Category Home Improvements

Excessive is how I would describe several aspects of my Thanksgiving 4 day weekend.  Let me see how much detail I can pull out of my cranium.

Wednesday night was just crazy.  I went straight to the running store after leaving work early where packet pick up for the race was going on.  There was a huge stack of paper entries waiting for me to key into the system as well as endless emails on my phone notifying me of each online sign up.

When I got home I knew I was going to have to do some creative data entry.  I ordered 3000 bibs for this race, a number I thought was overly generous since last year we had around 2250 people in the 5K event.  Well when I got done putting everyone in I had 2992 people signed up for the 5k race, leaving me no extra bibs basically for walk up entries.

Luckily I had about 150 bibs left over from last years race.  I had to do a lot of tweaking of some numbers and moving blocks of people around to make it all work but finally a little after 9pm I had the data side of things straightened out.

I was utilizing the recently repaired van for hauling the equipment because I had more with me than normal plus we were picking up the dogs on the way home since Ali was flying up to PA immediately after the race.  I had a tough time falling asleep as mental checklist after mental checklist was dancing through my brain, trying to make sure I had everything covered.

Even though the alarm went off at an awful 3:30 AM I was up and out of bed with no delay, I felt like the countdown timer had started as soon as my eyes opened.  Cindy and I were in downtown Naples well before 5AM unloading equipment.  The temps were on the chilly side in the low 50’s but not as bad as last year where it was downright cold.

So early on things were going smoothly.  We had gotten there early enough that we had everything set up and ready to go well in advance of the huge crowd of 3000+ people.  However when it was 6:45 AM and there still weren’t that many people on site it became a problem.  It was almost like knowing a tsunami wave was coming.

Well the wave hit and it hit hard.  All of a sudden there was a sea of people converging on the registration area.  Ali was having endless paper applications apps thrown at her which I tried to assist on as much as possible.  The line of people to pick up their race packets all of a sudden became close to a 100 people deep at one time.  We had a problem.

When these race day situations pop up it’s all about how you react to them.  Well we didn’t handle this situation as well as it should have been, the pre-registered line just was not moving like it should have.  Things were so backed up that we actually delayed the start of the race by 12 minutes.

The scene at the start line was pretty insane.  There was a massive lake of humanity extending hundreds of feet behind the timing mats as well as hundreds more people on either side street.  Trying to funnel this many people into  roughly 25 feet of start line is not easy.  I had to stand as a human barricade in front of my timing equipment to prevent it from being run over.

In the middle of the the start a bad situation developed.  One of the start mats got kicked which folded up it’s lead edge.  Within seconds this fold increased as people repeatedly hit it with their feet, it looked like a half rolled burrito and was a major tripping hazard.  I really can’t believe nobody went down.  When the crowd thinned just a bit I dashed into the oncoming bodies and tried to flatten the mat out.  The one bystander watching saw my attempt and afterward told me I was risking my life doing so.

So I had another issue to deal with.  There were so many people in the race it literally took 5 minutes till they all cleared the start.  However I knew there were also some VERY fast people in the event, fast enough to complete the 5K distance in close to 15 minutes.  I decided to leave the start line up and running as I ran down to the finish line to get it up.  After setting up the finish I ran back to the start line which was a couple blocks away to collect the time file.  By the time I returned to the finish line the top runners already had crossed the lines, I hoped I would see their times on my monitor screen. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw they were.

Cindy was a very integral part of the event as she reprised her role as race mascot, complete with her turkey costume.  It’s a role she was made to do, she absolutely loved interacting with people in a goofy and friendly way.  Her contribution really added extra smiles for many, many people at the event.

For my part, I thought timing the race was going well.  I had two timing boxes running at the finish line to ensure I had reliable reads, one of them being the timing box I just bought.  The first issue I had wasn’t a data related problem, it was a physical one.  One of the mats with the used system I bought had a small tear towards the back end of it.  Well after thousands of feet running across it this small tear developed into a large tear which I did not even see until a spectator pointed it out to me.

My first attempt at remediation was to fold the mat under at the tear location however it was unsuccessful.  After a woman actually tripped on the mat and fell I ripped it off the course and disconnected it from the timing box.  At first I thought maybe the torn area could be repaired but closer inspection revealed the mat was just worn out.  The areas that weren’t ripped looked thin enough that they could tear easily  as well.  I guess I will be buying at least one new mat soon.

So once the physical issue was resolved some data issues started to pop up.  With this many people I already expected some issues related to the human error that invariably occurs when dealing with these numbers.  The first few problems I encountered were exactly that, somebody was wearing the wrong bib or got their bib swapped with somebody else.  However I then started getting more worrisome issues.

I had people coming up reporting the didn’t see their name on the results I posted on site.  I looked them up and they had a chip start time, when they crossed the mats at the beginning of the race but no time when they ran across the mats at the finish.  My first thought was maybe their race bib chip malfunctioned which is rare but can happen occasionally.  My concern increased when I took the bibs of a couple of these problem finishers and ran them across the finish line, they read just fine.

After the race the scale of this scenario became clear, there were over 200 people that I had a start time for but no finish time.  That’s just great.  To have this scenario with two timing boxes up and running seemed nearly impossible.  When I started with my corrections I did notice a pattern, it seemed the period of time where all of the failures took place was during the very busy finish segment where there were a non-stop flow of people crossing the mats simultaneously.  My assumption was that for whatever reason, the high volume was causing reads to be dropped.  I have reached out to several sources, including the manufacturer of the timing equipment looking for answers.

Other than my personal timing related issues the rest of the event went well. I saw lots and lots of smiles that helped to counteract my personal fatigue.  I do think that the number of people that were in the event were problematic and if the club wants to continue to allow the event to continue with an uncapped participant level there will have to be several logistical/equipment changes made to better accommodate these numbers.

After the race we had to reload the van in a way that allowed for a small section of unused fold down bed space for the dogs to utilize.  I’m not quite sure how but we managed to get everybody in there.  When I think about getting rid of the party van I rarely think about these situations.  I literally would not have been able to get all of the stuff, dogs, and us into any other vehicle outside of a large van.

When we got home Cindy and I both had a ton to do.  Cindy’s family was coming over for Thanksgiving dinner so she had lots of prep to do.  My mountain of work was all post race related which included posting results, fixing results, updating the club web site and working on processing the finish line video I collected.

We were both buried in work right up until people started showing up.  In total we had 8 people over for the meal, the most I have had under roof for a Thanksgiving dinner in my house ever.  We had a large selection of good food to choose from.  Cindy’s two nephews that were over were big fans of the chickens.  It looked quite funny watching the chickens follow them around the yard.  I think everyone had a good time.

When the last person left the second quarter of the Eagles/Cowboys game was starting up.  I had so many other things to be concerned with on Thanksgiving that the Eagles playing on Thanksgiving was a minor side show.  With that being said I was still thrilled with the end result.  To have the Eagles lay a beating on the Cowboys, in Dallas, in front of a national Thanksgiving audience was a perfect way to wind down the day.

On Black Friday Cindy had to work which left me alone to toil as I saw fit.  I did do some minor Xmas shopping at Sam’s while I was buying other grocery items but the majority of my day was consumed just doing more work.

I wanted to get the majority of the house chores done so our weekend could be relatively work free (lol to that), because I wanted to get the Xmas lights/decorations up on Saturday.  I also took the time to replace the driver side mirror I broke earlier in the week like a moron.  Of course I had to make a video out of it.

On Saturday before tending to the lights we had a weird shopping trip at Home Depot.  We were there to pick up some other items but out of the blue I pulled Cindy back to the cabinets area.  The idea had popped into my head about setting up a corner floor cabinet in the unused corner of the kitchen, between the dog eating platforms.

I was surprised when I saw a corner floor cabinet with a lazy susan inside of it could be had for around 200 bucks with the 15% discount HD was running currently.  When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was very into it as the idea of additional counter and storage space in the kitchen was something she talked about in the past.  I completed the impulse buy with no clear plan of how it was going to all work, just a general confidence I would figure something out.

Getting the cabinet into the side door was very difficult, requiring me to remove  one of the rear captains chairs and awkwardly wrangle the piece into the van with an assist from a Home Depot employee.  Evidently sometime during this process I hurt my left shoulder, an injury that appears to have grown in severity over the last couple days.

When we got the cabinet in the house the wheels were spinning in my head as Cindy and I worked on setting up both the exterior and interior Xmas decorations.  As is often the case with my projects, they are organic and mutate as ideas develop.

Cindy and I talked about what to use as a counter top for the cabinet, I said possibly we could find a small piece of granite similar to what the rest of the kitchen is surfaced with.  There was potentially high costs associated with that option.  Yes it would be ideal to have the counter for the corner match but I am not OCD enough to care that much.

We then talked about the idea of adding a second cabinet on the right, utilizing still available wall space.  The idea quickly transformed into reality as we made out second trip to Home Depot of the day.  We were confused at first.  The corner cabinet was only 16 inches wide but all of the regular floor cabinets were 24″ wide.  When we looked a t a cabinet planning flyer we discovered that the corner pieces are designed to have an 8″ gap from the wall when mated to other cabinets, why that is I am not sure.

Cindy and I decided for the top we would take a shot out of making it out of some hard wood stained a dark color.  We found some nice looking poplar boards that seemed really cheap, we saw 10 foot long, 10-12 inch wide boards with a price tag of less than $6, what a deal!  Well when we got to check out our board pricing ignorance was revealed, the price was the PER FOOT price for the wood.  The wood that I thought was only costing us $20 instead wound up costing well over $100.

When we got back we pushed and piled stuff into their estimated position and liked what we saw.  When finished we thought it would be a great addition, now we just had to figure out how to get there.

On Saturday night we took a break from the cabinet project obstacle to watch The Purge sequel.  I went into the flick assuming it would not be as good of a film as the original which wasn’t fantastic but interesting.  The idea of a 12 hour annual period of government endorsed lawlessness is an intriguing concept for sure.

Well Cindy and I both were surprised that we thought the sequel was actually slightly better than the original.  There weren’t any big name actors in the sequel but I found it to be able to stand on it’s own feet without them based on story and action.  It gets a solid B+ from me.

So Sunday morning we were out the door very early.  I had determined that in order to cut the boards as they needed, I had to use a table saw, my circular saw would not give a straight enough rip.  A table saw would have been a good thing for various projects I have done in the past so I saw this as a good excuse to finally get one.  Of course the cheaper Skillsaw unit I had targeted was sold out at Lowes, I wound up getting Kobalt saw which was more money but had the nice feature of folding up for storage.

Once we got home of course the first job was putting the saw together which took a little longer than I hoped but was pretty straightforward.  The majority of the rest of the day was consumed with the kitchen corner project.

I left Cindy mostly in charge of getting the top laid out and stained after I cut the boards to size.  At first I concentrated on getting the base cabinets attached to each other and set in place.  My goal was to not make the cabinets locked in place permanently.  I screwed them together but don’t plan to attach them to the wall.  Their size and weight should keep them in place but if for some reason we need to move/change something about them it is doable. The inconsistent kitchen floor made using a shim under the back corner necessary to eliminate wobble.

As far as attaching the boards together that would make the top the ideas there changed several times.  Cindy originally thought gluing the boards together would work.  I did not, assuming the one inch thick boards simply did not have enough glue-able surface area to be strong enough.  After putting our heads together we decided to utilize bottom support pieces screwed across the joints to hold everything together.  This presented it’s own challenges.

I did not have wood screws that were short/small enough.  I went to the near by hardware store but the smallest I could get were 1 and 5/8″ long.  If I drove it through the support piece fully the point of the screw would pop out the top of the surface which obviously is not good.  I came up with an unconventional solution to the problem.

I got my washer collection and put three of them onto each wood screw, effectively shortening the screw by around a 1/4″ or so.  I carefully secured close to 10 supports on the bottom of countertop using this method.  When we flipped it over it felt relatively secure.

However after we cleaned up, leaving the top outside to dry I realized I had created another issue.  The clearance on the top of the corner cabinet was just deep enough for the bracing boards I was using.  However the screw offset exceeded that clearance, not allowing the top to sit flush on the cabinets. Great.

The day had many on the fly solutions to problems, some of them actually worked like my attaching a series of 2×4 pieces to create an axillary support for the smaller board that was on the wall side of the counter top.

We wrapped up the day of labor very tired and slightly frustrated but both still optimistic that the final outcome will be a great addition to the kitchen workspace.  My current plan is to spend my lunch hour getting some thin plywood to use as bracing and team that up with shorter wood screws that won’t need spacers.

The reason I am willing to use my lunch hour to do this instead of going to the gym is my shoulder.  I awoke this morning with pretty severe pain doing most left arm movements.  I seriously could not imagine much exercise I could do at the gym that wouldn’t hurt so I figured I may as well get more kitchen corner project materials.  Of course the costs for the project have grown beyond my original expectations but that is pretty much always the case.

If you want to see the pictures from the project take a look here – https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153376100572841.1073741879.504877840&type=1&l=0afe926580

Thank goodness I had Cindy to help me shoulder the load throughout the weekend, it was a tough four days.

I grabbed the dogs on the way home last night.  They were very excited for their trip out to the house as they normally are.  Once we got there I headed out in the back yard to tend to the chickens.  I figured I would continue my dog/chicken interaction study and left Sadie and Nicki out as well.  Once again the dogs appeared to be totally fine sharing turf with the hens.  I still kept a close eye on Sadie’s location at all times but she passed with flying colors.  I wish video was rolling as I walked across the yard to the shed with Sadie and two of the chickens following close behind.  It’s like a bizarre Brady Bunch. When Cindy got home she caught the tail end of the dog and chicken mingling.  She confirmed that Sadie seemed totally passive around the chicks.

I got my early voting out of the way yesterday.  I am sure my blog diatribes make it unnecessary to list where my circles were darkened.

This weekend is looking to be the annual tree trimming event where I circle the property and trim the branches of over 25 trees, some of which are quite tall. I time it now so the trees look clean for their Xmas light decorations that will be coming in November. It is one the most laborious, grueling and unenjoyable home maintenance tasks I tackle each year.  Thank goodness Cindy not only has every weekend off now, she also enjoys helping me with projects, even the ass busting variety.

The temps this weekend, at least the morning temps, look to be agreeable to outdoor labor so we will be looking to get an early start on the fun.

Ebola is now confirmed in NYC and again contracted by a medical professional who you would assume was taking appropriate precautions.  Worried yet? You should be.  I find it laughable that the mayor said the public should not be concerned this guy was riding the subway and hanging in the bowling alley the day before he was quarantined.

Friday night Cindy and I met up with friends of ours to catch Guardians of the Galaxy.  We caught a relatively late 7:45 showing.  Originally my lack of knowledge about the Guardians of the Galaxy comic books made me not all that interested in seeing the movie.  However Sean was able to fill in some of my gaps and spark more interest in the film for me.  I was glad he turned me around. The movie was funny and entertaining throughout.  I really enjoyed it, enough to hand it an A rating.  Go check it out.

It was weird enough for me to be going to a movie on a Friday night.  The odd behavior vaulted over the line when we went to dinner with Sean and Kim after the movie at 10PM.  I never, ever eat dinner that late.  We went to a nearby place called the South Fork Grille.  Cindy and I munched down on a couple appetizers since we had a light meal right after work.  The four of us had a good time hanging out, hopefully we get to do it on a more regular basis.

On Saturday we allowed the dogs and chickens to have their first coop free interaction.  I had the chickens out while I was weeding the property.  When Cindy got back from a DD coffee run with the dogs I had her bring them out back.  We put Sadie on her leash as she definitely could view a fleeing chicken as a big dog toy.  We left Nicki off leash, since she doesn’t have any chicken chasing speed left in her legs.  Surprisingly the interaction was rather boring.  Neither the chickens or the dogs got overly excited, it was more like a “hey, what’s up?” sort of thing.  Despite Sadie being very chill about the chickens I still can’t ever trust to let her out there with them free ranging.

A good portion of Saturday was spent finishing up the garage painting project, something Cindy already had put a lot of sweat equity into during the week.   She literally did ALL of the painting, my role was to take stuff down and then reassemble the space.  I also did a lot of organizing, sorting, relocating, and throwing out of items that live in the garage.

The Eagles Midnight Green accented by silver obviously makes the previously boring builder’s white garage look a lot different.  I actually cleared enough space that the SSR and Prius can comfortably both fit in the garage.  I used to have the SSR and Camry in the garage but it was very tight and required me to back the SSR into the garage in a very precise manner.  Since the Prius is much smaller I was able to pull both vehicles into the garage in a normal front first manner and still have room to get out of the door without requiring contortionist-like moves to get out.

I am happy with the garage outcome.  It’s the second space in the house that Cindy pretty much painted single handed.  She just loves to get things done.  This crosses a long term to do list item off the list that has existed for several years.  Finally, after 13 years in the house, every interior space has been painted.

On Saturday afternoon we piled the girls into the party van to head to Rural King.  On the way there we did something else nearly as rare as a 10 PM dinner, we stopped for ice cream.  In Bonita there is a cool little ice cream place in the shape of a cone, it reminds me of the same looking structure back in my Wernersville living days. I enjoyed a small cone of cookie dough ice cream while Cindy opted for one of her favorites, mint chocolate chip.

On Saturday night we enjoyed another great home cooked Cindy meal while watching Heat, a Netflix rental that has been laying around for a couple weeks.  It’s a comedy with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.  The “fat woman saying fck” humor wore off on me after hearing it the first 50 or 60 times.  I fell asleep for the majority of the second half of the movie so I will have to take Cindy’s word that it was ok.  I guess that means it gets a B rating.

On Sunday morning I had ideas of running 4 miles around the water park before swimming.  Cindy dissuaded me from the plan after I complained of some GI issues and the idea of only starting to run at 9:15 AM, well into the broiler part of the day this part of the year.  Instead I decided I would just do some extended swimming instead.

We arrived at the park a little early, early enough that we got a head start on our 1000 rep video series. Cindy is working towards completing 1000 push up reps and I am grinding towards 1000 pull ups.  I struggled to get 15 reps on the fat and slippery high bar on the playground equipment.

I had an odd incident while swimming my 1600 yards.  I was on my third 400 leg in the pool.  I was in one of the two lanes, the other lane was unoccupied as Cindy couldn’t get her hair wet after just coloring it.  As I am making a turn around I see at the opposite end some Hispanic looking guy sitting on the edge in my lane with his feet hanging in the water.  My initial thought was, “Why would this idiot decide of all places to hang his feet in, he would do it in the lane I am actively swimming in??”  Well I assumed by the time I got to the end he was at he would get out of the way.

Well when I closed in on the wall I still saw two feet hanging in the water in front of me, dead center.  As I veered to the side  to touch I popped my head up and barked out “Dude, move over!” and continued back the other way, assuming he would heed my warning.  So as I reach the other wall to turn around I see has the guy has moved, about 12 inches to one side, still sitting in my lane.  WTF!!

So this time when I get to the side he is sitting on I pick up the aggression in my stroke.  The increased speed and impact with the water was intended to throw a second wet warning to the guy to go find somewhere else to dangle his feet, there is literally 1000 other feet of pool border he could have utilized.  So the next time I come up his way he has finally moved over to the unoccupied lane however I could see he was watching me intently.  I wasn’t sure if he was pissed because I told him to move and was giving me stink eye.  Well I knew for sure I was pissed so if he wanted to get into it I was ready.

So I am on final lap of my third set of 400’s.   Just before I hit the turn around the hispanic guy hops in the lane he was dangling his toes in and breast strokes to the opposite end, completing a gruesome 25 yards in the pool.  He was standing in the water at my end point.  Again, my assumption was he wanted to get into it about me telling him to move.  I angrily stroked into the wall, stood up and ripped my goggles off, ready for the argument to begin.

The first thing he says in his heavy accent is “Swimming is hard.  You swim for long time”, with no hint of anger or malice in his voice or on his face.  I was completely thrown off as I was fully prepped for conflict.  Instead I said awkwardly “yea, it’s good exercise”  Well that was all it took, the guy went on a 10-15 minute, mostly one sided conversation where he told me all about how he used to swim a lot in the open water in his home land of Puerto Rico.  I also found out that the water he swam in occasionally had sharks, that he used to sometimes ride to the beach to swim on a unicycle, and some guy that used to teach him about swimming could climb a coconut tree like a monkey.  After scaling the tree and getting coconuts he would use them as part of a protein drink he made on the spot for energy for the long swimming sessions.

The guys accent made it tough for me to follow along very well and I really had no interest in what he was saying anyway.  I tried to display my eagerness to get started on my final 400 repeatedly by reinserting my ear plugs and strapping my goggles onto my head.  None of it mattered, he just wanted to keep on talking.  Finally some woman came over and asked if she could share one of the lanes for swimming.  Thankfully I used that as a wall to stop the mudslide of words coming out of the guys mouth.  I told him I was going to finish my last set and swam off.  Thankfully by the time I finished up he had moved out of the area.

When I emerged from the pool I described the incident to Cindy.  She hadn’t seen him hanging his legs in the pool but she did hear the extended conversation pool side.  She was 100% sure the guy was hitting on me, something that never entered my mind until she said it.  I didn’t get that vibe in the moment but from a Monday morning QB viewpoint, I suppose that was a possibility.  Whatever the root cause, it was a very weird and unexpected interaction.

On Sunday we collected our 5th egg of the week.  It seems like Betty likes to crank one out mid-late afternoon.  We hard boiled two of them to test them out.  They both looked and tasted good which should give us the green light to use the eggs for other cooking and baking needs.

Cindy and I both did a bunch more sets of push ups/pull ups respectively during the afternoon.  I am up to 200 pull ups so far, Cindy has 225 on film.

I tried the dog whistle I bought for Nicki and the Iphone dog whistle app.  Neither one seemed to illicit any reaction from her.  The only thing that seems to get her attention is very loud noise like aggressive clapping or thunder.  Her vision is impaired as well since her nearly incessant rubbing of her eyes has pulled her eyelids down.  To see stuff she needs to cock her head upwards.  It’s depressing watching the little puppy you knew 12 years ago transform into an old girl with all of these ailments.  I still feel guilt that Nicki’s health problems came on very quickly and drastically once I got separated.  Up until that point she was pretty much fine except for her lifelong itchy ears.

After work last night I  met Cindy at her daughters apartment.  They had a large Ikea wall mounted dvd cabinet to hang on the wall and asked if I could help do it.   They had the cabinet put together, my task was to get it securely mounted on the wall in a level manner.  Before I got started I identified one bracket that was not in the right spot.  It was a rather important bracket that is used to help reenforce the cabinets connection point to the wall.

At first I thought I might have to partially disassemble the cabinet to flip the bracket.  Luckily I came up with another solution that only required drilling a couple small pilot holes and some careful work with a screwdriver. Katie’s boyfriend helped me hoist the cabinet on the wall.  After securing the center mount point we leveled it and then sunk the anchors for either end.  The cabinet felt nice and secure at the end of the installation and looked nice complimenting the matching TV stand underneath.

The second task they had for me at first seemed to be far easier, hanging up one of those large outdoor roll up blinds on their lanai to help block some of the sun that beats in.  Somebody had already drilled holes in the aluminum screen frame, all that needed to be done was thread in hooks and hang the small triangle shaped loops from the blinds onto them.  Well this turned out to be an extremely frustrating task.

There was next to no clearance between the hooks and the ceiling.  When paired with the very small attachment points, and my fingers trying to hold the blinds up with one hand and guide the clasp with the other, it quickly became very frustrating.  I wound up drilling a second set of holes as low as I could on the frame to give me another fraction of an inch of room.  Even with doing that I still struggled like crazy to get the blinds on the hooks.  To get the last hook attached I used a pen cap as a surrogate finger, it was crazy.  All that struggling in the outdoor air had turned me into a sweaty mess.  The back of my shirt was soaked by the end of it.

Katie and Daniel thanked me multiple times for the help, the two projects made their apartment look more “finished”.  Another perk of helping out was getting to play with their dog Tank, a very cute and friendly french bulldog.  By the time we got home it was later obviously so we just threw a Costco pizza in the oven for an easy dinner since Friday night we aren’t doing our normal dinner ritual.

Tonight I am picking up the girls for another few days of dog sitting while Ali is out of town.  I just received my dog whistle in the mail.  Hopefully it makes it easier to get Nicki’s attention.

Yesterday Cindy found our second egg on the ground under the coop, woohoo!

An odd thing has been slowly shifting over the last year or so, my SSR has become less and less of a focal point in my existence.  It is not abnormal at all nowadays for it to sit untouched in the garage for 2-3 weeks not making even the slightest rumble.

When I first got the truck I was taking it to work at least once a week, typically on a Friday.  In addition I was taking every opportunity to take the SSR out on the road.  Driving the truck made me feel proud, successful and alive.

It doesn’t take a PhD to identify buying a vehicle like this in your mid-40’s is classic mid-life crisis behavior.  There is no question that at the time of it’s purchase I was indeed dealing with several things in my life that were tough for me to handle.  The monster truck was a great way to divert my attention elsewhere.

Once I got separated the SSR really became my crutch as I took it out repeatedly on mostly unsuccessful first dates, perhaps thinking it’s mere presence alone would help make up for my instinctive awkwardness when meeting most people for the first time.  The truck was truly my companion in sorrow during that time.  No matter how down I felt, a quick spin with the top down was better than any anti-depressants on the market.

Since I started dating Cindy (whom is the only other person I have allowed to drive the SSR more than 100 feet), the SSR has steadily been pushed into the background.  I no longer bring it to work regularly, rarely participate in the SSR Fanatics forum, and generally speaking pay little attention to it.  It’s an odd thing.  Hell there have been moments when I considered the financials of selling it versus keeping it, something that would have been beyond taboo two years ago.

My amateur analysis of this shift seems to point towards whatever potholes I was feeling in my life have now become more filled, evening out my mental highway.  Don’t worry, the truck isn’t going anywhere.  I still love driving it, Cindy loves driving it, so it will remain my on demand, expensive joy ride for the foreseeable future.

After work last night I dropped the dogs back off at Ali’s place.  She was not home from work yet.  I always feel guilty when I drop them off at an empty house.  Perhaps the sadness I feel coming from them is self manufactured but it doesn’t make it any easier to feel.

Cindy and I already knew the chickens LOVE cracked corn.  We now know they love corn on the cob nearly as much.  Cindy bought a couple cobs which I chopped in half with my machete.  We have been giving them one half cob a day in the morning.  By the time we get home at night the cob is completely picked clean.

The house has been giving off symptoms of the septic tank needing to be pumped out including some smell coming from open drains and the guest bathroom toilet (closest to house drain) not flushing well.  I contacted the company that pumped it before to have it sucked out this afternoon.  I am not sure how long it has been since I had it pumped but I know in the 13 years I have been in the house it has only been done twice so I am surely overdue.

Getting out of work early will work out well since I need to pack and get ready for my trip to PA which starts very early tomorrow morning due to a 6:10AM departure.  The flight is with US Air whom I dislike.  I am trying to come up with a way to get everything I will need for the 5 day trip into my small suitcase that fits in an overhead bin.  I have a very adverse reaction to paying additional fees for checking luggage.

I think the trip will be fun with the first half spent at a conference for event planners/race timers and the second half hanging with my buddy Troy whom I have shared some of my most memorable experiences of my life with.  We always have lots of laughs.

So I got it in my head that I wanted to get the carpets cleaned in the house last night, a rather ambitious plan for a Thursday evening.  Cleaning the carpet is a task that just never gets done as much as it should be, especially with the dogs in the house.  I bet it has been 3-4 months since it was last done if not longer.

So after setting the Scooba loose in the kitchen, I pulled out my 4-5 year old Bissel, filled it with fluid and wheel it back to the bedroom to get started.  I immediately notice that I see no cleaning solution getting sucked into the machine.  A little more investigation revealed this was because there was no fluid getting shot out of the nozzles.  I also saw that the guts of the brush area was very dirty, stuffed with dog hair and other organic matter. Great, the last thing I felt like doing was fixing the steam cleaner.

So I start pulling it apart and clean it the best I could.  I cracked the case body apart and pulled the two spray nozzles.  When I pulled the solution trigger with no nozzles I was only getting fluid out of the right side.  Well that was all I really needed to flip the “fck it I will just get a new one” switch in my head.

I have never really liked my rug cleaner.  When I bought it I opted for the less expensive model.  It had a small cleaning head and a small solution tank that I wound up having to refill 5 times to clean the house.  The water heating feature it supposedly had required you to let the unit sit for a couple minutes before using it and even then, didn’t appear to heat the water at all.  Hence, the idea of putting it on the curb for a problem that I may have been able to fix myself was a no brainer. When Cindy got home I told her she didn’t have to worry about dinner prep, we could eat at Panera and then shoot over to Target to get a new rug cleaner.

This time I went for the bigger, better Bissel model.  We got it home and within 15 minutes I had it together and had started the rug cleansing.  The first thing I noticed was the new cleaner is like a heavy tank compared to what I used to have.  The big solution reservoir, especially when filled to the top with cleaning solution makes the rug cleaner very HEAVY.  I told Cindy that carpet cleaning from this point on should exclusively be man work because of the force required to push and pull a machine of this weight several hundred times.  Within the first 5 minutes my right shoulder started to burn.

Other than the weight, everything else about the new cleaner was all good.  The heating system is obviously much improved over previous models, the solution felt warm right from the get go and never varied.  The 10 rows of brushes in the wider cleaning head did a great job of refreshing the carpet.  I also was able to be more efficient cleaning since the wider head and much bigger tank let me clean more footage per swipe and go much longer in between tank fills.  It took me just over two tanks to clean the master bedroom, main living space, the dining room and office.  This model also comes with a head attachment to clean hard surfaces as well so if my Scooba bites the dust I am not relegated to scummy mop and bucket cleaning duty.

Of course trying to half heartedly fix the old cleaner and then running out to buy a new one pushed my cleaning late into the night.  I didn’t finish up until after 9:30.  The amount of dog hair that was pulled out of what appeared to be pretty well swept carpets was pretty crazy and made the effort seem worthwhile.

This weekend I have a number of things that could capture my attention.  I would like to replace the wire on the top of the auxiliary chicken run as it is getting brittle and has already broken at several places.  Cindy and I also have a Sunday Rural King run planned to further augment our chicken care supplies.  We also plan to let the chickens out to roam the yard some on Sunday, under our close supervision.

Saturday night Cindy and I will be going out to see Transformers with our buddy Sean.  I have had a love hate relationship with the movie series over the years.  Some aspects of the films are really cool but they are almost always balanced out with an equal amount of stupidity.  Having Marky Mark in this latest film should definitely be an upgrade over Shia LeBouf IMO.

On my way home from work on Friday I swung by Ali’s place and picked up the girls.  I am dog sitting them until Thursday this week as Ali is in Costa Rica.  When we got back to the house I let them out in the back yard.  Sadie returned to the door sporting a nasty limp.  I did not watch them while they were in the yard so I am not sure what she did.  We checked her paws extensively and didn’t find anything lodged which could be causing her pain.  I am wondering if the rabbit that has been hanging around was out in plain view, causing Sadie to instantly haul ass after it.  Perhaps she pulled something in the process.  She has been limping all weekend.

My Saturday was very, very busy.  Shortly after 8 am I started on yard manicuring.  Weed whacking, mowing and a couple other outdoor todo’s took me until 11:30 to knock out.  After eating lunch I loaded up the girls in the party van for a ride up to exit 131.  I was returning the PC I set up for my accountants.  I didn’t want to pollute their home with dog fur so I just left the girls in the van with the AC cranking while I was inside.

After setting up the PC it was back in the van for the return trip of 35 miles back to the house where I had a mental list of indoor chores awaiting me.  I cleaned the bathrooms, the kitchen counters, dusted, watered the indoor plants, did laundry, and was working on running club membership stuff when Cindy walked in the door after work.

During the day I got not one but two calls from a lady that we probably will be buying our chickens from.  Evidently she is quite anxious to get them relocated because she said she needed room for a new goat.  I told her that I couldn’t get hens until I got back from PA next week.  She wants me to pick them up asap.  The hens we should be getting are a breed named Buff Orpington.  They are supposed to be good egg layers and docile.  The woman said they don’t mind being held at all.

Getting chickens is going to mean I have to be more mindful of what is going on in the backyard.  One such example is my never ending battle against fire ants.  My number one weapon against these little bastards is Amdro, it’s the only thing I have found that at least helps stem the red fire ant tide.  Well Amdro is deadly to chickens if they eat enough of it.  Typically I would just walk the yard and dump Amdro with reckless abandon.  If I am going to use it in the future I will need to cover the area so the chickens can’t get to it.  I am envisioning a large upside down empty pot as a good way to do this.

On Saturday night Cindy and I decided to just stay home.  I was beat from my day of labor and Cindy was sweating her ass off in the sweltering heat delivering mail all day.  We had a Netflix DVD in house so we just chilled with the girls and watched it.  The movie was Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale, Ben Afflecks brother, Woody Harrelson and Forrest Whitaker.  It was a good movie but is guaranteed to not make you feel better about the world when it is over.  A lot of pretty horrible shit goes down.  Still, I appreciate dark movies and would give this one a B+ bordering on A-.

Cindy and I started off our Sunday with the 20 mile Dunkin Donuts ride, the first time either of us have done any open road biking in a loong time.  I was expecting to struggle but thanks to a more or less neutral wind both directions we actually  held a good speed, 20+ mph for a large portion of the ride.  For the entire ride as a whole we averaged 19mph.  I was soaked with sweat when we got home.  I cooled off with a dip in the pool which Sadie appreciated, despite having her laps around the pool limited by her limp.

I had one project I wanted to complete on Sunday, replacing the rear hatch switch on Cindy’s Prius. In 2007 Toyota evidently had an issue with the rubber used for these switches which cause them to turn into a sticky tar consistency, especially in warmer climates.  The prior owner combated this problem by sticking some duct tape over the slimy switch. I was looking for a little more permanent and cleaner solution so I ordered a new switch assembly and wire harness.

My search for a how to video for the process came up empty, making it a prime candidate for another entry in my growing automotive maintenance YouTube collection.  I did find some text directions on the procedure which seemed pretty straightforward.  The worst part of the switch replacement was cleaning up the black goopy hole where the old switch resided.  I used half of a bottle of Goo Gone and a dozen shop towels in the clean up procedure.   The new switch works great and no longer coats your hand in road tar.

I had to do a few boring things like more laundry and pay my bills on Sunday but I also spent a lot of time geeking out playing Diablo, trying to get my monk through the expansion content.  I love that Cindy actually encourages me to just play games sometimes as she appreciates the various types of hard work I am doing the rest of the time.  She was quite content baking/cooking in the kitchen as I killed thousands of demon spawn.

Sunday night we finally almost closed out the original run of 24.  We have exactly one episode left in season 8.  I have to say that even though I thought it was impossible, Jack has somehow managed to set the bar even higher in lunacy during this season.  He flips back and forth between the roles of patriot, super hero, lover and cold blooded killer so frequently and easily it makes my head spin.  Just trying to document everything that happens to the guy in a 24 hour period and just how silly and far fetched it is for any human being would ruin the 24 experience.  Just strap in and hold on, check your sense of reality at the door.

Friday I left work early for two reasons.  During the day we had been working out logistics of Cindy’s Prius purchase.  The deal was complicated by the fact the seller had an outstanding loan on the car.  This means that Cindy can’t officially take ownership of the car until the seller’s bank releases the title so it can be transferred.

I made arrangements for the seller to drive the Prius out to the house, sign a bill of sale and then I took him back to his place, leaving the Prius in my driveway where it will sit until the title work is done.

On the drive back the seller and I talked non-stop, he has a very interesting background.  His stories of when he was deployed in Iraq as a transport driver were pretty amazing.  I dropped him off with the understanding I would let him know when the title was flagged as clear to be printed so we can get the transaction 100% wrapped up.

I had to haul ass back home to pick up Cindy.  We were supposed to go to the first Florida Tarpons game of the season.  With a 7:30 kick off I was worried we wouldn’t get there in time.  I was surprised that we walked in the door with 10-15 minutes to spare.

Regular blog readers may remember some of the trials and tribulations I went through last year with the Tarpons.  They moved around the dates of several games and outright cancelled 2-3 of them because one of the teams in the league disbanded.  It was pretty much a joke of a year.  At the end of the season, despite reassurances from team ownership, I was sure the team and the league were done.

Well to my surprise the Tarpons are still in business this year although a lot of things have changed.  They shifted the schedule around, instead of the season starting in March, it now starts in May, a dumb move if you ask me.  With a March start you had the opportunity to pull in some snowbirds to games, by May they have all flocked northward.  The league itself has seen a culling, now consisting of four, yes FOUR teams.  As a result the Tarpons play each team at least twice, some three times.

The Tarpons tweaked their uniforms slightly, they look worse than before, not sure who would have thought it was an improvement.  Finally, they no longer had cheerleaders, replaced with girls from the local casino that did no cheering, only throwing of  crappy merchandise into the stands.  (I was told later cheerleaders would be back next game)

Another change I was unaware of until the game started was the Tarpons evidently have a roster that is almost entirely different than last year, I only recognized one guy, the tall pencil thin wide receiver they call Optimus Prime.  Everyone else seemed new.  Sometimes change is good, sometimes it isn’t.  This years roster is definitely the latter.  Despite the league problems the last few years the Tarpons have always had a good team, getting to the championship game each year.  Well that appears to no longer be the case.

The most noticeable drop off in talent is at the QB position. They have some young, 20 year old kid playing QB that looks like he might not even weigh 160 pounds. His arms and legs seemed to be equal in circumference, about the size of a baseball bat.  Not only was he more built for basketball than football, he didn’t seem to have a lot of skills either.  His arm was weak, every single ball he threw had lots of air under it.  To make things worse he was inaccurate as well, consistently throwing balls behind, above or below the reach of receivers.  I felt bad for the kid, he was clearly overwhelmed.

The team the Tarpons were playing, the Miami Inferno, were a brand new team.  This was their first game ever.  Unfortunately they made it look like the roles were reversed, the Inferno beat the Tarpon’s ass, winning the game easily 58-35.  It was a disappointing start to the season.  The saving grace is the Tarpons gave all 2013 season ticket holders free season tickets to the 2014 season.  The best part of the game was our new seats are really, really nice, 4th row, a little past mid-field.

My Saturday morning got started bright and early.  I headed over to Ali’s new place to finish up replacing the bottom sections of screening on her lanai.  Sadie had punched through the brittle screening that was in place the first couple days they were in the new place.  Ali bought a bunch of pet resistant screening to replace it.  I told her I would put it in since I wanted to make sure Sadie stayed safely indoors unless supervised.

Installing the new screen was more challenging than normal  for several reasons.  Doing the panels by the ground are always a pain in the ass as it requires far more time on my knees than I prefer. The position was made more uncomfortable by the bushes poking me that ran along a good portion of the lanai.  The pet screening is much thicker than run of the mill screening, meaning it is a bit tougher to work with. Finally, Ali ordered rolls that were 36 inches wide, only a couple inches wider than the opening.  I should have advised her to get the 48 inch wide rolls.  With the 3 footers I had hardly any spare screen to grab onto and pull on to keep tension while inserting the spline.

It all added up to a frustrating couple hours but I eventually got the final two panels swapped out.  I would be totally fine never changing out another panel of screening in my life.

When I got home I dug into a fresh pile of to do’s.  One of those was to replace some of the defective sprinkler heads Cindy and I identified last weekend.  Before I started replacing heads I did another visual inspection, turning the system on and watching the spraying behavior.  It turned out that actually 6 of the 8 sprinklers in that zone were screwed up.  I only had bought 4 new heads so I prioritized which ones were most important, the heads hitting the garden and orchard.

Replacing sprinkler heads that have been in the ground for awhile can be a pain in the ass.  The St Augustine grass is thick and difficult to cut through.  Unfortunately the passage of time also dulled my recollection of where the main feed pipe for each sprinkler was coming from.  As a result I snapped one of the fittings while digging up one head.  Luckily I had one replacement fitting left over.  I got the new heads in the ground and adjusted.  I obviously have more sprinkler work ahead of me but it is lower priority.

I worked on another long overdue maintenance task Saturday afternoon, replacing the filters on my reverse osmosis system.  This job is actually a TON easier than it used to be.  The GE Profile system I have makes the physical act of replacing cartridges SO much easier than the ridiculous hassle I went through replacing filters with the original system.  There are three filters in the system, two filters used for pre and post filtration and a RO membrane filter in the middle.  The pre and post filters are supposed to be replaced roughly ever 6 months.  The RO filter is every one or two years depending on how much junk is taken out of your water.

It used to be the system would force me to change the filters.  When the filters were getting used up the flow of water out of the system would be drastically reduced.  However that has not been the case in recent years.  I am not sure if it is because I use less water now or if the water cleaner system that was installed 3-4 years ago does a better job of removing crap from the water before hits the RO.  Regardless, the RO system has been working fine.  I was probably at least 2 years past the recommended filter change interval.

Like I said, the physical act of swapping cartridges is very, very easy.  What is a pain is the stuff you have to do as part of the process.  You first need to sanitize the system using special empty canisters with bleach and let it circulate through the system for awhile.  After replacing the cartridges you have to let the system fill and then empty it a total of four times.  Considering filling the system can take 3-4 hours I wound up not doing the last drain until mid-afternoon Sunday.  At least I should be good to go for another 6 months (2 years).

Saturday night Cindy and I went to see Godzilla.  You may find some of this a spoiler so feel free to jump to the next paragraph.  I liked the movie overall but there were a few things that I found annoying.  First the film is billed as starring Bryan Cranston, one of my favorite actors.  Well his character exits the film within the first 1/4 of the movie, leaving the story to be focused on the guy that played Kick Ass in Super Bad.  I felt a little bit cheated in the process.  Not only did I get shorted on the Cranston quota, there wasn’t enough of Godzilla himself in my opinion.  Even with these shortcomings I enjoyed the movie, the monster battles were epic as you would hope for.  I will give it an A- although it is teetering on B+ territory because of the things I mentioned.

I found myself also being distracted at the movie by someone behind us a few seats down.  They had their feet draped over the chair in front of them the entire movie which I guess is ok if noone is directly in front of you.  However they found it necessary to play with the seat periodically which would make noise and vibration that I felt/heard.  It became necessary to shoot them stink eye at one point which seemed to stop the shaking but not the sneaker hanging in my peripheral vision. Idiots.

Sunday morning Cindy and I got our endurance training in although we went in different directions.  I opted to just do swimming while Cindy opted to run .  I did a hard (for me) session breaking my 1600 yards into 400/800/400 segments, trying to make sure the 1/4 mile leg I have to swim in the tri should feel well within in my wheelhouse.  Cindy got a hard run session in, probably harder than I could keep up with at this point.

On the way home we made several stops, one of them was Pinch A Penny for pool supplies.  It was to help address another one of the things I worked on over the weekend, fighting my green pool.  My pool water is typically very easy to maintain.  Keep the chlorinator full, add liquid chlorine once a week, run the pool vacuum and I’m done.  Well after my last top off with well water my pool has not recovered from the greenness that is normal with adding dirty water like it normally does.  I have hit the pool with extra chlorine and it still looked like shit.

Well yesterday I realized that I have been forgetting to add the all-in-one algecide treatment that is supposed to go in every few weeks.  I dumped what I had left into the swampy looking mess.  I also discovered that one of the valves was restricting water flow through the filtration system.  Moving it a few degrees dramatically increased the flow of water.  This morning the pool is looking bluish green at least.  I think it’s on the road to recovery.

Sunday night Cindy and I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  It’s a movie produced, directed, and starred in by Ben Stiller.  I found the movie very enjoyable and would recommend it to anyone looking to get inspired to break out of a mundane existence and really experience life instead of being pulled along by it. A-

The chicken coop should show up today, cool.

Friday after work I stopped at Home Depot to load up the back of the Tacoma with 30 bags of mulch for the second day in a row.  I followed up with a quick stop at Costco where I somehow managed to lose a massive container of minced garlic that I paid for.

After dinner I told Cindy I wanted to see if I could quickly get the 30 bags dumped and spread since the cooler evening temps had arrived.  As usual she was happy to jump in and lend a hand.  We knocked out all 30 bags, finishing up just as sunset was going down.  We had pretty much everything mulched beside a short part of the pool border and the two islands that surround the palm trees up front.  I estimated that 10 bags would cover what was left.  As usual the landscape looked much nicer with it’s annual mulch replenishment.

Saturday morning Cindy and I headed out pretty early for our day of fun.  After loading up with some DD coffee we headed to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a place I have been quite a few times but a place Cindy had never seen.

It didn’t take her very long to appreciate the beauty of the place.  Since we are firmly in the midst of dry season there was precious little water to be found in the swamp.  It is always interesting to see the place during dry season and then to come back once the daily deluges start to compare the difference.

We still saw a lot of wildlife from the 2 mile boardwalk path, mostly birds, including owls, something I don’t recall seeing there before.  We also saw these two HUGE gators.  We assumed at least one of them had to be a pregnant female, it was so wide across the middle.

I am always impressed by the huge cypress trees that are in the swamp.  According to the information placards some of them are more than 500 years old.  The largest we saw had a trunk 23 feet around.  Old things always have been sources of fascination for me. (as long as they aren’t me)

One of the reasons I wanted to go to the swamp was to get a couple bird feeders to replace some of mine that are falling apart.  Several years ago I bought some made out of recycled materials from their gift shop and they have held up well.  I figured I would get more there to help support the place.  I was disappointed to see the only bird feeders they had for sale were the wooden variety that break down quickly in Florida conditions.  Too bad, I guess Amazon will have to fill the void.

After a great swamp visit we headed east to Immokalee, specifically Jack & Ann’s Feed store.  I became familiar with Jack & Ann’s when I fenced the back yard years ago, I got all of my posts, fencing and wire from them.  The store, like much of Immokalee is very old and rustic.  It’s also quite large, selling a large variety of things that would cover the needs of most farmers.

Cindy scored herself a set of white boots for outdoor work but the real reason we went there was to look at their chicken accessories.  I thought they might sell coops there.  Unfortunately they had no chicken housing but they do have feeders/waterers and feed for them.  Once chickens are a certainty I am sure we will hit J&A more often for supplies.

It was nearly noon by that time.  I asked Cindy if she wanted to try to find an authentic Mexican place to eat at which would be very easy to do in Immokalee.  She was excited by the idea.  We pulled into a small little place called Mi Ranchito.  When we sat down I am pretty sure we were the only people in there with English as our first language.  The decor was old, the tables were dirty but the food was authentic Mexican.  I had a huge veggie burrito and Cindy enjoyed a chimichanga.

During the meal I dared her to try the sauce labeled as XXX hot. As I expected she took up my dare.  The sauce did invoke a reaction from her but not the violent, my tongue is on fire, type that I expected.  She followed up by sampling the 2 or 3 other hot sauce varieties that were on the table.

After lunch we headed northward.  I took a route through Lehigh Acres, I figured it would be a good opportunity to check on the two 1/4 acres plots of land I own and lost my ass on.  I have not driven by them in several years.  They looked much as I remembered.  One of my lots is really in a decent location, literally less than a mile from a Winn Dixie and other retail.  Too bad despite that fact the lots currently are worth about 10-15% of what I paid for them back in 2003.

The next stop was the Germain Arena box office, I needed to pick up my free 2014 Florida Tarpons season tickets.  Since the 2013 season was such a cluster fck with a ton of rescheduled and/or cancelled games they offered to give all 2013 season ticket holders free tickets for this year.  They have totally shifted the schedule from previous years.  The season doesn’t open until this Friday.  Last year the season opened in early March and was pretty much wrapping up by this point.

I managed to score a big upgrade in seat position this year.  My season tickets last year had a face value of something like $15 each.  The tickets I got this year are in row 4 and have a face value of $45 each, nice.  I can only hope this season goes better than last.  I am really quite amazed that the team and the league has not folded yet.

On the trip back south we stopped at Home Depot to get the remaining 10 bags of mulch needed to finish the landscaping.  Cindy also snagged three plants to be used in her ongoing pool landscaping renovation.  We had two more stops yet on our very busy Saturday, one for gas and one at Wal-mart before we finally pulled back into the driveway.

We got the additional mulch spread and the plants in the ground.  I had wanted to set the sprinklers to run manually so I could check their operation, I suspected some of them were not sprinkling as they should be.  My sprinkler controller has been flaky for several years.  The buttons were not working as they should be some of the time.  If you applied pressure at the wrong spot the display would reset or a function different then what you wanted would show up.  A couple buttons didn’t work at all.  I still have been able to work around the glitches, until Saturday.

The entire right side of the box now was unresponsive, not even responding to Fonzie like smacks.  I also noticed the status screen was showing OFF despite the rotary knob being set at the AUTO position used during normal operation.  If the system thinks it is OFF that means no water is flowing which would explain why the garden has been looking drier than normal.  It was clear the sprinkler box had to be replaced.

When I started looking on Amazon at replacements I stumbled across something called the Rain Machine.  My eyes widened.  A SMART, Wi-Fi connected sprinkler controller, touch screen device???

The device uses NOAA forecasting to adjust it’s watering schedule  accordingly.  It compiles your watering history and uses that as well to better fine tune future sprinkling.  There is even a smartphone app that allows you to interact with your sprinkler system anywhere you are plugged into the net. This is cool….

So immediately my mind is racing, thinking about the possibility of adding a smart sprinkler system to my homestead tech collection.   Mounting the box outside would be risky and dumb since part of the coolness factor would be interacting with the keypad and checking out the info.  That means I would need to relocate the sprinkler controller indoors.

Relocating it would involve stringing wire through the hotter than a sauna attic and then down one of the bathroom walls.  It would need to be somewhere close to AC power as well.  Another factor was the cost.  The device costs $250 and by the time I bought the materials needed to extend it inside I could easily drop $300 bucks in total.  In contrast, a replacement digital controller similar to what I have now would be less than $60 with a very straightforward and much easier installation.  I eventually quieted the tech addict in my brain and decided to go the latter route.

Saturday night Cindy and I went to a surprise birthday party at South Street for one of our running club friends.  There were a TON of people there.  We hung for a couple hours before heading home.  We were both quite pooped from our very busy day.

Despite our busy Saturday we still wanted to get a brick in on Sunday.  We headed to the waterpark where we did 4 miles of running followed by laps in the pool.  I broke my swim segments into 400-600-600 to try to get ready for my 1/4 mile swim leg of the fast approaching Naples Fitness Challenge. Cindy, Randall and I are competing as a team this year.  Cindy will run, Randall will ride and I will finish it out with my awkward sidestroking swim in the gulf.  The 4 mile run on Sunday was way tougher for me than I would like.

When we got home I worked on replacing the sprinkler controller.  Unfortunately it is a different form factor than the 8 year old box it replaced, meaning some touch up painting will be required.  Once I got it hooked up I had Cindy help me do a sprinkler health check.  I ran each zone for 5 minutes to verify the heads were still covering what they were supposed to be watering.  The survey revealed I have 4 heads that need to replaced, yay, more work.

We had to hustle Sunday afternoon to get stuff done since we were picking up mom for a Mothers Day dinner at Watermark.  We were planning to meet Cindy’s mom there at 5PM.  I figured the very early time would mean the place wouldn’t be too full.  When I pulled in the parking lot and saw no parking spots for the party van I knew my theory was incorrect.

It was jammed, with no less than 20 people waiting to be seated. We got very lucky that Cindy’s mom is an early bird.  She had shown up closer to 4:30 and got our name in.  We wound up only having to wait a couple minutes instead of the 30 minutes or more we would have had to wait otherwise.

We all had a nice meal that was subsidized by a gift card my dad had sent me for Xmas.  I hadn’t been to Watermark with my mom in a loooong time.  We shuttled mom back to her place and dropped her off.  She had fun which always makes me happy.

Over the weekend Cindy and I finished up season seven of 24.  It seemed to be the most ridiculous storyline so far with no less than 5 different people (one twice) being the main bad guy in the span of 24 hours.  Despite the impossibility of so many things occurring in a 24 hour period the show still manages to provide suspense and excitement.  You just have to be able to suspend your sense of reality to fully enjoy it.

We now have embarked on season 8, the final season of the original show.  Once that is consumed we should be up to date and ready to start watching the reboot of the series which is being collected on my X1 box.

Oh I forgot to mention I have a bid on Ebay on a perspective housing structure for our yet to be acquired flock of 3 or 4 chickens.  If my bid is successful we will officially be on the path of chicken caretakers.

Last night after work I felt the need to be productive.  I fulfilled that need by heading out to the orchard to do some tree removal.  The orchard is one of the first things we added to the landscape after building the house.  It never has lived up to expectations with several of the trees looking ratty, unhealthy and remaining very unfruitful in their yields.   I have allowed them to continue on for literally a decade like this due to equal parts apathy and sentimentality.

Well I decided a few days ago it was time to finally do something about it.  I drug my shovel, rake and post bar into the orchard and ripped out the tangerine and key lime trees both of which have done next nothing for several years.  Removing the key lime was pretty easy, it’s roots were not that big.  The tangerine, despite it’s ill/stumpy appearance above ground, had a large set of roots lurking underneath which took some prying to get at.

There is at least one other tree in the orchard that I have my eye on for removal but it actually appears to have some fruit on it, granting it a stay of execution.  My hope is to plant two new trees and do a better job tending to their care so they can grow and prosper.

Yesterday in the mail I got a promo for Comcast’s X1 home service.  X1 is the new modern spin Comcast has put on their cable TV service.  It includes all new equipment that actually has a modern and user friendly interface compared to the shit they used to put out there.  It allows you to do many of the things that Tivo’s can.

Speaking of Tivo, the reason I even took the time to look more seriously at the X1 is my Tivo Premiere has been starting to act flaky, more than likely the hard drive is starting to go bad.  If it goes that means I would either be spending the time/money on a new hard drive or a new Tivo box.  I have been less and less thrilled with what Tivo does for me for the money.  Since I only have OTA antenna programming feeding into it, there is very little on there.  I have been a looong time Tivo customer, dating back to when I had a DirecTv/Tivo receiver, some 10 years ago.

So anyway after looking at what the X1 system was I looked at the packages.  Right now I am paying 80 a month for 25mb internet service and the shitty digital tv package which I don’t even use (non-HD).  For roughly another 40 a month I could move to 50mb internet service, an X1 HD DVR for the main room, an X1 secondary HD box for the bedroom, 160 channels AND free HBO for 2 years.  I then factored in the $15 a month I would no longer be paying to Tivo, meaning my monthly bump would be more like 25 bucks. When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all on board, she misses having some of her favorite channels like HGTV available.

So I said f it and pulled the trigger, completing the upgrade arrangements with a roughly 10 minute phone call.  I also managed to get the installation charge of 40 bucks waived for the tech which is supposed to show up Monday afternoon.

To be honest, deciding to give Comcast more of my hard earned dollars isn’t something I thought would ever happen after I threw up my HD antenna some 4 years ago.  I am still apprehensive about it and if I didn’t have Cindy here helping me split living expenses I doubt I would have upgraded.  Still I am sort of excited for both the 100% faster internet speed and the features the X1 system will give me.  It should up the geek/tech factor in the house another few degrees.

I plan to still be utilizing my OTA feed for the other coax runs in the house like the guest bedroom.  I will need to be an active participant when the installer arrives to help him navigate the considerable coax runs and splitters that converge in the attic crawl space.