Category Home Improvements

My Saturday was very, very busy.  Cindy was out the door early to go volunteer at the kids triathlon.  Since I was up and had a list on the counter of things to do I got busy.  Weeding and weed whacking the property took me close to two hours, I was finishing it up when Cindy pulled back into the driveway with Nicki and Sadie in tow.  She picked them up from Ali’s after the race for a weekend stay.

After we ate lunch I launched a massive pressure washing session where I cleaned the most amount of things that I can recall.  Bird cages, gutters, flashing, sidewalk, plastic lumber, sheds, pool cage frames, pavers, fence posts, stucco, rain barrel stands, concrete pads, and more were all targets of the 25 degree wide, 3000 psi stream.  It was a brutal session that did not wind up until close to 5PM.

Certain areas do not respond to pressure cleaning alone.  The back wall of the small shed is one of these.  Even after blasting the shit out of it there was still black spotting on the vinyl siding.  Hitting the wall with a bleach/water mix was necessary to get the siding looking normal again. I was a bit stupid when I initially was brushing straight bleach on by hand with a brush over my head.   Of course this resulted in bleach splashing on my face and narrowly missing my eye.  After shooting my face with water I changed my technique.

On Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Jurassic World, one of the summer’s big budget films.  I was a big fan of the first couple Jurassic films with the first obviously being the best.  I was skeptical what a 4th iteration of the series would produce but the previews looked interesting to me.

The movie started out pretty well, it had what you want in a dinosaur movie, cool dinosaurs and good action.  However as the film went on it seemed like the writers of the script phoned it in.  The story got very predictable, silly, and campy. By the time it was over I wasn’t sure if I just watched Jurassic World or Godzilla versus Mothra.   When the lights came back on Cindy asked if I liked the movie.  I told her I felt like it was made for someone with an IQ of 85. It just got really, really dumb.   Overall it may barely touch B+ status but I really felt the story was so dumb that I need to officially rate it a B to maintain the legitimacy of my movie rating reputation. 😉

In addition to the movie we had sidebar “entertainment” 4 or 5 seats to our left.  There was a group of four young people, I think it was two girls and two guys.  I am guessing they were late teens, early 20’s.  They were being annoying a good portion of the film.  Of course they were unable to keep their hands off their smart phones during the movie.  Asking a kid that age to not touch their phone for a period of two hours is almost like asking them to hold their breath an equivalent amount of time.

So if the glowing screen during the movie wasn’t annoying enough, they also had periods of prolonged whispering and giggling that drew stinkeye glances from me but especially Cindy which made them settle down slightly.  When the movie was over the group of four got up before the lights were turned on and started exiting on the side opposite us.  All of a sudden we heard the unmistakable sound of somebody falling down the steps.  One of the girls took a major spill down the stairs, perhaps because she was busy texting on her phone or chemically altered.  Whatever the cause, I did not have a millisecond of concern regarding her well being when she fell.  It actually was a better ending than what was on screen.

Yesterday Cindy was gone the majority of the day at an aqua instructor course, giving me a very rare day at the homestead myself.  I took the girls on an errand run with me which included a stop at Pinch A Penny.  The pool pump was dead and just humming on Sunday morning, a symptom I knew was from a dead capacitor, since I had it happen in March 2013.  Two years seemed like a brief lifespan for the capacitor, especially since they cost $50.  I dropped another 50 bucks Sunday, hoping it is the last cap replacement I have to do on the pump.

I attended to a number of small to do’s around the house during the day but I also had some time to just do some mindless WoW sessions.  I did use one of my free level 90 boosts for Cindy’s virtual WoW character so if she ever gets the bug to play she can do so without being 100 levels behind me.

The baby chicks are doing well and seem to enjoy their L shaped living arrangements.  They happily run around pretty much all day long.  Even though the square footage the 11 birds have is pretty substantial, one day is all that patch of grass is good for thanks to the incredible amount of waste products fast growing chickens generate.  By the end of the day the grass the coops are on is a poopy mess.  Even once the 11 chicks are moved into the big permanent coop there is going to be a lot of daily mess to deal with, even with the bigger accommodations.

Last night another ferocious storm blew through.  I would not be surprised if some of the gusts approached 50 mph.  Lucy and Lola were out when the wind kicked up.  It was so windy that Lola laid on the ground and leaned into the gusts to prevent her less than 2 pound body from blowing away. Cindy grabbed her and put her in the coop.

Once the storm passed Cindy and I headed outside to do some more chicken work.  My goal at first was to just investigate what I would need to make a tunnel connector between the chicken tractor and the new coop we bought last weekend.

Well as the sun was setting not only did I investigate, I completed the connector.  I used left over plywood that was sitting in the attic for over a decade.  I then took a few measurements and pulled out the sawhorses and circular saw.  The end result was low tech and definitely unpolished but effective.  The plywood tunnel allows us to arrange the two coops in an L configuration, allowing the chicks full access to both during the day.

This morning before we let the chicks down from the top of the tractor we pushed the two coops together using the tunnel to join them.  It wasn’t long until they discovered their new expanded floor space.  I think they will be quite content living in this arrangement until we migrate them into the main coop.

That integration might not be all that hard.  Lucy and Lola have been hanging around the small coops quite a bit when they are free ranging.  They aren’t acting particularly mean or aggressive around the baby birds but more curious than anything.  Of course when it comes time to actually sharing food, water and housing arrangements there could be more fireworks.

This weekend I will have more solo time than normal.  Cindy is going to be volunteering at the kids triathlon on Saturday and then on Sunday she is going to be taking an aqua-intructor course that will run a good portion of the day.  I have plenty to keep me occupied.  2 months of raising chicks has left certain areas of the house/property a bit of a mess, I want to get things back where they belong.  I also will be grabbing the pressure washer to blast the scuzz off the sheds and anything else I deem necessary.

I was considering going to the show being put on by the cast from the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show at the casino in Immokalee on Saturday night.  On the two days Howard doesn’t broadcast I will often have Bubba on, who used to be on Sirius with Howard and is based out of Tampa.  The comedy show has limited free seating available or VIP tickets for 70 a pop.

As I was listening to Bubba’s show this week he said if you want a free seat you better show up at 6PM for the 7PM door opening else you risk being shut out. Well although I like the show, I’m not into it enough to stand in line for an hour to see them and certainly not enough to drop 140 bucks.  Instead Cindy and I will probably fall back on our preferred weekend entertainment and go see another movie. 🙂

After watching some more Dodge Hellcat videos recently, the idea of parting with my SSR to eventually slide behind the seat of a 700 HP super car is sounding more  and more appealing.  It doesn’t mean it will happen but the thought is dancing around in my empty head which is where every silly idea of mine that has come to fruition starts.

So on Friday after work I was pretty sure I was going to wind up driving home with a new TV.  I brought the truck to work so I would have the hauling capacity needed for a 75 inch tv.  In total I went to three different retailers, Best Buy, Costco, and Sam’s.  I went to Best Buy first as they obviously had the biggest selection.  The 75 inch tv’s are on display in the “Magnolia” area of Best Buy, the high end room where there are sofa’s and lot’s of big screens.

I wound up talking to a couple of the sales guys there.  They all pushed 4K tv’s hard, saying there was really no choice to be made, 4K is the future.  I discussed with them some of the info I had read regarding 4K like how after you are more than a half dozen feet away from the screen, your eye can no longer discern the difference in resolution.  I told them with my layout at home my couch is approximately 12 feet from the tv.  They did not agree with my statement and wanted me to see for myself.

In front of one of the couches was 70 inch Sony 4K tv that was currently playing Avengers in 1080p via an attached Blu-Ray player, it looked good.  I estimated my distance from the set as about 10 feet.  The sales guy then popped in a USB drive that had native 4K video on it and asked me if I saw a difference, even at 10 feet back.  The 1080P Avengers video looked great, the native 4K content looked amazing.  The detail and visuals almost seemed better than real life if I was standing there.  Ok they made their point.

My other counter 4K argument was the lack of 4K content currently.  3D tv originally was touted to be available everywhere eventually and instead the exact opposite happened, it dried up and went away.  I think the odds of that happening with 4K is less but still possible.  The sales guys pointed out that Netflix already has streaming 4K content with others reportedly ready to hop on board in the near future.

I then mentioned to them that my current intention was to buy a 75 inch 1080P set, specifically a certain Samsung model.  They immediately tossed mud at that idea, first because it was ONLY 1080P and that it was Samsung’s low end model which only has a real refresh rate of 60HZ, despite it being advertised on the box as 120hz through some fuzzy math.  Hearing that the tv I was close to pulling the trigger on was a low end set sort of let the air out of my balloon.  Thinking about dropping a good chunk of money for a non 4K set that has now been flagged as “low end” did not excite me.  I thanked them for the info and headed out with much less tv buying spring in my step.

I swung into Costco which was a few doors down to see my options there, which was the same Samsung 75 incher Best Buy staff just looked down their noses at.  I then headed to Sam’s where I was buying some groceries and looked again there.  By the time I was walking in from the parking lot I had already had an internal dialogue with the impulsive, illogical portion of my brain that was obsessing about a new tv.  I realized that for what I would spend on a new tv I could basically pay for an entire western road trip, which I value more.

The bottom line is my current 73 inch set has a few annoying holes in it’s capabilities due to it’s age, (lack of enough HDMI ports, no digital audio port, no internet connectivity) but it still works and looks fine.  Until that is no longer the case I need to just sit on the sidelines and reap the rewards as the prices of 4K tv’s drop as is always the case the longer a technology is on the market.  When I get a tv I will likely hold onto it for a good 7-8 years so I want to make sure I invest wisely.

On Saturday while Cindy was doing some of the seemingly endless baby chicken maintenance, she picked up Jaina, the cornish hen and took her inside.  Jaina is huge, something common for the breed as they are primarily raised for meat.  Cindy wanted to see just how huge she was.  So she weighed herself while holding the bird and solo.  The number was a pretty amazing 4 pounds.  For her to weigh that much this quickly was incredible.  For reference you may recall that when the vet weighed Lola she came in at scarce one pounds and three ounces.  We can only imagine how large Jaina will be as a true adult chicken.  Unfortunately cornish hens do not typically have a long life span, if allowed to they will literally eat themselves to death.  Cindy is hoping that her being allowed to free range will help stave off morbid obesity.

Before we were ready to head out to run some errands I was in the driveway.  I spun around and all of sudden had a male pit bull looking at me.  He seemed friendly so I called him over.  After letting him give me the sniff test I started petting him.  Cindy was startled by the dog and her first thought was keeping him away from the garage since the door was open with the 11 chicks inside the coop.  Pit Bulls and chickens are not going to mix well.

Cindy got the door closed and came over to the dog as well.  He had a collar but no tags.  He had a few small open wounds, one on his ear and a couple other places.  Of course my first assumption was the dog was from one of the idiots that unfortunately live in our area that think nothing of leaving their dogs outside full time.  These same people also often don’t put much priority on making sure their animals are safely contained.

We filled a container with water which the dog drank from several times.  I wanted to give him some treats/food but Cindy didn’t think it was a good idea unless we wanted him to stick around.  If I didn’t have a long list of things I wanted to get done on Saturday, the best option would be to load up the dog in the truck and take him to domestic animal services where his owner could hopefully find him although for the dog’s sake, he may better off being re-homed. Instead we let the pit bull head off with us hoping he knew where home was and was heading that way.  I felt guilty and somewhat irresponsible as we drove off.

So as I mentioned, Cindy has been finding that very large portions of her days are being consumed by chicken maintenance, specifically trying to keep ahead of the baby chicks and the mess they create.  In retrospect, getting 11 chicks was probably a bit more of a bite than we should be chewing.  Part of the problem is space.  In order to clean the chicken tractor properly the chicks can not be in it.  For the last couple weeks we have been using the run portion of the chicken tractor for that purpose, flipped upside down in the yard so we can grab the chickens easier.

Well the unannounced arrival of the pit bull put a scare into Cindy.  She imagined if the baby chickens were outside in the run when the dog showed up.  It could have been potentially disastrous.  Well when we got to Rural King a viable solution was in front of me.  They had a small, put together yourself chicken coop and run on sale.  It was constructed in much the same manner as the original coop I bought off Ebay which I quickly unloaded due to it’s lack of long term viability.  This coop cost less than half of what I paid for the first one and after unboxing and assembling it at home, seemed to actually be built a little better.

At first our thought was to just let the chickens hang in the new secondary coop in the front yard during the day, giving Cindy free access to clean the main coop.  After putting the chicks in there they looked cramped.  Even though the coop is elevated with space underneath, 11 chicks add up quickly.  I then came up with a secondary idea, mating the run from the chicken tractor with the new coop via one of the doors.  When I first mentioned the idea to Cindy she was skeptical but once we worked out a few logistics it actually was pretty cool.  Adding the run into the equation gave the chicks a lot of real estate to run around in and they took advantage of it.  It seems like this will be a good stop gap measure until we are able to do a full merging of the babies with the two adult hens in the backyard.

Saturday night we attended the final home game for the Tarpons which was morphed into a championship game as I described last week due to one of the teams being suspended.  The Tarpons were scheduled to play the Rio Grande Valley Sol, a team from Texas that had the second best record in the league.  For this reason I was very confused when we stepped into the arena and saw RAIDERS listed on the scoreboard as the away team.  When I saw the players from the other team on the field it confirmed that actually the Florida Marine Raiders were here.  What the fck??

So I looked online for some explanation of why the conjured up championship game was changed once again, with no prior notice.  No explanation was available online.  The following morning I saw a post that stated that on Friday the Sol pulled out of the game, citing transportation issues as the problem, probably meaning they had no money to pay for the trip to south Florida.  Since the Raiders are just across Alligator Alley I guess they were the best fit, regardless of their actual placement in the standings.  It was just another comical twist in this season.  The past few years have just been one lol moment after another as the league tries to prop itself up as legitimate where the reality is the entire thing is a house of cards.

The game itself was pretty good in the first half with only one point separating the teams on the scoreboard.  The second half however was all Tarpons with them pulling away for a 30+ point victory.  I drank a lot of beer, four large Budweiser drafts.  As they took affect I found myself less interested in the game and more interested in the man I referred to as “the seat nazi”.  This was the same guy that a couple games ago asked to see our tickets, despite us not being in his assigned section, to make sure we weren’t seat jumpers.

He is older, has a big belly and a scraggly looking goatee.  He peers out thorough his glasses at the sparsely filled seats, looking incessantly for people not following the rules and or sitting in a seat not assigned to them.  Don’t get me wrong, generally speaking I am a fan of rules and in an event where seating is at a premium, people jumping down to better seats is annoying.  But this is a Tarpons football game, 65-75% of the seats were unoccupied.  To me common sense needs to be applied in a balanced manner with the rules.  The seat nazi did not share this belief, repeatedly Cindy and I watched him walk up into the seating area to reprimand seat offenders for no good reason outside of stroking his personal need to wield power upon others.  It just was stupid.

Cindy and I stayed to the very end to watch the Tarpons nail down their “championship” but it sort of rung hollow.  Despite the Tarpons best efforts it didn’t prevent me feeling like it was a fake accomplishment from a league that makes up the rules as they go to compensate for the very shaky financial footer it is built upon.   My post to the Taarpons FB page asking if they planned to be back for 2016 has gone unanswered.  I suspect the silence means Cindy and I have watched the last game in franchise history.  At least it ended on a positive note, sort of.

Sunday morning Cindy and I slept in a bit.  The four beers and getting to bed after midnight lent itself to the late departure from bed.  Sunday was the Naples Fitness Challenge, an event I participated in a few times, including last year as a team effort with Randall and Cindy.   Not even being on site made me feel a bit like a loser and for a period of time made me feel like I should get my ass on the bike or something, despite my still present knee/IT band pain, just to prove a point to noone but myself.  I did not act on that feeling and instead distracted myself with more chores/projects around the house.

I did some work getting the four MyLaps timing boxes configured for real world use.  Before they are put into real world testing I need to set up a practice 5K in the back yard where I totally simulate the steps I will go through on race day.  It’s very important I have that blueprint laid out ahead of time, backed up with real testing of that blueprint to identify flaws before they matter.

I had an unexpected task laid on me when my neighbor asked if I could take a look at her laptop which was not connecting to the internet.  I expected the fix to be easy, instead I was working on it on and off for several hours as I watched Spiderman on tv.  It’s still not fixed. This is the very reason that I avoid working on people’s computers as a favor.  Those favors more often than not translate into hours of frustration for me.

Sunday evening we watched 3 Days to a Kill, what I thought was a Liam Neeson, Taken style of flick, except with the lead role played by Kevin Costner.  It was an odd film.  It did have aspects of a regular action movie but then it also had a slapsticky side with a side order of chick flick.  As a whole the movie was ok but the weird mix kept it from getting higher than a B rating in my book.

Cindy was worn out by the time I got home by chicken chores.  She said she spent roughly two and a half hours cleaning the baby chickens coop, trying to get it as clean as possible.  Of course this is like an egg timer with no bottom, in no time at all the chicks will make their coop a big mess again, it’s just what they do.  Once we are able to at least get the chicken tractor moved outside with them in it the daily cleaning will get a little easier since we can simply pick it up and move it to a clean patch of grass daily.

I told Cindy I would go out and let SOME of the baby chicks out to roam freely under my supervision, something we have done before, mostly with the 5 younger birds.  Well I decided all 11 would appreciate a few minutes of total freedom so I opened the end of the chicken run, giving them an opportunity to stretch their wings, which is exactly what most of them did.  They took turns running, jumping and flapping around the yard.  It was contagious, once one chick started running another 4 or 5 had to join in.

Now of course I was conscious of keeping all the chicks somewhat together and close enough that if there were any predators around I could cut them off.  For the most part they just buzzed around maybe a 50 square foot area and loved every minute of it.  Cindy was not very happy with me for letting all 11 out at once because of safety reasons.  She was afraid some of the chicks, especially the older black ones would try to run away.  None of them did and collecting all 11 to put them back into the main coop wasn’t nearly as challenging as we feared.

This weekend I have a lot to do, as usual.  The list includes the usual suspects but also includes some unusual projects like working on the new timing gear, working on a worm composter, and a few other oddball items.   The main entertainment for the weekend will be catching the Tarpons in their exciting championship game (sarcasm mode).  It very well may be the last time we see them take the field based on the financial realities of minor league arena football.  If so hopefully they can go out with a bang.

Yesterday Cindy took delivery of a large pallet of timing equipment.  It was the new stuff from MyLaps which is replacing the Ipico equipment I have used to time races for years.  It was a LOT of stuff, including four timing boxes and 24 rubber timing mats.  When I got home Cindy and I worked on getting it broken down and relocated.

Last night after dinner  I hooked up one of the new boxes and mats to my network for some initial testing.  I was limited in what I could do since I don’t have any of the timing chips yet, which are supposed to arrive today.  Even without chips I got a good sense of just how slick the MyLaps hardware is.  I think it is going to really work out well for both me as a timer and our race participants.

There were a few things that stand out right away with the MyLaps hardware.  The timing boxes, whether they are for the 4 meter or 8 meter set up are identical in size which is cool.  With Ipico if you want to support a wider line you need their Elite box which is a huge box, probably triple the size of the MyLaps box.

The timing mats are a huge upgrade to me.  They are 1 meter wide rubber mats that lock together.  They are extremely durable and have a low profile.  Ipico uses mats that are stored in bags and rolled out on race day.  It’s impossible to not have wrinkles in the mats as a result and more than once these wrinkles have snagged a runners foot, causing them to trip.  The Ipico mats/bags also get wet and will stink if you don’t allow them to completely dry out in between events.  There is no issue with that for the MyLaps set up, simply stack the mats in a corner and you are done, wet or dry.

The MyLaps timing boxes have internal GPS hardware that allows them to precisely synch their time.  With Ipico I synch the boxes in a very imprecise manner which requires me to manually synch the timing computer and the timing boxes to my watch which means if I am lucky the times will still be off by as much as a second.  There should be none of that slop with MyLaps.

Finally, the MyLaps timing devices that get adhered to race bibs is a tiny fraction of the size of the Ipico bib timing devices.  This is because Ipico hardware was designed to be used with timing chips worn on the sneaker.  They have been forced to make their bib chips very large to accommodate the older hardware.

The MyLaps system was designed from the start as a bib based timing system.  As a result they are able to use tiny RFID chips that a runner hardly even notices they are wearing.  We have had a number of runners complain that they did not like running with the Ipico bib tags because of their size.

So anyway, I am excited to do a lot of testing and practice with the new system.  It is going to get a true trial by fire since it’s first real world test will be the 4th of July race which is close to 1000 participants.

So I was discussing my potential 4K tv purchase with Jeremy yesterday.  He sent me an article talking about 4K tv’s specifically how their higher resolution is basically not discernible after you get a certain distance away.  For the 70 inch set I was considering that distance is somewhere around 5-6 feet.  Well I measured the distance my couch is from the TV last night, it was a 12 foot span.   I am one who doesn’t mind reevaluating decisions if the situation merits it.  The other consideration is the signal that is fed to both of my HDTV’s on the Comcast X1 service is only 720 HD, which honestly looks pretty damn good already.

So I now am considering staying with a 1080P set which would allow me to increase my desired screen growth curve.  Samsung makes a 75 inch set that would just barely fit inside my entertainment nook with a fraction of an inch to spare.  The dollar figure for the 75 incher is roughly the same as the Vizio 70″ 4K set.   Ali seems to not be interested in a free 73 inch tv for some reason but I still might be chasing the 75 inch dream anyway.

Cindy got an incredible amount of stuff done around the house yesterday.  She is like the Energizer Bunny, just point her in a  direction and things get done.

I had a lot of things I wanted to get done on Saturday, so much that I pulled out one of my infamous lists to keep me on track.  One of the first things I wanted to get done was giving the 11 chicks the Marek’s vaccine we bought online.  Both Cindy and I were nervous about the process since we never did it before but I had a step by step guide I printed off a website to help us out.  The process of preparing a vaccine was not what I expected, where you are injecting stuff between two vials, the actual vaccine and a jar of dilutant to make the finished product.

We set up a table in the garage along with the chicken run to put the chicks into after we vaccinated each one.  Cindy did most of the dirty work, my primary responsibility was to try to hold the chicks still while Cindy injected .2 ML of the vaccine into the pinched skin on the back of their necks.  Of course the chicks were not big fans of the process but for the most part it went well.  We had all 11 chicks done in around 20 minutes.  We now can only hope the vaccine does it’s job and helps the birds live a Mareks-free life.

To be more efficient we had Cindy do a Rural King run while I walked around and weed whacked the property.  She also did a thorough cleaning of the chicken tractor while we had the chicks in the front yard in the chicken run.  As the chicks get older and older, clean up of their living quarters is a more and more steady requirement.  I do not think once we move them outside to live in the chicken tractor in a week or so that all 11 birds will be able to live in there for very long. It’s just going to be too little space for too many birds.

We pulled the 5 younger chicks out for a short period of time and let them run around free under our close supervision.  The older birds bully the younger ones so it was nice for them to be able to do their own thing without the black chicks pecking them on the rear end.

Lola still has been pretty static in her condition, not acting significantly better or worse over the weekend.  Lucy still is acting just fine.  She wowed Cindy and I on Saturday when she managed to get all the way to the top perch in the chicken run, right below the roof.

I feel bad for Lucy.  Because Lola’s energy level is not good we have been leaving both of them inside the coop/run for longer periods of the day instead of letting them free range all day long.  I feel bad restricting Lucy but I would feel equally bad for Lola if she was stuck in the coop while Lucy ran around unencumbered.

On Saturday evening Cindy and I went to see San Andreas.  As we approached the theater we drove into a torrential downpour.  I dropped Cindy off closer to the ticket window and then parked the Prius in the back.  Despite the rain still falling at a downpour rate, I walked the couple hundred yards to the theater without even a hint of a slight jog.  I just don’t care much about getting wet.  By the time I met up with Cindy my white long sleeve shirt was drenched.  I surely would have won a wet t-shirt contest.

Cindy bought the tickets while I was walking up.  She told me that the staff warned her ahead of time that the AC was malfunctioning in the theater the movie was playing in.  Well I figured it was a good thing that I was soaked, perhaps it would help me stay more comfortable during the two hours.  It was warm in there but not unbearable.  It’s the second time we have had the AC in a theater at Coconut Pointe go out, the first time was REALLY noticeable.

The movie was full of absolutely A+ level visuals.  The level and detail of destruction depicted in the movie was perhaps worth the price of admission just to see in large screen, 3D, immersive format.  Of course the rest of the movie could not be all A+, disaster movies usually put so much emphasis on how things look that how things feel often gets secondary attention.  The movie is filled with situation after situation with outcomes that are just not unlikely, they are absolutely beyond the realm of the remotest of possibilities.  Sure, it’s a movie so you expect that to a degree but this seemed sort of ridiculous at times.  Despite the plot’s deviation into crazy town overall the movie was entertaining enough overall to earn a B+ rating.  If you are up in the air over a desire to move to California anytime soon I would suggest you don’t go see this movie. 🙂

Sunday morning we picked up the dogs early for a one night stay over.  After we got back Cindy and I did a very different type of exercise, something that used to be a 3-4 times a week thing for me, practice volleyball.  The reason this idea came to us was an email I got late in the week about the the beach vb series I used to play in making a stop in Fort Myers next weekend.  I mentioned the idea to Cindy of her and I playing co-ed doubles, despite Cindy having no beach volleyball experience and me not touching a volleyball for well over two years.  If I was going to consider this I would need to try to give Cindy a crash course in the sport.

On our runs through the nearby gated development I had noticed they had a basic beach volleyball court.  We drove down to convenience store, parked and then walked the roughly half mile to the court.  Not only was Cindy’s lack of vb experience a concern, my general poor condition of my joints was another issue.  My right knee has been feeling generally poor for a couple months, running, jumping and diving in sand is definitely not going to help matters.  But regardless of these issues it didn’t hurt to get out there and see how it goes.

Cindy is athletic, has good hand eye coordination and is a hustler by nature, three attributes that would give her a headstart.  We went through a number of drills including passing, setting, serving and hitting.  Although her technique needs work, for it being the first time on a beach court I thought she did very well.  My volleyball skills needed a bunch of WD 40 as well.  Towards the end of our practice I was feeling a little better but I have no doubt in a game situation I would be making a lot of unforced errors.

Cindy was surprised how hard she was working.  She was soaked with sweat and breathing heavy early on, aided by the fact that she insisted on running after most balls that went rolling off the court.  We finished up the workout with pass, set hit, drills.  We actually had a handfull of them that went like the should, with the ball getting driven relatively hard to the other side of the court.

Cindy’s body was not used to the impact of a relatively heavy beach volleyball on her forearms and hands.  She had clear bruises all over the place.  In addition she was hurting in various other places.  Even if you are in great shape, volleyball makes you utilize your joints and muscles in ways that are normally foreign.  I was feeling it as well although not quite as severely as Cindy was.  At this point I don’t know that jumping headfirst into a tournament would be a wise move without a more gradual practice curve leading to game conditions.

Early Sunday afternoon I tasked myself with giving Nicki a haircut with the clippers. Ali said she was shedding like crazy and her coat was looking very shaggy so I figured it made sense.  In the past Cindy has been the one trimming Nicki, this was my first time doing it solo.  I was out there buzzing away for close to 45 minutes I bet and could have spent another 30 probably.  Nicki was unwilling to stand for the process so I had to do the best I could with her laying down on each side.  When I was done there was a massive halo of black fur surrounding us.

Ever since Friday when I stopped at Sam’s Club for a few things I have been fighting an impulse buy for a 4K tv.  They had a Vizio 70″ UHDTV set there that I was interested in.  Although not cheap by any means, it was a good value for the money.  I had only a couple reservations.  The idea of losing 3 inches of diagonal size (current Mitsu DLP is 73 inches), seemed like a compromise, even though a 70″ tv is still quite huge in most people’s eyes.

My other concern was buying it at a place like Sam’s versus through my preferred retailer, Amazon.  Buying it through Amazon would allow me to both using my accumulated points to knock down my out of pocket cost AND collect triple points on the purchase to be used in the future.  These two things add up to over $350 in savings.  On the downside, it doesn’t allow me to scratch that impulse itch where you have the item RIGHT NOW.  I would have to wait until June 8th for it to show up.

I got close enough to pulling the trigger that I texted Cindy, asking her if I should do it or not.  After all I certainly don’t need to do it.  My old DLP Mitsubishi tv still works fine, the Vizio would just work/look better.  I didn’t hear back from Cindy before I checked out with my grocery items so the impulse was derailed for now.

Well I still had the idea rolling around in my head most of the weekend.  I texted Ali and asked her if she would want the 73 inch tv for her place since she has more than enough room to accommodate it.  She hasn’t let me know yet if she wants it.  I am basically letting her decision dictate what I am going to do.  If she wants the Mitsubishi I will pull the trigger, if not I will look at as a reason to just stay with what I have.

Here is the TV I am considering in case you are curious.

This extended four day weekend seemed to literally be over in a blink of an eye.  I really didn’t get much time to just hang out until mid afternoon yesterday.  On Saturday morning I headed outside to do a few chores before we headed out to run some errands.  One of those errands was to buy four new rollers for the patio slider.  I had already ordered four rollers on Amazon but when they arrived I saw they were slightly smaller than what was in place.  We struck out trying to find a match at Lowes but luckily found four rollers at Home Depot that looked nearly identical in size and layout.  They were less than what I paid via Amazon.

During the afternoon I took on the replacement of the rollers.  Removal and installation of the rollers were both more challenging than I expected.  Both operations required used of a prying tool and a hammer, tools you would think don’t mix well with big panes of glass.  While I worked on the rollers Cindy was busy cleaning years of dirt, grease and hair off the track for the doors.  When she started the track area was basically black.  When she was finished it looked brand new.

When I put the first door back on the track after replacing the rollers I was disappointed that the door still needed more effort than it should to open or close.  When I pulled the new rollers out of the box they were stiff, which I thought was odd.  Well I figured I may as well shoot the brand new rollers with some WD40 to see what would happen.  The miracle lubricant immediately made a big difference, the new rollers now spun like skateboard wheels.  The reduced friction resulted in both doors sliding more freely than they have in the last 10 years.

Late in the afternoon we had to go pick up the race bibs from the running store which was hosting early packet pick up for Monday’s race.  On the way there I dropped Cindy off at the ATT store across the street, we were wanting to get her upgraded to an Iphone 6.  She has been using my old Iphone 5 for awhile and it was starting to develop some issues.

After I picked up the race gear I met up with her at ATT while she was still in the middle of the transaction.  The phone swap took longer than I expected.  Time was tight because we wanted to go to the movies Saturday night and we didn’t leave with the new phone until a little after 6.  We had to still run home, eat dinner and shower before heading out to try to catch a 7:35 showing of Mad Max.  At first I thought we had no shot of making the shortage of time work and even suggested we just bag it.  Cindy was confident we could do it and she turned out to be right.  We got seated in the theater shortly after the previews started.

I saw the original Mad Max but don’t recall lots of details about it so I didn’t have a lot of expectations going in.  Well both Cindy and I were pleasantly surprised.  The movie was extremely entertaining from start to finish.  The crazy vehicles and the crazier people that drove them were worth the price of admission alone. Luckily the rest of the movie held up as well.  It was just good old fashioned fun to watch, a very solid A summer flick.

When we got home Saturday night Cindy said she wanted to check on Lucy and Lola to make sure they got in the coop ok.  Well when we looked in the window we saw Lucy up on the high perch but no Lola.  Of course Cindy immediately freaked out.  We went in the run with the light and saw Lola was sitting on the ground under the shed platform.  We could only assume that she felt too weak to climb up the ramp which of course which was disturbing. She had been exhibiting symptoms that made us think something was up for awhile. She had seemed particularly slow and low energy during the day.  When we saw she didn’t even have the energy to make the short ramp climb we knew things were pretty serious.

Cindy had been doing lots of chicken research recently and was scared that Lola had developed Marek’s disease, a herpes type virus that has a 100% morbidity rate and there is no cure.  A lot of the symptoms Lola had matched up but the thing is, the symptoms match up with a lot of other chicken afflictions as well.  I found a local vet that said they specialized in birds and made an appointment for Tuesday.  The rest of the weekend we kept Lola mostly in the chicken run so she wouldn’t tire herself out walking all over the yard. The other disturbing thing was if it was Marek’s it is highly contagious, meaning Lucy would have it more than likely.  Fortunately we have seen no energy or appearance issues with her.  It also meant that if we wanted to protect our 11 baby chicks we needed to give them a Mareks vaccine, which I ordered over the weekend as well.

On Sunday morning Cindy and I did another GPS-free bike ride, to Dunkin Donuts this time.  The 10 miles there felt very easy.  We maintained speeds over 18 mph without working very hard thanks to a tail wind.  Of course this meant on the way back we fought that same wind the entire way, making the return trip much more challenging.

Over the weekend we also hung an American flag to the chicken run which made for a nice patriotic addition to the chicken housing.  Doing it on Memorial Day weekend seemed appropriate.

Sunday felt very busy for us.  It seemed like we had lots of little things to attend to and a lot of them were chicken related.  The amount of chicken related to do’s Cindy deals with on a daily basis is surprisingly long.  The 11 baby chicks need very regular feeding, watering and clean up.

Since integrating the chicks they have mostly got along although there are brief pecking order battles now and then.  Despite the general peace in their chicken tractor home when it comes to hanging out the original 6 chicks and the week younger 5 almost always do so exclusively with their own group.

We also carted the chicken tractor outside to the front yard over the weekend to let the chicks experience the outdoors.  All of them freak out to varying degrees as I am rolling the chicken tractor, with them inside from the garage to the yard.  However once I place the tractor in the shade of the oak tree the babies LOVE having grass under their feet.  They immediately went nuts and looked like they were having so much fun.  They also have started to explore the second floor of the chicken tractor where some of them will hang out from time to time.

Sunday also was a day I had to prep for the Memorial Day race I was timing.  Things were complicated by the 5:30 Tarpons football game we were going to.  I needed to make sure most of my race to do’s were covered before heading to the game.  We actually left early for the game as we wanted to make a couple pit stops along the way at Rural King and Miromar Outlets which is next door to the stadium.  We stepped inside the arena just before they started with the national anthem.

The arena appeared to be the least full of any of the three games we attended so far.  I would be surprised if there were even 500 rear ends in the seats.  The Tarpons were playing some team from Georgia whose 1-6 record indicated that they were not very good.  Once I saw their QB I understood why.  This guy was the fattest quarterback I ever saw in uniform.  He would have been fat for a lineman.

In addition to his girth he was short, probably the shortest player on offense which really stacked the deck against him.  Almost every single pass he threw had a big arc on it, the type of trajectory you use for a corner route or a long bomb.  The passes had no zip on them whatsoever.  The end result of this was him getting picked off repeatedly by Tarpons defenders.

The game was a blowout from the very start.  We left early due to race prep yet to be done but the final score was an absolutely ridiculous 92-12.  The most points scored and biggest margin of victory in Tarpons history.

This year was targeted as a step up in the Tarpons history.  They joined a new league that supposedly had more/better teams.  I have not seen anything different in the level of play on the field and the continued dismal attendance numbers make it seem impossible that the team continues to exist beyond this season.  It HAS to be bleeding money.

The entire night the Tarpons did not attempt a single extra point, instead opting for two point conversions.  I joked to Cindy that it may have been a deliberate cost savings mandate from the owner since any ball that goes into the stands is allowed to be kept by the fans.  The funny thing is the odds of that penny pinching mandate being true are pretty good.

Crawling out of bed at 4:15 Monday morning did not feel great but it never does.  We opted to leave loading the truck as an early morning chore so we had to get up and cranking immediately.  The race was being held at the location of the water park so we at least did not have a huge drive to get there.    Everything related to the race went rather smoothly.  I really had no major bumps in the road at all, just how I like it.  It also was the last race where I will be timing with the Ipico equipment which should be swapped out by the time our next race rolls around on the 4th of July.  Between now and then I have a lot of work to do getting familiar with the new equipment.

Once we got back it was post race duties followed by some more odds and ends. One of those was getting around to replacing a section of the trim board in the lanai.  When the pool was added on to the house the old screening/framing of the lanai was ripped out.  I covered that opening with a border of painted 2×6 boards back then.  Well a couple months ago I noticed the bottom of one of the boards looked odd.  When I pressed on the area with a finger it immediately collapsed, the wood underneath was severely rotted.  When I did a knock knock test on the board it appeared the rot only extended maybe 6-8 inches from the bottom.

I decided that instead of replacing the entire board which would have had additional complications, I would try just cutting out the bad portion of the board and “splice” in a replacement section.  I went out and bought a small hand saw, something I did not own believe it or not.  I did my best to keep my cut straight and level.  My best wasn’t good enough.  The cut was straight enough but not very level meaning the replacement piece had a small gap.  Luckily a generous application of wood putty and some sanding should make my boo boo less of an eye sore.

Late Monday afternoon we headed down to the running club Memorial Day picnic, a festivity Cindy and I have participated in annually.   This year the picnic was not at the private beach it has normally been held at.  Instead it was held at Lowdermilk Park which is a beautiful place but also heavily utilized by the general public.  Obviously the cozy, exclusive feel the event used to have was gone.

The weather was not very good by 4PM, most of the time it was either raining or looking like rain.  Luckily the club brought some of their pop up shelters to provide additional dry real estate.  The change in venue did seem to bring additional people out for whatever reason.  It seemed like more people were there than past years but of course if you know me and my view of social situations, more does not normally translate to better in my book.

For most of the time Cindy and I were hanging with some of our friends from the club in one of the outlying tents.  I drank enough beer to take the edge off.  There wasn’t much auxiliary entertainment going on besides food, drink, and an MP3 collection from somebody’s phone playing on the PA system that was borderline maddening at times.  Cindy and I threw around my vintage, falling apart black XFL football for a little while but the vast majority of the time was just hanging out.  Overall the picnic was fun but I am holding out hope next year it returns to it’s former venue.

Yesterday we took Lola to her vet appointment.  Even though we had the cat carrier with to take her into the vet, the entire ride she spent on Cindy’s lap.  Lola has become incredibly docile and seems to absolutely love being held, petted, and scratched.  She makes noises that sound like purring when she is getting attention.

So when the vet comes in the first thing she says is although she specializes in avian medicine, it is a subset of medicine that doesn’t really include chickens, she deals more with conventional pet birds.  She said she might see 3-4 chickens a year.  Even so she was willing to help us best she could.

We gave her the background on Lola.   The vet was able to pull off what was identified as chicken lice from one of her feathers and was later able to do a stool test after Lola did her business in a towel.  The stool test revealed she had parasites which in a weird way was a good thing, compared to potentially having Marek’s disease.  A parasitic issue can be treated conventionally.

We left Lola at the vet for a couple hours while she waited a call back from a chicken expert to see if we could get a clarification about the possibility of her still having Marek’s.  The call did not come back quickly so we picked Lola back up however today Cindy heard that the expert doubted Lola had Marek’s, which again is good news.  Regardless, we are still going to vaccinate the baby chicks to give them the best chance of a healthy and long life.

Both Cindy and I had hoped yesterday would give us a chance to relax for a period of time since we got to do little of it in the prior three days.  I eventually got some WoW time in but Cindy was still busting it for most of the day with mostly chicken related tasks.  It gave me an appreciation of just how many little things can easily consume lots of time.  I am very lucky that Cindy loves to stay busy. 🙂

Yesterday was my 6 month dermatology check up.  Since I have had basal cell skin cancer cut off over a half dozen spots on my body I have to get checked out pretty often.  These appointments involve me stripping down to my underwear and having my skin examined under a bright light.  The only spot that I mentioned to him that felt odd was a dry patch between my shoulder blades.  He said it did not look like anything cancerous.  I told him that I do regular barbell squats and I wondered if what I was feeling was the end result of the bar grinding into the area.  He said that was the likely culprit.  I was surprised and pleased that this appointment for some reason did not include pulling my boxers open to take a glance at the skin in those areas.

Last night I took another shot at pulling one of the rollers out of the patio slider.  It was a bit tougher than I thought it should be but I eventually got one out.   I then turned to Amazon, looking for replacements.  I quickly discovered there are MANY varieties of door rollers.  Not only did I need to find something that looked the same, it had to have the same measurements.  It took quite while to find what appeared to be an exact match but I finally did so.  Four new rollers should be arriving Friday courtesy of free Amazon Prime 2 day shipping.

Very soon we are going to be integrating the 5, week younger chicks with the 6 older ones.  The plan is to let them all hang in the chicken run in the garage for a couple weeks until we move them outside to the chicken tractor.  Of course this integration has to be closely monitored to make sure none of the smaller chicks are beat up on by the older birds.

The six older chicks seem to have very little issues in their pecking order, everyone seems to get along.  The five youngsters seem to have more issues, perhaps partially due to the cramped living quarters that have been in. Jaina, the cornish hen is a pig.  She literally will eat non-stop if you let her.  She is almost double the size of the other chicks in her group.  She has no problem throwing her weight around, often plowing over the smaller chicks if she feels like it.

Stephy, the most visually interesting chick of them all is very aggressive and energetic.  She seems to enjoy jumping on top of the heads of the other chicks randomly.  She is an adept jumper/flapper.  This morning she was able to get her head over the edge of the bin on one attempt.

Pumpkin is my favorite chick out of all 11.  She is one of the smallest but also the most docile and friendly.  If I put my hand into the bin palm up in front of her she will hop on without issue.  I can then just let her perch on my hand on my lap for as long as I want, she is quite content as long as we stay within close proximity of the rest of the chicks.  For whatever reason all of the chicks get freaked out if they are taken too far away from the rest of the flock.

Take a peek at the next blog post too.

When I got home from work Friday we had to change and head right back out to attend the beach wedding service for our next door neighbor’s daughter.  The service was held at Delanor Wiggins State Park, a beach I have not been to in ages.  I was somewhat surprised that even at 6:30 PM there was someone at the guard shack collecting six dollars to park, it seemed sort of lame. Evidently this is a popular wedding location, in total there were three weddings taking place.  It took us awhile to find the correct location, we walked up a couple minutes after the service had started.

It was a very small gathering with two rows of chairs that may have added to roughly 20 total.  Almost everybody that was there had traveled all the way down from Michigan for the wedding, including the bride and groom.  Despite us driving through rain to get there, the weather by the coast was good.  The service was brief but very beautiful with the Gulf of Mexico visual backdrop along the peaceful sounds of the small waves breaking behind the couple.

After the vows were exchanged we headed out ahead of everyone else who were still doing the traditional post wedding meet and greet.  The reception was back at our neighbors house and there was stuff that still had to be set up.  We said we would get back and get a head start on it which our neighbors appreciated.

Cindy and I got back and buzzed around the neighbors house setting up tables, food and drinks.  We were supervised by the neighbor’s daughters dog, Cosmo.  By the time people started showing up we had things set up pretty well which Cecelia really appreciated.  I had already drank one beer and started on another to help lubricate the gears in my normally rusty social skills.  In addition to a large stock of alcohol there was a large collection of rich, mostly homemade food which I indulged in heavily. Cindy and I had a nice time hanging out with the members of the wedding party and other guests.  We even brought over the last of the homemade moonshine we had since Xmas.  It was a big hit. We wound up staying much later than I would have predicted.  Cindy and I didn’t actually fall asleep until after midnight, sheesh.

On Saturday morning the dogs woke me up at 6:40 am, which was very unappreciated by me.  I let them out and then did something very uncharacteristic, went back to bed.  The combination of drinking, eating and staying up so late was enough to put my ass back in bed where I stayed until I woke back up after 9am.  Cindy had been up for at least a couple hours getting stuff done while I snoozed away.

Once I got up I didn’t wait long before heading outside to weed whack.  Because of sleeping in I felt like I was behind schedule, a feeling that resonated with me most of the day.  Later in the morning we had both sets of chicks outside at the same time.  The older chicks were in the chicken tractor, the younger ones in the chicken tractor run.  For the young chicks it was their first time running around outside.  It was quite funny seeing their reactions.  For awhile they just sort of stood around looking at everything, stunned that there was more to the world than the blue walls they have been looking at for the last couple weeks.

Getting the bigger chicks out of the garage enclosure was quite the task.  Since it is fully enclosed except for one end Cindy had to crawl inside of it and try to corral the chicks who were not cooperative at all.  I had to come up and help her after I finished changing the oil in the Prius to get the last couple chicks moved outside.

One of the new set of chicks has been growing at an alarming rate.  At first Cindy thought something was wrong with her until she read up on her breed, cornish, on the internet.  Cindy never thought about the breed being connected to cornish game hens, a delicacy on some menus.  Evidently this breed has a voracious appetite and will eat pretty much non-stop if you allow them to.  Cindy couldn’t believe that many cornish have very short 4 week life spans before they are processed into the food chain.  Cindy started pulling the food from the bin on a scheduled basis to try to get the chick’s gluttony under control.  The chick is so big that she seems labored simply walking around.

We also continue to have issues with Lola, who again had hard crop issues over the weekend.  It’s amazing how she has become a lap chicken, where she almost appears to enjoy being held while Cindy massages her.  She makes cute little noises of approval the entire time she is being held and rubbed.  It seems like something chicken related needs to be attended to most times of the day right now.

Cindy and I did an errand run with Nicki and Sadie in tow.  They love to hang out in the back of the Prius although I am sure it isn’t quite as fun as the party van accommodations were for them.  We made our near weekly visits to both Home Depot and Rural King. It seems like chicken and home improvement supplies are always needed.

Saturday night Cindy and I had our second Tarpons arena football game of the year to attend.  The game was nociably lesser attended than the first game which was sparsely attended to begin with.  Our section of roughly 100 seats were literally only occupied by Cindy and I.  This fact made it more annoying when a ticket nazi decided to flex his ticket verification muscle.

To get to our seats we showed our tickets to the woman at the entry to our section.  We already knew where we were going.  So we sat down and were chowing down on the pizza slices we bought.  All of a sudden the seat attendant to our left, who was not responsible for our section walks over and asks us if he could see our tickets.  He apparently must have thought we looked like seat jumpers.  We showed him we were legitimate but both felt annoyed by the intrusion.  The ridiculousness of even giving a shit of who sat where when the place was 90% empty made the inquisition more pointless.  When Cindy went out to grab more food she said something to our attendant about the secondary seat verification.  She said that our seats were $50 seats and she guessed he just wanted to make sure we actually paid for the primo spot.  I still felt the whole thing was outside the bounds of common sense.  At this point they should just care about having a body in a seat, regardless of how they got there.

You may recall I mentioned how cold I was at the last game due to an ice rink being underneath the playing field.  This time I dressed warmer, wearing jeans, sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt.  I still was cold.  At one point Cindy and I both had our hoods up and despite the extra layers, by the time we left both of our feet were cold.  The game itself went well, the Tarpons dominated the game which made it confusing how the Alabama Outlaws managed to get 49 points on the scoreboard.  Good thing the Tarpons put up 68.

I did find myself annoyed with the Tarpons kicker.  Despite this being a home game on a field he should be used to kicking on, he seemed unable to avoid kicking the ball into the suspended scoreboard or support beams.  He did this no less than 6 times, I kid you not.  He would tee up the ball, look at the scoreboard, look at the ball, look at the scoreboard and then kick the ball, right into the scoreboard.

On Sunday morning I wanted to get up and do the Ave Maria bike ride.  Two consecutive evenings of eating a pile of less than healthy food left me feeling like a blob.  I planned to use the same approach as last week, no gps, just ride at a comfortable level, whatever that may be.  Well that plan didn’t work so well for the ride out to the college which was almost entirely into a rather strong headwind.  I had no choice but to increase the effort level to keep things rolling at a respectable pace.  By the time we rode the 12+ miles to the entrance of Ave Maria my quads and hips were burning.

Luckily on the ride back we had that same wind at our back which made the return ride much more enjoyable.  Although my legs felt much better coming back there was no way to make the pressure points on my hands and rear end feel much better.  I found myself constantly shifting position trying to alleviate pain/pressure in one spot, only to find myself applying it to another.

When we got back I jumped in the pool to both cool off and give Sadie one of her beloved splash sessions.  After 10 minutes of her running around while I hit her with atomic splash after atomic splash she was thoroughly soaked, and happy.  After we cleaned up we took the girls back to Ali’s place after their four night visit as part of our DD coffee run.  As always it was nice having them around to add their canine flair to our daily existence.

The rest of Sunday was pretty chill.  I did a few things but mostly WoW’d until we watched Bad Words Sunday evening.  It was a rather funny comedy but I was not a big fan of it putting children in the vicinity of very adult language and situations.  Overall it still gets a B to B+ rating, worth a rental.

So Monday night a little after 9pm Cindy tells me the water in the sink just stopped.  She then checked the bathrooms and confirmed the lack of water pressure was house-wide.  My initial thought was for some reason the breakers for the well or water equipment had popped.  A quick check revealed no breakers were tripped but we had nothing but drips out of the faucet.

I headed outside to the water equipment and took a look,  Nothing looked abnormal other than the low pressure reading on the gauge.  The pressure switch which controls the activity pump was closed and in the “on” position yet no water was being pushed.  I walked out to the well head and could feel vibration in the pipe meaning something was going on but obviously it was screwed up.  I turned off all the breakers for the well to prevent the pump from running dry which would destroy it, if it wasn’t already destroyed.

I returned inside and told Cindy we were indeed going to be waterless for the evening.  I hopped in the car and grabbed two large two gallon containers of water to get us by until Tuesday.  Unfortunately the water died before Cindy and I took our showers meaning we both cleansed in a less than satisfying manner using a small container of warm water and a couple wash clothes.  I certainly did not feel up to normal clean standards afterward.

So I made arrangements to work from home Tuesday so I could handle the well repair as it was obviously a high priority.  I turned the  breakers back on hoping that if there was some sort of thermal switch that killed the pump that overnight it would have corrected itself.  That hope was ill advised, the water system was still dead.  Monday night I left a message for the company that drilled the well when the house was built but I got a hold of the company that replaced my water equipment a few years ago first thing in the morning.  They said they could get out to check out the problem later the same, day, sweet.

Of course I did some searching around the net for information regarding well pumps, mainly how to replace one and what it costs to have one replaced by someone else.  When I saw the potential cost of 1-2K for a replacement I shuddered a bit but when I saw a video of what was involved it seemed like one of those tasks that would be best handled by a professional.  When it comes to items that perform crucial functions in the household I would rather let someone that does it for a living do the work.

So the guy from the well company pulled up late morning and I explain the chain of events.  He confirmed that it seems like the pump is running but not pushing water.  I left him alone to continue the diagnosis while I did some more virtual work in the office.  When I checked back on him I saw a 40 or 50 foot pvc pipe laid out in the yard and him on the phone.  When I came out I could hear he sounded flustered.  I also noticed that there was no well pump to be seen, which would normally be attached to the end of the pipe. Hmmm…

The guy hangs up and says there is a problem.  In order to pull out the well pipe he first had to disconnect the power connections in the junction box at the well head.  Those wires lead down to the pump at the end.  Well after he disconnected the wire nut the wire disappeared as it got pulled down the pipe.  The wires were pulled down by the weight of the well pump which had managed to unscrew itself from the pipe fitting.  The end result was the pump and the wire were now sitting somewhere at the bottom of the roughly 125 foot well.  So evidently the pump was still functional, it had just separated from the pipe.

The guy was honest in his role in the pump falling.  He said he wasn’t fast enough in grabbing the wire but he did not expect it to drop either.  He said common practice is to secure the wires to the well pipe with lots of waterproof tape to prevent this exact scenario.  Evidently the well installers, like so many other contractors involved in the building of the house took a shortcut and did not bother to secure the wires at all, creating this trap door scenario. I was also surprised to hear that a well pump can unscrew itself.  Evidently the rotational torque the pump uses to push water can eventually cause this after hundreds of thousands of off and on cycles.  It was ironic that the well pump that was actually still functional was now sitting at the bottom of the well.

So the well guy gave me two options.  He said sometimes they can get lucky and actually manage to fish the well pump back out although the odds of doing so are not good at all.  The other option was to install a new well pump.  Well my first question was about option two, “Isn’t a problem to leave the old pump in the bottom of the well?”.  The guy said not at all, he said this scenario while not common, does happen.  Plus a well pump is submerged in water it’s entire existence anyway.  Whether this occurs at 50 feet depth or 125 feet does not make a difference.  Logically this made sense but I still didn’t love the idea of the old unit laying down there.

I asked him the 20 Million Dollar Question, what will a new one cost?  He said for everything it’s $800 but because of his boo boo they would do it all for $725.  Considering I had 1-2k preloaded in my head, this number sounded reasonable.  From looking online I knew a pump runs about $400 for the unit.  An extra 300 bucks for the parts/materials and labor to do it sounded reasonable to me so I told him to go do it.  He had to go grab some materials from another guy in order to do the install so he drove off to get them.

While he was gone Cindy and I got to work on coming up for some different living arrangements for the chicks.  The older chicks were just getting too big for the bin in our bathroom.  Despite Cindy cleaning it up several times a day it was pretty disgusting most of the time due to the baby chickens ferocious excrement schedule.  We decided that if we relinquished one of the parking spots in the garage and put the chicken tractor run in there it would be a good solution.

We laid down a plastic garbage bag and then covered it with the same wood chips we use for the adult chickens.  We also put in a tray with sand in it so the chicks could play/dig in it, something they enjoy.  When Cindy brought the chicks out they immediately started running, flapping and jumping around, trying out the newly expanded borders of their home.

My only concern was during 90 degree days the garage could get uncomfortably warm.  Even with the door open I saw temps as high as 92 degrees in there, albeit with nice air circulation.  I had Cindy grab a fan during the day just to make sure things don’t get too stuffy.  I told her if need be, we will keep the garage door closed and the utility room door open so cool air from the house can help cool the garage space as well. Yes, my electric bills since acquiring the chicks have increased dramatically.

So the well guy returned with the materials he needed for the well work.  He said it should take him less than an hour to finish up. He knocked on the door ahead of that time frame saying he was almost done except for testing it.  So we turned everything back on and water started to flow, awesome.  However about 2 minutes into the test there was a POP sound from the well area and we lost pressure, not awesome.  The guy said it seemed like something happened with the feed pipe and he would have to pull it out again.

I helped him in the process this time, hoping my assistance would help speed up things.  As we raised the pipe we saw the problem, the single joint in the feed pipe had separated. Thankfully the copious taping the installer did with the new pump and wires prevented a second pump from dropping down to the bottom of the well.

After we pulled the pipe out the guy cleaned and cemented the joint.  I had never heard of a properly primed and cemented PVC joint pulling apart but I guess this was just my lucky day.  After adhering the two pipes together again and letting it set for 10-15 minutes I helped him lower the monster pipe back into the well.  After redoing the electrical connections the water tests were successful this time, water was flowing inside the house and at a pressure slightly higher than it felt before.  I thanked the guy for the work and for being honest about his screw up before he left.  He appreciated me not going into a-hole mode about it.

After watching what was involved with the entire procedure I am pretty confident I could have swapped out the pump myself.  If the job faces me down the road I would take a swing at it.  It was great having water inside the house once again.  The showers Cindy and I took later felt especially refreshing.

In addition to moving the older chicks we also moved the younger chicks into the bigger bin, our hope being the slightly larger bin would help alleviate some of the problems with the 5 youngsters.  One of them has been having poop butt symptoms and another had a small scab on her chest.  Their constant pooping requires constant cleaning else it can put the chicks at risk for health issues.  Cindy has been doing the best she can to keep on top of it.

Tonight after work I am picking up the dogs for a several night stay over.  During the day today Ali is taking Nicki to the vet for some sort of scabby looking thing on her belly.  We are all hoping it isn’t diagnosed as anything serious.