Category Home Improvements

So I left early from work once again yesterday because the painters were coming to finish the deck.  I had to laugh to myself when I got another text from the guy saying they were running late.  They got to the house maybe a half hour to 45 minutes before I did, they started somewhere around 2.  I was annoyed and concerned that they would not have time to finally finish.

When I got there Giovanni was hand painting the outer border of the deck, no paint was on the large areas yet.  The color that was down looked good at least.  The dogs, whom I picked up on the way home were quite vocal in their disapproval of the painters, barking at them out the slider.  Sadie was not at all happy that her dog door was blocked.

I attended to stuff inside as the work progressed.  Once the border was outlined they used a roller on a long pole to do the big areas.  It didn’t take them long at all to roll on the two coats even though they went through 4 gallons of paint.  They were finished up by 5.

I asked Giovanni how long until I could walk on it.  He said pretty much right away since the bright sun dried the paint very quickly.  When I ventured out on the deck after he left, barefoot, I discovered that was not totally true as I wound up with some wet paint on my feet.

I walked around the outside of the pool cage checking out the end result.  The color looked good and the patching and painting of the various cracks seems to have made them disappear.  Tonight I will take a closer look after work as I start to bring the stuff that has been sitting in the yard for a week back inside.

Although the frustration I had to deal with getting the deck painted were very annoying I am pleased with the end result which is the most important. You can all the pics from the project I took here.

Yesterday on the way to work I saw a dead German Shepherd on the side of the road.  Instantly I felt a wave of sadness come over me.  I hope whomever hit the dog has a huge serving of bad karma to feast on for a long, long time. Idiot…

So I have my Yamaha surround system pretty much set up the way I want it although the age of my TV makes certain things not possible.  I programmed my Harmony Remote to automatically incorporate the Yamaha receiver whenever anything tv related is going on with just one click.  When I change volume on the Harmony, it changes the volume on the surround sound.  This is the functionality I always wanted with my Bose Lifestyle but was unable to do so because of the RF style remote the system uses.

There is another feature of my Mitsubishi tv that annoys me, the way it handles AV inputs.  The tv boasts “smart sensing” of devices attached to the various HDMI and component connections.  If you connect something to a port it will detect it and ask you what kind of device it is.  Well for whatever reason it isn’t smart enough to detect the HDMI output from the Yamaha receiver which would allow me to navigate the AV menu system on the tv.

Well if the TV doesn’t smart detect an input it won’t allow you to flip to it which is asinine.  So if I want to view the Yamaha menu on screen I have to “trick” the tv by temporarily plugging the HDMI cable from the surround system into one of the detected ports.  Of course if the tv was a few years newer this would be a moot issue because I could utilize ARC and HDMI device control where all my HDMI capable devices would go into the Yamaha box and everything to the tv would be fed from a single HDMI cable.

This was one of those weird times where the 4 days off actually felt longer for some odd reason.

On Wednesday night I went to bed very early, I was probably out cold by 9:30.  The reason for this was my alarm clock was set at a ridiculously early 3 AM for the Thanksgiving Race I was timing.  I had more responsibilities than normal for this event so I wanted to make sure I was there as early as possible.  I’d much rather have it done with time to spare than scrambling.

Well imagine my surprise when I woke up on my own at 1:36am.  I knew there was no way I would fall back to sleep as I instantly had race related details running through my head. So after checking my email, eating breakfast and announcing my awakening on FB, I finished loading up the truck and headed down towards the race site.

As I approached I actually came upon Matt the race director setting up some signs at about 3:15 am.  He had a bunch of stuff to set up on the course and I was tasked with setting up the registration area.  He followed me to the race location and directed me to the tents and tables he had stashed the night before.  I threw them in the back of the Tacoma, slammed a 5 hour energy and got busy.

I had given a decent amount of thought regarding how to set up the registration area to alleviate the congestion problem we have had in the past.  I set up two tents, facing the lot with 8 foot signs attached to each, one designated for the untimed runners/walkers and one for the chip timed participants.

It was sort of peaceful setting everything up by myself since I knew in a short time the area would be overflowing with humanity. By the time Ali showed up I had the registration area pretty much ready to go. I also set up the PA system at the start line as well as staging the finish line equipment.

The combination of the layout and Ali and others work on creating race packets ahead of time for chipped runners helped expedite the registration area greatly.  Despite almost 2500 total participants, the lines never got out of hand.

So race start time was approaching.  Around 7:15 Ali stepped away from the computer table saying she wanted to take a few pictures.  That left me to man the table to make any last minute changes.  After helping a couple people I knew I needed to get to the start line but Ali was nowhere in sight.  I grabbed the bullhorn and made an announcement for her to come to the desk but still, no Ali.

Well finally I could not wait any longer and I started over to the start line.  As I did I finally see Ali whom ironically appeared to be at the start line being asked where I was.  I was obviously annoyed as I ran past Ali to the start, she said I didn’t have to wait for her.  I was under the impression she was only going to be gone for a minute instead of nearly 10 so obviously there was a miscommunication.

So I run towards the start line and had some club members unroll the timing mats while I got the box up.  Evidently Matt was freaking out because he didn’t know how to work the PA system to make announcements and no one else in the area did either.  I turned up the volume dial on the mic and we had sound, magic!

So I immediately could tell Matt was in freak out mode which is never good.  He starts giving me a countdown to the start of the race, regardless of my readiness or not. He starts playing the Star Spangled Banner on his trumpet which was a like musical timer.  I am scrambling to make sure I had the timing box cleared and synched.  I manage to get it done a few seconds after the song finishes and Matt is now desperate to start the race, like there was a guillotine above his head.

I tell him the box is up and ready and he starts the race.  Well in the mad rush to start I neglect to check my atomic watch for the official start time and to hit the button on my stop watch to start the time.  Matt immediately starts in on me saying this can’t happen, he NEEDS me there on time….

I was REALLY angry.  I told he had to chill out and that rushing the start caused problems (for the second year in a row).  He should only start his pre-race deal once I gave him thumbs up.  I have never had a race out of the hundred or more that I have timed where the race director is interested in starting a race before I was ready.

This isn’t even taking into consideration all the other aspects of the race that I was handling beyond the actual timing.  He was ultra-focused just that the race didn’t start 3 seconds late instead of the much more important concept of the race starting accurately.  I didn’t have time to go Hulk Smash mode on him.

I was planning to use two of the timing mats I used at the start for the finish which in retrospect was problematic.  With a race this big there were a number of late stragglers so I wanted to leave the mats down a bit to catch them.  Then when it came time to pull them up we had to get the herd of fun runners to get out of the way.

I had two of our guys lug two mats to the finish area.  I fast walked by the registration area carrying the start line laptop.  I yelled to Ali that I needed the main laptop taken to the finish line.  I was still fuming from the start line fisaco and told Ali the reason I was held up was because I was waiting for her to return.  She didn’t agree and I knew it was of little consequence now anyway.  I just had to fix it.

So I get to the finish line and start a mad scramble.  I dig into the start line times file to try to get a decent estimate of what the race start time is.  As I am doing that Ali delivers the laptop to the table, and walks away, obviously pissed at me.  I look at the laptop and see it is the wrong one. FCK!  So now things are getting really desperate.  I leap up from my bucket that doubled as a chair and sprint back towards the registration area.  I see Ali along the way and tell her she brought me the wrong laptop.  I snag the correct one and run back to the finish line at an even faster pace.

I slap the computer on the table and quickly make the connections.  I set the time on the timing box, clear the history and get the finish line mats up with about 45 seconds to spare before the lead runner came across, around 21 minutes after the race start.  Man, that was way too close for comfort.

As runners started to stream across the mats I just sat there with my head in my hands in disbelief that for the second year in a row, timing this race was a Chinese fire drill, despite all my efforts to make sure it wasn’t.   I felt bad about getting short with Ali, which I later apologized for.  In the end the race got timed and we had actual chip start times so it was an improvement over last year although the actual race start time was fuzzy, which I am not happy about. The start line fiasco will not happen again, one way or another.

By the time the race was over my 5 hour energy was wearing off, I felt beat.  After breaking down everything I loaded up the truck and headed home, very glad the monster event was over.

When I got home I had to quickly get the results processed before getting ready to head right back out.  I  caught absolutely NONE of the Macy’s parade.  I think it may be the first time as an adult that I have not seen any of the parade, that was kind of a bummer.  Mom had agreed to host Thanksgiving Dinner, we invited Ali as well.

I met Ali at her place and the dogs and I piled in her Volt for some gas free transport.  Mom had prepared a nice meal including Tofurky, something I know mom isn’t thrilled about but I really have come to enjoy. As much as I like the tofurky, the star of the meal is this pineapple casserole type thing that mom makes, it is so good.

We didn’t stay that long at mom’s.  Both mom and Ali were attending secondary Thanksgiving celebrations, I was closing out my Turkey Day at home.

At first I was sure I would pass out when I got home.  The big meal combined with the 1:30 am wake up is a deadly combination.  However somehow once I got done putting the race equipment away I got a second wind.  I actually cleaned and weeded during the afternoon.  I did collapse in bed shortly after 9PM, what a day.

So Black Friday arrived.  I had loose plans to maybe dip my toe into the shopping madness although nowadays much of the hoopla starts Thanksgiving evening so I would already be late to the game.  I headed out in the truck around 7:15 or so with my primary goal being grocery shopping.

On the way to Trader Joes I stopped at the Super Wal-mart, I figured there was not better place to observe Black Friday madness.  Well it wasn’t so mad.  Yea there were more shoppers than normal but it was far from chaotic.  I bought some softener salt, a few houseplants, and my first self Xmas gift, an inexpensive Daisy BB Rifle along with 600 BB’s.

The prior week the idea got into my head that it would be kind of fun shooting empty Diet Coke cans off fence posts.  They had a sale going on these lower end 650 FPS guns so I jumped in.  I plan to wrap it up and put it under the tree (oh I DID set that up too) Merry Christmas to me.  I’ll try to act surprised when I open my self-gifts.

I then headed to Trader Joe’s, Sam’s and Publix, in that order.  At Sam’s I did some perusing of their Xmas deals but nothing thrilled me.  If I needed a TV, this would definitely be the time to get one.

Ali planned to work on Friday so I picked up the girls on the way home so they could hang with me.

Despite my prior edict that there would be no or very minimal Xmas decorating this year I got the urge to to do just the opposite.  I hung lights outside and even set up the Xmas tree.

Now I went far less subdued than years past, only lighting up the two front palm trees and running the rest of the LED lights along the fence line.  Inside, besides putting up the tree, all I did was hang my monster stocking as well as Tuki’s, get out the snowflake dish towels, the black lab holiday area rug and the pine tree smelling candle.

It’s hard for me to explain why exactly I decided to do some decoration, other than not doing anything felt sort of like giving up, and I don’t like the feel of giving up, ever.

Later Friday afternoon I loaded the girls up to head to Home Depot for garden replenishment supplies.  Ali had agreed to come out and help me with the project on Saturday.  I loaded up a flat bed with many bags of garden soil and compost.  Before doing so I had grabbed a reciprocating saw blade and laid it on the flat bed.

Well when I checked out it was hidden from view and I had forgotten about it.  As I unloaded the dirt at the van I saw the blade laying there and realized I had just shoplifted the item successfully, unknowingly.  I could have easily just say “F it.  I spend a small fortune at Home Depot annually, what harm does not paying for a $12 saw blade do?” However my conscience took over, I marched back into the store and paid for the blade at the self checkout register.

The weird thing was when I left the first time, the security system at the door did not trigger.  I assume the large metal flatbed absorbed the EMF field that typically triggers the RFID security tag.  When I walked back in with just the blade in hand it blared loudly.  However since I was walking in instead of out, no one cared.

Black Friday I also got around to installing my new LED back up lamps in the SSR.  What should have been a ridiculously easy procedure became problematic when the passenger side bulb did not want to release conventionally.  I wound up extracting it using brute force.

So Ali came out to the house late Saturday morning.  I had all the bags of dirt piled by the garden ready to go.   Her primary role was to pitch fork the empty beds and do most of the planting/seeding.  I followed her forking with the rototiller, turning the soil over.  Then I dumped the new soil into the beds and tilled them again.  Finally I grabbed the hand rake and tamped down the soil lightly.

This winter’s crops are more kale, red lettuce, carrots, beets, peppers, tomatoes, sweet onions and two broccoli varieties.

After the garden work we worked on the unpleasant job of going through the Xmas ornaments.  I had the Rubbermaid containers piled on the lanai for us to go through.  We carried them inside and started the miserable task.

I knew it was going to be hard for both of us to do this.  Ali got particularly emotional when it came to our shared destination memory ornaments.  It got to the point where I asked her if I should just do it myself.  I told her I would just keep all of those shared ornaments to make it simpler which she was fine with.

We also used it as an opportunity to donate some unwanted decorations and throw out some we just didn’t need/want.  I told Ali I was fine with keeping anything really tacky or ugly, I kind of like a sense of humor in my Xmas tree.

The way it wound up, we took 80% of the Xmas stuff to Ali’s place, which was fine with me.  I filled the back of her Volt with containers and loaded the girls up in the party van to take them back.

Ali invited me to stay Saturday night to eat dinner and watch Wanderlust, something she had wanted to see.  We watched the movie while eating a Trader Joe’s meal I donated.  Although this isn’t the kind of movie I would seek out on my own, it was quite funny.  It had many comical and awkward moments, some of which I covered my face just because I felt embarrassed for the character on screen.  You would like the movie as long as you aren’t too uptight about penises being front and center.  B+

Sunday I had a very open schedule.  Anything I wanted to get done had already been done.  Ali again was working so I picked up the dogs after a coffee pit stop.  We had a very laid back day except for maybe a half hour period where I decided to set a new personal pull up best.

30 pull up reps is a HUGE milestone, especially for an old guy like me, but I will talk about this more on Dufisthenics.

Ali didn’t come out to pick up the dogs until after 8.  The dogs and I had a very chill day which included a two hour mid-afternoon nap.  I had felt tired ever since Thursday,  not all that surprising.

There was no disappointing Eagles game to clog up my Sunday.  Instead I get to pollute my Monday evening watching what is likely to be another poor outing.

I am not very happy that I spent much of my weekend walking around with a slight limp since I am doing the Tough Mudder in a few days.  I believe I injured myself doing the all out laptop sprint with no warm up on Thanksgiving.  It hurt it some more yesterday when an excited Sadie stepped on my flip flop while my right foot was still in it.  I turned but my foot didn’t move, sending a jolt of pain through the joint.

Of course it matters very little if my knee is healed or not by race day.  I will grind it out and deal with consequences later.

Saturday morning I had another race to time.  Right now I am entering a tough stretch where I have a race going on for 3 consecutive weeks.  Saturday’s race was not too bad though for two reasons.  It only had 200 runners and it was a longer distance, 15K so I had plenty of time to get everything up and running.  Even so I did have a couple weird issues pop up which resulted in a block of lost times that I had to recover using unconventional means.

When I got home I spent the next couple hours getting my indoor items taken care of after completing my post race duties.  After that I decided to go outside and at least start on the dreaded and hated annual tree trimming project.  I got the trees in the front yard trimmed before calling it quits for the day.

Saturday night I saw Skyfall, the latest James Bond film.  I had heard various good things about it which included praise from Roger Moore himself, who called Skyfall the best James Bond film ever, wow.  Well I think Roger, whom is now 85, may be suffering from dementia.

I like Daniel Craig as James Bond and I thought his first film, Casino Royale was really, really good.  The next Bond film was dumb.  I recall my thinking that it was one non-stop action scene with absolutely no attention paid to making an even mildly enjoyable story or plot.  Well with Skyfall they went 180 degrees in the other direction and made this film so much about story and plot (and not a very interesting one at that) that it was basically, boring.  Now granted, I was already half comatose when the movie started because I had been awake since 3:45am but the flick did little to help me stay awake.

I think the main villain in this was the weakest and silliest of any I have ever seen in a Bond film.  I felt no emotion when he gets his at the end, that tells you he wasn’t a very convincing bad guy.  The film also departed from typical Bond roots where James is always trying to save not only himself but also his current love interest in the end. There was none of that.

So anyway, obviously I didn’t really like the movie.  I’d give a C+.  I really would not encourage to spend theater type money to see it.

Sunday morning Ali dropped the dogs off at the house so I could watch them while she was going to work.  I had nothing but tree hell on my schedule so it worked out fine.

Speaking of trees….  every year I profess how awful this job is and that is because it IS awful.  In fact every year it gets a little more awful because trees grow taller.  I have a couple of them that are right at the upper limits of what I can reach with a 20 foot extension ladder and my 8 feet of reaching distance.

It’s the tall trees that are obviously the most dangerous.  In order to get the ladder as high as possible you need to have it standing at a shallow angle.  When the ladder is standing at a shallow angle you have very little margin for error when it comes to your balance.  With some of the limbs I was trying to generate leverage with the loppers directly over my head, you can see the potential for disaster.  I flirted with that potential several time where either the ladder shifted or  my center of gravity started to tip the wrong way.

On top of the danger is the pure misery of the work. F picking up trash, have the people that do prison work release come trim some cabbage palms.  They’ll never break the law again.

Up and down ladders, constantly working above your head utilizing your shoulders in all sort of painful ways.  My knees were killing me from them being propped against rungs of the ladders for hours and I must have hit the funny bone in my elbows at least a dozen times.

In addition to cutting palm fronds and seed branches, on several trees I spent considerable time with the machete.  The machete is the tool of choice to deal with old, dead crosshatch that populates the trunk of cabbage palms.  I hacked away like an crazed killer, sending wooden debris flying in all directions.

In total I pruned 28 trees, but that was only half the fun.  Now I had to go back around the property and pick up the hundreds of palm fronds and all of that wooden debris, throw it in the back of the Tacoma and then dump it in the fill pit at the back of the property.  I have no idea how many trips I made back and forth.

By the time I was all done it was 4pm.  Between the two days I probably spent 9 or 10 solid hours in tree hell.  Everything on my body hurt.  I took a shower and put on pajamas at 4:30 PM, who cares…  Next year, if I am still living here, I plan to buy a battery powered reciprocating saw (sawz-all) to make the job a little more bearable.

Hey, the Eagles lost again, this time it was to the hated Cowboys. To be honest I wasn’t really that bothered by it and actually saw some good things in this game.  If you looked at the score you would think the defense was horrible but actually, outside of the first quarter, they weren’t.  Most of those points came from special teams / turnovers.   The defense actually put a lot of pressure on Romo and for the most part played well for three quarters.

On offense we got to see the first real world test of Nick Foles at QB after Vick went out with a concussion.  For the most part I liked what I saw.  Yea he made a couple mistakes which is to be expected but f, compared to the amount of mistakes Vick makes, it’s nothing.  Foles made quick throws and seemed confident out there, not a scared kid.  It gave me some hope for the future since I think the Mike Vick experiment has just about run it’s course.

I also think the Andy Reid era has officially run it’s course.  In the past two weeks he set new “firsts’, the first time his team ever lost following a bye week and now the first time his team has EVER lost 5 games in a row.  I mean if the Eagles miraculously could win the rest of their games I guess it would save him but there is no way that is happening.  Everything changes sometime, it just so happens that 2012 looks to be that time for the big man.

So during the nights last week I started doing the prep work for the painting of the master bedroom.  That work included stripping the room and the walls as well as pulling large furniture items away from the walls.  I took off from work Friday and Monday to make time for the actual painting process as the area I was painting was the largest I ever had tackled myself, by far.

Thursday night I went around the room and hit discolored spots on the white walls with Killz.  The walk in closet was the worst spot where years of throwing shoes and bags left various scuff marks.  Unfortunately Killz has some pretty serious fumes.  I went to sleep in the midst of them.

On Friday morning I didn’t waste much time before getting started with the meat and potatoes project, I was getting busy by 8am.  First up was the dreaded taping portion of the job.

Taping is a very important part of a painting project.  If done well it can dramatically improve the end result of the painting as well as making it go faster when you are painting since you don’t have to try to paint an edge slowly by hand.  Taping also is tedious as hell. It took me about two and a half hours to tape everything.

I then cracked open the paint can and got to work.  First I painted by brush along all of the taped areas and then got out the roller to hit the wide expanses of wall real estate.

I have commented before on just how tough of a full body workout painting a room is.  Pressing a roller hard into the wall from 6 inches above the floor to 8 feet high will hit your core from about every angle imaginable.  I just barely had enough paint to cover everything with two coats, full two cans.

I was slopping paint on the walls until 5:30.  By the time I was done removing tape, touching stuff up and doing basic clean up  it was damn close to 8:30, twelve and a half hours after I started.  I was beat but glad to have the damn thing knocked out in one long day.

The color looked good in the room although I already knew it would since it has been utilized in most areas of the house already.  The bedroom feels classier and warmer, if that makes sense.

You can see all the pictures I took along the way here.

Saturday morning I took care of putting the shelving back in the master closet and the window hardware back on the walls.  Ripping everything out of the closet was an opportunity for me to do some house cleaning of both clothing and things that were stuffed in the closet that I didn’t need.  I had a large trash bag of stuff to donate when I was done as well as a pile for Ali to go through to see what she wanted. I also took the old pictures off the wall, figuring it would be therapeutic to replace them with something new and fresh.

Saturday afternoon I wanted to get my used Ebay radio installed into the Tacoma.  After my experience installing another Pioneer radio in my SSR and it taking upwards of 20 hours of my time doing so, I was nervous about the install despite what I found on the internet, making it seem like it should be pretty easy.  Imagine my surprise when it actually was easy.

Getting access to the radio just involved removing one panel.  The adapter harness I bought worked perfectly and the wire connections were very straight forward. In the course of two hours I had it all done, a minor miracle.

The radio doesn’t have all the features the 930BT does which is in the SSR.  The 310BT doesn’t support a back up camera, Bluetooth music streaming, direct Iphone integration and has a smaller screen but still it is a huge upgrade from what I had in there.

The menu system isn’t very intuitive either but with a brief glance in the manual I figured it all out in short order.

I videoed the install to add to my growing list of 99 Tacoma how to clips. Here it is.

Saturday night I wanted to go grab a new pair of flip flops, my old pair started to fall apart.  I figured I would take a run up to the Miromar Outlets.  I asked Ali if she felt like tagging along, she said she would, she hadn’t been to the outlets in a long time.

We grabbed some food as well while we were up there.  I bought some sandals at Oakley, a couple $10 shirts at the Gap outlet and a pair of dirt cheap wide receiver gloves at the Under Armour outlet to be used for bar work.

There was a funny/awkward moment as we we were driving back into Ali’s complex.  It is gated and after a certain time of day the gates close, requiring  you to use an access card at a sensor.  Well a car had just entered a hundred yards ahead of us so I hoped I could sneak through without flashing my card as well.

As I got close the the gate started to close.  Ali blurted out “Honey!!” as a warning and then quickly corrected by saying, “I mean, Shawn.”  I laughed and told her I knew who she meant.

Sunday morning I had a race to time.  It went pretty well although the three distances at once (2 mile walk/5k/8k run) presented a few challenges.  After the race I followed Ali back to her place.  We talked about bringing the dogs out to the house with Ali so she could bird sit while I pressure washed Tuki’s cage, which hadn’t been done since Ali moved out.

Ali actually didn’t show up to the house until after noon, she took a nap since she was exhausted.  When she got there I didn’t waste anytime pulling Tuki’s cage out in the driveway and blasting away.

Ali stayed to watch the Eagles game, lucky her.

That game was a complete ass beating from start to finish.  Everyone’s hope was the defense would come alive with the insertion of Todd Bowles as coordinator.  Instead it imploded, allowing the Falcons to drive up and down the field repeatedly.  I think they allowed the Falcons to score the first SIX TIMES they touched the ball, just an incredibly inept stat. They were in a word, terrible.

Once again they could not generate any pressure on the QB, registering two oh by the way sacks (one was a fall down) later in the game.  How a team that lead the league in sacks last year with basically the same core of players suddenly can’t get there this year is a mystery to me.

The offense was basically inept as well.  Vick, although he actually didn’t turn the ball over (a minor miracle) was mediocre at best, just like he has been since the short streak in 2010 when he took the job away from Kolb.  It is crazy that there is serious talk going on about replacing Vick, one of the most overpaid players in the NFL, with a third round pick rookie QB.  Talk about desperation setting in.

This also was a rather historic loss in another way.  For the last 14 years, Andy Reid had NEVER lost a game following a bye week, NEVER.  Evidently having an extra week to prepare always meant the Eagles were prepped and ready to go.  Well obviously that streak smashed into a brick wall Sunday.  Not only did they lose, they were crushed.  At no point during the game did the Eagles look like they even should be on the same field as the Falcons. It was that bad.

So what is wrong with this team?  By all experts accounts they are one of the most talented teams in the NFC.  Why can they not find a way to utilize all that talent in a consistent, effective manner?  I don’t know the magic pill but I do know if this team flounders it’s way to another break even season or worse where it misses the playoffs, we all may finally get a belated Xmas gift when Fat Andy is finally set out to pasture.

Monday I had a pretty much clean slate since I busted it up to that point.  The weather outside was pretty amazing with cool temps and low humidity, prompting me to open the front door and windows for the first time in roughly 6 months.

I did need to get something productive done so I weed whacked the property, something I avoided for the last 3 weeks.  Luckily the grass has started to move into it’s slow growth period as we head into the holidays.

I headed out to run a number of errands, enjoying my new radio as I did.  By the time I got back it was lunch time.

I decided to head outside to do some work on the bars.  I started off well, setting a new personal best in weighted pull ups, managing to pull chin high with 90 extra pounds hanging on me.

I thought I would round it out doing a 90 pound weighted dip.  I never had tried weighted dips at home before.

Because of the height of my parallel bars, when I do dips (unweighted) I sort of hop up and back to get into position.  Well without thinking, I did the same thing with 90 pounds between my legs.

Well as I hopped I started a pendulum movement with the weights that kept amplifying.  Within a second or two I lost control and came crashing forward.  As I did my right upper arm crashed into the top of one of the 4×4 supports.  When I landed I did a quick physical inventory and looked at my arm.  It looked like a nasty brush burn but it felt superficial.  I am very lucky I didn’t tear something.

At first I was going to bag it but I was now pissed off and decided to hop up there again after a couple minutes.  I was able to hop up without crashing but stalled out trying to push back up.

If you would like to see the crash as it took place, look here.

As time passed the impact area got pretty nasty looking as you can see here.

The rest of my Sunday I just sort of chilled out, literally.  With all the windows open the house literally got chilly at one point, enough so that I closed them.

It was a very productive weekend that started out high effort but ended coasting in gradually, just like I prefer.

Man the storm in the NE was horrible.  Seeing some of those pictures of Atlantic City and NYC were shocking.

Last night after work I figured I would stop at Lowe’s and get the paint for the bedroom.  What I expected to be a quick stop turned into a long, drawn out, annoying as shit affair.

When I painted the bathroom in July, the clerk at the paint counter convinced me to sign up for mylowes.com.  He told me how this wonderful site would keep track of your Lowe purchases.  He said in my particular case it would be beneficial because it would also keep my paint color code so I don’t have to worry about keeping old cans of paint around.  Ok, sounds great, I signed up.

So when I walked in there last night I expected to utilize my mylowes account to pull back my paint code.  I expected too much.

The first hassle was I didn’t remember my account password but I did have the little mylowes card with a bar code on it.  I asked if they could access my account using that.  He said he thought they could if they used their little hand held custom Apple Touch devices.

He walked me back to another counter and a woman that had one of these scanners.  At first he asked her if she could do it but it became obvious quickly that she had no idea how to do it.  She was fumbling around for awhile before the guy that was with me grabbed it and tried.  He was unable to get my account to come up either.

Ok, I told him I would initiate a password reset so I could just get into the info via the website.  After stepping outside and waiting for the email to show up, I completed the reset process and headed back to the paint counter.

The guy I was just dealing with had disappeared, I later found out he went to lunch.  Also other customers had showed up so I had to wait until they were helped.  In the meantime I went over to the public pc and logged into my account and brought up my past paint purchase, figuring that was all I would need.

So the woman that didn’t know how to work the handheld device was the one that was covering the paint counter.  I told her I finally had my account up so she could get the paint code.  She came over and looked.  It was like she had never seen mylowes before.  She said she didn’t see a paint code but I could tell that she didn’t even know where a paint code would be on the site.

She called over someone else and they said that the one number MIGHT be a paint code but he wasn’t sure.  My patience expired.  After more head scratching and confused looks I told the woman that I would just have to go dig out a paint can if I still have one.  I told her I didn’t understand why Lowes would push customers into using their site if the employees aren’t trained on how to use it.  Luckily I did have an old can of the paint in the utility room.

In the middle of the paint drama, I walked out and met Ali in the parking lot.  She brought her Volt to show me.

It’s amazing how far the tech has advanced in the past 5 years.  When we bought the Camry Hybrid it seemed like we were right on the cutting edge of cool tech.  The Volt makes the Camry look like old school.

Ali was showing me some of what she learned about the car during the brief orientation at the dealership.  The dual video screens, one for the dash and one for the AV system puts a huge amount of info at your fingertips.  The OnStar connection teamed up with Iphone integration puts a ton of entertainment in front of you.  Ali flipped through screens where you could check the local weather forecast, closest gas stations and what is playing in movie theaters (complete with plots and directions to closest theaters)

Of course all of this stuff is like crack to a techno-addict such as myself.  It is like driving around in your own little gas free space ship.  Ali was very excited about what will likely be her set of wheels for at least the next half decade.

With the back seat folded down Nicki actually has substantially more room to relax then she did in the Camry.  The hatchback configuration will give Ali a lot more flexibility to haul stuff in general.

So since I spent so much time at Lowes I got home much later than I hoped.  The game plan was to put another big dent in the paint prep for the bedroom.  I was annoyed I was getting a late start.  Well the start got delayed a lot longer.

My dad had called me a few days ago about some message he was getting on his laptop that he couldn’t get rid of.  I told him at the time to call me when he was ready to get the laptop on the internet so I could remote control to it.  Well last night he was ready.

I went through a very tedious process of walking dad through getting remote control software loaded on his laptop.  This was further retarded by his slow internet connection which is via a 3G wireless adapter.  Eventually after close to an hour on the phone I was able to rectify his problem.

 By the time I was done with dad it was after 8PM.  I was frustrated but wanted to at least get something productive done in the bedroom.

I patched a couple damaged areas around the window, swept the walls to remove any stray cobwebs and wiped down the baseboard area with a wet rag to ensure a good surface to tape onto.  It’s far less than I hoped to get done but at least it was something.

I expect the next 4 days to be both physically and mentally grueling.  In addition to the painting project I hope to get my Pioneer stereo installed in the Tacoma over the long weekend.  I am quite sure that will have it’s own unique set of “challenges” as well.

Just to make things interesting I have another race to time on Sunday morning.

At least I should have no shortage of things to write about come Tuesday.

So last night I finally began officially on the master bedroom painting project.  This project has literally been on the books for YEARS.  When Ali was still living out at the house we used our inability to decide on a color as a reason to back burner painting the room for a long time.  That and the fact that I view painting as a major pain in the ass.

Well I decided to finally just bite the bullet, take a couple days off this upcoming weekend and like Nike says, just do it.

I eliminated the color debate by deciding to just use the warm, neutral sandy tan color that I used in the master bathroom and that is utilized in most of the main living area.  No it isn’t splashy or daring but I think it will look good.

So last night after dinner I started the prep process.  I removed smaller items from the bedroom and utilized furniture sliders to get the bigger things far enough away from the wall so I could work behind them.

I removed the outlet and switch covers.  Every time I have painted other rooms in the house I get annoyed during this part of the process with the builder.  Evidently whomever they contracted to do the painting in the house were lazy assholes.  When they applied finishing touches to the paint they didn’t bother to remove these plates to do so.  As a result a lot of them are stuck on the wall, requiring some work with an exacto knife to remove them.  I mean how f’ing lazy can you be, just remove the one or two screws….

I was wishing I wouldn’t have to bother with the walk in closet.  I know sometimes when a room is repainted people don’t even bother doing the closet. However since the door to my walk in closet is open all the time it would look like shit if I left it builders white.  I slowly worked on the tedious process of first removing all the items in it before disassembling the two layers of wire shelving.

When I was done I was surprised how big the space was since I had not seen it with bare walls since the house was built in 2001.

I found the process a bit depressing as well on several levels.  As I was cleaning stuff out of course I came across Ali items that have not yet found their way to her condo.  I piled them up in a box.  It is unavoidable that this triggered  feelings of sadness about the death of what once was, regardless of it’s necessity.

Plus the idea that I was going to be painting and doing all the associated ancillary work in this big f’ing area myself was nothing that excited me in the least.  I am just going to keep my head down and keep plowing forward until I emerge from the other side.

Ali picks up her new Volt today, I am excited for her.

You can follow all the pictures from the paint project here.

Saturday morning I timed a regional cross country meet, the third year I have timed this particular event.  This was the largest event to date with 33 teams and 857 kids signed up.  Before the race some of the kids that were assigned to help out were given a task.

There were big envelopes made up for each team.  Inside each packet was that team’s roster along with the chip numbers assigned to them.  To make this process easier, I sorted the teams so each team had a contiguous block of numbers assigned to them.  I thought this couldn’t get much easier, you look at the first name and last name on the teams list and the numbers they are assigned, you then simply pull out all of the chips in between those numbers and drop them in the envelope.

Well despite explaining this process pretty thoroughly, even though I don’t think it warranted a thorough explanation, it somehow got messed up.  When I looked over at the table a few minutes later it was covered with chips strewn about.  I walked over and asked what happened.  The one girl said that someone was “confused” and messed up what I thought was a fool proof procedure.

I was pretty worried about the wrong chips getting into the wrong hands and the timing headaches it would cause.  Luckily they eventually got it all sorted out.

The finish line for this race is in the school’s football stadium which is always kind of cool.  The only thing that isn’t cool is the real turf that it is made out of has millions of tiny little rubber pellets which quickly fill your sneakers and adhere to anything placed on the ground when the field is damp with morning dew.  The good thing about real turf is I had zero issues with kids tripping on the finish mats since it is short and uniform in height.

I had a bit of a scare during the girls varsity race which was the first of four.  About half way into it the timing box started beeping continuously.  I looked at the indicator leds and saw there was an issue with one of the two timing mats.  I was really surprised because I was actually using two of the brand new timing mats I had received a a few weeks ago.

So I quickly cycled power on the timing box, hoping it was just some sort of weird glitch.  No dice.  I looked up at the clock and saw I was at about 12 or 13 minutes.  I was considering if I wanted to try to quickly replace the mat.  I imagined a nightmare scenario where a girl would be streaking towards the finish line I was still f’ing around with the mats so I decided to just let it go and rely on the one mat that was up and running.

Luckily it seemed to work out.  After the first race I swapped in another mat and it worked fine, confirming that my brand new mat was indeed dead.

After that excitement to start the day the rest of my timing duties went down pretty smoothly.  Despite the huge volume of kids I had relatively few problems.  The biggest problem was the roughly dozen timing chips I did not get back that we have to now try to get back with threats of a bill of $20 per chip.

I didn’t get off site until after 11:30.  I had to rush home and quickly post the results before heading right back out.  I was supposed to go pick up Ali to go look at cars, specifically a Chevy Volt.

Ali has been concerned that the Camry was getting up there in both years and mileage (it crossed 100k miles a few months ago).  The idea of getting smacked with unplanned repair bills wasn’t something she was real keen on.

I had been following the Volt for a long time.  It is a techolover’s dream car.  It takes what I think is an ideal approach to green travel, upping what the Camry does to an impressive degree.  Although the Camry is also a gas/electric hybrid, it utilizes both pretty equally to squeeze out it’s mileage numbers of 35/40 mpg, quite good for a sedan.  The Camry actually can be driven short distances in pure electric mode at speeds of up to 42 mph which we always thought was kind of cool.

Well the Volt can go around 40 miles of normal driving using nothing but battery power which is awesome.  If you are going on a long trip there is a gas engine that can be utilized as well so you don’t have to worry about being stranded if the juice runs out like you would if you had something like a Nissan Leaf.    The Volt potentially can avoid all use of gas for long periods of time if your daily driving requirements are not huge but is flexible enough to be used for long road trips as well.

Toyota actually makes a plug in Prius now but it only can go a maximum of 6 miles on pure electric mode which seems kind of silly.

I was the one that pitched the idea of a Volt to Ali since I saw they were offering huge incentives on the car since sales have been far less than hoped for.  She asked that I accompany her to the dealership since I worked as a slimy car salesman for 16 months in my early 20’s.

I called ahead to the local Chevy dealer to verify they had a Volt to test drive.  The sales guy executed sales 101, telling me he wasn’t sure if they had one (he knew they did), but he would check and call me back if I gave him my number.  Now, innocently he has obtained a contact number where he can hound me incessantly if he chooses to.  After probably reading a magazine for a few minutes, he called me back with the good news, they had one on the lot we could drive.

As we pulled into the dealership we were greeted by Jason, a friendly younger guy.  When I was looking at Camaros I had stopped in there and the place seemed to be populated with nothing but old stereotypical car sales guys.  I was glad we didn’t get one of them.

Jason grabbed the keys to the car and handed them to Ali.  I told her there was no reason for me to drive it even though I certainly would have liked to.  It is a geek’s dream.  Sitting behind the wheel reminds me of sitting in the one of those wrap around cabinet video games, there are just bells and whistles everywhere.

The test drive went fine, you couldn’t really tell you weren’t consuming any gasoline although the lack of typical engine noise was a good clue.  Ali liked the car.  There was one issue though, Ali didn’t want the options on this particular Volt.  Most Volts are equipped with leather seats, something Ali would never go for.  This Volt also had upgraded chrome wheels and a couple other things Ali didn’t care about.

The sales guy said he would go inside to do a search of other dealers inventory for something that was what Ali was interested in.  While he did that Ali got to look over more of the interior of the car in detail.  Luckily Ali approved of the cup holders, one of the most important things when it comes to buying a vehicle.

So we went inside and Jason showed us what he found.  The two cars that had the exact options Ali wanted were in two colors Ali did not want, red and blue.  Ali much prefers neutral colors like tan or the silver of the car she drove.  There was a silver Volt that had what Ali wanted minus the navigation system.

At first this seemed like a big negative to Ali but when Jason said the car comes with 3 years of free Onstar service which included turn by turn directions (minus a map on the screen) it seemed like less of a negative.  I told Ali she uses the NAV in the Camry very rarely and if she needed a map it already will reside on her Iphone. Jason said he also expects there will be a 3rd party smart phone app, similar to what is out for the Camaro that allows her phone to basically replace an in car system, displaying Iphone map data on the car’s AV screen.

Ok, so now we were landed on a vehicle that Ali would like.  Jason asked if we could get numbers that we were happy with if Ali would buy the car.  She said yes, although it would be a big stretch.  When Jason was running back and forth checking on things, he had left the print outs of the prospective vehicle on the desk.  I took a look at it and had to laugh a bit when I saw the print out included the dealer invoice.  I already knew approximately what the invoice was but I don’t think he intended for me to have it quite so accessible.

Ok so now they had to take a look at the Camry to see what it’s worth.  The Camry is still in great shape, it’s biggest wart is the high mileage.  I had run wholesale numbers on it’s worth prior to coming to the dealership so I had realistic expectations. Well Jason’s initial number did not come close to meeting those expectations.  They were obviously trying to “steal” the trade initially, another very common tactic.  They never expect a person to accept the first offer but if they are dumb enough to do so they make a killing on the trade so they always start very low.

I told Jason that number was way low based on the numbers I saw.  Of course he disagreed with my numbers and asked if he could bump the trade a grand if we could do a deal.  I told him that I had already been in contact with another dealership in Estero that was very interested in selling us a car.  I also said we were considering taking a look at a new Prius.

Basically, the most important thing you can do in a car sales negotiation is establish that you are not married to buying a car and are willing to walk away.  So, after some more staged back and forth talk about the numbers we arrived at a trade number $2500 above what we were initially offered.  It was higher than the black book values I found.  I backed this up by quickly checking retail prices of high mileage Camry Hybrids on AutoTrader which were not good.  It was a decent trade offer.

What made up for the median trade offer were the amazing incentives they are offering on the Volt.  2013’s have a $2000 rebate AND 60 month zero percent financing, wow.  If that was not enough to knock your socks off, come tax time, Ali will be receiving an ADDITIONAL $7500 back from Uncle Sam for the Volt purchase.  So basically you are getting a $10k spiff and free financing, it is pretty crazy.

So it was easy to figure payment numbers no interest to worry about.  The numbers still came in a bit high so Ali and I did some quick on the spot discussions related to divorce financial issues where we would utilize the majority of the remaining joint funds to help her knock down her monthly payment.  I agreed to do so in good faith, trusting that it will be accounted for cleanly when the time arrives to do so.  Even now, I was excited to help Ali to get into cool, new wheels.

So after confirming with me that I thought it was a good deal, Ali shook Jason’s hand and became the proud owner of a new Volt.  She should be picking it up tomorrow once it arrives from the dealership where it is currently housed.  Ali is hoping to employ my tech savy to get the Volt dialed in once she takes possession.

I walked away from the deal with the odd feeling of being jealous of both Ali’s living arrangements and future transportation accommodations.  She will probably save $100 + a month in gas at the current prices and can use the $7500 government spiff to fund her car payment budget column for quite a long time if she needs to.

When she posted about her Volt purchase on Facebook, her brother, whom has been on an anti-Obama jihad for some time now, immediately jumped all over the Volt.  He accurately pointed out that the Volt is HEAVILY government subsidized.  Not only will Ali get that huge spiff for buying a Volt, GM gets a spiff for making it, a big one.  He finds this egregious.

I don’t look at it in quite the same way.  I think the world needs to be pushed, pulled and dragged into a life where fossil fuels become a consistently smaller piece of the energy pie.  I think the Volt is the perfect compromise of both worlds.  Now the problem is, this tech can not yet be made available to the public at a price point where it will be widely adopted.  These government incentives are an effort to do this.  I think it is a big picture idea that is going to take time.  Unfortunately we live in a very short term, me first, fck you world where so many people care about themselves and themselves alone.

The Volt is also an effort to kick start domestic production of the massive battery packs that are used to power the car.  The last two decades have seen these type of technologies consistently farmed out overseas where they can be built cheaper.  I love that GM is relying on an American company to make these battery packs.  Ali’s brother was more concerned about the recent story that the battery plant has been nearly idle because of the slow Volt sales.  Again, big picture versus little picture.

The hope is that with the government footing a large portion of the Volt bill, this car, and others like it will become more and more mainstream.  The more mainstream they become, the less expensive they become as the technology is more widely adopted.  It’s a seed that was planted.  The government is watering it daily right now until it grows large enough to be self sustaining.  Will the plan ultimately be successful?  I certainly hope so but even if it would ultimately fail, I think it is a fight worth fighting.

I am a real fan of the greater good concept.  It is in everyone’s best interest to get away from fossil fuels both for economic and environmental reasons. (unless you are a fan of Exxon)  If you don’t agree with that basic premise and that in order to do so is going to take a massive financial effort to drag us away from the slimy tentacles of big oil, I would suggest you are sadly mistaken.

Saturday night I  headed downtown to meet up at a post race party for an 80 mile relay run that was held during the day.  I had a good time getting relatively drunk and hanging out with good people.  I got home just before midnight.

I had plans to run Sunday.  When I woke up right before 8am I almost immediately dismissed them, I felt shitty. Immediately the internal discussions start up, the taskmaster reminding me that if I blow off the exercise I will be annoyed with myself.

After I had my Pop Tart breakfast I felt a little more human so I started leaning back towards grabbing my sneakers.  My mind was made up when I saw it was a very comfortable 66 degrees outside, a temp I have not had the pleasure of running in for probably 7 or 8 months.

I drove down to the water park and decided to do the big 10K Oakes loop.  The first half mile or so I felt pretty shitty, questioning if I wanted to continue running for almost an hour straight.  Eventually things settled down and felt better.  I completed the 10K with no stops for water or a breather in what felt like a decent pace, I didn’t even bother to bring my GPS.  Mentally, I felt better for making myself get out there and do the work, even when I really didn’t feel up to it.

I picked up the dogs on the way back home since Ali was going to work and I was going to be home doing chores.  Since the Eagles were on bye this week I had all day to buzz around.  The lion share of my time was consumed by mowing, I spent well over four hours on the tractor since I mowed the back yard as well.

The weekend was over in a blink of an eye.

I doubled the time of this upcoming weekend thanks to the use of some of my vacation days.  By this time next Monday rolls around I hope to have the bedroom painted and the Pioneer stereo installed in the Tacoma.

I have talked a few times about my efficient and fast laundry technique.  Last night I documented the process for those out there that are looking to spend less time each week washing clothes.

I got my used radio for the Tacoma this week.  Included in the box was the radio and a brand new mic, gps antenna and USB/Iphone cable.  However there was one thing missing, the power/wiring harness that is used to connect the stereo to the trucks wiring.  I had already bought the adapter harness to connect the radio harness to the truck harness.

I double checked the auction listing to see if it mentioned the wire harness as being included or not.  It was not listed as being included so I had no tangible gripe with the seller.  Instead I had to hop back online and buy the harness I assumed was included, damn it.

I have yet another busy weekend in the forecast.  I am timing another cross country meet tomorrow which will easily consume over half of my Saturday.  The grass is due to be mowed along with my normal assortment of weekly to do’s. I have taken off the two days sandwiching next weekend with the intention of getting the bedroom finally painted, something I had hoped to knock out months ago.

Not that I had any intentions of shopping Abercrombie & Fitch anytime in the near future but this story will ensure I never will.  What a fcking tool.

Even though I went through a hellish installation process in doing it, I really like the Pioneer radio I have in the SSR.  The touch screen interface, integrated GPS, Iphone support and Bluetooth connectivity are all things I really like.  There is one problem, I hardly drive the SSR, once or twice a week is typical. 90% of my driving time is spent behind the wheel of my 99 Tacoma which has the functional, but boring factory stereo system.

I found a cheap, used Pioneer 310BT on Ebay.  The 310 isn’t as fancy as the 930BT that is in the SSR.  It has a smaller screen and not as many subfeatures but the core is there, integrated GPS, touchscreen, Iphone support and Bluetooth.

Once I saw the used unit I did a mad scramble to verify the radio will work in my truck.  I was amazed how difficult it was to confirm this.  So tough that I never 100% confirmed it, despite my polished web searching skills.  The 310 BT is no longer in production and evidently not many people put these radios in a 13 year old truck.

However the Tacoma has a double din opening, the 310BT is a double din radio, and I found a wiring harness that is used to connect an aftermarket stereo to the factory harness.  So I pulled the trigger.

I again took to the web for some preliminary info regarding removing the radio in a 99 Tacoma and again I found this info very sparse and hard to find.  I guess when I dig into the project I will have the video camera in hand to fill the media void.  When I did finally find some documentation on the radio removal, it didn’t seem too severe, much less involved than what I went through with the SSR.

If I successfully get the radio installed I’ll be able to eliminate several pieces of tech I have scattered around the cab of the truck like the GPS stuck to the windshield, the hands free Bluetooth device on my visor and the awkward mount I have for my Sirius Xact radio.

My chia seeds showed up last night.  When I opened the bag and looked inside it looked like something I would put out in the bird feeders.  Chia seeds are tiny, and mostly black.

I had talked to my buddy at work ahead of time, looking for advice on how to use them.  I followed his outline.  In a cereal bowl I mixed two tablespoons of the seeds, 8 ounces of unsweetened almond milk, and some frozen blueberries.

After giving the mixture an initial stir I let it sit for around 20 minutes, allowing the seeds to absorb the liquid, stirring it a couple times along the way.  The final consistency was sort of like runny rice pudding.  I could have thickened it up by using more seeds or less almond milk I guess.  It was my first time so I didn’t expect it to be perfect.

I dipped in my spoon and took my first taste of chia.  Damn, it was good, it was really good.  The almond milk and blueberries combined nicely.  After I finished the bowl I felt full and no need to grab some sort of supplemental desert.

There are tons of ways you can utilize chia seeds.  My buddy likes to add hemp seeds and frozen black cherries to his mixture too.  You can tailor it to suit your tastes.

What a great discovery and addition to my diet, get your chia seeds now.  Great taste along with fiber, protein, calcium and omega 3’s.

With my mom’s tight financial situation, anything that I can do to help her out is always a good idea.  My latest target was her monthly bill from Century Link.  Mom pays for DSL internet and old fashioned home phone service.  Together they add up to a decent sized monthly bill.

Well I came up with the idea of replacing mom’s home phone with the Magic Jack Plus, which would utilize her internet connection for phone service which would at least cut that monthly bill in half.  You basically pay for the hardware (I would buy it of course) and then it is between $20-$30 a YEAR.  Yes, that is it.  That price includes completely free and unlimited local and long distance calling in the US.  Mom doesn’t even have any free long distance included on her current home line, she has to pay by the minute.

The Magic Jack Plus differs from the Magic Jack in that it does not require a computer to operate.  That feature comes at a price as it is about double the price of the basic adapter.  Everything I have read about the Plus has been good.  It does what it is supposed to, provide low cost, full feature phone service for a fraction of conventional dial up plans.  You even have the option to transfer your existing phone number over to your Magic Jack, another thing mom probably would like.

To be honest, if I get one for mom and it works as well as I expect it to, I will be targeting the phone at the house as well.  Years ago I switched over to Vonage, which is far less than regular phone service ($16-1$17) a month, but an expensive pig when compared to the Magic Jack.  Plus the Vonage plan is only for 500 minutes of monthly calling, not unlimited so it would be a win/win.

Jeremy uses a similar device in conjunction with Google Voice and encouraged me to do the same.  The biggest negative for me was that for whatever reason, Google Voice has absolutely no numbers in my 239 area code thus making a number transfer impossible.

When I emailed mom about it I could tell she was somewhat cautious, although I think the opportunity to shave more off her monthly expense nut will convince her to let me give it a try.

This weekend I don’t have any big events like a Pull Up Jam on the schedule.  I would kind of like to go out and see Loopers.  I have heard from multiple sources it is quite good.  Unfortunately I haven’t found anyone with a similar interest in seeing it so I might go at it solo.  At least it will be a cheap date.

Of course I have at least a half dozen potential home related maintenance projects always ready to go and on deck if find the motivation level is there.

So as I explained on Friday, my game plan to attend the pull up event in South Beach, despite my dog sitting for the weekend, was to leave around noon and hopefully get back around 8, rolling the dice that there would be no excrement waiting for me when I got home.

I was surprised when Friday night I got a call from my mom.  She said she wouldn’t mind driving out to the house after she was done working on Saturday so the dogs would be ok.  I hadn’t even bothered pitching this idea to her since I assumed she would not want to do it.  Of course I was thrilled with the offer, it will eliminate the poop potential.  Mom said she would just stay the night and get up early Sunday to head to work.  Sounds good to me.

Saturday morning I was up and working early.  I had the girls ride with me in the van to Ali’s place to go pick up the Camry.  Ali mentioned it was due for an oil change so I told her I would do it while she was gone.  I left the van there and took the Camry back out to the house to do the work.  In addition to changing the oil and filter I added coolant and air to the tires.  The car really could use a bath but that is an extra cost service.

I spent the rest of the morning getting as much done as I could before I was to leave for South Beach.  When I have the dogs I don’t even bother worry about cleaning until after they are gone, especially now.  Very recently, seemingly to me since Nicki started on some thyroid medicine a month ago, her coat has rapidly transformed.  It has made her fur very long, much longer than ever before.  In addition, her shedding is non-stop.  In no time at all the carpet had various black spots where Nicki had been laying down, her hair just falls out.

I also noticed that Nicki’s level of thirst since being on the thyroid medicine is drastically increased.  She was constantly at the water bowl.  I really think this is all related to the meds.  I haven’t seen positive signs from the meds, Nicki still is moving slow and obviously has joint related pain.

So I got ready to pull out for South Beach.  I packed a small bag with various items, unsure exactly what I would be doing once I got there.  I included a towel, some water, a rubber resistance band, a change of clothes, my Flip camera and some deodorant.  That should cover most foreseeable circumstances.

I fired up the SSR, dropped the top and after filling the gas tank was off to South Beach.  I had the top down for the majority of the drive.  I actually drove through a period of significant rain with the top down.  I was on a section of highway with no real place to pull off to put the roof up.  Actually, as long as you are moving at a decent speed, the wind rushing on top of the truck shields the cabin from getting soaked too badly.

I had asked Luis, one of the Barstarzz members that invited me to the event about where the best place was to park.  He said the parking garage at the building which includes a Publix, Best Buy and Staples was a good choice if you don’t mind walking a bit.  The first two hours are free and the hourly rate after that is very cheap.  Cheap parking in South Beach is non-existent normally.  Since I only had the small bag to carry I didn’t mind the walk.

I did exercise some caution with my wallet.  I opted to leave it in the truck and just carry some cash and my credit card in a velcro pocket.  I had some concerns about some shady person snatching my bag when I wasn’t paying attention at the beach.  I figured if I kept my money, credit card and truck keys on me at all times that would be the safest bet.

The walk to the beach was pretty lengthy, maybe 6 or 7 blocks.  In my flip flops it took me about 15 minutes to get to the event, which was scheduled to start around 2PM.

By the time I got there it was probably close to 2:45.  There was a big crowd gathered around the bars watching people take turns on the 15 foot tall pole mounted in the sand.

The first thing I did was look for Luis.  Luis is an older guy like me that got into bar work outs late in life.  He is the one that invited me to attend the event.  I spotted him and introduced myself.  It was cool to finally meet someone I only knew virtually up until that point.  He kind of gave me the lay of the land as far as the event goes. Mixed in with the casual exhibitions there was going to be a pull up, muscle up, dip and free style competition, cool.  I figured I should at least give the pull ups a shot.

I wore my Bar-barians shirt to the event after verifying with Luis ahead of time that it wouldn’t be a problem. I didn’t know if it would be weird to be wearing Bar-barians clothing at a Barstarzz event.  Luis assured me it was fine.  I actually didn’t leave the shirt on for very long.  95% of the guys there were shirtless so I decided to join them.  If there is ever a place to show of the fruits of your calisthenics labor, it is South Beach.

As I was walking around I saw someone I recognized.  I knew I saw a video about him on YouTube a little while ago.  He goes by the name Raven (real name Ray)

I went up to him and introduced myself. Raven is a very unique individual and not a very young man, he recently turned 62 years old.  To say Raven believes in regimens would be an understatement.  For the last 42 YEARS, he has run 8 miles, everyday, on the beach.

He started doing this in January of 1975.  From what I saw on his website, he originally made a New Years resolution to run 8 miles a day for an entire year.  Well, he never stopped from that point on.  About 5 years into his running regimen he added pull ups and other body weight exercises into his daily routine as well.

To date he has run a total of over 100,000 miles in total, just an incredible feat. However what is really amazing is when you think in detail about the reality of what this man has done.  He LITERALLY has run that 8 miles every single day since 1975.  He has run through injuries, illness, horrible weather and just about any other adversity you can imagine.

As I talked to him I asked what was his biggest injury issue.  He said it was his back, at certain points he could barely get out of bed but he still put his 8 miles in.

Raven actually invited me to join him, a lot of people now run with him, at 5:30 at the 5th street lifeguard station.  If I knew about it ahead of time I may have packed some running gear and done it.  Instead I took a rain check and filed it away under the “to do’s” the next time I am in South Beach.

Raven was there because he wanted to take part of the pull up competition.

So the pull up contest eventually started.  As others made their attempt I tried my best to get loose.  Raven went before I did and knocked out 21 pull ups although his elbows were at 90 degrees at the bottom of his reps, a less than ideal range of motion.  There were varying degrees of correctness in the form many people used.  Some even used chin up grip for some reps. No one made a big stink though since they weren’t doing enough reps to win anyway.

Finally it was my turn to go, I might have been the 8th or 9th person to get on the bar.  At that point the most amount of reps was 22, which I knew on a good day was within my wheel house since my PR is 25.  I grabbed on to the highest of the three bars and started pulling.

I tried to keep my form very clean with my legs straight, feet together and using good extension at the bottom while making sure I was getting chin high at the top.  My pace was pretty quick and explosive early on, I got to rep 18 before I had to pause.  I managed to squeeze out 5 more reps to become the temporary leader with 23 reps.  It was kind of cool to have a big crowd cheering me on as I squeezed out the last few reps. I wish I gave someone my Flip to shoot video of the reps.  There was someone filming the entire event so I know my set is on film somewhere.  Hopefully I can find it.

As I was there a tall young guy came up to me and said hi.  His name is Max.  Max reminded me that a couple years ago he and I were communicating back and forth about exercise stuff.  Once he described the communication I remembered him but I still would have blanked on his name.

Max is almost the exact same height as I am, he is also 22 or 23 years younger than me.  Despite his long build he has been able to really do some high level stuff as far as body weight movements go, much more advanced than I have gotten.

Unfortunately Max also has had a ton of injuries along the way, despite his young age.  He actually was currently suffering from what sounds like a pretty serious shoulder injury.  In addition, during our talks he described a myriad of other injuries he has gone through.  Max is real focused and intense when it comes to achieving a goal once he sets it in his mind.

I talked to Max quite a bit, he seems like a real cool kid.  He lives in the Miami area, we exchanged email and phone numbers.  We agreed we should get together and work out once he heals up.

One of the other people I was looking for at the event was a woman I know primarily as “Low Bar”.  She is one of the few women that are actively involved in bar exercise.  She is from NYC and is familiar with the various bar groups there, including the Bar-barians.  She had flown down for the event.

I was periodically scanning the crowd for her but she was nowhere to be seen.  She showed up a little later.  I gave her a hug and welcomed her to Florida.  From the picture you can see why she is nick named Low Bar as she is less than 5 feet tall.

I sat next to her while the freestyle competition was going on.  I shot most of the video I took during the freestyle part of the competition.  You can see it below.

So the event started winding down around 6:30.  I was planning to simply walk back to the SSR and start the 2 plus hour drive home.  Low Bar asked me if I wanted to grab food with her cousin and her.  Since I had mom in place to tend to the dogs I said sure.

Before I left I found Luis and thanked him again for inviting me to the event.  It was a lot of fun to be around that kind of positive energy.  I should invite the Barstarzz guys to hit my backyard bar park, that would be quite the scene.

I got in on the group picture before I left.

So we walked towards Ocean Drive and picked a spot to eat, thinking we would just eat out in the sidewalk seating area.  Instead the hostess directed us inside to eat, um ok.  Well this place, called Mangos, evidently is also a night/dance club.  We were seated directly underneath a speaker that was blaring loud dance music.  It didn’t take long until I got up and asked the hostess if we could eat outside instead because of the noise.  She accommodated us but let me know there was a certain line in the sidewalk that I had to keep my chair behind.  No problem.

We had a good dinner.  Even with being outside it was still kind of loud, I had a hard time making out what Low Bar’s cousin was saying at times because of the noise and her strong Fillipino accent.

One thing that is nice eating outside is you get a nonstop stream of “interesting” people to look at.  Some of the fashion decisions that were on display were pretty mind blowing. After our meal we walked back towards the hotel they were staying at.  Once we hit 5th street I peeled off and started the long walk to the parking garage after giving them both hugs goodbye.

The drive back across the alley was a bit treacherous at times with some torrential downpours, including one I walked through to get to the front door of the rest stop.  You can see my level of drenching in the picture.

I  pulled into the driveway about 10:30.  After letting the dogs out (mom was already in bed), I took a shower and crashed into bed.  I was quite tired.

You can imagine the joy I felt when at 2:20 am I hear Nicki crying by the door.  I assumed that meant she had to go to the bathroom.  Well at least she is letting me know.  Well the funny thing was the first thing she did when I opened the bedroom door was go lay in front of my mom’s door.  I called her over and went out back.  She did a number two and a one so I despite my being delirious with exhaustion, I preferred that to waking up at 7am to the smell of shit on the floor. Unfortunately afterward I had a very difficult time falling back asleep.

Mom was up early, crazy early to get ready for work.  She wanted her alarm set at 5AM.  Well it didn’t take long for the dogs to realize there was something going on in the main living area.  They decided to wake me up a little after 6am, oh well.

So I told mom about my time on the east coast.  As we were talking I realized this was the first time mom has set foot in the house since Ali and I separated.  In fact, mom said it was the first time she has been at the house since last CHRISTMAS.  When she first said that I was sure she was wrong but as I thought about it I couldn’t remember any other visits.  It seemed impossible that so much time had passed so quickly.  My life does feel like a bit of a blur the last 6 months or so.

Mom was the first person to sleep in the bed Jeremy donated to me.  She said the bed was comfortable although she said she slept terribly.  I wouldn’t credit that to the bed though, almost every time mom stays at the house she reports poor sleeping results.  The deviation from her routine must through her for a loop.

So mom got ready and headed out around seven for work.  I thanked her again for her dog sitting, it was nice to not have to be constantly checking my watch when I was over in South Beach.

So despite a severe lack of sleep I decided I needed to get some running in for Mudder training.  I drove to the now closed for the season water park to run around.  My initial hope was to do four laps around the outside of the park which would add up to 8 miles.

The skies were overcast which made running early on pretty bearable.  As I got to the halfway point my right knee was feeling pretty shitty.  Each stride had an accompanying ping of soreness associated with it.  I decided to only do 3 laps instead of 4, finishing the 6 miles in 55 minutes and change, not a great pace but ok.  I figured running the last 2 miles wasn’t worth it if I was really hurting.  When I got home I iced the knee and it actually doesn’t feel too bad today.

Well that Eagles game was a bummer.  I actually was so tired I was half asleep for nearly 3 quarters of the game.  I was awake when Vick fumbled another two times.  His turnover problems are a real big deal.  Obviously opposing teams realize that the best way to beat the Eagles is to pressure Vick.  When this happens he makes a lot of poor decisions and he’s not good at protecting the ball.

Despite the turnovers the Eagles actually grabbed their first lead late in the game.  The drive that got them the lead had the opportunity to be a HUGE fail for Andy.  For some reason he decided to go completely against the book and go for it on 4th down with over 10 minutes left in the game on his OWN 30 yard line, a huge risk.  Luckily the Eagles converted by a few inches but man, he would have been crucified if they didn’t.

So anyway, the drive was very long, covering 17 plays resulting in a 14-13 lead.  All that was left was for the defense to hold the Steelers with a couple minutes left on the clock and the game could be secured.  Well obviously it didn’t happen.  The biggest fail was when the Eagles had the Steelers pinned back on their side of the field facing a 3rd and 12.  Instead of dealing the knockout blow, they played a soft zone that allowed a 20 yard completion.  Once that happened I knew they were done.

The Steelers proceeded to march down the field easily and kicked a game winning field goal with three seconds left.

It was a disappointing ending for sure but I think the bigger news is Mike Vick’s torrid turnover pace. The amount of times he has turned the ball over thus far this season is staggering.  He will obliterate the league record at this pace. Hopefully Andy is smart enough to eventually realize that either Vick has to take care of the ball better or someone else has to start taking the snaps.

Ali ran the Chicago Marathon yesterday, the reason I was watching the dogs for the weekend.  She had much cooler temps to run in this year, hovering around 50 which for me, would be ideal.  Ali prefers warmer air.  She managed to finish a couple minutes ahead of last year’s time but had a lot of struggles, especially the last 10 miles of the race.  She said her entire lower body was just in severe pain.

The good news or bad news, depending on how you look at it, is she gets to take another whack at the marathon distance in a month as she is signed up for the NYC marathon.

After the Eagle game I had enough daylight left to go out and hop on the tractor.  Once again it was not running smoothly, acting like there is still some ethanol slime in the fuel system.  I will need to find some additive that will dissolve the shit.  I never like doing chores at the tail end of the weekend but it felt good to get the grass done.

You know when I run, at least when I run by myself, lots of random thoughts go through my head.  As I was running Sunday my mind drifted to to the topic of people that spend a lot of energy screaming about “entitlements” and how they are ruining the country.  I then thought about the hypocrisy that many of these exact same people are responsible for parenting the most “entitled” generation in US history.

These people that are so eager to cut seniors medical or social security benefits are the same people that think it necessary to equip their child with a one digit age with the latest and greatest iDevice.  They feel it is important that they have some sort of video screen stimulation in front of their child’s face  most waking moments of the day.  Their child should not be made to suffer the cruel punishment of having to actually look out a window during a road trip and look at scenery.

These are the people that see nothing wrong with their child receiving a medal when their soccer team gets last place.  After all, children should be taught early on that no matter how hard they do or don’t work, they will be rewarded.  I mean wtf, how can parents complain about an entitled society when they parent in such a manner that does nothing but encourage that mentality?

I literally laugh out loud when I see bumper stickers were parents proclaim their child had a perfect dental check up.  Good job Sally, way to go Petey!

Their children are being raised in a bubble.  No one is allowed to yell at them, nobody should ever treat them unfairly, they are not allowed to endure hardship or struggle to attain a goal.  It is just handed to them.

You see, as much as failure hurts, it is an absolutely essential part of life.  If you are never allowed to fail you don’t ever appreciate or even know what true success is.

Maybe more people in the country need to go on solo runs so they can come to these type of revelations on their own.  Don’t talk it if you don’t walk it.

I saw this quote floating around Facebook and it struck me as so true.