Tag philadelphia eagles

Before I start the weekend recap, I realized over the weekend that I totally forgot to blog about a movie I watched the prior weekend in addition to the 28 series, Mr Bean’s Holiday.  I never had seen a Mr Bean movie but I sort of remember hearing they were funny so I grabbed it for us to watch.  Ali always says I don’t get enough comedies.   The movie started and just looking at the guy was funny enough.  He is a very weird looking man.  I thought it was odd that during the first 5 minutes he didn’t really say anything and instead just made silly noises as he went from one physical comedy scene to another.  Then it continued and continued and continued.  Evidently Mr Bean is more or less a modern day mime and he didn’t say a complete sentence the entire movie.  His silly appearance and noises kept me entertained briefly but after that it fell off into just bizarro world.  When it was done I told Ali that I thought that it may have been the stupidest movie I ever saw in my life.  How this guy has managed to make more than one film is astounding to me. Yuck. I’d give it a D. 

My weekend had a pretty low chore quotient compared to most.  Part of that was because we haven’t had to mow the grass for two weeks.  I had almost my entire list done by noon on Saturday.  On Saturday evening we picked up my mom to take her to her birthday dinner.  I didn’t tell mom where we were going ahead of time.  I kind of got the vibe that she may have suspected that I had picked the Turtle Club but she acted surprised.   I had reservations for 5:45 but sunset was scheduled to go down a few minutes before that.  I intentionally arrived early so we could possibly get seated before the big event.  The plan worked out perfectly, they sat us right down and within 10 minutes we got to witness another perfect sunset.  Mom was really excited about being there.

Just like the last time our dinner was very good.  I kicked myself a bit when I realized that I hadn’t mentioned anything ahead of time about it being a birthday dinner for my mom to the restaurant staff.  However when we ordered desert we just happened to mention it was mom’s birthday.  The waiter brought the slice of key lime pie that mom and I were splitting with a single birthday candle in it and they had written Happy Birthday on the plate in some sort of raspberry sauce, which was very nice.  The bill for 3 people was almost exactly 50% higher than the bill for two people as expected.  After a very enjoyable meal we headed out and waited for the valet.  The valet station was a bit of a circus.  There was all sorts of confusion going on.  They were bringing back vehicles that had no driver waiting for them while others waited and waited for their car to show up.  I felt a bit bad when our Camry was brought back before a group of people that were waiting there before us.  It seemed like all of the women that were in the crowd waiting were pretty wasted.

After dinner we asked mom if she would go to Lowe’s with us to help us pick out paint.  Yes we are planning on finally putting some paint on the walls.  The barren white walls that we have had since we built the house helps make the space feel big but it also makes it feel sterile and generic.  We are starting out conservatively by painting the guest bathroom and bedroom.  Most of the decision making process was left up to mom and Ali.  Mom has a good decorating eye from her years in the furniture business something that definitely was not passed on to me.  I can tell when a color scheme looks nice I just am not good at deciding what the scheme should be.  The spare bedroom is going to be a grayish light purple color and the bathroom will be an earthy shade of green that I like. (green is my color)  We are planning on doing the large living area of the house in some sort of tan, the shade of which has not been determined.   Ali is very nervous about the prospect of painting.  I am not.  I don’t enjoy the process of painting but I am pretty assured that I will pleased with the end result.  The walls have been long overdue in getting some attention if you ask me.

As part of the overhaul, Ali wants me to change up the surround sound system.  We have a Bose lifestyle system that has little cube speakers that are white just like the walls.  The normal person would hardly notice them.  However to Ali these are a HUGE eyesore.  Ali wants me to get speakers that I can mount flush with the wall and also wants to build some sort of door to hide the AV equipment above the tv.

  It makes me chuckle when Ali goes on these tangents.  She has this quirk about her where she focuses on the minute details of an issue instead of the big picture.  We could have a room that is filled to the ceiling with junk and Ali would spend the time alphabetizing the post cards she found in a shoe box in the room.  So likewise when faced with painting the interior of our house Ali’s primary focus goes to little things like stereo speakers.  Hey I’m not complaining, you mean you WANT me to go out and buy a new up to date surround system? Twist my arm.  I would welcome getting a new system that runs on infrared instead of the proprietary Bose RF shit that makes it not work with my Harmony remote. Then Ali mentioned further plans of hanging curtains on either side of the TV area that could be pulled back when we are watching it and closed when we aren’t.  I may have to draw the line there.

So anyway I am hoping over the 4 day Thanksgiving holiday I have that we can get one if not both of the rooms painted.  It should give those rooms an entirely different feel.

Sunday was another low key day.  I performed my second week of water system bleaching.  I am pretty convinced that the discoloration we have been seeing in our water is a result of algae in the holding tank.  With our old water system I could pull the lid off the holding tank and after removing any frogs or bugs that had squeezed in there, I was able to drain it and blast the algae out of the inside with a pressure washer.  Well the new fancy tank is totally sealed.  great for keeping frogs out, shitty for keeping algae from forming.  So what I have to do is drain the tank and then as I refill it I add bleach to a small hole that is normally used to pull air into the system to help bubble out the sulfur.  Both last week and this week I added probably a couple cups of bleach.  I have already noticed the water looks better than it did.  I plan to do it for 2 more weeks and see the results.

We watched the Eagles beat the Dolphins.  For a long time the Eagles tried to let the 0-9 Dolphins win.  In fact thanks to 3 first half interceptions deep in Dolphin territory, the Eagles were behind at halftime 7-3.   Late in the first half Donovan McNabb went out with an ankle injury.  I truly could have cared less.  After a rough start AJ Feeley settled down in the second half and did a solid job.  He is definitely a more accurate passer than Donovan.  So anyway in the second half the Eagles managed to score a couple times to win.  Even though it was a win it really said a lot of negative things about the team.  They struggled to beat an 0-9 team, at home, that was starting a rookie quarterback whom was playing in his first regular season game.  Against this 0-9 team with a rookie quarterback they managed to register zero turnovers and get zero sacks.  They are going to get so smashed by the Patriots next week.  I hope they have a lot of body bags.

Sunday night we watched Die Hard 4.  I really liked the original Die Hard.  The sequels have been so so.  It seemed like each sequel tried to outdo the prior one in terms of action and implausible acts of heroism by John McLain.  Well Die Hard 4 takes the cake, it was a disappointment of blockbuster proportions to me.  Ok the movie is doomed from the very get go because of one simple fact, the bad guy in it SUCKS.  In order for a movie like this to be good, you HAVE to have a good villain.  In Die Hard 4 they cast some metrosexual looking guy that looked like they painted a few gray hairs into his side burns.  When the guy tried to portray anger he instead looked like he was ready to cry.  What a joke.  If there is such a thing as too much action in a movie, Die Hard 4 has it.  Ridiculous scenario after ridiculous scenario goes down scene after scene.  One minute John McLain can barely walk, the next minute he is sprinting like Marion Jones on roids.  Some of the feats he pulled off would make Superman jealous.  By the end Ali and I were just laughing at how silly things were getting.  The movie was lame, plain and simple.  The first one was sooooo much better.  Die Hard 4 is lucky to get a C from me.

Last night before bed Ali was watching one of her many Oprah episodes on the Tivo.  As I was getting Tuki water the scene on the TV caught my eye.  It was a living room that was FILLED with junk on either side, piled 5 feet high with only a small walking path in the middle.  I sat down and watched in horror as they showed the rest of the house.  Every single room of the house was like this, jammed full of clothes, shoes, housewares and any other sort of various material items that this woman could buy.  I told Ali I had to see the woman that was responsible for this, it truly made me sick.

So they finally show the couple who own this house.  A chubby, tear factory of a woman and her husband that makes excuses for not being able to stop her.  I instantly had a severe dislike for this woman.  Anybody that allows their home to become a warehouse of things like that is beyond pathetic in my book.  I was angry.  I said to Ali that the woman should just die she serves no purpose and is pathetic.  Ali chastised me for taking such a severe, cold position about this woman.  I couldn’t help myself.  I just have zero tolerance for people that put themselves into a miserable situation by their own hand whether it is being morbidly obese or in this case a compulsive “hoarder”.  I continued my rant to Ali saying there are already too many people on the planet, someone like this serves no purpose.  Of course I knew what I was saying was harsh but I was just besides myself with disgust.  The show was filled with the woman crying constantly, saying she was trying to fill a void in her life first from her kids growing up and second because she had some siblings die in recent years.  She turned her house into this mess over the span of a decade or so.

Her husband frustrated me almost as much.  He said he guessed he was “somewhat” responsible for allowing this to happen.  Ya think so?  Grow a set of balls and establish a line.  Take her credit cards, check book and access to cash if the fat dumpling can’t control herself.  His excuse was he didn’t know how to stop her.  Unreal.

So anyway Oprah brought in a crew of 100 people to clean up this disaster area.  I said to Ali that I can almost guarantee that once Oprah is done with her, this woman will fall right back into her hoarding ways. You can just tell, she has no self discipline.  This woman was the poster child for disgusting American consumerism that so many of us are guilty of, taken to an extreme degree.   I guess I am a heartless bastard.  As I have said many times, the herd needs to be thinned.

The weather this weekend was awesome!  We finally had our first real cool front come through.  The past two nights it has dropped into the mid 50’s at night with highs during the day just around 80 with low humidity. It was just about perfect.  When you have just gone through 6 months of  90 degrees with high humidity, the chill in the air feels great.

The perfect weather made the huge list of “to do’s” not seem bad at all.  One of the first things I did was check out the source of leaking water in the garage.  The water was coming out from behind the fridge so I assumed a drain was clogged with spider webs or something.  However when I pulled the fridge out I saw the basing around the hot water heater was filled with water.  Damn it.  The heater is only 6 years old but I guess if it is a budget model, which I’m sure it was, I suppose it could be failing.

So I did some quick looking around online to educate myself about water heaters.  It looked like I could get a decent replacement that is bigger, self cleaning and has a 9 year warranty for about 300 bucks at Lowe’s. Add a trip to Lowe’s to the list.

So I wanted to get some of my other list items knocked out.  I replaced the air filter on the tractor, scrubbed down the pool and fixed the floodlight on the front of the house.  Then I decided to trim the Palmetto.  The Palmetto is a bushy palm bush that sort of has a whole bunch of mini-cabbage palms jammed together.  As long as we have lived at the house we have talked about trimming this thing and never had.  I went at the project myself, Ali’s back was still bothering her from the pruning project from last weekend. 

I put on my shitty old leather gloves that I have had since I worked at Goodwill.  These gloves had been through the wars and as a result were falling apart.  Several of the fingers were ripped open and several seams were pulling apart.  Hand protection is mandatory when working with a Palmetto.  The shaft of the fronds is serrated like a bread knife.  If I took one and drug it across your arm quickly you would be in the hospital getting stitches.  I sat down on my ass, reached into the bush and started trimming away.

I bet I removed at least 100 fronds both dead and alive.  As I scooted around to the far end I got an unpleasant surprise.  I evidently disturbed an ant mound but not a fire ant mound, big ants.  The ants flew out and started biting the hell out of my feet, yea I had flip flops on.  I shot up and immediately swatted them away.  As I was trimming there were multiple times where I got cut up via the holes in my gloves.  When Ali came down to check on me I told her I had to get new gloves, this was crazy.

Finally I was done with the primary trimming but that wasn’t good enough.  The center of the Palmetto was filled with dead fronds.  I wanted them out.  So I wedge myself between some fronds, ignoring the pain of the fronds digging into my hands, arms and sides and start reaching and ripping. I grab the base of dead fronds and pull.  The dead wood snaps easily and I throw the remains out in a pile behind me.  I’m sure I looked like a dog digging a hole in the dirt.  Finally I was done.  It looked much better.  The various cuts I had on my body were worth it.  Another 5 year old project finally gets done.

So I get cleaned up and head out to Lowe’s.  I had entertained the idea of possibly buying the water heater, throwing it in my truck and performing the replacement myself.  I’m pretty sure that I would have been able to get it done.  I was basing my decision on what the labor charge would be to install the new heater.  So I found the heater that I saw online and tracked down a guy in the department to talk to about it.  I asked how much the install charge was.  He said a normal install is $229 if no special work needs to be done.  The cut off line I had in my head was 200 bucks so that was close enough for me to continue.  The way Lowe’s handles it was less than ideal for me but I can understand it I suppose.

The install is 229 BUT the way they do it is charge you 35 bucks to have the installer come out first, survey the potential install to identify any possible issues and THEN he comes back another day with the heater.  In my little ideal scenario, i would pay for the heater and the install on the spot, the guy comes out once and does it.  However I can understand that two visits could potentially eliminate a lot of unforeseen problems.  So anyway, I paid just the 35 bucks for now.  The installer is supposed to call me today to set up appointment number one.  I would hope that by the end of this week we will have a nice new Whirlpool water heater sitting in our garage.

After Lowe’s I also had to stop at Sam’s.  During my errands I had both windows in the truck down and had my 90’s alternative channel on Sirius blaring.  It was just very enjoyable to drive that day.  Traffic didn’t bother me in the least.  I felt uncharacteristically upbeat about that moment in time.  It was such a beautiful day.

I bought a new pair of leather gloves at Lowe’s.  I retrieved my old torn up ones and after a momentary pause to recollect and reminisce about the gloves that I have owned since the early 90’s, I unceremoniously threw them in the trash.  I did feel bad about it.

On Saturday night we finally got around to watching Shrek 3 which I have had forever.  The movie was average on the funny scale, Ali and I laughed a few times.  It was definitely the weakest of the three.  I think the Shrek franchise has run it’s course.  No more need to be made. I’d give it a B.

On Sunday morning Nicki, Ali and I piled in the truck.  I dropped Ali off at the gym for spinning class and then Nicki and I headed to my mom’s.  I had my caulk gun in hand to finish up the ceiling out on mom’s lanai. The job didn’t take very long at all.  I had some caulk left over that I used to fill a few gaps around the exterior windows that have been known to let critters in.  Even with the extra caulking I still had 10 or 15 minutes of spare time to just relax and shoot the breeze with mom before I had to go pick Ali back up.

Once we got back we had one more big chore to knock out, mowing and weed whacking.  I went around and weed whacked everything, then I switched attachments and put the hedge trimmer head on along with ear protection.  This new trimmer seems louder than the older one, especially when I use the other attachments that require me to sometimes hold the motor closer to my head to hit certain angles.  I was amazed how well protective headphones worked. After using the trimmer, I slapped the blower head onto the unit to clear the sidewalk and driveway.  All in all I am pleased with the new weed whacker even with the increased noise output.  It also uses more gas than the old unit.

Once I was done weed whacking, Ali was still mowing.  She saw I finished and came over to me and asked if I could finish up the mowing.  The constant jostling was not doing her painful back any favors.  So I hopped on the mower and after another hour or so, the grass was all done.  It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, the rest of the day was pretty much chore free.  I chose to spend a good chunk of it vegging out playing WoW.

This past week I actually have played very little WoW.  I think I went a stretch of 3 days or so where I didn’t even log into it.  The iron-like grip it once commanded on my free time has definitely relaxed significantly.  It is starting to get tired.

Before the Eagles disaster, I just happened to be watching 60 minutes as a result of watching the Colts/Patriots game.  They had yet another astonishing story of incompetence and deceit tied into the 9/11 / Iraq war scenario.  It was all about an Iraqi informant, code named fittingly enough, Curve Ball.  Curve Ball was THE primary reason that the United States used as a basis for believing that Iraq was actively producing WMD’s.  Curve Ball defected to Germany and sought asylum.  He told German intelligence elaborate, detailed information about a chemical plant that he worked at.  He said that this plant produced chemical weapon agents, he witnessed it first hand.  When Colin Powell went in front of the UN, he used Curve Ball’s depiction of events as one of the backbones of “proof” that Iraq was indeed in the chemical warfare business.

Of course you know where this is leading.  The United States used Curve Balls stories as the nail in the coffin, the indisputable proof that W wanted to legitimize his desire to attack Iraq.  However the US never talked to Curve Ball.  In fact the US only went on what German intelligence told them.  German intelligence told the US that although they thought Curve Ball was credible, they were unable to confirm ANY of what he said.  That was good enough for us, let’s invade! 

As the story goes on it reveals that not only was Curve Ball not credible, pretty much every single bit of information he gave the Germans was a lie.  Yea he was at this chemical plant, which was the only thing true, while it was being built, that was it.  The time line he gave for witnessing the events was totally made up, he wasn’t even in Iraq at that time.   The chemical plant turned out to be a seed purification plant.  No chemical warfare, no hidden trucks going in and out.  In fact this was all verified by UN inspectors 3 weeks before the Iraq war started.  It didn’t matter, W and his war profiteering buddies needed a new source of revenue! 

So basically the number one first hand source used by the USA as proof of Iraq WMD’s was a total scam artist.  We went to war on unconfirmed allegations of someone that we didn’t even talk to ourselves.  Unbelievable.

I went through the trouble of burning Loose Change to dvd to give to my one buddy at work to see.  If for some reason you are unable to watch it online and would like a dvd version of it, let me know.  I’d be happy to send you one.

Ok so let’s talk about that disastrous Eagles game.  It doesn’t get any worse than that.  During prime time in front of a national audience in your home stadium, you get creamed in every aspect of the game by the hated Dallas Cowboys.  To make matters worse, TO had a huge game, happily taunting away the entire time.  I had no expectations of them winning but it still was painful.  Andy Reid looked like he was about to cry several times.  The fiasco with his family combined with a team in disarray is surely enough to break a person.  The 2007 Eagles are done, toast, finished. 

Saturday morning I headed out relatively early to Home Depot to pick up some stuff.  One of the things I was looking for was a pole saw to assist in our pruning project.  In 39 years I never have used a pole saw.  I am embarrassed to say that when I saw them over the years they looked overly complicated with the ropes and stuff.  I didn’t really know how they worked.  Well I’m glad I overcame my fear of pole saws, they are a godsend when you have hundreds of branches to knock down that are 15 feet off the ground.

So we started on the pruning right after lunch.  Thankfully it was overcast, otherwise I may have melted into the ground.  We pruned and collected branches all afternoon.  We didn’t mess around with the tractor and the yard cart, the truck was used to dump the junk.  I bet we made at least a dozen trips out to the pit in the back.  It is incredible how much junk you can get off these trees.  Like I said before, the pole saw was awesome.  Instead of having to climb up a ladder and awkwardly and dangerously reach for high branches with a hand lopper, I could remain on terra firma and reach as high as any tree top.  The pole saw allows you to take down bigger branches with the saw part of it, for smaller, rounder branches like the seed branches, you can use the lopper.  The rope is used for the lopper. 

Even with my tool for branch removal, the job was extremely tedious.  My neck was cramping from looking up all the time.  I was constantly getting showered in tree debris, ants and other organic matter.  It seemed like no matter how many branches I removed from a tree, there was always one more dead or unsightly one to cut.  By the time we quit I had no gas left in the tank.  There were actually other trees we could have attended to in the back of the property but I called it as “good enough”.  I had no inkling that this pruning project would be so extensive.  We spent at least 8 hours in total pruning and I bet we could spend another 4 yet if we wanted to get EVERYTHING.  I weighed myself before taking a shower to wash the grime off me.  My dehydrated weight was 178 pounds, whoa.

Saturday night Ali and I sat down and watched Loose Change, 2nd Edition.  Some of the video clips I linked last week were from the Loose Change movie, there are two of them currently and there is another due to be released soon, Loose Change Final Cut.  I told Ali what it was about, she really didn’t know what to expect.  Like me, she never had looked into the 911 Conspiracy theories.  Wow that was some flick.  Some of the stuff they brought out was flabbergasting.  I misquoted last week when I said the guy took out a 3 million dollar insurance policy on building 7 and the rest of the WTC 6 weeks before the incident, it was 3.2 BILLION.  He was paid over 2 BILLION in his insurance settlement, although originally he tried to get over 7 BILLION..  Did you know that Marvin Bush was the head of security at the WTC up until 9/11?  Did you know there was an estimated 193 billion in gold housed in the WTC and only 200 million of it was recovered?  Did you know there were no documented 757 plane parts found at the Pentagon or the crash site in Pennsylvania? The video the government has told us contains Osama Bin Laden confessing to being behind 9/11 is an OBVIOUS fake.  It’s all documented for all to see, if you only take the time to look.

Here is the quote regarding the mission statement for the ultra-right wing neo-con group that included the likes of Dick Cheyney, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush among others.

September, 2000. The Project for a New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank whose members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, releases their report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

In it, they declare that “the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

There is just example after example of suspicious to down right criminal things that are exposed in this documentary.  I challenge ANYONE to watch this and not come away with serious doubt about the story that has been told to the American public. At the link listed above you can watch the documentary in it’s entirety for free.  Not that we need another reason to despise the Bush administration but this is truly unbelievable, even if only a fraction of it is true. Take the time and WATCH it.  Please post your comments after you see it.

After the movie Ali didn’t really know what to say.  Her dislike of the Bush administration was already so deep that piling on top of it is nearly impossible.  It’s almost like we are living in the Matrix, the government manipulates us to see what they want us to see, feel what they want us to feel, all to serve a truly sick master.

Hey the Eagles won.  They were setting things up to almost follow the Bears game plot exactly however they managed to come up with a defensive stop and then actually were effective with clock management and left the Vikings no time to come back.  They were doing a good job of letting the Vikes 3rd string QB look like Joe Montana for awhile. Hey it’s a win.

When I got Ali the Treo 750 phone, I was very proud of myself.  It addressed some of the complaints she had about her Treo 650, namely it’s poor reliability with synchronizing her outlook email, calendar and contacts.  The 750 does a fantastic job of this and actually does it in real time instead of just once an hour.  The IE browser in Windows Mobile is far better than what the Palm OS offers as well.  Windows Mobile just has more bells and whistles.  Well last night I was working on her phone trying to address a couple issues and Ali asks me if it would be possible for us to simply swap numbers between our phones.  (I still have a Treo 650)  I told her it couldn’t be done, although if we were willing to eat a ton of fees, I think it actually could be.  All the bells and whistles that I find so cool just seem to frustrate Ali.  She said she actually liked the 650 better…. what?????  Hearing that hurt since I thought I did a good job of addressing the problems Ali presented to me with her old phone.

Well one of the things I have been waiting for is the Windows Mobile 6 free upgrade to be released by ATT/Cingular for the 750.  It has even more cool features and would address a couple of the quirks Ali was complaining about.  There have been many rumors that it has been ready to release for months but ATT is sitting on it for some reason.  I have been patiently waiting for the official release although there has been an unofficial version of it floating around for a month or so.  Well last night after hearing Ali’s complaints, I lost my patience.

I downloaded and installed the unofficial version.  It went well.  I had the unit back up and working in about 20 minutes.  I am hoping the OS upgrade will make Ali feel better about the phone.  I still have some more tweaking to do.

The weekend started with me feeling ambitious and motivated it ended with me feeling the opposite.  On Saturday morning I cut short my WoW session early so I could start on my list.  I changed the air filter on the Camry and rotated it’s tires, part of what the dealership wanted to charge me 300 dollars to do.  Ali was going to a group class at the gym at 10:15.  We decided I would go with her, drop her off and get the Sam’s Club shopping done while she was there.  I putzed around Sam’s as slow as I could, looking in detail at things that interested me.

  I snagged a new socket set.  Ironically I had bought the exact same set from Sam’s a few years back.  That set met an untimely demise as it just happened to be in the passenger seat of my Buick the day it burned up.  I never had gotten around to replacing it and had been scraping by with the shitty, incomplete socket set I have had forever.  I also looked at TV’s, computers, surround sound systems and various other appliances and gadgets.  I went as slow as I could and even so I still had 25 minutes to waste in the parking lot which I spent listening to a rebroadcast of one of the Stern shows.

When we got back home the afternoon was spent mostly back inside doing various cleaning and picking up around the house.  However while we were finishing up watching a Kitchen Nightmares that we started while eating lunch, the doorbell rang.  At first I hoped it was just the mailman dropping a package at the door or something.  Normally they will ring it and go back to their jeep.  Nope, there was someone standing there, I cringed, imagining they were selling something and indeed they were, kind of.

I open the door and see a bald guy, around my age wearing a Florida State polo shirt.  Initially he thought I was the neighbor across the street, when I corrected him,  he looked at the long print out he was carrying (list of registered republicans)and found my name. He shakes my hand and introduces himself, Eric Zichella.  I was befuddled, not knowing what the punchline was.  I recognized the name but wasn’t quite sure where from.  Then he says he is running for the vacated seat in the Florida House of Representatives.  He handed my a little postcard with his face plastered all over it.  Now I knew where I heard the name from.  This guy has been doing a media blitz.  We have received 2 or 3 cards from him as well as a message on our answering machine about his campaign, all of which I paid no attention to.  However I was flabbergasted that the guy was standing on our doorstep. The idea of a politician going door to door just struck me as bizarre.  He seemed very personable as he tried to befriend Nicki who was barking incessantly at him and to Ali whom came up to see what was up.  He said something about how he was just going around to meet people in his district to introduce himself and to see what people’s issues were.  Well my brain was stuck in neutral.  I really could come up with very little to say as I looked over his card he handed me three or four times.  I commented that the I heard the guy he is trying to replace, who died, was a good man.  After that I could manage little more than an awkward smile and laughs.  He could sense that the conversation had ended, asked us for our support and left.  Even as I closed the door, I was dumbstruck that the guy was going door to door. The guy must really want to be a politician.

After he left, Ali brought over several of the cards we have received from Eric in the mail.  She said she didn’t want to make a big scene but evidently she was paying more attention to the card than I was.  Evidently Eric is a hard core, right winger.  In the one postcard it has several pictures of him holding a gun, another pose with him in front of Ave Maria (the new catholic university that opened up) and various blurbs about his opposition to gay marriage.  So he is an anti-gay, bible thumping hunter??  Um no, I wouldn’t vote for him.  I really need to get off the republican voter list.  Even though I don’t agree with Eric’s political views, I can’t help but be impressed by his determination. I wish I wasn’t so tongue tied and would have taken the opportunity to ask Eric his views on some issues like Iraq and illegal immigrants.   Knocking on doors is tough business.

Saturday evening was our official anniversary dinner.  All week Ali was trying to get me to tell her where we were going, she doesn’t like surprises.  She was very surprised when we pulled into the Turtle Club.  The Turtle Club is a fancy place with outside tables that are right on the beach.  We went there once before, a long time ago with my mom.  I researched sunset times, the 5:45 reservation was the latest I could get and I calculated the 7:01 sunset would be within reach.  I purposely arrived a few minutes late to ensure we would get to see the sun drop from our table.

Not only did we get to eat outside, we got one of the best tables there, right beside the railing to the beach, a front row seat.  Since it was our once a year dinner, nothing was held back, I even got an appetizer.  When we first looked at the menu we were a bit worried since pretty much everything had meat involved somehow.  The waiter told us that they did have a vegetarian plate that is not listed on the menu. 

 The sun was beating on us a bit early on.  We both had on sunglasses and the long pants I decided to wear made me a little warm.  As the sun dropped lower in the sky things became quite pleasant.  Ali and I did some talking about the 9 years of marriage we were celebrating talking about the things we most enjoyed about it.  As sunset drew closer the beach filled with people.  You saw many flash bulbs going off as everyone wanted the postcard shot in front of a beautiful sunset.  The sunset was indeed beautiful.  I confirmed with Ali that it is the first time we could remember watching a sunset as we sat at a table eating dinner at a restaurant.  It was extremely cool.  I took a couple pics with my camera phone, they probably don’t do the scene justice.  I was so relaxed that we even ordered desert. 

The bill was steep but I knew it would be.  I didn’t give the kid waiter a full 20% tip as there were a few annoying things about the service like them bringing out Ali’s veggie plate with rice pilaf done in chicken stock as well as long periods where our guy would just disappear.  He was less than attentive.  For the nearly 100 bucks that we dropped I would expect a little better service. 

I had another first, actually using the valet.  I never use valet service for several reasons.  First it seems lazy to have someone park your car. Second I don’t really trust some kid to drive my vehicles around.  Third I guess I’m cheap.  I hate paying someone to do something I can easily do myself.  Being a valet newb, I wasn’t quite sure what to tip so I erred on what I would consider the high side and gave the guy 5 bucks for the 45 second retrieval of our car.  I asked Ali how she liked the anniversary dinner.  I got 5 star reviews for my effort and thoughtfulness. 

Sunday was a blah kind of day for me.  In the morning I had some motivation and some energy.  While Ali was away at spin class I buzzed around the house doing this and that.  After she got home we headed outside to pay attention to the back part of our property that gets infrequent mowing/trimming.  I went out with my new trimmer and worked on knocking down the high grass and weeds in the two long ditches while Ali mowed.   The new trimmer did an ok job of hitting the high stuff but it had noticeably less power than the older Homelite.  My theory is this is because the new unit has a clutch in it in able to use the attachments where as the old unit is direct drive.  Once I ran out of gas on the new trimmer, I retrieved the old one to finish.  It ripped through the heavy brush much better.  I guess I will keep it around for those situations. 

We finished up just in time for the Eagles game. Ugh what a boring, lethargic game.  Both Ali and I fell asleep during it.  To see them struggle to beat a shitty team like the Jets did nothing to make me feel better about the team.  By the end of that game I didn’t care if the Eagles won or lost, I was just praying it didn’t go into overtime, it was that boring.  So they managed to beat a 1-5 team, yay.

Ali had talked about us going back out after the game to work on another one of my list items, pruning the landscape.  However by that time I had zero ambition left and just didn’t feel like doing it. Instead after the game, while we ate dinner we watched Ocean’s 13.  It was entertaining, unrealistic and confusing like all of the previous Ocean Whatever flicks.  Somehow it is just fun to see all these big name actors in one flick, even if you can’t keep track of the hundreds of things going on at once.  I’d give it a B+.

For some reason I was thinking about a couple odd things over the weekend.  First, why is it that so many reality tv shows have adopted this idiotic practice of showing the same footage over and over and over again within the same show.  Of course the answer is it requires them to actually produce less content, but here is how it goes anyway.  The show starts and they show a preview of everything that happens during it. Then the first segment airs and then a commercial hits.  After the commercial hits instead of continuing the show they instead repeat the last minute or so before the commercial.  I mean do they think that people have such short attention spans that they forgot what happened three minutes ago??  It’s moronic.  You can easily see the same footage three times per episode.  Thankfully with Tivo I can skip it.

Advertising is such a me too racket.  The big thing in truck ads nowadays is to show a truck doing these unbelievable things that would never happen in real life.  I think Toyota started it recently with ads showing the Tundras doing things like hauling huge loads up and down a gigantic see saw, narrowly avoiding massive swinging girders and other crazy demonstrations.  Now Nissan has an ad where they show the frame of a Titan stopping a locomotive engine and Ford runs one where a a truck drops put of the back of an airplane that is landing and brings it to  a stop.  Ok, ok we get it these trucks do all of these amazing things but my real question is what gas mileage do they get and how comfortable are they to drive when I am lugging my small collection of stuff from Home Depot back and forth? I have no immediate plans to rent out my truck as an auxiliary airplane brake system.