Archives July 2005

I never would have guessed before we got a dog how much she would integrate into a persons life. Nicki has many quirks that are very odd but seem normal to us since we have had her for well over 2 years now. She is a very fussy eater. She normally eats once a day, late at night. There are days where she won’t eat at all or eat very little. I’v tried various tricks to try to encourage her to eat. At first I would act like I was eating her food to show her how good it was. When that stopped working I started yelling the cat’s name once her supper was down. (the cats like to try to steal her food). Nicki would run to her plate to scare away the feline poachers and sometimes that would interest her in eating. Then we started burying various treats into her supper. Soon she learned she could just pick out the treats. So our latest motivator is to put a little bit of wet cat food into her supper. Nicki views this as a forbidden treat since she sees us serving it up and giving it to those rotten cats. This seems to work pretty consistently as she will come over right away to eat the cat food. Normally she will eat the rest of her food, sometimes she will eat a hole out of the food where the cat food was and leave the rest.

In the mornings she has developed another routine. Once I start to prepare our lunches she goes over to her empty plate and licks it, looks at me and cries loudly. That is her hint that she is ready for her marro-bone treat. Marro-bone’s are little hard dog treats with a meaty center. However she won’t eat them if I put them on her plate whole. If they are whole they are too precious to eat and instead she will pick them up and try to bury them somewhere in the house (normally in the pillows of our bed) So instead I pull out the scissors and with her snout inches from my hands I cut the treats up, breaking them into pieces on her plate. She then devours them in no time flat.

Last night she pissed me off. I took her out after 9 to do her business which she did, I figured she was good for the night. It was storming pretty hard around our house so we waited to jump in the shower and in turn got to bed pretty late after 11, we both were tired. Well I get dragged out of my sleep around 1am by the furry alarm clock. I’m groggy and angry but she seems persistent that she now needs to go out. I stumble over to the slider and open it which immediately sets off the house alarm. (I didn’t know Ali set it) So as the alarm and siren is blaring into the dead of the night, I hurry up to the keypad to shut the racket off. I take the dog out, she does a number 2 but it was no emergency. I verbally chastised her for getting me up for a non-event, slam the slider closed and collapse back into bed. Needless to say I am a bit tired this morning. It’s nice that the dog has me so well trained…

We resumed our lucky streak by dodging the brunt of Dennis. Even though Dennis passed us a good 200 miles offshore it still affected our weather for the better part of 3 days. We did mild hurricane prep by putting any loose outside items away as well as pulling all the stuff on the lanai into the wall by the sliding door. I braced a few of the fragile trees in the orchard. I did special work on the one apple tree that has an active mockingbird nest in it. I secured it with rubber tree supports and then took the branches that the nest was built upon, pulled them up and tied them to make a more secure foundation to prevent the nest with 3 little birds in it from blowing away.

Friday night was the biggest rain event for us. When I woke up Saturday morning we had over 3.5″ of rain in the gauge. Our property which had most of the standing water gone on Wednesday is once again surrounded by a series of standing water small lakes. Saturday and Sunday was mostly gusty with periods of light to medium rain. By Sunday morning I was able to put the stuff back outside. I’m glad to report the little birds and their home survived.

On Saturday we had a majorly lazy day. Dennis dictated indoor activities with the constant wind and rain. Ali loves lazy days, she could just lay in bed for hours. Lazy days make me stir crazy. The plus side was I used all the lax time to play hours upon hours of WoW, my guilty obsession. I feel bad at times about sitting there so long, spending so much time trying to acheive various cyber goals that mean nothing outside the context of the game. But it keeps my mind busy, keeps me entertained and insulates me from other things. Well late in the afternoon we did a bit of “work” when we cleaned out some more of the clutter in the bathroom and I installed a makeshift shelf in the bathroom cabinet to double our available space down there, allowing us to clean stuff up.

On Sunday we decided to go running even though it was still overcast and gusty. I expected the stiff wind that was in our face for half the track’s length to significantly slow our times. I was very surprised for us to beat our previous best lap times by a full 6 seconds. The wind affected Ali’s breathing enough that she couldn’t run as many continuous laps as last week so we would stop and walk one then run one for the last couple laps. On lap 12 I told Ali I wanted to run one as fast as I could just to see what kind of time I could do. So I took off, extended my stride and went hard. I’m sure I looked as silly as ever. When I run my natural technique keeps my upper body very upright and straight, even though my legs are moving. It got me the nickname “Road Runner” during my baseball playing days. Anyway, I turned the lap in 1:45 about a 7 minute mile pace, not bad and about the same pace as when I ran the 12 minute run in the Junior High fitness test. I was pleased with that. As we finished the run it started to rain again but the cool rain felt good on our overheated skin.

Over the weekend we saw two movies. On Saturday night we watched Blade 3 on pay-per-view. I wanted to see this in theaters but we never got around to seeing it. It was a good flick, along the lines of the other ones. Great fighting, sweet special affects, a good villian who gets what he deserves in the end. I’d give the film a solid B.

On Sunday we went to the movies. There are 3 movies out currently I wanted to see, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four. Since Batman Begins has been out the longest we figured it wouldn’t be out that much longer and the theater should be less crowded. I heard it was a darker Batman and it has made decent money so I figured it was pretty good. I like superhero flicks. Well I didn’t like this one. I thought it was borderline terrible. To compound it’s badness, it was a long movie, well over 2 hours. The storyline bordered on ridiculous. So much of it just didn’t make any sense. Much of the movie is filmed in a dark manner that I guess is supposed to convey the darkness of Batman but in reality all it did was make it hard to see what was going on. The guy that played Batman was lousy. I thought it was stupid how he changed his voice and overacted when he was Batman, speaking in a deep silly voice that didn’t work at all. Batman gets his powers from basically being rich and really pissed off somehow. I don’t want to go into great details to ruin it for any of you victims that didn’t see it yet. I found it odd that in several scenes Mandy Moore had blatantly protruding nipples. I assume this is a look they wanted but it, like so much else in the movie, didn’t fit in and just seemed like an obvious bone thrown to the male audience. Sure there are lots of things blown up, a fast car but none of it really mattered, the plot was just so ridiculous at times, nothing could pull me back into caring about the movie. It gets a D. Hopefully the other two won’t be such disappointments.

Yep there is more big wind heading in our general direction. It appears that it should be comfortably off our coast as it goes by but if we learned anything last year it is you just never really know. The panic level here is pretty low, people aren’t boarding up or anything like that. It is disconcerting that there have been a bunch of storms already and we are early in hurricane season.

I remembered one other observation from Vegas I never got out here. Down here in senior citizen heaven we have police everywhere for some reason. You literally can’t go 5 minutes on the roads without seeing a deputy vehicle. Many more police are here than where I lived in PA, many more. However when I was in Vegas, I went 4 full days and don’t recall seeing one policeman or vehicle on the road. Casino security was the closest I saw to law enforcement. I thought it was very odd that Vegas, the capital of gambling, hookers and whatever else had next no visible police presence.

As the case with most things, I have mixed feelings about the latest terrorist attack. I was struck when a co-worker stopped me in the hall and said “Did you hear that they are linking the attack with AL QEDA?” with fear in her eyes and on her face. I didn’t quite understand why the possible linking of Al Qeda would be shocking. Since 9-11, maybe I have been numbed by all the death and tragedy that fills the news almost every day. As of now the death totals in todays attack are maybe slightly more than the average amount of US troops that have been killed per week in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past two years, yet when those stories are presented daily they get as much attention as the weather report, they are that commonplace. But when the death occurs outside of that area it suddenly becomes much more significant?

I heard Bush give his standard “The terrorists won’t prevail….” speech. Well of course they won’t prevail but you know what, they won’t ever be defeated either. You can’t defeat people whose greatest source of honor is to strap explosives to themselves and blow us up.

That being said, I think it is near pointless for people here to cower in fear that they will be the next victims. We all take far greater risks stepping into our automobiles each day yet we do it blindly and without fear. If it is your time to go it is your time to go whether it be by natural causes, cancer, hit by a bus or a terrorist attack. If you are lucky you won’t even know what happened and you have the bonus of no longer having to be a part of this overpopulated, self-centered, wasteful, rotting society.

I forgot about this moment over the weekend. When Ali and I were out shopping I was dying of thirst from sweating so much in the morning. So I stopped at a gas station/mini-mart. I go in and pick up my Yoohoo and go to the counter to pay. I have a one and twenty dollar bill in my wallet. The total was like $1.45 so I gave her a twenty. “I can’t make change for this” she says. “You can’t make change for a twenty dollar bill???” I said in disbelief while making a face that I’m sure said “WTF” “How can’t you have change for a twenty” I continued. She said something about just starting her shift, so I guess that means each new shift has no change, good plan. “Fine I’ll go out to my car and dig around for money” So I go out and find some quarters to pay the tab with. By the time I got back in there was a redneck type of guy there who just asked for two packs of cigarettes. The second the first pack hits his hands he immediately starts slamming it into his palm, the move smokers do to tap the tobacco down into the cigarettes I assume. He was doing this very hard and fast like he was trying to beat the shit out of them. He miscalculated on one blow and it glanced off his palm, rocketing the pack of cigarettes across the counter at the clerk that has no change. He tried to not look embarrassed as the clerk gave them back to him as he immediately went back to pounding the pack. He anxiously ripped the pack open and threw a cigarette in his mouth as he walked out. I paid the woman for my Yoohoo and left happy for yet another reason I am glad I never took up smoking.

As a courtesy to Ali, for the past 6 months at least I have abandoned making lists of things I want to get done over the weekend. Ali said these lists caused her stress. I found that the lists help keep me organized, help motivate me to get the list all crossed off in the shortest amount of time possible so I can spend the rest of the weekend doing nothing if I want to. This is in direct contrast to my wife who prefers to rest and relax first and then do the work later as the motivation comes. So what has happened for the majority of our relationship is either I just go ahead and buzzsaw through the work myself or Ali gets dragged into it earlier than she wants and as a result is unhappy about it.

Well this weekend the list made a comeback. There are just too many times where I think of things I want to do and get sidetracked and never come back to it. Every organizational and motivational person will tell you that writing down goals/objectives is a surprisingly strong motivator. So I am using the lists, I’ll keep them out of Ali’s view if necessary but I’m using them.

The list for the 3 day weekend was pretty ambitious. The most time consuming entry was pressure washing the lanai. After I pressure washed the 2 bird cages it was time for the big project. The pool cage frame is made of white aluminum. We picked white as the color of the frame because it looked bright and clean. However we didn’t realize how the extreme dampness during rainy season transforms that brilliant white to different shades of green and gray from mildew that accumulates. It looks like shit after a little while. The pressure washer takes care of the problem but it is an extremely laborious process. I take a step ladder into the pool area to reach the top areas that are a good 15 feet up in the air. Up the ladder, down the ladder, extending out with one arm as far as I can reach to blast scum off the areas of the frame that are far away. By the time I blasted down the frame and the deck I spent over 4 hours. It looked almost as good as new. Hopefully it stays clean for at least a month or so.

I took a quick breather and then knocked off another list item, I washed both cars. A dirty car annoys me, it portrays laziness just like people that are physical wrecks do. I didn’t do the 5 star service but washed and vacuumed each vehicle. As I did these outside chores, Ali cleaned up inside. That took up the majority of the daylight for Saturday.

Saturday night we went to dinner at the new neighbor’s house. We had them over for a dinner a couple months ago. We were blown away when we went inside. The inside was beautiful with large rooms, tile floors, granite countertops and huge fancy kitchen cabinets. The place looked like it was decorated professionally with nary a pencil out of place. We had a nice dinner and conversation and it was quarter of 11 before I looked at my watch. After we got home we both thought how our house looks like a trailer in comparison with no real themes or thought put into how things are laid out.

It was amazingly hot this weekend. By 10am in the morning it was over 90 degrees every day. On Sunday morning I walked the property and did some weeding. In the middle of it I took a “break” by going with Ali to the local track and doing our developing routine of running. We ran a mile and a half in the broiling heat and humidity. All told, including walking, we covered over 3 miles. I was a sweaty mess so when we got home I hopped in the pool for a few minutes to bring my body temperature down a bit. Then it was back outside to finish weeding.

After I was done, I thought we would mow but Ali suggested we wait till Monday to mow to allow for more of the standing water to evaporate which was a good idea. So we went out shopping. The plan was to look and possibly buy a new TV for the bedroom and then look at some new furnishings as a result of our dinner expereince with the neighbors. I saw some TV’s at Sam’s that looked good and then we went to Best Buy and Circuit City to compare. I wanted an HDTV this time since it is more of a mainstream product now. My techno addiction was in control, I looked at tv’s that were 800-1000 bucks, comparing features and quality. Non HDTV’s of the same size could be had for much less but I had no interest in them. I keep hearing how HDTV broadcasts are amazing and I wanted to experience it myself. Our trips through Circuit City and Best Buy didn’t reveal any great deals, certainly nothing better than the one Sony unit at Sam’s. The plan was to go do the furnishing shopping while I decide what I wanted to get. Ali was totally indifferent to the purchase of a TV.

Somewhere around the time we pulled into the Bed, Bath & Beyond parking lot I decided it was ludicrous to drop that kind of dough and instead I would scour ebay or the paper for a lightly used model at a big cost savings (like I could have had if I wasn’t a dumb ass, more later) So as we went into the store I green lighted Ali to get what she thought would help spruce things up. We picked up some lamps, bathroom rugs, new bathroom accessories and more that came to a nifty price tag of more than 300 bucks. Then we swung into Home Depot and picked up some more plants, pots and stuff to give the top of our kitchen cabinets more of an organized tropical look instead of the hodge podge junk yard look that adorned it for the last 4 years. Good thing I didn’t get that TV.

The 4th of July was a holiday but it just felt like just an extra weekend day. We mowed the grass. It is amazing how fast the grass grows during the rainy season. The perfectly manicured property I created 2 weeks prior has once again turned into a hairy, soppy beast in no time. We could easily mow twice a week. The sweat poured off me as I weed wacked a border around everything as Ali plowed through the high grass. Mowing the grass was the second to last thing on the list. All that remained was moving the garden.

The experiment to add dirt to the one end of garden to avoid flooding was a dismal failure. Three quarters of the garden was still under water, still a bog and everything we planted in there died. So I decided it had to be trashed and moved to high ground. We have a little high spot next to the shed where the fill was put so that would be the spot. To move it I had to disassemble it. I waded into the water and muck and popped off all the staples that held on the fencing. As I am bent over, with sweat pouring off my face and mosquitos buzzing around my head I am miserable but driven by the concept of finishing the last list entry. I hop into the mud with the power screwdriver to disconnect the brackets that held the pieces together. Then I had to lift up the muddy landscape timbers and the 4 foot pieces of rebar that anchored them and lug them to the new area. I relented a bit (on Ali’s suggestion) and left the parts out on the highland to be assembled next weekend. They needed to dry out anyway. The last list item was complete (kind of).

Monday afternoon we spent a decent amount of time just enjoying the freshly cleaned pool area. I half fell asleep while floating in the pool. I was out there long enough to get a pair of red legs. We didn’t really do anything celebratory at all. No cookout on the grill, no fireworks, I just wasn’t into it this year. I don’t know why.

On Saturday we watched parts of the Live 8 concerts. What a great idea, another concert to raise money for Africa. Wait a minute, what’s that? It is free, we just want to “raise awareness”. WTF? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. Why can’t they raise money AND awareness? To put that all together with all those stars they could have rasied a fortune to immediately help the people they were raising awareness about. It made absolutely no sense to me. There were some great acts, including Pink Floyd.

I have an ongoing ebay issue going on. I bought what was listed as a NEW Bissel Spot lifter. (see earlier blog entry) I spent more than retail for it after I added in shipping and then was sent a used item. When I confronted the seller about it he said they would replace or repair it but I was adamant that I just wanted the money back which he eventually agreed to. I sent the unit back June 7th but received no follow up from the seller, so last week I started emailing him to ask what was up. He gave some BS about they only process returns every 2 weeks. Yea ok whatever. Then a day or two later I get a UPS ship notification from these clowns, they are sending me ANOTHER unit! I stayed calm on the first emaiil, I reminded him that he agreed to refund my money, I was not to get another unit. (plus I already bought a new one) He replied back saying that their ebay policy was to replace or repair, blah blah, acting like he never agreed to refund the money. Of course I had his emails promising the refund and I fired back with threats of action through paypal as well as searing ebay feedback if he doesn’t make good. I said it wasn’t my fault they run a sloppy operation and didn’t process the return as he said. I wasnt going to pay to send back yet ANOTHER unit. I gave him 48 hours to refund the money. Then I get a reply from someone else saying the owner whom I was arguing with was out of town. I let the stand in know that I was moving forward with my threat regardless. That is where it sits, if no money goes back to me by the end of today I am gonna hammer this bastard. F’in jerk.

The entire new bedroom TV thing was sparked by an ad I saw in the paper. The ad was for a 36 inch Sony HDTV that was advertised as new but never used. It said new they are $1500 bucks but it was selling it for 750. I called on a whim and talked to the woman. She said she won it as a sales spiff but didn’t need it. She gave me the model number and I said I would call her back after I did some research. I looked it up and found out that it was indeed selling for 1500 on Best Buy.com. Hmmm a nice deal. Well on the Vegas trip I was reading a real estate investment book. One of the major principals in there was negotiation and how to do it. I thought this would be a good opportunity to put what I read to use. I called the woman back and told her I verified what she told me and it seemed like a really nice TV but I had only budgeted 500 bucks but I’d be willing to go to 600 or 650 on the TV. She said she just listed the TV and didn’t want to take less money immediately. Per the book, instead of caving, I demonstrated that I was “willing to walk away” as I told her to let me know if she got no other offers as I would be happy to buy it from her. She happily agreed to do so as she took my number and wrote down my offer.

After I got off the phone I did more checking and realized how good of a deal this was, it was steal basically. Yet I stood by my guns, let her stew, let her think about getting the cash in hand. However, by the time Friday came I was ready to cave. I knew it was a great deal even at 750 and when I got home I immediately picked up the phone to call her and agree to her price. Of course it was sold already, of course someone realized that getting a brand new TV for half of new price was a deal not to quip about. I beat myself up about it for a good part of the weekend and even more so when we went out to look at new ones at stores that were smaller sets for hundreds of dollars more. Sigh….

Today’s quote from none other than Mark Twain:

“Such is the human race. Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party didn’t miss the boat.”

Last night we saw the Tivo recorded the Jack Lalane show. We were curious about it so we checked it out. Om my God it’s great. These are the original shows from the 60’s, they play on ESPN Classic everyday at 5:30 am. Ali and I got up and did the program with Jack. His energy level is incredible. Many of the exercises were unconventional by today’s standards but effective none the less. I can’t remember laughing so hard at a tv show in a long time. There is a live one man band that does sound effects in timing with the exercises which is just hilarious. Jacks little looks, quips and mannerisms are so funny. Then when we got to the point where we did our neck and face exercises I just lost it. You have to see it to understand how crazy it is. After the face exercises were done he had us bend over at the waist and slap ourselves all over the face to promote blood flow. 🙂 He sings a song at the end. Of course he had on his signature jumpsuit. If you are up at that hour just watch it, once. If you are in the DVR family, record it. Trust me you won’t be disappointed. The guy is 90 now and still could run circles around some people half his age. I can only hope I keep my desire for fitness untill I drop as he has.

There were a few things I forgot to mention about Vegas. One odd thing I noticed was they don’t have any painted lines on the roads. I do not know why, maybe the heat, maybe something else. Instead they use those reflector bumps as line markers. The problem is many of them are missing or damaged so they are very hard to see in many situations, a strange plan.

The prevalence of gaming machines is not limited to casinos or the airport. When I stopped to grab something to drink at the convenience store, they had slots and video poker there as well! There were a couple down on thier luck guys playing on some of them. Unreal.

Yesterday as I was crossing the intersection with 3 lanes going either way, I spotted an interesting individual in the middle of the intersection. If I were to guess his age I would say late 30’s to early 40’s with a buzz haircut and facial hair. He was wearing a button down short sleeve shirt with baggy, rapper style, denim shorts. His mode of transportation was an old beat up skateboard and in his one hand he had a lit cigarette, in the other he wielded a fishing pole. I continued to look at him as he crossed the street on the skateboard while taking a drag on the cig, in my rear view mirror as I went up the road.

June has been incredibly wet, it officially is the most rain that Naples has ever seen in a month, more than 21 inches of rain has fallen. A normal amount of rainfall for the year in our area is around 50 inches. We got nearly half of that in one month.