Category Relationships

So on the way home last night I asked Ali if she minded if I stopped by to see the dogs which she said was fine.  On the way there I stopped by Sports Authority, looking at things for the trip.  I wound up not buying anything other than a cheap pair of sunglasses for the trip.

I always was a big fan of Ponch from Chips/T-1000 Terminator 2 style sunglasses. The huge mirrored lenses when combined with my buzzed hair and facial scruff I am sure to accrue while on the road it will make  for an interesting visual.

When I got to Ali’s place Sadie was inside by herself, meaning Ali was out walking Nicki.  I hooked up Sadie and went out to find them.  Once I did, we handed off, I took Nicki back while Sadie did her business.

I have started a new “thing” with Nicki.  When I am at Ali’s place we play the elevator game.  Instead of making Nicki climb and descend the steps with her aching back legs I pick her up and carry her up or down the two flights of stairs.  When I first started doing it Nicki was uneasy, thinking it meant something suspicious was going on like possibly a bath.  She would lay down and try to avoid it. Now she actually stands there and waits for me to grab her, like she actually enjoys the zero effort trip to the second floor.

I hung out at Ali’s place for a little while with her and the girls, talking about the trip and other things.  Ali is actually going to be out of town for part of the time that I am, the first time we both have been out of Naples at the same time in different locations.

It felt a bit strange saying goodbye to everyone since typically every road trip out of the state I have ever taken has involved some combination of Ali and the dogs. It’s just part of the new world we both live in. I gave both the girls a kiss on the head before heading out.

When I got home I had no time for farting around like I did the night before.  I spent a couple hours attending to trip related items as well as sharpening my mental list of things to get handled before shoving out tomorrow morning hopefully sometime around 4AM.

I will be leaving work early today to knock out the last minute items, including mowing the grass, regardless of the amounts of water that are still on the ground.  Hell even if it is pouring I will be out there on the tractor, knocking down what I can.

The rest of the evening will be a whirlwind of activity with Cindy showing up later to help me batten down the hatches.

I’ll be trying to blog as time allows while on the road.  I am bringing the wifi hotspot to potentially allow me to type away while rolling along at 70 mph.    I look forward to creating a new set of road trip memories to supplement my already impressive collection.

Yesterday Alison and I got the final part of the divorce paperwork handled, the quit claim deeds that move the property around from a title standpoint.  I had already assumed the mortgage months ago, late last year I think.   The quit claim deeds were simple one page documents that just had to be notarized and witnessed by two people.  I filed the one for the house later in the afternoon at the clerks office next door.  The copies for the horrible investment chunks of land in Lee County went out in the mail today.  At least filing the paperwork is cheap, something like 11 bucks each.

It feels good to have it finally done, the process went on much longer than I expected or hoped for.  I am looking forward to moving ahead in life without the divorce looming over me like a gray cloud.  It has been an emotionally difficult journey on many levels.

I still will need to change some other stuff like life insurance, medical insurance, etc.. so if I kick the bucket anytime soon she still would be the lucky benefactor.

I have been trying to get things lined up to be able to do another roadtrip and an ambitious one at that, the Grand Canyon.  I have a total of 11 days to get out there, hike it and get back.  Cindy is going to be going as well.  I couldn’t afford to do this trip without someone to split the costs with.

I already warned her that a long road trip can be a true trial by fire when it comes to spending time with someone.  Little annoyances can become magnified 10 times over when you are in a confined space with another person for 100 hours or more.  We will either emerge from the trip feeling better about our compatibility or be ready to kill each other.

Regardless of that, the trip should be awesome overall.  I have only been to the Grand Canyon as a kid during a western road trip with my dad.  I hiked down only part of the way and recall feeling like I was near death by the time I got back up to the South Rim.  This time around the goal is loftier,  from the South Rim all the way down to the Colorado River and back up in the span of a day.  The National Parks website officially advises against this due to it’s difficulty.  Sounds like a good reason to do it.

During the various western road trips Ali and I took, the Grand Canyon was never a consideration because of traveling with the dogs.  Since this will be a canine free trip those limitations are lifted.

I have planned a not exactly direct route which will hit New Orleans, the flat plains of Kansas, and the mountains in Colorado on our way to the canyon.  Unfortunately there are a lot of miles to gobble up which is going to require a LOT of long driving days.  We will try to split the driving duties close to down the middle to make it less painful for both of us.

Then there is the party van, which has already taken me all over the country multiple times.  I have some concerns about calling on it once again to take me cross country, after all it is at this point 17 years old.  I suppose I will just cross my fingers and roll the dice that mechanical issues will not be one of the memories from the trip.

By this time next week I should already be on the road, well up into northern Florida with a day one stopping point of New Orleans.  Adventure awaits.

I am doing something unconventional, crafting a blog entry in the evening.  I prefer to avoid writing about emotional subjects where others might see a moist pair of eyes.

So today was the court date that Ali and I both knew was going to be here someday.  Honestly it arrived much later than either of us expected when we first separated. We originally planned to try to have it in the books right after the new year, assuming the world didn’t end on December 21st of course.

The journey we took to get to this day hasn’t been as smooth as I hoped it would be but perhaps what I hoped for was unrealistic.  I definitely did not enjoy the moments where Ali and took on an adversarial instead of friendly positions against one another.  It felt foreign and toxic.

For the most part I have managed to keep my nose to the grindstone, getting spun off into dwelling on the past far less than I would have expected going into this.  That might also be because for the most part Ali and I continued a relationship that was not conventional husband and wife but similar in some ways.  We still saw each other and did things together on a pretty consistent basis.  Now that both of us are dating other people that has tapered off quite a bit but Ali and I still interact with each other on a regular basis.

It has been quite the contrast from my first marriage where once she moved out that was it, she more or less became an insta-stranger that I have not spoken to in close to 20 years. Of course the circumstances leading up to that marriage dissolution where quite different and treacherous.

So anyway, our court time today was early, 9AM.  I got countless questions about the shirt and tie I was wearing from my co-workers, since they never see me in such garb.  I was glad the hearing was early, I had a change of clothes packed.

So I met Ali by the courthouse and we found the courtroom together.  She was visibly upset from the get go.  Outside the courtroom there was a mass of people.  Evidently with simplified marriage dissolutions they knock them out assembly line style.  Ali’s lawyer showed up a few minutes early just to go over the process with us.  It seemed pretty simple, they basically ask you 6 or 7 questions and that’s it.

There were 3 or 4 couples that were ahead of us so we knew exactly what to expect.  So they call our name and up we went.  Ali was really crying which always upsets me.  I coped with it by not focusing on her as we answered the questions we were asked. Then in less than 90 seconds our almost 15 year marriage was dissolved.  As I was standing there I couldn’t help thinking about the bitter irony, comparing our wedding day, which had tears of happiness as we exchanged our vows to today, where the tears were for the death of those same vows a decade and a half later.  It stung me badly but I tried to not let it bubble up to the surface.

After being told the final paperwork will be sent to us we exited the courtroom and talked to the lawyer some more.  He has to prepare the quit claim deeds transferring assets around per the divorce agreement, hopefully it gets finished up this week.

So I told Ali I would walk her out to her car.  It was a sad couple hundred yards but I tried to remain as upbeat as possible.  The finalization of the divorce doesn’t symbolize the end of my relationship with Ali, it’s just a new chapter where both of us hopefully continue to grow, learn and find our way to happier lives for whatever time we have left on this planet.

So in less than an hour I have my court date to finalize the divorce.  It sort of feels like having a dentist appointment looming on the calendar to have cavities drilled, without novacaine.  Yes this is going to suck but it will be a relief when it is over.

Even with keeping my blog updated during my at home training week it feels like I have a lot of things to cover, without even discussing what it feels like to be officially divorcing the person you spent well over a third of your life with.  Perhaps I’ll try to describe that in the future.

On Friday, training got done early which gave me time to get a nice head start on my weekend.  I did a grocery run which included a Trader Joe’s and Sam’s Club stop.  I actually got out in the morning before class and got my Publix shopping out of the way.  Yes, it is awesome not starting your work day until 10AM.

On Friday I received the new Bar-barian bracelets that I ordered as prizes for the forum challenge.  Last year I received some from the NYC guys to hand out as prizes.  I wore them myself as well.  Unfortunately I have gone through two of them at this point.  The bands had the text printed on them and unfortunately time washed that text away eventually.  At this point they just look like a plain black and white band.

The bands I bought are laser cut, meaning they may get dirty and beat up but they should remain readable indefinitely.  Of course I outfitted myself with one for field testing.  🙂

The water level on the property actually dropped enough on Friday that the trenches out by the road dried up  enough to mow down the 2 foot high trashy looking grass that filled it.  I was glad I got to it when I did, it rained cats and dogs later, once again filling the trench.

When I was doing my grocery shopping I grabbed a new dog bed for Nicki, a Serta no less.  It claimed to be very soft, comfortable and therapeutic for older dogs with joint problems.

I know Nicki will be suspicious of it and hesitant to use the new bed as she is hesitant about most anything new, but hopefully it makes her nap times just a little bit more enjoyable.

Unfortunately over the weekend Ali told me that whatever urinary issues Nicki has seem to have has returned, despite two weeks of antibiotics that we thought knocked it out.

On Saturday I kept myself very busy.  I changed the oil in the Tacoma and made a YT video out of the process, perhaps helping oil change first timers down the road.  Of course as in most of my videos, there were several lol moments involved.

I also hung a new floodlight out front, replacing the conventional motion detector unit that died recently.  The replacement was also bought at Sam’s Club and it was pretty cheap, something like $40.

The new unit isn’t so much a floodlight as a security tool.  It’s 4 ultrabright LED’s are motorized.  If the light detects motion it locks onto it and tracks it.  So the light shoots on and then follows you up the driveway.

It also has a constantly blinking LED that makes it appear to be a security camera as well.  Installation required some McGyvering.  The mounting screws they included were too long so I grabbed some shorter ones at the nearby hardware store.

Then, the screws I bought had too large of a head to fit in the narrow slot the base provided.  I remedied this via a big ass drill bit, boring the opening until it was big enough.  My unconventional installation yielded conventional results.  The new light worked as planned. Even during the daytime it is in action, tracking movement.  It doesn’t flash on the lights when the sun is out but is cool still the same.

Saturday afternoon I also mowed the property, going around the areas that were still submerged from the heavy rain.

Over the weekend I got turned on to a new type vehicle that they are trying to push into production sometime in 2014, utilizing a former GM production plant.  It is called an Elio.

The Elio is an American made trike vehicle 1+1 layout with two front wheels and one in the rear.  There is a second seat behind the driver seat.  The long narrow configuration helps contribute to it’s impressive gas mileage numbers, 84 mpg on the highway and about 50 mpg in city driving.

The engine that pulls the vehicle around is a small, 3 cylinder, fuel injected 70 hp configuration. (anyone remember a Geo Metro?) Despite the small motor, the light weight and aerodynamic shape allows the Elio to get up to 100 mph with 0-60 times of right around 10 seconds, not awful at all.

Overall I like the look of the Elio. the Plymouth Prowler naked front suspension looks cool.  The overall aerodynamic shape is pleasing to the eye.  Supposedly the interior is designed to fit 95% of the population, even 6′ 3″ storks like myself.  The interior also includes standard amenities like power windows, power locks, AC and a radio, nice.

Despite it’s small size, supposedly they expect the Elio to receive a 5 star safety rating with it’s standard 3 air bags, energy absorbing crumple zones and a cage designed to protect the occupant(s) surprisingly well in a collision.

Oh did I mention that the projected price of the Elio is only $6800?

Yes that is not a misprint, $6800.  At that price point I could buy an Elio and literally pay for it with gas savings as it would make a perfect commuter vehicle for someone like me that logs close to 50 miles per day back and forth to work.

So of course, there is some fine print.  The Elio, despite securing a potential manufacturing facility is not yet in production.  Their current timetable is a late 2014 production launch.  They are taking “reservations” for the car online.  Basically they have different reservation amounts, $100, $500, and $1000.  Basically the higher your reservation amount, the sooner you will get your new Elio. (reservation amount comes off the price of course)

Despite all of this potential goodness, as of now, there is no guarantee that Elio will get off the ground, it’s a very difficult thing to enter the automotive market.   Plus if the Elio does make it to production, we have no way of knowing just how good they will actually be.  If their build quality and reliability are Yugo-like, no matter what their price is, it won’t be very successful.

So although it would be intriguing for me to slap down a $100 reservation, I instead am just going to be waiting and seeing.  If the Elio actually does make it all the way to production I will seriously be considering squeezing one in the garage next to the SSR in a year or two.

On Saturday night I went to see Elysium.  I had some high expectations for the flick since it had some big names like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in it.  The premise of the movie seemed intriguing as well, the ultra-rich build their own orbiting space station paradise while the common people are left on a decimated planet Earth to struggle to exist.

Without getting into too much detail, I just found the movie disappointing and weak.  It just didn’t grab me like I expected it to and I thought Jodie Foster’s role was really lame.  I can only give it a B.

On Sunday I did another brick, a brick made more brutal by the blazing sun and high humidity.  It was a 17 mile bike ride, followed by a 1.25 mile run, 1200 yards of swimming, and then another short .6 mile run.  The circuit was made more difficult by the backpack I was carrying for the ride and run segments of the training.  Cindy and I were thoroughly beat by the end of it.  It was so damn hot and humid.

One thing the hot sun is good for is evaporating water.  By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I was able to hop back on the tractor and take care of the spots I missed the day before due to standing water.  Since I weed whacked a few days prior, as a whole the landscape was looking pretty good for mid-August.

Sunday afternoon I also headed back outside with my flying wing.  I was a bit more daring this time out, despite some gusty cross winds.  Well, it cost me.

I was having a good time, looping, climbing and rolling at full throttle.  I brought the wing into a steep dive with the intention of pulling out of it maybe 50 feet above the ground.

Well as the ground was approaching I wasn’t being as attentive on the stick as I should have been.  A cross wind tipped the wing one way and by the time I realized it the wing had smashed into the ground nose first at probably 60 mph plus.  I knew it was going to be bad…

As I approached the wing I saw the motor mount lying on top of it.  As I got closer I knew the plane was history.  In addition to the broken mount the interior guts were torn out, the prop was broken and one of the servo mounts was destroyed.

I felt really bummed out and angry at myself for crashing the wing.  The plane was old and ready to be replaced, since it was probably damn close to 10 years old at this point.  However what made me sad was the plane was meticulously built by Mike, my former RC buddy that moved to Colorado.  I felt terrible destroying his handiwork via careless flying.

I wasted no time ordering an EPP foam wing to replace it, named the Tuff Wing.  My flying skills will put it’s name to the test for sure.  It’s supposed to be a 70MPH plane right out of the box.

I was also annoyed because I had just ordered two additional batteries for my old wing.  The new wing will utilize different battery packs.  I plan to try to get my old clunker Sky Scooter back in the sky with the new battery packs.

Sunday night I got to see Taken 2.  It was entertaining and action filled with bad guys getting what they deserve left and right.  I never would have pictured Liam Neisen as an action star years ago but in this role he excels. I’d give the film a B+, a very solid rental.

Yesterday was another solid day of training from home although I was actually late for class.  Before class I went to pick up the dogs, get coffee and drop off mom’s new ion/magnet bracelet.  I didn’t get logged into the remote classroom until 10:15.

The dogs chilled out, slept, hung on the pool deck, and whined (Nicki) while I was in the training.  During the breaks I did my best to entertain them.  They both closely supervised my lunch workout.

Before Ali came out to pick up the dogs I finally got out to try to put my flying wing back up in the air, a place it hasn’t been in a couple years.  I had 4 old battery packs, only one would hold a decent charge.  I gave myself a quick mental refresher on what I needed to do to get the plane in the air, turn on the transmitter, plug in the battery, adjust the initial aileron angles, hit full throttle and give it a good strong toss at an upward angle.

My toss wasn’t great but the power of the brushless motor was enough to overcome it, sending my flying wing upward.  Instantly I could tell my initial trim settings weren’t good.  With no stick the wing wanted to climb and circle right.  I clumsily adjusted the trim mid-air, making sure there was plenty of space between the plane and the ground.

Despite the battery being dormant for a long time it actually provided a decent amount of punch.  I was able to do loops, rolls and pull out of power dives without problem.

Luckily flying an RC plane is much like riding a bike.  Once you get accustomed to the controls it comes back to you.  I didn’t have any issues with disorientation regardless of the direction or angle the wing was flying at.

I had the plane up for maybe 6 or 7 minutes before I brought it down, not wanting to push it too far with an old battery.  I managed to land it cleanly about 10 feet from Sadie who was watching the flight along with Nicki.  I was quite pleased at my success flying after so long.  It was fun.  As long as the standing water stays away today I will probably try to get back out there again some time today.

Last night I finished the single player version of Heart of the Swarm.  It was a pretty epic storyline with huge battles along the way.  I used minimal skill in my play style, preferring to use the F2 key to just send my entire army around the map instead of doing careful micro-management of my units as you are supposed to.  Oh well, it got the job done, great game.

If you are looking for some epic tv by the way, watch Ray Donovan on Showtime.  It is a bit like a modern day Sopranos.

So Monday is Ali and my court date to finalize the divorce.  It has been tough on both of us as the date has grown closer.  Despite both of our assumption that this day was coming, the finality of it is still a tough thing to deal with.  It will be good in the long run to finally have it done with officially so we can both move forward in whatever path we wind up following. However I don’t think the little twinges of sadness and feelings of failure will ever really go away for good, at least for me.  I am happy that we have continued to be supportive of each other throughout the separation and I hope we continue to be good friends the rest of our lives.

So Thursday was the club’s big holiday 5K, our biggest 5K of the year.  I knew it was going to be a mad house so I wanted to get on site extra early, not that it did me much good.  I was on site about 4:25 am but the equipment truck didn’t get there until closer to 5.  I made the use of my alone time dropping off my timing/registration equipment at their respective locations since the registration area, the start and finish line were in three different spots, each several hundred yards apart.

The night before I had sent out an email asking the board members to try to get there as early as possible and they answered the call.  We had many more bodies on site at 5AM than normal, we put them to good use.  We got the registration area up and ready to receive the roughly 1000 participants that were going to be converging shortly. As expected the parking lot became a beehive of humanity.

Ali and I were swamped with people signing up that morning, we had something like 120 entries to type in before the race.  Ali finished up the data entry as I hurried to the start line.  The starting line crowd extended down the street close to 100 yards, it was quite the scene.

Timing the race had a potentially big bump in the road.  While I was running the finish line Ali was also updating some of the participant information in the system which in theory, should have been ok.  While I was in the system checking a couple things I noticed I wasn’t seeing an average pace number for some of the finished runners.  I thought it was odd but printed out a stack of results to have someone post for me anyway.

Well as I looked more at the results I saw something was f’d up.  A bunch of the women were all showing the same finish time, oh geezus.  This is the sort of issue that crops up time to time and the kind of issue that can only be handled via experience.  Without dropping a bead of sweat I erased all of the results from the race and imported them via a secondary method, hoping it would correct the problem.  Luckily it did.

I could only assume that having the participant data modified while results were coming in caused the problem somehow so I had Ali stop the work.  The rest of the race the times flowed in normally.  All in all for being the largest 5K the club has ever put on, things went very smoothly.

I was both the first one on site and last one to leave as I recollected my equipment from it’s various collection points.  I didn’t mind at all, it gave me a moment to reflect on how cool it is that I witnessed the venue go from empty, to crushed with people, back to empty with hardly a hiccup.

Some guy was flying around his quad copter with a HD camera mounted to it during the race.  Check out the video he compiled here, it’s pretty cool.

I was quite pooped the rest of the 4th of July and didn’t even entertain dragging myself out to see any fireworks shows.  There were a few houses close by that provided mini-versions of pyrotechnics that was enough for me.

On Friday I fast forwarded my weekend chore list, trying to get everything done ahead of time.  Part of that list included my two headed grocery shopping at both Costco and Publix.  I took the SSR out for the errands to make them a lot more fun.

On Saturday morning I decided to go to do the normal club group run.  I wanted to try to do the 7 mile route, a distance I have not covered since I did the stupidly long 16 mile jaunt with Tracy several months ago.

When I walked out the door at 5:20 am I noticed my weather station showed an outdoor humidity level of 99.7%.  I felt every point of it during the run.  All in all, I held up ok to the longer distance run.  I ran it with Mitch, the club president, and Steve.  Luckily neither of them was looking to push pace as we averaged around a 9:20 mile which was plenty for me at that distance.

By the time the run was over my cotton shirt was absolutely drenched.  Thank goodness I have some water proof slip covers in the back of the SSR to accommodate such a situation.

Early Saturday afternoon Ali stopped out with the dogs.  She brought a bunch of empty bins with her.  The purpose of her visit was to collect various dinnerware/bakeware items that have remained at the house.  They stayed there because Alison didn’t have a place to keep them.  Since we set her up with the big Ikea shelving set that was no longer the case.

Ali had not been out to the house in a long time, at least a month, maybe even closer to two.  As we went through the house collecting various things for the bins there were various swells of emotion that rolled in, something that I think is unavoidable, regardless of how much time has passed since the separation.

We hung out with the dogs in the back yard for a bit during a break in the process and Nicki seemed quite content as she laid sprawled out on the carpet with mommy and daddy under the roof of where she spent that majority of her life. It made me smile but feel sad at the same time as I looked at her.

There were too many crates to all fit in Ali’s Volt so I threw the excess and the dogs in the van and went back to her place to help her unload.  Some of the crates had enough weight in them that she would have struggled hauling them up two flights of stairs.

The property has remained bogged down from excessive rain.  Despite the various bodies of water around the yard I tried to at least cut a small portion of the increasingly ratty looking grass, basically mowing the mound the house is built on.  I am hoping for a solid 2-3 rainless days so I can get out there to knock the rest down.

I saw a couple movies over the weekend.  The first one was Life of Pi, a movie I knew little about but had heard was quite good.  I knew it involved animals and little more.  Very early on I got a sense the movie was a Forrest Gump / Castaway hybrid although as things rolled along I realized the film had a personality all of it’s own.

I became very attached to Richard Parker, the tiger, despite his ornery ways and inclination to kill things.  Speaking of killing, there were several scenes of animals, albeit make believe CGI versions of animals, getting killed in ways that I found disturbing.   If you are an animal lover like I am you might want to have your finger close to the fast forward button for a few scenes.

All in all I found the movie touching, deep and meaningful.  It gets a very solid A in my book.  This appeared to be a film that would have been worth seeing the 3D version in theaters.

Last night I watched Jack Reacher on the Xbox, yet another Tom Cruise action film, a role that no one can dispute he excels at.  Despite seeing Tom in this sort of role again and again, I never seem to tire of it.  I enjoyed the film and was ok overlooking a few moments of absolute sillyness.  I’ll give it an A-.

Yesterday morning I went to a duathalon/triathlon but not as a participant.  My initial goal was to go there to talk to and shadow the guy that times their events, John from Endurance Sports Timing.  John and I are in contact a bunch since we both time races and use identical hardware and software to do it.  We often will compare notes, trying to help each other when needed. Cindy decided to sign up for the run/bike/run duathlon since I was going to be there anyway.

The race was staged by Elite Events a father/son team that started putting on events in our area couple years ago.  I had heard various things about their events, mostly negative but never had seen anything first hand.

It was interesting being on the sidelines of a race, observing the loosely controlled chaos instead of being in the middle of it.  I could see where some of the complaints about their events were coming from.  The race started late, there seemed to be inadequate race staff directing participants at key areas of the course and the race results were delayed and had a number of errors.

The registration and finish line area had no bathroom facilities at all.  If you had to relieve yourself you either went in the woods or walked around 3/4 of a mile to the other side of the park, a major f up.  You needed to have at least a couple port-o-potties out there.

On the plus side, the organizer has some good equipment to make the race come off as more professional with nicely branded signage and equipment.  They had a nice PA system with a wireless mic that allowed a lot of flexibility.  I can tell that they have good intentions but perhaps lack the manpower to address the needs to pull off all aspects of a race successfully.  Having races that combine duathalons and triathlons lends itself to scoring problems.  I think simpler would be far better in their case.

On a positive note, Cindy had a great race, winning the masters division, something she never did before.  For her efforts she received a personalized beer glass and a finisher medal.  Unfortunately she was one of the victims of the scoring problems and did not get announced as the masters winner.

During Sunday afternoon I headed outside for a prolonged outdoor workout session, my best outdoor session in months, despite the blazing sun and thick, muggy air.  I knocked out 100 pull ups, 100 push ups along with a number of other calisthenics training on both the bars and my set of rings.

During the workout we had to be very aware of fire ants.  Because of the wet ground they have been migrating closer to the house and it’s higher ground.

I decided to do my first set of push ups in the grass.  Prior to getting into the plank starting position I inspected the spots where my hands and feet were going to be, making sure they were ant free.

As I got to around rep 20 of 25 I started feeling burning on my stomach.  I ignored it and quickly pumped out the last 5 reps.  Well when I glanced down, my white shirt had a couple hundred ants on it and the burning on my abs grew rapidly.  I ripped off my shirt and start swatting and plucking the bastard ants from my mid-section.  I was quite thankful that the elastic band on my shorts was tight enough to discourage the ants from traveling south before chomping down on me.  The rest of the push up sets were performed on the dog deck for safety sake.

All in all I bet the outdoor workout was close to an hour.  I felt tired but accomplished at the same time.  The dip in the pool felt fantastic.

I got my electric bill in the mail.  It was much higher than I have become accustomed to, around $165.  When I looked at the average daily kilowatt usage it was something like 7 units higher per day than the same month last year, which didn’t make any sense, until I thought about it.

There are two possible explanations I can come up with.  Last week I noticed that one of the off stops on my timer for the pool pump had fallen off.  That means instead of running 3 hours a day it was running more like 14-15 hours a day.  I am not sure how long it was screwed up.  If it was for a couple weeks that would be a pretty solid explanation.

The other suspect is my AC system.  A few times I have noticed that the outdoor compressor is making an electrical buzzing/humming noise, a noise I don’t recall hearing before.  The AC system however seems to be functioning otherwise, the house is being kept cool overall.  What I am wondering is if the low speed/power part of the compressor is not working.  The low speed feature of the two speed compressor is a big energy saver, if that is screwed up I would imagine my electric usage could creep up considerably.

I am going to have someone come out to check it.

I didn’t really talk about Ali and I filing our divorce agreement on Wednesday,  it was emotional as I expected it to be.  One thing I did not expect was to get annoyed at the process of filing the papers.

When we walked up to the window and told the clerk we wanted to do she immediately started shoving a FAQ paper at us and telling us how she was unable to give us any legal advice.  Evidently she thought we were asking how to file the paperwork.  We slowed her down and told her we had the paperwork in hand and just needed her to process it.

So after a very slow process, made slower by some computer issue the woman was having, she hands us the paperwork which included a final court date in mid-July, a day that Ali is going to be out of town of course.  We told her that date was going to be no good.  The clerk said the only way to change it was to write a letter to the judge to request a date change. WTF??? Several parts of this made no sense to me.

First, when she was processing the paperwork, what would be so difficult to throw out a tentative date to us, asking if it works for us?  Second when we indicated that the date was a problem, why can’t the clerk simply immediately hop right back into the system and change to another date?  It seemed totally stupid.

So the next day we got it rescheduled, however waiting 24 hours translated into a new court date 3 weeks later than the original, I don’t get it.  At this point we just want to get this over with.  That point now will not arrive until summer is firmly on the downside in mid-August.

The hobby room painting is done but the room reassembly that is going to include some major sorting, throwing out and reorganization still needs to be completed.  That process will take up a decent chunk of my weekend.

All week in Naples it has been raining thanks to the tropical storm that is now moving up the coast.  Alison was supposed to be heading to PA this weekend but cancelled because of the shitty weather.  As a result my dog sitting weekend has been cancelled as well, a bit of a bummer.

I am annoyed that I am still feeling wheel vibration in the Tacoma, especially at highway speeds.  I assumed the vibration I have experienced for quite a while was due to the old worn out tires.  Now I’m not sure.

The easy thing is to guess that the new wheels are not balanced properly but I sort of doubt that is the case.  To test the theory I may do a diagonal tire rotation on the wheels/tires to see if the vibration feels any different after changing tire positions.  If it does, the truck will go back to Tuffy to check balance. If that comes up clean, there are more problems lurking in the suspension.

This weekend has a loose framework in place.  I will tighten it up as it comes.

So I heard a lot of buzz about this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode which I had not seen yet.  Fortunately my eyes didn’t stumble across what the shocking development was.  Last night I finally sat down to watch the episode with Sadie by my side and Nicki lounging on the floor.

Now of course I won’t give details of what happened but let me tell you, it lived up to the hype.  When it went down I am sure my mouth drop opened.  I had an inkling that something was up but I did not expect anything close to the scale of what actually goes down.  As the credits flashed up silently I sat there on the sofa, still trying to digest what just happened. Wow.  One of the most shocking moments in my tv watching history.

Today Ali and I are supposed to officially file our divorce agreement at the clerk of courts office.  Almost on queue, today’s weather is very gloomy and gray, unusual for Florida.  It’s going to be a sad moment, regardless of both of our hopes that it actually leads to happier times for both of us.  Things aren’t officially official until you get a court date to stand in front of a judge to affirm your intentions and he/she signs the order.

I’m not looking forward to the sadness these final steps are going to contain but at the same time I know it’s part of the storm that we have to navigate to get to better times ahead.

I must be stressed out, last night I was hoarding food big time. I feel like a slob today, need to get things high and tight asap.

So yesterday I got an email from my buddy Rich letting me know he recently changed jobs.  Ironically I had sent an email to his old work address a couple weeks ago and got a bounce so I was wondering what was going on.

Rich (on left) has been a good friend of mine that I met early on in my hard core volleyball days.  He was a member on a team I was recruited for back in the early-mid 90’s.  I recall how Rich and I would pepper the volleyball warming up. He loved when I would hit hard at him so he could try to dig it up, which he was pretty adept at.  For whatever reason from that time on we were friends and regular volleyball partners.  We were both lefties so it made for an interesting combo on the court.

Despite being close in height (I am a little taller), we had two very different roles on the court.  I was more the enforcer, preferring to just hit the ball hard, serve the ball hard with little else going through my head.  Rich was a far better defensive player, quicker, more cerebral and adept at mixing in power with finesse.  He also had a unique ability to bump set me just right, allowing me to take good rips at a ball more often than not.

Rich has a very dry but incredibly quick and witty sense of humor that I found endlessly entertaining.  He is responsible for most of the volleyball opponent nicknames I have listed here .  He also has been a huge part of the massive volleyball tip list I have created over the last decade or so.

We had a super successful run as vball doubles partners for two or three years, the highlight of which was our epic win in the 1999 Pottstown Rumble where we outlasted over 120 other teams to win our division.

Rich and I also had a stint as work out partners when I was in my beefy creatine days.  Once a week he would come over to my townhouse in Wernersville where we would push big weight in my finished basement while listening to a CD I burned with some of our favorite “pump you up” music. (anyone remember Ramstein?) After working out we would celebrate by pigging out, typically on meatball sandwiches.

Since I moved to Florida, Rich and I have fallen out of touch quite a bit.  Since I relocated he has married, bought a house, got a job in the IT industry and now has two children which keep him very, very busy.  It is a big change from the Rich I knew but a good one in the big picture.

So anyway he and I had an email exchange where we updated each other on the status of our lives currently.  Despite a lack of recent communication I had no problem jumping right into sharing personal feelings and information with Rich.  He was and always will be one of the few people in a very small circle of mine that I am comfortable sharing that sort of stuff with.

Rich has a unique ability to make me laugh out loud, often, a rare thing.

I handed out an invitation for him to come visit with the family anytime he chooses, I’d love to be able to  hang out with him again.  Who knows, we could maybe even find our way back onto a volleyball court somehow…

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.