Archives September 2005

Truck meeting, cancer

Last night Alison and I attended a meeting regarding dump trucks and their relationship with the community. Dump trucks are pretty well hated for several reasons. They start up at 4-5am in residential areas of the estates and in many cases become unwelcome alarm clocks at these wee hours of the morning. Some truck drivers are wreckless and most importantly to me, the trucks are a huge part of the daily traffic quagmire we have been in since they have been allowed to leave earlier for the past month.

The meeting had 7 speakers and a moderator who was one of the writers for the local paper. The meeting was well covered with reporters from all the local TV networks as well as the newspaper. There was a big turnout, between 200-300 people. From glancing around the room it looked like the truckers had a large majority of the audience. Each speaker had 8 minutes to talk then an hour of question and answer followed. Some of the speakers were good, there were 3 that were pretty worthless. It was a bit annoying hearing things said up on stage that you would have loved to stand up and refute but there was no real time interaction permitted. The Q&A session was a mess. The moderator did a piss poor job of presenting the questions. He did not throw out questions that asked the exact same thing in a slightly different manner. Then after he asked it he would keep asking for additional responses from the panel even though the question had been answered previously.

Surprisingly to us, the biggest question that kept coming up was the issue of truck drivers parking their trucks in the yard of their homes. I would guess 75% of the questions were tied to this issue. I can imagine if you had a dump truck next door that was firing up in early AM 6 days a week it would get very annoying. I suppose we are lucky we have no truck drivers in our immediate vicinity. Ali submitted a question regarding the trucks impact on the morning commute which was not really answered directly. The panel members that addressed it made statements that made assumptions that were just not true and just annoyed the hell out of both of us.

Ironically we got the most information AFTER the meeting when Ali talked to some of the deputies that patrol our area and I got to talk to the commissioner for our district at length about a few things. I’ve sent the man countless emails but never spoke to him so it was cool. I found out many things I didn’t know and it made me appreciate how the guy is trying to do whatever he can to help things along short of jumping into a front end loader and building the road himself.

It was a frustrating but informative 2 hours.

I JUST got the call back from the dermatologist. The spot near my ear is basil cell skin cancer. Basil cell is the least dangerous type of skin cancer but still it’s cancer which is more than a bit scary. In mid-October I go in to have it removed. They basically keep cutting away until they don’t detect any more bad cells. Ugh.

More funny Jack

Jack Lalanne had a very funny show on Monday. He opened the show talking about how temptation is everywhere, how inner demons are pulling at you to live an unhealthy lifestyle and how they are all around you. Then all of a sudden he pulls out a cap gun and starts firing into the air at random while yelling “Get out of here demons! We don’t need you around!” When he started firing his gun his dog, Happy who was sitting on the set got freaked and ran off. It was funny as hell. Yesterday as I walked up the hall I saw that Jack was on Fox News being interviewed. Even though he is 91 now he still seemed ultra energetic. I wish I could have seen/heard the entire interview. I love that guy.

Tonight is a community meeting regarding the problems with dump trucks in the community. I will be in attendance and will be very eager to get in a few questions of my own. I left at 6:30 this morning and got to work at 8:10, this delay caused primarily by these wonderful mechanical monsters clogging the traffic flow.

2 dummies

Dummy number one is me. Yesterday I was getting changed to go to the gym at lunch and as I was digging through my bag I realized that I didn’t pack my sneakers. Doh! Well that was not going to stop me from getting my exercise fix so I threw on my gym clothes and then wore my docksiders with no socks. Yea I’m sure it looked ridiculous but noone can say I’m not dedicated. 🙂

Dummy number two is some guy that wrote a letter to the editor yesterday. I can only hope this was toungue in cheek, but knowing some of the people that live here, he could have been dead serious. Humiliated by weeds…. Here is the letter:

Bad weeds

Editor, Daily News:

I am disappointed and appalled, and extremely embarrassed, by the weed conditions exploding at the intersection of Golden Gate Parkway and Goodlette-Frank Road.

It should not matter whether the city or county is responsible for the disgusting weeds growing between crevices at that intersection.

Someone, anyone, just do it. Eradicate the uncontrolled weed growth.

I’m humiliated and disturbed by the non-action of management to elicit some action.

END QUOTE

Weekend

This weekend was ok but I am more than a bit tired. On Saturday I spent an hour or two cleaning out the 2nd bedroom. This bedroom had been designated as the hobby room as it has 2 desks with one being for my RC stuff and the other set up with Ali’s sewing machine. However over the last 6 months or so it mutated into the junk room, filled with boxes, packing material, golf clubs and assorted other things that don’t belong there. Ali had a PC show so I did it myself which was better anyway. Unlike Ali, I don’t have such a strong aversion to just getting rid of shit that we don’t need. Ali sees something and thinks how maybe someday in some remote situation, we may possibly need this so she holds onto it. She also will hold things in the hopes of properly recycling them. But since she was MIA I was able to go through whirlwind style and quickly separate stuff into trash, yard sale or other piles and deal with each appropriately.

Later in the afternoon I decided I would tackle mowing the back of our property. It hadn’t been done in a couple months so it was jungle thick, meaning I had to go turtle slow. I spent over 3 hours sitting on the tractor. By the time I was done I looked like a furry grass mutant as the sweat that covered me caused the grass clippings to adhere to my skin. Saturday night was car night at the casino so we headed over. We had some decent success at the video poker machines. We didn’t win the car but at least someone with a last name ending in Z didn’t win either. We didn’t get to bed till 1am.

Sunday Nicki didn’t care about our late night and insisted on getting me up at 7. I was really tired. Ali woke up a few hours later and we went for our run. Ali set yet another record, running 2 miles straight and a total run of 2.75 miles. Her recent progress has been awesome. Just as we finished there were 2 hispanic soccer teams that showed up for a match at the field inside the track. It was interesting watching the pre-game warmups.

Before the Eagles game the neighbor brought over their little Jack Russel Terrier, Zoe in an attempt to socialize her with Nicki. Zoe is a bit of a terror initially, barking and trying to attack any dogs she doesn’t know. However after a few minutes she settled down. We had her and Nicki in the dog run area for a good half hour together and besides one or two small incidents they got along fine. It was cool, plus Nicki was more relaxed with our neighbor which is a relief since we plan on having them tend to the pets while we are in Palm Springs.

The Eagles game was a good one. It seemed like the Eagles played better than the score indicated and should have won by more. It was a heroic effort by Akers to kick that game winning field goal with a wrecked hamstring. I’m not sure why he was even active on the roster on Sunday since it was apparent last week that the hamstring was screwed up. Those things take time to heal up. It was a nice win.

I did something I have done very rarely in the past year, flew my rc plane. I took my high speed flying wing out and chucked it in the air. My skills were a bit rusty at first but after a few minutes I was doing power dives, loops and rolls like I hadn’t missed a beat. WoW has pretty much sucked my motivation to fly RC away but it was nice change to fly again. On a later run I was out there for a long time as I would climb the wing to high altitudes and then cut the motor and just glide on the currents for a long time. I enjoyed it and plan to reintroduce it as a more regular part of me leisure activities. WoW will always be there.

Maybe all my bitching helped just a bit when it comes to the very light work schedule of the road crew doing our widening project. For the first time I can remember, there was a full crew doing work on the road Saturday morning. It’s about f’in time.

This morning I was DEAD tired from a weekend of light sleep. In a few minutes I go to the dermatologist. Ali has been bugging me to go for awhile to have a few odd spots looked at. Hopefully all is well. I have spent more than my fair time in the sun over the years, much of it without sunblock.

Fed up

My email exchange with county officials regarding the miserable road conditions out at our place has continued. One of my email exchanges was CC’d out to an email list that a rep from the local paper saw and found interesting. She called my house and asked if she could turn it into a letter to the editor, I said “Sure” , the more people that see it, the better. County officials tell me that it is reasonable that an 8 mile project should take 5 years. I laugh at that but have not taken the time to present them a long list of projects that dwarf this in scope but have been completed in less time. Right now my favorite example is the Chesepeake Bay-Bridge tunnel that was COMPLETED in less than 4 years. Our straight as an arrow, flat, 8 mile segment takes 5 years, and this is deemed as reasonable, total BS.

Last night as I was cleaning off the kitchen counter I saw a letter from Capital One regarding their “new and improved” airmiles plan. They had just changed the plan less than a year ago so I thought it was odd that they would change it again. The way it used to work was whatever the price of the ticket, you multiplied it times 100 and that was how many miles it cost. So for example if I bought a $160 dollar ticket, that would be 16,000 miles. Well as I read the new redemption schedule I quickly got very pissed off. The new plan goes like this, if the ticket is less than 150 bucks, it costs you 15,000 miles. Of course it is very difficult to find a roundtrip ticket for 150 bucks anymore. If the ticket costs $150.01 to $350 it costs you a flat 35,000 MILES!!!! WTF?????? I was freaking and I picked up the phone and dialed. Ali said “You are going to call them now??” Hell yes. I got some robotic female on the phone and after giving my info I explained to her how outrageous the new plan is. I gave her the example of how the 160 dollar ticket that costs me 16,000 miles now will cost me 35,000 miles in the new plan. I asked her how this was “new and improved” from a customer standpoint? Reading from her script, she pointed out how I get 500 “bonus” miles when the new plan goes into effect and how I can get double miles if I buy from “preferrred” businesses. I immediately idenitifed those perks as next to useless if it was going to cost me so many more miles for a ticket. I told her I realized she had no control over it but I wanted her to pass along how ridiculous the new plan was and how it will likely result in me taking my business elsewhere. She apologized for the inconvenience but offered no counters to my proposal that the new plan sucks. I hung up knowing my gripe would probably never heard beyond the customer service sheep I just spoke to, yet it took a bit of a load off my back to at least express it. I mean come on, do they think people are stupid?? Jerks.

Rita, BB6

Rita seems to be close to an instant replay of Katrina, giving Fla a glancing blow and then reving up to a super storm over the bathtub warm waters of the gulf. If anything good came from Katrina it’s that the people in Texas aren’t f’ing around and are getting out. I’d be lying if I said the huge onslaught of named storms down here in the past 2 years doesn’t concern me.

Although I haven’t blogged it, Ali and were regular Big Brother 6 watchers which ended on Tuesday night. I wasn’t very pleased with either of the final two players. My favorite player was Kasar. When he got his chance to address Jennifer who backstabbed him after he gave her HoH it was great. He was dead serious when she told her to think for herself and it was surprising that she admitted that she didn’t do that. That one move made her the most hated person in the game for me by far. I was somewhat surprised Ivette didn’t win it all since she spent the entire game preaching how much her family could use the money. I guess it fell on deaf ears.

Reality programming is now in full force. What was a pretty empty tv schedule for me now has Survivor, Apprentice, ER and soon to come, American Idol plus others to fill up the time.

Hey today is the first day of fall, I would have never known except for it being mentioned on the radio. When I was in PA I would be counting down to this day from a month out or more as it signified the end of fun things like weekend volleyball tournaments, weeknights at Gary’s and most outdoor activities I consider enjoyable. The change it had on my moods was dramatic. Now if anything, I look forward to the oncoming 70 degree, low humidity weather that is on it’s way for us over the winter. I have been down here long enough that I almost take pleasant winters for granted, where as the first year or two I relished in the wonder of it all.

Hurricane yawn…

It seems a bit odd here today. Collier County has declared a state of emergency and we are in the hurricane warning area, yet it is basically business as usual. Schools are open, businesses and homes are not boarded up, it’s just another day.

It has been windy since last night and it should pick up quite a bit during the day. It seems that people have a bit too much faith in the forecasters. I’m not quite sure why, their track record of predicting paths of these things is far from stellar.

Some firsts and a third

This weekend was the tour vball championship in South Beach. Last year it was shortened because of Hurricane Jeanne. It is a weird format starting at noon on Friday and wrapping up on Saturday. I was leary of it because I haven’t played back to back days of volleyball for probably at least 6 years. I think the last time I did it was at Rehoboth when I played with Rich and Heather on a Sunday after playing men’s on Saturday. South Beach is a dog friendly area so we took Nicki with as well.

The drive over took longer than I expected, nearly 2 and a half hours. The traffic was heavy. I commented to Ali about how heavy the traffic was on the east coast. I was on a section of I-95 with 5 lanes and every single lane was jammed with vehicles. I guess it will be good prep for driving in LA. We got there and surprisingly arrived there the exact same time as Randall whom had a nice and tidy half hour drive to get there. South Beach is a very unique venue to hold a tournment with the sidewalk restaurants and clubs fronting the beach you are playing on. The activity is constant with currents of people flowing in all directions. Oddly the worst part of South Beach is the actual beach itself. It is in a word, horrible. The sand is hard, filled with rocks, coral and broken glass and looks to be basically construction sand. It really is surprising that they don’t clean it up, it was downright dangerous to play on.

When we checked in we were disappointed to see there were only 2 nets of BB. Hell last year with a hurricane coming there were 4 nets. I don’t know why the turnout was so low. Getting all of the supplies in place was a large pain in the ass. We had a shitload of stuff to drag to the beach and then once we got it all setup, we found out they were moving our nets about 200 yards down the beach because the sand at our original court was unplayable. So we carried 2 shelters down the beach and then came back to get the other bags/coolers/chairs. We got play underway around 1:30 or so. Our pool play was a struggle but we were one point away from being undefeated in pool. We had a team down 24-20 (game to 25) and we managed to lose. I was pissed about the loss but we shook it off to win the last pool play game which cemented our position in the playoffs. We ended the day there around 6 and we would do the playoffs the next day.

I was dirty, sweaty smelly mess. The sand, besides being filled with sharp objects was also very dirty so I was basically different shades of brown. We lugged our stuff back to the parking garage and headed out to find our hotel, the Aqua. The hotel was easy to find and when we stepped in the lobby we thought it looked cool. It is a South Beach trendy type of place. It has a wall mount aquarium, subtle blue lighting everywhere and a surfboard as the front counter. I thought for that minute that maybe this place was worth the high price ($140 a night) which may be the most I ever paid for one night at a hotel. We got our room key and headed up the stairs to our room. The hotel had a quaint courtyard and upstairs was an open area with furniture including 2 outdoor bed type things. There was a group of guys hanging out up there drinking beer as they looked over the wall at the activity on Collins Avenue. We made our way back to our room, opened the door and then we were a bit taken back at the sight. We looked down and were a bit shocked that it was a bare cement/concrete floor. Hmm ok I guess that is trendy or something. Looking around the room we saw bright colored plastic furniture and tables. The back part of the room had some laminate wood flooring and the tiny bathroom had bright blue tile below a toilet that looked to be right out of a public bathroom. We were underwhelmed with the room but it would do. I was sunburned so I felt warm. I looked for the thermostat but there was none to be found. Evidently you had no control over the AC, wtf…. Well I had to use the bathroom. I lift the lid on the public toilet and it promptly falls off in my hand. The lustre has quickly worn off by now. Well at least it has a shower. It was a very loud shower. As the water came out of the shower head the pipes vibrated making a very loud noise throughout the duration of the shower. Oh well at least the water was warm. Ali and I both cleaned up and then we went out to meet Randall for dinner.

The amount of people and activity picked up significantly as nightime approached. One thing I noticed about South Beach is it is one of the few places I can remember where the national epidemic of obesity is not apparent. South Beach is filled with in shape, good looking people. Fat asses are outnumbered by hard bodies. It really is amazing. Navigating through the crowded sidewalk with Nicki was a bit of a challenge. Some people wanted to interact with Nicki but for the most part, Nicki’s skepticism of anybody new or different kept her firmly by our side. She held up well at the beach. It was cute how she would come out to see me whenever I came close to the shelter. I’d give her a quick pat and tell her to go back to mom. Anyway, as we walked we stopped at a place that had outdoor seating and some of the tables had benches, which Ali thought Nicki could sit up on. Well the pooch wasn’t into sitting on the bench but instead found shelter under the bench and table as she watched the endless feet shuffle by. We had a good dinner. If we were there for a non-volleyball event, didn’t have the dog with, and didn’t feel dead tired, we may have explored the nightlife further. Instead we said our goodbyes and agreed to meet up the next morning for day 2 of vball action.

After we got back to the room I walked down to a gas station a couple blocks away to grab some milk I could have with my pop tarts the next morning. I then collapsed into bed hoping for a good night sleep. Nicki laid on her dog bed next to us on the concrete floor. Even though I was exhausted I couldn’t sleep. There was constant noise from outside from both sides of the room, I was warm with no way to lower the temperature and then later in the night there were 2 tremendous blasts of thunder that shook the room. I doubt I got more than 2 or 3 hours of actual sleep.

Even with the lack of sleep I woke up Saturday around 7 and got up feeling sore from the day before but somewhat energized by the prospect of playing part 2 that day. I took my pop tarts and milk and went down to the hot tub in the courtyard and soaked my legs in the super warm water while eating my breakfast. I thought it might help with the aches and pains. I got Ali up and while she went down to eat the continental breakfast, Nicki and I hung out upstairs by the benches and outdoor beds. Nicki walked around and explored while I just sat back and relaxed and watched over the balcony. I saw what looked to be 2 hookers strolling down the street. I watched the doorman at the fancy hotel across the street flagging down taxi’s for guests. I wondered why they made these guys wear long pants as he was constantly running up and down the driveway. He must be a sweaty mess in no time. Ali came back upstairs, we packed up, checked out and agreed that it was our first and last stay at the Aqua.

We got to park a little closer to the beach this time and we took a little less junk with us, learning from the prior day. We ran into Randall who was eating his breakfast. We went down to our net and were happy to see that the one team on our net had spent the time to do a thorough raking of the court in an attempt to get some of the debris out. It was in much better shape than the day before.

We got playoffs started. Our first game was against two younger guys who were no older than early 20’s. They were both good, high energy players. Early on they jumped ahead. They made several incredible saves, running down balls that I thought were our points for sure. But slowly we chipped away and played consistent, smart ball. The other team made too many unforced errors and we wound up winning the game by a few points. We played well, better than the day before. I was surprised that I was able to move much but the adrenalin from playing masks aches and pains pretty well.

Our next playoff game was against a team from our pool that we beat the prior day. They normally play A but we handled them on Friday and figured we could do the same today. We didn’t. They played much better than the day before and we had a few key errors at bad points in the game and wound up losing 25-20. After we lost, I chucked my hat in frustration, I was able to throw it from our side to beyond the endline on the far side. Throwing it upside down gave the hat better aerodynamics.

Well we still had the 3/4 playoff game. It meant something because 3rd place gets prizes, 4th place does not. Again we were playing some younger guys that took 1st place off their net. We pretty much dominated this match. We played very well and won the game easily. It turned out that the 3 teams from our net wound up taking first, second and third which is a nice accomplishment. It took a loooong time until the tournament officials to get around to handing out the prizes, probably and hour and a half. We got some decent stuff for third. Once play was over and the adrenalin subsided, the aches and pains returned. My knees were covered with brushburns from some dives into the hard sand. My hitting shoulder was dead weight and I was just pooped out. After we got our prizes we threw our stuff into the car and then had one last meal at South Beach. This time at Johnny Rocket’s, a 50’s style burger and shake joint. It was a nice lunch. I had a burger and a milkshake, a combo I haven’t had forever. We said our goodbye’s to Randall and made our way through the beautiful people heading towards the beach. We exited South Beach without incident and drove back across the state, getting home a little after 6pm Saturday.

I was a bit stressed because I knew there was a lot of stuff that should get done and I only had Saturday night and Sunday to do it. The Eagles played at 1 so I needed to get most of it done prior to that. When we got home I was inspired and put away most of the stuff from the trip and cleaned the bird cages, but after that my inspiration waned. I was tired as hell and fell asleep like a rock at 10.

On Sunday I got up early and went outside to do some weeding. I told Ali that I would be willing to try our run even though in reality I would have been fine with skipping it that day. Ali came out in her running gear a little before 10 so I threw on my running shoes and we headed to the track. My knees were covered with band aids so it was tough to do a quad stretch without pulling off all of them. The first 2 running laps were not fun, my legs were just tired. But I just kept plodding along, happy that Ali is into running. Ali set another record, running 7 laps continuous. It was tough for her but she did it, I’m impressed with her desire to improve at running. After walking 2 laps we tacked on another 3 running laps to give us 2.5 miles ran. (plus 1.5 walked)

When we got back I dove right back into the outside work, finishing weeding and then weed whacking while Ali mowed with the tractor. The grass is getting brown as we have had almost dry season conditions at our place even though dry season normally isn’t until November. I got done just in time for the Eagles game. We watched most of the first half from the pool on the little TV I installed outside. It was a different kind of way to take in a game and the pool felt good on my overheated body. The Eagles ran wild over the Niners, it was a great game.

After the game there were a few little things I wrapped up but I even found the time to play some WoW. I have been feeling increasingly guilty when playing the game. In the back of my mind I keep thinking about how much time I have poured into the game and how that time could have been used differently. I even ran scenarios through my head about what it will be like when I decide to shelve the game and how difficult it will be.

I woke up this morning tired and sore but happy from an exciting weekend that wound up pretty damn well.