Exhausting weekend

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.