Category Home Improvements

Man last night was busy…

So Cindy and I have known mice have been getting into the chicken run area at night.  We have seen some mouse poop in the feeders and have discovered tunnels where the little bastards managed to find a small hole to dig under the buried chicken wire.  Well last night Cindy saw something on the ramp into the coop after we had closed the hens up for the night.  It actually tripped the motion detector light we have in there.

Cindy pulled up the security camera feed and saw a large field mouse under the coop as well as three smaller mice, presumably a momma and her babies.   Cindy’s initial reaction was to want to put rat traps in the area which I immediately shot down.  They were field mice, not rats and although their presence is annoying, it doesn’t present a danger to the chickens.  We need to start raising the feeders off the ground at night and work at fortifying the spot the mice keep digging into.  There is no way I want to kill them, I just hope by making the food unavailable and access more difficult they will realize it’s time to go find new living arrangements.  Also if the chickens corner one of the small mice they will take it out, we have seen it before.

I spent time with Cindy outside crawling around in the sand with a rake trying to scare the mice out from under the coop.  The mother ran out, scaring the shit out of Cindy but the babies were not quite as smart.  I put some additional temporary barriers in the spot the mice were getting in  until I can properly secure/bury more chicken wire.

I messed around with the kitchen light switches last night, trying to discern how ez/difficult it would be to install my WeMo smart switches.  The kitchen is a 3 way circuit where two switches are wired to the large overhead fluorescent light, a configuration the WeMo officially does not support but can be made to work based on other research I have done.

Although I have done some basic electrical work in the past I do have anxiety about it and prefer to just leave it be if at all possible.  I have taken some unintended shocks from normal house current and it was not a good time.  Over my extended 3 day weekend I plan to take a shot at getting the switches installed but I will be making sure each step is done in a cautious manner.

After crawling around by the coop I definitely needed my normal pre-bedtime shower.  As I was rinsing my hair I noticed the water pressure was dropping off.  I remembered the dishwasher was also running so I figured the pressure would kick back in shortly when the well pump fires back up.  Well that never happened.  Instead the pressure continued to drop until the flow of water completely stopped, just as I was rinsing soap off my face. Well that is just great.  I stepped out of the shower and dried off my third washed body, announcing to Cindy the water is dead.  I threw on shorts and a t-shirt and begun my diagnostics.

The first stop was the breaker box in the garage.  I verified that both the 220 and 110 volt well circuit breakers were not tripped which they weren’t.  I then headed outside to the water equipment.  I heard no activity and verified I had no pressure there either.  I felt the inlet pipe to see if I felt any vibration that the well pump normally generates, nothing.  I unplugged and re-plugged the well pressure switch and still got no response.  I walked out to the well head and verified there was absolutely nothing going on, nope.  Damn it.

So we faced the ugly reality of no water pressure.  Luckily I have 13,000 gallons of it in the pool but that isn’t useful for much more than flushing toilets.  We used some of our drinking water to do stuff like brush our teeth but normal bathing, dishwashing, and laundry were all on hiatus until the problem was fixed.  I called and left a message for the water company that did the well pump.  It was just replaced in May so I assume if it was somehow dead it would be replaced under warranty.  I unplugged the pump overnight.

This morning the first thing I did when I got up was to go plug in the well pump on the off chance the thermal switch in the unit tripped and reset itself.  Imagine my surprise when the pump actually kicked on, son of a bitch.  We had normal water pressure while I prepared for work but my mind was far from at ease.  Obviously there was something wrong, the pump should not cut out in the first place.

One of my suspicions was the water pressure tank was failing.  The tank I have in place is very old as it was reused from my old water equipment when I got my new stuff 4-5 years ago.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it is at least 10 years old.  When the pressure tank goes bad it can cause a well pump to “short cycle”, meaning it cycles on and off rapidly which can make it overheat.

When I talked to the water guys on the phone this morning I told them the pump was working again.  They said sometimes if ants get into the contacts of the pressure switch it can make the switch stop functioning as all four contacts need to be made.  I told him I saw no ants around the switch but I mentioned when the well pump was replaced the installer said my pressure tank was not in good shape.  The water guy said that could definitely be another cause of the problem so later today they will be sending someone out to take a look.  Although the last thing I need now is another bill, having the threat of water pressure vanishing at any moment is something that has negative impact on your quality of life so it has to be addressed.

So I, like presumably all Eagles fans were SHOCKED to see Jeff Lurie blew out Chip Kelly with one game left in the season.  The firing was shocking enough but to do it with one game left instead of just waiting until the miserable season was over really put an exclamation point on it, Lurie had enough.

Now as a fan, of course I wished Lurie would blow out Chip Kelly.  To me he has proven he is arrogant and inflexible, unable to adjust when what he planned doesn’t work.  He seems to put little value on relationships or making players want to win for him.  But despite these feelings, the logical side of me said we were stuck with Chip for at least another year and likely two, until his guaranteed contract ran out.  For Lurie to eat something like 13 millions dollars to get this guy the fck out of town speaks volumes to me.  It makes me think Kelly used the same dismissive arrogance in his discussions about his future with the team owner as he did with most others.

The move gave me a new found respect for Jeff Lurie and his desire to bring a championship to the Eagles.  The easy thing would have been to let Chip continue steering the ship.  However Lurie was not afraid to admit he fcked up maybe not for hiring Kelly, which nearly everyone thought was a good move initially, including myself, but surely for handing him the reins of personnel decisions.  That was obviously a very poor decision as the team roster is filled with some islands of talent mixed in with some of Chip’s bungled choices like Kiko Alonso and Byron Maxwell both of whom were awful this year.

I have no idea who will be in next in line to coach the team but I can only hope it is an established winner.  Thanks to Chip’s bloody surgery on the roster this year there will be a lot of work to be done until this team once again has an established, cohesive, core of players that possess the skills and chemistry to be a playoff level team in the NFL.

Adios Chip, we won’t miss you, have fun back in college.

When I got home last night I wanted to get a couple things done in the very limited daylight that remained.  The first was to work on the SSR.  Over the weekend we wanted to take the truck out but had to leave it in the garage because the clutch was messed up.  It was releasing a fraction of an inch above the floor.

When I tried to back the truck out of the garage last night it was even worse, I wasn’t even able to get it in gear.  I popped the hood, opened the clutch fluid reservoir and saw it was pretty much empty.  I dumped some synthetic brake fluid in there and pumped the clutch a few times which allowed me to at least get the truck out of the garage.

Once I was down in the driveway I located the quick drain port that was installed as part of the Corvette clutch upgrade I had done several years ago.  It seemed like the fitting that is loosened to drain the fluid was leaking just a bit. I hoped that was all it was.

I had Cindy come out with me so she could apply pressure to the clutch pedal while I slowly opened the drain line.  After some trial and error the line “burped” releasing the air that was in there.  I then tightened the fitting as much as I could, verified it wasn’t leaking and then had Cindy take the truck for a quick test drive.  She said it felt normal once again.  Of course I need to keep an eye on the fluid level to make sure there isn’t some other leak source.  I certainly hope not.

I then spent 10 minutes setting up my new Automatic adapter in the Tacoma.  Todd bought it for me off my Amazon list for Christmas.  It is a small device that stays permanently connected to your vehicle via the standard diagnostic port.  It them connects to your smart phone via bluetooth which then allows the data it collects to be displayed via their app and a web dashboard.

It basically is a way to make your older “dumb” vehicle, smarter allowing it to give you some of the high tech feedback that many new vehicles include as standard equipment,  sort of like a poor man’s OnStar.  Since the Prius already has some degree of this intelligence I figured the Tacoma was the best candidate for the device. I am still a bit foggy on everything it can and can not do.  I will put it through some more real world testing this week.

Todd also bought me a couple WeMo light switches.  I have to decide what spots in the house their intelligence would be best utilized.  I was originally hoping to use one for the big overhead light in the kitchen but found out the smart switch can not be used in situations where a light is controlled by more than one switch as is the case in the kitchen.

Yesterday would have been Nicki’s 13th birthday.  Facebook gave me a sad reminder of it yesterday by flashing up the picture from last year where she was enjoying her normal birthday vanilla cupcakes.  It still stings badly whenever I make myself focus on the loss of the closest thing I will ever have to a child.  We miss her so much.

So our flight back from New York on Wednesday evening was long, very long.  The 3 hour flight was stretched further by the plane arriving almost 30 minutes late combined with a 45 minute wait on the runway because of the huge amount of planes trying to get into the air.  Once we were in the air we hit a lot of turbulence.  I assume the turbulence is what made the air crew wait incredibly long until they started the drink/snack service.  I bet we were 90 minutes into it by the time we got our drinks.  We hadn’t eaten any formal dinner so we actually paid for a healthy snack box up front.  With as long as it took to get the regular food service we were glad we paid the extra 5 bucks.

As soon as we landed in Florida we were immersed into the crazy for December levels of heat and humidity.  It was not welcome.  When we approached the baggage area Cindy and I got very nervous when they called my name to go to the luggage counter.  I was afraid they lost/destroyed my bag.  Instead they had the bag sitting in the office.  Since we arrived at JFK so early we actually were there when the previous Fort Myers flight took off.  My bag got thrown onto that plane instead, funny.

Cindy’s mom was picking us up from the airport.  I felt bad that our delayed flight made her have to wait until after 10 to pick us up.  We were exhausted by the time we got home so we did little else than pile up our bags in the laundry room to be sorted out the next day.  It felt good to fall asleep in our own bed without a serenade of honking horns waking us up through out the night.  It felt surreal that just earlier that morning we were walking through Central Park.  Various scenes from our memorable trip passed through my brain as I fell off to sleep. It was a great, great time.

We woke up Christmas Eve with a long list of things to tackle.  Not only did we have to “untrip” the house, which involves a lot of washing, cleaning, and putting away, we also had last minute Christmas stuff to  attend to.  I also spent a bunch of time processing the various video footage we shot in NYC, the majority of which was at Stonepark with Lou.  All of that footage is here, all of the stuff we shot with our phones is here.

Cindy ran out early to get some stuff for the Christmas meal we were hosting for her family.  Later in the afternoon I went out to do some last minute shopping. Yes, I was going to go out shopping, in brick and mortar stores, on Christmas Eve.  Although I had bought Cindy a number of Christmas gifts and the NYC trip was the real present to ourselves, I felt some bizarre need to get her just a couple more things.  I wasn’t locked in to exactly what I was getting but I did have a loose idea to perhaps get her a low end mountain bike that we could use to ride around the nearby Rookery Swamp area.

My first stop was Sam’s Club.  It was crowded but not crazy busy.  I walked in there just walking around, wondering if something would strike me as a good gift for Cindy.  I didn’t really expect much luck but then I walked down the small appliance area.  I spotted a small induction cooking system.  It included one “burner” which is not a good term since induction surfaces actually create no heat.  They create heat in the pan through magnetism.  The kit also included three induction cooking pots/pans.  Induction units heat up super fast and use less power than a conventional stove top.  I thought with as much cooking as Cindy does it would be a really helpful addition to her kitchen arsenal.

I then started on my mountain bike quest.  Like I said I wasn’t looking for anything high end but I didn’t want junk that would fall apart in short order.  When I first stopped at Wal-mart all I saw were bikes that fell into the junk category.  I then hopped in the car and headed over to Target.  They had junk bikes but also had some that were a step up in both quality and price level.  I was debating between two bikes.  One was a Schwinn that was tagged as a woman’s bike.  The other was a brand I never heard of that had no gender designation so I assumed it was a man’s bike.  This bike also had a fully independent suspension with shocks up front and the spring/trailer arm set up for the back.  Even with the suspension it was like 40 bucks less than the Schwinn.

I was torn on what to do.  I wound up walking up front with the cheaper bike with no gender designation.  I loaded it in the car. pulled out of the lot and immediately had buyers remorse.  The Schwinn was nicer looking and had more quality components.  I turned right onto Immokalee Road and made an immediate U-turn.  I marched the bike I just bought into the store, returned it and walked back out with the Schwinn.  I felt much more at ease with the decision.  Of course when I got home I had to tell Cindy she had to hide for a bit so I could hide stuff.  The induction cooking system got wrapped and I hid the bike on the far side of the SSR.

During the day I also took some time to address the rear bumper on the Prius which got banged up when I stupidly backed into Cindy’s daughters (boyfriends) car when I was rushing to get out of the driveway when we left for NYC.  The impact area had a few spots where the paint was scraped to the plastic but most of it was just surface scraping.  I generously applied Scratch X to the damaged area and was able to get a good amount of the scratching to fade away.  Sure you can still tell something went on in that corner but it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb as it did.  I doubt we will invest in getting the bumper professionally repaired since we have a goal to “dip” the Prius sometime in 2016.  This week I am having Cindy go with Katie to get an estimate on what it will cost to get the door on the Nissan repaired.

We spent Christmas Eve watching content on the dvr while enjoying  our normal Friday meal of pizza.  Not exactly the template for a Christmas Eve but we enjoyed it which is all that matters.

Our Christmas gift opening got the latest start of my entire life.  Cindy wanted to get the chicken maintenance out of the way before we started which was fine by me.  The end result was us not starting to tear paper until close to 8.  Hell years and years ago I remember finishing up before 7.

Despite us giving each other the trip to NYC we still had a huge mountain of packages around the tree.  Each year we proclaim how neither of us having a primal need to receive a lot of presents and each year we still get each other a lot of stuff, odd.  Cindy got me a nice variety of things including several books which I need to make the time to read, clothing, workout gear, geeky things, and new office chair which I sorely needed.  Cindy seemed to like what I got her as well.

Later in the morning we had a Skype session with my sister.  I bought my niece and nephew kid Kindles for Christmas which evidently were a big hit.  When we got connected both of them were very busily playing with them.  It made me feel good to be the “fun gift” uncle.  We had a good session catching up and being able to do so via video call makes it a different type of experience.

Cindy had to start digging into prep for the the Christmas brunch she was preparing for her family.  As usual Cindy made big plans for the meal.  I contributed by trying to get the post gift opening carnage cleaned up and organized the best I could. The first people started showing up between 12 and 12:30.

Cindy’s brother and nephew, Owen were among the first to arrive.  Owen is very shy by nature but each time I see him he opens up to me a little bit more.  He and I spent a lot of time talking/playing with his Minecraft toys as well as him explaining the Mario game he was playing on his Nintendo 3DS.

We hoped to wait to eat until Cindy’s daughter and boyfriend got there.  They were coming from the east coast where they were visiting Katie’s dad and his family.  They weren’t going to get there for awhile so we eventually just dug into the food.  As usual Cindy did a fantastic job with the spread of food, it was all delicious.

Eventually Katie and Daniel got there.  It was nice having Cindy’s family under one roof.  It seemed like everyone enjoyed each other’s company, not always an easy thing to accomplish.  I had several moments during the day I thought about my mom not being around to enjoy Christmas with us.  I also thought a lot about Nicki not being part of my Christmas for the first time in over a decade.  Even after the separation I think I had the dogs with me every Christmas because Ali was away.  This was the first year that wasn’t the case.  I did my best to quickly fast forward my brain to another thought before the wetness in my eyes reached critical mass.

Cindy’s family headed out late afternoon, allowing us to get stuff cleaned up and spend some time “playing” with our stuff.  One of the things I got from my dad was a Belkin Wemo, a smart switch that can be tied into our Amazon Echo.  The end result was me being able to do stuff like this.

On Saturday I had no desire to attempt any endurance training.  My lower body was still trashed from the workout with Lou nearly a week later.  Cindy’s back was hurting her as well.  I got my exercise from doing stuff around the house.  We also decided to head out into the day after Christmas madness which equals if not surpasses the Christmas Eve crowds I experienced.  Luckily since we didn’t go out until closer to noon the initial rush of gift return mania had subsided.  Cindy wanted me to find my own bike so we could ride together.  I had planned to get a bike of course but was willing to wait a little bit until the big tab for the last 30 days of spending had been handled.

After not seeing anything I was nuts about at Target we wound up stopping at Dick’s Sporting Goods.  The had a nice selection of bikes, most of which were a step up from what Target had.  We found a 29 inch Diamond Back mountain bike that was on clearance.  It was more than I was looking to spend initially but it was a high quality bike with quality accessories and disc brakes, I decided to get it.

While we were there we also developed another idea as far as Cindy’s bike goes.  She actually liked the bikes at Dick’s a little more.  They were a little more money but not prohibitively so.  We decided to put a bike on hold for her with the intention to make our second bike return at Target on Sunday.  I wanted to make sure Cindy liked what she was riding so letting her be involved in the process made more sense to me. Ironically over the weekend the plan flipped once more as we found a bike on Amazon she liked even more that would actually cost me less out of pocket because of Amazon spiff dollars and a gift card I had.  Once it arrives we will finally be ready to hit the trails.

On our way back we picked up Sadie for a weekend visit.  When we got home I wanted to get more stuff done.  One of those things was repairing the hole in the pool screen Sadie created during her last stay at the house.  It was the first section of screen I have replaced since I had the entire cage re-screened.  With Cindy’s help I think I did a decent job of getting the new section straight and tight.  Being on my swollen and stiff knees for that long was not much fun however.

On Saturday night Cindy and I watched our latest Netflix rental, The Age of Adeline.  This was a movie I never heard of that Cindy picked out.  It was an interesting premise and my dream scenario.  A woman has a freakish series of events occur that halt the aging process.  Even though she was something like 110 years old she remained physically in her late 20’s.   The movie even had Harrison Ford in it which was an unexpected surprise.  I found it a very solid rental worthy of a B+ rating all day long.

Saturday night I watched the Eagles efficiently complete the flushing of this season, losing at home to the Redskins with a playoff berth  on the line.  I was confident they would lose as I have no confidence in Chip Kelly’s ability to change in a manner significant enough to make a difference.  It is now established that he totally bungled the personnel decisions he was handed responsibility for in the off season.  He has now missed the playoffs two years in a row and if you factor in the losing streak at the end of last year his win/loss record for the past 20 games is atrocious.  I would be fine kicking him to the curb.  Hey flashy college coaches fail in the NFL all the time, this is just the latest example of it.  For Jeff Lurie to give a third year NFL coach personnel control was just asinine in my opinion.  That is a responsibility that is normally only given to coaches with proven track records, something Chip Kelly definitely does not possess.

On Sunday morning I still had no inclination to try to do supplemental exercise.  Instead after tending to stuff around the house we combined a coffee run with returning the Schwinn bike.  I think Cindy felt a little bad about returning the gift I bought her but it really didn’t bother me at all.  I would much prefer she gets what she wants instead of what I think she wants. We actually made two trips to Dunkin Donuts.  Once to get coffee and a second time to get Cindy’s replaced when she said it tasted like a taco.

The rest of our Sunday was pretty low key.  We kept busy but I encouraged Cindy to just take a break and relax, something she is worse at than I am.  She did take my advice at least a little bit, taking the time to finish the book she started while we were in NYC.  I combined work and play for most of the day.

Despite this being a relatively slow week at work I have a decent amount of things to get handled both at work and at home.  I am now looking forward to the end of the next 30 days after which my life responsibilities will change dramatically for the better.

So I will do my best to recap four days packed with more stuff than my memory is comfortable regurgitating.  Wednesday I left work early after reports of the mob scene at the running store with hundreds of people signing up last minute for the Thanksgiving race.  I got to the store and saw people lined up 10 deep.  There was no way I would have room to set up my laptop at the registration table so I instead went into the back room of the store and made my own desk comprised of a white board laid across two piles of shirt boxes. I worked back there on data entry non-stop for a couple hours.  The pile of paper I had to burn through during the last two days was just ridiculous.

When I got home Cindy had loaded most of the race equipment in the truck which was a huge help, allowing me to concentrate on getting  the data from the last minute entries handled.  We tried to get to bed as early as possible to be some version of rested for what surely was going to be a mentally demanding morning.

I was quite unhappy when I woke up at 1AM and rolled around unsuccessfully for 90 minutes trying to fall asleep a bit before the 3:30 alarm went off. At 2:30 I had enough, Cindy was already awake as well.  We got up and got ready to leave an hour or so earlier than we planned.  I knew the running club equipment truck was going to be there so I figured we could get a head start on the set up.  We wound up pulling into the start line area at a ridiculously early 4AM.

We immediately started working on laying out the start mats.  We had the 8 rubber mats in place and had just started laying the first cable when we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  The vehicle appeared to be approaching a little faster than it should be and we had a 10 meter coax cord loose in the road so I stood up and started waving my arms and yelling for the vehicle to slow down.  Well as the car got closer I saw the lights on the roof, it was a city cop.  He stopped right in front of the mats and started giving me shit.

He didn’t appreciate my tone of voice as I was yelling for him to slow down.  I didn’t appreciate him not appreciating it.  We had a rather angry back and forth exchange. He was quite put off that I was not nice in asking him to slow down and probably further put off that once I saw he was a cop that I did not drop to my knees and beg for forgiveness.  I told him that I had a loose cable on the ground and did not want it getting caught in his vehicle and damaging the equipment.  The cop asked where the safety cones were, which I had not grabbed from the equipment truck yet.  I guess I foolishly assumed two bodies on their knees in the middle of the street were a good sign to slow down, although I should have had cones there from the get go. I pulled the wire out of the way and told the cop he could go now.  He definitely won’t be sending me a Christmas card this year. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if the race timer got arrested?

As we were finishing up another vehicle rolled across the mats faster than he should have.  Again we yelled for him to slow down.  He thanked us for the warning with a stream of expletives as he drove away, a Happy Thanksgiving to you too buddy.  I did post about 8 cones around the start line mats, many of which adorned with SLOW signs to dissuade drivers from flying over them.  They were not successful.  When I returned to the start line later the mats were buckled and shifted from idiots going too fast over them.  I guess my ideas about leaving mats across the road prior to the race start just isn’t going to work out.

So as we started setting up the registration area other volunteers started showing up to help get everything rolling.  I had asked Chris to show up to help me handle race day registrations since I knew I had to make sure all of my timing equipment was up and running before the race started.  After I got done setting up the finish line equipment I returned to the registration area where the line of people signing up on race day had swollen greatly.  I was flabbergasted that this many people waited to the absolute last minute to sign up, especially considering the huge influx of people that already signed up the last couple days.  It was nuts.  I told Chris, who was also running in the event to just do as many as he could before he had to head to the start line.  I had to get there to get the start equipment up and running.  I told him whatever entries that were left I could enter at the finish line.

So the race start group was huge as you can imagine.  Having roughly 3000 people compacted into roughly a block of roadway creates quite the crowd.  I had to wait nearly 5 minutes until I could disconnect the start box.  I ran over to the registration desk and grabbed an incredibly thick pile of yet to be entered paper entries and the main laptop and ran back to the start.  I threw the timing box  and computer in the back of the golf cart and hauled ass to the finish line.  This race is brutal logistically because not only do I have to wait at the start line forever for all the runners to clear, the event also has some VERY fast participants.  The winning runner crossed around the 15:30 mark.  I got the finish line up and configured with literally less than 60 seconds before he crossed the finish mats.

Normally by the time I am at the finish line I am just collecting times and posting/printing them.  Because of the deluge of paper entries I instead found myself doing data entry for the majority of the race.  I had over 50 paper entries that were handed in last minute.  Chris didn’t stop keying them in until 7:23.   Almost all of these people were out of towners that I did not have in my participant database that made the process very slow, made slower by trying to publish some finisher results while getting peppered with questions from participants who assume I know everything since I am sitting behind a computer.  I did not get my last paper entry into the system until after the one hour mark of the race, utterly ridiculous.

Finally I was able to breathe and realize I was officially past the worst part of the worst race I had left to time.  I may have actually smiled just a little bit for the first time all morning.  The timing for the race went smoothly overall.  I had a couple problem times which is pretty unavoidable with an event this size.  I fixed those problems and have heard only a couple post race issues which again is great with a 3000 person 5K.

Cindy once again reclaimed her role as the event mascot, spending a good portion of the morning in a turkey suit encouraging the runners, especially the kids.  She really excels in this role. We rolled off site around 9:45 after helping to clean up the majority of the race equipment.  The DD coffee on the way home felt especially satisfying, we survived our last Thanksgiving race, the largest event I have ever been involved with to date.

There was little time to relax when we got home.  I had post race stuff to attend to, Cindy had a big Thanksgiving dinner to coordinate.  Her family was due to show up around 4.  We both buzzed around for a good portion of the afternoon prepping despite both of us having low energy reserves from the skimpy sleep followed by the race craziness.  We combated it with some afternoon coffee.  I followed up with a 5 hour energy just as people were starting to show up.

I did watch some of the Eagles embarrassment on tv during the afternoon but don’t even feel like wasting time typing about it.  It was a horrible, horrible game on a national stage.  Chip Kelly has been exposed as a miserable NFL personnel manger and a one trick pony when it comes to game plans. That is all I can say about it.

In addition to Cindy’s family, a friend of ours came over with her dog, Sage, who is a high energy labradoodle.  Before we let her into the backyard we corralled all the chickens back into the run for safety.  As we expected Sage was very interested in the chickens, running around the coop barking at them.  The chickens of course did not realize they were completely safe in there and started freaking out.  We tried to distract Sage and get her to play in other areas of the yard but her interest always turned back to the chickens so we headed back inside with her.

We had a lot of people under the roof, double digits including ourselves.  Cindy prepared a varied meal that was very tasty, she got good feedback from all.  The 5 hour energy and the natural energy from having all of those people around helped me stave off tiredness.

Kim was the last one there.  As her and Cindy talked I was hanging with Sage on the floor.  She was laying next to me and very content to let me rub her for as long as I wanted to.  It was cute.  When they left Cindy and I got most of the stuff cleaned up before retiring for a much needed night of sleep.  I slept like a rock with no recollection of the time in between closing my eyes and waking up around 7:30 Friday morning.

In the past I have messed around with the Black Friday scene, doing some occasional shopping.  This year I was not all that into it.  Cindy had her 9AM walking class to run so I used that time to get stuff done around the house outside, taking advantage of the cooler temps and lower humidity.  Once she got home we headed out to run some errands.  We took the SSR to add enjoyment to the trip.

One of the stops was Sam’s Club.  We took a look at some of the Black Friday stuff they had out.  One thing that caught our interest was an Atari 2600 package.  It’s basically an Atari looking console with some updates like wireless controllers and over 100 classic Atari games built in.  Cindy had an Atari 2600 as a kid and was very excited by it.  I never had one, opting for the more high end Mattel Intellivision as my first video game console.  I made an impulse buy and spent 40 bucks on the Atari system.  Later in the day when I hooked it up it did not take very long for me to realize that it was probably $40 wasted as any game I played normally was only briefly before I tired of the block graphics and klutzy controls.  Cindy, whose excitement was the main drive behind the purchase did not seem very excited about playing either.  Nostalgia sometimes sounds better than it actually is.

On Saturday I had plans to start with a run which were scuttled by an unsettled feeling stomach.   Instead we picked up Sadie and brought her home for a weekend visit.  We then got busy on part one of the two day Christmas decoration project.  I wanted to get the exterior decorations done on Saturday and the inside stuff done Sunday.  Our decorations got a few new additions this year with four fresh sets of colored string lights for the two front palm trees and a set of “AppLights” icicles for the front of the house, which are controlled via a smart phone.

The colored string lights are a first for our property.  Ali had a deep dislike for colored Christmas lights so as a result I bought/hung nothing but white lights during the last 15 years or so.  I continued the all white thing even after we split for no particular reason.  Well both Cindy and I were very happy with the addition of color to the holiday landscape.  It looked really cool and I suspect next year it will expand to the second set of four palm trees.

The icicle applights looked cool as well as they cycled through dozens of patterns and light combos.  When combined with our LED snowmen heads and techno LED string light tree we bought last year the front of the house is very busy.

We also got the chicken coop into the holiday spirit, stringing a long set of lights around the front of the run and roof line of the coop.  When it got dark out we walked the property admiring our handiwork, we were pleased.

Mid-afternoon I took part in an odd physical challenge.  When I posted about my shoulder issues last week an older calisthenics buddy of mind on FB who happens to be a physical therapist mentioned that bear crawling is a different type of way to help build up the shoulders.  I decided I would put that theory to the test in a rather large way.

I have done bear/death crawls in the backyard a few times.  Once I crawled out to the back fence line and back.  Another time I did it while towing the tractor with Ali steering it.  I thought I would up the stakes and crawl the perimeter of the fence line this time, more than doubling the total distance.  Of course I did it on video and had a stop watch running.  As expected the crawl got very uncomfortable very quickly.  I paused multiple times during the attempt but never let my knees touch the ground.  I returned to the start line after about seven and a half minutes, completely out of breath.

Cindy, who was filming my attempt then said she wanted to try it which I thought was a bad idea.  Cindy never has done bear crawls, to make her first one just short of a 1/4 mile seemed excessive.  When she started out her pace seemed slower than mine but she kept going, pausing much less than I did.  At first I thought she would stop rather early in the attempt.  Instead she kept plugging away and actually completed the circuit almost a full minute faster than I did.  My ego was officially deflated but I took it in stride.  It was a testament to Cindy’s competitiveness and determination.  We both have been feeling the side effects of the bear crawl since with some pretty major back and shoulder soreness/pain.

Saturday night we stayed home and watched our Netflix rental, Vacation, the reboot of the National Lampoon series I have always loved.  My hopes of it delivering the same level of entertainment as the original films was probably unrealistic.  There were plenty of laughs in the film but overall it fell pretty short of the bar Chevy Chase and the gang set 20-25 years ago.  Seeing Chevy in the film for a small cameo role did nothing but depress me.  Man, he looks just awful nowadays with no hair and an extra 100 pounds or so on his body.  Beverly D’Angelo looks like she has botox for breakfast every morning which was scary in a different way.  Overall the film was ok, I guess I can give it a B+ rating despite it failing to capture the magic of the originals.

Sunday morning we finally got that run in.  We decided to keep it simple and just run to the end of our dead end road and back, which worked out to be a bit more than 3.5 miles.  The cooler temps made the run feel more comfortable although Cindy’s GPS indicated we ran it at a slower pace than it felt.

When we got back we let Sadie out and noticed she had diarrhea going on, something that she has from time to time.  Cindy made rice to supplement her meals to help her solidify things.   Ali had told me she gave Sadie turkey from their Thanksgiving meal and we had given her left over turkey Ali gave to us.  I later found out that giving a dog turkey skin is actually a really bad thing.  The sky high fat content in the skin can cause big problems for dogs ranging from diarrhea to full blown pancreatitis depending how much is consumed compared to the size of the dog.   I asked Cindy if the turkey we got from Ali had skin on it, she confirmed it did. I was quite surprised by this revelation and amazed I had not ever heard it before in my many years of dog ownership.

After doing a coffee run we got started on the inside decorations which included setting up the tree and other decorations which have been reduced significantly over the last few years.  Cindy spent a lot of time tweaking the branches of it to make it look as full and pretty as possible.  The interior of the house looked warm and festive by the time we wrapped up around lunch time.

The rest of Sunday was more relaxing, the first real relaxing we did during the four days off.  I did still need to pay my bills which included a pretty big accomplishment, making the last payment on the SSR roughly a year ahead  of time.  Owning the muscle truck free and clear has been a goal of mine for quite awhile.  The removal of that loan payment means the only long term debt I am currently holding is on the house in the form of the main mortgage and the HELOC.  It feels good. I plan to continue adding to my car payment budget column even though I won’t be having a payment.  I figure it will come in handy when I finally decide to replace the venerable Tacoma.

So of  course the world news is the terrorist attacks in France which I have some thoughts on but I wish to skip chronological order and expand on those last.

So this was declared as tree trimming weekend by myself.  The forecast low in the mid-60’s looked like the lowest temps I was going to see for awhile.  When I woke up Saturday morning I was annoyed to see the thermometer reading 71 degrees.  I wasted very little time and was outside gathering my tree trimming tools by 7:30.  I was solo since Cindy was attending a Blue Zones event in the morning.  It didn’t really matter since I was going to be doing nothing but hacking branches several hours which she couldn’t help me with anyway.

It didn’t take long for the heat to start ramping up as the early morning fog burned off.  I was sweating my ass off even though it was only 9AM.  Thank goodness as the day wore on cloud cover rolled in that kept the sun hidden for the majority of the day.

I found myself getting very frustrated due to losing things.  First I lost my machete that I normally use to hack off rotting cross thatch.  I knew I sat it down in the yard somewhere but could not find it after 10 minutes of circling.  It was found later buried under a pile of branches.   Then later I somehow lost the blade to my cordless SawzAll, it flew out in the process of buzzing off more cross thatch.  Thankfully I had a spare blade.  The lost blade was again found later, under another pile of branches.

For a couple years I have said I need to buy a taller extension ladder, the 20 footer I have just is not tall enough to safely reach a couple of the trees anymore.  Each year I don’t buy another ladder and each year I put myself into increasingly more perilous conditions to trim these monster trees.  Well this year set a new standard in danger.

To trim the tallest tree I had to stand a couple rungs from the top of the ladder and could not even use my new loppers which would require two hands.  Instead I had to trim all of the palm fronds with one hand via the SawzAll while using my off hand to hold onto the tree.  The gusting wind added tree sway into the equation. NEXT year, I am getting a new ladder.

I had an unexpected encounter when I was trimming the second tallest tree on the property.  I was knocking off loose cross thatch and all of a sudden saw a small banded snake that looked a lot like a pygmy rattler bury itself into the branches just above where I was working.  I discontinued work in that area and let the snake be.  I was very surprised to see a snake living that high up in the tree, a first for me.

Tree trimming is a physically grueling and dirty job.  Climbing up and down the ladder and working mostly over your head all day has a way of wearing you down. When I was chopping off rotting cross thatch I would periodically get organic matter facials depending on how I was positioned in relation to the gusting wind.  As I labored on I told myself several times, “you have done this many times, it always sucks, and you always get through it anyway”.

By the time Cindy got home I had four trees left to trim.  She thankfully brought me some much needed coffee which I enjoyed while sitting in a chair in front of the many piles of cut branches that littered the property.  The chickens and Sadie mulled about me in support.

After eating lunch I finished up the remaining trees and then joined Cindy in the equally arduous task of picking up hundreds of palm fronds and the big chunks of rotted cross thatch that were everywhere.

We repeatedly loaded down the back of the Tacoma with huge mountains of debris and drove it back to the fill pit for dumping.   I have a technique to expedite the dumping process.  I try to grab a couple palm fronds at the bottom of the pile and pull them out, most of the time I am able to get the majority of the pile on top of them to slide out as well.  Well during one of those trips that plan backfired.

I had my hands on three or four low fronds and was pulling hard, leaning back so my bodyweight was helping.  All of a sudden instead of the pile coming out, just the fronds I had a a hold of came loose.  The force I was applying resulted in major momentum which catapulted one of the branch ends directly into my nose at high speed.  It felt like I was punched in the face.

I expected a stream of blood to start flowing out of my nostril.  I did start to bleed but it was from the outside, not the inside.  The branch left a nice little gash on the left side of my nose.  After using my shirt a few times as a bandage I asked Cindy instead to run inside and grab me a real one to stop the slow but steady stream of blood.

The clean up actually went faster than I expected it to.  In total we ran nine pickup loads of crap to the fill pit.  By the time we got everything cleaned up it was between three and four in the afternoon, a hard day of labor.

As I surveyed the property and saw the roughly 25 trees that I trimmed up I felt a mixture of pride, relief, and anxiety, knowing I yet again accomplished one of the shittiest home chores I have but will be repeating it once again a scarce 365 days from now.

Saturday night there was no way we had the energy to go out to the movies.  Instead we stayed home and enjoyed a delicious fish sticks dinner while renting Train Wreck On Demand.  The movie was the unrated version of the Amy Schumer comedy meaning it had some very adult scenes which I didn’t think really added much to the movie.  All in all I thought the movie was an average comedy with an average amount of laughs. Amy saying very outrageous and dirty things was funny at first but grew old eventually.  It seemed to rely too heavily on it, much like a lot of Melissa McCarthy’s films.   As a result it gets an average B rating from me.  I honestly expected it to be funnier.

Sunday morning I had no interest in endurance training as I had universal body aches and pains from the tree trimming.  We needed to get to Rural King early anyway since we had used up the rest of the chicken feed.  Although I probably earned a casual Sunday I did not feel comfortable taking one.  The weed whacking had not been done for three weeks, things were looking pretty ratty so I grabbed the whacker and got busy.  My work inspired Cindy to get the mowing done as well which she had planned on doing later this week.  Putting off the chore for a few weeks and whacking additional fence line to compliment the tree trimming meant the task took longer than normal.

When I finished up I had a quick test I wanted to do with the timing system.  Setting up the mats with the MyLaps system is by far the biggest negative since I switched from an Ipico timing system.  The 25 pound mat sections have to be connected together and then have an individual wire run from each mat back to the timing box.  With two people the process can take damn close to 15 minutes if you have the maximum amount of mats laid out, which is eight.

I had a theory that because in prior testing that these mats read chips 3-4 feet to either side that I might be able to only connect every other mat and still get chip reads along the entire mat width.  So I tested it.

My test did sort of prove my theory as I was able to get reads on sections of mat that had no wire attached to them.  It did also show that you are sacrificing field strength when doing so which could be problematic in a high density situation like a start line.  The follow up test to this would be setting up two lines during a real race where the first line wires in every mat and the second line does every other.  You could then easily see if you are losing reads skipping mats by comparing the numbers between the two timing boxes.  However since I will not be using MyLaps after my running club timing stops at the end of January I don’t feel all that motivated to look into it further.  If I would invest in more timing equipment for GMT it would not be with MyLaps.  I prefer something that is reliable AND easy to set up.  MyLaps does not meet that latter criteria.

So the Eagles played the Dolphins Sunday afternoon.  The game started off with the Eagles on fire with them putting in their best first quarter performance of the year, racking up 16 points.  It looked like they were setting the stage for a blowout.  Well the wheel fells off and the team managed a measly field goal for the rest of the game while allowing the Dolphins to stay in the game long enough for a one point, 20-19 win.

Of course there were many directions fingers could be pointed so let’s start naming names.  Caleb Sturgis, why is he still on the roster?  Is there really no better kickers available out there?  This guy is pressed to make extra points, his accuracy is just atrocious.  It’s the second time this year that his miss of a short field goal turned out to be the difference between a win and a loss on the scoreboard.

Sam Bradford, statistically he had an ok day although again he displayed some of that inaccuracy I have been complaining about since early in the season.  He just misses a lot of throws, something commentator Rich Gannon pointed out as well.  He got crushed on that hit that knocked him out of the game and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is out for next week.  I am surprised he lasted this long.

Miles Austin, wtf happened to you?  I remember when you came onto the scene with the Cowboys you were tearing things up for a couple years.  As an Eagle your catch to fck up ratio is all out of whack. Not being able to drag your foot on that TD grab is pretty lame as is your route running, awareness, and ability to make a tough catch.

Byron Maxwell, you are disgustingly overpaid.  The fact that Chip Kelly thought your skillset was worthy of mega dollars in free agency is a further testament to how bad Chip is at assessing talent.  Maxwell sucks.  He gets burned repeatedly each and every game and excels at nothing but pass interference/holding calls and poor tackling.

Matt Sanchez, dude, way to waste no time reinforcing your reputation of choking when it counts, throwing yet another game killing interception in the end zone when the game was on the line.  Plus why in the world did handing off the ball to DeMarco Murray seem to be impossibly complicated for you?  They ran into/tripped one another at least half a dozen times, no joke.  Sanchez is just another non-answer to the QB position long term.

And of course Chip Kelly, your mad scientist like experiments with the Eagle roster in the off season has been a pretty disappointing failure.  I am fine calling the Chip Kelly era as officially played out by the end of year three.  Go back to college where lower talent levels makes your hurry up offense more effective.

It was a bad loss in a season of bad losses.  I expect more to follow.

Ok so let’s talk about the French terrorist attacks which of course were tragic,  As expected there was world wide support for France and social media wasted no time jumping in, making it easy for people to offer one click “support” by changing their profile picture to have an overlay of the French flag.  Also as expected, the terrorist act instantly whipped the Obama haters into a frenzy with them posting non-stop vitriol that accomplished nothing but more division, hate and prejudice.  Repeatedly I saw posts that seemed to indicate that different leadership, gun ownership and more military action in the middle east was the easy answer to these problems.  I just don’t get it.

After nearly a decade and a half of the US being mired in a “war” with terrorists it’s like the American public has learned absolutely nothing as a result.  When I read “we beat the Nazi’s, we can beat ISIS the same way” it just shows an incredible lack of understanding of the situation.  Terrorists are not a conventional army.  They wear no uniforms.  They don’t attack in battalions. They don’t fear death, in many cases they seek it out, seeing it as an opportunity to serve their God in a perverted way.  You can not bomb away this problem.  You are fighting an idea, not an army.

When I see the sweeping, Muslims are the problem generalizations roll in it again shows a lack of thinking, indicating that the radical extremists that perpetrate these atrocities are representative of  Islam as a whole.  It’s like saying the KKK is representative of Christianity.  It’s just silly.

France has reacted very strongly to the attacks, launching near immediate air strikes and locking down the country, trying to get a clear picture of all the connections the terrorists involved had.   These attacks I suppose are the start to the large cup of revenge they plan to indulge themselves in.

Listen, I understand the idea of revenge.  I know how I felt after the 9/11 attacks.  I wanted somebody to pay.  However the lessons of a decade and a half direct involvement/invasion by the US in the middle east quagmire has clearly established that our course of action was massive, incredulously expensive both in dollars and loss of life and mostly ineffective.  If anything our involvement in the region only cultivated more support for the radical Islamist movement.

If France goes in there swinging a bat wildly, killing many ISIS insurgents and innocent civilians that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time it will just pour additional gas on the fire.  The unfortunate result will be giving further credence to how the west deserves any attack upon them, no matter how senseless or brutal in the minds of ISIS and others driven by their similar, contorted religious beliefs.

Do I have the definitive answer to this dilemma? Nope, not even close.  All I know is more bombing, more military action, more of what has been tried for the last 15 years isn’t going to make a difference.  You can’t “defeat” an idea and you are dealing with an enemy that looks at death as a victory.

If you have 5 minutes take a look at this, it explains my point in a much more comprehensive and well written manner.

Also if you want a better understanding of the rat nest of players in thr Syrian conflict, take another 5 minutes and watch this.

Last night on the way home I picked up Sadie for an extended stay as Ali is out of town for a few days.  It’s always fun to have her there and today she will get to hang with Cindy all day.

I had an impressive virtual achievement last night that will mean absolutely nothing to anyone that has not played World of Warcraft.  I finished up getting my last character to max level of 100, meaning I now have a monk, mage, priest, warrior, death knight, druid, hunter, rogue, warlock, shaman, and paladin at max.  I actually have 12 100’s since I also leveled Cindy’s druid to 100, even though she doesn’t play. 🙂

Now being at max level in reality is really only the start of where the game begins for most people where you begin doing high level stuff in the quest to equip your virtual self in gear that makes you stand above others in both power and visuals.  However with this many level 100s, the time required to do this with 12 characters would literally be impossible to find so instead I will pick a few that I want to focus on from this point forward.

I announced my accomplishment to Cindy last night.  She did a good job of expressing fake excitement for me.  I love that she encourages me to participate in mindless entertainment from time to time to help balance the non-entertaining portions of life.

I have targeted Saturday as tree trimming day.  A forecast low temp of 65 degrees was the lowest I saw in the 10 day forecast so I am going all in, hoping to get out there nice and early with my brand new loppers.  Cindy has an event she is going to first thing tomorrow so that will allow me to get a good head start on the trimming and then allow me to double back and help her with the equally grueling task of picking up all the cut fronds and other organic matter to dump it in the back of the property.

The grass is overdue for weed whacking and I have a number of other ancillary chores that could get done as well.  When you have a monster job on the menu like tree trimming it has a way of sucking the energy to do much else out of you.

So even though yesterday was a day off from work it didn’t feel much like one.  Maybe that’s because I started off the day going into the office.  I have been trying to get something implemented at work that require it to be done off normal working hours. Cindy tagged along since we had a few errands to run on the way home.  I spent a couple hours at work spinning my wheels trying to figure out an issue that has been in my way for awhile.  The end result was once again having to punt, making me feel like I just wasted my time.  I left feeling very frustrated.

Our first stop after the office was the nearby Goodwill.  Cindy was there the other day looking for cheap children bikes.  The reason was I needed to replace the wheels on the chicken tractor, which are repurposed from an old kids bike.  The bearings on those wheels were shot and hardly wanted to roll.  Cindy picked up a bike earlier in the week but the wheels were too small.

The store had another bike with wheels that were a good match.  The $20 price tag seemed a bit high considering the brakes were permanently bent in such a way that caused them to constantly rub on the wheel.  The chain on the bike was horribly rusted as well.  If I wasn’t dealing with a charitable organization I would have went into Craigslist mode and offered them half of the price tag since it wasn’t good for anything but parts.  However the two wheels I needed were in decent shape so I paid my $20 with a smile.

After a stop at Sam’s for some grocery items we were back home where I could continue to do more work.  The first project was to do the wheel swap.  This was a little more challenging than I expected.  The old wheels came off of a single speed kids bike.  The bike we bought was a geared model.  This meant the rear wheel was a bit wider because of the hub.  I had to take a pair of vise grips and bend the frame mount points on the tractor out slightly to make it fit. The wheels are a fraction of an inch bigger than the old set so the clearance with the frame is tight but by the time I was done the tractor was once again rolling freely.

You would think with our chicken coop palace we built that the chicken tractor would be obsolete.  It actually is heavily utilized by the chickens during the day as they free range.  We have water and food in there that they utilize all day long.  They like feeling safe while eating.  The hens sometimes use the tractor as a playground, going up and down the ramp and jumping out one of the side doors that we normally have open.

After I gave the tractor a new set of wheels I pulled out my roughly 25 year old mountain bike from the small shed.  I told Cindy that I want to buy us a set of inexpensive mountain bikes so we can ride the big loop at Rookery Swamp.  My old bike just is not up to the task with two dry rotted tires, horrible brakes and a seat that is leaking impact dampening gel.

I bought this bike as a young man.  I recall riding it up and down in the street in front of my first wife’s parents home after I bought it.  I remember being very proud of the purchase.

Before relocating the bike to the roadway where it will surely be picked up by one of the many scavengers in my area I wanted to remove a couple accessories that could be useful when we get new bikes.  I carefully removed a rear cargo rack and two vertical handle bar grips that allowed me a more upright riding position for variety and comfort.  Sure it will be sad to get rid of something that has been part of my life for longer than it has not but it’s definitely well overdue.

My next task was continuing the work in transforming the shipping box my race clock arrived in into a crude carrying case.  I had started work last weekend by installing metal L brackets on each corner as well as a handle.  However in my testing with the clock inside the wood was bending dangerously, too thin to support the weight in that configuration.

During the week I went out and bought some more supplies to further reinforce the box. They included some 5/8 inch fencing boards.  My thought process was to put one board on the handle side and the bottom of the box since those were the two points supporting the majority of the weight.

I cut and attached the boards in both spots as well as attaching the front “door” section with hinges with Cindy’s help.  I thought I was going to have to go buy a latch to lock the box but Cindy made the good suggestion of taking one of the four I had installed on the chicken tractor.  I had to do some creative mounting to get the latch in place but it worked out.

I replaced the wood screws that were holding the handle in place with machine screws using nuts and washers which are much better suited to support the concentration of weight in that area.  I placed the heavy clock back in the box, closed the lid and lifted it up solely by the handle.  It felt much stronger with the additional boards able to support the weight without significant flex.  I was able to carry the clock the 200 feet from the back yard to the hobby room exclusively by the handle which was a good real world test.

I also added some secondary L brackets to some of the sides, doubling up the strength of those joints.  Cindy suggested that a set of roller wheels on one end might be a final helpful addition, allowing you to pull the box like a set of luggage if need be.  Now of course this box is not designed to be tossed around like luggage and surely would not hold up to severe abuse however I think it will manage to fulfill the basic needs I have.

Yesterday I stumbled across some old pictures on my local NAS at home of Nicki.  It inspired me to put together a memorial type video similar to what I did for mom.  Getting through the process was tough and impossible without having to reach for the tissues more than  once.

Cindy and I got up a few minutes before 4AM for Saturday’s race.  Cindy wanted to transform us into zombies since it was Halloween.  She did a pretty incredible job for only 5-10 minutes of work.  My 25 year + old Grateful Dead concert shirt was the perfect accessory for the look.

When we got on site we had to get our bearings since this was a first year race.  There were several issues like power that was supposed to be run for us not being there and the onsite bathrooms being locked until 20 minutes before race time that were annoying but outside my realm of responsibility.

This race was unique because the start and finish line were at the same spot.  I timed the race with the same set of mats using one file for the start and another for the finish.  It worked out well from my perspective.

My timer buddy John and his family were at the race which was cool.  It’s not often that I get to talk timing with someone who actually knows how much of a pain in the ass it is.  He had let me borrow one of his timing clocks for the CC meets we did so I had it with to return to him.

My timing went fine with no hardware failures, the only errors coming from the human variety with runners switching bibs.  The awkward interactions I anticipated were not as prevalent as I expected which was good.  There were a couple people I could tell were off put by my decision to leave the team but for the most part it was business as usual which is fine by me.

I had a few brief conversations with some board members and although noone is happy about me leaving, they understand the reasons behind it. It felt weird in a good way knowing this was the first and last time I would be timing the event.  It seems surreal that in three months I will be able to abandon 4AM alarms and all of the work/stress that precedes each and every race day.

It was funny going into Dunkin Donuts in our zombie make up.  As you can imagine it merited more than few glances and smiles.

When we got home post race work took us up until lunch time.  After eating we both headed out into the heat of the day to get outdoor chores done.  We were joined out there once again by the sandhill cranes that are becoming more and more trusting of us.  We have gotten within 10-15 feet of them although the key is to act like you aren’t paying attention to them.

After finishing up the weeding and other stuff I decided to hop on the tractor and mow the back of the property.  I decided to go a step further and mow some of the property beyond the fence line which literally may only get done once or twice a year.  The lack of frequency means the area is almost jungle-like as I was mowing down grass that was three feet high or more at spots.  Mowing these spots is extremely time consuming.  Not only do you have to go at a snail’s pace, you have to mow each spot repeatedly, a minimum of two to three times until it is all knocked down to ground level.  Thank goodness I don’t suffer from allergies like I once did, there were bushels of organic material thrown into the air.  The mowing is a precursor to another horrible yard maintenance task that we have to do shortly, the annual tree trimming extravaganza.

Halloween night Cindy and I were both beat from the combo of getting up early to time the race combined with the work around the house.  We decided to skip going to the movies and instead watched our current Netflix rental, The Gambler, with Marky Mark.   The character he plays is not likable at all, a degenerate gambler that comes from a family of entitlement.  He plays the role well but this character was so unlikable overall that it pulled down my opinion of the movie to a B.

Sunday night Cindy and I finished watching Boogie Nights, another MM film which I never saw believe it or not.  The 70’s time period and copious porn simulation in the movie of course made for good entertainment but by the end things got pretty dark and depressing.  I’d still give it a B+ overall.

Oh, we kept our streak of zero trick or treaters for the last decade alive Saturday night.  Not a single soul appeared at the door.

The time change over the weekend allowed us a welcomed and needed extra hour of sleep on Sunday.  We decided to get out and do the same four mile run we did last week.  My expectation was it would feel slightly more comfortable than the week before since that is the natural course of things.  When we pulled into the park we saw cones and people running with race bibs on, evidently there was a race going on as well at that time.

We started out running against the direction the racers were going, seeing some familiar faces along the way.  We were surprised by the amount of people walking the “race” even though it was only a 5K distance.  Running among the racers had an undesired side effect of me running faster than I normally would during the first two mile lap.  By the time we started the second loop I was already feeling miserable.  The faster pace to that point combined with the annoyingly warm and humid weather considering it was November 1st was doing a number on me.

Lap two was pure drudgery, I had to declare it as a NTZ (no talk zone) about half way through it.  When I declare NTZ that means I would prefer Cindy did not speak but if she does she can expect no verbal response or acknowledgement from me.  When I am in the midst of feeling that shitty I just don’t want to communicate.  When the end of the second lap drew close I accelerated only slightly, I just had nothing in the tank.  I was very, very glad to be done.

After a DD stop we headed to Home Depot and Rural King, a near weekly occurrence.  We loaded up on a number of things including an electric pressure washer.  Regular blog readers know of my years of pressure washing hell with my gas powered pressure washer.  This electric model is much lighter and about the half the pressure of the gas washer.  We bought it so Cindy can easily use it for routine cleaning without the hassle of the gas washer and less chance of damaging surfaces with 3000 PSI.

We also bought stuff to provide some lighting in the chicken coop.  The chickens have been waiting till the very edge of darkness until putting themselves to bed.  As a result when they go into the coop it is very dark and they are unable to see well enough to get themselves situated on the perch.  Cindy and I have been going out and placing the stragglers which isn’t a good long term solution.  The plan is using a timer and an LED bulb to keep the inside of the coop lit shortly after dusk to the birds can get to bed normally.

When we got back home we went out before lunch and installed/deployed/spread the various things we purchased.  During the afternoon I had mostly indoor things to attend to, including paying my bills.  Later in the afternoon I spent close to a half hour just sitting in the yard watching the chickens and the cranes in the backyard.   It was peaceful.

While we filmed a video Sunday targeted to let people know where their eggs come from there was this funny moment caught on tape when Pumpkin decided she didn’t want to sit on Cindy’s lap.

I had a a few different times over the weekend where I was thinking about Nicki, picturing her walking around the pool deck or sleeping in one of her beds only a couple weeks ago.  The thoughts brought instant moisture to my eyes as I redirected my mind to some other subject.

Saturday morning Cindy and I decided to change venues for our run, skipping the track and instead heading down to the waterpark.  We wanted to run the loop around the perimeter of the park which is almost exactly 2 miles, my goal going in was two complete loops.  The park was quite busy as there appeared to be large soccer and baseball events going on simultaneously.

It didn’t take very long into the first lap for me to start reconsidering my 4 mile target distance.  I didn’t have any specific reason other than just an overall lack of comfort running.  I just have not gotten to the point that any distance of running actually feels “good”.  After the first lap we reversed direction and I told my inner voice that was encouraging me to stop early to shut up.  I chugged along and managed to complete the four miles, disliking every step of it.

Even though I have not really felt comfortable during any of my my running sessions since starting up again, I have been not having any significant post run aches and pains which is a good thing.  I just wish I could shake the old and slow feeling I have while doing it.

After the run we stopped and picked up Sadie for her visit.  When we got back home it did not take long for me to feel weird as I looked around the house.  It felt strange to have Sadie there without Nicki.  I stopped and stared at Nicki’s food stand, the South Dakota license plate we bought her on the road trip, her dog beds in the office/bedroom and even the spot by the end of the bed where she would often sleep with her head hidden under the dust ruffle.  Looking at these things and realizing they will never be as they once were was painful and felt tragically final. Although Sadie was mostly her happy self there were moments were it felt like she too was confused and sad that her long time companion was nowhere to be found.

Cindy and I kept busy Saturday afternoon working on various things.  The flag we had mounted on the chicken coop had been torn to shreds by the brutal Florida summer.  We replaced it with a higher quality flag that has mounts that should let it deal with the wind better.  We also relocated the main bird feeder pole.  Since the new chickens have been around they have been rather bullyish when it comes to the feeders.  Whenever regular birds would come in the chickens were very quick to chase them away.  It’s gotten to the point that the feeders were not even being used by the regular birds.

We moved them about 100 feet further back in the yard, hoping it would discourage the chickens and allow the smaller birds to eat in peace.  I think we also need to spend the extra money to get higher quality seed.  The stuff would have been using is very heavily made of cracked corn which the chickens love but not so much for smaller birds.

After moving the feeders we had some unexpected birds that appeared to appreciate the relocation, the huge sandhill cranes.  A family of three birds have been hanging around the house all week, much closer than they used to.  One of them got close enough to poke a hole in a window screen.  Well they hung by the feeders forever, tapping the feeders and poking at the ground endlessly.  Cindy and I love when they hang out on the property.

On Saturday night Cindy and I wanted to go see Bridge of Spies.  It was a nice night out so we decided to take the SSR.  When we were on Immokalee Road about 5 miles from the house I glanced at the gauges and saw something very disturbing, coolant temperature gauge was pinned to the right at 260 degrees (normal is 210).  Oh shit.

I had no idea what was wrong and the truck was running normally but a pegged temperature gauge is nothing to f with.  I did a U-turn as I flipped on the heat to full blast to help cool off the motor.  I babied the truck on the drive back and despite running the heat, the gauge never moved from the right.  I ran scenarios through my head as to what was going on.  The three that came to mind was a bad thermostat that was preventing coolant from entering the radiator, a bad temperature sending unit that was sending a bad reading or a failure of the electric cooling fan. When I pulled back into the garage I could hear the fan running so that ruled it out as a potential problem source.

Cindy assumed I was going to just say f it, lets stay home since we now wasted 15-20 minutes, meaning there was no way we would make it to the theater by the posted 7:45PM start time.  I told her I still wanted to go, counting on the 15-20 minutes of previews that normally lead up to each showing.  We hauled ass in the Prius and pulled into the parking lot a couple minutes after 8.  Even after grabbing a bottle of water and quickly hitting the bathroom we sat down literally just as the opening scene was starting, what luck.

I was having a very bad time with drowsiness, so much so that I walked back out to the concession stand and grabbed a small Coke and a box of Reeses Pieces, hoping the caffeine/sugar would help pry open my eyelids.  It did help but I still was fighting off drowsiness at various times.  My drowsiness was not a reflection of the movie which was A- quality.  The true life story regarding the tension at the height of the Cold War era was interesting and disturbing.  Existing during a time where mutual nuclear obliteration felt like a very real threat just seems impossible but it was very, very real.

On Sunday morning I did some more investigation into my apparent SSR overheating problem.  I turned the ignition to the detente right before starting the truck which initializes the gauges.  I saw that the coolant gauge was stuck in the middle at 210 degrees, even with the truck being stone cold.  It quickly became apparent that none of my initial ideas about the problem were correct.  This is a stepper motor issue, one of the many problems that are common in the SSR’s. (and other GM products of this era).  Basically the little motors that control the gauge needles in the instrument cluster are shitty and prone to failure.  A search of the SSR Fanatics forum revealed tons of instances of people getting these motors replaced.

That same search on the forum revealed there is a kind guy that is happy to perform the repair for owners for a very minimal fee if they pay for the parts and shipping.  If push came to shove I could probably do the entire repair myself but it involves soldering new motors in place, something I am not very skilled at.  I would rather have it done by somebody that is adept at it, especially if he is willing to do it at a heavily discounted rate.  My part of the process will still be a bit tedious as I will have to pull apart the dash and the instrument cluster to send it out to the guy for repair.

While this is being done I am going to have some further customization completed. I am having the factory black cluster face replaced with a silver face, matching the rest of the truck.  It will just one of the many tweaks I have done since taking ownership of the truck in 2011.

Late Sunday morning we hosted a bib making party  where we had a total of eight people (including us) peeling timing chips and affixing them to the back of the bibs for the the upcoming Thanksgiving race which utilizes custom bibs.  Cindy prepared a nice spread of food for everyone and the project was completed in around two hours, faster than we expected since there were roughly 3000 bibs to prepare. Our guests seemed to have a good time and the chickens were quite happy to meet them.  Cindy and I were both very grateful for the extra sets of hands.

Late in the afternoon I had the random urge to take Sadie for a walk over at Bird Rookery Swamp which is literally a couple miles from our front door.  When I suggested the idea to Cindy she was enthusiastic as well.

I used to take Nicki and Sadie there pretty regularly but had not done so in well over a year.  Nicki’s aging legs made each trip into the swamp slower and shorter.  The last time we went she was in obvious pain afterward so we stopped going. I thought Sadie would really like to go back.

The first thing I noticed when we pulled into the lot was they have been making improvements to the area.  They built a nice observation deck that extends over lake by the parking lot.  The second thing I noticed was how high the water level was after a very long and intense rainy season.  It was the most amount of water I could ever recall in the place.

As we headed in we talked to a couple that said there was a large gator near the start of the path and that a biker had told them he saw a number of gators as well.  We hoped to see a lot of these for ourselves.  Unfortunately we only had two baby gator sightings, neither of which exceeded four feet in length.

We did have a very cool wildlife sighting right before the turnaround point.  There were two young male deer hanging out in the shallow water nibbling away.  The one that was closest to us seemed remarkably calm in our presence, giving us a few casual glances in between mouthfulls.  In all my trips to the swamp I had never seen any deer up close and personal.

We only walked 1.25 miles into the trail before turning around.  Even with the weather conditions being pretty comfortable we could tell Sadie was tired, not used to extensive walking, something we hope to address more often.  On the way out she was the trailblazer, leading us most of the time by 10 feet or more.  On the walk back she gradually fell back, walking even or slightly behind us at times.  Even with being tired you could tell she had a fun time.

The Eagles played late for the second week in a row.  I was so tired I did not even make an effort to stay awake, drifting off for good in the 2nd quarter.  I awoke to find the conclusion I expected, the team lost to the Panthers with the offense underperforming once again.  This is a pattern I expect during the rest of the year, the team may pull off some wins against the lesser quality teams but won’t be able to hang with the playoff quality teams because the Eagles are not a playoff quality team.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed out for the nearby track to do some running.  Last week I logged 8 laps around the track, this week I increased it by 25% totaling a little more than 2.5 miles, big woop.  We got out a little later than normal meaning the temperatures were a little warmer than I would have preferred.

On the way back to the house I did a double take when I saw this sign by the side of the road on our street.  I stopped and backed up to take a picture of it.  Evidently somebody was really fed up with residents in our area using their car window as a trash can.   I too have always been annoyed by it but I never had the brilliant idea to post a public service announcement about it using some sharp language to punctuate the point.  I thought it was pretty hilarious.

It immediately made me think of a number of similar signs that would be appropriate on our street like, STOP SPEEDING ASSHOLE, STOP DRIVING ATVS ON THE ROAD ASSHOLE, KEEP YOUR DOGS IN YOUR YARD ASSHOLE,  and STOP HITTING MY MAILBOX ASSHOLE.  I think the signs could easily scale to a national level as well.  Imagine how effective GET A JOB ASSHOLE, LOSE WEIGHT ASSHOLE, or STOP TEXTING ASSHOLE campaigns could be.  I was disappointed that later in the day somebody had stomped the sign down.  I may have to fix/resurrect it.

Cindy and I took advantage of the couple rain free days we just had to get the entire yard mowed.  The front drainage ditches still had some water in them.  I got the tractor stuck in a particularly muddy section.  As I was trying to push it out solo some old guy towing a trailer stopped and helped me push, proving not everyone that lives around me is an asshole.  A lot of the ditch had too much water to mow so I had to knock down a large rectangle of high grass using the weed whacker which is never much fun.

After we got done outside and ate lunch we headed out to go pick up the dogs for a weekend visit. When we got back I had two projects I wanted to work on. The first one was installing my new Ring doorbell.  My existing doorbell, which I had replaced a couple years ago had already developed a hole in the button.

We had already played with the doorbell on Friday night to test it’s capabilities. It is basically a doorbell mated with a networked web cam and infrared sensor. It works like this, someone walks up and presses the big illuminated button.  Once they do an instant alert is sent to whatever devices you have tied into the service.  You are then taken to a live feed of the front door where you can see/hear whomever is there and they can hear you as well.  It allows you to be virtually home from anywhere in the world more or less, able to interact with front door visitors at anytime.

The Ring also has advanced motion detection capabilities which you can tune to your liking.  It not only tracks motion but also heat with it’s infrared sensor to differentiate between inanimate objects and living beings.  Of course cars throw heat so you need to make sure you adjust the set up so every vehicle is not setting off an alert.  If the Ring detects movement it sends you a different sounding alert.  If you accept it you are taken again to the live feed so you can see what is going on.  Even if you miss the notification, when you sign up for Ring’s dirt cheap cloud monitoring ($30 a year), you have recordings of any of these events which you can review whenever. The Ring has a very wide angle camera inside which offers you a GoPro sized field of view in HD resolution.  The two way sound quality has been very good so far in our testing as well.

Installing the Ring was not difficult.  I opted to use a left over piece of 1″ x 6″ as a mounting platform, the uneven surface of stucco wall would have been problematic.  You have two options for powering the Ring.  You can simply pull it off periodically and charge it’s battery via it’s USB port on the back.  You can also use your existing doorbell wiring to power the device which is the option I used.

Of course cool tech is rarely cheap and that is the case with the Ring which sells for $199.  Luckily I had $100 in Amazon bucks to help soften the sticker shock.  Even if I didn’t, for me, it’s worth the two Franklins if you have similar geek bloodlines as I do.

The other project I started was the LED projector in the SSR thing.  I totally was improvising the entire time I was out there.  I found a hole in a cross support that is not a perfect spot but the only workable one without cutting into the supports with industrial strength tools that I do not own.  The plan involved snipping out a small piece of sheet metal, drilling the proper size hole in it and then mounting the projector through that.   Before I finalized the physical install I wanted to verify that tapping into the back up light circuit would work.  The tap connector I bought earlier did not seem to work well for what I needed.  I was unable to get any juice to the projector.  I stopped the project until I could try a different splice connector, similar to what I used on the other side to fire up the back up camera.

Sunday morning we backed up our Saturday run with a Dunkin Donuts bike ride, the first time I paired a run/ride on a weekend in forever.  The westbound ride to DD was especially treacherous, the bike lane was filled with debris.  It was bad enough that when we got back I sent an email to the road maintenance department asking if they could use their street sweeper more regularly on that section of roadway.  Even with me staying back several feet from Cindy I still wound up hitting a couple things.  Luckily none of them hit the tire at the right angle to flat me.

As I watched the Eagles game Cindy was busy running a dog care salon.  She gave Nicki a pretty thorough hair cut with the pet trimmers we bought awhile back.  She then gave both dogs a bath.  It seems like both dogs actually fuss less when we give them a bath outdoors with the hose instead of throwing them into the bath tub.

I was surprised at the way the Eagles game turned out.  In the first half when Sam Bradford threw not one but two interceptions in the Saints end zone, I thought it was the perfect set up for yet another Eagles implosion.  Instead they came out in the second half and put a hurting on the Saints.  The offense all of a sudden seemed viable both on the ground and in the air.  The biggest difference I noticed was the team seemed to be working at a more normal pace, not the Chinese fire drill hurry up style that Chip has built his career on.  Maybe Kelly has realized that proper execution trumps time between plays in the long haul?   If the Birds can keep forward momentum against the Giants next week maybe I will start to believe that Chip actually is capable of changing up his style if circumstances demand it.

Yesterday I posted my first Vines since January.  You may recall when I started Vining a couple years ago I went on a tear, pumping out 7 second videos at a torrid pace.  For no particular reason I can recall I just simply stopped doing them.  Well I popped out a few yesterday.  I am now just short of 200 total Vines, a minuscule amount when compared to regular Viners but a decent number for an old fart.