Category Movie Reviews

On Saturday I handled most of the stuff that needed to get done for the weekend, including tending the garden.  I harvested another big load of broccoli.  My broccoli crop this year has been the most productive in recent memory.  I bet I have been pulling florets for close to 3 months at this point with no signs of it slowing down.

I had the girls out at the house with me most of the day Saturday.  As always, their presence makes anything I am doing better.

I also had a chance to watch Battleship, the latest Netflix dvd that was sitting on my counter for a week or so.  It was a quality action film that kept me entertained from start to finish.  It’s a strong rental if you like this type of genre, B+.

I had to do the prep for the big 10K race I was timing on Saturday.  With this race I take on some additional responsibilities beyond race registration and timing, namely making sure the registration area is set up and running efficiently.  I got the truck all loaded up and ready to go Saturday night, I wanted to be on the road EARLY.

The alarm clock went off at a very unwelcomed 3:30 AM but I pulled myself out of the sheets, the drive to get the task accomplished taking control.  I was on site at 4:30 AM, a full 3 hours before the race start and an hour earlier than I normally would show up for any other race.

I was the only person there other than the security guard for the Philharmonic who let me inside so I could set up the registration tables.  I worked solo for nearly an hour, it was kind of weird, knowing that in a short period of time the area was going to be swarming with people.  I enjoyed the calm before the storm. By the time others started to stream in I had the registration area ready to go and had done everything I could until the equipment truck showed up.

The timing for the race went well, even with over 800 runners signed up.  Other than a few minor things everything ran smoothly.  I got off site by 10 AM, not bad for a 10K event.  Unfortunately I still had a bunch of race work to do once I got home as well.  This race has some additional requirements, similar to the half marathon which require me to do some data massaging.  I had a frustrating issue getting a file created for the race photographer, something I had done before, which made it more frustrating.

Right was in the midst of this aggravation I received an email from a race participant.  The man was complaining that we based age group awards on gun time (time when race starts to when you cross the finish line), instead of chip time. (time you cross timing mats at start line to the finish line).   I responded back to him saying we always base awards on gun time, thinking that would be enough to satisfy him.  No, instead I get this back in a few minutes.

Thanks for the reply. But I remain curious as to the reason?

I find it useful to be able to compare my true chip time time amongst the entire field of participants.

If GCR uses a computer program – this ranking can be done in seconds.

Just some feedback.

Well maybe I was just cranky from being up since 3:30 or it was the building frustration from my data export problems, but these few sentences really annoyed the shit out of me.  Especially the suggestion that I could meet his needs in a few seconds if we used a “computer program”.

I wound up deleting my original draft email which was chock full of sarcasm.  Instead I took a few seconds to locate an article that explained that the primary reason this is done is because it is the official way a race is to be scored by the the USATF, the governing body of the sport.  Luckily, this response was sufficient to answer his curiosity and end the message thread. If it would have continued beyond that my inner smart ass would have run wild.

I finally figured out my data issue and decided to go blow off some stress in the SSR.  I hadn’t driven the truck for over two weeks.  I made a road trip up to the outlets.  A few hard acceleration starts where I chirped the tires in second gear followed by top down highway cruising with Linkin Park blaring was all I needed to ease my bad mood.

The outlet trip was to buy stuff for one of my Bar-baric buddies in Russia.  He won a contest back in January but his prize somehow managed to vanish in the shady Russian postal system, never arriving at his door.  So I bought some new prizes and am hopeful they arrive safely this time around.

On the way back I had a weird urge.  I wanted to find a set of pull up bars and do some reps.  I remembered someone telling me that Pine Ridge Middle School had a decent set of pull up bars as well as other outdoor exercise stations.  After finding the school I walked around, having no idea where the stuff was located.

The school grounds looked a bit dated by Collier County standards which has a number of modern, lavishly equipped schools dotting the area.  In contrast this place looked like it had been around for at least 30 years.

Finally I found a huge field behind the school and spotted the pull up bars.  The bars, like everything else outside looked old.  I hopped on and did 20 pull up reps, it felt solid enough.

I then started walking around the perimeter and came across 10 more fitness stations, including monkey bars, parallel bars and even a balance beam.  I did a little something at each station.  I imagined how cool it would be to make a full workout of the circuit.  I estimate the run around the outside of the field is at least a half mile long, probably longer.  Repping and running from station to station would be a great way to spend an hour or two.

This was the first place I have found outside of my back yard in the Naples area that has legit calisthenics equipment.  I was very pleased with my discovery.  If you want to see the pics of the different stuff you can see it here.

The combo of the SSR ride and the the quick bodyweight work out soothed my inner beast.  It was a good weekend.

Last night I received my latest Netflix dvd, the original Catfish movie/documentary that launched the present day MTV series. I wasted no time watching it, throwing it in my 360 to watch while I ate dinner.

Wow this was the grand daddy of deceit.  Nev’s story is pretty incredible, yet as I am finding out, deception in relationships that begin on a monitor is not unusual at all.  The level of deception in this case steps it up a few notches however. I found the film entertaining and well done.  Nev is a very likable guy.  Watching him stumble upon the deception is a pretty interesting process to witness. I’d give it an A-.

At the very end of the film is the explanation where the term “Catfish” came from when used in an online dating scenario.  It is quite interesting, in both the actual definition and the person that delivers it.

On Friday night I had a weird dream.

I found myself back in my meat cutting days at Weis Market where I worked for over 3 years in my early 20’s.  I had just got done doing something in the front of the room when my boss, Bob, told me to get something from the cooler in the back.

As I was walking back I was shocked when I saw on a top of boxes an egg crate style container that had live baby ducks in it. These weren’t tiny just hatched ducks, they were about the size of Tuki.  I had no idea why we would have baby ducks in there but the possibilities disgusted me.  Almost on queue as I was standing by the crate of ducklings, one hopped out and fluttered into my chest were I caught it.

I hugged it close to me and immediately walked out the back door as Bob was asking me where I was going.  I didn’t answer him.  I was walking through a neighborhood, looking for a safe place to release the duck to freedom.  Everywhere I looked it seemed there were gangs of stray cats that would love to take out the duck.

I walked and walked for a long time.  Finally I found myself in some remote forest with a nice stream.  Despite being held all this time the duck hadn’t made any fuss, almost like he knew I was his ticket to freedom.  I set the baby duck down in the water and smiled as I saw him happily paddle away.  By the time I got back to the meat room there were baby ducks walking around everywhere. End of dream.

Saturday morning I got up to do the club run.  My plan was to do one more 10 mile run which would be my final barometer in my decision if I was going to run the Hooters Half Marathon which is one week away.

I ran the first half 3.5 miles with Matt.  I ran the rest by myself although I did benefit from others being there.  During the last 3.5 mile segment, far ahead of me I spotted a woman that I designated that I wanted to pass.  I was making up ground on her tediously slow but the quest to pass kept my pace up.  I actually wound up running the last 3.5 faster than the first 3.5 miles.  I hit my goal when I finally passed her with about 300 yards to go till the park entrance.

I wound up covering the 10 miles, basically the same 10 miles that I felt so horrible on two weeks ago, almost 10 minutes faster, running at an average 8:47 pace, a couple seconds within what I did at last years half.  So I had no more excuses to not sign up for the half marathon, which I did later in the weekend.  It is going to be a tall order to beat my time from last year but I plan to utilize my “acquire target, run down target, acquire next target” strategy to get me through it.

On my way home from the run I picked up the dogs since Ali was working.  Compared to last weekend I had few things on the to do list.  One of them was to quickly run the tractor around the yard to mow down the few weeds that were sticking up above the mostly dormant grass.

Saturday afternoon I decided to attend a running club function at South Street.  They had a speaker from the local hospital come in to speak on achieving and maintaining better balance in your physical well being.  Of course I was already pretty well versed on that subject but the free food and a chance to hang out with some of my running club buddies made me decide to go. Plus it was a good excuse to drop the top on the SSR and go for a ride.

I had three beers during the 2 hour event and had a good time.  I was a bit surprised that out of the roughly 50 rsvp’s we received, almost 20 people didn’t show up.

I had a in home Saturday night planned since I was keeping the dogs overnight.  I had received my latest Netflix dvd in the mail, Moon, and wanted to watch it.  I had heard it recommended now by three different sources.  Moon is about a guy that lives alone on the moon in the future, running a mostly automated mining operation.  That is all I will tell you, which isn’t much.  However I thought the film was very well done, it was kind of a throwback to when sci-fi was less about special effects (SE still great anyway), and more about an interesting story.  Moon delivers, rent it.  Solid A from me.

Before bed I flipped on the bedroom Xbox and saw they were offering a free rental of a movie called Stolen, which I never heard of.  I thought it was was a bit odd I never heard of it since it was released in 2012 and it starred Nicholas Cage.  Well after viewing the film, I had a much clearer understanding of why that was, it sucks.

Normally a film with an action/revenge theme will win me over.  Well Stolen is just so incredibly stupid on so many levels it lost me very early on.  The bad guy crosses the line from evil to moronically silly so many times it makes me not care when he gets what is due to him in the end.  The casting of the daughter in the film was horrible as well.  Her attachment to Nick Cage was so manufactured and wooden I had to lol a few times.  You name it, it’s all there, bad acting, predictable plot, ridiculous scenarios, the movie blows from start to finish.  I see why they were giving it away.  My advice to you is to not watch it unless they pay YOU to do so. It gets a D from me.

So I awoke Sunday to a day that really had no major focal point.  I had the vast majority of my to do’s done.  Wow, could I actually have a Sunday where I was just lazy?  What do you think?

To get my exercise fix in I did a quick attempt at one of the BB challenges for this month.

Then later in the morning I had an odd series of events go down.  I had been seeing listings of Mitsubishi DLP’s for really attractive prices for a few weeks.  Evidently Mitsubishi is getting out of the tv business so the sets that are still left in the sales channel can be had at deep discounted prices.

You may ask why I would even be looking at a big DLP tv? I already have one, a 5 year old 73 incher that consumes practically every inch of entertainment “nook” in my great room.  Well I was thinking it would be cool to have one of the newer Mitsu’s that supports 3D, has 5 less years on the odometer and has some additional features my set doesn’t have.  Plus I could give mom my old set.  In my head, these things made sense, at least for a few hours yesterday.

So anyway, I was on slickdeals.net and saw that HH Gregg had an in store special of remaining Mitsubishi 73 inch tv’s for a great price of $799.  For reference, 5 years ago I spent well over 2k for mine.  Some stores had them still, some didn’t.

So just for the hell of it, I called our local store and was told by a guy named Chuck that they had one remaining and it was a display model.  He said that would knock an extra 10% off the price down to a crazy low $700.  Wow.  I was now in full emotional buying (like emotional eating), logic out the window mode.  I told Chuck I would be down to take a look.

I was so sure I was coming back with a new TV that I threw my ratchet straps in the back and two blankets to protect it from harm since it is a display model.  I get down there, walk in the store, and am a bit shocked that there are 7 or 8 men in read shirts staring at me, all HH Gregg staff with nothing to do.  There literally were more staff on the floor than customers.

I briefly said hi as I marched back to the tv section, obviously not requiring any assistance.  I saw the Mitsubishi sitting on a stand by itself.  It looked pretty much identical to mine albeit with some different A/V ports.  I was quickly greeted by a sales guy asking if I needed help.  I told him I talked to Chuck on the phone and would like to wait for him.  He said Chuck was helping a customer but would be with me shortly, ok cool.

I walked around the set some more checking it out, noticing how it was manufactured in October, meaning it wasn’t sitting around all that long, cool.  I thought of how it would be nice to have a fresh tv that I won’t need to be concerned about for a number of years and what a great deal I was going to score. And then it happened,  the voice of logic managed to crawl out from under the pile of bullshit reasons to buy the tv and said “What the fck are you doing?”

I started to reevaluate my reasons to buy the tv one by one.  Ok this tv has 3D support, cool.  How often do I watch 3D movies?  Not much.  When a 3D and 2D version of a movie is in theaters  I really don’t care which I see at this point, the newness has worn off and in fact 3D effects can get downright annoying at times and take away from the film.

Then I moved on to the logic of buying a new tv that is the same size of my existing tv.  There is nothing wrong with my current set.  In fact I just paid $200 a few months back to fix it.  Yes the price of the new TV was great but I could spend $700 less and still have a 73 inch great looking tv to look at, as well as not having to go through the hassle of installing it and transporting the old one by myself.

I then reminded myself that the Tacoma needs 4 new tires a lot more than I need a tv.  In fact there were countless better ways that money could be put to use.  So in the span of 60 seconds I had totally flipped my position.  Chuck had not gotten free yet and it was a good thing.  It saved me from having to awkwardly explain that I had come to my senses. I quietly exited the store, once again passing the hoard of salespeople with nothing to do, except Chuck.

I hopped back in my truck a bit disappointed that my compulsive buying itch was not scratched but at the same time knowing I would be avoiding the buyers remorse that would have been sure to follow.

So when I got home after my near miss tv purchase I was feeling conflicted.  I knew with as hard as I worked last weekend there was nothing wrong with me not wanting to do any projects this weekend.  Plus it was hot and humid on Sunday with temps crossing 85 degrees.  The project I was thinking about doing was cutting down the palmetto bush by the garden.

The palmetto bush has bothered me forever.  One time I spent a lot of time trimming it back hard to make it look a little better.  In no time it became overgrown and ugly looking once again.

So anyway, I was fighting the urge to start the project.  However I grabbed my new cordless reciprocating saw mid-afternoon and walked down to the bush.  I thought that maybe I would just try out my new saw to see how it works.  Well that was the beginning of the end.

At first I thought I would just zip off a few branches.  Well then a few became a few dozen, then after the battery died, out came the extension cord and my original sawz all.  I worked my ass off for a couple hours, sweating and cursing myself along the way for not being able to just chill out.

By the time I was finished the bush looked like this.  I am hoping to get my neighbor to help me using his large tractor to dig/rip the base of the palmetto out of the ground.  It will be a MAJOR pain in the ass to try to do that by hand.

I had some good news in my fight to cut back usage of web host resources by the Bar-barians web site.  Since I implemented a Cloudfront CDN I saw the usage numbers on the site go down dramatically.  Well my good feelings were short lived when I saw another email from my web host this morning that basically said “good, but not good enough”.

Take a look at Feb 23rd and 24th, the first two FULL days of using the CDN. (22nd had it up for part of the day)  The daily bandwidth which at some points was approaching 7 gigabytes was reduced DRAMATICALLY to less than 300 meg.

But the focus of my web hosts email was CPU time which has dropped a lot as well but still over their threshold for shared servers.

Well I noticed that actually this blog is consuming a large share of cpu minutes as well, which I never really paid attention to.  I know a LOT of people read my daily brain dump but I never thought it was enough to put a big dent in my server usage.  Well it is, using about 40% of my total cpu time.   In fact, if I do the same style of optimization on this blog as the Bar-barians site I am pretty sure I can get my overall usage back under the threshold where they will leave me alone.  That would be awesome.

The pool deck is scheduled to be painted on Wednesday.  I was undecided on what color I wanted to paint it, the wall color or the accent color.  After getting some opinions I decided I am going with the accent color.  If I used the wall color it would just be way too much with absolutely nothing to break it up.  The accent color is darker and warmer both of which will give the deck a dramatically different appearance from the off white color it was originally painted. The darker color also will not be so quick to look dirty. I think the end result will be pretty cool.

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.

As disappointed as I have been with the last two Eagle losses which in the end came down to the defense coming up small, I was pretty surprised that Andy fired Juan Castillo yesterday.  I guess I was surprised because although in the very end, the defense failed, throughout the games there were equally bad issues on the other side of the ball.

I have never been a fan of Castillo as the defensive coordinator.  Many times last year I was asking for this very thing (his firing). I never understood why Andy thought it was a wise move to insert a guy that has coached nothing but offense in the NFL as the defensive coordinator.  To me it seemed like Juan’s strong points were enthusiasm and cheer leading.  Unfortunately crafting an effective, consistent defense was something that was missing from the list.

Supposedly the guy Andy promoted, who was the interim Dolphins head coach last year, is a no nonsense kind of guy.  Hopefully he can somehow insert a toughness into the defense that has been missing for a long time.

Last night I finally got around to seeing Looper.  It was not quite as good as I hoped/heard but I enjoyed it.  I sure hope they invent time travel before I die so a younger version of myself can close the loop.  I’d give the flick a B+.

I missed the debate last night and could care less.

I started off my weekend at 4:30 am, dragging my tired ass out of bed to go run with the club.  If I didn’t have the Tough Mudder coming up on the calendar I would remained firmly in bed.  In my mind I felt like at some point before the race I needed to get the “long” course under my belt which is about nine and a half miles.  I figure if I can run that distance continuously, running the roughly 12 mile Mudder course shouldn’t be a problem since there are tons of breaks for the obstacles thrown in there.

I wasn’t really planning to do the long course yet, especially since my knee was bothering me just running 6 miles the week before.  I told Matt I would see how I feel once we hit the water stop at 3.5 miles and make my decision then.

We headed out at a pretty quick pace, something like 8:15 miles, faster than I would prefer if I was going for the long haul.  Eventually we throttled it back a bit.

Saturday was the first morning where it actually felt somewhat “cool” .  The temperature was right around 70 which is still high for 6am, but the humidity level felt much more tolerable.  I definitely could feel the difference when running.

When we reached the water stop I did a quick knee assessment.  It actually felt pretty good so I told Matt I was down for doing the long run.  So instead of turning right and heading back towards our starting point, we went left and ran another mile and a half to the end of Gordon drive before heading back.

My legs were feeling it pretty severely for the last couple miles, they had not been pushed to do this distance at this pace since I ran the Hooters Half in March.    My overall pace actually was almost exactly what I did in that half, no wonder I was tired. It felt good to get the long run under my belt. I would say the run combined with the 200 pull up lunch break qualifies me as being officially ready for the Mudder.

I took the SSR to the run, something I don’t normally do.  With the top down and the wind whipping around I was actually on the cool side, I had the heat blowing on my legs.

So when I got home I had a long list of things I wanted to get done.  I had already tried to get a head start by weeding the property on Friday night.  The first thing I wanted to get done was spraying Weed B Gone on the entire yard, at least everything that is close to the house.

I have had an uphill battle with weeds in the yard forever.  There are three weeds that like take over my lawn, two of the three I don’t know the name of, the third is dollar weed, or Creeping Charlie as I like to call it. I have been trying to keep the weeds under control by applying granular weed and feed in bag on a semi-regular basis.  That stuff is VERY expensive and overall I have not been pleased with the results.  It will normally hold back the dollar weed for a bit but it always returns.  The stuff doesn’t seem to touch the other two weeds that dominate the lawn.

Weed B Gone is a more direct approach.  You attach it to a hose end sprayer and blast away.  Unlike the bagged weed and feed, this stuff is designed to work fast, killing the weeds in a matter of days instead of weeks while leaving the grass intact.

Not only is this stuff more direct, it is also more dangerous.  When you read the directions there are a number of warnings, like don’t apply on a windy day, don’t apply within 25 feet of stuff you don’t want to die, don’t let pets on the grass until it is thoroughly dry, don’t let it run off into sewer systems, etc…

Well I didn’t pay much attention to one of the warnings which says to apply while wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt.  If some of it gets on your skin, you are advised to wash the skin for 15-20 MINUTES with water which sounds ridiculous.  I applied the solution with a steady breeze wearing shorts and a t-shirt, I definitely got some of it on my legs, arms and hands.  I rinsed myself at the end but only for a few seconds, hopefully I don’t drop over dead.

I am hoping the mass extermination of weeds combined with our going into dry season soon will allow real grass to fill these spots in a density enough to choke weeds out in the future. Time will tell.

I then grabbed by loppers and shears and got busy trimming and pruning a few things around the house.  This is a nice warm up for the hellish, November cabbage palm mass pruning that I will have to do.  You have no idea how little I am looking forward to that miserable job.

Next up was some tractor work.  The blades on the tractor, although only a couple months old had already dulled.  The cutting performance while mowing was pretty awful.  I decided to pull them off and try to sharpen them.

Luckily with the Craftsman mower, removing the blades with the deck on the tractor is much more doable than it was with the Cub Cadet which required me to yank the deck to pull the blades.

The blades were still more or less intact although the cutting edge was very, very dull.  I could saw away on my arm with one and not draw a drop of blood.  I decided to use my dremel for the job after locking each blade up in my table vice.

I have never tried sharpening with the dremel, the few times I did it in the past I used a grinding wheel attachment for my cordless drill.  I couldn’t find that attachment.

The dremel actually seemed to work pretty well.  The smaller grinding head gave me better control as I worked the cutting surfaces.  By the time I was done at least I could feel and edge on the blades.  It will be interesting to see how long my sharpening holds up.  I did a brief test cut and there was a definite improvement.

While I had the blades off I drug up the pressure washer and blasted the organic crud off the underside of the mower deck.  In the process I wound up splashing the wet, green/brown sludge all over me.

Finally I needed to give the SSR a bath.  The trip to and from SoBe last week had left the truck with a bug facial that needed to be cleaned up. After finishing up all the outdoor work, heading inside offered me no rest as there was cleaning and laundry to do.

By the time I was done it was after 3.  I was beat.  So beat that my original idea of going out to see Looper Saturday night got shelved, I was just too tired.  Instead I stayed home and threw in a Netflix dvd I had sitting around the house so long that it had dust on the cover, Underworld : Awakenings.

I have seen a number of Underworld movies.  They have a simple formula that works, vampires, werewolves, gruesome violence and Kate Beckinsale in tight leather body suits.  They stuck to the formula and once again it delivered a solid 75-80 minutes of brainless entertainment, B+.

So I woke up Sunday and was debating if I wanted to go for a bike ride or not.  Surprisingly, my right knee felt pretty solid despite running nearly 10 miles the day before.  Then once I decided I was going to get on the bike I was debating what ride I wanted to do.  I settled on doing the 17.25 mile Publix ride.

I pulled down the Dawes for the ride, thinking the aero bars would come in handy if I hit the sustained wind that normally is part of this route.  Despite it’s added weight, the riding geometry the Dawes offers is actually more comfortable than my lighter, higher end Trek 2.1.

For the first half of the ride I was hauling ass. I was over 21 mph for almost the entire time.  Of course I knew this meant I had a wind behind me, helping to push me along.  I knew this same wind would be my adversary on the ride home, I just didn’t realize how big of one.

Man once I turned back east it was miserable.  I knew there was wind, I didn’t think it would suck that bad.  I dropped a couple gears and got down on my aero bars, but only briefly.  I realized the elbow rest on the left side had shifted downward which made the position awkward and annoying.  Instead I grabbed onto the drops in my handlebars and stayed there for the majority of the ride home.

I struggled to keep my speed above 16 mph for most of the 8+ miles back.  My legs were totally gassed by the end of the ride where my overall average speed dropped to 17.7 mph.  I jumped into the pool with my bike pants and top still on to cool off.

After changing I hopped in the van to go pick up the dogs so they could hang out at the house with me.  I had cleared the slate of the majority of the chore list so I was looking forward to a day of relaxing, as much as I can relax.

Watching that Eagles game certainly did not relax me.

For the second week in a row the defense had the opportunity to win the game and for the second week in a row they failed to do so, in an even grander collapse.  However the blame for this performance certainly does not rest on the back of the defense alone.

Ok if you look at stats alone, you may think that Vick had a great game, well if you take away the blown coverage that allowed Maclin to run for a 70 yard td, Vick’s game was not good at all.  After making stupid predictions of next to no turnovers by himself the rest of the season, he was involved in 3 more turnovers.  Luckily for the Eagles, the Lions offense was awful for the majority of the game, was unable to turn any of those turnovers into points.

I addition to their stumbling offense, the Lions were playing horrible sloppy ball, committing an amazing 16 penalties.  If I told you a team had 16 penalties and failed three times to score any points off turnovers you would assume they lost the game.  You would be assuming correctly, unless that team happens to be playing the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles scored a TD late in the 4th quarter to go up 23-13 with just over 5 minutes left in the game.  A good team does not lose a game when playing a team that has sputtered all day in that situation.  Well of course as well all should now realize, the Eagles are not that good of a team.  Instead they allowed themselves to be gashed up and down the field.  They actually tried to allow the Lions win in regulation after committing pass interference in the end zone.  Instead the Lions had to settle for a game tying field goal as time expired.

Overtime  was a total joke.  After Vick took back to back sacks the Eagles had to punt out of the back of their end zone, giving the Lions great field position.  The Lions easily gained the yardage needed to kick the game ending field goal.  What a fcking mess.

Let’s point out a few names since Andy refuses to do so, preferring to just take blanket blame for everything once again.

Let’s talk Mike Vick, whom at this point might be the most overpaid QB in the league.  Outside of his great 8 game run in 2010, his stats since have been mediocre at best.  His new found love of turning the ball over has made his presence behind the center a liability.  I have never seen someone that turns over the ball this much be allowed to keep his job.

Vick gets hit more than anyone else I can remember in recent history.  It literally seems that more plays than not, he is on his back.  The blame for this lies both with him taking too long to get rid of the ball and an offensive line that seems to generally suck.  They appear to be out classed each and every game.  Andy always seemed to understand the importance of a good o-line in the past.  Granted they have had injuries that have forced some not so qualified players to step into starting roles, but again, good teams are able to rise above injuries.

Ok let’s turn to the special teams.  They suck.  I can’t tell you how long it has been since there was a punt or kick off return that was anything significant.  Hell they even threw Desean Jackson back there for one punt and he promptly lost a couple yards.

Ok how about that defense that has collapsed when the game was on the line?  Well the most obvious flaw is the dramatic difference in sacks this year when compared to last.  It seemed like Stafford was basically untouched, it was like we had four Mike Mamulas on the D-line, always one step away from making an actual play. Jason Babin and Trent Cole are totally ineffective all of a sudden.

Who the F is number 27 and why the F is he allowed on the field?  He was involved in almost every big passing play during the Lions come back, blowing coverage repeatedly.

I mean maybe all of this bitching is because of the false sense of how good the team was after the Eagles built a 3-1 record to start.  If you looked at how they squeezed out those wins it was obvious this team was far from dominant.  Now they are following last years blueprint where they lose games that could have been wrapped up if the team was able to perform when it matters.

If this team stumbles it’s way to another .500 year I think it will be the rubber stamp that Andy’s methods of managing the team have finally run it’s course.

Oh during halftime I went out and hung on the bar with one hand.

I was feeling pretty funked Sunday night.  Maybe it was a hangover from the shitty Eagles loss, maybe it was a combo of other things on my mind.  I just know that the world did not feel very bright and shiny.

Originally I had ideas of trying to run with the group on Saturday morning but my legs still felt like shit from my leg work on Wednesday.  Plus I was tired, still catching up on the sleep deficit from my late Thursday night Prometheus showing. Instead on Saturday morning I picked up the dogs early and brought them back to the house, Ali was going into to work. I had stuff to do around the house so I figured the dogs would rather hang out with me while I was doing stuff than be at home alone.

I finally got around to creating a new to do list, something I have wanted to do for quite awhile.  For years I had a list pinned to the fridge of both short term and long term projects, Ali hated it.  However for me, it serves an important purpose.  I find having these items in front of me day and in and day out makes me much more likely to complete them sooner rather than later.  Having a “hey I should do this” item pop into your head and then just hope you remember to do it later does not have a high success rate.

This time I split the list into three categories, home improvement projects, home repair/maintenance, and automotive related items.  I am looking forward to starting to cross off some of those items.  I really need to knock some of those painting projects off the list.  Painting indoors is the perfect Florida summer project.  Anything involving being in the AC is an ideal summer project here.

I had another visit from the German Shep over the weekend.  Again she was cute as could be.  Well once again I walked her back over to her place which once again had the front gate wide open.  I walked her all the way up to the front door of the tiny house and rang the doorbell.

First the woman, whom I think doesn’t speak much english came to the door followed shortly by whom I assume is the husband, flanked by several of their multiple children.  I told them their dog, whom I confirmed is named Nina, was over at my place again.  I asked them if they wanted me to close the gate as I left.  He said no, he will put her in the garage, lovely.

So evidently Nina is either thrown outside or locked up in the garage, poor dog.  Later in the weekend I saw her walking in front of one of my windows, looking for her new friend (me).  By the time I got outside she had gone back to her side of the street.

After I got done with my house chores I took aim at flushing the coolant on the SSR, something I should have done shortly after I bought the truck.  There is a good chance the original coolant was still in the SSR and if that was the case, it is two years past the maximum recommend change interval of 5 years.

I followed the general procedure I found on SSRFanatics, draining the system and then flushing it with distilled water multiple times.  It took awhile to go through the fill, let engine run for awhile and drain cycles but it certainly wasn’t difficult.

I decided to document the process to add to my growing library of automotive maintenance videos, some of my more popular YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcEmach_hVw

During the afternoon I saw a number that caller id’d to Orlando.  Normally if I don’t know the number the caller will get a big fat serving of voice mail.  However for some reason I decided to pick it up.  On the other line was some young guy from the Festiva group.  I recognized the name, that was the company that took over ownership of our timeshare, another one of our poor investments,  several months ago.

I forgot the guys name but boy was he a talker, he immediately started rambling, I only interjected a sentence or two, for the better part of 10 minutes he did all the talking.  This was the crux of what he said.

As part of their grand take over plan, Festiva is offering to convert current owners off of their current deeded arrangement as well as the tie in to RCI, a company that I have already discussed here many times negatively.  RCI sucks plain and simple.  Well the idea of dumping RCI sounds good, keep blabbering away sales guy.

Festiva supposedly has their own exchange program that supposedly has very minimal fees compared to what RCI charges, ok that is nice as well. Who doesn’t like lower fees?  However I knew there was another shoe to drop, and drop it did, a big muddy work boot no less.

Switching over to the Festiva plan would be easy, easy as long as you were willing to drop ANOTHER $5500. When I heard that I may have literally said “what the fck” under my breath.  What a joke.  The joke got better.

The guy tells me that approximately 70% of the current owners have opted to switch over to Festiva (I am sure that is an OMGWTF lie), meaning that there is a much smaller collection of deeded owners remaining to spread those lovely maintenance fees across. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if my yearly maintenance fees double.  Ok, well now I was pissed.

I told blabber mouth that this is how it appears to me.  Festiva came in, sends out a letter that their new ownership is a great thing, they were already doing some repairs/improvements to the property and it didn’t talk of any other signficant changes for owners as far as costs were concerned.

The reality is they are using a Mitt-like Bain Capital approach to the timeshare.  Come in, gut the principals that the current owners bought under and give them one $5500 option to get out, else face higher maintenance fees, directly caused by their actions.  It was utter bullshit.

So when fast talker took a breath I stopped him.  I told him this was the bottom line.  If anything he is proposing involves me laying out another large sum of money to chase the other large sums of money we already flushed down the toilet with this timeshare he can forget it.  I told him I am now separated and there was not a chance in hell that I would be taking his offer.

I told him that if the maintenance fee armageddon he was referring to comes to pass I would simply dump the timeshare and walk away from it.  In my financial situation turning my back on the thousands of dollars we threw at this pig is a better option than dropping another $5500 to put lipstick on it.  F that.

Despite leaving absolutely no doubt that I was not going to do anything this guy continued trying to pitch me it’s merits.  He was determined, I’ll give him that.  For whatever reason I didn’t just hang up on him. Despite his annoying persistence, pitching something that is intended to do nothing but screw me over, he seemed like a nice guy.  Finally I convinced him I was not interested.  I thanked him for the info. Regardless of how I feel about it, it was important for me to know it was coming so I can act accordingly.

I let Ali know about it as well since her name is on the deed.  She is going to call RCI and see what they say about it.

So Ali texted me late in the afternoon she was leaving work.  I asked her if she wanted to grab dinner at Sweet Tomatoes after I dropped the dogs off, a place neither of us has patronized since we separated.  It’s a weird dynamic I find myself in with Ali, I know that I I need to put more effort into establishing a new social circle yet I find myself doing most stuff with her.

I guess part of the reason for that is our split was so amicable.  In marriages that split with a screaming, frying pan throwing, you f’d who hell storm, you typically won’t see the estranged spouses having much contact at all.  We have always been and continue to be good friends.

Anyway dinner at Sweet T’s was good, there wasn’t a big crowd like we saw during season.  Of course we ate later than the old people normally chow down, I don’t think we got there until after 6.

We made Father Day plans for her to bring the dogs out so we could do a swamp walk, something else that I hadn’t done in awhile.

Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to do a block (bike/run/swim).  Ali talked about maybe joining me for the swimming portion but she decided to stay home.  It was a tough session.  After biking more than 12 miles, running 4 and swimming a mile I was pooped to say the least.

After the swim I drove over to Ali’s.  She had a Father’s Day card for me from the animals which was cute.  I had the SSR so she loaded the dogs up in the Camry and followed me out to the house where we ate lunch before heading over to the swamp.

We knew it was going to be very hot for the dogs so we packed a lot of water and planned to cut the walk short.

The swamp is actually not very swampy at all, it was almost totally dried up.  15 foot deep basins that used to be filled to the brim with water now had nothing in them at all, it was pretty weird.

The dogs were obviously laboring in the heat.  We stopped much more than we normally would, both so they could drink and just lay in the shade.  It was funny watching the dogs veer side to side in the path, making sure to hit every shady spot they could.

We saw a couple gators nestled in the muddy shallow puddles that remained in a few spots.  We did manage to have one new swamp wildlife sighting, a doe and her baby fawn right out on the path behind us.  It was cute.

The dogs were quite glad to get back into the van, the Florida heat and sun is very tough when you are black and furry.

When we got back to the house I jumped in the pool so I could splash Sadie a bit to help cool her down.  You could tell how tired she was.  Instead of her normal sprint around the pool perimeter it was a just basically a fast walk.

As I was drying off I said to Ali how ice cream, specifically a milkshake, would taste good.  She mentioned how she still had a Cold Stone gift card with a partial balance on it as well as a coupon.  Ok , so it was decided, now we were going for ice cream.

I followed her to her place in the SSR to drop off the dogs.  We then headed over to Cold Stone or at least where Cold Stone used to be.  We discovered that location had closed so we went to another that was a couple miles away.

I requested an extra thin chocolate shake, something that can be hard to come by.  I hate when places basically dump soft serve in a cup and call that a milkshake.  I want to be able to drink it with a straw, not use a spoon.  They did a good job of meeting my request. The shake was quite good.

As we were sitting outside enjoying our respective treats, somehow the subject came up about online dating, specifically Ali asked me if I would consider doing it.  Well I was surprised she would wonder if I would consider it based on my tendency to favor electronic communication over all other types.  I told her that I actually had Match.com account already although it is the free variety where you basically can browse and have very restricted communication with other site members.

She seemed pretty surprised by that.  I told her that so far it seems like a weird scene, telling her that it seems I am of most interest to older women, an age range that typically is not going to interest me much.  I guess it was weird to even be discussing that at all with Ali, it just seemed to be part of the conversation.

So on the way back to Ali’s place we made one more stop at the grocery store so she could grab supplies to make the dog’s veggie meal supplement.

It was a fun Father’s Day albeit in a new set of circumstances.

Last night I finally finished watching The Immortals which took me a total of 3 sleepy nights to complete.  The reason I had it my Netflix queue was because it was from the same guys that produced 300, one of my favorite movies ever.

Well these guys had let me down before with that awful super hero themed flick that had the guy with a massive blue penis.  I was hoping that was a fluke and Immortals would be their redemption.  Well it wasn’t, instead it’s strike two.

The movie tried so hard to be epic.  It leaned hard on 300 style cinematography with many, many slow-mo, blood spewing, skull exploding fight scenes.  I just didn’t get into it, at all.  It was a chore to get to the end of it.  Mickey Rourke was the head bad guy.  His random and totally pointless acts of violence got so ridiculous I was laughing out loud eventually.

I don’t know if you could make a film that felt any more unoriginal than Immortals.  Don’t bother, C-.

Disclaimer, some spoiler elements could appear in the is entry.  If you want Prometheus to be a total surprise, skip today’s entry.

So last night when I got home my game plan was pretty much the same as most Thursdays since I have been flying solo, get some stuff done. I cleaned Tuki’s cage and did all the laundry I had in the baskets.

Somewhere during this process an odd idea popped into my head.  I should go to the movies.

I had been wanting to see the new sci-fi thriller Prometheus.  I had asked my mom and Ali if they had any interest in seeing it, neither of them did.  Well I have an established track record of not minding going to a theater with me, myself and I.

By the time the idea entered my head it was already too late to see the earlier showing at Silverspot.  My only option was the 9:30 show.  Hmmm.  I hopped on the Silverspot website to see how presold the show was, there was exactly one seat sold at that time so crowds would definitely not be an issue.

I was already feeling a bit sleepy at 7PM.  The prospect of seeing a late movie that would see me getting home after midnight on a Thursday sounded pretty daunting.

I didn’t commit either way mentally right away.  A little before 8 I decided I would go for it.  A 9:30 movie on a Thursday night is something I am pretty sure I never did before, that means I need to do it.

I hopped in the shower and into the SSR shortly after that.  It was a beautiful night for some top down driving.  I was glad to see the check engine light did not return.  I noticed something interesting while driving topless at nights, concrete is a huge heat emitter.

The air felt comfortable as I cruised along however I noticed every time I drove under an overpass I could feel the heat emitting from the structure above like a heat lamp.  The sun was already hidden behind the horizon at this point.  It’s just was a weird thing I never noticed before.

I was unsure how late DD was open, I was hoping to score a late night cup of coffee to hold off the sleepies.  I pulled in about 8:45, 15 minutes before they close, whew.

So I got to the theater about 15 minutes before show time.  Mercato, the happening night spot where the theater is located seemed very dead.  The parking garage was very sparsely populated.

This was the first time I actually paid for a seat on site, normally I handle the transaction via their website ahead of time so I can lock up a good seat.  Getting a good seat wasn’t an issue last night.  I got top row, dead center.

The theater was not full at all, there might have been around 15 bodies in there total.

So let’s talk about the movie.  I was in the 3D showing.  3D has definitely lost some of it’s gee whiz impact with me.  Yea it’s cool but I don’t know that it does much at all to significantly enhance my enjoyment of the flick.  Plus, theaters still charge you a premium to see 3D.  I would rather see 2D and spend 3 or 4 bucks less.

I came into Prometheus not knowing much background except it was a sci-fi thriller that was directed by Ridley Scott, the guy who did Aliens.

Visually the movie was epic as epic can be, it looked GREAT.  It didn’t hurt that you got to also see Charlize Theron in nothing but skin tight body suits the entire movie and another lead female cast member in her underwear for another long time period.

I found the storyline very interesting, a search for our ultimate creators.  The road that storyline traveled had a few bumps in the road and some head scratchers that you just had to not dwell on.

I saw tons of parallels to the original Aliens series, slightly crazy/evil android, hot chick being the main character and several other things that made me think they should have just called the film Aliens 4 or 5, (dont recall how many there were)

Well it didn’t become crystal clear for me that it should have actually been called Alien:The Prequel until the very end.  It wasn’t until then that I realized all of the other similarities were intentional, duh.

The film had plenty of grab on to your seat moments as well as “that is fckn gross” scenes.  Frankly I enjoyed them.

There were a few issues plot wise that I would have liked answers to but all in all I liked the movie and would give it an A-.  I didn’t walk away feeling like my $17.50 was a waste.

By the time I got home it was after midnight as I predicted.  My eyes didn’t shut until probably 12:30.  I don’t feel all that awful today, yet…

So I was back and forth if I wanted to get up to do the club run Saturday morning.  My legs and rear end were still both quite sore from my leg work on Wednesday at the gym.  Well my exercise guilt won out and I drug myself out of bed to go to the run.

There was a big crowd at the club run this week, possibly the biggest I have seen to date.  Ali, Christy and Michelle were there as well.  I once again paired up with Matt and despite my legs feeling shitty, he drug me along to what I believe was my best time for the 7 mile route which surprised me.

I asked Ali if she minded if I picked up the dogs on the way home so they could spend the day out at the house, she said it was fine.  I had a productive day at home getting everything I wanted done, done.  For most of my time outside the dogs hung out there with me, laying in various shady spots.  It felt damn close to summertime hot out there.

After I got done I jumped in the pool and gave Sadie her first splashy splash session in a long time, she loved it of course.

I also gave the Tacoma a bath for the first in many months.  The truck does not get cleaned very often anymore since the exterior finish is a mess at this point from a decade plus in the Florida elements.  Even so, it did look a little better when I was finished.

I went an extra step and finally got around to using the headlight renewal stuff I bought months back.  The headlights on the Tacoma had that dull glaze that is so common.  After about 15 minutes of work I had both headlights looking significantly better.

On the way to drop the dogs off we made a pit stop at Pet Supermarket to get them some food.  In addition I couldn’t help myself, I had to buy the stuffed tick dog toy I walked by.  Ali laughed when I showed it to her.

When I dropped the dogs off it was right around 5:30. Ali said she bought the stuff to make some pesto pasta thing, so  she asked if I wanted to stick around for dinner.  I didn’t have anything planned for my Saturday night beside some Diablo 3 sessions so I said sure.  Ali said it was the first “dinner” she has actually prepared since living there. It was quite good.

After eating dinner I didn’t stick around too long.  I have been conscious of how much time Ali and I have been spending together thus far since we split up and although it is still quite comfortable for me to just hang out with her I don’t think it helps either of us do much moving forward.  So even though I would have been fine to hang around and watch some stuff on her DVR and hang with the dogs, I headed home.

Sunday morning I once again had another exercise session, this time doing a biking/swimming brick.  My average bike pace was a 1/2 mile faster than the week prior.   I increased the distance of my swimming from 1200 to 1600 meters.  I was happy with both of those results.

Once again I took the SSR and once again I was happy I did.

After I finished my swimming I hung out at the water park for a little bit, reading one of my magazines.  I peppered in people watching as well.

When I got home I was feeling really sleepy.  After I got done paying the bills I succumbed and laid down for a 2 hour + nap.

Sunday evening I made a lackluster attempt at the normal mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge. I then threw in my current Netflix dvd rental, I Am Number Four.  I don’t recall what triggered me to put this in my queue but I had no big expectations for the flick.

Well it turned out to be something I really liked, hell I’d give it a solid A.  It has several elements that appeal to me, aliens, super hero powers, good looking women and a revenge storyline.  Rent it, you won’t be sorry.

As I am sure you have heard, Howard Stern, whom I have been a big fan of for over 20 years, and the only reason I endure shitty Sirius/XM radio,has joined America’s Got Talent as a new judge this season.

When the show first came out a few years ago I checked it out since it was getting big ratings.  I didn’t get it, I found the show INCREDIBLY annoying and overproduced.  After watching three or four episodes I never went back.

Well since Howard is now a judge I thought it had to be better, surely by now they got smart and made the show less annoying.  I set the show up for a season pass on my Tivo.  Well I barely made it through the two episodes so far, it is just awful, let me see if I can explain why.

The way they piece the show together is dreadful.  They do so many cut away shots between the judges, the host, the act and the audience you hardly ever get to just watch an act and make your own assessment.  Most of the acts they only show some brief highlights wedged in between the endless cut aways.  They have so many music beds playing on top of the judge comments and even the acts themselves that they could open up a hotel with them. They will also apply a video filter to certain aspects of the show to give it an epic, movie look which seems totally out of place.

I hoped that having Howard on the show would help negate all of this but his commentary was  butchered up and fragmented by the idiots in the editing room.  I found that he added very little to my enjoyment of the show.  I will suffer through a couple more episodes but I have a feeling even with Stern on, AGT it will be short lived in my season pass list.  I have too many potential good things to watch to waste my time watching that piece of shit.

It feels like it is produced for the absolutely dumbest segment of the American tv audience.

This past weekend has probably been my roughest emotionally since Ali moved out.  Why this would occur 6 weeks after her move out date is beyond me. I just felt sad, like I was mourning everything that had become routine and familiar over the past 15 years.    It seemed like everything I saw as I walked around the house triggered a “that was when Ali and I did this or that” response.  I just couldn’t get my mind out of that mode.

I know that wallowing in sorrow doesn’t do any good.  I just need to keep trying to reach outward and forward instead of retracting inward.   Isolating myself would be a very easy course of action after all.

I really miss the dogs.

So Friday I had to haul ass.  I was doing work at our Immokalee branch but I had made arrangements to pick up my mom after work for an early Mother’s Day dinner and celebration.  I got out of the branch later than expected so I hauled ass back to the house, changed, grabbed some extra garden veggies and then hopped in the SSR to get mom.  I gave her a call once I was back out on the road so she knew I would be a little later than expected.  Mom hates if I am even 10 minutes later than I estimate.

I was a bit worried as I pulled out onto the main road with the top down.  There was a huge gray cloud near by that was obviously dumping precipitation.  I estimated with the direction the road curves I should just miss it.  I was mostly right, I drove through some drizzle but nothing serious.

So I get to mom’s place, hand her the veggies and am ready to go.  Mom stops me and asks if I could quickly reassemble her Roomba.  It ran over something which made the brushes pop out.

So we hopped in the SSR and were off.  Mom was concerned about her hair blowing around so I put up the side windows to minimize the wind in the cabin.  Mom definitely enjoys riding around in the SSR, who wouldn’t?

So originally I thought we could go to Watermark Grille, an old favorite of mom’s that we had not visited in awhile.  Mom actually had her own suggestion, PF Changs, another place I had not been to in ages.  Well that was fine with me.

I was sort of surprised when they said it would be a 20-25 minute wait.  I guess since we are firmly out of the dreaded snowbird season I assumed that we wouldn’t have to wait.  It was no big deal, I bought my mom and I something from the bar and we sat in the outside seating area until our buzzer lit up.

We had a nice meal.  We opted for a 39.95 dinner for 2 combo that included soup, a starter, the entre and mini-deserts.  Mom actually wound up getting an entire additional free meal.

As we were sitting there a server came out with a second plate of what mom ordered.  He said her original plate was a bit short on scallops so to compensate they were bringing out another whole serving.  Sweet.

After dinner I took mom over to Trader Joe’s which is part of the same shopping area.  By the time we got there it was after 8.  The parking lot was very empty which was wonderful.  Every time I have been there before it was crowded to the point of annoyance.

Mom and I walked the entire store.  Mom saw some things that were more expensive than she was used to from her years of grocery shopping but she also saw quite a few good deals.  Mom picked up a few items which I paid for along with the stuff I got, I told mom she could consider it part of her Mother’s Day present.

On the ride back to mom’s place she no longer cared about her hair so we put all the windows down.  Her mad scientist hair looked pretty funny.

I gave mom her Mother’s Day card and was on my way home shortly afterward.  It seemed like mom genuinely had a nice time which I was to happy to see.

Saturday morning Ali decided to do a sprint triathlon.  Sadie had an appointment at the vet for a booster for her Lyme Disease vaccination at 9:30 so Ali asked if I could take her.  In addition Ali had 3 or 4 other things she wanted checked out while I had the dogs there.  I also was on call for the upgrade that was being done at our remote branch.

I headed outside a little after 7, hoping to get all of my outside to do’s knocked out before the girls early 9:30 am appointment.  I had to hustle, by the time I came back inside it was almost 8:30.

I picked up the girls in the van and whisked them off to the vet.  Ali evidently did not let the vet know she wanted additional things done, they had only planned to give Sadie her booster shot which isn’t even administered by the vet.  I wound up sitting around for about 15 minutes until the vet was free.

While I was waiting a man and a woman came out of “the room”, the room where both of our cats were both put to sleep.  The couple was upset, the woman, almost uncontrollably so.  I felt bad for them, knowing all too well exactly what they were feeling, it’s horrible.

So the vet got free and took Sadie back first for her work which included the booster and the disgusting job of emptying anal glands.  Sadie was fine going back with the vet staff. Then it was Nicki’s turn.

Nicki HATES the vet.  She was cowering and shaking the entire time.  They had to basically drag her back to the exam room while I waited out front with Sadie.  Nicki had her glands squeezed and they also checked her out for a possible urinary infection.  After they brought Nicki back out they went over both dogs to check for ticks.  Luckily this time they came up clean.

I took the girls back to the house so they could hang with me during the day since Ali would surely be napping for awhile after her triathlon.

The girls were pretty mellow at the house, not doing a lot of running around and playing outside.  To be fair it was pretty much summertime hot and humid outside which probably cut down the fun quota a bit for them.

I attended to various things around the house including cleaning the inside and outside of the windows.  It was pretty amazing how my view of the outside world cleared up dramatically after I was finished.  I like clean windows.

At one point the dogs got another bonus ride in the van as I had to run out to the hardware store to grab a few nuts and lock washers to repair my Kreepy Krawler.

So later in the afternoon I took the girls back to Ali’s place.  Ali and I had planned to go see The Avengers Saturday night.  Part of that plan was to use a Fandango gift card Ali had to make for cheap entertainment, something we both can use due to our new financial realities.

Ali hopped on the Fandango site and tried to first book tickets for the 3D show since it showed at 6:45, a good time.  At the very last step of the process the site balked and said there were no tickets available.  DAMN, we both figured there must be a ton of people buying tickets up.  We then tried to get into the 2D show that was a half hour later, same deal, no tickets available.  Oh well.

I figured we better get up to Coconut Point with plenty of time to spare since apparently there is a huge demand for tickets.  I figured Fandango was only allocated a certain block of tickets for each show.  We left early to make sure we snagged a valuable and apparently hard to get ticket.  I was very surprised the movie would be THAT pre-sold considering it was at Coconut Point, a place that is traditionally very empty.

We got up there about 5:15.  We went right to the ticket booth prior to eating,  since I was worried about getting a ticket.  “Do you have any tickets left for the 6:45 3D show?” I asked nervously.  After a brief pause the clerk said she did, I happily handed her my credit card, whew, we managed to score tickets….

Our dinner was at Johnny Rocket’s, Ali had a free meal coupon that was supposed to be the cherry on our low cost evening out.  We had an average meal.  Our server was a bit awkward.

When we were done eating we still had like 45 minutes until showtime so I suggested we walk around a bit.  We made two geeky stops, the Apple store and Brookstone.  It was just window shopping though, no purchases were made.

So we go back to the theater and head inside.  After being handed our 3D glasses and grabbing our movie junk food, we head into the theater with about 30 minutes to go, nervous that even this early there may be an issue scoring a quality seat.  We turn the corner and look up at the rows of seats.  Not a single body is occupying any of them.  WOW, what luck, I guess we beat the HUGE rush that is surely going to come piling in at any moment.

Well that rush never came.  In total I don’t believe there were even 30 people in the theater.  Why the fck Fandango acted like it was sold out is beyond me.

So anyway, my anticipation for The Avengers was quite high, I was a comic book geek as a child.  I really was looking forward to this movie that ties together several prior super hero films that were all big hits on their own.  I was a bit worried that it would be impossible to adequately split the attention between so many characters in a way that felt right.  Well they did it.

The film was just great, just like everyone says it is.  I really enjoyed it from start to finish.  There were some really funny parts in there, the funniest of all were saved for the Hulk.  A couple of his scenes had me belly laughing, hard.

Ali and I were the only ones that sat through the entire credits to see the bonus/bonus footage.  I have to say, it really isn’t worth the wait but it did make me laugh.

We both agreed the movie was great. A+, see it, in a theater, tonight.

I dropped Ali off at her place and after helping her with walking the dogs, headed home.  I made plans to stop back at her place briefly on Sunday to pick up the Scooba she was borrowing and to help Ali pull the bed apart so she could vacuum under it for any potential tick visitors.

My plan for Sunday was to go do a full sprint tri (and then some).  I hadn’t done a brick, not to mention a 3 event brick in ages.  Other things have just taken priority.

Well originally I planned to throw the bike in the back of my Tacoma since that is what I normally would do.  As I pulled the bike off the wall I looked at the bed of the SSR, hmmm I wonder if I could get my bike in there??

Well it took removal of the front wheel and some careful manipulation but eventually I got my Trek in the back of the SSR, sweet!

The bike ride was the first event I tackled, doing the Livingston Road 12 + mile course.  It felt tough right from the get go, I struggled to maintain my mental minimum speed of 18 mph.

I had a funny moment after the turn around part of the ride.  In front me of was an obviously much older guy, I was making up ground on him very quickly even though I was still only going 18-19 mph.  As I got closer I saw he was wearing a FDNY t-shirt.  I gave the “on the left” warning and followed up with a “good morning” as I whisked by him.  I actually picked up the pace a bit from there to the traffic light on Immokalee Road, keeping my speed mostly between 19-20 mph.

Well I had a red light at Immokalee so I unclipped and stopped.  I was startled when I heard a voice behind me a couple seconds later, it was the old guy!  He said he wanted to thank me for the motivation.  Evidently once I blew past him he picked up his pace, caught me, and was drafting me.  I had no idea.  This guy was firmly into his late 60’s if not scraping the 70’s.  I was impressed he was able to catch up to me, good for him.

He said I was welcome to draft behind me for the next segment since he hitched a ride on me.  I told him it was fine I didn’t need to draft.  Well the old guy took off in front of me and stayed that way until I made the turn on Livingston to head back to the water park.  He was pacing 19-20 the entire way.  I was too gassed at that point to care all that much about passing someone that had 30 additional years on the odometer.  It did kind of put me in my place as a lukewarm average cyclist at the very best.

By the time I got back to the park I was really tired. The idea that I had two more events yet to complete did not fill my heart with joy.  After putting on my sneakers, stripping my shirt, drinking some water and sucking down a Goo I headed off for my planned 4 mile run, two laps around the outside of the park.

The first half mile or so of running after a bike ride is just very uncomfortable, especially if you haven’t done that transition in a long time.  I found myself early on giving myself excuses to only run two miles instead of the four I laid out because I felt crappy.  Eventually I settled in an was able to finish the 4 miles at an unspectacular but ok 9:12 per mile pace.

All that was left was the swim portion.  I went into the water park and hopped in the lap pool.  My first 400 meters was ROUGH.  Even though my time for it wasn’t horrible (8:45), I felt extremely tired.  My triceps were burning, a muscle group I normally don’t associate much with swimming.

However as I continued on the discomfort settled down, I pulled negative splits on my remaining two 400’s, racking up 1200 meters in 26:20, a good number considering the long, long lay off.

As I was swimming I was thinking about my chronic shoulder problems that have gotten worse over the last several months.  It then struck me that the increased shoulder problems coincided with the decrease in my time in the pool.  Swimming is a fantastic all around shoulder exercise.  I am hoping that my return to the pool will mean the departure of my aching shoulders.

After I was done I decided I would skip the pizza and fries water park lunch.  I figured I could grab a PB sandwich when I stopped at Ali’s, my next stop.

When I came rumbling into Ali’s place with the SSR she emerged from the front door in an obvious bad mood.  She evidently was in a tick induced rage after finding a couple more on the carpet, including one that was engorged with blood.

Ali is at her wit’s end with this tick problem and now suspects that her apartment itself could be the source of the little blood sucking bastards.  She was annoyed that apartment management told her they could do a tick treatment inside her place but it would be an extra cost item.  Ali’s reasoning was she paid a premium to have the dogs there and if the prior tenants had a dog (they did), part of what should have been included is complex management doing a full flea/tick treatment of the living space before she moved in.   I agree with her.

Anyway, Ali had not made the headway into her to do list by the time I arrived.  I offered to handle her grocery shopping at Target for her to lighten the load.  I grabbed her list and headed to Target down the street.  In addition to the groceries I was also charged with trying to find some flea/tick treatment for carpet.

I returned with the groceries and tick powder in hand.  Unfortunately after reading the directions it became clear that the treatment would be best performed with the dogs out of the apartment for a day or so.

I ate lunch at Ali’s and then helped her move the bed components around so she could sweep.  I then offered to handle the Dyson to sweep her steps since it is a bit cumbersome to do without some significant upper body strength.  After verifying there was nothing else she needed I headed home.

I had a VERY lazy Sunday afternoon.  I originally figured I would lay down in bed and take a nap.  Instead I laid there and got up to date with Fringe episodes via Hulu. I watched 4 or 5 of them back to back.

My Sunday evening followed much the same pattern.