So Saturday morning was another timing gig, this time at a new venue in Marco Island. The race was to commemorate the opening of a new bridge that was paid for by stimulus money. I was quite concerned going into this race since it was new which almost always equates to problematic. Well there were problems but not as many as there could have been.
Our first issue was finding the registration location. We had an address but in total darkness, did not see anything. After stopping at a near by 711 and being told there was “some park” around the corner we found where we were supposed to go.
Our normal club volunteer coordinator was not at this race so Ali and I became the ring leaders, telling people where things went and what needed to be done. Ali dealt primarily with the registration area, I dealt more with the finish line logistics.
The geography of the race was less than ideal. The registration area was in the park but the start/finish line was a couple hundred yards away out on the main road in Marco. I had to scurry back and forth between the two locations several times.
The lines being out on the main road was also a problem. The police were supposed to have the road closed around an hour before the the 7:30 start time. Instead cars will still flowing by well after 7am. We were setting up our finish line as traffic drove by a few feet away, not a good thing.
Once I had the finish line set up I ran back across to the registration area to help Ali. As I sat down I encountered another misstep. They had contracted a local radio station DJ to provide “entertainment” pre-race. He was set up about 50 feet from the registration tent with both speakers pointed directly at us.
We couldn’t hear a thing over the guy’s maddening non-stop routine. In the span of 5 minutes I was wishing physical harm upon this guy, he was driving me nuts.
We also had a big issue with phantom registrations. No less than a dozen times we had people come up telling us they were registered for the race yet their names were not on the list. There were all sorts of alibi’s, “so and so was supposed to sign me up” “I sent it in the mail” “I signed up online but my son didn’t show up on the list” Unfortunately in the heat of battle we just do not have the time to give each case a full inquisition so we wind up putting these people in the race, taking their word for what they tell us. If this turns into an annual event we will need to fix this.
When such a mixup occurs we have to enter these people into the race with a new number. After one such mix up I went to the day of registration table and grabbed the next available bib number to assign. As I was entering the info I had the one volunteer spin around and start bitching at me because I took a number. She said she had already assigned that number to somebody. She said I(me) CAN”T DO THAT. I had to stop myself from laughing in her face.
I told her the number was still in the stack of unused numbers, if she needed it she should pull it. I told her all she had to do was simply write the next available number on the entry form. She was pissed at me but I didn’t give a shit, there were too many other things to worry about.
About 5 minutes before the start of the race I ran back over to the finish line. I had to quickly get the starting mats up and running. It takes a couple minutes for the timing box to initialize so I delayed the start of the race by a couple minutes, oh well.
Ali and Christy were running the race. The addition of a steep bridge to the course added a big challenge. Hills just are uncommon in Florida running events. Ali did well, finishing in under 28:30. She was shocked and excited when I told her she got second in her age group. Ali had only placed in her age group once before and that was years ago. She accepted her second place trophy with pride at the awards ceremony.
All in all things went well, despite the problems I outlined earlier. The group of volunteers they had were very enthusiastic and followed direction well which is what you want. If this turns into an annual event there will be some minor fine tuning to be done but nothing major.
After unpacking the car, doing the post race duties and eating lunch Ali said she was retiring for her nap. I told her I had several projects to work on. I am trying to get out of the habit of doing as much housework as I am accustomed to since Ali has been pulling 2 day work weeks for the past month or so. She should be able to knock out items I would normally take care of with that schedule. I still ran the vacuum in the house even though Ali pledged she would do it on Sunday.
So I embarked on various small projects. They involved things like weeding the garden, installing more hooks in the small shed for bike storage, cleaning the tractor, installing chicken wire along the base of the garden (keep out rabbits), replacing two defective yard sprinklers and finally washing the Camry.
My thumb, which had remained painful but functional all week, was worked hard during the projects. I paid for it later.
Mom had told me earlier in the week that she wanted to try out Sweet Tomatoes for her birthday dinner instead of a more traditional sit down venue, an odd request but I was happy to go again. We picked her up a little after 5. She had just finished her Saturday 6 hour shift at work.
We heard a lot of updates about mom’s new job and unfortunately they aren’t as shiny as a week prior. The boutique mom is working at is very small and is just maintained by the owner and mom. The owner seems to enjoy standing all day, even though there is a single chair there. Well mom is not used to standing on her feet for that long, and it has not been much fun, her feet are killing her. Even though mom could certainly sit down if she wanted to, she almost feels obligated to stand since the owner always is. I am sure all that standing is not fun, the last time I had an on your feet all day job was in the late 80’s when I was a meat cutter.
Evidently it also is quite warm in the store. Mom said she literally has sweat rolling down her face during certain points of the day. There are a couple fans in the store but mom said they don’t help much or maybe she again doesn’t want to look bad by standing in front of them constantly.
Plus if there isn’t much floor traffic the job can be incredibly boring. Boring jobs make time pass very slowly. I have first hand experience with this.
So anyway, the less than stellar job report reflected in mom’s mood, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t all that into going out to eat. When I suggested that perhaps after dinner we could go look for some more comfortable shoes mom acted like I just had an alien pop out of my chest, saying she HAD to get home so she could soak her feet. She said she now goes to bed at 8pm. Um, ok.
Mom reacted in a similar way when I suggested that she drive her Rav 4 out to our place on Thanksgiving Day so I could give it the thorough cleaning it sorely needs. I also noticed while I was driving her car that the brakes pulsate, I could replace her front rotors and pads and eradicate that problem for her as well. Again, this was viewed as unreasonable. It sounded like she now has determined that doing anything extra on a day that precedes a day she has to work is just impossible to accommodate.
We gave mom a Publix gift card for her birthday. Not the most extravagant gift but a very useful one, free groceries are always a good thing.
Mom said she liked ST but I think it still was not a great choice for a birthday dinner. It would have been better to go to Watermark like I originally suggested. We told mom we would see her on Thursday and dropped her off.
As Saturday night drug on my thumb was getting incredibly painful again, it actually reached the same levels of pain as the week prior. A couple times I bumped it against something and went through the roof, it hurt that bad. I again iced it and took some Advil while I watched Robin Hood.
I fell asleep during part of the movie but what I did see was not what I expected. I am by no means a Robin Hood expert but I thought it was basically he was the guy that was good with arrows that stole from the rich to give to the poor. Well the movie wasn’t about that at all, I guess you would call it a pre-quel.
Instead it cast Russel Crowe as Robin Hood,t he big psuedo-general dude, leading England against a French invasion. It’s only after the french are repelled does he become the character we all know. The movie was ok I guess. I’d give it a who cares B.
Sunday morning I was glad to wake up to a slightly less painful thumb, at least I could use it somewhat. We made plans to meet up with Christy to go biking mid-morning, We put in a total of almost 19 miles. The highlight of the ride was saving two turtles that got them stuck out in the middle of a road with high curbs.
Mid-afternoon my thumb still was hurting but I determined I could at least still hang on a bar. I wanted to go out and do a hard mode attempt for this month’s bar-barian forums challenge. I had told a couple guys on the forum I would.
Hard mode ups the stakes with 3 muscle ups, 30 dips, 15 pull ups, 30 push ups and 3 more muscle ups, completed in as little time as possible. I physically felt pretty low between my hurting thumb and overall lack of energy. I still wanted to try it.
I ran into an unexpected road block early, missing on one of my early muscle ups, it kind of set the tone for the attempt. The 30 dips really burned me out. I dropped off the parallel bars at 22 reps and then had to hop back on them for the last 8 reps. The pull ups were broken apart as well into a set of 10 followed shortly by a set of 5. For the push ups I managed to stay in position for the entire 30, trudging through the last 10-12 at a slow pace.
Despite my struggles, I was right around the 5 minute mark with just 3 muscle ups to go. I grabbed the bar and tried to get over it and failed miserably. I just had no pop left in my upward movement. This lead to a very frustrating few minutes. In total it took me 3 minutes to get those last three muscle ups. After a couple more failures I knew I had no choice but to let my body rest longer so I could get them done. Taking additional rest time during a timed event doesn’t work out well.
I wound up with a disappointing time of 8:05. I am confident I can do much better if try again feeling more upbeat and without an aching thumb. I hope to give it another go before month’s end. You can see the attempt here.
So the Eagles played in prime time last night against the division leading Giants in New York. A bleak Eagle forecast was made bleaker by the news that Mike Vick and the number one receiver, Jeremy Maclin were both out with injuries. A loss seemed to be in the picture for sure.
Of course with as crazy as the NFL is anymore, this resulted in a win. Vince Young threw three interceptions but drove the Eagles down the field in a ridiculously long 19 play drive to score the go ahead TD. The defense, which had played well all game looked like they were going right into collapse mode, allowing Eli Manning to pick up a quick 50 yards on a couple plays with time running out. I was like “here we go again”
Well for one of the few times this year the defense actually came up big, making a play when they had to, forcing Eli to fumble the ball which the Birds recovered, game over. It was a very improbable win. I still have no illusions of this team going anywhere in the big picture but hey, it’s a win.
Now as you can tell by the blog entry title, the win was pretty much secondary to me anyway. I was too busy hating Desean Jackson.
Desean has been a malcontent this season. He is pissed off that the Eagles refused to renegotiate his deal before the season. Well I assume there have been some undocumented locker room ramifications of his discontent which was put on center stage by Andy deactivating him for last weeks embarrassing loss to the Cardinals for missing a mandatory meeting.
A reasonable person would think Desean would be back on the field with something to prove. Well he did, he proved his a first class asshole.
The first time Desean touched the ball was during a punt return where he performed one of his familiar , run backwards 15 yards before going forward moves, resulting in a loss. He does this all the time. NBC flashed a stat that since the Giants game in 2010 Jackson’s punt return average has been less than THREE YARDS per attempt . That is awful.
So in the 2nd quarter the Eagles found themselves backed up to their own goal line after a good Giants punt. Vince Young launched a ball down the sidelines that Jackson caught. He ran past midfield before he was pushed out of bounds on the Giants sideline, it was close to a 60 yard gain.
My mouth fell open as Jackson flips the ball at the Giants defensive coordinator, hitting him in the chest. He followed up with more theatrics, letting the Giants know how bad ass he was. Well this of course drew a penalty., wiping out the huge gain The incident instantly shook me out of the sleepy haze I was in. I was incensed.
It’s not like this is the first time Jackson has exhibited this behavior, he does it all the time. The only difference is this season he has made so few big plays we haven’t seen it as often. Ali was in the office paying bills but she heard what was going on and came out to see. She couldn’t believe it either.
I immediately grabbed my phone and updated my FB status with “Desean Jackson is a fcking asshole. I could care less if he ever plays for the Eagles again. He is just a punk.” Even after Jackson ran back a big punt later in the game I could have cared less. I don’t want a guy like that on the team, period.
Late in the game he once again proved he hadn’t learned a damn thing, taunting the fans after making a first down catch. Hey Desean, you fcking idiot, the Eagles have been TERRIBLE this year and your lack of production is a nice big chunk of that problem. SHUT THE F UP AND MAKE PLAYS.
I sincerely hope the Eagles just let the asshole walk at the end of the year. Let him go play on a team like the Raiders, they love pompous asshats.
Now I see ESPN running things like “Is Vince Young a better option than Michael Vick???” I had to laugh. Yes Young at least drove the Eagles down for a winning score late in the game, something Vick hasn’t been able to do with much consistency at all. But to anoint him as the answer after one game, a game where he also happened to throw 3 interceptions, is a bit ludicrous. Of course the Eagles do have a track record of doing just that. After all that is how Vick got his job and subsequent overpaid contract.
Whatever, this team is going nowhere fast.
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This was interesting enough that I don’t want to wait until Monday. Desean Jackson, the pompous, showboating, inconsistent punk of a wide receiver was cut today by the Eagles. The move came as a big surprise.