Archives July 2005

I watched the shuttle take off with baited breath, hoping to not see it explode. It was cool to watch the launch and especially this one since they had additional camera views that I’ve never seen before. But then the bad news hit that more crap fell off the main fuel tank and they were once again grounding future missions. I find it next to impossible to believe that the think tank at NASA can’t handle this issue. In my 15 seconds of analyzing the problem, I wondered why they couldn’t equip the tank with some sort of high strength mesh condom-like device that would prevent loose pieces from breaking away. I mean come on, it really can’t be that hard can it? I’d love to see a launch live sometime, I bet that would be amazing to hear, feel and see the power up close and personal.

I ran over to Ali’s work to pick up her and Nicki for a quick trip to the vet. As we were waiting for the vet we saw one of the assistants come walking up to the cat scale carrying a cat hanging upside down by it’s legs. The cat was knocked out and just hanging there limp like a a carcass. As the woman tried to put the drugged cat down, she banged it’s head into the scale before she plopped it on like a pile of hamburger. She gets the weight and then picks up the cat by the legs again and throws it over her shoulder like a fur coat. She displayed a lack of concern for the cat that made Ali and I take pause.

I haven’t had my in office cam on for months for some reason. It’s on now so you don’t miss a minute of all the exciting head scratching, eye squinting, phone talking and yawning that goes on here every single day!!

Saturday was my first volleyball tournament since last month. I knew it was going to be hot when it was in the mid 80’s by 7am. Randall and I have had little success recently, missing the playoffs in the last 2 tournaments we played in. I wrote it off to some bad luck and some sloppy play, well after missing the playoffs again and turning in our worst performance to date I think there is more fire than smoke. It was EXTREMELY hot all day which made for difficult playing conditions, however everyone was playing in the same weather so it was no excuse. In our first game we beat a guy playing with a 12 year old kid and then lost every game afterward, finishing a very disappointing 1-3. The games were close for the most part but we managed to fade consistently at the end. Balls were hit OB all day which just kills you in rally scoring. The serves kept going the other way. I tried to hit on 2 more than I ever have. It’s something I don’t do all that well but I was desperate to get something going. It was just all around bad and left me wondering why I am putting the time and effort into playing if we can’t even get off a BB net. We have another tournament in a couple weeks. If things continue to suck I will have to decide to either just bag it or try to mix things up and play with some other people to see if things improve. In my situation, it just isn’t worth it to me to play if we can’t have a modicum of success.

Our neighbors sold their place and are moving up north. With the hustle and bustle of moving they neglected pool maintenance and wound up with a dark green pool that resembled a pond. I told them I would take care of cleaning it up, dump a few chemicals in, clean the filter a couple times, problem solved. Well that has hardly been the case. For the past week I have been dumping shit into that pool and all I have to show for it is water that is now more bluish green then dark green. I have spent the 50 bucks the neighbors gave me for the chemicals and another 30 on top of that out of my own wallet. The damn water just will not clear. I poured enough crap in there to kill anything yet it still looks more suitable for fish than human beings. The neighbors were back this weekend cleaning things up and made some comments to Ali about the pool still being cloudy. It made me a bit angry since I have been busting my ass trying to clear it up. I have a water sample now that I am taking with me on today’s trip to the pool store. What a pain in the ass.

On Sunday. even though I played volleyball the day before, I hit the track with Ali to do our run. (before the run I was out weed whacking the entire property) I don’t know if it is testament to the improvement in my knee or a result of my lack of action in the tournament. Again, the heat was brutal. However we did manage to turn in our fastest joint lap ever, beating our prior best by a full 6 seconds. In general we are turning laps a good 10-12 seconds faster than when we first started, a nice improvement. We were both drenched when we were done.

After a dip in the pool to cool off, lunch and a brief nap while a thunderstorm rolled through, I was ready to go back out into the hot humid muck to tackle reassembling the garden border that I ripped apart weeks ago because of the flooded mess it was mired in. There were more storms surrounding us but I didn’t give a shit, I put this off long enough. As I moved the landscape timbers out of the way, I discovered the one had become the centerpiece of a massive fire ant mound. As soon as I moved it, the ground came alive with thousands of the vicious little bastards. They quickly got onto my boots and pants. I flicked off the ones I saw, killed others as they managed to bite me. I took the tiller out and started turning over the dirt where the garden was going to be. When I got to the part where the fire ant colony was, I paused for a second, thinking about how the tiller will throw the dirt and ants back at me and how it could be rather unpleasant. I decided I didn’t care, the job was going to get done. I plowed into the still active mound, scattering the ants everywhere. I didn’t bother to look down at my legs, I knew there were ants on me. If I felt a sting from a bite I smashed the little bastard but kept plowing ahead. They were inside my pants, inside my boots, biting on a regular basis, I just didn’t care. I assembled the border. When I got to the last piece that had the ants all over it I used caution as I tried to drag it into place quickly to avoid more bites. Of course I was unsuccessful and got another half dozen more bites on my hands. With ants surrounding me, I hurriedly sunk screws into the corner brackets. I stopped there for now as I threw down a bunch of Amdro to kill off the ants and had to give it some time to work. I went right from doing this to helping Ali finish up fluffing mulch. With all the rain, the mulch gets very compacted. It gets so compacted that it becomes dirt-like which allows weeds to grow within the mulch, even though I have expensive weed block underneath. I hate weeding. So Ali went around with a garden claw breaking it up and followed her with the rake and picked out remaining weeds. I once again was a sweaty mess. Whew, what a ball busting day.

The rest of the day I did some various indoors things I needed to do like wipe out the old hacked Tivo for resale on ebay, try for the 10 th time to unsuccessfully activate the new phone I got from Cingular and try to pick up a bit around the house. I’m getting frustrated with all the pet hair that is everywhere. The Roomba is getting less effective in keeping the floors clean. All the hair clogs the brushes, blocks the sensors and gets into spots in the Roomba where it doesn’t belong, causing problems. I would still recommend a Roomba to my friends but not to ones that have pets that drop a lot of hair. It just takes too much maintenance to keep the Roomba running in those situations.

The satellite installer cancelled for Saturday and instead is coming this Friday to do the install. No big deal and actually it is better since I will be around for the install to handle any technical questions. Since I ran the cable and installed the unit myself, I could answer questions that Ali would have no clue about.

I have that “things are out of control” feeling lately where it seems there are many things that should be getting done that aren’t. This causes me stress.

I got a new Tivo 2 unit. No I didn’t pay for it. A few months ago I got a Tivo credit card and collected points that I used to get the new Tivo. This is the 2nd generation Tivo with even more features. It has built in support for broadband connections, it lets you view pictures and play music from a PC on your home network and allows you to schedule recordings from the world wide web. It’s a sweet box. I spent last night getting it all setup. For some reason getting my hands around some new geek gear inspired me to contact directv to see about the possibility of picking up local channels through the satellite. Right now I just use it for the NFL Sunday Ticket and occasional PPV movies. However the picture qulaity coming off the satellite is soooooooo much better than the cable feed. It’s like night and day. So I called Directv and asked if I could just pick up local channels (major networks). At first they said no, my only option was to take their low end 41.99 per month package. I disappointedly said “That’s my only option?” The woman said she would check on something. She came back in a bit and said since I was a customer since 2000, they would add on the local channels for only 6 bucks a month. Ah cool, that will work. However she said I would need a different dish to receive the locals. I asked her if it cost anything to get the new dish and she said, no, and transferred me over to that department.

I got a guy this time and I explained to him what the deal was. He said ok, that will be 50 bucks for the dish plus 15 shipping. “Hmmm I was just told that it shouldn’t cost me anything” He said he didn’t see any notes on my account saying anything about that but he put me on hold again. He came back and again said “Since you have been a customer for so long….” they were going to give me the dish and I would just pay shipping. Then he found out I would also need a new receiver as well which also would be free. Sweet. I wanted to install it myself since I did the original install but he said with a new receiver, an installer has to do it. They could send a guy out Saturday morning to do it, um ok, fine. So hopefully by Monday I will be watching crystal clear network TV pumped through my 140 hour Tivo 2 box.

On Saturday I am playing in my first volleyball tournament since the Pottstown Rumble. My last two tournaments with Randall didn’t go that well with us missing playoffs both times. I don’t have any expectations so that normally makes the day more enjoyable. I almost feel like skipping it cause there are so many little things around the house that I would like to get cleaned up and done. Oh well. Over the next month I am burning up my leftover vacation so I will have some long weekends to get stuff done.

When I was out in Vegas and PA I had to use my phone a bit. I knew I didn’t have a nationwide plan so I would have some roaming charges but still I figured my bill may be twice what it normally is, maybe 70 or 80 bucks. When Ali opened the Cingular bill and said “HOLY SHIT!” I knew it was bad, over 180 dollars. Almost all the calls were a minute but the roaming charges were ridiculous. I guess it is my fault for assuming it wouldn’t be so expensive. I signed up for a nationwide plan today, no more roaming. What a racket…

It’s ironic that by the time I am done with my braces and I’m not conscious about my teeth when I smile, I will still be hesitant to do it because of all the lines that draw across my face now whenever I try to unleash a toothy grin due to my advancing years. Damn it….

This weekend we made our second consecutive trip to the movies, this time to see War of the Worlds. I thought the movie had some amazing visuals, a lot of “look at that” moments that kept me entertained as I wondered about how they did certain things. The amazing, epic scenes of destruction helped to cover up what was really an average flick altogther. I enjoyed it more than Batman, Ali did not. Oh well, I’d give this one a B- to C+, only Fantastic 4 to go, I heard that one has gotten some really horrible reviews but I’ll risk it anyway.

Buttons, the diabetic, on the verge of death several times cat is really getting on our nerves. We think she has feline dimensia. She does all this stupid stuff, has a strange look on her face and is basically just becoming a big pain in the ass. Since her latest near death episode, we started giving her wet food twice a day to supplement her dry food that seemed to make her throw up all too often. She used to anxiously await me putting down the wet food. Now, she gives a casual glance over somedays and instead continues to eat the dry food. She has some ridiculous hang up about drinking water from her water bowl which I change daily. She almost refuses to drink out of it, instead she would much prefer to lick dirty shower water off the floor, drink out of the tupperware container that catches spilled water from Nicki’s water bottle or drink from the bowl of water we have for the dog in the bathroom for overnight. She is obsessed with it. Over the weekend Nicki decided to wake me up at 2am to go to the bathroom. I stumble to the door to let her out, and in rockets the cat, like she was sitting there with her nose jammed into the opening like she was waiting the instant the door opened to allow her access to the water sources. This ridiculous obession, combined with the early morning timeframe enraged me. I angrily grabbed the cat and initially was thinking about throwing it across the living room. I instead just threw her onto the nearby sofa as I yelled at her to stay the F out of the room, like she understood. It’s like the cat doesn’t care if my foot is at the door and the dog is standing guard, she will try to bolt past to get to the bathroom. It is maddening. Yesterday I was disgusted to see a chunk of cat litter adhered to the dryer that is about 2 feet from their COVERED litter box. How it got there I don’t know, I just uttered “F’in cats….” as I left the utility room.

The weekend was a busy one. Because of Dennis, we didn’t mow the grass last weekend. 2 weeks of not mowing during wet season is a recipe for a mowing marathon. The grass in spots was 8 inches high, requiring me to mow very slowly and sometimes hit the same patch more than once. It sucked.

On Saturday I also helped the new neighbors move a Murphy bed from the old neighbor’s place. (they sold and are moving) It was a big piece of furniture that we had to disassemble to get out. The installers wanted 600 bucks to move the bed two doors down. So we did it ourselves in 2 and a half hours and saved them a wad of cash. It wasn’t all that hard, just took some sweat dollars.

After we went to our neighbors place for dinner the other weekend we felt like we lived in a double wide. Everthing was so high end in comparison to our stuff. So that helped nudge us into looking into getting some new countertops. Ours are low end white veneer that are functional but not much else. We are interested in getting corian countertops. We got some quotes from Lowe’s and Home Depot for them. Because of the huge kitchen island, it is going to cost a lot of money. Even though Lowe’s has a free sink promotion, Home Depot was actually a couple hundred less because they charged significantly less per square foot for installation. We want to go with a color called “Silt”, sounds nasty huh? It is a darker color with more gray than anything, with various browns mixed in. It will break up the all white kitchen nicely while matching the browns that are found everywhere else. My gameplan currently is to wait for a HD 10% off anything internet coupon I signed up for and then use that to help offset the big chunk of cash this is going to cost. I’ve had various people recommend granite over Corian since they cost about the same. Ali and I agree that although granite is nice, it would stick out in our house like putting on rhinestone sunglasses. The rest of the house isn’t upscale so we don’t want the countertops to be so out of place with everything else.

That is all.

Even though I am an extremely casual golfer at best, I appreciate and follow the pro game loosely. I just happened to catch Jack Nicklaus finishing of his last major tournament of his career. He struggled a bit all day but finished it like he should. He nailed a 15 to 20 foot hooking putt. He had tears in his eyes for most of the day. When he finished the huge crowd gave him a never ending ovation. It was cool that his old nemesis, Tom Watson was in his foursome as well. When Jack finished, Tom was crying as well. You have to admire Jack Nicklaus, he was so good for so long. I’m glad I caught it live, I’ll remember it.

Two quick gym related stories. Yesterday I was sad to pull into the lot and see a crew of mexicans slaughtering the beautiful mature trees that were scattered throught the parking lot. These had to be at least 20 year old trees that were big and full. All they were leaving were 6 foot tall barren trunks. When we asked at the front desk about the carnage they said they trees were out of “code” for parking lot trees. This county is f’in ridiculous sometimes with the things they find time to worry about. The trees have been around for a few decades and now they are out of code? This place aggravates me sometimes.

As I was up front doing a shoulder machine, I saw an old man, in his 60’s I would assume, with leathery, heavily wrinkled skin, a big belly and smoking a cigarette. I figured he was heading a few doors up to one of the shopping places. Nope, he dumped his cigarette just before he came in the gym to do his “workout” I watched the guy as he went from machine to machine doing minimal weight and using improper form on pretty much every one. I mean what is the point……

I just found that the new appraised value on our house has gone up an astonishing 45% since last tax year. It really is an amazing real estate situation down here. If we moved down here now we would struggle to get our foot in the front door of a 2 bedroom condo.

Since being exposed to the original Jack Lalanne show a couple weeks ago, he has become one of my favorite people of all time. Ali and I go through his workouts in the evening on a pretty regular basis. He is so upbeat, so excited about everything, it’s next to impossible to not pick up part of that. He says some very funny things at times and he doesn’t even realize it. The other day he was instructing you on how to get into position on the chair for a particular exercise, he says “ok now you tremendously overweight people will have a problem with this…” On another show he got a letter from a viewer complaining about him lauding the fitness benefit the goose step move that nazi’s used. He reassured the viewer that he was not a nazi sympathizer. Then after he read the letter he did a “sieg heil” salute and put his index finger under his nose to mimic hitler’s moustache. Every show has little funny moments in them like these. He is great.