officially listing the house for sale in a few days.  I occasionally checked in on the Ring camera to see how things were going.  I knew that part of this process would include them rearranging or totally removing things for the pictures to optimize the visual appeal.  What I did not expect was that nothing that was moved or put away would be put back.  I spent a good portion of the evening playing hide and seek, trying to find certain things that were moved or hidden.  I am still hunting for a few things. I am looking forward to seeing how the pictures turn out.

Last night on the way home from work I stopped at Sport Clips to get a fresh skin fade haircut applied.  I had my fourth different stylist, this time a Filipino woman named Sue.  She was very high energy and talkative.  With her accent I had to really try to focus when listening to her.  At one point she asked me if I was married and had kids, I told her I was/did not.  I asked her if she was married, she said she was, for 20 years.  Well that seemed to open the flood gates.  She started telling me all sorts of things.  Not only was she married for 20 years but she is married to man that is 30 years older than her.  When she told me this my only reply was, wow.

She indicated that she was less than thrilled with being married and was looking forward to not being that way.  I asked how old her husband was now, she said he was in his 70’s, meaning she was in her 40’s.  She kept going, telling me how they separated for a few months and she went on three dates via Tinder but did not have a good experience.  It required next to no input from me to keep the flow going.  She told me several times how lucky I was to not be married and how she won’t ever get married again.  It sounded like a blissful relationship, not.  It made for an entertaining hair cut at least.  I’ll be back in another 5-6 weeks.