Category Home Improvements

Yesterday a new addition to my backyard predator deterrent arsenal arrived, an Airsoft gun.  I already have a conventional pump action air rifle which delivers bb’s at a high velocity but inflicts a physical toll on the shooter.  Pumping the gun for the recommended 8-10 times gets tiring pretty quickly.

The CO2 cartridge powered BB hand gun I bought Cindy doesn’t require pumping but the cartridges seem to get depleted pretty quickly and gave inconsistent accuracy.  One of the disadvantages of both guns in this situation is a metal BB shot at high velocity could potentially injure or even kill a smaller animal which is not my goal at all.

A couple people recommended the Airsoft guns as a good choice for this role.  It shoots larger, plastic bb’s at a lower velocity that may sting and annoy an animal but should not cause any permanent harm.  It’s spring loaded firing mechanism is a nice compromise between pump action and the Co2 cartridges.  You pull back a handle that cocks the spring once and you are ready to fire.  This morning before work I set the gun up and did a few test fires and showed Cindy the basics.  I think the Airsoft gun may be the exclamation point we need to convince chicken predators that they need to move elsewhere.

I left work early yesterday to get on site for race set up.  I came into an issue early on when I realized the cord that is used to connect the mic to the portable PA system we use for the start line was broken.  I racked my brain for a quick solution and realized I could use the wireless mic I had in the box if I could find a fresh set of batteries.  Luckily there was an Advance Auto a few doors down that I scored a pack of AA’s from, problem solved.

I spent over an hour and a half creating team packets for the event.  In each packet was the bibs for each team, the pins needed to attach them and a team roster list which had team member names and their assigned bib number.  Well before the race we had a bunch of people coming up with some issues.  Despite my work, more often than not these people were not wearing the bib number that was assigned to them, illustrating exactly why we stopped making this race chip timed.

In total there were over 900 people that signed up for the race, smashing the old record of around 650.  The layout was not ideal for that amount of people, especially before the race where you just had mobs of people blocking any direction you wanted to travel.  Since the race wasn’t chip timed, after we got done with the hectic pre-race scene things calmed down.  My main responsibility shifted to just producing a report of the the three largest team rosters and taping the finishers on my GoPro.

I even was able to enjoy a tofu burrito late in the festivities thanks to Cindy scoring us a couple.  More often than not in years past the food would be all gone by the time I got a chance to look for it.  We got off site a little after 8 o’clock which wasn’t bad.  I felt disgusting after sweating non-stop while the sun was out and not being able to wash my hands at all after handling tons of dirty race equipment.  A shower was very welcomed.

This weekend we have normal yard maintenance to handle but I have some ancillary side projects that I would like to get checked off the list, including hopefully install the LED projector on the SSR.  We also will be picking up the dogs on Saturday to hang for the rest of the weekend which is always a good way to add some smiles.  Exercise-wise I have an ambitious plan of running on Saturday and biking on Sunday.

We started Saturday off with a trip to the track, I wanted to give a short run a try.  In general my IT band has been hurting less since the road trip so I wanted to see how I would feel.  For the first two or three laps the answer was not good as I felt pain in my right hip and knee.  Eventually as my body warmed up the pain faded.  We completed the 8 laps and I probably could have pushed to a 5K distance if I wanted to.  So far I haven’t had any serious blowback as far as follow up pain or soreness.

We headed out to Home Depot to grab sod and top soil needed to repair the now massive excavation the chickens have performed at various spots around the yard.  Cindy and I worked in tandem to complete the work.  The humidity in the air was noticeably less on Saturday.  The combo of cloudy skies, breezy conditions and temps in the low 80’s almost felt pleasant to work in. Cindy and I set up the inflatable Halloween cat by the front door to complete our decorations. (unless Cindy decides to decorate the coop)  We anchored the cat with opposing 35 pound dumbbells to keep it steady as much as possible.

We have had a wasp problem on the one side of the house that I mentioned last week.   I finally broke down and bought wasp spray although I don’t feel good about killing the insects, despite their aggressive intentions towards me.  The wasps had somehow survived a couple spraying sessions, one by Cindy and one by myself.  I eventually pulled the hose holder off the wall and soaked every inch of it with wasp spray, hopefully putting an end to their persistent unwelcome habitation.

Recently I saw a Lincoln commercial where it showed off the built in ground projection logo set up.  Basically you open the door and an LED projects a crystal clear image on the road.  It’s just a cool thing.  This reminded me that a couple years ago I had bought the hardware to do this for my SSR but never installed it.  I found the box in the garage and hooked one of the projectors up to my 12V DC power supply to verify it worked.  I showed Cindy the bright image it cast on the rug which she thought was cool.

I have two of them as I originally planned to install them as prescribed, in the bottom of both doors.  I have since changed direction.  I want to try to hook one up in the back of the vehicle under the rear bumper.  I am hoping to tap the back up light circuit for power.  When you unlock the truck the back up lights stay on for several seconds so I thought it would be cool to have a projector in the back. I haven’t gotten beyond the thought process stage of this.  I need to put the back of the truck on ramps so I can do some thorough investigation about mounting options.

Speaking of the SSR, I made another large payment on the loan for the truck this weekend during my bill paying session, leaving less than a thousand dollars to go before it’s paid off.  It will be nice to have my only existing vehicle payment evaporate although I still am a bit sad that for the most part the SSR is a much smaller focus of my entertainment sphere nowadays.

We did take the SSR to the movies Saturday night.  It was our first trip to the theater since before the road trip.  I bet it has been a month and a half since we went to the movies which is surely a record for us.  We went to see The Martian, both Cindy and I are big fans of sci fi/space flicks.  The movie theater was decently full, probably half the seats were occupied.

I thought the movie was great and extremely well done.  Really the only negative I can give is it’s long, if you are annoyed by lengthy movies.  Personally I don’t care if a movie is long as long as I find it entertaining and interesting (ie Lord of the Rings).  I felt like I just watched the best space themed movie since Apollo 13 by the end of it.  I give it an A+.  Cindy felt similarly.

Cindy and I had talked about doing the 20 mile DD ride on Sunday morning as a follow up to Saturday’s run.  However Cindy wasn’t feeling great and the skies looked very threatening so we bailed.  It turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain shortly thereafter.  The weather all day was very unstable with periods of sun and rain which I assume were the fringe effect from hurricane Joaquin.

After skipping the ride my day became very lazy.  We grabbed coffee and some gas for the mowers and I paid my bills, other than that I was in slug mode.  Part of the slogfest was watching the Eagles game which was so shitty for most of it that I split time watching it with playing Hearthstone on the iPad.  I really don’t enjoy watching this team play, let me break down the latest loss.

Chip Kelly seems to be a one trick pony.  His vaunted hurry up offense which seemed to frustrate defenses in his first couple years in the league now seems to be passe and easily addressed.  The only thing it seems to do consistently is tire out the Eagles defense since they spend so much time on the field.  In addition Chip’s personnel management skills are proving to be pretty damn awful.  We are seeing the end result of coring out the majority of a team and inserting a random cast of characters like it is fantasy football. The team has no character, no personality and no leaders.

I have not been impressed by Stafford, our new QB.  Yes the offensive line has been more or less horrible and the receivers have dropped some catchable balls but his accuracy is reminding me of Donovon McNabb.  I have seen him miss wide open receivers A LOT, something I did not expect.  So far I certainly don’t see his play as a step up from what Nick Foles could have done for us. It was nice to see Stafford complete a couple long balls.  I think I heard the announcer say yesterday was the first game the Eagles had a play over 20 yards.  If that is true it is a pretty damning stat considering the team used to lead the league in plays over 20 yards.

The running game continued to be awful, again in large part thanks to the shitty offensive line that Chip constructed in the offseason.  Their inability to create anything resembling a consistent running attack further cripples their ability to pass as play action fakes mean absolutely nothing.

Huge kudos to Chip for signing a kicker that obviously has a mental block, missing a short field goal and an extra point which would have changed the game outcome.  I expect Calebs stay with the team to be brief.

Even with the Eagles leading late I had a sickening feeling in my stomach they were going to collapse at the end, which they did, allowing the Redskins to mount a confidence crushing 15 play drive to score the winning touchdown.  The offense came out onto the field with roughly 25 seconds to go and promptly shit the bed, allowing two sacks before crawling off the field with their tail between their legs.

I have read some former Eagle coach comparisons for Chip Kelly, the most accurate one I saw was with Ray Rhodes who did well his first couple seasons until the wheels completely fell off.  At this point I can see this team of misfits scraping together 6 wins.  I am curious if double digit losses is enough to merit the end of Chip Kelly’s pro coaching career.  The miserable Eagles game did nothing to pick up my already gloomy mood which was enhanced by my lack of tangible productivity backed by off and on shitty weather all day long.

Despite us being well past the vaunted super moon my overall mood has not been great.  I am concerned that as I advance further into the depths of middle age that I am acquiring more of the traits I saw in my mom as she got older, beyond wrinkles.  I am lucky to have Cindy’s positive energy to slow my descent.  I just don’t feel like dealing with things a lot more often than I recall in the past.

Last night Cindy and I watched Ray Donovan which had it’s season finale last night.  Man that was some intense shit, it may be the best finale I have seen since they wrapped up Breaking Bad.

I forgot to mention that over the weekend I was attacked by two of the more aggressive members of the insect family, wasps and fire ants.  For a long time I have seen wasps crawling into the small opening in the pull out drawer of the hose holder on the side of the house.  There were enough wasps in there now that it was dangerous to try to get water from that hose.

I have run into this situation before where I was hesitant to take out a wasp nest because I felt some odd sense of guilt destroying something the wasps have worked tirelessly at creating for weeks on end. Well just like my act of ripping out the old bush by the house, which bypassed my normal sentiment, the wasp nest received less compassion than normal from me due to my bad mood.

I first used the hose to spray water into the opening to confuse the wasps and prevent them from flying out to attack me.  I then quickly grabbed the lid to the drawer and yanked it open as I simultaneously sprinted away to avoid the wrath of the angry wasps.  Somehow in the span of a fraction of a second a water logged wasp managed to land a burning sting on my left calf before I could escape. The combo of the water I sprayed and the force I opened the drawer with ejected the baseball sized nest out into the yard.

My other incident came while I was weed whacking.  Up until a couple years ago whenever I weed whacked I ALWAYS wore my work pants to do so to protect my legs.  For whatever reason one day I decided to start wearing shorts for the job which is kind of dumb but I guess it was driven by sacrificing safety for more comfort in the heat and humidity of south Florida summers.  Well I paid the price.

I was knocking down weeds along the edge of the driveway.  I inadvertently moved the trimmer head into a substantial fire ant pile that was somewhat obscured by the high grass on top of it.  The angle of the trimmer head evidently was just perfect to launch dozens of angry ants out of their mound, onto my calves and into my boots.  Within a few seconds I had a massive coordinated attack on my lower body which resulted in kicking off my boots and spending 5 minutes getting all of the evil little bastards off my skin.  My legs look like an acne riddled 14 year old’s forehead right now.  I think the pants will become standard weed whacking equipment once again.

The other day I saw a warning about a devious default setting in the new iOS 9 called “Wi-Fi Assist”, located under SETTINGS/CELLULAR.  (have to scroll to the VERY bottom) The “feature” is supposed to automatically use your cellular data if the phone determines your wi-fi signal is “weak”.  There have been many reports that this setting has resulted in a lot of people getting huge phone bills when they rolled right past their normal data caps thanks to the phone using cellular data when users assumed it was using wi-fi. Unless you want to be in the same boat I suggest you turn off that feature asap.

I think this is a total bullshit move that is an obvious attempt to pad the pockets of cellular carriers.  I find it even more concerning that I turned this feature off the other day only to see that this morning it had turned itself back on without my interaction.

Cindy and I were up at 4AM for Saturday’s race.  We had the truck all loaded up Friday night so we could get out the door quickly.  It didn’t take long once we got on site for things to start coming loose at the seams.  There evidently was some miscommunication between the race charity organizer and the running club race director in regards to where the race registration area was going to be located.  We had already started set up on one side of the park when the charity organizer came and told us we were supposed to be set up somewhere else.

I told the woman that I just confirmed the location a couple days ago and that we would not have time to move everything around.  She had already set out a number of signs pointing 5K runners to the other location so we had to have someone go and relocate the signs pointing to where we actually were.  There was also more confusion in regards to how we would utilize space after the race for awards.  It was like they thought we were going to be in the way of the festivities for the big charity walk that followed.

I found this odd since the race course was changed this year specifically to put the race and walk in the same vicinity per their request.  In retrospect it would have been better if they left things alone.  The entire morning was filled with a lot of frustration as we muddled through various issues.  When the awards ceremony were conducted it was done at practically an auctioneer type pace because they wanted us out of there asap.  The whole event was just not well executed.  My timing portion of the event went smoothly with no missed runners that I am aware of.

When we got home Cindy cleaned the coop while I cleaned up the post race work.  I then joined her outside to tend to chores.  I had not weed whacked the property since we got home from the road trip plus I had other stuff to do.  Despite the early wake up and timing the race I somehow had enough energy to trudge away in the increasing heat and humidity.  I was not feeling very enthusiastic however, feeling like I was assigned to a prison work detail.

Mid-afternoon we went and picked up the dogs whom I hadn’t seen in something like 3 weeks.  When it came time to load them up Nicki was acting hesitant, like she didn’t feel like going.  She does the same thing when we try to load her up at the house to go back to Ali’s so I think at this point she just doesn’t like the hassle of changing locations.  Nicki is really slowing down.  Every step she takes looks painful and I swear she sleeps 90% of the day.  It makes my heart heavy.

Originally Cindy and I talked about going to the movies on Saturday night. As evening approached that plan changed as we both were dragging from the early alarm followed by a day of labor.  I could almost guarantee that I would drift off if I was sitting in a dark movie theater so we decided to just stay put and continue catching up on our big backlog of DVR content.

Before settling in for the night I headed back outside late in the afternoon to rip out a large bush on the garage side of the house.  This bush was one of two that I planted shortly after the house was built.  I ripped out the first one years ago because it was getting overly large and was causing issues accessing the utility boxes.  This second bush was even larger.

The bush required regular trimming to keep it looking half decent and even after doing so I still was not really pleased with the outcome.  I made a command decision that if I didn’t like the way it looked why am I keeping it?  Up until this point the answer that would have come back is sentimental value, it had been there almost as long as the house.  Well at that point in time, perhaps aided by my super full moon bad mood, sentiment had lost it’s grip on me as I cut the bush down to the ground with loppers and pried out the roots with a shovel.  Cindy will put something in that spot that is more visually appealing and less maintenance heavy.

Sunday morning despite skies that were looking threatening we pushed off for our 20 mile Dunkin Donuts ride.  I want to try to make sure I get a decent cardio session in on the weekends since I plan on phasing out my Wednesday lunchtime cardio in favor of more resistance training.

We had Cindy leading on the way there.  When behind, I typically like to stay back several feet so I get my own view of the road ahead.  Well maybe 8 miles into the ride I was tailing a little closer than normal.  I saw a decent sized pebble fly into and out of my field of vision followed immediately by a loud pop, it had punctured my front tire.

I immediately pulled off and Cindy stopped and doubled back as she heard it as well.  Luckily we had a spare tube with.  The stone had poked through the sidewall.  I stuck a patch on the inside of the tire before we put the new tube in to reinforce the repair.  A quick couple blasts with a CO2 cartridge inflated the tire and we were back on the road. Believe it or not this was the first time I had a conventional flat while riding.  I once had the spokes on a rear tire break but I never flatted myself.

After fixing the flat Cindy suggested we just turn around and head home as the skies to the west were looking very gray.  I told her we were close to DD and I didn’t want to fall short of my predetermined goal.  I told her I was sure we would beat any rain (we did), despite not really knowing for sure.  The ride back was into a steady head wind that I lead for the entire 10 miles.  I dropped gears and upped my cadence to compensate.  By the time we got in the driveway I was spent.

I cooled off with a dip in the pool which Sadie appreciated as it gave her an opportunity for some splash time which she always likes.  Although Sadie is still quite mobile, I can tell she is getting older.  It used to be she would literally run around the pool until my fingers were shriveled, wanting just one more splash.  Now after a few minutes I can tell she has had enough and is ready to lay down.

Cindy and I did a Home Depot run to pick up sand for the chicken run and top soil for the chicken holes.  The hens have dug out some huge holes they use for dust baths.  Some of the holes are to the point where they are on the verge of displacing the castle stone border they are dug next to.  Somehow we need to find a way to get them to dig holes in areas of the yard where it has less impact.  By the time we got to Home Depot I was feeling like a battery that has a direct short across it’s terminals.  I was exhausted.  Simply dumping the dirt and sand out of the back of the truck when we got home felt like a large undertaking.

Later in the day when I spread the sand I almost wound up beating up the chicken run. I hit my head three times going into and out of the doorway when I I forgot to duck.  After the third time I punched the 2×4 cross member, as if it was intentionally getting in my way.  Yes, I was in a bad mood.

This low energy feeling persisted throughout the rest of the day.  As I watched the Eagles game I was repeatedly drifting in and out of alertness.  The Eagles played better in the first half but unfortunately returned to utter offensive ineptness in the second half, scoring zero points and having to hold on to close out the Jets after building a 24-7 halftime lead.   Sure I was glad to get a win but overall the performance did not make me feel like the Eagles have a solid foundation to build the rest of the season upon.

My fantasy team is in utter shambles. (0-3)  Early injuries have wrecked my roster and I have some fantasy players that are not coming close to living up to their predicted productivity.  Roddy White has been the biggest offender, the wide receiver for the Falcons.  Yesterday the Falcons scored 39 points and White somehow managed to not contribute one speck to it, earning an unbelievable zero points.  I am so frustrated I feel like I should just cut him to make a virtual point which will mean absolutely nothing to anyone else but me. Of course the second I cut him he will blow up and have a huge game, guaranteed.

After the game my feeling of sluggishness continued.  Cindy and I watched five back to back episodes of Fear the Walking Dead, a testament to my laziness.  We stayed up to try to catch a good glimpse of the Super Moon which was mostly obscured by cloud cover. My mood issues that correlate with the phase of the moon have been well documented in the blog. My mood/state of mind during this latest phase has been as dark as I can recall in a long time, perhaps testament to the proximity of the moon.  Very little feels right/good during these periods of time.  Hopefully my feelings brighten as the weeks goes on.

Every year after a road trip it feels strange to be home.  The idea that a few days ago you were on the other side of the country and now find yourself back in familiar surroundings with familiar routines just screws with my head a little bit.  When we got home on Friday about 5 of course one of the first things we did was head out back to say hi to the chickens.  I guess they were as excited as chickens get which means not very.

We immediately worked on unloading the Prius whose interior looked like a homeless person was living it after 13 days on the road.  I went back to front, systematically removing items, many of which first went into the middle of the garage for Cindy to sort and sanitize as needed.  Cindy also was out in the coop tending to it since we told the chicken sitters we would handle cleaning it since we would be home.  In total we were plugging away a solid couple hours until we actually settled down to enjoy our traditional Friday night pizza and start catching up on our huge backlog of dvr’d content.

Saturday I headed outside to start on what I knew would be a pretty miserable session of yard chores.  Two weeks of it not being touched combined with heavy rainfall had left the grounds in a pretty jungle-like state.  As the heat and humidity poured down on me I instantly yearned for the crisp, cool air we just experienced in Wyoming and Yellowstone.  Florida wet season is really getting old.

After weeding the yard I hopped on the tractor and mowed the soppy grass wherever I could.  A lot of areas were still too submerged to touch.  Some of the areas I did mow were still very mucky resulting in the tractor looking like a swamp buggy when I was done with mud splattered everywhere, including on me.  Cindy was busting ass during most of this time giving the coop a very thorough scrub down.

After taking a shower to get all the scuzz off me most of the rest of the day was spent inside tending to pulling and editing the various videos which is a lengthy process.  You can catch what I published so far either on my YouTube channel or on Cindy’s channel.  There is still more content for me to dig through.

On Sunday morning doing any endurance training was not even mentioned.  Both Cindy and I were not feeling up to it plus it felt that there was still a ton of things that needed to get done.  Among those things was the monumental task of auditing the trip where I had to reconcile a HUGE pile of credit card receipts and enter them into Quicken.  As I did so I categorized the expenses into a few categories, gas, lodging, food, souvenirs, rides, and other.  Seeing the final numbers were interesting.

Despite driving an additional 1600 miles this year we basically paid the same for gas as last year thanks to lower gas prices.  Driving 6600 miles on $380 of gas is pretty amazing.    Our average cost for lodging per night was $91.  That number was inflated by two nights at Cody, Wyoming during our Yellowstone visit which cost more than $150 a night.  Ironically during the entire trip we did not stay at a single La Quinta.  On most prior road trips La Quintas were the destination of choice most nights.  This time around they always seemed to be priced slightly higher than comparable chains.  Since dog accommodations were not a concern  it wasn’t a big deal.

Originally I had set a loose mental goal of us spending basically the same amount of money as we did last year.  The final tally came in about $500 higher than last year but with one night and two extra days of travel which included Vegas I think we did ok.  That final total is inclusive of cash I pulled out and money for two weeks of chicken sitting.  I bet I spent well over 90 minutes getting everything accounted for.

After a quick trip in the SSR to blow out the cobwebs and grab some coffee I got back onto the tractor to mow most of the areas that were impassable on Saturday.  A couple days of hot, bright sun had done a nice job of getting rid of a lot of the water.  The tractor still required a thorough bath after mowing again.

So on both Saturday and Sunday I spent over 35 minutes on the phone with a Directv representative.  This is something I go through every year and every year it annoys the shit out of me.  I have Directv just for the Sunday Ticket, something they allowed me to do years ago when I dropped my main package.  It is a non-standard configuration that they won’t allow a new customer to do.  When the season concludes I suspend my service for 6 months and then have it reactivate when the season begins.

Well each year I have to call to get the Sunday ticket working again.  They can’t simple turn it on since I have no normal package, it always requires the intervention of a supervisor.  So on Saturday I call and explain to a guy the background of my situation.  I told him that last year I specifically requested that the rep notes in my account what was done to get the service working so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel again.  He said there were no notes about that on my account which pissed me off.

Despite my advice to get a supervisor involved he insists on going through vanilla troubleshooting steps like restarting the receiver (I already did that) and resending the authorization several times, which did nothing.  He then tells me that we can’t really tell if the Sunday Ticket will work until Sunday, closer till game time.  I told him that wasn’t true, even before the games there will be a placeholder image on the Sunday Ticket channels if you are authorized for them.  The guy just seemed out of ideas and was trying to get me off the phone with “just wait to see what happens on Sunday” advice. I wasn’t accepting it.  I kept pressing him to dig deeper as I knew there was more that was required.  Well after 35-40 minutes I was abruptly disconnected which of course infuriated me but I had no time to sit on the phone another half hour again.

Fast forward to Sunday morning.  I once again call and this time get an older sounding woman on the phone.  I once again explain the background of the issue.  The woman says that she doesn’t see my account as even having the Sunday Ticket included on my account, nor does she see record of my call from Saturday.  Well that is just lovely.  Since I do not have a basic programming package the woman was not able to add the Sunday Ticket to my service.  However, after a long wait and some intervention by a supervisor, finally the channels started working.  I once again asked the woman to please document exactly what was done so we don’t have to go through this again next year. Ironically, since the Eagles/Cowboys game was a national broadcast I couldn’t even use the Sunday ticket this weekend which blacks out locally broadcast games.

After bearing witness to the game, I almost wish it was blacked out entirely, it was that bad.  In the offseason Chip Kelly came under a great deal of scrutiny based on his dismantling of the core of the team, especially on offense getting rid of our starting QB, RB, WR, and two offensive lineman.  After the strong preseason performance by the Eagles a lot of those critics adopted a wait and see attitude, maybe Chip is not only a strategic but also a personnel genius?  Well after two games of the regular season this outlook on Chip’s player decisions are looking much bleaker.  The Cowboys game was an utter disaster.

The defense, surprisingly, were the far better of the two units, despite being out on the field for 40+ minutes thanks to the Eagles absolute failure to sustain any sort of offensive momentum.  DeMarco Murray, the LeSean McCoy replacement ran for negative yardage overall for the entire game.  The fault for this was largely the offensive line that seemed to routinely let D-lineman into the backfield every time Murray was handed the ball, it was miserable.

The receivers did little to help move the ball dropping a number of balls that a pro should normally pull in.  Sam Bradford, who I assume was supposed to be a Nick Foles upgrade, looked flustered and confused in a manner that befit a rookie, not a guy that has been a starter in the league for a number of years.  I really don’t like the passing game that has been in place for the first two games.  I don’t think I have seen a single pass that has traveled in the air more than 20 yards down the field.  I don’t know if it is because the Eagles have no receivers fast enough to beat anybody deep or Chip just wants to exclusively do dump and run pass plays.

There is nothing that will get Eagles fans to turn on you faster than coming up small against the Cowboys.  If Chip hangs a couple more consecutive losses around his neck (he has lost 5 of last 6 games dating back to last year), there will be a roar of dissent calling for his head.  It seems like the league has now figured out how to deal with his hurry up style of play.  It scares no one.  Chip’s style of viewing players as trading cards you can just plug into and out of a team without consideration of overall team chemistry is looking to be his fatal flaw.  The team looked absolutely awful on Sunday.

As if the Eagles awful performance was not bad enough, my fantasy team is now in shambles as well.  Two crucial parts of my team were Dez Bryant and Tony Romo,  whom I spent high draft picks on, both are now going to be sidelined for months.  I may as well raise the white flag now as my bench players are marginal at best.

Later yesterday and overnight there was another round of torrential rain and storms that made me very glad to have had the opportunity to knock down the grass over the weekend.  It’s going to be an interesting week as I try to adapt back to the daily grind after two weeks of taking each day as it comes.

Although I don’t think Trump is a viable political candidate, I do find his campaign extremely entertaining.  Yesterday he decided to lash out at Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who evidently dared to say something negative about Donald.  It doesn’t really matter what your background is, if you say something bad about Trump he will find the time to throw a few “idiots” and “losers” your way.

I thought Chris Christie put the Trump hoopla into perspective during an interview I saw on Fox News at the gym.  He reminded the host that 4 years ago at this time Michelle Bachman was leading the polls for the GOP.  Although I still think it is unlikely, I actually hope Donald manages to somehow win the nomination and further hope Bernie Sanders is his opponent.  It would be absolutely hilarious to see Trump throwing endless personal attacks at Bernie and have them bounce off  like teflon.  Bernie absolutely will not participate in smear tactics.  It would be one hell of a show.

Prep continued last night for the race and departure that are both coming up this weekend. I have many fragments floating around in my head of things to get done before now and then.  I need to make sure it all gets pulled together.

Hey it’s Throwback  Thursday.  When I was a kid I was really into riding toys.  I had a number of them.  The farm I grew up on was a good place for them with many hills as well as a long, gradually sloped driveway, perfect for gravity powered vehicles.

Before a bicycle became my primary transportation I had four different “vehicles”.  Two of them were purely gravity powered.  One was a soapbox style car that my dad built for me from a kit.  It had a conventional steering system, complete with steering wheel that cleverly used a dowel and rope to control direction.  Unfortunately as the rope stretched the steering got progressively more sloppy.  It had a hand brake that consisted of a piece of wood that applied friction to one of the back wheels.  Despite my dad putting a lot of work into the project it never got an equivalent amount of riding time.

The other gravity only vehicle got even less use, an old riding mower with the engine removed.  Driving this was cool as it almost felt like a real car.  The coolness quickly faded when it came time to push the thing back up the hill.  It weighed a ton.  As a result the old mower spent most of it’s time in the barn.

The two pedal powered toys I had where the Big Wheel and the Green Machine.  The Big Wheel was the status quo of riding toys, everyone had one.  It’s light weight and reliable steering made it a solid choice for most riding conditions.  I do recall thinking that I always felt cramped in the riding position.

My favorite riding toy of all time was the Green Machine. I remember when I opened it on Christmas feeling like I hit the jackpot.  It’s aggressive styling and unheard of rear wheel, lever based steering made the toy unique and difficult for the average kid to master.   The steering on the toy wwas both a good and bad thing.  It was bad for conventional steering and became very twitchy at speed. It however was awesome for doing power slides.  I loved pedaling my ass off and then throwing the steering levers in opposite directions, sending the Green Machine into and instant tail spin.   It’s extended riding position was also unmatched in comfort.

I miss the days when the major decision I had to make for the day was which toy I was going to ride.

So after work on Friday I made the mistake of stopping at Costco.  It was a mistake because I forgot to consider that people were worked up into a frenzy about tropical storm Erika.  The mere mention of a remote possibility of it becoming a hurricane is all it takes to set off mild panic.  The aisles of the store were crammed with people preparing for end of days.  It seemed like almost every cart in the store had a case or two of bottle water jammed in it.  As is always the case for me, I don’t react well to mob mentality.  Sure be prepared if there is a serious reason for concern but what the fck, we get severe thunderstorms weekly that deliver as much if not more punch than the storm was predicted to have.  It turned out to deliver even less than that as Erika fell apart Saturday morning.

The state of Florida jumped right onto the overreaction bandwagon with Rick Scott declaring a state of emergency far in advance of there being one.  His declaration meant other government agencies had to fall in line and overreact in kind.  State agencies were given orders to do stuff like shutdown, unplug, and cover equipment with plastic.  It was all just a big production over a very small threat.  Since Florida hasn’t had a hurricane make landfall in 10 years it seems like some EMS agencies are just chomping at the bit to put their emergency action plans in place, regardless of their actual need.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed to the track to run.  We wound up running slightly over 5K in distance, the first time I have run that far in at least 6 months, maybe more.  I felt ok during the run besides being drenched from what felt like 100% humidity.  The rest of the weekend I had an off and on limp but I didn’t expect to emerge from the run pain free.  As long as it fades in a day or two that is the best I can expect nowadays.

We picked up the dogs after the run on our way to do a couple errands.   At Home Depot I picked up some hardware to work on the door to the chicken run.  Since it was built it has twisted somewhat, making it difficult to open and close. My idea was to drive an anchor point into opposing corners and then use vinyl coated steel cable with a tensioner in the middle. My thought was this would resist the twisting forces.

Well it seemed like all it wound up doing was actually make the door even more difficult to close.  I decided to take a new approach, grabbing my large wood chisel and a hammer.  I used it to shave down the 2×6 along the bottom frame of the door until it was able to swing open and closed without friction.  It took a lot of trial and error and I had to keep chasing away curious chickens that thought wood shavings were treats.

Over the weekend I also tried to further address water problems and the coop.  The seam between the chicken run and shed still has been allowing a lot of water to seep through.  The water runs down the side of the shed and then drips onto the chicken door landing, splashing water inside as well.  Yesterday I used an entire tube of caulking to fill that seam as much as possible.  Hopefully I have finally got the issue handled.

During the afternoon Saturday I also completed the rebuild of my pool cleaner.  I installed the new bumper assembly and gear box.  Having ripped it apart several times recently and using my power drill made the work go very quickly.  I was quite happy when I put it in the pool for a test run and it immediately took off, hauling ass around the bottom of the pool like it was brand new.

Saturday night we again stayed home and watched Run All Night, another Liam Neeson action flick.  Cindy didn’t expect much of the film but it was quite good.  Liam and action films have proven to be a pretty solid combo.  I’d give this one an A- rating without batting an eye.

On Sunday I woke up feeling very blah.  I felt unmotivated, lazy, and just down on the world.  I felt like I have such a busy week ahead of me that I should be doing stuff to prepare but had no desire to do so.  The wet swamp outside did little to help alleviate my cloudy mood.  Instead of doing productive work I played some games of Hearthstone for awhile to soothe my mind.  As the hours passed I started to feel a little better, aided by a cup of DD coffee.

I couldn’t mope that long because I needed to get busy on making my famous chocolate cake.  A friend of ours and her kids were coming over Sunday evening so we wanted to give them a treat.  Cindy Periscoped a good portion of the cake prep process.  The end result was what may have been the best version of the cake I ever pumped out.  Both the frosting and the cake itself were dead on.

The rains once again came mid-afternoon making any outdoor activities with the kids impossible.  Instead when they showed up they were entertained by the dogs, Tuki, and the latest Transformers movie that was streaming on Netflix.  Cindy prepared a very tasty meal to compliment the chocolate cake which everyone gave kudos to. It was nice to have them out to the house, hopefully next time the weather is more accommodating.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a super packed week.  I host the fantasy football draft party tomorrow night, have a race to time on Saturday, and oh by the way, a two week western road trip to prepare for.  Yay.

Yesterday my pool cleaner parts showed up so I wasted little time ripping into my old Navigator.  I was surprised at what I found.  I already knew I was missing part of a bracket inside, I didn’t know I was missing a lot more than that.  As I dug deeper into it small ball bearings fell out on my lap.  One of the bearings on the main impeller had totally shattered.  When I turned it upside down a few other things fell out, a piece of styrofoam and a red plastic disc that looked broken.  I never figured out where they came from.  (I just discovered they are from the gearbox)

I had the thing almost completely ripped apart on the patio table.  I carefully swapped in my rebuild parts.  At this point the only thing that has not been replaced is the gear box at the top of the cleaner which sounds like shit.  After reassembling the Hayward I dropped it in the pool.  It was tracking much faster but not turning great, surely due to the gearbox.  I ordered a new gearbox and bumper assembly a few minutes ago. I’ve come this far, I may as well do a complete teardown so I can add “Hayward Pool Cleaner Repairs” to my resume.

Cindy’s daughter stopped by last night to have dinner with us.  She hung around for awhile afterwards.  When Cindy and Katie get together they often wind up getting quite silly.  Last night was no exception.  You can see some of the sillyness here, but only for another few hours until it is vaporized from the Periscope servers.

It is amazing how the name of a Periscope broadcast can influence the viewership.  I named the stream simply “Cindy and Katie”.  Two female names instantly brought in a ton of male viewers, surely hoping for something risque.  At one point the total live viewers swelled to almost 300 which is crazy considering most broadcasts Cindy or I do barely scrape double digits.

I had a bad dream last night.  I showed up at the finish line to time a race and finishers already were crossing the line. I had no timing equipment set up at this point.  The race clock had just passed 7 minutes and this was a half marathon so I had no idea what the hell was going on.  My mind raced to figure out what my options were.  The dream ended just as I concluded “I’m fcked”.

So when I got home my immediate task was to work on the pool cleaner.  Despite putting a new set of feet on the cleaner it was going around the pool floor at a snail’s pace.  When I pulled it apart I saw a bracket that has fallen off 3 or 4 other times had worked it’s way loose again.  When I did some quick internet research I saw a recommendation to replace the inner a-frame if certain components are loose.  When I checked these components they were very loose and worn.   I was able to find a rebuild kit for 30 bucks.  I figured it was better than spending 300-400 on a new cleaner.  I am hoping this latest repair will help me squeeze another year or two out of the Hayward.

While I was out there I saw the small hawk had once again showed up, perching defiantly on a nearby fence post.  Once again the bird was unfazed by BB gun warning shots, I had to again walk at the hawk until it retreated to the back of the property but it still was hanging in a nearby tree.  I decided to try another method of deterrent.  I went inside and grabbed my drone.

I got the quadcopter airborne and walked to the back fence line.  The hawk was still in the same tree.  I steered the drone towards the bird and it immediately took off, flying to another tree.  It evidently was not a fan of the copter, it is quite noisy, like an angry swarm of bees.  I chased the hawk back and forth around the back of the property until it finally flew far away.  I’m hoping if am consistent with my hawk sorties they will learn there are better spots for them to hang out than our property.

So I was happy that it did not rain yesterday, giving the standing water an opportunity to evaporate to a good degree.  I calculated that by today the areas I could not mow on Sunday should be passable.  Well that plan was dashed when a tremendous storm rolled through last night.  The sound of water being dumped on the roof by the bucket was not music to my ears.  It was accompanied by frequent, close lightning and window rattling thunder.

About five or six times we had momentary losses of power.  This a very common summertime occurrence in Florida.  Unfortunately since we installed the Philips Hue bulbs this is a MUCH more annoying problem if it happens when you are trying to sleep.  The power to a Hue bulb is always on, the light may be off but the electronics inside are not.  When power is removed and then restored the Hue bulbs default to turning back on.  So every time the power burped the house lit up, requiring Cindy to grab her phone to turn them all off again.  I have to see if there is a way to change that default behavior, it was getting somewhat maddening.

So the stock market has had another blowout the last few days.  Luckily for me when this happens I don’t freak out although on paper I will have lost thousands of dollars in my two retirement accounts.  I am still young enough that I can view these dips as opportunities to cost average as I get to buy more mutual fund shares at a lower number through the automatic purchasing that continues to go on in the accounts.  However if I was closer to retirement age I don’t think I would be willing to have my nest egg exposed to the manipulation and robo-trading that can make these dips in the stock market much more exaggerated.

I got out of work a little early on Friday, I put the time to good use.  After stopping at Sam’s to get a few bulk items I was still home before 5.  I immediately changed clothes and headed outside to get a jump start on the weekend chores.  I got all of the weeding done as Cindy was still finishing up mowing on the tractor. It gave me a nice mental head start on the weekend.

For the past week or two we have had a couple baby turtle doves living by the side of the house on the ground, they are a little larger than a parakeet.  At first when we saw them we assumed they fell out of a nest from the oak tree and were stuck on the ground. That theory changed when saw them sitting on top of a fence cross support and later saw them fly pretty capably short distances.  They seem pretty docile.  As long as I walk quietly I can pass them with only a couple feet leeway.

At one point over the weekend I saw the two baby birds on the ground flapping around, it almost looked like they were fighting.  As I got closer I noticed there was a third bird, an adult turtle dove who I assume is the mom.  The babies were just very excited and I assume mom was feeding them, explaining how they have survived on the ground. It was cute.

First thing Saturday morning Cindy and I worked on deworming the chickens.  Instead of trying to catch each one and shoot liquid down their throats we decided to inject the dewormer into blueberries which the chickens love.  For most of the birds it was pretty simple as they gobbled up the blueberry after which we set them loose in the yard.  Kristen and Pumpkin were the most challenging but eventually they downed the medicated berry as well.

After de-worming we picked up the dogs during a DD coffee run.  I hadn’t seen them in two weeks.  We kept them the rest of the weekend until I dropped them off this morning.

There was more coop tweaking on Saturday.  When we were cleaning the coop we noticed the floor near the automatic chicken door was quite wet.  I have had a problem with some water seeping down the wall of the shed where it meets up with the chicken run but I didn’t think it was that much.  When I built the run I filled in the small gap between the roof of the run and the side of the shed with a piece of plywood.  When I took a look at the wood it looked like it had developed a slight warp that resulted in a slightly downward tilt, directing any rainwater that fell on it against the shed wall.

I took my one leftover spare corrugated white plastic roof panel and cut it down so it would fit on top the area where the plywood resides.  I installed the piece at an angle sloping away from the shed to keep as much water away from the shed wall as possible.  I have to wait until the next good thunderstorm to see if my efforts were fruitful.

I also did some extensive yard maintenance on Saturday hopping on the tractor to mow down the back of the property.  Since we were in one of the dry spots during wet season I figured I better mow while the mowing was good.   Mowing the back is a slow process due to the height of the grass.  Certain spots require you to either go very slow or to back up over a second time to get the high stalked stuff. The canopy on the tractor makes the task so much better on a hot August day.  After I was finished mowing I still had some gas in my motivation gas tank.  I grabbed the weed whacker and started hacking away at the thick high grass that filled the ditch towards the back of the fenced in portion of the yard.  Getting through the stuff required max throttle and a gradual chopping strategy where you knock down the grass/weeds with multiple passes.  When it was all done the backyard matched the front of the property for one of the few times each year.

On Saturday night Cindy and I made our near weekly trip to the movie theater to see Fantastic Four. Both Cindy and I had read the bad reviews of the film ahead of time but we normally prefer to make our own judgements.  Once again we had issues with other theater patrons.  There were two presumably teenage girls that were about 3-4 seats down in the row behind us that had near continuous conversation going on.  It started doing the previews.  Cindy and I assumed they would have the common sense to shut up once the movie began.  Of course we were mistaken.  They got a couple looks from me and a lot more from Cindy, including a “Psshhht!” which did not appear to do anything.

When I weighed the options of getting up and making a scene versus simply moving to another section of the mostly empty theater the latter choice made more sense.  A couple young girls are not going to respond well to requests for common courtesy, a trait the majority of modern day youth are devoid of.  We relocated to the top left corner of the theater with nobody within spitting distance and had a much better experience.

I have had a long streak of having favorable reviews of every Marvel movie I have seen.  Even lesser known titles like Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy exceeded my expectations.  Well this latest Fantastic Four broke that streak.

To be honest the first 75% of the movie was ok, it kept my interest and portrayed an interesting background of how the FF 4 obtained their powers, something I did not know.  However once Dr. Doom emerged as the feature villain of the film things totally flew off the track.  The story all of a sudden got incredibly stupid, simplistic, and unimaginative.   It was like the writers walked off the film at this point and were replaced by 5th graders.  Dr Doom has unimaginable power, literally being able to just look at somebody and make them melt, or open cosmic black holes, yet somehow he winds up in a conventional hand to hand battle with Mr Fantastic, played by an actor no one cared about.  The ending of the film was just incredibly moronic.  It took what was possibly a B+ flick straight down into B- or even C+ territory, it was that dumb.

The movie also was animation feature film short, barely 90 minutes long.  Again it felt like they lopped out huge chunks of film towards the end and just threw whatever was left against the wall.  Hell it was so bad that even Stan Lee did not have an appearance in the movie.  Like true Marvel suckers we stayed till the end of the credits, hoping to at least catch something of interest.  Our reward for waiting was a blank screen and a closed curtain.  The movie certainly is not worth of spending movie theater dollars to see.  Sure rent it on Netflix but don’t expect to be impressed.

Sunday morning Cindy, who just got clearance to bike last week after her toe surgery, and I planned to get out on the road for a bike ride.  We were joined by Kerri whose son is going to be our chicken sitter during the road trip.  She lives close by and has just started road biking.  We decided to ride out to Ave Maria since it was on the way to Kerri’s place.

Prior to Sunday the longest ride Kerri did was about 3 miles, going all the way out to Ave Maria was about 25 miles for her and 30 miles for us so she was making a dramatic increase in mileage.  Kerri however is a good endurance athlete with several marathons under her belt.

I lead most of the ride keeping a pace that was around 16 mph on average, trying to account for the extra distance and Kerri’s lack of riding experience.  On the way back I picked up the speed a bit doing 17-18mph for a good portion of the distance and Kerri was able to hang.  By the time we got back to the entrance to her development both Cindy and I were pooped.  Neither of us had rode 30 miles in quite a long time.  The last 3 miles to the house were not enjoyable between a sore rear end and tired legs.

We still are having issues with chicken sleeping arrangements.  Saturday night we had to remove Peaches from the top of a barrier screen Cindy mounted in front of the electronics.  Every night all 11 birds try to jam on to the top perch area, despite there being three totally empty perches below.  As the birds continue to grow there is less and less space up top.  Cindy and I are considering yet another modification where we turn the big perch structure we made on it’s side so there is a large triangle of perching space all at the same height.  There are some design changes and proof of concept that need to be worked out but hopefully we can make it work.

I got my DJI quadcopter out for the first time in months to shoot some aerial video of the property.  Right after taking off for my first flight I saw something very odd on the horizon.  It was low, bright to the point where I could see it even behind clouds and appeared to be moving very slowly. I tried to position the copter so it was pointing in the direction of the object but on the video I can’t see what my eyes tracked.  My logical assumption is what I saw was a plane with a reflective exterior that was catching the high sun at just the right angle to reflect in my direction on the ground.  The copters higher vantage point may have erased that angle which is why I couldn’t see it when played back.

I burned through all three battery packs shooting my property from different perspectives.  I think the video turned out decent after a lot of cutting and trimming.  You do get a good aerial view of the new coop and chicken run from an overhead perspective.

Over the weekend I was watching several videos of what the first few hours of recruit basic training is like.  The drill instructors screaming repeatedly inches from the recruits face was disturbing for me and I wasn’t even there.  I don’t know for sure how I would react if I ever decided to enlist in the military but I presume it would not be good.  Sure you have to know going in what your role is going to be and that treating you like dirt is how they break you down to reshape you as a soldier.  I just wondered how many of those kids were thinking “What the fck did I get myself into…”

Sunday night Cindy and watched my current Netflix rental, McFarland, a movie about an unlikely cross country team coached by an unlikely coach in a very Hispanic town in California.  Even if you know nothing about cross country running I am confident you will find the film touching and inspirational.  It’s a solid A in my book.

So we are a few days away from the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing away.  To me, the 10th is really the day that mom left us as she was found unresponsive behind the wheel of her car only to be revived too late to save her brain.  The idea of mom feeling the heart attack coming on not being able to do anything about it is something that frustrates me and brings heavy feelings of sadness  and remorse.  I feel like somehow I should have been able to so something to prevent it, somehow.