Archives October 2004

I picked up Nicki after work yesterday. When I went back to the kennel area it was quiet this time and Nicki was just laying on her pillow. I noticed she didn’t eat any of the beggin strips I gave her before I left in the morning which is very rare. I called during the day to check on her and the woman said Nicki went out with her just fine and was doing well. Once Nicki saw me she went crazy. She had the biggest dog smile I ever saw. So although she didn’t exactly have fun at the kennel, she survived so I guess I just need to let it be and take her there when I go away next weekend.

I have the video feed set up again today so I can see what Nicki is doing at home again today. Open Windows Media player, FILE/OPEN URL http://duf.homedns.org:9090 I have the audio feed on so right now you’ll hear what is going on as well.

I stayed up late again last night playing Top Spin tennis. I am having a hard time dragging myself away from the game. I am just hooked on trying to work myself up the rankings. Right now I am still somewhere between 2000 and 3000. It’s very challenging taking on different people and breaking down each players tendencies and tactics. I have NFL 2K5 still in the box, haven’t even tried it yet. I’m waiting for Keener to get online so I can continue my long standing domination in virtual football.

Tonight is the debate, tune in and watch W get hammered once again. I have a friendly political debate going on here at work with a co-worker. She is very pro-Bush. She offered up a very typical “what about ME screw everyone else” opinion about Bush. She said she got a 2k tax refund last year which is part of the reason she likes Bush. I pointed out that that kind of short sightedness is why we are buried in the deepest debt in history. Cutting taxes while we are spending billions a month in Iraq is just fiscally irresponsible. But Bush-backers don’t care about how it affects us on the backend, long term. They see less taxes RIGHT NOW. So that must be good, right? Ugh.

This is a very funny clip, Halo fans rejoice. Thanks to gangwhore for the contribution (via keener)

I haven’t griped about my soon to be ex-gym for a while. Today I noticed one other “improvement” that was done. They replaced 2 lime coated, disgusting water fountains with one new one that is mounted about 3 feet off the ground. It is ridiculously low for normal sized people. Maybe they thought you could stretch your hamstrings while getting a drink.

Also, there is a newly joined member there that is driving me nuts. He is one of those guys that is in love with himself. He is always shooting himself sexy looks in the mirror as he checks himself out. But I don’t care about that. What is annoying is how loud this guy is. While he is doing reps he makes sounds like he is taking a massive dump. But even worse, after his sets he moans and pants like he just got finished shooting his scene in a bad porn movie. It is really off the charts, I can hear him clear as day all the way on the far side of the gym. I just don’t understand what runs through the minds of certain gym-goers. Are these noises supposed to turn on chicks? From the disturbed looks that were being directed his way after every episode I can ascertain that I am far from the only one who is not enjoying his routine. Oh well, I heard from someone else that this guy just signed up for a year so I don’t need to worry about him following me to the new gym. Thank goodness.

My first day of going solo went ok. I have a lot more to do around the house by myself and Nicki just mopes around because Alison isn’t there. 2 weekends from now, when I go to PA, Nicki is supposed to be kenneled. As preparation I dropped her off today to have her stay there during the day today to get accomodated. It didn’t go well. The facility is brand new and clean. Once Nicki got inside she was very nervous just like she always is in new surroundings. Then we went back to the kennel area. It was a row of maybe 10 kennels on either side. It literally looked like a cell block. But what immediately caught my attention was the noise. The half dozen or so dogs in there were barking like mad and the noise was just echoing off the bare walls making it impossible to even hear what the woman was saying. I brought Nicki’s bed with, a few toys and her bottle that she drinks out of. I got out a few beggin strips and tried to comfort her. Then when we closed the door, the look of fear and panic on her face was horrible. The other dogs continue to bark incessantly as we walked out, I don’t look back for a last look as I knew it would only upset me more. The woman assures me she will have her out quite a bit during the day. She seemed very nice but it didn’t make me feel much better about leaving Nicki in that situation. The woman said that the dogs were barking so much only because she was in there, but somehow I have a feeling that is more of the status quo. I am going to see how she is when I pick her up. I have a feeling she will be majorly freaked out. I’m already scrambling in my head to come up with other options for her care while I am away. I can’t imagine what she would be like after being there for 4 days. Damn I never could have imagined how much owning a dog can impact other aspects of your life. We almost feel guilty about going away at this point. Until this trip next weekend, Alison and I haven’t been anywhere alone together for more than one day in the past year.

I have the live feed to my house set back up. I cranked it up so Ali could see Nicki. Right now I have it pointed at Tuki. To view it open windows media player and then do FILE/OPEN URL enter http://duf.homedns.org:9090 as the URL. Give it a few seconds to buffer and you will have a live feed of our great room. The video quality is pretty impressive.

This weekend was my 6 year wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went to the Naples Dinner theater and saw a show called I Do, I Do. They start serving dinner at 5:30 and the show doesn’t start until 8. The last time we went, we arrived right about 5:30, not knowing what to expect. What we found was the entire meal part of the evening takes at most, an hour, leaving a huge chunk of time to kill before the show starts. So this time we didn’t arrive until around 6, thinking this would give us less time to kill. Well this show was less full than the one we attended before, so the food part of the night took even less time. So after we finished eating I had to try to pass the time without going mad. I am TERRIBLE and just sitting there blabbing about things. So after we looked over every word and picture in the programs 4 or 5 times, and still having over an hour to go till showtime, Ali could tell I was going nuts. Luckily, I came up with a game to help occupy us. The game was simple, take the word NAPLES and see how many words you can spell with those letters. It sounds very simple but it took a good half hour up. By the time we were done we had come up with 40 words! Ali came up with many more words than I did but it was a solid team effort. The game took us up to a few minutes before showtime. The few minutes we had left I played a single player game called Sleeper. It is a simple game, you look around the theater and see how many old people are asleep in their seats after the big dinner. Sadly, I only found a couple. I cringed as the guy came on the stage for the pre-show announcements, including ANNIVERSARY announcements! For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to see if they did such announcements. I felt like an ass and apologized to Ali for not being thoughtful enough to put our name in. The show was appropriate for an anniversary. It was about a couple going through 50 years of marriage, starting in 1948. I enjoyed it, especially in comparison to Pirates of Penzance which was close to torture for me to sit through. However near the end of the show, the painfully uncomfortable chairs started to take their toll as I struggled to find a comfortable position. The show ended about 10:15 and we headed home to be greeted by Nicki, as she acted like she didn’t see us in 5 years.

This weekend I went back to using my infamous “list” to set my agenda for the weekend. The list wasn’t terribly long, maybe 5 or 6 items long. I even threw in a couple “unlisted” projects . I got it all done.

One add-in was to replace the weatherstripping on the bottom of the garage. Our garage has always been a spider and bug haven. I never gave it much thought, although I noticed our neighbors, whom have an identical model, have a garage that is almost bug free. A couple weeks ago, I saw why ours was so bad. The weather stripping that goes along the bottom of the door was about 6 inches too short! This left a nice big gap for critters to stroll in and out whenever they pleased. This obvious shoddy work pissed me off, but it is way too late to hold the builder responsible so I bought some fresh weatherstripping and ripped out the shitty stuff. While I was at it, I carefully examined the door seals from the inside, with the door closed, identifying any incoming light and addressing it’s cause. By the time I was done, the door which at first had more light shining through than a window, was almost completely dark. Hopefully the insect population in our garage will thin out shortly.

One other add in project was to plant some fresh vegetables in our garden. I had it covered with a tarp and some weedblock for a couple weeks. I found out that the weedblock did little to actually kill weeds, it just keeps them from coming through the fabric. After pulling up the weedblock I had a ton of weeds to yank anyway. We planted a little salad garden consisting of simply romaine lettuce and a tomato plant.

Another unexpected job was installing an under-counter, space saver combination wireless phone, answering machine, clock radio, timer thingy. Alison fell in love with it instantly at Best Buy. Anything that clears counter space scores big points with her. As I was drilling the holes in the bottom of the cabinet, from the bottom drilling upwards, we had an incident where the drill banging into the cabinet caused a hand painted lighthouse that Ali painted at the shore 5 or years ago, to fall and break into a million pieces on the floor. I suggested that maybe we could try to glue it even though I knew it was an impossibility. She sadly buried the lighthouse in the trashcan. I felt bad about it. It was one of those things that you can’t replace.

Sunday was our actual anniversary. It was lame and I felt bad about it. Even though we celebrated the night before, Sunday was the actual day so even though originally I didn’t think it would be a big deal, I felt bad about not having anything special planned for that day. We just did stuff around the house and looked for “by owner” land for sale. Ali sampled our newly, solar covered pool out. The water was holding steady at 86 degrees. Ali said it felt a little chilly. Haha. Even though Ali said she could care less that we didn’t do something out of the ordinary on Sunday, I told her next year we would do something cooler.

I revisited an existing issue with the Vette. A sensor I replaced had not been adjusted properly, causing a problem with the Vette stalling out. The one person that test drove the car since I put it up for sale, drifted into my driveway as the car stalled on him. That’s not a very strong selling point so I needed to fix it. I finally got it adjusted as it should be. I took it out on an extended test drive and it ran as well or better as it ever has. I plan to take it to work a few times over the next few weeks since I will be myself. I may as well get some fun out of it until I sell it. It went into the local Auto Trader for a 12 week run. Hopefully that will get me better results than the local paper.

This morning we got up early to drop Alison off at the airport. She will be up in PA for the next 2 weeks helping out my brother and sister-in-law and their newborn. I will be heading up 2 weekends from now to join her for a few days. Ali was very sad to go. She was very upset about the idea of not seeing Nicki for so long. It’s incredible how much she loves that dog. So for the next 10 days or so I will be on my own trying to maintain some sense of normalcy while traveling back home during lunch everyday to let Nicki out for a bathroom break. As a prep for Nicki’s extended, first ever, 4 day stay at a kennel, I am dropping her off there tomorrow during the day to try to get her accomodated with the surroundings. My plans for the next 10 days include growing facial hair, play as much computer and video games as I please and staying up too late most nights so I can be grumpy and tired the following mornings.

Kerry hammered Bush again in the debate. It wasn’t even close. Bush looked nervous and agitated all night. Bush also introduced the world to yet another new word in his dictionary, “fassle”. He used it in describing the military. I believe he combined the words “fast” and “agile”. Again, Bush relied on repeating his catch phrases and everytime he would do it, Kerry would systematically take him apart. The only thing that seems to have much substance on the Bush attack is Kerry’s voting against the 87 billion war appropriation. Kerry himself admitted that he made a mistake in the way he spoke about that. In contrast, when Bush was asked on the last question of the night to list 3 things that in retrospect he made a mistake on he refused to name even one. Pathetic.

I am AMAZED and annoyed by the apparently new campaign strategy this year to leave messages on answering machines and flood your mailbox with junk mail. We had another 2 pro-bush messages on the machine yesterday along with another 2 pieces of junk mail doing nothing but repeating the catch phrases and telling us how safe Bush is going to keep us. It speaks to both how much money the republicans have to send out these mailing repeatedly to the entire country and how desperate they must be to think that telemarketing will somehow get them votes.

Every morning I have a routine. Lately it seems to be getting more difficult to get out the door early enough to avoid the gridlock out here. I was wondering if my routine is more complicated than normal. Here is what occurs every weekday.

Alarm goes off at 5:42 am. Lay in bed for 5 to 8 minutes in a groggy, semi-awake state. Usually get up after I hear the quarter to the hour commercial break finishes.

Bathroom break, take out braces

Shuffle out to laundry room, scoop the litter box. Replace the cat water, fill the cat dry food dish, add some tarter control treats to it. Scoop out a third of a can of wet cat food and put it on a plate for Buttons. (she meows constantly until I do this)

Get a shot of OJ in a glass then take out the flaxseed oil, shake well and take a good swig of it. Immediately wash it down with the OJ to help neutralize the horrid taste.

Leash up Nicki and take her out. On most mornings she will only do a number 1 right away, on special mornings we get both a 1 and 2.

Back inside, go into bedroom and perform my secondary alarm clock duties for Alison to get her out of bed.

Back out to the kitchen to prepare my bowl of cereal. On mornings I feel like getting a little wild and crazy I will instead have a glass of milk and 2 pop-tarts. If I don’t hear activity in the bedroom by then, I repeat my human alarm clock duties.

I take my breakfast to the office and sit down in front of the computer. I delete the couple dozen spam quickly while scanning for legitimate email. After any email correspondence is complete I will pop open the web browser and look at a few news headlines. Usually sometime during this process, Alison will also come into the office with her breakfast and do the same thing.

I shut down my puter and head back to the kitchen. I put my breakfast dishes in the dishwasher along with any other dishes left over from last night. (normally the bird crocks) Next up I need to prepare the lunches.

While Alison goes back to the bedroom to shower, I prepare both of our lunches for the day. The lunches are identical everyday. For me, a peanut butter sandwich, a pint of skim milk, lowfat yogurt and a Zone Bar. I also will normally throw in a small container of cottage cheese. Alison’s lunch also has the peanut butter sandwich but instead of yogurt and a zone bar she gets carrots and string cheese. Her sandwiches get cut in half, mine do not. Both of our lunches get packed into their own individual lunch boxes. Normally at this time, I will also refill our water bottles for the gym.

Next, I go into the other bathroom to wash my hair and then as I walk back to our bedroom, I give a peanut to Tuki our parrot. Once in the bedroom, normally I make the bed and pick out whatever I am going to wear.

By this time I have glanced at the clock I realize that once again I am behind schedule and am going to get stuck in shitty traffic. So I try to hurry up my sink routine of pre-rinsing with Plax, brushing my teeth, rinsing with Listerine and then clean my braces and put them back in. Then I pull out the electric razor and do a quick weed whack job of my face. It never does nearly as good of a job as a blade but time constraints leave me little choice. After rinsing the sink, I grab my Adidas facial creme for men and generously apply it to my face. It is a futile attempt to fight back the affects of time.

Sink time is done. Next I have to pick which pair of shoes to wear and if my outfit requires the black or brown belt. Then I carry out my gym bag, turn off the air cleaner in the bedroom and coax Nicki from out of the bedroom out to the kitchen.

The bedroom door gets shut to prevent the cats from going in there during the day making it even hairier than it already is. It also diminishes the chances of having to clean cat vomit from our bedroom.

As I walk by the bird cages, I flip on the small radio so the birds don’t have to sit there in silence. It is an old radio that seems to change stations by itself. One day it will be on the Stern station, the next it will be playing oldies.

Before I can load the lunch boxes and gym bags into the trunk of the car I need to give Buttons her insulin shot. I load the needle and then have to check her normal resting spots to find her and administer the shot.

Almost ready. The used needle goes into the empty milk jug in the pantry. One last check, the back sliding door has to be locked and the blinds pulled across it but turned so they let in some light. The pantry door needs to be closed and one last check is made to make sure we have everything we need for that day of work. We put Nicki’s leader leash on that she hates, take her out to the car where she hops into the back seat that is covered with a beach towel that is changed weekly. We set the house alarm and finally get in the car.

Normally we get out the door by 7am. Ideally, if we got out by 6:45 it would make the commute much easier but it seems next to impossible to hit that mark. The commute to work can be as short as 45 minutes or as long as 75 minutes.

This routine is followed faithfully, day in and day out. Does it seem overly complicated or excessive? I’ve been doing it so long I don’t know any other way.

Does anyone else wonder what the candidates are writing during these presidential debates? I bet W is drawing pictures of super heroes and race cars. No wait, that is what I used to draw as a kid. I used to draw quite a bit when I was young. I would draw hot rod cars, super heroes and various renditions of the cartoons in Mad magazine. My favorite was to draw Spy vs Spy episodes.

This morning, Ali had to go into work a little earlier than normal so she was up before me and was in the shower. As I laid in bed I had recollections again back to childhood. I remember that my mom’s routine was to take a bath before bed. I remember laying in bed hearing the running water and it helped to put me to sleep. It relaxed me somehow. Although I would have liked to relax and fall back asleep this morning, the reality was I had to get up in 10 minutes myself.

My IP phone equipment arrived yesterday. It works surprisingly well. I had it hooked up and working on my office PC in no more than 5 minutes time. The sound quality is good, and it doesn’t suffer from what earlier implementations of IP telephony did such as lag and poor sound quality. The terminal adapter to allow a regular phone to go through the internet installed easily as well. It’s very cool. I made the call to Sprint yesterday to have them cut all the fat off my local phone service. The only downside will be no more caller id when people call my home number but I figure we don’t get enough calls for it to really matter and if I want to screen the calls I will just let the answering machine get it. Another few hundred slashed off my yearly expenses. I am slowly trying to drag us into a position that Alison at least can drop to part time.

My search for land is getting rather hopeless. It seems the prices of land are going up weekly. It is really frustrating. Right now there is an element of buying madness, regardless of the cost which is artificially driving up prices. I think the only way I am going to find something reasonable is to luck out and find a decent lot sold by owner. I plan to drive around this weekend and scout some stuff out.

Rest in peace Rodney. He was one of the funniest guys I’ve ever seen. He made us all laugh.

Unlike his boss, Dick Cheyney is an intelligent guy that is well versed in the political process. The debate was a back and forth affair with both sides accusing the other of just being plain wrong. Cheyney got some good jabs in at Edwards and vice versa. As I saw commented after the debate, the truth is this VP debate will be quickly forgotten as Friday’s presidential debate will take center stage. However there were 2 things that stood out for me about this debate. First the price tag that is on the Iraq conflict, 200 billion if you believe the democrats, 120 billion if you believe the republicans. Either number is huge, especially after Edwards brought up that the first gulf war cost us a TOTAL of 5 billion. That is staggering. The second moment was when the issue of gay marriage was brought up. The topic was presented to Edwards where he stated his ideas that marriage should be between a man and a woman but the idea that there should be a constituional amendment regarding it was ridiculous and nothing more than a political ploy to appeal to the religious right. When the 90 second time slot for Cheyney to rebute he simply thanked Edwards for the kind words he said regarding Dick’s gay daughter and nothing else. Obviously Cheyney is not onboard with Bush’s stance on this and his silence said it all. Unlike the first presidential debate which Kerry obviously won, this debate was more of a toss up. Like I said, in the big picture, of the 4 debates scheduled, this one was the least important.

Wow Stern announced he signed a deal with Sirius to go to satellite radio at the end of his contract. It was a rumor forever. Guess I will be buying a Sirius receiver. Sirius.com is slow as molasses right now. 🙂

How annoying is it to get automated politicial messages on your phone and answering machine? I have gotten several now from the Bush campaign. I can’t believe they think this somehow would encourage people to vote for their candidate. Unsolicited phone calls do nothing but piss people off. Dumb asses.

My gym reopened after being closed for the past week for renovations. I stepped in and was underwhelmed. Instead of a color scheme of black, teal and purple, it is now a more subdued black and gray setup. They replaced the rug on one side, replaced the rubber floor on the other and are in the process of redoing the bathrooms with tile. It certainly is an improvement over what it was, but they didn’t bother to take the time to clean the mirrors, organize the weights and they still had one person behind the counter, surfing the internet. They could have gold plated the equipment in there, it wouldn’t make a difference if they still neglected the upkeep on the place like they obviously will. They just don’t get it.

Even though I hadn’t lifted for only a week, it felt like 6 months. My chest workout was anemic, I felt weak as a baby. There was an older gentleman there, probably closer to 50 than 40. He was doing HUGE amounts of weight with dumbell curls. More than I ever saw anyone do. He was doing these seated on a bench which prevents cheating like you can do when standing. He maxxed out with 70 pound dumbells doing at least 8 reps with each arm. It was impressive. It made my curl reps with the 70 pound barbell look totally anemic. Oh well it was good to get back into the gym. With volleyball done, I can add my legs back into my routine without fear of residual soreness that could affect my vball game.

On the way back I saw a pickup with a bad attempt at political wit on a bumper sticker. It read, “Democrats are so full of crap, they need 2 John’s” Har har har.

We worked very hard this weekend. But, I didn’t really mind. We laid out 90 bags of mulch and 250 feet of weedblock. I already have pictures up to see the result of our labor. Although it was hot, sweaty and dirty work I didn’t really mind that much. I think the fact that Ali was out there with me working side by side helped make it easier. We normally work well together on projects.

By lunchtime on Sunday, we had most everything done, including mowing the grass. Perfect timing as it allowed me to watch the Eagles game. It was sloppy. The offense couldn’t finish drives, the team had TONS of penalties and even though the Bears looked hapless for most of the game, they still had a shot late into the 4th quarter. Far from a stellar effort by the Birds, but they got the W and go into the bye week 4-0, can’t ask for much more than that.

After the game I decided to work on recharging the AC on the Vette. Of course what I would expect to be a 30 minute job turned into close to 2 hours of screwing around. And even after all that time, I don’t think my efforts really resulted in much difference. I am so ready to be rid of this car. The ad ran for a second Sunday but I received 0 calls on it. Grrrrr… I have a feeling I will have to sell this for less than I paid for it to get rid of this big, red fiberglass headache.

Last night was weird dream night. I had several but can only remember details of one. For some reason I found myself back home in PA. I had taken the southwest Florida Fox 4 news van for a joyride. This actually was the size of a motorhome, full of AV equipment. I was driving it around the roads of Gouglersville, by myself. After my brief journey, I parked it in center city Gouglersville, right outside what used to be Brightbill’s family store. I remember I was nervous that someone would ask me what I was doing but there was nobody around to care. However after ditching the van, I could not find my car. My dream ended with me walking around town looking for my car. Perhaps someone took my wheels for a joyride…..