Category Fitness

So Michelle, Ali’s normal training partner for her marathon training was unavailable to run on Saturday because she went to a concert Friday night.  When Ali told me this I offered up my services as her pacer, despite her training plan requiring an 11 mile run this week, a distance I have not run since the half marathon in early March.

Since the race I haven’t run any further than 7 miles and in the past month or so I haven’t run any further than 4 miles.  Jumping into an 11 mile run would not be something recommended by any conventional running logic.  Obviously I don’t subscribe to such logic.  As long as the muscle between my ears thinks I can do it that is all that seems to matter. Hell I wasn’t even planning to go to the club run on Saturday, now I am running 11, funny.

So my alarm went off at 4:45 am and I met Ali at her place so we could carpool.  Despite it being very early in the morning the air already felt like soup, heavy with humidity.  We set off at what would normally be a slow pace for me, right at or a little under a 10 minute mile pace.  It was fine with me to err on the slow side since we were running a long way.

During the first half of the run Ali and I were chatting about various things, the pace made it pretty easy to do so.  Well the second half of the run was a different story.

The sun had now come up.  I had decided to run shirtless since I knew I would be soaked with sweat.  I didn’t think I would totally sweat through my shorts as well.  I just had a constant stream of moisture flowing from my body.  I kept wiping annoying streams of water off my elbows on my shorts.

Despite the slower pace, the cumulative miles were taking their toll.  My legs were simply not accustomed to running for that far and that length of time.  Conversation between the two of us was very sparse during the long run back, we both were just trying to keep moving.

To Ali’s credit, she kept pace the entire time, in fact I was sort of letting her set the pace for a good portion of the run.  When Ali runs with me the same thing happens as when I run with Matt, she goes faster.  I have told her before that she should try to get some work in running with someone faster than herself, it will make her better.

Ali pissed me off towards the end of the run.  We were down to about a mile to go.  Despite not saying anything I am sure it was obvious I was not enjoying myself at this point.  Ali says to me something like “if you want to stop and walk back it’s fine…”

To say something like that to me when I am was in the throes of physical misery really annoyed me.  I snapped back at her “Why would you say something so stupid to me?  Since when do I stop… I should smack you on the back of your head!”   She instantly realized it was not the smartest thing to say and dropped it.

So then we are running by a hotel that has this steep incline in front of it’s front door.  Ali says she wants to run it.  I said nothing but followed along, thinking, “you son of a….”  Then just for fun there was one more smaller bridge we had to run across and back at the final turn around point.

So we now had like a half mile to go.  Despite having two legs that felt like they were filled with cement at this point I wanted to put a little exclamation point on the run, to let Ali know that if you ask me if I want to stop, I am going to make you run faster.  I picked up the pace and kept it picked up all the way back to parking lot.  Again to Ali’s credit, she was behind me but more or less kept pace. I think we wound up running a negative split. (second half of run faster than first half)

When it was all said and done we covered the 11 mile sin a sub 10 pace, something I do not think Ali has ever done before for that many miles.  I looked like a sponge that was dropped in a bucket.  I was so glad to be finished.  I think I have established 11 miles is the limit to the distance I can “just do”.

Ali was nice enough to pick up the tab for some DD coffee and a donut on the ride home.  I then loaded the girls up in the truck with their supplies for an extended stay out at the house.  Ali is up in Orlando for a conference until Thursday.

When I got home I immediately headed outside for more uncomfortable garden maintenance and weeding in the brutal heat and humidity.  When teamed up with the early morning run I was absolutely gassed after eating lunch.  I had no choice but to retreat to the bedroom and take a nap for close to two hours.  The dogs were happy to join me.

When I awoke I continued working on what remained to be done.  I took the girls with me for a ride to Home Depot.  Initially I was going to go to Lowes to buy the paint I am going to use in the bathroom.  However in an effort to save some cash, I applied for the 10% mover discount coupon on their website, figuring I can wait a couple days to get the paint.

Well I was on slickdeals.net, looking for Home Depot coupons as well.  I saw on their site that both Home Depot and Lowes honor coupons from competitors.  The post also included a link to an online True Value coupon that gave you $5 off any purchase of $25 or more.  Others reported using the coupon successfully at their Home Depot.  Hey five dollars is five dollars, that would pay for two DD coffee runs. I printed it out and had it in my pocket.

At the store I grabbed two $20 sling chairs to replace the two rotting, greenish chairs on the lanai.  I also got a new towel bar and toilet paper holder that will be installed as part of the bathroom painting project.  So I was easily past the $25 price point and presented the coupon to the woman working the register in the garden center.  I told her that I read online that HD honors competitor coupons.  I handed her the True Valu coupon that I printed off the website.

Well this seemed like news to her, she placed a call to the head cashier and asked if she could accept the coupon.  The answer that came back was no.  She said they honor coupons out of competitor ads but they don’t accept coupons printed online because of fraud.  I told her that I know others have used this coupon at Home Depot but there wasn’t much she could do.  I wasn’t going to stand there and go into a big production over $5 but it annoyed me slightly as I stuffed the coupon back in my pocket.

Sunday morning I had it my head that I wanted to do a bike/swim brick despite my legs feeling pretty tired from the long run the day before.  I also decided I wanted to take my Dawes out of the cobwebs and use it for the ride.  I have not been on it since sometime in 2011.

Wow riding the Dawes is such a different experience than riding the Trek, the geometry between the two feels dramatically different.  To be quite honest, I find riding the Dawes to be more comfortable.

With the Trek it feels like I am reaching down 10 feet to the handle bars.  This steep forward lean helps cut down wind drag but it also results in a lot of weight on top of my hands.   The Dawes position is less extreme and if I am able to utilize the aero bars comfortably, cutting down the wind drag while offering me a much more comfortable riding position.

The temperatures again were brutal.  Despite having the constant breeze from my nearly 20 mph pace, in no time I was again dripping wet.  I got down on my aero bars and stayed there for the majority of the ride, it was comfortable and efficient.  Pretty much every time I looked down at the GPS I was between 19 and 19.5 mph, topping out at 22 during the last mile or so.  I was surprised when I stopped the GPS to see my average pace was 18.9.  I must have dilly dallied too much at the turn around points I guess.

Regardless, I enjoyed the 12.25 mile on the Dawes.  I think I am going to use it for the next few rides.

I then headed inside to swim.  I was quite overheated from the ride and was looking to cool off a bit in the water.  Well that didn’t happen.  I dove in and was immersed in water that almost felt like a bath tub, it was that warm.

I originally had plans to put in 2000 in the pool but I bagged after 1200.  Swimming in warm water when you are already warm kind of sucks. For the ride home I didn’t put the top of the SSR down, I had already met my sweat quota for the day, I enjoyed the AC turned up high for the drive.

After doing some more stuff around the house I took the girls on another ride, this time to Trader Joe’s.  I wanted to stock up on their fantastic, relatively healthy microwave meals for one.  I really like them and they aren’t very expensive.

When I got home later in the afternoon I had had ideas of starting work on pulling the bathroom apart in advance of painting.  However I once again got smacked in the face with a wave of sleepiness and for the second time in as many days I laid down for another nap.  I am not sure the last time I had a dual nap weekend.

Over the weekend I watched a bunch more Falling Skies episodes.  I am glad to report I still like the show, even after getting past the episode 3 or 4 dead zone that Jeremy warned me about. I should finish up season one this week.

After eating dinner I finally regained the motivation to start work on the bathroom.  Part of this project will be the elimination of the three shelves that were installed to the left of the mirror.  I installed these things years ago and admittedly did a very shitty job of doing so.

Not only did I mess up the spacing between them, I tried to fix a loose drywall anchor with glue which wound up running down the wall a bit. For years we simply covered up the glue marks by sticking items on the shelf in front of the eye sore.

Well the shelves serve minimal purpose so I decided they had to go, I was sick of looking at them.  So I grabbed a hammer and knocked them off the wall.  The shelves left behind a considerable mess of glue and beat up drywall.  I am going to have a lot of prep/patch work to do in there before any paint gets on the wall.

So as I was in the middle of working on the bathroom I glanced out front and saw Thina sitting in middle of the yard, obviously looking for her best friend.  I thought Nicki and Sadie would have fun interacting with her so I walked them out to the back yard and called Thina over.

As soon as my dogs saw Thina they of course started barking.  Their barking instantly set Thina into scared submissive mode, she started to run away with her tail between her legs.  I called to her repeatedly and she stopped and then cautiously approached.  Eventually she belly crawled to the fence line and was sniffing with both Sadie and Nicki.

The interaction looked good enough so I opened the gate and called her in.  When she came inside she immediately went full submissive rolling over into her “don’t hurt me” pose.  Once she realized my dogs meant her no harm she sprang to life.

Within a few minutes her and Sadie were sprinting around the yard.  Thina with her long, bounding strides actually seemed to be faster than Sadie, something Sadie is not used to since Nicki is not exactly a speed demon.

Sadie also for the first time was on the receiving side of numerous dog kisses from Thina.  Sadie is always the kisser, not the kissee.  Thina was giving Sadie kisses almost non-stop, to the point where Sadie got annoyed briefly, it was funny.

I brought out a big bowl of water for the dogs.  Even though it was now well into the evening it was still very humid, they were panting heavily.  Thina drank like she hadn’t had water in days, she went back to the water bowl again and again.

Later she decided the pond was a good water source.  I ran over and tried to get her out of there.  It was too late, she was already laying on the muddy bottom and had taken a few licks of the nasty water, ugh.

Nicki played with Thina as well in a much more reserved manner, typical for her.

So after watching the dogs all play for close to an hour it was getting dark.  I figured I would walk over to the hispanic owners house yet again and tell them to come get their dog.  I thought maybe forcing them to come get her would allow me to stress once again that the dog HAS to be kept safe.

As I walked into their driveway I looked back and saw Thina was following me.  I also saw a large truck coming, driving well over the 30 mph speed limit.  I yelled for Thina to stop but since she has had absolutely no training, she continued to approach.  She JUST missed getting hit by the asshole driving the truck.

Now I was pissed.  I almost watched these people’s dog become road kill because of their lack of responsibility.   I walked up to the door and rang the doorbell, ready to be much more forceful in my plan of action for the dog.  Nobody was home.  Great….

My anger multiplied when I looked down at the pet dish that was by the door, something that looked like it was made for a cat or a small dog. The dish had nothing in it, no food and not a drop of water.  Knowing how brutally hot it was on Sunday I realized why Thina was so damn thirsty.  We have now officially entered into the realm of animal abuse.

So I took Thina back over to my backyard and left her in there with my dogs.  I then went back over to the hispanic’s house and started trying to block up the numerous holes in the shrubs.  In addition to using a number of dead palm fronds I even grabbed some unused shelving of mine to assist.

Well I soon realized that there was a whole other set of potential escape points on the other side of their driveway, this was going to be a fruitless effort.  The only way to stop her from escaping would be to put up some sort of temporary fencing along the front property line.  I would place the odds of these people doing that at slightly above zero.

After my blockade attempt I went back over to my property and hopped on the computer.  I printed out two letters, one in Spanish and one in English.  The letter basically said that I witnessed their dog just miss getting hit and she keeps getting out of the yard.  I said if I saw the dog out of the yard again I was contacting county animal control.   I taped both versions on their door.

I then grabbed a leash and walked Thina back over to her house.  Sadie was not happy at all with me as I took her new friend back home.  I brought some of our dogs dry food with as well.  I filled her tiny dish with food and water.  She hungrily gulped down the food all three times I filled it.  She also seemed to have a hard time drinking the water since the bowl was small.  I actually walked back to my place and brought over a larger spare bowl for water and left it there.

I hung out across the street well into darkness, hoping the owners would return so I could let them know what went down and what I think about it.   Finally a little after 9 I finally went back to my place.  Thina was worn out from all of her play and actually stayed put thank goodness.

I was so annoyed that I ignored the “one more time” warning in my letter to the family and placed a complaint with animal services via their web site.  I plan to follow up with a phone call today.

The bad thing is there is a process that has to be followed.  They will first warn the family a couple times, and then maybe eventually fine them.  I am not sure at what point they actually would take ownership away from them.

The saddest thing is no matter which way this goes, unless she gets removed from the house, Thina is the loser.  Even if they actually do something to prevent her from getting out of the yard they still will keep her thrown outside with scare food and water, cut off from any sort of love that she obviously is craving.

Ali decided she couldn’t justify a 6 hour round trip to go to the Tarpons “Ultimate Bowl” tonight.  Unless I can snag a last minute “date” I will wind up just going by myself.  I think I am going to spring for one of the good seats close to the field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally I had ideas of trying to run with the group on Saturday morning but my legs still felt like shit from my leg work on Wednesday.  Plus I was tired, still catching up on the sleep deficit from my late Thursday night Prometheus showing. Instead on Saturday morning I picked up the dogs early and brought them back to the house, Ali was going into to work. I had stuff to do around the house so I figured the dogs would rather hang out with me while I was doing stuff than be at home alone.

I finally got around to creating a new to do list, something I have wanted to do for quite awhile.  For years I had a list pinned to the fridge of both short term and long term projects, Ali hated it.  However for me, it serves an important purpose.  I find having these items in front of me day and in and day out makes me much more likely to complete them sooner rather than later.  Having a “hey I should do this” item pop into your head and then just hope you remember to do it later does not have a high success rate.

This time I split the list into three categories, home improvement projects, home repair/maintenance, and automotive related items.  I am looking forward to starting to cross off some of those items.  I really need to knock some of those painting projects off the list.  Painting indoors is the perfect Florida summer project.  Anything involving being in the AC is an ideal summer project here.

I had another visit from the German Shep over the weekend.  Again she was cute as could be.  Well once again I walked her back over to her place which once again had the front gate wide open.  I walked her all the way up to the front door of the tiny house and rang the doorbell.

First the woman, whom I think doesn’t speak much english came to the door followed shortly by whom I assume is the husband, flanked by several of their multiple children.  I told them their dog, whom I confirmed is named Nina, was over at my place again.  I asked them if they wanted me to close the gate as I left.  He said no, he will put her in the garage, lovely.

So evidently Nina is either thrown outside or locked up in the garage, poor dog.  Later in the weekend I saw her walking in front of one of my windows, looking for her new friend (me).  By the time I got outside she had gone back to her side of the street.

After I got done with my house chores I took aim at flushing the coolant on the SSR, something I should have done shortly after I bought the truck.  There is a good chance the original coolant was still in the SSR and if that was the case, it is two years past the maximum recommend change interval of 5 years.

I followed the general procedure I found on SSRFanatics, draining the system and then flushing it with distilled water multiple times.  It took awhile to go through the fill, let engine run for awhile and drain cycles but it certainly wasn’t difficult.

I decided to document the process to add to my growing library of automotive maintenance videos, some of my more popular YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcEmach_hVw

During the afternoon I saw a number that caller id’d to Orlando.  Normally if I don’t know the number the caller will get a big fat serving of voice mail.  However for some reason I decided to pick it up.  On the other line was some young guy from the Festiva group.  I recognized the name, that was the company that took over ownership of our timeshare, another one of our poor investments,  several months ago.

I forgot the guys name but boy was he a talker, he immediately started rambling, I only interjected a sentence or two, for the better part of 10 minutes he did all the talking.  This was the crux of what he said.

As part of their grand take over plan, Festiva is offering to convert current owners off of their current deeded arrangement as well as the tie in to RCI, a company that I have already discussed here many times negatively.  RCI sucks plain and simple.  Well the idea of dumping RCI sounds good, keep blabbering away sales guy.

Festiva supposedly has their own exchange program that supposedly has very minimal fees compared to what RCI charges, ok that is nice as well. Who doesn’t like lower fees?  However I knew there was another shoe to drop, and drop it did, a big muddy work boot no less.

Switching over to the Festiva plan would be easy, easy as long as you were willing to drop ANOTHER $5500. When I heard that I may have literally said “what the fck” under my breath.  What a joke.  The joke got better.

The guy tells me that approximately 70% of the current owners have opted to switch over to Festiva (I am sure that is an OMGWTF lie), meaning that there is a much smaller collection of deeded owners remaining to spread those lovely maintenance fees across. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if my yearly maintenance fees double.  Ok, well now I was pissed.

I told blabber mouth that this is how it appears to me.  Festiva came in, sends out a letter that their new ownership is a great thing, they were already doing some repairs/improvements to the property and it didn’t talk of any other signficant changes for owners as far as costs were concerned.

The reality is they are using a Mitt-like Bain Capital approach to the timeshare.  Come in, gut the principals that the current owners bought under and give them one $5500 option to get out, else face higher maintenance fees, directly caused by their actions.  It was utter bullshit.

So when fast talker took a breath I stopped him.  I told him this was the bottom line.  If anything he is proposing involves me laying out another large sum of money to chase the other large sums of money we already flushed down the toilet with this timeshare he can forget it.  I told him I am now separated and there was not a chance in hell that I would be taking his offer.

I told him that if the maintenance fee armageddon he was referring to comes to pass I would simply dump the timeshare and walk away from it.  In my financial situation turning my back on the thousands of dollars we threw at this pig is a better option than dropping another $5500 to put lipstick on it.  F that.

Despite leaving absolutely no doubt that I was not going to do anything this guy continued trying to pitch me it’s merits.  He was determined, I’ll give him that.  For whatever reason I didn’t just hang up on him. Despite his annoying persistence, pitching something that is intended to do nothing but screw me over, he seemed like a nice guy.  Finally I convinced him I was not interested.  I thanked him for the info. Regardless of how I feel about it, it was important for me to know it was coming so I can act accordingly.

I let Ali know about it as well since her name is on the deed.  She is going to call RCI and see what they say about it.

So Ali texted me late in the afternoon she was leaving work.  I asked her if she wanted to grab dinner at Sweet Tomatoes after I dropped the dogs off, a place neither of us has patronized since we separated.  It’s a weird dynamic I find myself in with Ali, I know that I I need to put more effort into establishing a new social circle yet I find myself doing most stuff with her.

I guess part of the reason for that is our split was so amicable.  In marriages that split with a screaming, frying pan throwing, you f’d who hell storm, you typically won’t see the estranged spouses having much contact at all.  We have always been and continue to be good friends.

Anyway dinner at Sweet T’s was good, there wasn’t a big crowd like we saw during season.  Of course we ate later than the old people normally chow down, I don’t think we got there until after 6.

We made Father Day plans for her to bring the dogs out so we could do a swamp walk, something else that I hadn’t done in awhile.

Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to do a block (bike/run/swim).  Ali talked about maybe joining me for the swimming portion but she decided to stay home.  It was a tough session.  After biking more than 12 miles, running 4 and swimming a mile I was pooped to say the least.

After the swim I drove over to Ali’s.  She had a Father’s Day card for me from the animals which was cute.  I had the SSR so she loaded the dogs up in the Camry and followed me out to the house where we ate lunch before heading over to the swamp.

We knew it was going to be very hot for the dogs so we packed a lot of water and planned to cut the walk short.

The swamp is actually not very swampy at all, it was almost totally dried up.  15 foot deep basins that used to be filled to the brim with water now had nothing in them at all, it was pretty weird.

The dogs were obviously laboring in the heat.  We stopped much more than we normally would, both so they could drink and just lay in the shade.  It was funny watching the dogs veer side to side in the path, making sure to hit every shady spot they could.

We saw a couple gators nestled in the muddy shallow puddles that remained in a few spots.  We did manage to have one new swamp wildlife sighting, a doe and her baby fawn right out on the path behind us.  It was cute.

The dogs were quite glad to get back into the van, the Florida heat and sun is very tough when you are black and furry.

When we got back to the house I jumped in the pool so I could splash Sadie a bit to help cool her down.  You could tell how tired she was.  Instead of her normal sprint around the pool perimeter it was a just basically a fast walk.

As I was drying off I said to Ali how ice cream, specifically a milkshake, would taste good.  She mentioned how she still had a Cold Stone gift card with a partial balance on it as well as a coupon.  Ok , so it was decided, now we were going for ice cream.

I followed her to her place in the SSR to drop off the dogs.  We then headed over to Cold Stone or at least where Cold Stone used to be.  We discovered that location had closed so we went to another that was a couple miles away.

I requested an extra thin chocolate shake, something that can be hard to come by.  I hate when places basically dump soft serve in a cup and call that a milkshake.  I want to be able to drink it with a straw, not use a spoon.  They did a good job of meeting my request. The shake was quite good.

As we were sitting outside enjoying our respective treats, somehow the subject came up about online dating, specifically Ali asked me if I would consider doing it.  Well I was surprised she would wonder if I would consider it based on my tendency to favor electronic communication over all other types.  I told her that I actually had Match.com account already although it is the free variety where you basically can browse and have very restricted communication with other site members.

She seemed pretty surprised by that.  I told her that so far it seems like a weird scene, telling her that it seems I am of most interest to older women, an age range that typically is not going to interest me much.  I guess it was weird to even be discussing that at all with Ali, it just seemed to be part of the conversation.

So on the way back to Ali’s place we made one more stop at the grocery store so she could grab supplies to make the dog’s veggie meal supplement.

It was a fun Father’s Day albeit in a new set of circumstances.

Last night I finally finished watching The Immortals which took me a total of 3 sleepy nights to complete.  The reason I had it my Netflix queue was because it was from the same guys that produced 300, one of my favorite movies ever.

Well these guys had let me down before with that awful super hero themed flick that had the guy with a massive blue penis.  I was hoping that was a fluke and Immortals would be their redemption.  Well it wasn’t, instead it’s strike two.

The movie tried so hard to be epic.  It leaned hard on 300 style cinematography with many, many slow-mo, blood spewing, skull exploding fight scenes.  I just didn’t get into it, at all.  It was a chore to get to the end of it.  Mickey Rourke was the head bad guy.  His random and totally pointless acts of violence got so ridiculous I was laughing out loud eventually.

I don’t know if you could make a film that felt any more unoriginal than Immortals.  Don’t bother, C-.

 

 

 

Last night when I got home I did the normal mode version of this month’s BB challenge.

I followed up with a very clean dinner. It was the first time I used the juicer since Ali moved out, supplementing my wrap with a juice consisting of beets, carrots, spinach and tomatoes.

I literally had pizza or warm up pizza for dinner the last four nights in a row, it was time to get back on track. As a result, the numbers on my cool bamboo decked bathroom scale have been creeping upwards a bit.

Since Ali moved out my self discipline hasn’t been quite as iron clad as I would like it to be.  I think it is not abnormal to have some personal slack when you find yourself in a new mode of life.  I will be pulling some of that slack back in.

I had a big ass box at my door last night, it was a used SSR wheel.  Why in the world would I be getting a single wheel?  Well, for a spare of course!  The SSR has NO spare tire whatsoever, not even a shitty donut spare.  The factory instead provides you with a tire patch kit and a cigarette lighter powered inflator, like that would actually work on the type of tire hole that would knock you off the road. (it won’t)

So basically if you have a serious flat in the SSR you are done.  Well a guy on SSRFanatics had bought an aftermarket set of wheels for his truck so he was selling his old ones that were not in great shape but perfectly useable.  He was selling the wheels super cheap, I only paid $50 plus shipping for it.  My next move will be to go to a place like House of Flats and try to find a cheap, used 255/45/19 tire to have mounted on the rim.

Boom, there is my instant spare.  I would simply put the wheel in the bed of the truck and leave it there, especially on long road trips.

I decided to remain productive last night and gave the SSR a much needed bath, washing off the highway scuzz and beach film that was coating it. It looked tons better when I was finished.

As I was washing the truck I had a visitor.

The house that is across the street from mine and down one spot is a rental house.  There have been a round robin assortment of individuals living there over the past few years, none of which seemed very impressive.  Well my other neighbor across the street had reported that this latest hispanic family apparently has a dog, a young German Shephard that they don’t pay attention to.  She said she saw the dog hanging out in my yard multiple times.

Now of course the fact that a dog is in my yard doesn’t bother me in the least. But I am bothered by people that don’t care enough about the safety of their dog to restrain them.  There are tons of assholes in our vicinity that have no issue flying down our road at twice the 30 MPH speed limit.  The idea that a dog could be killed because of lazy, irresponsible owners sickens me.

Well anyway, I got to meet this shep in person last night.  When she saw me she cautiously approached, acting like she was in trouble.  I called her over in a friendly tone.  As she got even closer she took an extremely submissive pose, practically crawling towards me on her belly.  Her body language makes me think that her human owners have little issue wailing on the dog.

I knelt down and told her it was ok.  She was obviously still very young, surely less than a year old.  She laid on her side and wanted me to rub her belly.  I looked the dog over as I was petting her, I was pretty sure she is kept outside based on her appearance, another typical move for hispanic/Mexican families, many view their dogs like lawn furniture.

Once the shep realized I wasn’t going to hurt her she was glued to me.  I went inside to give her some water which she gulped down immediately.  I then grabbed one of the girls Milk Bones and gave it to her.  The dog acted like I gave her a piece of gold.  She immediately ran back over to her property with the bone in her mouth.  I assume she ate it over there as she came back a little later looking for more.

I hate situations like this.  If I go over to these people’s house, assuming they speak English, I see scenarios where the dog is punished for wandering by being shackled to a chain or beaten.  The property does have a manual gate that can be closed to keep the dog contained but it seems like they are very forgetful in doing so.

I also have the option to contact domestic animal services and let them know about the dog roaming free.  They will come out and warn the owners and even fine them if it would continue.  I again however see this resulting in more pain and suffering for the dog. It sucks.

I told Ali about the pooch.  Of course her answer is I should just keep the dog. That would be a simple resolution with complex consequences long term.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So since I was taking the SSR to Siesta Key and I was also going to be playing volleyball on Saturday, I decided a high and very tight haircut would be beneficial.  Buzzed hair does not blow in the wind or collect much sand.  I believe I set a new head shaving speed record, completing the task in 7 minutes.

It went a bit faster than normal since I didn’t leave the top a bit longer like I normally do.  Instead I slapped on the 1/8″ guide and went nuts.  Some people like this look, more don’t.  For me, in my current state of mind, it works.

Friday night I was awakened several times by thunder, there were some strong storms blowing through.  When I got up at 4:45 the rain had stopped but it looked like only recently as the roads were soaked. I wasn’t all that thrilled with driving the SSR up 75 on wet, dirty roads but I knew it was going to be getting a bath regardless so it didn’t really matter.

The drive up to Siesta Key went fine, the SSR is very smooth and fast on the highway, I averaged 80+ for most of the ride.  I opted to keep the top up until I hit the Dunkin Donuts in Siesta Key.

I found a good spot to park next to an island, the other side of which was occupied by a Camaro 2SS/RS, obviously looking to minimize asshole exposure as I was.

As I walked towards the beach, I saw the surrounding park area had huge lakes of standing water.  Wow, it seems like it really rained there as well last night.

Well when I got up to the beach it was a flurry of sights and sounds.  The event organizers were desperately trying to “fix” the beach.  The standing water was not isolated to the park area.  Many parts of the wide and hard beach were under water as well, including many spots where nets for the tournament were located.  It looked like an awful mess.

Well the tournament organizers had engaged various pieces of power equipment in an attempt to combat the soggy sand.  They had 3 or 4 ATV’s pulling graters around.  They also had a gas post hole digger and fire hose.   They would dig a deep hole and insert the one end of the hose in it,d dragging the other end far off the courts to relocate water.

I was impressed with their efforts but I knew there was no way we were starting on time, it was a huge undertaking.

They had clip boards out with assigned net numbers.  Tabby and I were assigned to court 37.

I decided to walk over there and take a look.  I laughed out loud when I saw our court. It was one huge lake.  There was no way they were going to be able to get it ready in time.

I texted Tabby and told him our court was underwater.  He arrived shortly afterwards.  He had driven over the night before and stayed in a hotel.  He confirmed that it absolutely poured all night long.

By this time I already had been mulling about for over an hour, watching the clean up activities taking place.  Little did I know I would be waiting much, much longer.

As we waited, Tabby went up to grab some of the complimentary water.  As he reached for a third water pouch (he was grabbing one for me too) he got reprimanded by one of the event staff, saying he shouldn’t take too many waters at a time.  WTF??

It was symbolic of how shitty this tour has become.

This tour, which I still refer to as the Bud Light Tour, even though Bud Light hasn’t been an actual sponsor for eons, used to really offer some decent value for the money when I first moved down here to Florida.  Not only did they give out free water without water police watching, they gave out free beer!  In addition the prizes they handed out were quite nice, nice enough to make you motivated to win even more than you normally would be. This tour also used to go  above and beyond with their tournament t-shirts, offering colored shirts with unique designs for each and every tourney.  They did all of this with an entry free that was somewhere around $50 a team.

Well fast forward to present day.  They have raised the entry fee almost 50% to $70 a team PLUS this tour now requires you to be a USA Volleyball member which costs an additional $20.  Instead of offering more for your money, they offer significantly less.  The only free thing you get is water and rationed water at that.  The t-shirt is now an ultra-low cost, low quality white variety with the same artwork for every tournament.  Oh and the prizes now suck as well, low quality crap that falls apart in a few months.  The only decent item given out is a volleyball if you win first place and how many volleyballs do you need?

About two and a half hours after I arrived the organizers got on the stage and made an announcement.  They said of the 40 nets they had set up, almost half of them are unplayable, despite their efforts.  They gave the players two options.  The non-open divisions could convert to a fours format instead of doubles, requiring less nets, or you could ask for a credit good towards a future tournament.

Well the crowd groaned at the announcement.  A huge portion of the players opted to bag it and take the credit.  Tabby and I probably would have done the same except he already had a hotel room booked and paid for Saturday night, he had nothing else to do.  I had nothing on the schedule until Saturday night so I said I would be down with playing fours as well, a format I haven’t played in forever.

The organizers said the teams that were interested in fours should team up and report in.  Well Tabby and I didn’t know anyone else playing in the A division so we just gave them our names and said we would play with whomever.  Well there happened to be another team that checked in right before us in the same boat so they became our new partners, Nick and Josh.

So when the brackets were finally established, which took quite a long time, it turned out we had a total of 4 teams of A 4’s.  We would be playing on one net.

By the time the first game got started it was after 11 am, ridiculously late, but at least we were playing and on a court that was in relatively good shape at that.

Both Nick and Josh were younger guys, I don’t know if either of them had their 25th birthday yet.  They brought with them three young cute girls as well.  I never got a firm handle on who was paired up with who.

Josh said that Nick and he played a whole bunch of indoor volleyball before but they only started playing beach ball last year.  Of course I noticed right away that Nick was wearing a Tough Mudder headband.  Evidently Josh and he not only did the Tough Mudder, they are basically mud race junkies.  He said on average they do two a month, wow.

In addition to their mud racing, Nick is a triathlete, sporting an Ironman tattoo after he completed the Louisville event.  It was cool being able to exchange stories with him about both mudder life and tri’s.

On the court we did pretty well.  All of us were sort of thrown off balance by playing 4’s, especially when you have never played with or met half of your team members.  We kept things basic, doing a full rotation where everyone plays every position, not a great formula for success but we went with it.

Despite not playing for almost exactly a year I felt pretty comfortable out on the court which kind of surprised me.  Playing fours does take some of the pressure off since you have more bodies covering the same area normally covered by only two.

We wound up losing our first game by a couple points (rally to 28), but it didn’t really bother me.  After all that lead up to us actually getting out on the court, I was happy to just be playing.

The girls that Nick and Josh brought did a nice job of being our official team cheerleaders, cheering loudly and offering encouragement throughout the game.

During the first game I had a foot collision with a guy on the other team at the net.  I was rushing in to hit a low set and he was planted there to block.  My toes smashed into the side of his foot.  It hurt, but I didn’t pay much attention to it at all.

Well after the game I happened to glance down at my left foot and saw this. It looked like I was beating on three of my toes with a hammer.  My second toe was the worst as blood was seeping around the toenail. It was gross.

I was surprised that I was able to play more or less unencumbered despite the mangled toes.  Evidently those three toes serve little functionality when it comes to playing beach volleyball.

As we watched the other two teams on our net it became apparent that there were no weak teams playing, I am pretty sure that everyone that agreed to play 4’s signed up for A doubles, not BB.

One of the teams had one of the dreaded father/young son phenom combos on it.  The dad was a real strong player, evidently he plays AA skill level or higher normally.  His kid whom I can’t believe was more than 12, was a great player with setting skills that far eclipse mine.  Playing 4’s was actually perfect for him as he could be the full time setter with little penalty to the rest of the team.

Our second game was against that team. Once again the game was pretty tight but again we came out on the losing end.  Personally I was still playing well so the eventual game outcome didn’t concern me all that much.  Both Tabby and I agreed that it was too bad we weren’t playing doubles because we would have probably done pretty damn well.

So our last match in pool play was against another good team that happened to lose their first two games by a narrow margin as well. (every game during pool play was close, no blowouts)  We tried mixing things up this game, making Tabby the designated setter since he was the best setter by far out of the four of us.  He said he didn’t mind setting full time.

He did a nice job of setting but we wound up losing yet another close game, mostly on the back of unforced errors, including a number if missed serves. (which I had none of all day)  There was a funny moment in that game where the tall, big hitter on the other team, whom was drilling balls all game, hit another rocket right at me.

I crouched down to dig it but the ball was coming so fast it got there before my arms were extended.  I wound up catching the ball dodgeball style instead, it looked funny.

So we weren’t sure if we were going to be involved in the playoffs or not, with a single, 4 team pool sometimes they let all the teams participate in playoffs.  Nick and Josh asked if we wanted to get out on the court for a bit while it was figured out to play doubles, like we were supposed to.

In a way it seemed like a way to prove which team was the reason we were 0-3 in pool play.  Well I think we got the answer.  Tabby and I were ahead 15-9 by the time we had to stop for playoffs to begin.

So we found out we did indeed get to play in the playoffs, albeit against the father and son team whom was undefeated.

We saved our best game of the day for last.  We really made some nice plays and I was really hitting well when I had the opportunity.  My arm felt very lively.

The playoff game, which was to 21, was tied 19-19.  I was so hoping to get a chance to crush a couple balls to give us the win.  Instead, the last two plays didn’t involve me at all and we wound up going down for the fourth time of the day, 21-19.

Oh well, despite the goose egg,  I walked away from the day feeling really no remorse.  Considering the circumstances I played really well.  If I play well and we still lose, then it bothers me much less.  If I stink up the joint and lose I take it much harder.  And that isn’t to say anyone on out team stunk up the joint.  It was just very evenly matched, good competition all afternoon long.

I had some time before I had to head for home to go to the Tarpons game so I stayed to ref the next match which turned out to be the first blow out of the day with the old guys dominating the big lunk team, 21-5.

I set up my Flip cam and stubby tripod to tape the pool play matches.  It’s a far cry from the good old days of Ali footage that included panning, zooming and cutting out the time in between action but you can see generally what is going on.  I have the first two games posted here and here.  I will get the third one posted later this week.  Even if you get bored with the volleyball, listening to the girls commentary and the occasional rear end walking by helps make up for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVXEiGypwyQ

Some new winning volleyball tips from this weekend have been added here.

I packed up my stuff, thanked Tabby and limped out to the SSR, my bloody toes were starting to hurt.  I texted Ali and told her we should still be a go for the Tarpons game.

The drive home I think I actually made better time than the drive up.  I nestled in with a convoy of vehicles that were cruising around 85 mph.  I made it back from Siesta Key in about 90 minutes.

On the drive home I had an unwelcome visitor to the SSR dashboard, the check engine light.  Geezus Cripes, I thought to myself, can’t I get a f’ing break with the automotive issues!!??  I am hoping the light is related to a loose gas cap since I filled up that morning for the trip.  I haven’t had time yet to throw my code reader on the truck.  It drove fine otherwise.

So I got home, threw the stuff that was in the truck on the garage floor and headed right to the shower to clean up.  Looking in the mirror revealed that the spray on, 70 SPF sunblock appeared to work.  My scalp, which was exposed all day didn’t even look pink thanks to me spraying the gunk generously on my head.  Washing my bloody toes was a bit painful.  They sure looked broken but I was able to wiggle them so maybe they were intact after all.

By this time it was right around 6, the game started at 7:30.  I jumped right back in the van and headed over to Ali’s place. She was nice enough to drive us to the game in the Camry, I was beat.  I told her I would be happy to pay the $5 parking fee this time, not wanting to do more walking than was necessary.

I had not bought tickets ahead of time so we were walking towards the ticket booth.  As we did we were stopped by a guy asking if we needed tickets.  Skeptical, I said yes, we didn’t have any yet.  He said that he is one of the sponsors of the Tarpons and he had a bunch of tickets he was just giving away.  He showed me the tickets and then gave me a business card of his  for the legal service he provides.  He just asked that we visit the web site on the back to which I said “sure, no problem”.  I was still a bit skeptical this was legit but when the two tickets got us in the door my skepticism faded.  Wow, we actually got free tickets, sweet.

Well I wanted a beer and some food before anything else.  We stopped at an Italian stand near our section.  For some reason I thought they sold Papa John’s mini pizzas there.  The woman behind the counter said they do not but the single slices they sold were really nice and big.  Ok, give us two slices.

What we were handed almost seemed like a joke.  The slices looked like shit.  They were small and looked to have almost every speck of moisture baked out of them.  Ali’s also looked a bit mangled.  In retrospect I should have been more of a prick about it and asked for slices that didn’t look like red cardboard but I was hungry, thirsty and just wanted to sit down and relax.

So we walked into the breezeway of the stadium.  I had my slice of shitty pizza in one hand and my beer in the other.  I needed a third hand to pull out my free tickets.  Since I was lacking the necessary appendage I decided to balance the plate on one arm while reaching in my pocket for the tickets.  Well in short order the pizza became unbalanced and dropped on to the black, disgusting cement by my feet.  In my attempt to prevent the drop I also spilled a good portion of my beer as well.

Well without hesitation, I swooped down and picked up the pizza and slapped it back on the plate.  My instant analysis was the rock hard pizza landed crust side down, limiting the ability for microrganisms and bacteria to penetrate it.  Plus I grabbed the pizza well within the 5 second rule parameters.  Ali of course was grossed out beyond belief and offered to walk back and ask if they would swap out pizza slices.  I told her to not bother, I was fine.

So once we sat down and I did a quick visual spot check on the bottom of the pizza, I ate the entire thing, washing it down with what remained of my Bud Light.  Yea typing this out makes me realize just how gross that actually was. As far as I know the floor of arenas are typically not cleaned, ever.  At least to this point, I have had no side effects from the dirty slice.

The game itself was sort of a joke.  It was the final regular season game.  The Tarpons were still undefeated and the team they played from Western Pa, was winless.  Not only were they winless, they had some awful looking purple uniforms.

It didn’t take long to see why the Phantoms were winless.  On the first play from scrimmage the Tarpons sacked them for a safety.  Then on the kickoff, the Tarpons ran it all the way back for a touchdown.  It was like that the entire game, I believe the final score was something like 91-16.

Despite the lopsided contest on the field I generally had a good time just hanging out.  I had a couple more beers and went back and got Ali and myself another slice of pizza from the other end of the arena.  The quality was much improved and I didn’t even drop it this time.

We didn’t do any seat jumping this time around.  Our free seats were good enough and to be honest, the place is small enough that there really are no bad seats anyway.

We left a little after 10pm with a little less than 10 minutes to go in the game.  The game was already well beyond over at this point anyway.  The Tarpons begin the playoffs in a couple weeks.  I may try to go to the game if I can.

So when we got back to Ali’s place we made arrangements for me to come back the next morning to pick up the dogs.  Ali was going to go to work on Sunday and I planned to mostly work on the truck during the day so I figured the dogs could hang with me.

After a much needed good night’s sleep I jumped in the van and got the dogs.  After completing any remaining house chores I started on the long awaited and somewhat dreaded, starter project.

When the Tacoma starter died in 2007 I remember contemplating doing the job myself.  After looking at the tight working space and not doing any research on the internet about it, I decided to just pony up the money and pay someone else to do it at that time.

Well my financial situation is a lot different in 2012.  Wherever I have an opportunity to shave money off my expenses I need to do it.  Doing this job myself would save me roughly 250 bucks.  After looking into the procedure pretty thoroughly I determined I should be able to pull the job off with the addition of a couple tools, a long ass socket extension and a swivel socket, both of which I bought at Sears earlier in the week.

The job had it’s peaks and valleys as I expected.  The biggest f up was when I mistakenly thought the bolts that hold the solenoid cap on the starter were the bolts that held the starter to the motor.  I spent a good 20 minutes carefully removing them unnecessarily.  Eventually I found the correct bolts and was quite glad I had my swivel socket and extension, doing the job without them would have been close to impossible.

Once I got the old starter out I tried sliding the solenoid cap off of it to see if I could look at the internal contacts that were most likely the problem.  Once I got the solenoid cap loose I couldn’t see the contacts and I also couldn’t push it back together.  I said f it and left it that way since I was going to just be giving the old starter to Autozone for the core charge.

The girls were excited to go on yet another ride in the van to go get the new starter.

I was a bit bummed that the closest Autozone to me did not have a starter in stock.  The guy said they sold the last one the day before.  He called the next closest store and verified that they had one, which they did.  For my trouble he told the other store to give me a 10% discount on the part, sweet.

I walked out of the second store having only dropped $92 for the new starter, which included a set of body fastening connectors, a nice deal.

Reinstalling the new starter was a bit of a challenge.  The first challenge was getting the starter into place.  To do so required bringing the starter up from the bottom of the vehicle in an upright position and then carefully rotating it in just the right way so it would go back into it’s mounting position.

After that I had to get the two bolts back in that hold it in place.  I had an issue with the top bolt.  It almost felt like the top hole in the starter wasn’t threaded properly.  I started encountering a lot of resistance while cranking it earlier than I should have.  I turned on that sucker hard and was only able to get the bolt close to but not quite snug.  Although the starter feels plenty secure I think I am either going to use a nut for a washer or get a shorter bolt so it is attached as it should be.  I don’t like half assing a repair if I am going to spend the time to do it.

Speaking of half assing, I managed to break the outlet off the back of the air box when I was removing the tube that runs between it and the throttle body.  For now my solution is duct tape but I am hoping to find a used box cheap somewhere in the future.

Replacing the starter was INCREDIBLY dirty work.  The Tacoma slowly leaks various fluids at this point in it’s life so the area I was working with was a greasy, oily mess.  By the time I was done my hands and forearms were pure black.

So anyway, eventually I got it done, stuff hooked back up and was able to do the big test, turning the key.  I held my breath and then exhaled when the truck turned over and started normally on the first try, success.

I got done just in time.  About 15 minutes after I got the last tool put away it started to downpour.

I videoed the starter repair as my automotive repair videos typically garner a decent sized YouTube following.

I was dead tired after a day turning wrenches under the truck in the hot driveway.  I asked Ali if instead of me getting back in the van and driving the dogs to her place, if she would mind driving out to the house to pick them up.  I sweetened the deal by offering to provide pizza for dinner.

I could tell she wasn’t thrilled by the idea but she agreed to come out, she knew I was beat up from volleyball before throwing the truck repair on top of things.

So by the time she got out there I already had burgers for the dogs made and cooling on a plate.  I made their supper and then used the burgers as a garnish, a combo both of them found quite tasty.  After the pizza came out of the oven Ali and I ate it while catching the season premiere of Master Chef.

When she was ready to go both of the dogs were looking quite comfortable.  Ali asked if I wanted the dogs to sleep over and I could just drop them off Monday morning on the way to work.  I said of course I was fine with it if Ali was.  Ali likes having the dogs with her at night.

So it was decided, it was officially a dog sleepover night.  Sadie snored happily next to me.  It was nice to wake up to the two black and furry faces.

I dropped them off this morning as planned.

I am pretty gimpy today between my smashed toes and normal muscle/knee soreness that accompanies rare volleyball action.  None of the pains feel like they are the type that will last beyond a few days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I called up Best Buy on Friday to find out how to go about getting my 73″ inch Mitsubishi TV fixed under the $400, four year extended warranty I bought with the TV in 2008.  I explained the problem and then gave the woman on the phone the contract number.

After punching it in she says, I’m sorry, your warranty expired on May 6th.  I was immediately confused.  I explained to the woman that when I bought the tv I was told the warranty is tacked on to the factory one year warranty, giving me five years of coverage.  She explained that is not the case, the extended warranty overlaps the first year of factory coverage, her explanation being that it covers items the factory warranty does not.

Well of course I was quite annoyed being that I am 25 days outside of that 4 year period and that the warranty was misrepresented to me up front.  I expressed this to the phone rep multiple times and asked repeatedly for Best Buy to do something for me to remediate the problem.  She apologized and said there was nothing she could do.  Her only advice was I could go to the local store and talk to the manager there to see if I could get anywhere.  Well that is the last thing I felt like doing.

You see I already knew that I had the back up plan of getting the repair done by Mitsubishi at a reduced rate.  If I was looking at a $1000 repair I might have been more tenacious in my fight. So I hung up, called Mitsubishi and made arrangements to have the tv fixed for a flat rate of $200, including parts and labor, not a bad deal for a tv that is 3 years out of factory warranty.

So on Saturday I got busy around the house in the morning, hoping to knock out most of the housework before picking up the dogs, whom were doing a sleepover Saturday night.  The reason I wanted to get stuff done was to clear the slate to finish up the castle stone border around the pool landscape area.

I planned to pick up the remaining 25 stones I needed from Lowe’s since that is where I got the first 75 from.  I was annoyed that they just happened to be sold out of 12″ sand colored castle stones on Saturday afternoon.

So I hopped back in the truck and went over to Home Depot, luckily they had them and they were the exact same price.

As the dogs sat outside in the shade with me, I worked on getting the remaining stones in place.  Overall I think they look ok although there is a height change between the two side halves of the border that I am not thrilled with.  At least that is a job I should not have to revisit anytime again in my lifetime.  Once cool weather returns I will rip up the border around the pond and do the same thing.  All the pics from the project are here.

Saturday night I finished up season 2 of Boardwalk Empire. It was a surprising ending, it seems like half of the original cast is dead.  Season 2 definitely had more action and was better than season one.

While I was driving my SSR over the weekend I had noticed I was getting a clicking noise when I pushed in the clutch.  Well on an on ramp when I was stomping on it hard after shifting from 2nd to 3rd instead of a click, I heard a snap and something metal falling off.  I looked down in the foot well and saw a large spring that looks like it snapped.  Well the clicking noise was gone but the odd thing was everything still felt normal with the clutch.  I have not yet determined where the spring goes to, something else to fix. Yay.

The party van has a problem as well with the HVAC fan.  If you turn the fan speed to high it sounds like it is going to come through the dash, vibrating terribly.  If I keep the fan on the first two speed settings it seems ok.  So until I get inspired to look further into that repair I keep the fan dial turned to the left and just max out the secondary fan that blows cool air out the ceiling vents in the rear.

I had a nice Sunday with the girls.  After doing a bike/swim brick at the water park I was outside with them quite a bit.  They had dog smiles for most of the weekend.  They were especially big when I made them burgers for lunch on Sunday.

The reason I had them overnight was because Ali was doing the Naples Tri on Sunday morning.  She had a good showing, knocking somewhere around 10 minutes off her time from last year.  She was exhausted afterward.  I didn’t wind up bringing the girls back until dinner time.

 

Last night after work I was debating if I wanted to go out to my backyard bar park and try to do the 1/2 BBR set that got rained out Sunday.  I wasn’t feeling all that positive mentally. Just eating dinner and sitting down at the computer was sounding like a very attractive alternative.

Well after some angry self talk from my inner task master I eventually grabbed my gear and headed outside.

I’ll cover details of the attempt in Dufisthenics, but let’s just say I was not successful in hitting my goal.  The funniest part of it was after I was too tired to complete even one of the required three muscle ups at the end, I clapped my hands together in frustration so hard that it sounded like a gunshot.

It is a move I usually reserve for the volleyball court.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7qq9SOmLKY

For dinner I went the healthy route, making another wrap stuffed with good stuff like tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, spinach, hummus, carrots, swiss cheese and mushrooms.  My biggest problem with the wraps are they are a mess to eat.  I pile so much stuff in them that when I go to eat it, half of it falls out.  Oh well, that’s what forks are for.

Today should be a fun day.  I get to drive over to the new Marlins Stadium for a tech seminar.  (like last year) After the seminar I get to watch the game from one of the suites.  I am looking forward to seeing the new ballpark.  I have heard mixed reviews about it, some saying it is great, others calling it hideous.  I will offer up my opinion tomorrow.

It will wind up being another late night drive across the alley but it’s nothing a cup or two of coffee can’t handle.

So I was back and forth if I wanted to get up to do the club run Saturday morning.  My legs and rear end were still both quite sore from my leg work on Wednesday at the gym.  Well my exercise guilt won out and I drug myself out of bed to go to the run.

There was a big crowd at the club run this week, possibly the biggest I have seen to date.  Ali, Christy and Michelle were there as well.  I once again paired up with Matt and despite my legs feeling shitty, he drug me along to what I believe was my best time for the 7 mile route which surprised me.

I asked Ali if she minded if I picked up the dogs on the way home so they could spend the day out at the house, she said it was fine.  I had a productive day at home getting everything I wanted done, done.  For most of my time outside the dogs hung out there with me, laying in various shady spots.  It felt damn close to summertime hot out there.

After I got done I jumped in the pool and gave Sadie her first splashy splash session in a long time, she loved it of course.

I also gave the Tacoma a bath for the first in many months.  The truck does not get cleaned very often anymore since the exterior finish is a mess at this point from a decade plus in the Florida elements.  Even so, it did look a little better when I was finished.

I went an extra step and finally got around to using the headlight renewal stuff I bought months back.  The headlights on the Tacoma had that dull glaze that is so common.  After about 15 minutes of work I had both headlights looking significantly better.

On the way to drop the dogs off we made a pit stop at Pet Supermarket to get them some food.  In addition I couldn’t help myself, I had to buy the stuffed tick dog toy I walked by.  Ali laughed when I showed it to her.

When I dropped the dogs off it was right around 5:30. Ali said she bought the stuff to make some pesto pasta thing, so  she asked if I wanted to stick around for dinner.  I didn’t have anything planned for my Saturday night beside some Diablo 3 sessions so I said sure.  Ali said it was the first “dinner” she has actually prepared since living there. It was quite good.

After eating dinner I didn’t stick around too long.  I have been conscious of how much time Ali and I have been spending together thus far since we split up and although it is still quite comfortable for me to just hang out with her I don’t think it helps either of us do much moving forward.  So even though I would have been fine to hang around and watch some stuff on her DVR and hang with the dogs, I headed home.

Sunday morning I once again had another exercise session, this time doing a biking/swimming brick.  My average bike pace was a 1/2 mile faster than the week prior.   I increased the distance of my swimming from 1200 to 1600 meters.  I was happy with both of those results.

Once again I took the SSR and once again I was happy I did.

After I finished my swimming I hung out at the water park for a little bit, reading one of my magazines.  I peppered in people watching as well.

When I got home I was feeling really sleepy.  After I got done paying the bills I succumbed and laid down for a 2 hour + nap.

Sunday evening I made a lackluster attempt at the normal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge. I then threw in my current Netflix dvd rental, I Am Number Four.  I don’t recall what triggered me to put this in my queue but I had no big expectations for the flick.

Well it turned out to be something I really liked, hell I’d give it a solid A.  It has several elements that appeal to me, aliens, super hero powers, good looking women and a revenge storyline.  Rent it, you won’t be sorry.

As I am sure you have heard, Howard Stern, whom I have been a big fan of for over 20 years, and the only reason I endure shitty Sirius/XM radio,has joined America’s Got Talent as a new judge this season.

When the show first came out a few years ago I checked it out since it was getting big ratings.  I didn’t get it, I found the show INCREDIBLY annoying and overproduced.  After watching three or four episodes I never went back.

Well since Howard is now a judge I thought it had to be better, surely by now they got smart and made the show less annoying.  I set the show up for a season pass on my Tivo.  Well I barely made it through the two episodes so far, it is just awful, let me see if I can explain why.

The way they piece the show together is dreadful.  They do so many cut away shots between the judges, the host, the act and the audience you hardly ever get to just watch an act and make your own assessment.  Most of the acts they only show some brief highlights wedged in between the endless cut aways.  They have so many music beds playing on top of the judge comments and even the acts themselves that they could open up a hotel with them. They will also apply a video filter to certain aspects of the show to give it an epic, movie look which seems totally out of place.

I hoped that having Howard on the show would help negate all of this but his commentary was  butchered up and fragmented by the idiots in the editing room.  I found that he added very little to my enjoyment of the show.  I will suffer through a couple more episodes but I have a feeling even with Stern on, AGT it will be short lived in my season pass list.  I have too many potential good things to watch to waste my time watching that piece of shit.

It feels like it is produced for the absolutely dumbest segment of the American tv audience.

This past weekend has probably been my roughest emotionally since Ali moved out.  Why this would occur 6 weeks after her move out date is beyond me. I just felt sad, like I was mourning everything that had become routine and familiar over the past 15 years.    It seemed like everything I saw as I walked around the house triggered a “that was when Ali and I did this or that” response.  I just couldn’t get my mind out of that mode.

I know that wallowing in sorrow doesn’t do any good.  I just need to keep trying to reach outward and forward instead of retracting inward.   Isolating myself would be a very easy course of action after all.

I really miss the dogs.

Earlier this week I used some of my Amazon spiff points to buy a couple pieces of fitness gear.

The first item was something called Fat Gripz.  These hard pieces of blue rubber are designed to be used with barbells, dumbbells and pull up bars to make the grip area significantly bigger.

What is the point you ask?  Hand, forearm, and grip strength.  These things have tremendous reviews from pretty much everyone that uses them.  A fat grip equates to much more difficulty.  If you do a set of curls with 30 pound dumbbells and then do another set after slapping the Fat Gripz on you will be amazed at the additional effort required.

I will be using the Gripz primarily on my pull up bar but I will try them out for different movements as well.

The other item I got was a dip belt.  The belt will make doing weighted dips and pull ups much easier instead of holding a dumbbell between my knees.  It will be accompanying me to the gym today.

Last night I decided I wanted to take a chunk out of my weekend workload by mowing and weed whacking the property.  Since summer/wet season seems to have gotten an early start this year the grass needed full grooming.  I didn’t get done until after 8.  I threw together a wrap for dinner that included hard boiled eggs, tomato, carrots, hummus  and swiss cheese.

So I have now had a chance to play three different classes in Diablo 3, the barbarian, the witch doctor and the monk.  All three are a lot of fun in different ways.

The barbarian and his brute force, in your face smash mouth style of play is great for stress relief.  The witch doctor with his zombie dogs, endless jars of spiders and assortment of spells are just eye candy to watch.  The monk utilizes a Bruce Lee fists of fury play style that is fast paced and devastating.

If I had to pick a favorite out of the 3 so far I would probably take the monk by a slim margin.  I always did like Bruce Lee.

Yesterday I saw a video that outlined the procedure to replace a broken ceramic tile.  I have had a broken tile in front of the fridge for a few years that I first just covered with a throw rug and later tried to fill with some similar color grout filler.

Well after watching the video I realized I should just replace the damn tile, it isn’t rocket science.

This weekend I have several things I’d like to get knocked out but nothing set in stone.  Speaking of the tile replacement, I am going to rebuilding my home project list which was ripped off the fridge awhile ago.  I find having that list in front of me serves me well as motivation to eliminate items from it instead of having things drag on forever without ever getting done.

That list will have several items on it in addition to the tile replacement. Painting the bedroom, master bath, and garage will be on there.  I also am looking to replace the twice replaced landscape timber border around the pool with concrete landscape blocks.  Wood rots, concrete doesn’t.

As part of painting the bathroom, I am hoping to score a left over piece of granite/Corian from someplace that I can use to cover the big flat surface in the bathroom next to the sink.  Right now it is just white drywall that looks like shit.

Of course projects cost money so besides the tile replacement, most of these will be delayed until I have some more time to get a solid feel for what my new financial thresholds will be.

Awhile back I signed up for the WoW annual pass.  Part of the reason I did it was because they were giving people Diablo 3 for free as part of the promotion.  Well the game was released yesterday.

This is the third installment in the series.  I was never a huge fan of the prior games.  I played a decent amount of the first Diablo and I didn’t play Diablo 2 at all.

Well there has been a ton of hype and anticipation for D3 and since I was getting it for free I certainly was going to check it out.

Just like most of my computer game purchases in the past few years, installing D3 required nothing but an internet connection although the roughly 8 gig download took quite awhile to complete.

I fired up the game and created my first character, a Barbarian of course.  Their “Hulk Smash” style of play appeals to me.  The game opens with a cinematic, an incredibly realistic cinematic.  It is simply amazing what they can do with computer animation, the detail was fantastic.

When I jumped into the game itself the visual orgasm continued, the graphics and character animations are just top notch.  Unlike WoW which can seem hopelessly complicated to the novice, Diablo 3 doesn’t have anywhere close to the same learning curve.  The controls are much simpler and moving around the environment is made intuitive by the helpers Blizzard built into the game.

It just so happened that as I was creating my first character my buddy Charlie had just logged on to the game.  D3 makes it stupidly easy to team up with your buddies for some monster smashing fun.  Within seconds Charlie and I were marching around together raising hell.

The game is just flat out fun.  At least initially, you feel God-like as you can smash through a pack of 15 bad guys with little consequence.  I have a feeling as the game progresses the margin for error will get slimmer.

Diablo shares the gear concept with WoW.  As you kill things and progress through the game, upgraded armor and weapons drop which you can pick up and use to make yourself even more bad ass.

Blizzard took a bold new step with Diablo 3, introducing an in game virtual auction house that can have financial rewards in the real world.  Players can spend real cash for virtual goods.  That concept is not new.  However they can also sell virtual goods for real cash, that, is new.

One of the big problems in WoW is the huge underground in-game gold market.  Basically there are businesses that are built upon the backs of virtual slaves that do nothing but collect gold in the game and then sell that gold to other people that don’t want to spend the time to accumulate it conventionally.  This trade is huge in China, hence the term “Chinese gold farmers” .

Well a few years back the gold farming industry got nasty.  Greedy farmers figured out there was a much faster way to collect gold to resell for profit, steal accounts.  They developed and introduced trapdoor websites and keyloggers that were specifically designed to steal your WoW account logon information.  Once they obtained it they would log on as you, sell everything you have and empty out your virtual bank. It has been a HUGE issue in WoW.

Well Blizzard decided to eliminate that market in Diablo 3 by creating their own virtual to real currency auction house.  It will be interesting to see how it works out.  I haven’t played around in that part of the game yet.

The game just seems to be so well done and I have only scratched the surface of what it has to offer at this point.  I look forward to digging deeper in the upcoming weeks.

In a recent edition of Newsweek (yes I am still receiving it for free) there was an article regarding the obesity epidemic.  I found it interesting that the article focused on the “wheat belly” effect I talked about a few months back.

Over the years the public has been fed many magic bullets that were the cause of obesity.  First is was food that was high in fat so food companies pumped out “low fat” versions of their products that always cost more than the regular variety.

Then it was all about carbs, carbs are bad.  This lead to stupid diets like Atkins that made you lose weight while you stuck to it but the moment you resumed a moderately normal diet you would blow up to dimensions bigger than before.

Well within these fads there remained a pretty solid health plan, eat less calories and exercise more.  That always works, right?  Well yes, but there is an asterisk.

For decades the established principal in nutrition has been a calorie is a calorie.  Whether you consume that calorie via a milkshake or via a piece of broccoli, it is burned by your body for energy the same way.

Well the wheat belly principal bucks that trend in a big way.  Now people are looking more at how certain types of foods interact with the body’s processes, in this case, whole grains in particular.  Foods that spike insulin production are the ones that are most responsible for fat production.  Well guess what, wheat/whole grains are one of these foods.

A more accurate and effective measurement of a foods fat potential on the body is it’s glycemic value, which is indicative of that food’s effect on insulin production.  I found it shocking that a piece of wheat bread has a higher glycemic index than granulated sugar.

In addition, in many people’s bodies, gluten is treated as an irritant which contributes to a large number of other problems.

If you look at our food chain, it is just bursting at the seams with “whole grain” foods that have been sold as a healthy alternative when the exact opposite may be true.

I have heard/read repeatedly how a gluten free diet (absence of wheat/grain products) is the best thing you can do for yourself if you are trying to clean up your diet/lose weight.  I myself have been quite guilty of jumping on the whole wheat train for the last decade or so.  I am now going to be starting to moderate that as well.

For the most part since Ali moved out I haven’t spent much time moping around and dwelling on it, knowing that in the big picture it won’t help me move ahead.  However at times I will find myself triggered randomly into sad thoughts.

One of those times was this morning when I was getting ready to leave for work.  I glanced at the Peanuts calendar that is hanging on the wall I saw it was still on April.  As I turned the calendar to the current month I thought about how Ali always would get a Peanuts calendar every year and then carefully go through it, marking important dates and accenting them with cute Peanuts stickers that were included.

At that moment, the realization that 2012 was the last year such a calendar would be adorning my wall made me sad.

So Friday I had to haul ass.  I was doing work at our Immokalee branch but I had made arrangements to pick up my mom after work for an early Mother’s Day dinner and celebration.  I got out of the branch later than expected so I hauled ass back to the house, changed, grabbed some extra garden veggies and then hopped in the SSR to get mom.  I gave her a call once I was back out on the road so she knew I would be a little later than expected.  Mom hates if I am even 10 minutes later than I estimate.

I was a bit worried as I pulled out onto the main road with the top down.  There was a huge gray cloud near by that was obviously dumping precipitation.  I estimated with the direction the road curves I should just miss it.  I was mostly right, I drove through some drizzle but nothing serious.

So I get to mom’s place, hand her the veggies and am ready to go.  Mom stops me and asks if I could quickly reassemble her Roomba.  It ran over something which made the brushes pop out.

So we hopped in the SSR and were off.  Mom was concerned about her hair blowing around so I put up the side windows to minimize the wind in the cabin.  Mom definitely enjoys riding around in the SSR, who wouldn’t?

So originally I thought we could go to Watermark Grille, an old favorite of mom’s that we had not visited in awhile.  Mom actually had her own suggestion, PF Changs, another place I had not been to in ages.  Well that was fine with me.

I was sort of surprised when they said it would be a 20-25 minute wait.  I guess since we are firmly out of the dreaded snowbird season I assumed that we wouldn’t have to wait.  It was no big deal, I bought my mom and I something from the bar and we sat in the outside seating area until our buzzer lit up.

We had a nice meal.  We opted for a 39.95 dinner for 2 combo that included soup, a starter, the entre and mini-deserts.  Mom actually wound up getting an entire additional free meal.

As we were sitting there a server came out with a second plate of what mom ordered.  He said her original plate was a bit short on scallops so to compensate they were bringing out another whole serving.  Sweet.

After dinner I took mom over to Trader Joe’s which is part of the same shopping area.  By the time we got there it was after 8.  The parking lot was very empty which was wonderful.  Every time I have been there before it was crowded to the point of annoyance.

Mom and I walked the entire store.  Mom saw some things that were more expensive than she was used to from her years of grocery shopping but she also saw quite a few good deals.  Mom picked up a few items which I paid for along with the stuff I got, I told mom she could consider it part of her Mother’s Day present.

On the ride back to mom’s place she no longer cared about her hair so we put all the windows down.  Her mad scientist hair looked pretty funny.

I gave mom her Mother’s Day card and was on my way home shortly afterward.  It seemed like mom genuinely had a nice time which I was to happy to see.

Saturday morning Ali decided to do a sprint triathlon.  Sadie had an appointment at the vet for a booster for her Lyme Disease vaccination at 9:30 so Ali asked if I could take her.  In addition Ali had 3 or 4 other things she wanted checked out while I had the dogs there.  I also was on call for the upgrade that was being done at our remote branch.

I headed outside a little after 7, hoping to get all of my outside to do’s knocked out before the girls early 9:30 am appointment.  I had to hustle, by the time I came back inside it was almost 8:30.

I picked up the girls in the van and whisked them off to the vet.  Ali evidently did not let the vet know she wanted additional things done, they had only planned to give Sadie her booster shot which isn’t even administered by the vet.  I wound up sitting around for about 15 minutes until the vet was free.

While I was waiting a man and a woman came out of “the room”, the room where both of our cats were both put to sleep.  The couple was upset, the woman, almost uncontrollably so.  I felt bad for them, knowing all too well exactly what they were feeling, it’s horrible.

So the vet got free and took Sadie back first for her work which included the booster and the disgusting job of emptying anal glands.  Sadie was fine going back with the vet staff. Then it was Nicki’s turn.

Nicki HATES the vet.  She was cowering and shaking the entire time.  They had to basically drag her back to the exam room while I waited out front with Sadie.  Nicki had her glands squeezed and they also checked her out for a possible urinary infection.  After they brought Nicki back out they went over both dogs to check for ticks.  Luckily this time they came up clean.

I took the girls back to the house so they could hang with me during the day since Ali would surely be napping for awhile after her triathlon.

The girls were pretty mellow at the house, not doing a lot of running around and playing outside.  To be fair it was pretty much summertime hot and humid outside which probably cut down the fun quota a bit for them.

I attended to various things around the house including cleaning the inside and outside of the windows.  It was pretty amazing how my view of the outside world cleared up dramatically after I was finished.  I like clean windows.

At one point the dogs got another bonus ride in the van as I had to run out to the hardware store to grab a few nuts and lock washers to repair my Kreepy Krawler.

So later in the afternoon I took the girls back to Ali’s place.  Ali and I had planned to go see The Avengers Saturday night.  Part of that plan was to use a Fandango gift card Ali had to make for cheap entertainment, something we both can use due to our new financial realities.

Ali hopped on the Fandango site and tried to first book tickets for the 3D show since it showed at 6:45, a good time.  At the very last step of the process the site balked and said there were no tickets available.  DAMN, we both figured there must be a ton of people buying tickets up.  We then tried to get into the 2D show that was a half hour later, same deal, no tickets available.  Oh well.

I figured we better get up to Coconut Point with plenty of time to spare since apparently there is a huge demand for tickets.  I figured Fandango was only allocated a certain block of tickets for each show.  We left early to make sure we snagged a valuable and apparently hard to get ticket.  I was very surprised the movie would be THAT pre-sold considering it was at Coconut Point, a place that is traditionally very empty.

We got up there about 5:15.  We went right to the ticket booth prior to eating,  since I was worried about getting a ticket.  “Do you have any tickets left for the 6:45 3D show?” I asked nervously.  After a brief pause the clerk said she did, I happily handed her my credit card, whew, we managed to score tickets….

Our dinner was at Johnny Rocket’s, Ali had a free meal coupon that was supposed to be the cherry on our low cost evening out.  We had an average meal.  Our server was a bit awkward.

When we were done eating we still had like 45 minutes until showtime so I suggested we walk around a bit.  We made two geeky stops, the Apple store and Brookstone.  It was just window shopping though, no purchases were made.

So we go back to the theater and head inside.  After being handed our 3D glasses and grabbing our movie junk food, we head into the theater with about 30 minutes to go, nervous that even this early there may be an issue scoring a quality seat.  We turn the corner and look up at the rows of seats.  Not a single body is occupying any of them.  WOW, what luck, I guess we beat the HUGE rush that is surely going to come piling in at any moment.

Well that rush never came.  In total I don’t believe there were even 30 people in the theater.  Why the fck Fandango acted like it was sold out is beyond me.

So anyway, my anticipation for The Avengers was quite high, I was a comic book geek as a child.  I really was looking forward to this movie that ties together several prior super hero films that were all big hits on their own.  I was a bit worried that it would be impossible to adequately split the attention between so many characters in a way that felt right.  Well they did it.

The film was just great, just like everyone says it is.  I really enjoyed it from start to finish.  There were some really funny parts in there, the funniest of all were saved for the Hulk.  A couple of his scenes had me belly laughing, hard.

Ali and I were the only ones that sat through the entire credits to see the bonus/bonus footage.  I have to say, it really isn’t worth the wait but it did make me laugh.

We both agreed the movie was great. A+, see it, in a theater, tonight.

I dropped Ali off at her place and after helping her with walking the dogs, headed home.  I made plans to stop back at her place briefly on Sunday to pick up the Scooba she was borrowing and to help Ali pull the bed apart so she could vacuum under it for any potential tick visitors.

My plan for Sunday was to go do a full sprint tri (and then some).  I hadn’t done a brick, not to mention a 3 event brick in ages.  Other things have just taken priority.

Well originally I planned to throw the bike in the back of my Tacoma since that is what I normally would do.  As I pulled the bike off the wall I looked at the bed of the SSR, hmmm I wonder if I could get my bike in there??

Well it took removal of the front wheel and some careful manipulation but eventually I got my Trek in the back of the SSR, sweet!

The bike ride was the first event I tackled, doing the Livingston Road 12 + mile course.  It felt tough right from the get go, I struggled to maintain my mental minimum speed of 18 mph.

I had a funny moment after the turn around part of the ride.  In front me of was an obviously much older guy, I was making up ground on him very quickly even though I was still only going 18-19 mph.  As I got closer I saw he was wearing a FDNY t-shirt.  I gave the “on the left” warning and followed up with a “good morning” as I whisked by him.  I actually picked up the pace a bit from there to the traffic light on Immokalee Road, keeping my speed mostly between 19-20 mph.

Well I had a red light at Immokalee so I unclipped and stopped.  I was startled when I heard a voice behind me a couple seconds later, it was the old guy!  He said he wanted to thank me for the motivation.  Evidently once I blew past him he picked up his pace, caught me, and was drafting me.  I had no idea.  This guy was firmly into his late 60’s if not scraping the 70’s.  I was impressed he was able to catch up to me, good for him.

He said I was welcome to draft behind me for the next segment since he hitched a ride on me.  I told him it was fine I didn’t need to draft.  Well the old guy took off in front of me and stayed that way until I made the turn on Livingston to head back to the water park.  He was pacing 19-20 the entire way.  I was too gassed at that point to care all that much about passing someone that had 30 additional years on the odometer.  It did kind of put me in my place as a lukewarm average cyclist at the very best.

By the time I got back to the park I was really tired. The idea that I had two more events yet to complete did not fill my heart with joy.  After putting on my sneakers, stripping my shirt, drinking some water and sucking down a Goo I headed off for my planned 4 mile run, two laps around the outside of the park.

The first half mile or so of running after a bike ride is just very uncomfortable, especially if you haven’t done that transition in a long time.  I found myself early on giving myself excuses to only run two miles instead of the four I laid out because I felt crappy.  Eventually I settled in an was able to finish the 4 miles at an unspectacular but ok 9:12 per mile pace.

All that was left was the swim portion.  I went into the water park and hopped in the lap pool.  My first 400 meters was ROUGH.  Even though my time for it wasn’t horrible (8:45), I felt extremely tired.  My triceps were burning, a muscle group I normally don’t associate much with swimming.

However as I continued on the discomfort settled down, I pulled negative splits on my remaining two 400’s, racking up 1200 meters in 26:20, a good number considering the long, long lay off.

As I was swimming I was thinking about my chronic shoulder problems that have gotten worse over the last several months.  It then struck me that the increased shoulder problems coincided with the decrease in my time in the pool.  Swimming is a fantastic all around shoulder exercise.  I am hoping that my return to the pool will mean the departure of my aching shoulders.

After I was done I decided I would skip the pizza and fries water park lunch.  I figured I could grab a PB sandwich when I stopped at Ali’s, my next stop.

When I came rumbling into Ali’s place with the SSR she emerged from the front door in an obvious bad mood.  She evidently was in a tick induced rage after finding a couple more on the carpet, including one that was engorged with blood.

Ali is at her wit’s end with this tick problem and now suspects that her apartment itself could be the source of the little blood sucking bastards.  She was annoyed that apartment management told her they could do a tick treatment inside her place but it would be an extra cost item.  Ali’s reasoning was she paid a premium to have the dogs there and if the prior tenants had a dog (they did), part of what should have been included is complex management doing a full flea/tick treatment of the living space before she moved in.   I agree with her.

Anyway, Ali had not made the headway into her to do list by the time I arrived.  I offered to handle her grocery shopping at Target for her to lighten the load.  I grabbed her list and headed to Target down the street.  In addition to the groceries I was also charged with trying to find some flea/tick treatment for carpet.

I returned with the groceries and tick powder in hand.  Unfortunately after reading the directions it became clear that the treatment would be best performed with the dogs out of the apartment for a day or so.

I ate lunch at Ali’s and then helped her move the bed components around so she could sweep.  I then offered to handle the Dyson to sweep her steps since it is a bit cumbersome to do without some significant upper body strength.  After verifying there was nothing else she needed I headed home.

I had a VERY lazy Sunday afternoon.  I originally figured I would lay down in bed and take a nap.  Instead I laid there and got up to date with Fringe episodes via Hulu. I watched 4 or 5 of them back to back.

My Sunday evening followed much the same pattern.