Tag lululemon expensive

Christmas fell on the perfect day this year.  Since it was on Sunday and we get Christmas and Christmas Eve as official holidays that meant Friday and Monday were our observed days, making for a nifty 4 day weekend.

So Thursday after work I stopped at Mom’s place and did a vehicle swap, my Tacoma for her Rav 4.   I was taking the Rav 4 back to our place to do some extensive work on it including the front and rear brakes as well as an oil/air filter change.

I took my normal route home from mom’s up on I-75.  I pushed the Rav 4 up to 80+ mph, normal cruising speed for that highway.  The car NEVER sees highway speeds as mom’s driving is very limited anymore, she rarely travels outside of a 10 mile box.

Thursday was also Ali’s birthday.  On the way back to the house I picked up the requested Hungry Howie’s pizza.  We ate the pizza while watching one of Ali’s favorite Christmas movies, Elf.  We rounded out the meal with cupcakes from Publix, vanilla for Ali and the dogs (they LOVE cupcakes) and chocolate for me.

For her birthday I gave Ali a gift card to one of her favorite clothing stores (home of the most expensive shorts in the universe), lululemon. I think she didn’t suspect it since I generally mock lululemon whenever possible.  I also gave her a pair of small gold hoop earrings that were on her Amazon wish list.

So I started the work on mom’s Rav 4 around lunch time Friday.  I actually brought the Flip out to crudely document the process so I could post the only 1996 Rav 4 front brake job video in the world.

For the front brakes I was replacing both the front brake pads and the rotors.  When you would step on the brakes the pedal would pulsate badly.  Sure I could have tried to have the rotors turned but brand new rotors aren’t that expensive so I decided to go that route instead.

The front brake work went flawlessly, I ran into no snags along the way.  My experience on the Tacoma and Camry merged together helped me greatly.  I took the Rav 4 out after just doing the front brakes and it felt tons better with smooth, strong stops.  I had an idea to just leave the drum brakes alone since the car was stopping fine but the dealership had told mom they rear shoes were thin plus I already had the new shoes in hand.  I decided to dig into the back brakes utilizing a common motto I absorbed over the years, if you don’t try new things you don’t learn, you don’t accomplish and you become less valuable.

I had watched a couple brake drum videos on youtube but as I had mentioned, I did not find any that dealt with Rav 4 brakes specifically.  I did as was recommended, took a picture of the brakes before disassembly  and also left the driver side intact so I could use it as (reversed) reference.

Getting the brakes apart wasn’t all that tough but in retrospect I didn’t pay enough attention to exactly how everything was connected as I was popping springs, removing C clips and pulling out brackets.

So now I had a pile of parts on the ground and I started trying to get it all together, utilizing the new pads.  I was struggling mightily.  Despite having the photo and the virgin drum brakes on the other side I just couldn’t get stuff to fit back together properly.  The problem was with both the picture and my real life example that there are items obscured from view, tucked away deeper in the mechanism.  After at least an hour of futzing around I took a break and went inside to recheck one of my example videos.  Sometimes taking a break like that helps clear my head.

So I reviewed the video and headed back to the garage with renewed vigor.  One thing I realized was a lot of the hardware needed to be reattached to the one shoe while it is off the car.  Trying to do it any other way is nearly impossible.  So despite my new information I STILL could just not get the new pads in place correctly.

At this point my lower back was on fire and killing me.  I was sitting on my creeper stool leaning over for a couple hours more or less straight futzing around with the fckin brake parts. I had enough.  I decided I was just going to put the old pads back on and leave well enough alone.  My decision seemed to be the right one when the old pads fit together correctly and I was finally able to get everything back on the car and connected.  I made the assumption that there must be something screwy with the new brake shoes, they just didn’t fit.

Friday night we had loose plans to go see Mission Impossible in the theater.  After a day of frustrating car maintenance I suggested to Ali that we instead stay home, have pizza and watch Green Lantern on dvd.  She was more than fine with that.

The movie was fine, firmly in the middle of the pack as far as super hero flicks go. DC comic movies just don’t ever seem to measure up to their Marvel counterparts.  I’d give it a B.

So our Christmas Eve started out very early, as in 4:15 am early.  We decided to go to the club run.  The run wasn’t officially supposed to get going until 6:30 but we showed up around 6 because we planned to run further.  Actually Ali and I drove separately since Ali was planning on running 13 miles.

So a bunch of people headed out well head of the 6:30 start time, myself included.  For some reason probably 75% of the early group were women.  I told Ali and Michelle right away I planned to run “my pace” whatever that was.

I started out with a quick pace, after maybe 2 miles or so I had passed anyone that left early.  My plan was to do the long 10 mile run as part of my informal training plan to do the Hooter’s half marathon in March.

Now unfortunately my desire to pass people early on meant I was basically running the entire group run alone, missing out on one of the benefits of a group run.  Running with people makes the distance seem shorter.

Oh well, even on my own I did my best to push my pace although I did not check my watch once to see what my pace actually was.  When I hit the halfway water stop I was surprised to see I covered the first 5 miles in less than 45 minutes, a very good pace for me for that distance.  I had ideas of doing the entire 10 miles in less than 90 minutes which I had never done before.

The run back was tough, my legs were definitely running out of juice.  As I came back I ran past a ton of people that had left later.  Feeling like I was in the front, even if it was because I left earlier than most,  made me try to keep pushing my pace even though it felt like I wasn’t going as fast as the first half of the run.

I was pretty stoked when I stopped the GPS at the 10 mile mark a few seconds past my 90 minute goal.  I am sure that is the fastest I ever have run 10 miles.  It also gave me hope of breaking the 2 hour mark in the half marathon.  If I would run the first 10 miles at the pace I ran, I could do the last 3.1 miles at a slower pace and still break 2 hours.  It would be a nice accomplishment.

As I was getting ready to leave I got a text message from Michelle’s husband.  It said Ali’s back had tightened up and she was walking.  She wanted me to come pick her up.  Ironically when I found her she had started jogging again but she still opted for vehicle transport back to the starting area.  She said it just started getting really tight for some reason.

So I had driven mom’s Rav 4 to the run.  At first, before I wound up spending so much time on the rear brakes I had ideas about washing and waxing it as well.  Instead I decided to go to a full service car wash where they did a nice job on both the inside and outside of the vehicle for around 20 bucks.  It was worth the money to save me the time.

While I was on the way home I started to noticed a noise from the drum brake that I had apart when I was stopping, you could definitely tell something wasn’t working as it should.  Great, I guess like it or not I was going to be ripping back into the rear brakes once again. However I first wanted to attend to getting the oil changed, that should be easy, lol.

So I put the Rav 4 up on ramps, find the oil drain plug and drain the oil.  While I was under there I looked for the oil filter which is normally close by.  I looked and looked and looked.  I saw nothing that looked like an oil filter on the bottom of the engine, wtf??

So I slide out from under the car and look under the hood.  I spot the oil filter mounted up top, right near the exhaust manifold.  After visually inspecting it’s location I had a feeling that the filter was going to be a royal pain in the ass to get out if it was screwed on tightly, it was.

I have an oil filter pliers which I use to remove the filters on all of my other vehicles, it works well.  The way the filter was snugged in there next to the manifold I had no way to grab it from the side as you would normally do.  Instead I was trying to squeeze at the top and twist the pliers awkwardly to loosen it.  I struggled with it for a good 20 minutes, getting more and more frustrated as I succeeded in only putting various dents in the oil filter casing.

I conceded I would have to take another trip to Autozone to get one of those oil filter wrenches that fit exactly on the top of the filter.  I took my new oil filter along as a reference to make sure I got the right size.  The $5.99 purchase worked as expected, ending the frustration quickly.  The right tool for the job makes all the difference.

After completing the oil change I also replaced the air filter since I was already under the hood and mom had no idea when it is replaced last.  Now it was time to turn my attention once again to the damn drum brakes.

So I jack the car up, pull off the drum and take a look.  Nothing looks damaged thank goodness.  I take the brakes apart and decide I would once again try the new pads.  As I had both the new pads and old pads on the ground I noticed one of my problems.  There are two holes on the top of the shoe that a mounting rivet gets hammered through.  I had the rivet in the wrong hole in the new shoe.  No wonder nothing lined up right, dumb ass.

Once I figured that out another revelation came as I put the hardware on the new shoe, I had messed up the way some of the hardware mounts on the rivet.  It was supposed to go, parking brake arm, press on clip, adjuster arm and then C clip.  I had it as press on clip, parking brake arm, adjuster arm and then C clip.  Correcting these two f ups, plus the now considerable experience I had built up taking the drum brakes apart and together made reassembly go much better.  Everything finally looked right.

At that point hopping over to the driver side and replacing the shoes went pretty easily. (except for getting the damn tension springs back in place, they suck)  I put everything back together and took it out for a final road test.

Mom had gotten out of work early so she got to see some of the tail end of the brake work taking place.  Ali filled her in on how much time I had worked on them and mom said she felt bad it was such a chore.  I told her I knew it would be a challenge, just not this big of one.  By that point I had already exorcised the brake demons and was in the home stretch of the work.

So our Christmas Eve celebration was a bit unconventional, we got to watch Eagles football, something I am sure mom was less than thrilled about.  Most NFL games happened on Saturday to avoid a full schedule on Christmas.

The Eagles had been eliminated officially from playoff contention as the game began since the Giants beat the Jets.  It didn’t seem to matter.  The Eagles caught a break early when Romo went out after smashing his hand on a guy’s helmet.  The Dallas offense was pretty anemic without him.

The defense posted what was it’s third strong performance in a row, just missing a shut out thanks to the punter stupidly getting his kick blocked very late in the game, he took FOREVER to get the ball away. The now meaningless, late season hot streak will further muddy any post season decisions with this team.  I mean who are the real Eagles?  Are they the team that looked like world beaters off and on this season, or the team that played like dogs just as much?  Does this late season win streak save Juan Castillo’s job and take the heat off of Andy?

I really don’t know.  A realist will tell you that a team with so much talent finishing 8-8 (if they beat the Redskins next week), is still a major failure.  It will be interesting to see what goes down once the season ends.

After the game we tried to swing back into the Christmas theme by watching Christmas Vacation, only the second Christmas special/movie I watched this year.  We all retired to bed early.  Mom always goes to bed early and I was especially tired from starting my day a little after 4am with a 10 mile run and a full day of playing mechanic under my belt.

I woke up quite early Christmas morning, much earlier than years prior, I think I was up and out of bed at 4:30 am.   It wasn’t because I was particularly excited about it being Christmas, that excitement dulled a decade ago, I just woke up and figured I would get up.

I spent the time waiting for Ali and mom to get up in my virtual hideaway, WoW.  I was sure to wish other players in my dungeon groups Merry Christmas before we started.

Mom came out after 6, saying she was awake for awhile but didn’t realize I was already up.  I didn’t come and pull Ali out of bed until around 7.

So after filling my coffee cup we got started.  Mom and Ali were the clear leaders in the present race with mom probably winning out at the end.  Ali had mentioned some dismay that I had fewer presents than normal.  I assured her I really could care less, my big present was sitting in the garage.  At this point I really do enjoy giving more than receiving anyway.

The present opening went on for maybe 45 minutes or so.  The dogs were excited for Christmas just because we act excited about it.  Their favorite gift by far was the value pack of busy bones I got them.  They both got busy on one while we worked on our presents.

We bought mom a number of Wal-mart gift cards each in it’s own box to add impact.  We also got her some conventional gifts as well.  We gave her a stash of 10-15 scratch off lottery cards too, hoping she would strike it rich.  She pocketed one whole dollar after scratching them all off, bleh.

I received a number of SSR related gifts that I liked.  However my big gift was rather unexpected, Ali bought me the Kindle Fire I threw on my wishlist not expecting anyone to actually buy it.  Sure I already have gadgets out the ass but the Kindle Fire has intrigued me.  It fits all the requirements I like in a Christmas gift, it’s electronic and I can “play” with it.

Ali didn’t really have a “big” gift from me, the highlights were probably a gift certificate to get a manicure and pedicure and a solar Casio watch that she should be able to wear while swimming.  It is a dual analog/digital watch that is in girly pink.  She definitely seemed the most interested in that.

This year I once again used codes on the presents to help me remember what each one was and the order they should be opened in.  Once again sometimes it didn’t help as the codes didn’t always trigger my memory.  I thought my manicure/pedicure code was the funniest, CMMP.  It stood for Chinese manicure and pedicure, based on the fact that every person I saw at the place was Asian.

After all the presents had been opened we enjoyed our traditional french toast breakfast that mom prepares.  It was cool that Christmas day we are able to do so outside.

For the remainder of the morning Ali and I mostly cleaned some stuff up and played with our stuff.  I spent a decent amount of time getting around the Kindle, seeing what it could do, I will have a more in depth review in a few days.  I also worked in holiday phone conversations with my family.

Mom headed out after we ate lunch, she was anxious to get back home.  I told her to let me know how it went since it would be her first time behind the wheel with the new brakes.  She thanked us for her gifts and was on her way.

Mom called me after she got home and told me she got home safe.  However she was complaining about the brakes.  She said they felt soft.  I asked her if she tried applying them hard because when I did that in my test drives there was a dramatic difference in stopping power.  She also said her parking brake seemed like it “wasn’t there”.

Now my reflex reaction was to get angry.  After all I had spent an ass load of knuckle busting time on mom’s car.  For the first thing I hear from her to be negative really flipped my switch.  I am sure mom sensed my anger as she tried to backpedal a bit from her initial complaints.  I assured her the car will stop well and that it is normal for the brakes to feel different after they are replaced.

Just like mom’s initial reaction to me could have been better handled, mine could have been as well.  There are additional adjustments I can do to address her complaints like adjusting the drum brakes so they engage more with the parking brake and doing a full system bleed to ensure the brake pedal feels as firm as possible. It was just bad timing.

Later that afternoon I headed outside to take another shot at the Bar-barian challenge in bar-baric muscle up mode.  I had a disappointing outcome, winding up with less reps than my first attempt.  I felt sort of blah from eating crappy food and my phone call with mom.  I really want to complete 5 full layers, hopefully I can get some more attempts in this week before the month ends.

The rest of our Christmas was very low key.  I think Ali was in pajamas all day long, something she really thinks is fun.  I obviously do not share her excitement about that.

The final day of my 4 day holiday weekend was fun.  We had talked about going on a DD bike ride but Ali’s back was still sore so she wasn’t up for it.  I did do some work on her bike however, attaching two of her gifts from me to it, a bike computer and a holder for her Iphone.

The bike computer will give her front and center speed and distance info on rides and the phone holder will allow her to use her Iphone for stuff like the mapyyride app which uses the phone GPS to track your two wheeled travels.

I then turned my attention to the SSR.  I “installed” the SSR badged valve stem caps.  I also hung the “CAUTION. 2005 Chevy SSR. Yes it is fast and no you can’t drive it!” sign over the door in the garage.

I gave the SSR an overdue bath, it was dirty from it’s unintended exposure to rain a couple weeks ago.  I also swept it out and carefully used an ArmorAll soaked rag to refresh the weatherstripping a bit.

I had another project to do involving the running boards.  The running boards on the SSR are topped with rubber.  The rubber on my car was discolored, almost white in spots.  Yea I could hit it with some ArmorAll and it would look marginally better but only for a short while.

On SSRfanatics I was clued in to a  product called Forever Black which is basically a dye that restores rubber/plastic to it’s original black pigment in a much more long lasting manner.

To prepare for the process there is a special cleaner you use to clean the area.  It is supposed to remove any residue of old wax/protectants that may be on the surface.  After allowing the rubber to dry thoroughly I was ready to go.

The Forever Black is applied almost like shoe polish.  The container has a sponge applicator attached to the top of the bottle that you press down to release the dye.  Applying the dye was pretty easy, I just had to be careful along the edge of the rubber to make sure it didn’t get on the paint.  As recommended on the bottle, one coat was not enough.  In fact I did a total of 4 coats to make sure the rubber looked as good as possible.

As you can see from the after  picture the difference is pretty dramatic.  I am very pleased with the results and would recommend the product to anyone that has fading rubber/vinyl components on their vehicles.

While I was at it I applied a coat to my unused front license plate bracket.

Later in the day I asked Ali if she was interested in heading to the dog park, something she mentioned we should do more of a week or two ago.  She said that would be fun so we all piled in the party van and headed to the park.

When Nicki was younger we took her to this park to try to socialize her with other dogs, something that we never were very successful with.  Most of the time she would just sit up on a bench behind us, hiding.

We took Sadie there once, shortly after we adopted her.  We knew she would have no issue since she is so outgoing.

There were a decent amount of dogs there, maybe close to 10.  Both Nicki and Sadie had fun interacting with the other dogs.  True to form Sadie was eager to say hi to both the new dogs and their owners. Surprisingly she never really got into a good game of chase/wrestle, something she loves to do normally.  She didn’t seem to quite trust the other dogs enough.

Nicki was much less timid than she used to be, something that has happened since we adopted Sadie.  Having Sadie around seems to give Nicki more self confidence.

Both Sadie but especially Nicki have a pretty gross by product of interacting with other dogs, slobber.  Repeatedly they would have these long dangling lines of slobber hanging off their mouth that I would either wipe off with my shirt or hand.  It’s extremely gross.  I don’t know what causes it but our dogs were the only ones that had that going on.

So after maybe an hour or so of hanging out it seemed pretty clear they had enough as they were spending most of their time laying down in the shade.  I think they enjoyed themselves. We’ll need to try to get out to the park more than once every 3 years.

On the way home we made a turn down a street no more than half mile away from our own.  Ali was informed at the end of it was a 13 mile trail/park that we had no idea about.  Evidently some of the local runners will occasionally go out there to train.  We went quite a ways back until we found the entrance to the trail.  Wow that’s cool.  Even cooler is it says dogs are allowed.  Next weekend we may find ourselves out there on another dog adventure.

Monday evening we had plans to go to dinner with Matt, his wife Kristen and their little boy Zack.  We were meeting them at a place called Alexander’s that I had never been to.  Ironically it is in the same complex that my dentist’s office is located, right across the courtyard.

Matt is the race director for two of the largest races in our area which is how I got to know him.  Both he and his wife are also professional musicians which is a totally foreign area for me.

The restaurant was so nice.  It has a beautiful outdoor seating area and an equally nice indoor area.  I was really happy Matt turned us onto it, we can surely take guests there and have a nice dinner.

Our meals were quite good and we had a nice time shooting the breeze.  Like I said the world they live in is so different than anything I have ever dealt with.  It was very interesting getting a glimpse into how it all worked.

Matt had laid out beforehand that the meal was on them as an expression of their appreciation of what we do both for his races and the running community in general which was very nice.  Of course it goes without saying that next time we get together I will be footing the bill no questions asked.

After the meal I showed them the SSR, up until that point it had only been seen in picture form.  Matt was impressed by the cool factor.  He had requested I bring the Tough Mudder headband along.  We wound up snapping a picture of him wearing it along with Zack in front of the SSR.  Zack who was a trooper sitting around during an adult dinner (hard for a 6 year old) found the transformer style hard top mechanism very cool.

The dinner was a nice way to wrap up an enjoyable 4 day Christmas holiday.

Ali’s friend Sue and her daughter Kaitlyn were supposed to arrive at our place late last night.  They were driving down for a brief visit from North Carolina.  Well they decided to stop at Tampa, they thought the drive would take a little less time.  I got word that they safely arrived later on this morning.

Sue is a childhood friend of Ali’s whom has never been down to Florida since we moved there. It will be nice to have her get the tour.

Today it’s back to the grind but only for 4 days after which I get to tack on one more extended three day weekend, cool.

The new computer should show up today, I will be busy this week getting migrated.