Category Vehicle Maintenance

So yesterday Tuffy was supposed to call me to let me know the cost for getting the rear wheel bearings replaced on the Tacoma.  I waited till 10am I never heard anything so I called them.  Brad answered the phone.  I reminded him he said he was going to call me.  He said he was just checking the price now (yea sure), and he would call me back.  Ok fine I gave him my office number and waited.

1:30 came and I had not heard back.  I was getting annoyed as I normally do when someone tells me they are going to do something and then do not follow through.  I call again and get the assistant manager.  He looks up my name in the computer and sees that Brad did indeed get pricing yet for whatever reason neglected to call me.

He gives me a repair price of almost $700.  I was like WTF?  The number sounded ridiculous.  He started breaking down the various parts which included doing both rear wheel bearings something that evidently is recommended.  In his numbers were no price breaks or discounts taking into account that the bearing noise was non-existent until their mechanics laid their hands on the truck, which I pointed out to him.

So I told the guy no thanks, I will look elsewhere to do it.  I hung up frustrated that I now got to add the local Tuffy to the growing list of garages that  I won’t be frequenting.

I did a search online and found a small two guy garage that has TONS of positive feedback regarding their customer service, fair pricing and knowledge.  I called them up and made an appointment for tomorrow to have the work done.  Hopefully my 10 year search for a garage I can trust can finally come to an end.

I’m not really sure what I will do at the gym today.  My knees still hurt from running and my forearms hurt from tire flipping.  I guess I could do glute squeezes.

So on Friday I decided I was tired of farting around regarding the Tacoma tire situation.  I had spent a couple weeks scouring both new tire prices and Craigslist ads, looking for a cost efficient way to get new rubber on the truck without spending an arm and a leg.  I had mentioned last week I had a goal of getting it all done for less than $600.

Well it became pretty obvious I was not going to be able to hit that goal.  So Friday afternoon I called my local Tuffy, the place that handled my SSR tire problem last year for free.  I figured I may as well give them my business as a thank you.  I called them up and got a quote of $674 out the door for a set of General Grabbers, a nice looking, raised white letter tire.

So it is a little more than I was looking to spend but at least it would be done.  The garage ordered the tires.  I told them I would be in first thing Saturday morning to have them installed, good deal.

So I roll into the garage a little after 8 am and see Brad, the manager I dealt with before.  Brad is a bit of an enigma.  His demeanor is very subdued and you would almost get the first impression that he was annoyed to be even speaking to you. However despite his somewhat unfriendly outward appearance, he does try to take care of customer needs.

So I handed over the keys and took a seat in the lobby.  I had a conversation with Brad and another customer in the waiting room about how things used to be in Collier county and how much things have changed in the last 20 years.  The convo went much along the lines of what Mitch told me the week before with stories of drugs, gangs and crime being the norm.

So the mechanic that was working on the Tacoma came in and talked to Brad.  Brad tells me that the driver side tie rod is bad, allowing lots of back and forth movement.  Replacing the rod and doing the required alignment afterwards was going to tack another $200 onto the bill.  Well I knew I had little choice, you don’t want to throw new tires on a loose front end.  Brad said they could get the part in less than an hour.  I told him to go ahead and do the repair.

Well the tie rod and alignment of course meant I was spending more time waiting.  I didn’t get out of there until 10:30.  By that time I was quite tired of waiting but glad to have the work finished.  I hopped in the truck and headed home.

Well almost immediately I noticed an odd noise once the truck got over 40 mph, it was like a droning sound.  At first I thought it could possibly be the little rubber nipples that are on new tires however it didn’t make any sense that it would be that loud and that the noise would come and go.  Instead of turning around and going right back to the garage I went home, I had stuff I wanted to get done around the house before it got too damn hot.

I did call Brad when I got home and told him about the noise.  He told me to bring it back in and they would look/listen to it.  I told him I would stop back later in the afternoon after I got some work done.

I got my work done and drove back to the garage, still hearing the noise, and frustrated that I had yet another vehicle issue to address.  When I got there the mechanic that worked on my truck went for a drive with me.  He clearly heard the noise and agreed it was coming from the left side.  I described the noise as sounding like something was rubbing or similar to how it sounds when you drive over rumble strips except the noise fades in and out.

When we got back to the garage he put the truck up on the lift.  He called me out several minutes later and handed me his amplified automotive stethoscope.  He had me hold it against the back of the driver side rear wheel as he spun it.  I heard what sounded like the brake shoes lightly rubbing against the drum, he told me what I was hearing was the wheel bearing.

I immediately questioned the diagnosis.  I told him that before the tire/tie rod replacement I never heard the noise.  I assured them I was pretty in tune with what noises my truck makes after all this time.  It made very little sense to me that changing the tires, a tie rod and an alignment would have caused the rear wheel bearing to fail, yet the noise did sound like it.

Replacing a wheel bearing is nothing I am equipped to do and it is a part that is only available from a dealer, meaning it was not going to get addressed on Saturday afternoon.  I am going to be getting a quote on the repair later today and am going to have to make arrangements to get the truck there sometime this week.  I am hoping it isn’t too steep, my total expense could reach double what I was looking to spend originally, fantastic.

Saturday night before going to the movies I was an inadvertent accessory to fatally maiming an anole,  it somehow got itself wedged under a sticky sliding glass door I was trying to pull shut.  I felt absolutely horrid when I looked down and saw it’s small tail frantically thrashing.  I lifted up the door off the track and got the poor guy out.  He was still alive but the damage was done, the 3/4 of his limbs were wrecked and the skin on his back was torn back.

I immediately felt a heavy wave of sorrow hit me as I picked up the little lizard in my hand.  I took him outside, thinking he would prefer to die peacefully outdoors under a plant or tree.  However when I tried to put him down he acted like he preferred the warmth of my hand.  I realized that in his condition he was likely to be attacked by ants or other insects while he was still alive and unable to do anything about it.   That certainly wasn’t what I wanted to happen.

So as I held him in my hand I lightly rubbed his tiny head with my fingertip, wondering what I was going to do, I was already late to leave to go to the movies.  So I did the only logical thing, took him along to the movies.  I knew he wasn’t going to last long but I thought the least I could do was let him die with company instead of alone since I was responsible for his fatal injuries.  By the time I got to the movie theater he was almost completely faded away.  When the movie was over he was gone for good.  I felt really bad about the whole ordeal.  When I got home the little guy was buried in the garden even though it was pushing 11:30 at night.  Sorry buddy…

Speaking of the movies, I saw Fast and Furious 6.  You would think a movie with 6 sequels would be rather long in the tooth.  Well the FF series seems to buck that trend.  This was not only a pure action film, it was old school, relying on honest to goodness car chases, explosions and fight scenes that were real and not CGI creations.   I can only imagine the budget involved with destroying that many things.

The Rock  is f’ing huge.  He looks like he washes down his Revita-T with steroid milkshakes.  The guy is just a monster, tons bigger than his days a s a WWE wrestler.

The movie was just fun.  Yea the plot is predictable but with a movie like this you really don’t care.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself from start to finish.  Maybe the most amazing thing is they are clearly making a 7th installment, and you know what, I will go see that one too.  It gets a solid A from me as long as you are just looking for brainless entertainment on a grand scale.  If you are looking to boost your IQ, look elsewhere.

You may recall I had this dumb idea to replace my dishwasher with a higher tech version for no good reason.  Well the higher than expected Tacoma repair charges did a good job of derailing that idea.  I did make a tech appliance purchase this weekend though, a toaster.

A toaster, much like my dishwasher is an appliance that sees a lot of usage in the house.  This particular toaster injects some fun tech into the process.  It has no traditional lever to drop the bread.  Instead you place the bread in the slot, hit a button and it is lowered into the toaster.  The unit has a LCD screen where various info is displayed, including a count down till your toast is done.  It looks super cool, at least as cool as a toaster can be.

The purchase satisfied my gadget itch without putting a major dent in my wallet like a dishwasher potentially could have, a good compromise.

On Sunday I did another training brick, this time just a run and swim.  Since I omitted biking I felt like I should stretch the run, doing 6 miles instead of 4.  This was the first time I have run 6 miles since doing 16 with Tracy what felt like eons ago.  It almost wound up being another 4 miler.

As I was coming close to completing lap two of the two mile loop I was in the midst of heavy internal conversations.  One voice was really interested in stopping at 4 miles, I just was not feeling great. Stopping short was sounding really good.  However thankfully the “don’t be a pussy” voice was louder and pushed me into lap 3.  Despite feeling pretty shitty the entire run I averaged slightly over a 9 minute mile pace which isn’t terrible for me.

In the pool I stretched things as well, doing three 500 yard segments instead of the 400’s I normally break my swim into.  I was quite pooped by the end of it all.

I picked up the dogs on the way back to the house.  They had fun hanging there as always as I worked on various things around the homestead.  They both just seem so happy when they get to run around (fast walk for Nicki) the yard with no tether.

My Memorial Day started early as it has the past few years due to timing a race.  For awhile it was just Bill, who drives the running club supply truck, and myself.  We seem to be the only two that are on site two hours before a race consistently.  Bill was actually there far earlier, having to do some last minute changes to the course due to a large soccer tournament that was going on at the same time.

The race wasn’t all that big with around 300 entries.  Timing the event went very well with no major issues at all.  It almost felt relaxing compared to some races I have been part of.

I had a bit of downtime early Monday afternoon so I thought I would fill it with a physical challenge.  I targeted the big 300 pound tire in my backyard as my exercise, specifically flipping it.  I have done some flipping of the tire before, it was tough.  For the holiday I wanted to push the envelope, flipping it from the parallel bars to the fence line and back, somewhere close to 500 feet in total.

Before the attempt I applied one of the temporary Bud Light Platinum tattoos that Ali gave me awhile back.  For some reason it felt appropriate.

As expected, flipping the heavy tire that far was pretty brutal.  It didn’t help that my knees both felt shaky from the run the day before and that my forearms were still feeling mildly irritated.  None of it mattered though, I was going to get the tire to the fence and back if it killed me.  It probably took me close to 15 minutes but I completed the challenge, sucking wind majorly by the end. On the return trip I tried to count the number of tire flips, I think it was 38 flips meaning for the round trip I probably flipped the big ass tire somewhere between 75-80 times.

Late Monday afternoon was the GCR Memorial Day picnic.  On the way there I drove through torrential downpours, I was hoping that the picnic would have different weather conditions since it was located much further south and on the coast.  For the most part, it was.

There was a period of 45 minutes where it rained quite hard.  I stood over the grill with a big umbrella, trying to keep our grill master Dave dry as he cooked the burgers and hot dogs.  There was a great spread of food this year once again.  Unfortunately we also were once again plagued with a large amount of flies trying to get their fair share.

Although the food was great, I actually had very little of it besides a small veggie burger and some healthy pasta salad.  Most of my consumption was the alcohol variety.  I didn’t keep an accurate count but I think I downed something like 5 BLP’s, an equal amount of Miller Lites and a couple jello shots to boot.

I was drunk, really drunk.  At one point I was trying to bump a volleyball around and was physically unable to do so, shanking nearly every ball towards the water.  Much like last year, I was one of the few that basically closed out the picnic sticking around till the very end.  All I can say is thank goodness Cindy, the woman I am dating, knows how to drive stick.  Otherwise I may have still been sitting there in the SSR waiting to sober up.  It was a fun time for sure.  I am still feeling the side effects though.

So finally, finally, finally, around 3 months after I sent in the paperwork for my taxes the refund is sitting in my bank account.  I met Ali at the bank once again yesterday and was able to get the transaction done in 5 minutes.  I have been anxiously awaiting the deposit of these funds to replenish what I already laid out to get the pool deck painted a couple months ago.

I also should be able to finally get a new set of rubber on the Tacoma.  The tires have been worn and noisy for quite a long time, something to be expected since they probably have at least 75,000 miles on them now.

So when I had my physical a few weeks back it was revealed that my testosterone level was ridiculously high, 1360, the reason I wound up getting my man parts ultrasounded. They wanted to rule out some sort of abnormal mass causing the high score.

Well when I initially went in for the exam and was asked about medication I was taking I didn’t even mention a testosterone supplement I was taking because I didn’t feel like it was making any difference.  I had started taking it a few months ago in an attempt to self medicate for some issues I was having that could be related to low T scores.

When I went back in to the office after my initial blood test the doctor sat down and said he had an awkward question for me, he asked if I was taking steroids.  I laughed and said no.  He said that my testosterone number was off the charts high, 1360.  Normal range in healthy men is classified as number between 300-800.

Once he told me my score I told him about the supplement I was taking and how I didn’t bother to mention it because I hadn’t noticed any difference with my issues.  He found it hard to believe that my T number could spike that high with any non-steroid supplement.  He looked up what I was taking online and found the ingredient list.  The major ingredient is something called stinging nettleweed. Still he was dumbfounded by the score.

So anyway the high score was why I was sent for the ultrasound, to rule out a physical problem as the cause.  He also told me to stop taking the supplement ( I already had) and that he wanted to draw more blood later (last week) to see how my levels are.

The ultrasound scan revealed no abnormalities that could cause elevated T production thankfully.  When I went back to the doctor yesterday the results of my second blood test seemed to confirm that my sky high T was tied into the supplement.  My testosterone level had dropped to 785, a nearly 500 point drop and now just inside the upper “normal level”.

The results of the test seem to point to the Revita-T supplement being the sole contributing factor which still is pretty amazing, a T supplement just never produces those kind of numbers.  Hell you could be injecting yourself with testosterone and not see a level that high.  Perhaps my body chemistry just really responds to what is in the pill.

The more surprising thing is I was actually only doing the lower of the two dosing options with the supplement.  The instructions say take either 1 or 2 pills at night before bed.  I was only taking one and there were plenty of nights I forgot to take it altogether.

So anyway, the end result of this month of blood draws, ball scanning, and other uncomfortable/awkward physical examinations is I am walking around with a stellar T score.  For comparison, I had a T test done in 2011 and my number was 560.   I am actually considering resuming my supplement although maybe on an every other day basis.  It is a bit unsettling that the directions also advise you to “cycle” the product on a 2 month on 1 month off schedule, when shooting roids you follow a similar schedule.

So I just got done installing a Samsung SSD drive in my work computer. I was following some very thorough directions that I found here. However I ran into an issue when I was trying to clone the existing system partition to the SSD drive.

I also got myself in trouble using the command line DISKPART tool when I set the wrong partition on my SATA drive as Active, causing a bootmgr error.  Luckily I was able to boot up my Windows 7 recovery cd (be sure to make one first) and fix the problem.

So anyway, after getting my system booted back up on the original SATA drive I decided to throw in the CD that is included with the SSD drive.  On there was a setup for a “Data Migration” utility.  I installed the program and fired it up.

Wow the utility makes migrating an existing installation on a SATA drive to a new SSD drive stupidly easy.  Pick your source drive, pick the SSD drive as the destination and click COPY.  Roughly 25 minutes later my 170 gig of data was moved across.  I shut down the system, unplugged the SATA drive, plugged the data cable for the SSD drive into the port formerly used by the SATA drive and hit the power button. WOW.

Once the POST process was done and the computer started hitting the SSD drive the system was amazingly fast.  My existing Windows 7 install was over a year old at this point.  As a result, when booting off the SATA drive it took well over 5 minutes until everything was done loading up.  This slowness is despite weekly de-fragmentation that had been done to the old drive.

Once I logged into the upgraded system the SSD drive was completely done loading the desktop in less than 15 seconds.  It was amazing.  Every thing I did on the system felt like it had a rocket booster attached compared to how things performed before, it’s just incredible.

I had avoided SSD drives in the past because of the reputation they had early on of wearing out.  Although there are no moving parts in a SSD drive, the repeated writes to the flash memory eventually will make certain areas stop working.  However as in most things in tech, they have gotten much better with SSD drive reliability as time has passed.  The Samsung 840 drive I installed has a 5 year warranty, better than anything you will find on a conventional SATA hard drive.

The huge performance improvement I am seeing makes me want to install the technology on my home computer as well.  Unfortunately SSD drives come with a price, literally.  They are much more expensive than their conventional spinning platter counterparts.  Right now I need to be using that money towards tires instead of toys.

Friday night after work Ali dropped the dogs off at the house so we could go check out this years version of the Collier County Fair.  Although we aren’t living under the same roof we still share our bizarre interest in the fair.  When we left the house the sun was up, I felt plenty warm in my jeans and Big Dogs long sleeve shirt.  Grabbing a sweatshirt felt totally unnecessary.

I don’t think we ever attended the fair on a Friday night, wow was it busy.  We merged into a long line of cars waiting to get into the fairgrounds.   Once we parked and got inside the gate we immediately saw an act going on we were interested in, a dog frisbee show.  We came in on the tail end of the show but what we saw was pretty cool.  This couple rescues dogs, trains them, and then adopts them out to families to the tune to about 20 dogs a year.  That is awesome.

We walked through the tent that is “church row” .  It houses 5 or 6 church stands including the anti-abortion people.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t go to a fair looking to be “saved”.

As soon as the sun went down I knew I was going to regret not grabbing an auxiliary article of clothing for my upper body.  The temps were hurtling down quickly.  If I am cold that means Ali was frozen.

We walked through the animal area once again.  Last years fair actually was the moment in time when I decided to stop eating beef, pork, and poultry products.  This year simply reenforced that feeling.  If you take the time to observe cows and pigs, especially pigs, you can see that they are not dumb animals devoid of intelligence or feeling.

Ali and I were especially touched by these two pigs that were laying snout to snout in a reassuring manner, similar to the way Nicki and Sadie will do.

We saw two more animal acts while we were there, bears and bengal tigers.  I felt much better about the bear act.  The couple that ran it are local and described the open 2.5 acre habitat their bears roam on.   The tigers got stuffed back into these tiny compartments in a trailer.  I have a feeling they spend the majority of their time confined in a similar manner.

We walked into the heart of the carnies where the majority of the rides and games of (little) chance reside.  Ali and I were impressed in the rides this year in both quantity and quality, although we didn’t get to ride any.  Luckily since there were a lot of people at the fair, we didn’t have as many solicitations from bored carnies as in years past.

Part of the fair experience is downing fair food.  We warmed up with some pizza that was low quality, even for fair food.  We finished up with arepa’s, which is two corn patties with cheese in between.  Those were better than the pizza but by the time I finished up what was left over from Ali’s, I had enough fair food.

Last year I greatly enhanced my fair experience by hitting the beer tent pretty hard.  I tried to revisit that strategy but I only downed a single beer.  I was just too damn cold.  Unfortunately the cold weather sort of steered us towards the exit a little quicker than we may have if the thermometer was 10 degrees higher.  There was a wrestling show at 9:30 that we didn’t stick around for due to the cold. Although I was plenty cold, I saw plenty of unfortunate people walking around in shorts and t-shirts, ouch.

In years past I would usually try to find the scariest ride on the grounds and try it.  I sort of felt bad that I didn’t do any rides, it makes me feel like an old fart.  One of the unwelcome side effects of being 45 is something changes in your head that makes getting nauseous a very accessible side effect of amusement rides.   Skipping the rides actually bothered me enough that I might  go back to the fair during arm band night where you pay 10 bucks and can do unlimited rides.

I can hear the PA system of the fair very clearly from my house at night.  Hearing all the commotion makes me feel like I am missing out on something.

After the fair Ali actually headed home sans dogs, they slept over since I was going to have them for a good portion of Saturday as well.  Whenever they sleep over it is bittersweet.  I enjoy having Sadie snoring next to me but then when they go home, the next night feels very lonely.

Sadie also seems to enjoy minimizing my sleep when she is sharing the bed.  Early Saturday morning, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-5:30 am she jammed her nose into my shoulder and then sat upright next to me, staring,  requesting attention.  Well of course my first concern is that there is some sort of urgent bathroom need so I drug myself out of bed and let her out.  She took a leak but it was far from urgent.  It’s funny how she still likes to get me up early when she is at the house, since with Ali, she won’t ever try to wake her up.  She has adopted a dual internal alarm clock depending on which bed she is in.

So Saturday morning I picked up Ali once again.  I wanted to go pick up my season tickets for the Tarpons.  While we were up there we each had a 40% off coupon for the Gap outlet that is right next door in the big Miromar Outlets.  I actually only bought one cheap shirt at Gap.  I wound up spending the majority of my money at the Adidas outlet getting another pair of training pants and shorts.  Ali scored deals from several places.

After dropping Ali back off at her place I headed home to tackle my major project of the weekend, replacing the valve cover gaskets on the Tacoma.

My prep for this job was watching a YouTube video of some guy doing the same job on a 98 Forerunner.  I left the video up on my computer as a reference although I only referred back to it a couple times.

The disassembly process wasn’t horrible although I found a couple additional steps I had to do that were not on the video, perhaps a difference between the Tacoma versus a Forerunner.  One tip that I am glad was in the video was to cover the intake opening once the plenums are removed.  The point of this is to prevent foreign objects from falling in which would be a disaster.

This tip saved my ass when I started to pull the wire loom for the fuel injectors out of the way. The loom was made out of plastic.  After 14 years the plastic had become extremely brittle.  As I lifted on it pieces flew off.  I am pretty sure if I didn’t have the intake covered plastic shrapnel would have fallen in.

When I tried to actually pull the driver side valve cover off it was sticking.  When it did finally jerk free it crashed into the loom, breaking it further, way beyond the point of no return.  I broke the remaining fragments off, knowing I would have to come up with some other way to shield the wires.  I ran into a similar problem on the other side.

When I was unbolting the valve covers it became quite obvious why they were leaking, besides old gaskets.  The bolts that hold the valve cover on were all loose, very loose.  I guess years of vibration backed them out.  It’s no wonder they were leaking oil.

My gasket set included new fittings for the spark plug tubes.  After f’ing around with replacing just one for almost 15 minutes I decided the remaining 5 old gaskets were adequate.  The new, blue Fel-pro gaskets fit the valve covers perfectly.  It was a good thing that they are seated in a ridge on the cover, keeping them snugly in place during reassembly.  Getting the covers back on is a pain in the ass.

The wires/wire loom is never removed, it is just loosened.  To remove/install the valve covers you have to work it under the wires awkwardly.  There are also a bunch of vacuum lines nearby that provide further obstacles to get around.  I did my best to maintain calm as I tried various angles of attack until I eventually found a winner.

So I got the driver side valve cover done and was almost down to putting the last bolt in the passenger side cover.  As I pushed the socket on the bolt it came loose and the bolt tumbled down below, coming to rest somewhere on the skid plates under the truck.  I crawled down there with a flash light and felt around for awhile, reaching my hand into incredibly dirty, oily, greasy places, trying to feel for the bolt.  I was unsuccessful.

At this point I was already 3 hours into the job, an hour longer than the instructional video said it should take a “novice”. The last thing I felt like doing was pulling off the skid plates.  I already knew I was going to AutoZone to get some generic wire loom so I figured I will just get another bolt while I am there, screw it.

So I had about a 90 minute round trip to and from the store where I bought some 3/4″ wire loom and two different kind of bolts, one had the right style panhead but was about 5MM shorter than the factory bolt, the second bolt had a conventional nut head but was the same length as the factory hardware.  I wanted to have my bases covered.

So by the time I got back to the house it was getting close to 5.  I had mentally resigned myself to not getting the truck back together on Saturday as I was already beat, tired and didn’t want to stay out there into the darkness.  I figured I would work until maybe 6 or so and call it a day.

Well surprisingly the reassembly process went pretty smoothly. There were a lot of vacuum hoses and electrical connectors that had to be reattached along the way.  When I was taking it apart I was concerned I might not be able to remember where it all went but most of it fell right into place.

I did use some visual aids when it came to reinstalling the spark plug wires.  I drew myself a small diagram illustrating how the two sides connected together as well as laying the wires out on my folding table in the same layout as they were removed.

I had everything back together in around an hour.  I was very nervous when I turned the key, hoping I didn’t forget to attach something along the way.  A smile crept across my tired face as the truck started up and sounded normal, whew.

It was a challenging job, made more challenging by the brittle plastic.  Luckily the generic wire loom I used seems like it will be adequate to protect the injector wires going forward.  In total I was out there for close to 5 hours.  I was stiff and sore.  However those pains were dulled by the knowledge that I succeeded in a repair task that I probably would have stayed away from a few years ago.  Unfortunately I wont really know how effective my new gaskets are until some time passes.

So I Saturday night it felt like my brain was punching a ticket that my body was not willing to cash in.  I got it in my head I wanted to do a personal triathlon Sunday morning incorporating running, riding and swimming.  Saturday I was walking around stiff legged and slow, hardly the way I want to feel before asking my body to endure a triple brick a few hours later.

Well Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed.  I wasn’t feeling great but better than 7 hours prior.  I still had the mental need to complete this fitness goal so I gathered my stuff to do so.  I decided since it was St Patricks Day it would be appropriate to wear the bike jersey I bought in Ireland.  It is too small for me, it’s only a medium but I figured for one day I could jam myself into it.

I pulled into the water park a little after 8:30.  First up was a two lap run around the outside of the park grounds which adds up to 4 miles.  It was my first running since the half marathon.  Early on I did not feel great, my legs were feeling the side effects of the Tacoma work.  It felt like the first mile or so I had a slight limp in my stride.

As I was on the back stretch of the last lap I pulled down on the bike jersey that I had on under a t-shirt, it was sliding up my belly.  A few seconds later I heard what sounded like a piece of wood hit the path behind me.  I wondered if a small branch dropped but did not bother to turn around to look.

So I got back to the truck after my 4 miles and reached around to the back of my bike jersey, I had put the key to the truck in one of the bottle pockets that are on the back, figuring that would be the safest, least obtrusive spot.  Hmm weird, I didn’t feel the key.  Again I patted down my back and felt nothing but skin, what the fck??!!!

I then awkwardly get my hand inside one of the pockets and feel my finger poke out a large hole!  Obviously this must be the pocket where the key formally resided.  Great.

Well my mind immediately recalled the noise on the pathway.  I hoped that noise was actually the key falling out.  I hopped on the bike and sped over in that direction, hoping nobody picked the key up.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted the key.  I was very lucky.  If it dropped out in the grassy portion of the run I would have never heard/found it.

So the bike leg of my tri got a late start.  I had a good ride, slightly slower than the previous week but with a 4 mile run to pre-fatigue my body it is to be expected.  With the wind to my back I was over 20 mph, with it in my face I was in the 17’s.

The swim portion of the tri went fine, I did 1000 yards of swimming broken into 400,400, 200 segments.  My right shoulder hurts quite a bit during the early portion of the swim but feels pretty good by the end of it.  I decided to opt out of a post workout pool pizza lunch, instead heading directly home.

During Sunday afternoon I attended to various left over duties around the house.  I also had a brief visit from Randall’s girlfriend and her friend Ceci.  They had run a half marathon up in Sarasota that morning and stopped by to pick up stuff I was giving to Randall (old 360, Bose system).   They couldn’t stay long since they still had a long drive across the alley and St Patrick Day drinking plans.

Speaking of which, I maintained my odd tradition of a dry St Patricks Day.  I didn’t go out. I didn’t drink a drop of alcohol.  It really isn’t a conscious effort.  Nobody invited me out to celebrate and it wasn’t important enough for me to actively seek out St Patty’s madness.

Instead I spent my Sunday night watching Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter.  I remember when I saw the preview for this in theaters last year I thought it was an incredibly silly premise.  I later heard the film had a huge budget but as expected, did not do well at the box office.

Well I wanted to see just how they managed to portray one of the most famous presidents in history as a vampire hunter so I threw it in my Netflix queue.  Well it turns out they did a pretty decent job of making it work.

Of course nothing can make you forget the strangeness of the plot but if you allow yourself to just go with the flow of the movie and not do much reality checking you will find a mostly enjoyable experience.  I thought the movie was fun and surely worth a Netflix rental.  I never thought I would see Lincoln kicking ass and taking names with a silver tipped axe but now that I have, I like it. B+

So last night on the way home from work I stopped at the Auto Zone near my work to pick up a set of valve cover gaskets for the Tacoma.  Well evidently they recently sold their last set but a quick check of inventory showed the store located on Pine Ridge had them.  I redirected my normal home route and picked them up.

I inadvertently secured myself a 10% discount from this chain of events and realized it is something anyone can do with a little planning.  AutoZone has a policy that if one store doesn’t have an item and you have to drive to another AutoZone location to get it they knock 10% off the price.  This is the second time they have done this for me.

The way you could manufacture this discount is to check their website ahead of time which has pretty accurate real time store inventory.  If you see two nearby stores and one has the part and the other doesn’t,  you simply stop at the store that you know doesn’t have the part first.  They will give you a little print out that you take to the second store, instant 10% discount.  Now of course this would only make sense if the item you are buying costs more than a few bucks and if the stores are close enough together.  In my case both of these criteria were met.

So yesterday I got another email from IX.  It was from somebody in the Ukranian part of their help desk had responded regarding my CPU utilization issue.  The email made no sense.  The person said my account was still using too much CPU time but the stats she included for each day had no numbers and the scripts listed had small CPU usage numbers.  I was pissed and immediately called them up.

I told the guy this email made no sense, stating I was still using too much CPU time but the stats in the message did not back that up.  He did some quick checking of my CPU usage and he saw that for the past two days my CPU use has been well below the threshold. (thanks to the wonders of CloudFlare)  He said he was not sure what his Ukranian counterpart was looking at.  He marked the ticket as finally being closed, after more than a month of my scrambling to get out from under the problem.

When I got home last night I decided I wanted to try to beat my pull up reps max.  I did a strong set of 23 at the gym over lunch and I thought I might have a shot at at least matching my improbable 30 reps I nailed down last October.  I wound up a little short, bailing after rep 28, my grip was burning.  It would have been cool to hit the magic 30 rep number again.  It’s coming.

Last night Tuki made me snap for a brief period of time.  Tuki does a lot of things that are annoying, like screeching when I go into certain areas of the house, trying to attack me when I do stuff like change his crocks and clean his cage.  He also likes to fly off the top of the cage when I have him out as I walk by, giving my head a fly by.  99% of the time I just ignore his antics since it is well established the bird doesn’t like me.

Well last night I was carrying laundry back to the bedroom and Tuki was on top of his cage.  As I walked by he launches himself and bangs into the side of my head during one of his flight loops.  Well that flipped my switch instantly.  I get within 6 inches of the bird and scream “Do NOT fly into my head!”  I follow it up by smashing my fist on the top of his cage several times for emphasis.  I think I got my point across.

This weekend I would like to tackle the valve cover gasket replacement on the truck.  I am a bit hesitant to embark on this repair as it requires a LOT of disassembly, more than any Tacoma work I have done thus far.  I need to allow myself an entire afternoon to do the work to accommodate the hurdles I always manage to hit.

I’m hoping to rack up another training brick Sunday morning as well.  For entertainment I always have 4 more Walking Dead the game episodes to play through and Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter sitting in a Netflix envelope on my counter.

I am annoyed that the opening game for the Florida Tarpons, the arena football team that I bought two season tickets for this season, has their opening game on Monday night.  Monday, wtf?  Last night all the home games were on a Saturday night but one.  I need to find someone to go with me.

I knew it had been longer than normal since I changed the oil on the Tacoma but I didn’t realize just how long.  I looked at my maintenance log and saw the last time I changed the oil on the truck was in mid-August at 142,000 miles and change.  I am currently well north of 151,000 miles.

Holy shit.  I have never let any vehicle of mine go 9000 miles between oil changes, typically 5k is the upper limit. The van also hasn’t had it’s oil changed since the western PA road trip so it is overdue as well.  The plan is for me to change the oil on both vehicles tomorrow during the day while I am home for pool deck painting project.

Staying in the auto maintenance field, I think I have decided to take a crack at replacing my valve cover gaskets on my Tacoma.  The valve covers on my truck have been leaking for years and are probably the prime reason my alternator failed last year.

I remember getting a quote for replacing them a long time ago and it was ridiculous, something like $500 supposedly because of all the labor involved. F that.

Well for whatever reason, yesterday I got to looking into what is involved to replace the gaskets.  With my IAC and spark plug/wire adventures I already had a decent amount of experience ripping into the engine a bit.

I found this video on youtube that did a good job of outlining what is involved to do the repair.  It has a LOT of stuff that has to come off to get to the gaskets but nothing that is outside of the range of a hack mechanic like myself.  It seems the most important thing will be organizing the parts/bolts that are removed so you make sure they go back in where they belong.

The video author said an experienced mechanic can do the job in about an hour.  He estimated a novice could do it in two, which means it will probably take me 3-4 based on my track record.

The parts only add up to $35, I’ll deal with a couple hours of greasy frustration to save $475.

The guy that made the video had 357,000 miles on his 3.4L engine.  Wow.  Although the exterior of my truck looks like shit from years in the blazing Florida sun, inside and mechanically it is holding up pretty well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are a regular blog reader you know I have had issues the last several months with my battery warning light in the Tacoma coming on.  It has been a hit and miss thing.  Well yesterday when I went to the gym the light came on and stayed on solid.  In addition I could smell a slight electrical burn.  I was worried that the alternator had completely died.

When I got to the gym I opened the hood and saw the alternator looked normal but I still could smell the burn.  My concern was it wasn’t charging at all which would quickly result in the truck dying in the middle of the road somewhere.  I was just hoping I would be able to get the truck to Autozone after work before it died.

I was relieved when I made it there.

I had the guy come out and test the alternator.  I had it tested once before when the light started coming off and on. At that time it tested as ok.  This time it did not.  The alternator was still outputting juice but less then it is supposed to, it failed the test.  It was good to know it was still putting out power, it meant I should be able to make it back home without having to call AAA.

So I didn’t waste much time until I got to work, knowing daylight was at a premium.  I pulled the SSR out of the garage and pulled the Tacoma part of the way in so the engine bay was under the light, just in case the job took longer than expected.  Of course, it did.

So I had done some loose research on alternator replacement, it didn’t seem too involved, a couple bolts, disconnect the electrical connections, loosen the belt and then reverse the process.  Well I hit a road block almost immediately.

I found two mounting points, a pivot bolt up top and a nut down below.  I removed the pivot bolt and loosened the nut below, thinking that would be enough to allow the alternator to move downward so I could remove the belt.  It did not want to budge at all.  Hell I even tapped it with a hammer to see if it moved, it didn’t.

So I went inside and looked for quick reference on the internet.  However as I was sitting there I realized I have my Chilton’s manual in the truck, I should be using it.  I am just so conditioned to using the internet as my sole reference point.

When I looked at the book I confirmed those two bolts were the only ones that held the alternator in place.  However the book also mentioned that with the V-6 models, it is recommended you remove the skid plate on the bottom to get better access to the alternator.

By this time daylight was gone, I was utilizing a flashlight and one of my fluorescent lanterns we use for the running club to provide additional lighting where needed.  As I was crawling around under the truck, trying to get the skid plate off, with the lantern next to me, a flaw in my plan to work at night with the garage door open was revealed, fucking bugs.

Working at night, in Florida, at the tail end of wet season with an open door and bright light source is like a big welcome sign for any insect within a couple hundred yards to come on in.   As I am pinned under the truck with limited movement area I had all sorts of things buzzing around me, including mosquitoes.  I was getting extremely agitated at this point.

Once I got the skid plate off I did have much better access to the bottom of the alternator.  I realized I needed to back off the tensioner bolt to allow the bottom of it to swing.  Once I did that I was finally able to get the belt off.

So now with both bolts totally off the alternator you would expect it would just fall right out.  Nope, it was still held in place just because the pivot bolt area is a really tight fit into the mounting area.  I left the it suspended in place while I turned my attention to removing the two electrical connections.

The first connector wasn’t too bad.  I had to pop off a plastic cover and then remove a nut.  The second connector SUCKED.  At first I tried to get it removed while the alternator was still in it’s mounted position.  Supposedly you just had to press down on a tab and the connector should release.  Well it didn’t.

I then popped the alternator out of the mounting bracket so I would have full access to the connector to manipulate it.  Even in this position I was unable to get the damn thing off.  I fought with it for a good 15 minuted trying various tools to help me.  I was getting nervous because some of my work with a pliers was damaging the plastic connector a bit.

Finally I got the damn thing to release.  When I looked at the connector I saw why I was having issues, it looked like it was a bit warped from heat.  I was worried that it might not work on the new alternator.

Installing the new alternator was not nearly as aggravating as removing the old one since I knew what was involved.  The bitched up connector did still snap in to the new unit, thankfully.  The most difficult part of putting the new alternator in was getting the pivot bolt portion back into it’s bracket with the bolt hole lined up.  It was SUPER tight, I had to use some light tapping with a hammer to get it into position.

Finally, after 2 hours of nasty labor I was ready to turn the key to see if my alternator surgery was successful.  I held my breath, turned the key and was pleased when the truck started right up and the battery warning light remained dark.  Sweet success.

The new alternator cost me about $140 after returning the old core.  I am pretty sure if I went to a garage to have the same work done I would have easily been out $400 or more.

I did wind up getting incredibly dirty.  My engine area is a greasy, oily mess.  The valve cover gaskets need to be replaced. I had black all over my arms, hands, head and legs.  It was a long shower that involved tons of scrubbing with my loofa brush thing.

Despite being worn out from the late night mechanic session I was up until almost midnight catching episode 1 of this season of Walking Dead.  As expected, it delivered.

The Chick-Fil-A bullshit has grown into an even bigger mess.  You know once Sarah Palin starts commenting on a situation it is a certified three ring circus.  The images of people wrapping around the store to “support” Chick-Fil-A literally made me sick to my stomach.  I mean really, this is the way you are going to show you give a damn?  Sheeple are so disappointing.

I was chatting to Homey about this yesterday and he was pissed off at the calls from gay activists groups to picket Chick-Fil-A locations to harass customers.  I think that behavior is out of bounds as well.

I just don’t get it.  It is all posturing that at the end of the day accomplishes NOTHING. Well nothing except giving Chick-Fil-A a lot of Jesus dollars from gay marriage opposing religious individuals.

My position is extremism, regardless of the cause, is something I don’t support.

Last night I tried a balancing move I never pulled off before, the one hand handstand.  It is one of the BB challenges this month.  I actually held it against the wall for 25 seconds.  It was cool.

This weekend I plan to do oil/filter changes on all three of my vehicles, I’ll be running a regular Jiffy Lube out of my garage.  The Tacoma is due because of mileage, the SSR and party van are ready based on time since neither of them are driven all that much.

Last night I headed outside for some work on my bars.  I didn’t have one piece of equipment with me that I normally do, my Flip cam.  I sort of decided that it isn’t necessary for me to film every time I go out there.  In a way I believe it is counter productive to do so.  I need to spend more time getting sets and reps in and less time doing video production work.  I’ll talk about this more in Dufisthenics, later.

I was clued in on a sci-fi series called Falling Skies on TNT.  The premise sounded kind of V like and I liked V.  In a nutshell, once again the Earth is invaded by hostile aliens with bad intentions.  The aliens are eons ahead of us technologically and the story revolves around a small group of people trying to fight on with mostly small munitions.

Right now I am in the middle of the two part series premiere.  I like the show but thus far it hasn’t grabbed me by the neck yet as a must watch thing.  I was a little discouraged when Jeremy told me he started watching the show last year but bailed after three or four episodes.  We’ll see if I have the same reaction.

A weird thing has happened with the flickering battery charge light problem on the Tacoma, it went away.  It seems like ever since the 4 days of rainy weather hit I haven’t seen the light come on once.  I did crawl under the truck during the weekend and verify the connection from the battery to the terminal on the starter was secure.  If the light returns once the rainy weather departs I am not quite sure what that will tell me.

My verbosity is a little thin today, my bad.