Category Rants

Most blog readers love rants, here are a few.

So today’s gym news wasn’t anything I saw or heard, it was something I smelled.  The entire place smelled like sewage.  There is nothing like the smell of shit to get you pumped up for a few extra reps.  I asked one of the employees if the awful smell was coming from the bathroom(s).  They said no, they aren’t sure where it is coming from.  Well I certainly hope they track it down, poop is bad for business.

On a side gym note, that young girl that was responsible for turning the place into a mind numbing rave concert a couple weeks ago has been MIA for the last 10 days.  I am wondering if I indirectly contributed to her getting blown out.  Hopefully not, I was just trying to avoid taking anti-depressants just to get through my work outs.

So I had contacted UnderArmour.com last week to see if I could get information  regarding where the fraudulent $600 order that was paid for with my CC was sent to.  I was told I would be contacted by somebody in their fraud department.  Well of course, I never was.

So I call back today and tell the girl on the phone that I was never contacted.  She looked in the notes of my case and it says the fraud department must have overlooked contacting me but that they have marked the transaction as fraudulent. “Ok great, what exactly does that mean?”, I asked.  She said that it meant that if the bank contacts them they will clear the charge.

I told the rep that I suspected the charge could be connected with a local transaction and that I wanted to find out the address the merchandise was shipped to to assist in the investigation.  She said they were not allowed to do that.  I said to her, “So even though the items were paid for with my credit card, you won’t tell me where they were shipped?” “We aren’t allowed to.  That information could only be requested by the bank in certain situations”, she replied.

Well this is asinine.  After thanking the woman for basically telling me nothing I hung up annoyed.  The reality that the person charged $600 of shit on my card and more likely will see no punishment for doing so really pisses me off.  More than likely the bank will just write off that $600 as the cost of doing business in a world where CC fraud is the norm instead of the exception.  There has to be a way to pursue these scammers.

So I might be heading up to the Orlando area for a long weekend next month.  I thought maybe I would try to take advantage of the timeshare arrangement Ali and I bought into a decade ago.  My thoughts about our purchase of that timeshare and my dealings with the points program provider, RCI, have been well documented in the blog over the years.  The timeshare purchase is number two in the all time worst purchases list behind the investment land we bought during the boom which I will be paying for until I am dead.

So anyway, one of the small perks the place used to offer owners was a discounted rate on units if they were just staying up in Orlando for a few days.  I remember it was very reasonable, something like $30-$40 a night.  I was hoping they still had the plan in place despite ownership of the resort changing hands a year or two ago.

So I call the place up and ask about discounted rates for owners.  The woman said they no longer offer that benefit to owners.  If you want to stay there you pay the same rate as anyone else.  Wow, how nice.  Glad my thousands of dollars spent are so well appreciated by the new resort management.

Not only do you get no discount, they won’t even tell you the rate on the phone.  The only information you will get is if there is any availability on a certain date, if you want to know what they will charge you, you must go to a website to get a quote.

So I go to the website, punch in some dates and am presented with prices no better than local hotels.  What a crock of shit.  It seems to me that there should be some sort of legal recourse when you enter into a contract with a facility and they change the rules after they have your money.  Unfortunately it is easier and less expensive to just shrug your shoulders and say “they fcking blow”.  Exactly what they are counting on.

So after work on Friday I went straight to mom’s place.  We had arranged to do an early Mother’s Day celebration.     I took the SSR to work for the occasion.  I took a few pictures of the truck through out the day.  This one came out the best.

I took mom up to Hemmingway’s in Coconut Point.  We had a nice meal in their outdoor seating area facing the water. During dinner I utilized tech in a way that even made me, a certified geek, appreciate.

Mom had asked me last week if I could pick up a supplement she uses at Costco.  Unfortunately when I went last week they were no longer carrying it. Mom was bummed. However technology came to the rescue.

I whipped out my Iphone, loaded my Amazon app and found the supplement, available with free two day Prime shipping no less.  I placed the order, arranged for it to ship to mom’s place and was done in the span of three minutes.  Tech is so commonplace nowadays I lose appreciation for just how powerful the internet is since it is used so frequently.

After dinner I asked mom if she needed anything else while we were out.  She asked if we could stop over at the nearby Super Target to try to find another ion bracelet similar to what I bought her a couple years ago for Christmas.  They didn’t have  that exact model anymore although they had something similar.  Mom wasn’t interested in the alternative.  I dropped her back off at home and made plans to take her to Trader Joe’s some night this week.

I had an early Saturday morning planned.  Alison was one of the organizers for an all girl 5K that was being put on.  Even though it wasn’t an official GCR event a number of our people showed up to help.  It was a good thing.  Things were pretty chaotic early on.  My role was much different than it is on a typical race day where my nose is mostly planted behind the screen of a laptop.

I wound up on the crew that was setting up the course, using my truck as the transport vehicle.  There was some confusion regarding the course layout so we wound up using the Tacoma odometer to do it along with some guesstimation.  It turned out the course was around 3.2 miles, a little long but pretty damn good for figuring it out on the spot.  After laying the course out I was recruited once again for my truck, this time to take the course marshals out to their various spots.

I got back to the registration area with only 10 minutes to spare.  Luckily the only thing involved with timing this fun run was activating a stop watch at the start so I could set the finish line clock.  Those ideas I had about chip timing the run would have never worked out.

There was a decent turn out for the race, over 150 women signed up.  The number is very good when you factor in that the race was only organized a couple months ago.  A nice chunk of change was raised for the charity the race supported and the women all seemed to have a good time.

Saturday afternoon I was dragging from the early wake up call.  I cut some corners with the house chores, something I don’t normally approve of but it felt like a smart move.  One of the chores was tending the garden.  I pulled a MASSIVE carrot out of the ground, it may be the biggest ever.  It looked like a couple different carrots may have grown into this singular monster.

Saturday night I watched my latest Netflix dvd, John Carter.  This Disney movie made a lot of noise when it was released for both it’s huge production costs (about a quarter of a BILLION dollars) and it’s relatively small box office numbers (only 73 million domestic gross).  Still, it looked like something I would find entertaining.  I did.

The movie was not horrible at all although it certainly did not merit the kind of money that was spent on it.  It seemed like they were definitely trying to hop on the Avatar band wagon in many ways.  John Carter certainly is not a movie that leaves any sort of lasting impression but for at least 2 hours it did a good job of keeping me entertained, B+.

On Sunday morning I did my first endurance training in a looong time, I had not run a single mile since the 16 miles I logged with Tracy a month or so ago.  It has not been a deliberate avoidance of endurance work, just other things have gotten in the way.

Well I went full boat yesterday, combining a run, bike ride and swim.  I paid the price.  The weather yesterday was summertime muggy.  Even with starting relatively early I was sweating my ass off after the 4 mile run.  The bike portion didn’t feel any better, especially after the turn around point where I was pedaling into a slight headwind.  My legs just were out of gas.

I also decided to not wear bike shorts for the ride, instead thinking my running shorts would suffice for the 12.25 mile ride.  I regretted that decision greatly during the last 4-5 miles. My nether regions felt raw.

I was totally spent by the time the swim segment of the workout came up.  When I hopped in the pool, despite very warm water, I had heat exhaustion style goosebumps going on.  The first 400 I swam felt very difficult.  I kept my ass in the pool until I covered an additional 800 yards.

I emerged from the workout exhausted but glad that I completed it.  I need to get more consistent with my Sunday tri training.

Sunday afternoon I was doing my bills.  Part of it was reconciling my credit card statement.  I came across the charge for my visit to Zookies when Troy was down.  I noticed they charged me $6 more than I had authorized.  This pissed me off of course.  There are lots of stories of this going on, restaurant staff padding the charge, assuming most people are too lazy to look closely at their CC statement.

Well that amount of anger was nothing compared to what I felt when I saw the next charge, $599 at UnderArmour Direct!!!!  What the fck??!!  So I immediately call the CC company and report the charge.  I also hopped on to their website to verify that I didn’t see any other bullshit charges, nope UA was the only one.  Someone bought a shitload of athletic clothing on my dime.

Now I have to go through all the bullshit of them cancelling the card, sending me a new one and then my having to update every situation where I have stuff billed directly to the card.  There are a lot of them.

Once I hung up I was doing more head scratching.  The overcharge at Zookies was two days before the Under Armour charge.  I wondered if whomever was brazen enough to pad my food bill also was the person that made the UA purchase.  All they would have needed was the info on the card in many cases.

I called up Zookies and asked for one of the owners, neither was there but they said they would let them know and have them call me.  I got a call back shortly from Mrs Zookie, whom I have talked to several times at the bar, she is very nice.  I explained to her about the overcharge at the bar and my suspicions that it could be connected to the massive UA charge two days later.

She was very concerned by my story.  I told her I have no way of knowing for sure if they are connected but wanted to make her aware that one of her employees could be dealing in CC fraud.  She said she would review the receipts from that night to see whom cashed out the bill.  I thanked her for her effort.

I actually plan to try to do a little investigation on this myself.  Far too often banks basically ignore this fraud and write it off as a cost of doing business.  They won’t even try to prosecute the criminal perpetrating the fraud.

I am going to try to contact Under Armour and get details on the order, specifically what address it was sent to.  Since it was done in my name with my CC I am hoping they will give me this info.  If they do I will pass the address along to Mrs. Zookie to see if it matches up with the address of one of her employees.  If so, BAM, gotcha.

I also have a phone call to make to Comcast.  My promised 49.99 rate seems to have been smoke and mirrors, this months bill was $68. I really dislike Comcast…

So I got up early this morning to go pee, around 3:15 am.  I laid back down fully intending to fall immediately back to sleep.  Instead I rolled around for 45 minutes before I sad f it, and got up.  I tried to be productive with the extra time, working on race things, calling in for a replacement battery under warranty on my Neato, web site updates and finishing up watching DurianRiders YouTube videos.

I find Harley’s point of view and the way he expresses it very entertaining.  In one of the videos I watched he talked about how one of his goals was to promote critical thinking.  I realized that is one of my goals as well all though I never expressed it in quite that way.  Anyway if you have a few minutes to kill check out his channel.

Yesterday I contacted the maker of the supplement I was taking and told them of the results I saw with my T numbers.  They were as shocked as my doctor, saying that typically they will see a bump of 100-150 points  in T with supplementation.  I can’t tell exactly how far I jumped since my previous T test was in 2011 but if I use that as a guideline I launched 800 points in 2 months.  Was it a fluke?  I can’t tell you for sure.  All I know is they asked me to make sure to write a product review. 🙂

So once again the Tarpons cancelled a home game yesterday, giving one days notice.  This time the team they were supposed to play was disqualified for “not meeting minimum league requirements”, whatever that means.

The good news is I wasn’t going to be attending the game anyway because I am taking my mom out for an early Mothers Day celebration tonight.  The bad news is this is just more gas poured on top of the burning ship.  Although the Tarpons do a good job putting a quality product on the field, the rest of the league does not.  As I stated before, I have no idea how there will be another season of arena football at this point.

Originally when I bought the season tickets they were supposed to be for 7 home games.  Currently only 3 home games have been played.  Getting the remaining four in is highly unlikely.

So I have been pricing a new set of tires for the Tacoma.  The prices have been steep, I am looking at dropping somewhere between $600-$700 for new rubber.  That is a lot of dough to drop on the nearly 14 year old truck.

Jeremy had an interesting suggestion. (he has those occasionally)  He said I should look on Craigslist for someone dumping their factory wheels/tires because they put aftermarket phat rims/tires on their truck.    Surprisingly, a CL search did reveal a number of people doing just that.  It isn’t beyond the scope of possibility that I could score a set of wheels/tries with good tread for $400.  The wheels on my Tacoma are pretty beat anyway.  So we will see what opportunities pop up, I have some feelers sent out.

Tomorrow I am helping out with an all girl 5K that Ali and others are involved with.  I have offered to try to chip time the race but Ali didn’t think it was necessary since it is supposed to be more of a “fun run” .  For whatever reason, I almost feel guilty about not timing the race.  One of the things I did during my early AM time was once again offer my services to time the race.  We will see what happens.

The rest of the weekend I plan to split between work/exercise/pleasure/rest.  Hopefully I can find the right balance.

I had a couple local businesses/organizations that have annoyed me recently that I neglected to mention here.  Ironically they are somewhat related.

First up is the Naples Philharmonic or “The Phil” as it has been affectionately known over the years. Recently they announced that they were going to change the name of venue to “Artis – Naples”.  The management explained that they thought that renaming the Phil to Artis better reflected the centers all around dedication to arts of all types, not just the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra that is housed there. To me it sounded elitist, stuffy and unnecessary.

She backed up that the name change was deemed necessary based on some magical surveys that were sent out and mulled over by some people whose job it is to create an issue where none needs to be.  It was deemed that somehow changing the name of the Phil would translate into an important step in the evolution of the building.  This lead to a further burning of dollars, contracting some bullshit firm to think tank new names.  Who knows how much was spent to arrive at a name that rhymes with Fartis, but I can assure you it was way too much.

Well the reaction from the local community was overwhelmingly negative.  The papers lit up with comment after comment chastising the decision to change the name for seemingly no good reason besides the recently installed new management trying to separate/distinguish itself from the founders of the Phil.  To me it sort of seemed like a passive aggressive “f u”.

I am wondering if the Phil (Phartis) management will have a New Coke style revelation, come clean, and say “our bad”?  History shows that the public reacts much more favorably to someone that admits a mistake than someone that refuses to address the big pink elephant in the room. “Hey we fcked up” can go a long way.

As I said, the feedback in the newspaper to the name change was severe, which brings me to my next rant target, that same paper, the Naples Daily News.

Last week, with no notice other than a quick post by the publisher, the paper went to an online subscription model.  This model basically means that if you do not pay for either a conventional paper subscription or an online only subscription, you no longer have access to the majority of the content on the web site and no longer can comment on stories. Instead you are presented with an excerpt of the story and a prompt to get out the credit card.

I know this model has been adopted in some major newspaper publications, although I am not quite sure how successful it has been.  Personally, I think it’s stupid.

For several years the NDN has been polluting their site with in your face ads.  Every time you would load the home page a big box ad would hover over the content with a randomly placed and intentionally small X to dismiss it.  In addition to this they also would sometimes have a huge inline banner ad that would push the news content down for several seconds and then retract upwards.

Yes it was annoying but I viewed it as a way the newspaper ensures viewership of the ads, a trade off that seemed reasonable to me.  This new pay only model does not seem reasonable.

The NDN has a very small local reporting staff.  Much of what is posted on the site is simply national news feeds regurgitated.  Taking away the ability for the community to actively participate and view local stories without digging into their wallet seems counterproductive.  The more eyeballs they get on their online content and the ads associated with it, the better.  This move is going to dramatically reduce that number.

For my part, besides this small rant here, my reaction to this change will be simply to not view the paper online, something I expect repeated by many others.  I think NDN is walking on thin ice.  When you make content unavailable to people they learn to live without it, making your existence even more tenuous and unnecessary.  I’ll get my news from the local tv channel website instead, for free. Bad move NDN.

Congratulations are in order for my brother Todd, whose divorce papers were finally signed by a judge. His divorce proceedings have incredibly been ongoing since July of 2007.  If I tried to relate some of the shit that has gone on related to the divorce it would be hard to believe.  Let’s just say simply good riddance to dead weight.  I feel a little better about my existence that I now can use the title “ex-sister in law” when referring to the worthless bitch.  No, I’m not a big fan.

So I head into the gym today and hop on my cardio machine once again for my 5 minute warm up.  Immediately I listen to what they have going on with the AV system today.  Things seemed to have returned to normal.  They were at least playing modern music with actual singing and the volume level was not quite loud enough to be obtrusive.

Back in the free weight area they had ESPN playing on 2 of the 3 tv’s as it should be.  All was almost right with my little gym world once again.

So I was about halfway through my workout when it happened.  All of a sudden I see the TV above the dip station I was on change channels to this fcking non-stop rave/techno concert feed.  I see the volume bar climb as well.  I look around and see one of the girls from the front desk walking away with remote control in hand.

This girl is young, if I had to guess she probably has not reached the legal drinking age.  Perhaps that is why she gave no consideration to how stupid it was to fill the gym with this awful music that she apparently likes. Treating the gym where she works as if she was driving around in her car must seem logical to her young mind.

So I went up front looking for her but she apparently was in one of the back offices.  I went back to the free weight area, climbed on top of the dip tower and turned down the volume on the tv that was polluting the free weight area the most.

Not only did she change the tv over the dip tower, 9 of the 10 tv’s in the gym now had the techo concert playing, it was ridiculous.  As you can imagine, I went through the rest of my work out incredibly perturbed.

As I was walking out the door the young girl and the owners son were back behind the desk.  I got his attention and asked him what was up with the music?  He said, “No good?” I told him it sounds like a rave concert, was terrible, and very distracting.  The girl that was the trigger man for the music aberration looked surprised that someone found her musical tastes annoying and inappropriate.

The owner’s son thanked me for letting him know.  I told him it was just my 2 cents.  However if this continues, I will be taking my 2000 cent monthly gym fee somewhere else.  I have enough things in my life to get annoyed about without having to deal with Silly Sally the Techno/Rave queen.

So you may recall that last week I had to ask the gym staff to turn down the volume on the sound system which was playing bad music at a ridiculously loud level.  Ironically the last two days of last week the gym was devoid of music, relying only on the symphony of iron clattering as the sound system appeared to be broken.

So yesterday I step on my cardio machine and it doesn’t take long for me to notice the latest attempt to steal my sanity.  The sound system was working once again and the volume was at a tolerable level.  The problem was what they were piping through the system.

It appeared to be some German techno band.  There were no words involved, only a repetitive, maddening beat that went on endlessly.  It seriously sounded like it was the same 10 seconds of sound looped, it was AWFUL.  It reminded me of some of the Hispanic music I occasionally hear blaring in my neighborhood.  No matter what song is played the beat is identical and equally maddening.

I actually gave the staff a one day pass and did not complain.  It did not stop me from being amazed at the ignorance of playing rave music in a gym that is filled with more senior citizens than anything else.  Get a clue, cripes.  If that shit is playing again today I will be voicing my opinion.

After work last night I arranged to met Ali at the bank to deposit the tax check, or so I thought.  I arrived at 5:15 and realized the lobby closes at 5 every day except Fridays.   DAMN IT!  The drive through was still open until 5:30 so I hoped Ali and I could just get in one of the vehicles and do the transaction from the curb.

When Ali pulled up I gave her the bad news about lobby hours but told her we could still try the drive through.  Well that plan got scuttled when she realized she forgot to bring her wallet with.  I couldn’t believe that once again I whiffed on getting the check deposited.  The new plan is to deposit the check today, before 5PM.

Lat night I was feeling stupid, (as I do most nights) and I recorded my first Randall shout out in Spanish.  I tried to somewhat look the part.

After work on Friday I stopped at the bank, hoping to finally get the funds from the tax refund in the bank.  I had stopped at Ali’s place first thing in the morning to get her to sign off on it.  So I sent the check up the tube at the drive through teller and heard a voice coming back to me a minute later.

The teller told me that she was unable to deposit the check because it is made to me AND Ali.  Since her name is not on the checking account they are unable to deposit the check without Alison being physically present with her ID.  Damn it….  Ali was equally frustrated when I gave her the news.

Friday night I watched my latest Netflix rental, Chronicle.  I remembered very little about the plot of the movie so I quickly read the description on the dvd sleeve.  Some young guys find some sort of extra terrestrial object that gives them super powers, ok I’m in.

The movie was quite good, better than I expected.  It made me think about how I would react if somehow I managed to obtain some sort of super human ability, if I would use it for good or allow the power to corrupt me.  I would expect it to be somewhere in the middle maybe.  Anyway, I found the movie to be very good, rent it, solid A from me.

Saturday I kept myself quite busy.  We are getting back into the time of year where I can no longer ignore mowing the grass for a month at a time.  I buzzed around on the tractor after tending the garden and weeding the property.  I picked up the girls earlier so they enjoyed themselves hanging out while I toiled.

I actually went around the house with the Dyson, something I need to do less and less because of the robotic sweeping that goes down 3 times a week.   I followed up by letting the Scooba scrub the kitchen and master bathroom, again something that hasn’t gone down in close to a month.

I then targeted vehicle cleaning as the non-standard chore of the day.  I started off with the Tacoma, something that rarely gets washed anymore.

I remember early on in my ownership of the truck I used to be pretty meticulous and regular in washing it.  However 12 years in the Florida sun and a shitty repair job on the passenger side of the truck that has left it with peeling clear coat has made washing the Tacoma a rarity.

As I washed the mostly faded white paint I found myself feeling somewhat sentimental.  I thought about just how many parts of my life the truck has accompanied me through.  It has been a dependable, rock solid companion that has moved me over 120,000 miles around the planet since I bought it in 2001.

The sentimental feelings perhaps were a result of some recent ideas about eventually replacing both the truck and the van with a full size dual cab truck, thinking that would kill two birds with one stone.  I’d be able to still transport all of the raw materials needed to maintain the house but also have plenty of room to carry 2 or 3 additional people and more importantly, two dogs.  Of course to even think about that I would need to get the SSR paid off which isn’t happening anytime soon.

After washing the Tacoma I washed the SSR, the second time doing so in as many weeks.  After I washed it last week I wound up in an unanticipated downpour, negating the work.

I followed up with the party van, not washing the exterior but thoroughly vacuuming the interior to suck up the abundance of dog hair that was filling the space.  I also pulled out the comforter in the bed and threw that in the wash.  I don’t think I had swept out the van since the trip my dad’s in January.  It was long overdue.

Mixed among the chores/projects I needed to do preparation for the race I was timing on Sunday.  I had the freshly washed truck all loaded up and ready to go by 9pm.  My eyelids were closed 30 minutes later as the alarm clock was set for 4 AM.

Some race mornings I pretty much spring up out of bed, ready to tackle the challenge of making everything come together.  Sunday was not one of those days.  The alarm was not welcomed and I almost wound up falling back asleep after turning it off.  I drug myself out of bed and managed to get on site shortly after 5am.

We seemed to have less hands on deck than normal, I was buzzing around for quite awhile until I got to the point where I could settle in and help Alison do data entry.  The race actually started a couple minutes late because I had a little bug to iron out last second.

We had some issues because for some reason participation in the race this year saw a huge unanticipated swelling of numbers.  For the most part our year to year race participation has either been flat or slightly down, mostly due to an oversaturation of races in our area.

Last year the race had less than 350 entries , this year we wound up with just less than 500 people signed up.  There were only 300 shirts ordered for the race and I had only requested 500 race bibs, figuring that was more than adequate based on prior years numbers.  We actually ran out of bibs late in the registration process.

Despite a large amount of runners, timing the event went very smoothly.  I had basically no errors, something that rarely occurs.  I was driving off site by 9:30.

After getting all of the post race work done and eating lunch I felt exhausted.  I laid down for a close to two hour nap and woke up still feeling tired.  I also woke up still coughing and sniffling.  I am going on my third week of this annoying illness.

Sunday night I saw Ironman 3.  I had heard one review of the movie going in and it was very positive.  I came out of the movie agreeing with the review, overall it was a great movie with some very funny moments and one liners sprinkled amongst the kick ass action.   Unlike Spiderman, which was pretty firmly in the lame bucket by the time it hit the third sequel, Ironman 3 delivered and left me wanting more. With the ending of it however, I’m not quite sure where the story goes from here.  Solid A.  My only really negative thought was the 3D version of the film really offered me nothing extra.

I had a very odd dream last night, surely related to my thoughts about replacing the Tacoma.  I saw someone selling a used 2007 Ford pick up truck in the paper and I went to look at it.  The young guy selling it seemed like a pure breed redneck.  When I saw the truck I found it hard to believe that the truck was only 5 or 6 years old.  It had a lot of rough spots which the kid explained away as minor problems.

I knew that there was no way I should buy the truck but instead of just telling the guy no thanks I stuck around and listened to him ramble.  He told me he had a spare body for the truck that I could have, it was at at garage of a “friend” of his.  We hopped in the beat up Ford and drove over there.

The guy opens the garage and it is a cluttered mess.  The kid starts throwing stuff out of the way, creating Iron Man-like chaos as parts and objects crashed into the floor and each other.  He was trying to reach the back wall, evidently there was a secret door where the spare body was kept.  I wound up helping him throw stuff out of the way to get to the door.

Once the door was open it revealed a large sunken space, the top part surrounded by a ledge that had a ton more stuff on it.  The guy again goes on a destruction rampage, pushing the stuff off the ledge, crashing onto both the concrete floor below and the things on it, mostly other cars.  I asked him why he was making such a mess.  He replied simply “I don’t give a fck”  His reply reaffirmed my belief that I should not buy his 2007 Ford.

He pointed to a corner of the area below, saying that was the spare body he was going to give me with the truck.  It was the shell of a late 50’s Corvette.  I remember thinking how mounting a Corvette body on a 2007 Ford truck frame would be more hassle than it’s worth.  Plus where would I put the mulch?  End of dream.

So since the shake up at the gym a few weeks ago I have been observing the changes taking place.  The round robin of temporary managers seems to have halted.  The behind the counter staff was once again mostly turned over. Curiously, most of them now are younger chubby women that look like they never did a sit up in their lives.

From a business standpoint, this makes little sense.  When a perspective gym member walks in the front door, you want an in shape individual greeting them, someone that visually represents the fitness level someone might be aiming for.  Having a muffin topped woman pitching a gym membership seems hypocritical at best and just bad for the bottom line.  I know guys that would be influenced to join a gym solely on how attractive the staff is.

There also is a weird phenomenon that goes on at my gym where gym members somehow transform into gym employees. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this happen, it’s almost like the place uses it’s membership as a farm system to harvest employees, most of which don’t last more than a few months.

I had to laugh when I saw the latest addition to the gym show up yesterday, a speed/heavy bag set up.  It was plopped right in the middle of the already small open floor space utilized for abs work.  I was like, wtf.  Are we now in a MMA gym?  I had no idea why management would think this was a good idea.  Hell I would much rather see a real pull up bar installed than a boxing station that I guarantee will collect more dust than jabs.

So this Sunday I have a race to time, my first race in almost a month.  After that I get another nice break until Memorial Day.  I do enjoy the open weekends, free of timing responsibilities that this time of year offers me.

I don’t have a lot of specific plans lined up outside of normal to do’s.  Sure it would be nice to catch Iron Man but I would rather let the opening weekend maniacs pass through before seeing the film.

So I walked into the gym yesterday and assumed my position on a cardio machine for a 5 minute warm up.  Within 20 seconds my attention was diverted to the music that was being blared through out the gym.  Not only was it stupidly loud, it was just awful stuff, some hip hop shit.  It was so loud it totally obliterated my focus on exercise and instead placed it on how loud the music was blaring.

When I got done with my warm up I walked over to the weight machine area where one of my buddies was stationed, almost directly under one of the speakers.  I yelled to him (had to yell so he could hear me) “Why the fck is this shit SO LOUD?!!”  He shrugged but agreed the decibel level was approaching concert level.

As I looked around the gym I could tell some of the old people were also annoyed by the music.  Well I did what made sense to me, asked the staff at the counter to turn down the music.  I told them it sounded like a concert back there.  They seemed surprised it was too loud.  Perhaps that is because there are no speakers positioned over the front desk.

Anyway the turn of the dial returned the music back to the background noise that it should be instead of a front and center stick that is jabbing your ear drums.  As I walked back into the workout area I could tell several others approved of the lower music level.  I just wondered why nobody else would have said something.

Last night I decided to take the clippers to my head for the 6th time on tape.  I had not buzzed my own hair in quite awhile since I had Sport Clips cut my hair professionally two times.  I do enjoy the Sport Clips experience and I plan to use them in the future.  I just like to keep my appearance in the air with different varieties/lengths of hair on both my face and head.

I had my head shaved down in 3 minutes, a new speed record.

Big shout out for Jason Collins for admitting he is gay.  That took a lot of courage.  I expect it to lead to a number of other athletes stepping out as well.

Last night we had a hellishly long board meeting for the running club.  It went almost two and a half hours.  For whatever reason there seemed to be a number of topics that involved a lot of talking, some of it a little more than needed.  By the time I got out of there I was mentally numb.

When I got home I was pleased to find that Nicki was able to hold it for the 4 hours I was gone.  I had a number of things to do, despite the hour getting late.  I didn’t get to bed until after 11, yawn.

So my buddy Troy comes to town this weekend.  I haven’t seen him for quite awhile, I believe the last time was 2 years ago (or was it 3) when I went to a Ravens game with him?  I have known him for over 20 years.  In some ways Troy has a personality similar to my dad, very sarcastic with a good dose of smart ass.  We have had some pretty memorable adventures over the years.  I am hoping to create some more memories over the 3-4 days he is here.

So the news is filled with the live pursuit of the Boston bombing suspects.  Supposedly one was already shot and killed and it sounds like they are hot on the trail of suspect number two.   The description of events sounds like something out of movie, high speed chase, robbery, bombs and tragically law enforcement killed/injured.

I found some of the information about the pursuit odd.  For instance, if you just planted bombs at the Boston Marathon, logic would dictate that you are going to lay as low as possible for as long as possible.  But these guys supposedly went out and robbed a 7-11, leading to the chase??   That is a real head scratcher.

This morning someone sent me a link that I found very interesting/disturbing.  The article refers to a private military operative group named “The Craft” that evidently had a substantial presence at the finish line.  As you read through the article you will find many things that seem very, very strange.  Including the fact that almost all of them were wearing large black backpacks.  More smoke billows out when you read that info about The Craft being there and pictures of their group essentially being erased from media coverage of the bombing.

There is one particularly interesting picture where one of the group clearly has a backpack on and then later is shown running without one.

What exactly does this all mean?  I can’t really tell you.  I can tell you that I have never heard of a marathon hiring a private military group to man the finish line and that it is highly unlikely they would do so.    Read the article and draw your own conclusions.