Category Rants

So yesterday was a frustrating day.  I have been patiently waiting for my mom’s remains to be cremated for several days.  When we first made the arrangements last Thursday we were originally told that Monday would be the likely day it would happen.  Well it didn’t occur until yesterday because of  delays first in the death certificate being signed by the cardiologist and then supposedly because the medical examiners were dragging their feet on giving the go ahead for the cremation.

Well in addition to the cremation, the funeral home was providing me with the death certificates that will be needed for various things related to my mom’s estate.  The plan was I would pick up my moms remains and the death certificates at the same time.  Well now it was the health department that was dragging it’s feet in producing the certificates.  When I picked up mom’s remains they said the certs were not available when their courier stopped by earlier however they should be ready now.  The funeral home director said he left a long detailed message with the birth and death records office telling them I would be stopping in to get the certificate since their building is in the same government complex where I work, ok fine.

So I head to the office where they produce the death certs and come into an area that is empty besides the Haitian woman sitting behind a window.  She was in the middle of eating her lunch. I told her I was there to pick up a death certificate.  She asked me for what year, puzzled, I said “Last week” She points to the wall behind me and tells me I need to fill out a form, as she went to pick her food back up.

I told her that I was actually sent here by the funeral home to pick up the death certificates for my mom. This began a few minute exchange where I repeatedly caught myself on the edge of blowing up in the face of this woman.  The woman told me that she knows nothing about me picking up forms, that maybe the funeral home talked to the other clerk who is out on lunch but  she repeated “noone told me nothing” in her thick Haitian accent.

She even got up and saw that the death certs were indeed completed and sitting on top of a file cabinet but her directive to me was to call the funeral home back because she can’t give them to me otherwise.  If I didn’t really want to get the certificates in my hand, this was the point I would have started to angrily chastise her for being insensitive to the situation and for being more interested in stuffing her face then sorting out the confusion.  However I instead took one more deep breath, and told the woman I did not have my phone on me, and asked if she could call the funeral home to verify I was telling the truth.

It was obvious that the woman was not very interested in doing anything that kept her away from her meal a second longer but she found the number and made the call.  Of course the call confirmed that what I told her was indeed true.  She finally handed the papers over to me after seeing my drivers license.  I suppose once I had the papers in hand I would have been able to lash out at the clerk as I wanted to during the heat of the exchange.  I declined however, not seeing any tangible benefit from doing so.  My energy would have been wasted since I don’t think she was a deep enough thinker to even comprehend what was wrong with how she handled the situation.

So once I had the certs I made copies and distributed one of them to my lawyer working on my mom’s estate.  Shortly afterward he sent me a draft of the petition that would be filed with the clerk.  I immediately flagged that he had my mom listed as living in Collier instead of Lee county.  I replied back to him about the error.   He said he listed Collier because the death certificate had a Naples address.  I quickly pulled out the cert and looked at it.  The street address was correct but for the city it did indeed have Naples instead of Bonita Springs.  You have to be kidding me.

So I called the funeral home back, unsure if the error was from the health records department or from them.  It was the latter.  The guy I talked to looked at the original paperwork we signed off on and it did indeed say Bonita Springs, somewhere along the chain it was mistakenly entered as Naples.  The guy told me that for most situations, the city error will not matter when it comes to using the cert to confirm my mom’s death to whomever needs it however obviously they owed me a 100% correct certificate that he assured me they would expedite. Ok fine.

So when I picked up my mom’s remains during the afternoon it was a sad moment.  I opened the cardboard box that housed the plastic container that contained the ashes.  I did not open the inner container, I simply placed my open hand upon it and kept it there for a few moments.  I immediately felt a surge of emotion as I tried to grasp that all that is left of my mom’s physical being is in this small vessel.  As I have often done in the last 10 days, I  quickly reinstalled the dam that has kept that flood of feelings under control as I backed up and drove away.

When I returned to my office with my mom’s ashes I thought it would be a little too weird to walk in there with human remains in hand.  I instead decided to leave them in the truck however for some reason I felt badly about leaving the ashes in a hot space.  I decided to leave the truck locked and running with the AC on for 90 minutes until I left.  I don’t expect that to sound sensical but not a whole lot makes sense nowadays.

So later after Cindy got home we opened up the black plastic container that contained the ashes.  When we did I got another jolt of aggravation and anger.  My siblings and I decided that mom’s remains would be spread in the ocean.  In order to facilitate that the funeral home recommended her remains be placed in a special biodegradable bag that is designed to dissolve in water.  Doing it this way prevents scenarios where human remains are blown around in the normally windy ocean conditions.  Thursday morning I reconfirmed with the funeral director that her remains would be in one of these special bags which would in turn be placed inside of a second regular plastic bag for safekeeping.  Well what I saw was just the ashes inside of a regular plastic bag.  You have to be kidding me.

Throughout this entire process I have been very patient with the delays and bad timelines we were given.  The events of yesterday, both due to simple lack of attention to detail seem pretty incredulous.  In the funeral home business I would think attention to detail would be taken for granted.  When you are dealing with grieving families the last thing they need to deal with is your fck ups, yet there I was with two of them in one day.

So I again talked to the funeral director, in a far angrier manner this time around.  When I told him of the mistake he groaned out loud as if he was the one who actually packaged the ashes and forgot to use the bio-bag.  I told him I didn’t understand how these sort of mistakes happen.  He apologized repeatedly.  So now there has to be arrangements to get ashes back to them to place them in a container as they were meant to be.  I certainly don’t want to be the one to do it.  So yea, anyway, the funeral home’s performance score overall has dipped greatly in the last 24 hours.

So last night I again transformed my great room into a high tech fantasy football drafting venue.  I forgot to do a total head count but I think we may have had 15 people in the house in addition to Cindy and myself. As always there was a ton of food and alcohol on hand.  As always I indulged in way too much of both.

The draft wound up around 11 but as always I needed to have the house more or less back to normal before heading to bed.  Thankfully with Cindy helping me this process didn’t take nearly as long as years prior.  I woke up this morning wishing I had taken Friday off.

This weekend is going to be all about getting things around the house back in order.

It’s odd, it doesn’t feel like my mom being gone has really sunk in yet despite it now being one week since she passed.  It feels like I am still able to pick up the phone and call her or drive be her community pool and see her out there chatting with the pool ladies.  Of course I can no longer do these things but I wonder when that reality will become more accepted internally.

On Monday I contacted pretty much everyone that needed to be contacted regarding my mom’s death.  My current focus is getting the will filed with the clerk of courts and getting my mom’s remains in my possession.  Due to what seems stupid rules and procedures, my mom has still not been cremated.  I am hoping it finally happens today.

I figure it would be a good thing to not focus exclusively on my mom’s passing, after all it is a pretty sad subject.  I thought a good old fashioned rant would help clear the pipes.  Let’s talk about the ice bucket challenge.

For those of you that are living in a dark cave somewhere, the ice bucket challenge is this years version of the Harlem Shake, a viral phenomenon where people are dumping ice water on their heads on video to raise ALS (Lou Gehrigs Diesease) awareness.  Prior to dumping water on your head you are supposed to name other individuals that you are challenging to do the same thing.  If you don’t take the challenge you are supposedly tasked with donating $100 to ALS, if you decide to go the ice route, a smaller $10 donation is advised.

Ok let me first say something positive, raising awareness about ALS is a good thing as is raising awareness about any serious disease or ailment.  But come on,how many people honestly care about ALS awareness that dump the ice? If you ask me, precious few.   This is all about looking silly, and encouraging others to look silly,which I guess is fine but the lemming mentality of it is something that I certainly don’t embrace myself.

However the thing that really perturbs me is when you start to look at where the national ALS foundation spends it’s money.  Their most recent public filing shows that only 22% of the revenue they took in was actually given back out to help ALS research.   The CEO of the organization was earning 325K in 2012 and every single position listed in their filing was paying at least 6 figures.

Unfortunately this is a very common scenario.  Somebody a long time ago realized that preying on the good will and charity of others is a great way to make a living.  Very few individuals that donate to a charity will take that extra step to actually look into how that organization is spending the money that is so generously donated to them.  For those of us that like to look behind the curtain, http://guidestar.org contains the full disclosure information for just about any charity you can imagine.    To me, skimming 78% off the top for salary and expenses is pretty egregious, unfortunately there are many examples of charities that give even less back, one of the biggest being Suzy G Komen.

So what exactly am I saying? Don’t do the ice bucket challenge? No.  If you want to do the challenge feel free, it’s your right to do so.  Personally I won’t be participating due to my built in dislike of going with the flow. But I would encourage you to be more picky about who and how you donate money to a cause.  Find ways to be charitable in a more direct manner instead of throwing money at charity custodians that sleep just fine at night skimming large chunks of money off the top for personal gain.

So yesterday I was busy making calls to tons of different places trying to get accounts of my mom resolved.   For the most part it was a positive experience, everyone was nice, cooperative, understanding, and offered their condolences, except one place, Century Link, who provided internet and land line service for mom.  I told the guy that my mom passed away last week and I needed to cancel her service.  The guy offered no “I’m sorry to hear that”, simply “What is the account number”.

I give him the information he asked for.  He then tells me there is a $200 early cancellation fee.  Well despite being a bit beaten down from the events of the last week  this instantly got my fuse burning.  I asked him how there could be an early termination fee when she has had the service for over four years?  My fuse expired when the guy says to me “Why did you say you were cancelling again?”  “WERE YOU NOT LISTENING? MY MOTHER DIED LAST WEEK” I blurted out abruptly and angrily.  I couldn’t believe he was paying so little attention.

The guy then tells me that the fee is waived if a customer is deceased, how nice.  He told me things were cancelled but was unable to provide me with some sort of confirmation number.  He said confirmation would arrive in the mail.  Idiots.

Another one of my calls was to the hospital billing department.  I was trying to get a handle on if I could be seeing any surprise huge bills connected with mom’s care.  As has been the case with every NCH staff member I have dealt with in the past week, the woman on the other line was extremely kind and accommodating.  She explained to me exactly how it all works and that I should not be scared by the massive bill I will be seeing in the mail.  She said that it will be submitted to Medicare and between that and the insurance supplement that mom carried more than likely it will take care of the medical expenses which is a big relief.  She even gave me her direct number if I needed anything going forward, so nice.

When we were cleaning out mom’s place we found a single pack of cigarettes in the small cabinets above the stove.  Evidently this was mom’s emergency pack.  A tired smile came across my face when I saw it was still wrapped in plastic and untouched.  The pack was thrown in the trash, something I wish we could have done permanently 40 years ago.

One of the bigger challenges in cleaning out mom’s place was what to do with my old 61″ Sony projection TV that I gave to mom years ago.  Mom loved the tv and it still worked just fine despite no maintenance in 13 years.  The problem is nobody wants older style tv’s anymore, even charities.  I tried giving it to the donation center a couple miles from mom’s place but they said they don’t take any TV’s produced before 2007.  So we wound up using the truck Todd rented to deposit the tv in the garage at the house.

Now I probably could have dicked around, listed the tv on Craigslist and gotten a handful of dollars for it but I just did not feel like adding that to my already long list of to do’s.  Instead I utilized my pretty reliable curbside disposal service.  I rolled the tv to the road, attached a sign that said WORKS GREAT, FREE and crossed my fingers.  When Torrin, Cindy and I left for an errand the tv was still there.  On our way back it started to rain which concerned me, if the tv was sitting out in the pouring rain it surely would no longer be worth anything to anyone.  I breathed a very large sigh of relief when we approached the house and saw the 61″ behemoth was gone.  When we built the house in 2001 the Sony tv was the crown jewel, fitting beautifully in the entertainment nook.  To have what was then a $3500 tv given away more than decade later felt a bit weird but if it continues to serve somebody else needs going forward I’m happy enough with that.

I was so tired on the way home last night it was ridiculous and dangerous.  I literally could not keep my eyes open and caught myself more than once momentarily dozing off.  Sunday night I awoke before 4AM to pee but could not fall back asleep as my mind was racing between everything I needed to do.  Last night my sleep was again interrupted by Nicki whining by the bedside to go out at 4:45 AM, something she never ever does at Ali’s place.  I’m hoping to get my first solid block of sleep in awhile tonight as I returned the dogs to Ali’s place this morning.

After finishing up my blog on Sunday morning I packed up quickly to head up to Troy’s place in Lancaster.  As expected, my two day parking bill under Liberty Place was quite steep, $82.  As I was making my way out of the city I got to see a cool feature of the Tom Tom in action, building view.  In major metropolitan areas not only do you get a clear view of the streets, you get an accurate view of the buildings along the street.  I thought that was neat.

The drive up to Lancaster was a bit on the lengthy side, taking me nearly two hours.  I knocked on Troy and Melissa’s door right around noon. I last saw Troy when he came down to visit me last year.  I last saw his girlfriend when I was up there to go to a Raven’s game 3-4 years ago.

There has been a new addition to their family since I was last there, Lydia, a high energy, friendly Boston Terrier.  Within 5 minutes the shorts I was wearing were covered in dirty paw prints as we hung in the back yard.  I didn’t care, she was happy to have someone else to play with her.

Troy suggested that we take Lydia down to the awesome new dog park they built recently, of course I liked that idea.  He told me that some local girl won the dog park by entering some contest held by Beneful, the dog food company.  For winning this contest Beneful built a half million dollar dog park for the city, wow.

The park is in a word AWESOME.  Instead of grass which requires lots of upkeep and water, the dog park is lined with RealTurf, the high tech artificial turf that is used throughout the sports industry.  For human beings there is a huge deck made out of composite lumber that never wears out.  On top of that are a number of Adirondack chairs that are under huge shade sails.

For the dogs there are wide open spaces to run, water features that can be activated with the press of a button, a tree that doubles as a tennis ball launcher, and even water fountains that have one level for people and another for their furry friends.  It was easily the best dog park I ever saw in my life. Lydia was a social butterfly, going around to tons of dogs and people introducing herself although she was a bit submissive when it came to dealing with a dog that wanted to aggressively play.  It was great hanging out there for awhile watching the dogs play.

When we got back Melissa had made us a nice lunch that we enjoyed in their back yard.  Troy did some solid work out there since I was last at the place, making a small eating area with landscape blocks that is covered with a small shade sail.  Troy suggested that we head out to a nearby bar with outdoor seating.  They had some sort of blues band playing, starting at 3PM.  Sure, I was up for anything. Like most things when you live in a small city, the bar was only a few minutes away.

I was surprised that there was a $10 cover to walk in considering I saw exactly 4 people in the outdoor seating area with maybe another 10 under the roof.  Troy generously picked up my cover. Now of course I am not a big fan of blues but as I said, I didn’t really care.  The band was a bunch of older guys fronted by a big black guy with what looked to be an ACL injury style knee brace.  He remained seated during the entire performance.  He mostly just sang but could play a mean harmonica occasionally.

The three of us kept a very steady flow of Miller Lite drafts flowing during the couple hours we were there.  The beer helped me enjoy both the music and my observational ability of the audience around us which happened to include two dancers from the original Soul Train show.  There was something interesting to see at every one of the few tables that were populated.  Melissa was enjoying the show.  The lead singer picked up on her enthusiasm during the performance and called her out more than once.  When it was all over he was more than happy to pose for a quick picture.

On Sunday night we just stayed at Troys place where Melissa made another nice meal, a pasta dish this time.  We decided to just hang there and work on the 30 pack of Miller Lites Troy had in the fridge.  Boy did we work on them.  By the time the evening was over the box was empty between the three of us.  I do not have an exact total of how many beers I drank between the blues fest and out of the 30 pack but I am absolutely sure I set a personal beer record, consuming well into the teens without a doubt.

As we were drinking we took turns reviewing some pictures Troy and Melissa had stored on some SD cards and then watching various Howard Stern content on YouTube which Troy and I found hilarious, Melissa, not so much.  I collapsed into bed somewhere close to midnight, it was a fun but exhausting session.

I awoke Sunday feeling dehydrated and a bit hazy but not nearly as bad as I would have predicted after drinking so much beer.  I had no nausea, headache or other debilitating issues.   Poor Melissa had to actually get up and go back to work, Troy had luckily taken Monday off.  Troy and I were throwing around ideas of what to do on Monday.  We started the day pulling Troy’s Mustang out of storage.

Troy has had this Mustang for nearly 20 years but I only had seen it in the flesh once, back when he still lived in Robesonia.  After turning it over for a little while the Mustang roared to life and he pulled it out of the garage.  Overall the car is in good shape considering it is 40+ years old.

Troy had me look at his brake lights before we took it out.  Some garage had done some work on the brakes awhile ago.  The end result was his brake pedal grabs VERY high.  Because of this his brake lights do not get activated unless he pushes very hard on the pedal, a dangerous problem for sure.  Since we were just taking the car on a relatively short trip to the diner we rolled the dice.

Hopping in the Mustang brought me back to the last old car I owned, my 71 Buick convertible that burned up in the early 2000’s.  Original muscle cars smell old, they creak and roll and make all sorts of noise as they rumble down the road.  At this point in my life though I am totally fine just riding in someone else’s old car.  I have no desire to  dip my toe back in that pool whatsoever.

The diner we had breakfast at was huge and pretty busy.  When we walked in the hostess told us if we didn’t mind sitting in a two person booth she could make sure we were in the section of a very pretty waitress.  I am not quite sure why she went there but we saw no harm in sitting in a two seater. It almost seemed like we would be rude to decline.  The waitress was attractive by diner standards I guess but not quite what I expected. We had a good but large breakfast, I couldn’t finish the egg white omelet I ordered, maybe because I dusted off the large side of tater tots and toast as well.

While we were eating we decided we go to Gettysburg, a place I recall visiting once as a child but with little to no recollection of the trip otherwise.  Troy is an American history buff with even more knowledge regarding the Civil War and Gettysburg.  He said on average he goes to Gettysburg a half dozen times a year.  He is so into it that he even took the test to be a part time Gettysburg tour guide.  I was surprised when he described just how difficult the test was and even more surprised that he did not pass the test, even with his near encyclopedic knowledge of the place. I thought it would be cool going there with Troy, it would be like having a personal tour guide to fill in the massive canyons in my Gettysburg knowledge.

After returning the Mustang and grabbing a few things at his place we headed out for the battlefield which was roughly an hour away.  The skies looked sort of menacing but a little rain wouldn’t have bothered me.  We wound up staying dry the entire time.

We began a combination by car and by foot tour of the entire battlefield region.  Everywhere you looked there were statues and monuments scattered about at key positions of the battle.  No matter which one I pointed at Troy knew who it was as well as an extensive back ground of this persons role in the war.  To me, it was really quite incredible.  I knew Troy knew Civil War history well, I didn’t know he knew it this well.

Having him by my side explaining things made the visit exponentially more interesting.  I imagine if I would have toured Gettysburg solo I would have tired of it much more quickly.

Some of the quick facts about the battle I didn’t know was that it lasted 3 days, not one and a total of over 51,000 troops died during the battle, the largest amount of casualties ever on American soil. I also found it interesting that up until closer to the mid 1900’s, the park was soley dedicated to the victorious northern soldiers.  They only added tributes to the southern forces much later.

A number of the grave markers had coins on them, one of the few things that Troy actually did not know the explanation for.  A Google search revealed that depending on the type of coin left it signified different things.  A penny means they knew the dead soldier, a nickel means they went to boot camp with the soldier, a dime means they served in the same company, and a quarter means they were in battle where the soldier died.  There were a lot of pennies out there.

Troy and I scaled several large sets of steps during our visit.  The Pennsylvania monument has a steep spiral staircase leading to the top observation deck.  We also climbed to free standing observation towers one with 120 steps and another with 100 that had pretty much everyone sucking wind by the time they reached the top.

In total we spent around 4 hours touring the place with Troy easily navigating the many roads that connect the various areas.  The trip made it very clear that ultimately he really should be doing something that taps into his passion for history.  He said he doesn’t think he would make a great tour guide, I told him based on what I saw first hand he would be a perfect fit.

On the way back we stopped at a Subway to grab some lunch.  Behind the counter was a an obviously younger freckled face girl whom we found out was 19.  I had made some comment when I was ordering my sandwich how I was trying to recover from a lot of drinking the night before.  All of a sudden she tells us how she prefers to drink whiskey, primarily Jack Daniels and Windsor.  I told her that she didn’t look old enough to drink.  She said she wouldn’t be for two more years.  She continued, telling us how she normally only drinks whiskey at home like somehow that makes it better.

Despite what surely were odd looks on my face regarding this revelation she continued.  She described her love of heavy metal groups and going to heavy metal concerts.  This mostly one way conversation continued even after Troy and I sat down to eat our food.  She came out from behind the counter cleaning tables while relating more stories about the 20 concerts she has attended, her most and least favorite concerts and how she has never been any further back from a stage than fourth row.  Both Troy and I exchanged looks of confusion during this exchange, I’m not sure how we got there.

On Monday evening Troy, Melissa and I headed to a nearby sports bar place that served brick oven pizza.  Neither Troy or I got what we expected in our pizzas.  Troy order the four cheese variety, little did he know that meant it was exclusively cheese with no sauce.  He described it as eating a big piece of garlic bread.  My “shrimp and roasted tomato” pizza was just the opposite, it had no cheese at all, odd. Prior to dinner we went on another Wixon shoo fly pie search which again turned up unsuccessful.  I did find a store made pie that seemed like a pretty close equivilent however.

Monday night we again just hung out since I had to get up early Tuesday to drive back to the airport.  No beer was on the menu however, all three of us had our fill the night before.  We did watch Gravity on HBO.  Yes I saw it before but watching it again was enjoyable enough.

I set my alarm on Tuesday for 5:15 AM.  Troy got up before I left at 6 but I was able to get out without waking Melissa or Lydia.  I thanked Troy for the good time and encouraged him to come back down to Florida whenever he could.  I always enjoy hanging with him regardless of the environment.

The drive down to the airport went smoothly as did the rental car return.  I was back inside the terminal by 7:45, plenty of time considering my flight to PA was not until 10AM.  The security lines in Philly can be tortuously slow so I didn’t wan to take any chances.  It didn’t take long until I had my first annoying experience of the day, which turned out to be filled with them.  As I checked into the kiosk I got the prompt to insert my credit card to pay my $25 bag fee.  I find bag fees along with the other once complimentary items/services that many airlines now charge for to be infuriating.  To me it’s just a pure money grab even though initially the change was blamed on fuel prices.

I had a lot of time to kill so I spent it doing some souvenir shopping and grabbing a large DD coffee to enjoy.  I also was on the search for an open electrical outlet to charge my phone which was drained quite a bit from the Bluetooth connection with the Tom Tom on the drive down.   It was harder than you would think to do so.  The charger I had along did not have real long prongs on the plug meaning it did not make a good connection if an outlet was already loose from years of use.   In total I tried 5 different spots until I found one that worked.

I had an interesting sighting as I was entering the men’s room.  Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor and current candidate to become governor once again, was headed into the store across the hall.  I thought it was quite odd to see him in Philadelphia but I assume he was taking a flight back to Tampa which was in the same general area.  When I exited the mens room I walked around the gate, trying to find him.  I would have liked to shake his hand and wish him luck in defeating Rick Scott, the biggest asshole governor in Florida history.  A selfie to share with Jeremy would have been even better.  Unfortunately I think by the time I was looking for him he had already boarded with the other first class passengers on the Tampa flight.

So I boarded my plane on time around 9:40 or so.  Although I wasn’t flying first class this time, I was lucky enough to be seated in an exit row which offers nearly first class amounts of leg room.  We were told our 10:05 departure was going to be delayed around 10 minutes to address a “minor maintenance issue” .  I heard a stewardess say the issue was simply a tray table lock that was broken.  The 10 minute delay was in fact a 33 minute delay as we got in the air at 10:38. This started a very long and annoying trend of overpromising and underdelivering, something that bugs the living shit out of me.

As I said earlier, US Airways is VERY big on nickel and diming it’s customers in coach.  The ONLY thing you get is drink service, even though this was scheduled to be nearly a 3 hour flight.  And if you do get a drink you do not get an entire drink, instead you get a cup filled half with ice, there is no way they would let you have an ENTIRE 12 ounce can of soda or a complete bottle of water.  Nope, you get one small cup and nothing more.  It’s ridiculous.

I mostly passed the time playing more PvZ on my Galaxy tablet.  I find the game to be a great way to make long boring trips less long and less boring as I lose myself in endless waves of zombie attacks.    As we approached Fort Myers we were descending and then suddenly felt a big surge with the engines along with an obvious changing of directions.  After 5 minutes or so the pilot came on and said there was some storms near the airport so we were going to have to circle for around 3-4 minutes before being able to land.  Ok, no big deal.

Well that 3-4 minutes turned into 45 minutes of maddening looping, during which a couple times we again were told we should be landing “very shortly”.  Then the captain comes on and says that he really wanted to get us to Fort Myers but the weather wasn’t moving.  He said protocol dictated that the fuel level on the plane was low enough that it required us to now divert to Miami to refuel.

Instantly a huge groan flowed across the cabin area as the passengers that were already sick of waiting realized that not only was their wait going to get much longer, anyone that had travel arrangements made for Fort Myers (like me having Cindy waiting to pick me up) had to wait until landing in Miami to let the other party know.  The captain told us we should be landing in Miami in 15 minutes, instead it was more like 45 until we completed yet another maddening holding pattern.

By this time I was really fcking annoyed.  Of course the pilot could not control the weather and nobody would expect to land is conditions that were dangerous.  I was annoyed that we left a half hour late for a tray table.  Those 30 minutes probably would have been the difference between a normal landing and the Miami diversion.  I was also extremely annoyed at the pilot for being one of those guys that threw out overly optimistic numbers instead of realistic ones.  Don’t tell me something will take 3-4 minutes if it could take 45, don’t tell me you will be on the ground in Miami in 15 minutes if it will take triple that, don’t tell me the flight back to Naples is 20 minutes when it was more than double that. Time and time and time again the pilot threw out timeframes that were nowhere close to being accurate.  I mean come on, use some common sense.  Underpromising and overdelivering is the way to manage a situation like this, not vice versa, idiot.

Of course the refueling pit stop in Miami took much longer than the captain indicated as well.  We were not allowed to leave the plane so there was a line that stretched the full aisle of people waiting to relieve themselves in the tiny on board bathrooms.  By the time we landed back at Fort Myers it was almost 6PM, almost exactly double the amount of time the flight was scheduled for.

Yet another annoying item was that despite the delays and consistently poor reporting of expected times, none of the airplane staff saw it appropriate to offer passengers any additional food or drinks. (unless you were paying for it of course)  This seemed utterly ridiculous to me and lacked simple common sense and courtesy.  People are frustrated, aggravated and annoyed.  A bottle of water or, gasp, an ENTIRE can of soda is a small price to pay to express “sorry, we know this is a pain in the ass”.  Once again it cemented my opinion of US Airways as being penny squeezing idiots. The cherry on top was the bags taking nearly 30 minutes to arrive at baggage claim, it was truly a travel day from hell.

Cindy was able to find out about the delays and rerouting after the fact.  Evidently the information online was well behind the actual timeline.  She wound up eating lunch and reading to pass the time.  I felt bad she had to twiddle her thumbs for so long.  She picked me up in the SSR.  It felt good to be in control of my own destination for the first time in 6 hours.

It was quite nice to return home to the comfort of another home cooked Cindy meal and the familiarity of the 47th  avenue estate.  Cindy worked hard to maintain the house in my absence, a duty I will be once again resuming this weekend.

Last night I did take the time to pay my bills and fire off this blurb to the customer complaint section of US Airways.com.

If you would like to see all of my pics from the trip they can be found here.

So even though I have had the chicken coop I ordered for several weeks sitting in the shed I hadn’t gotten around to putting it together.  There was no real rush because I knew we weren’t going to be getting any chickens until the PA trip was out of the way.  Well the trip is now officially out of the way so I needed to get to work.

It was off and on raining last evening so I decided the garage would be the best place to put the coop together.  I opened the two boxes and leaned the parts against the wall.  The first impressions I got were “cool, most of the hard work is already done” and “geez this wood looks rather thin and light duty, I wonder how long it will last”.

The coop parts were all predrilled with guide pins to help you mate the larger sections together.  The parts smelled and looked like cedar wood but I am pretty sure they are made out of some sort of fir wood that just smells like cedar. The instructions were rather spartan and included no words at all, only low resolution pictures that showed how stuff went together but not the order it should go together which caused a few problems.

Everything fit together well. My only concern was the potential long term durability of the structure in the harsh Florida climate.  The wood that is used is thin and light, light enough that I am planning to sink some sort of auxiliary anchors in the ground to make sure the coop doesn’t get uprooted in the gusting winds that accompany summer thunderstorms.  I plan to pick up some animal friendly wood protectant on my way home to apply to the coop to hopefully extend the longevity of the structure.

I got everything put together last night except the nesting box which I hope to get finished tonight.  After that we need to get chicken accessories like feeding/watering stations, wood chips, straw and finally the chickens themselves.  If things come together there is a chance we could have the chickens in the backyard this weekend.

I have had an issue with Facebook for a couple months when checking it on a pc, it’s slow as shit.  As I start scrolling down a newsfeed there are these lengthy, annoying pauses as more content is loaded.  It’s annoying enough that it will make me bail on the site.  I see the behavior on multiple machines using multiple browsers, IE, Firefox or Chrome.  Jeremy suggested I load up a couple Firefox plug ins like NoScript and AdBlocker to cut out the countless background scripts processes that launch when you load a complex site like Facebook.  Unfortunately I found these add ons also turn web browsing into an annoying experience as page after page won’t load until I interact with the plug in and tell it to let content load.  Even with using these tools, the Facebook newsfeed still runs like shit.

At this point I am not quite sure what is causing the lag infested Facebook browsing, perhaps it is the change they made awhile back where all of the videos embedded in your newsfeed preload and start playing as soon as they enter your browser view in a Vine-like manner.  Perhaps it is the mountains of unwanted ads that are now shoved into the typical newsfeed.  Maybe I just have too many FB friends whom I never actually met in real life, bloating the content in my feed.  Whatever the cause, I am really sick of it and frustrated that I am yet to find the root cause of the problem or definitive solution.

So yesterday I developed an issue with one of my WordPress sites I host with IX webhosting.  When I would try to authenticate to the WordPress dashboard I would be presented with a 403 Forbidden error.  Sometimes a WordPress plug in can cause odd behavior like this so the first thing I did was rename the plug ins directory to eliminate that possibility.  It still threw a 403 error.  Oh well I guess I’ll have to call support.

Any long time blog reader of mine is aware of the many, many issues I have had with IX Webhosting over the years, there are too many to enumerate.  However one thing I actually did like was that their call center was located in Ohio and I could at least speak with somebody that has English as a primary language.  They also have an online chat but that is staffed by Romanians whose communication skills are less than stellar, so I prefer to call in when I have a problem.

So I call the number and am on hold for a very long time, at least 15 minutes.  The reward for my patience was the other line finally being picked up by somebody with a very strong Indian accent on a poor quality line.   Immediately I could feel my blood pressure elevate.  Don’t tell me that IX has outsourced their call center to India…

So as is almost always the case when dealing with an Indian phone representative, the conversation was peppered with lots of “What?”, “Say that again..”, and “Huh?”.  It was frustrating as hell.  The communication barrier and the guys obviously lower level of technical expertise resulted in my problem not being resolved.  I hung up in near disbelief.  After having a four day plus outage several months ago that cost their customers collectively hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime, they decide to ship phone support to India, something that is is universally seen as a hated practice for customers.  Indian help desks suck, plain and simple.

The move just piled onto the multitude of reasons I should have abandoned IX webhosting years ago.  The ONLY reason I have not bolted is because of the massive amount of work and time that will be required for me to re-home the NINE web sites I house there.  It will be horrible.  It needs to get done however, I can’t continue to reward horrible customer service with my dollars.  I guess I need to start doing some homework.

Cindy has been having some issues with her phone connecting to my in home wifi network.  I found something online about some compatibility issues with my D-link router which is at least 5-6 years old at this point.  I used it as a good reason to refresh my in home wifi network.  I purchased an ASUS RT-AC66U dual band router after reading a number of surprisingly good reviews.  I never bought an ASUS router nor knew they even produced them.  This is the first time I have ever used anything beside a Linksys or D-Link router in my house.

After screen shotting all of the configuration on my old router I shut it down and put the ASUS in place.  Getting the ASUS online had some hurdles to clear and bugs to squash but I had most of it done before we ate dinner.  I like the UI for router, it is easy to navigate and as powerful as you need it to be.  The wireless performance boost was noticeable.  The 54 megabit top speed of my old router is now tripled, Cindy’s laptop was showing a 150 mb wifi connection, sweet.

Tomorrow Cindy and I fly out for PA for my sisters wedding.  It is going to be a very quick hitting visit with our flight back leaving early Monday morning.  I believe it is the first time I am stepping foot in the greater Reading area in at least three years, wow.  The major to do besides the wedding is to see my brother’s new house.  Other than that I will be giving Cindy a whirlwind tour of the area that I used to call home.

Tonight I have to run the dogs back to Ali’s place so they can be picked up by dogsitter number two.  Ali does not return until Saturday sometime.  I then will head home to do a whirlwind packing job followed by hopefully reasonable bedtime since the flight rolls out at a ridiculously early 6AM.

So a couple weeks ago Cindy upgraded the firmware on her Galaxy S4 to version 4.4.2 which is known as “KitKat”.  The Android OS likes to attach odd names to different releases of their operating system.  Well since doing so she has been complaining about various things and a quick search online reveals she is far from alone in her complaints.  Evidently 4.4.2 is widely recognized as being a buggy release.  There are many reported issues but the one that has been really annoying Cindy was the bad response lag when interacting with the phone.

Unfortunately there is no simple way to flip back to the previous stable version of the firmware, the only methods I saw to do so involved rooting the phone, something I would not rather fck around with.  There was a reported “fix” for the lag issue, a factory reset.  A factory reset is just what it sounds like, it erases the phone and sets it back to the way it comes out of the box.

Now of course you don’t want to do this without backing up your stuff ahead of time.  Samsung provides a utility called Kies to perform this function.  I fired it up and did a full back up.  After getting the green light from Cindy to blow the phone away I did so.  After the wipe completed I reattached the phone to Kies and did a full restore which should bring the phone more or less to the point it was before minus a few minor tweaks.

After completing the restore I handed the phone to Cindy and had her check it out.  All of her apps were there, her emails, her pictures, etc….. great.  As she was digging around on the phone I heard her say “no…..”.  I asked what the NO was about?  She said she lost all of her old text messages.  I told her they were supposed to be part of the backup, in fact I remember the backup pausing for a long time as it was backing up the old messages, yet they were nowhere to be found.  Cindy was very distressed by this.

This morning I reattached her phone to Kies and was unable to see any of the messages as part of the back up, how nice.  Depending on how crucial these old messages are viewed to be by Cindy will dictate how much more effort I will put into seeing if I can come up with a resolution.  Needless to say I am not very happy with how Kies performs.  If I knew old messages were going to be in jeopardy we could have used the built in back up functionality in GoSMS Pro to back off stuff ahead of time.

So yesterday I posted one of my many random observations from the gym.  The gym is a great place to people watch. People do a lot of silly things while working out, there are literally millions video examples of this peppering the internet.  Hell, take a look at the president’s gym routine.  If I saw that going on at my gym I would probably post commentary on it as well.

When I post my observations I try to make sure they are descriptive but not personal.  I describe what I see, smell, or hear that strikes me as odd or funny but I don’t preempt it with names  like moron, dipshit, d-bag, etc… I am basically just the gym reporter.  I also have admitted multiple times that at one point or another, I have been guilty of the very things that I find funny today.  Most people that I notice simply do not know any better, however that does not mean it isn’t funny.

Well more than once I have had people take offense to my commentary, viewing it as mean spirited instead of the observational humor it is intended to be.  Unfortunately this is just part of having an opinion, pissing people off.  Sure I could follow the rainbows, puffy clouds and unicorn approach to Facebook posting as many people do, never post anything even mildly controversial, opinionated, deep, dark or negative but that would be pretty damn boring, at least for me.

My opinions and thoughts that I have posted on Facebook and my blog have raised more than a few eyebrows over the years.  I know I have pissed off many people and that’s ok.  It’s what having an opinion and personality is about.  Some people will get it/like it and some people won’t.  I don’t get angry with people if they disagree with me, I certainly spend enough time being disagreeable myself.

I am going on my 11th year of putting myself out there, if you choose to tune in or tune out, it’s all the same to me.

Last night when I pulled up to the house the garage door was open and Cindy was inside of it holding a mop upright, an odd thing.  When I got out she said the reason for the mop was to try to coax a bird out that had flown in the garage when she opened it.  I didn’t expect to be involved in an animal project last night but of course I was obligated to.  This bird was of decent size, about the same as a mockingbird.  It apparently was not very bright.  Despite the garage door being fully open, offering a 20 foot wide escape route, when we would coax the bird from the back wall it would fly on top of the retracted door and hang out there.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the bird to simply fly out the door we started using additional tools including a towel, an empty plastic box and finally my big fish net from the shed.  No matter what the tool the result was the same, every time I would try to snag the bird he would simply fly to another part of the garage.  We even put the door down for a period of time hoping it would make it easier to capture the bird, that plan failed as well.

I was getting worried for the bird.  You could tell he was very scared and getting tired.  He had his beak open all the time, something birds do when overheated.  I stuck with the fish net.  I couldn’t get the bird to fly into it but I held it in front of him in a non-menacing way.  A few times he would step onto the frame of it for a couple seconds before flying off.  Finally, after somewhere around 15-20 minutes of attempts I got him to perch on the frame of the fish net while I very slowly lowered it and walked outside.  Ironically after all of that effort, once I got him safely outside he didn’t want to fly off the fish net immediately, he just sat there looking at me, probably due to exhaustion.  Finally he took off for a near by tree.  Another animal rescue mission was complete.

Cindy told me when she saw the bird she tried to put up the windows of the SSR up so the bird couldn’t go in it.  However when she turned the key it appeared to be dead.  I hopped in the truck and verified it was dead as a doornail.  The battery was just replaced last year so the odds of it being bad were slim.  My initial guess is when Cindy drove us home from the running club picnic on Memorial Day she  inadvertently left the ignition switch in the accessory position.  When I swapped out the ignition switch on the truck awhile back an unintended side effect was if you weren’t careful you are able to pull the key out of the ignition with it still being in the accessory detente.   It was raining last night so I didn’t bother to address it but tonight the plan will be to push the SSR out of the garage, jump it, and hope the battery is able to be revived via the alternator.

My brother-in-law who basically NEVER posts on Facebook was motivated to do so yesterday because of his own personal blowback from the Affordable Care Act.  His story followed what unfortunately is becoming a common narrative.  Since the ACA changes, his company, which by all accounts is doing fantastic financially, has told employees they are raising their portion of healthcare premiums drastically.  His current contribution of around $300 per month for his family of 4 could skyrocket to 1000 bucks a month.

I don’t think anyone that supports the concept of universal health care would see this as acceptable collateral damage.  However there are many facets to this situation.  The first thing I would question is just how honest my BIL’s company is in their accounting of the need to 100% pass increased health care costs entirely onto the back of their employees.  Like I said, from what he has told me, his company makes dump trucks full of money for what they do.  An unwillingness to split that pain more evenly with employees seems pretty shitty to me.

For every story like this you can also find someone with the exact opposite experience where the ACA was a godsend and for the first time in their life allowed them medical coverage for a pre-existing condition that in the past insurance companies could slam the door in your face for.  Of course these stories get much less coverage than the people that are getting the shaft like my BIL, whom are normally going to be much more vocal in expressing their outrage. My BIL puts most of the blame on Obama and the “ignorant” people that voted for him for this situation.  He feels bitterness and anger that he is being asked to pay a ton more for his premiums so that “beggers” can get coverage that in many situations is government subsidized based on income level. Although I don’t agree with the sweeping generalizations he uses to describe people that benefit from ACA I can understand his frustration.

I find myself in an odd position with this.  Although I have always supported the idea that a universal health care system is a good thing overall in a modern society, I think what was passed into law here was far too much of a byproduct of insurance company lobbyists.  The ACA act is making insurance companies a TON of money.  When the plan was pitched, part of the logic was distributing the cost of insurance amongst more people should overall lower the cost of coverage since you have more wallets supporting the load.  Obviously that has not been the case per my brother in law’s and many more examples.  And of course who can forget the now infamous Obama quote “if you like your current insurance coverage, you can keep it”.

The other smoking gun in addition to insurance companies is the medical profession itself and it’s RIDICULOUS costs.  What we are charged for medical care/procedures is nothing short of rape, it’s insanity.  Last week at the running club picnic I was talking to a fellow board member that had to go to the emergency room after laying down his scooter on some loose gravel.  He had a bad cut on his leg that required stitches.  While he was there the doctors insisted on taking an MRI of his head and a second one of his body.  Dave is a handyman/contractor that has no health insurance.  His bill for a few hours in the ER, $13,000.  Yes that is not a misprint.  To say he was furious would be a massive understatement.

My point is the health care and insurance industry gets you from both ends, insurance companies charging higher rates, using the ACA  as a catch all reason (despite it making them a fortune), and the medical profession that can easily bankrupt the average individual if they spend more than a couple days in a hospital.  It’s a horrible, horrible mess. Add big pharm into this equation as well, they may be the most evil of the three after all.

Just like so many of our countries largest problems, the core reason behind all of this is corporate greed.  Having individual health care being infinite profit centers for big businesses means things will never really fundamentally change because the money doesn’t want it to.

We are f’d.

So Cindy’s Prius has been sitting in my driveway collecting dust since last Friday.   The reason for this is she is not the legal owner of the vehicle yet.  You see the one, what we thought was minor bump in the sale was the seller owed money on the Prius yet so he did not have the title in hand.  We thought we had a good plan of action in place, the loan gets paid off, the car stays at my place until the title is cleared off the lien and then we complete the title work.  We figured since Florida went to electronic titling early last year the process should be real fast, bank pays off loan, notifies the state DMV, title cleared, bing bang boom.  Boy were we wrong.

The funds to pay off the loan were moved Friday, the bank officially marked the lien as paid and notified the state of Florida of this on Saturday.  As of of today the electronic title is still locked up tight, showing an outstanding lien, meaning it is unable to be printed or transferred.  Monday and Tuesday I was hoping the title status would flip since the state website says it could take up to 48 hours for the status to update.  It didn’t but I didn’t have much concern since we were still within the published time constraints.

When we went through the entire day yesterday with the status remaining unchanged my concern and aggravation started to pile up.  I was not alone in this concern.  The seller needs the deal to get wrapped up as well since he is relocating across country and was hoping to be on the road heading west by this point.  He and I both were rattling some chains to figure out why this was taking so long.  I called the state DMV customer service number.  After waiting at least 30 minutes on hold I finally spoke to some woman.  I told her the lien was satisfied on May 17th yet the online title check website still shows the title as having a lien on it.  The woman had nothing for me other than the lien satisfaction was not posted yet and that was all that she could tell me. Great.

I was texting back and forth with the seller.  He was on the phone with his bank several times trying to get some sort of answers.  The bank says they electronically sent the lien satisfaction notice as they should have.  The problem is there is no way for us to find out what the deal is in Florida DMV.  We don’t know when the lien will clear or if they even have it in their system to process.  It is very, very aggravating.

I suggested to the seller that maybe his bank could directly contact Florida DMV to either verify they received the communication about the lien or to directly communicate that the lien is now fulfilled.    He said he would give that a shot.  I was surprised when I got a call last night at home from Texas.  It was a rep from the seller’s bank, calling to fill me in on the situation.  She assured me the notification was sent to the DMV on Saturday and that whatever the hang up is, it’s in the DMV’s side.  She said it was possible that they only batch process lien releases a few times a week and we had to wait for the next run to go through.  I told her about the info on the DMV web site saying processing should only take 24-48 hours once the state is notified.  It was very nice of the bank to take the step to reach out to me but it didn’t really give me any more of a definitive answer of why this is taking so long.

You would think when the Florida DMV switched to an electronic only title system, that would mean an increase in efficiency and speed.  After all just clearing a field on a form and submitting it to any location around the globe via the internet takes a matter of seconds.  Why in the world there are days of time that pass before this change is reflected in the system is ridiculous and moronic.  It’s almost like the state has some schlub on a typewriter with a big can of white out that is making these changes manually.

So as of now we continue to be on the same holding pattern that we have been following all week long.  Lesson learned, when buying a vehicle privately, make sure the seller has the title in hand.

I am taking tomorrow off to be the shuttle for Cindy who is having eye surgery.  It will make for a nice 4 day weekend that has a number of activities planned including chores, race timing, and recreational, hopefully evenly balanced.

Friday afternoon work was pretty quiet so I asked if I could head out a bit early.  I had a bunch of stops to make and I also stopped at Ali’s new place to get a few more things accomplished.  Even though she has a ton of stuff to unpack, her garage has enough room that she can actually park the Volt inside so she can recharge it nightly.  I got a good chunk of things done.

Friday night I was quite pissed off at myself when I knocked a Mexican Coke off the counter and had it explode all over the kitchen floor.  Somehow the exploding Coke bottle shrapnel managed to cut my left ankle as well.  Cindy handled the lionshare of the clean up duties.

On Saturday morning I was up and working outside early wanting to get a jump start on the day.  I knocked out at least a half dozen tasks before 10AM.  One of those tasks was especially disgusting.  I have an LG front loading wash machine that I like.  For a little while I have had an issue where the laundry sometimes had a bit of an unpleasant smell to it, despite my effort to always leave the front door of the unit open when not in use to make sure it drys out to prevent mildew. There is another maintenance task that I have not been doing, cleaning the pump screen.  I last did this 2-3 years ago at least.  Cleaning the pump screen is an easy task but one I have let slip, perhaps because when I checked it before it was fine and didn’t need any cleaning.

Well for whatever reason I finally decided to pull out the pump screen Saturday morning.  As I loosened the fixture a small amount of water started to spill out which is normal.  What wasn’t normal was the stench that hit my nostrils.  It was like I pulled the plug on a septic tank, the smell was that bad.  I threw a towel on the floor to catch the disgusting water.  When I pulled the filter from the body of the washer the true horror show began.

The plastic filter body was covered in some some of slimy substance that instantly turned me into a mouth breather to keep me from vomiting.  I had no idea what type of organic matter I was looking at, I just knew I was looking at the source of my stinky laundry.  I took the filter to the sink and blew off the slime with hot water and then sprayed both the filter and the the hole in the washer it resides with bleach.  I reinstalled the now disinfected filter into the washer with a new mental commitment to clean it monthly.  I noticed the laundry that was done over the weekend was missing that tinge of sewage stench.

Once I got all of my home chores done I was once again off to Ali’s new place to get her computer equipment back online.  Ali was told by Comcast that her service was all migrated to her new address and all she should have to do is plug stuff back in and it will work.  Well of course this was not the case.  A call to them was required to get Ali’s cable modem working again at it’s new location. Ali’s computer stuff is temporarily housed on top of a folding table until she is able to buy an Ikea computer desk to match the Ikea shelves she already has in her new office.

Almost everything is out of Ali’s old apartment at this point.  Sometime this week she should be handing in her keys and will be 100% moved.  It will be awhile until everything finds its place at the new townhouse.

After getting done at Ali’s I headed down to the running store to handle the race entries that came in that day.  I had the laptop with me so I could do it on the spot instead of having to do the data entry at home later.  I got there earlier than I needed to so I had more sit around with nothing to do time than I prefer.  Saturday night race prep ensued culminated with setting the alarm for 3:45 AM Sunday morning.

So Cindy and I were the first ones on the race site Sunday, a little after 5AM.  We immediately spotted a big problem, there were no port-o-potties on site.  Port-o-potties are a pretty crucial part of any race as most runners want to make sure the tank is empty before hitting the road.  A text to the race director indicated this responsibility was not supervised as it should have been and instead was assumed to be handled.  You can not make assumptions in this role.

So now we had to come up with some sort of alternative.  Cindy scouted the area and identified a 7-11 two blocks away and the public bathrooms at the Naples Pier three blocks away that could be used.  Yes it was incredibly inconvenient for runners but it was the only solution we had.  To try to head off a million “Where are the bathrooms?” questions we printed out a bunch of signs that indicated the two options and posted them around the registration area.  I was surprised that the signs actually did seem to work for the most part.  I didn’t hear much public griping about the huge hole of no on site restroom facilities although I am sure nobody was happy about it.

This was the first race that I was utilizing the new equipment I bought, three laptops and a new printer.  I had set up everything at home but did not totally simulate race day conditions which was dumb.  As a result I had a couple issues on site that I had to work around unexpectedly.  A lot of them turned out to be related to the way Windows 7 will automatically restrict communication when you don’t define an  IP address as non-public.

After overcoming those early issues the race timing went smoothly. We once again used the race bibs with an integrated timing device  and once again they performed very well.  Utilizing this type of timing device adds cost to every race but it streamlines the process greatly for both us and the runners, making it an overall win.

Cindy ran the race in addition to volunteering beforehand.  Despite her predictions of a poor performance ahead of time due to her lack of consistent running lately, she got third place in her age group. She was only 10 seconds behind the second place finisher and only a couple seconds off her personal 5K best.  I told her ahead of time she would do well, her competitive nature really helps her in a race environment.

When we got back to the house I had an hour or two of work doing post race processing and figuring out the issues I had on site with the laptops.  After I got that handled Cindy and I headed outside for some tandem gardening.  I had picked up some stuff for the garden at Lowes on Saturday, some basil, spearmint and two red peppers.  In addition we had the mail order sweet potatoes to get in the ground and a couple climbing plants that Cindy bought a couple weeks ago.

It was very relaxing and enjoyable to work together getting stuff in the ground.  For the sweet potatoes I dug a trench through the middle of two raised beds to create two raised mounds along either side.  I put 6 or 7 plants in each bed.  I have grown regular potatoes before with varying success but never sweet potatoes.  I am hoping they do well.  One thing that is doing well are the Cubanelle peppers, we have harvested at least a couple dozen so far and there are a bunch more in the pipeline.

Cindy and I went to a late afternoon showing of Spiderman 2.  Well it’s actually Spiderman 2 2 since this is the second iteration of the rebooted Spiderman series.  It was funny that as we were getting our tickets. our friend Deb from the running club walked up behind us with her daughter to see the same movie.  They wound up sitting with us to watch the movie.

I liked the first Spiderman reboot movie(which I saw by myself), more than I expected.  From the previews of Spiderman 2 I was worried the series was fast forwarding to the original Spiderman 3 which jumped the shark for me.  Spiderman 3 had just too much shit going on.  Too many enemies, too much ridiculous heroics and not enough story.  Well unfortunately I think Spiderman 2/2 has already reached Spidey 3 status.

The movie had several things that bugged me, too campy, too far outside the boundaries of remote possibility , and too predictable.  The efforts to log jam in a second arch enemy followed by an oh by the way third just didn’t work for me.  The main villain’s hatred of Spiderman didn’t hold any water either to be honest.  The movie was entertaining but not great.  For instance I think the recent Captain America was a lot better.  I’d give Spidey 2 a B+ rating.  I would be fine if they phased the current iteration of the franchise out.   After seeing all 5 Spiderman movies I am quite positive I prefer the Toby McGuire version of my favorite childhood superhero.

After the movie Cindy and I grabbed dinner at a nearby restaurant.  As we enjoyed our meal I witnessed a phenomena that was depicted brilliantly here in this video. The subject was how the world now spends a ridiculous amount of time looking down, at their smart phones.  It is something I notice all the time and something I find myself doing more often that I like.  At dinner there were two women and a young boy eating outside.  The two women spent the vast majority of their time at the table with their faces buried in their smart phones.  The little boy was standing behind the one woman, who I assume was his mother, looking somewhat sad that his mother was ignoring his existence, preferring to scroll through endless status updates of people she rarely if ever sees in real life.

The developed world really has become a slave to their phones.  It is morphing adults into iZombies and inflicting a permanent disability  on today’s youth who will be void of the ability to communicate conventionally, relegating them to communicating in electronic acronyms, incomplete sentences and “likes”.   Children are being turned into “screen addicts”, not being able to go on a 10 minute car ride without having a video screen of some type in front of them to pacify their raging ADD.  Simply looking out the window at the passing scenery is treated like minor child abuse.

If you step back, put down the phone and think about the path this is leading to it is easy to see what is so wrong about it.  Yet we all continue down this path, not thinking about the eventual outcome of it all which can be nothing but bad.

So the next time you exit the movie theater, are stopped at a red light, or sitting at the dinner table, suppress the urge to check in with your connected device that disconnects you from the world immediately around you.