Archives September 2005

It’s an odd thing how people do things in cars that they wouldn’t do otherwise. For example if you were standing in line at the bank, would you be ok with walking to the front of the line and jumping in? Of course not, you would probably be verbally and possibly physically assaulted. Would you be ok with waiting for a half hour in line waiting to get the latest and greatest of something and having someone from the back of the line come in and stand in front of you? No way, you would strangle them. Why is it that when people are in vehicles they think nothing of this behavior? I am witness to this every morning.

The traffic on the main road out of our place is backed up for over a mile every morning. The delay is made worse by assholes that will make a right turn towards the back of the line, go a 1/4 mile, make a left and then another left to reenter traffic a mile ahead. These people have no qualms in delaying the others waiting in traffic. Somehow they think their time is more valuable than others. As I see these idiots lining up to reenter traffic I fume as the ignorant people in line in front of me let these line jumpers back in without issue. I am amazed that these people don’t realize that the cars they are letting back in line have just figuratively flipped them off by jumping from the back to the front of the line. When my vehicle approaches the reentry point I leave inches between my vehicle and the one in front of me to give no illusions that any of these offenders will be allowed to jump in on my dime. I NEVER let them in. I will normally shoot dirty looks their way even though with the darkness and tinted windows, they probably never see. I instantly have severe disdain for any human being I see behind the wheel of one of these vehicles pulling this stunt. They are forever branded as self centered, thoughtless, idiots in my book. These idiots would never do something similar outside the protective shell of their automobile. F’in lemming jerks.

It’s great that the Eagles are such a good team that they get showcased in national games regularly. But in reality, games like MNF are just a pain in the ass for the fan. They start too damn late and get done on Tuesday mornings. For those of us that get up at 5:30 to enter daily gridlock, such timing is not beneficial. I am rather tired. Now to the game itself.

Of course I am not pleased with the outcome. Trotter getting thrown out of the game before it even started was inexcusable. The Eagles made too many big mistakes to be able to win that game and even so they still had a chance to win it at the end. In a backhanded way, that is a compliment. Somehow Akers missed 2 field goals indoors. McNabb fumbled twice and was picked once and they still could have won. I was annoyed that McNabb did not run a single time. That element of his game is a huge plus to the team because it keeps the defense guessing, yet he seems to have put that part of his game away for the most part. I don’t understand it. TO had some drops but still was the primary weapon. It was good to see him with a smile on his face from time to time. When the game was over, Atlanta celebrated like it was the Super Bowl. The little cornerback got in TO’s face and was talking it up. It was game 1, let them have their Super Bowl now, we will have ours when we stomp these punks in the playoffs if they get that far.

This volleyball season has been my worst EVER. This past weekend my regular partner was out of town so I played with someone new whom I had played against a few times. He is 11 or 12 years younger than I am so his energy level is high. Unfortunately it didn’t translate into good results on the court. We went 1-3 and missed playoffs. The game we did win we had to come back from being down 20-18 to win. Unfortunately the scene was much the same as most matches this year. The other team constantly serves to my partner forcing me into being a setter which is something I don’t excel at and the results are poor. I lost my temper several times. One noticable incident was after I got a rare serve, Jeremy made a good set tight to the net. There was no block and I decided I wanted to crush the ball straight down to relieve some frustration and instead pounded the ball into the net. I was screaming the lord’s name in vain, grabbed the net and shook it violently and just made a general ass of myself. The whole day was more or less like that with us losing to teams that a year ago I would have written off as sure wins for me. It sucked. Jeremy is a good kid and despite the bad results, it was fun to play with him and we got along well off the court. His skills are raw and we would need a decent amount of practice time to iron out our game. This week are the finals for the other tourney in South Beach. I’ll bust my ass and pray for better results. I’d hate to have my season end with play similar to this week. It would make me seriously doubt if I wanted to keep at it.

My mom had the weekend off since she ended her old job Friday and starts the new one today so she came out. She went shopping with Ali on Saturday and then stayed over till Sunday. It was nice having her out as we don’t see her nearly enough. Her new job has much better hours which we hope will translate into more regular visits from her.

On Sunday I knocked out a few housechores but since Mom was there for a good chunk of the day and the fact that wanted to watch football, I blew off cutting the grass. I’m sure I’ll regret it when I am trudging through a jungle next weekend but oh well.

On Sunday morning Ali and I did our run. Ali set a new personal best with running a total of 2.5 miles, which was cut into to two 1.25 mile segments. The first running session was really tough on her so I was surprised she pushed it on round two. She really has showed interest in pursuing running regularly which I am more than happy to support. Even though I played vball Saturday, I was able to run Sunday without major issue. Other parts of my body hurt more than my legs and knees.

On my way home from the tournament on Saturday I was in a downer mood from the bad vball performance (which I am still feeling today). I stopped in traffic behind an early 90’s Ford Escort hatchback. On the glass there were two stickers. In the bottom left corner was one that said “Nice People Swallow” and in the middle top was one that simply saild “ASSHOLE” I’m sure this guy picks up lots of chicks.

My opening week in fantasy football was a downer as well. My QB and wide receivers totally sucked, combined they generated 10 points which is unreal. Even with that miserable performance I only lost by 8 points so if even one of those players could have performed up to par I would have won. How can Trent Green score 7 points with the team putting up 28?? My reserve QB, Joey stinkin Harrington would have been a better choice Sunday. Carnell Williams who was on the bench for me, racked up 148 yards and a TD. Grrrr. Such are the ups and downs of FF.

I forgot to mention last week a hilarious Jack Lalanne show we watched. In this episode, he incorporated a normal hard cover book into the workout. He had us squeeze the book in front for the chest, extend it behind for a triceps exercise and several other book exercises. Then he had us laying on our backs, he says “Ok, put the book in your mouth and bite down on it!” then you were supposed to raise your head up and down while clenching on the book. This exercise caused uncontrollable laughter from me and I didn’t follow along. It looked so damn funny. These shows are just awesome.

On Saturday night we had our neighbors over. We played a marathon game of Dogopoly, a dog based version of monopoly. When we called the game at 12:30am I was the clear leader in money and was declared winner, but we found out that we weren’t exactly following all the rules and if we were, my one neighbor would have won it all for sure. It was a hollow victory.

On Sunday we had outside work to do, the biggest job was mowing the grass. As I was weed whacking and Ali was on the lawn tractor she came over to me and motioned for me to follow her. She pointed to the ground. I looked down and saw a snake that evidently didn’t vacate the area of the mower and got clipped by the blades. It was bleeding badly from the middle but wasn’t dead and was writhing around. Ali was very upset. I wasn’t sure what to do. I debated if I should take a shovel and try to end it for the poor snake or leave it be to let things run their course. I decided to pick the snake up with a shovel and I took him over to high grass. I laid him down, told him we were sorry and I covered him with palm fronds to shelter him. For some reason I had this ridiculous hope that he would be able to recover from his injuries. I checked on him a couple hours later and was still hanging on but when I checked on him the next morning he was gone. I felt like shit as I dug a hole and buried him. I guess the better choice would have been to just try to kill him instantly to end whatever suffering a snake feels. I just dreaded the prospect of him not dying after my first attempt and me having to repeatedly try to turn out the lights for him. Hopefully I don’t have to find myself in that situation again anytime soon. It was an Eastern Garter snake, a species that I had not seen in our yard before.

On Monday we went to Haverty’s, where my mom works, for now. She has worked there since she moved down to Naples but has never been thrilled about working at the place. She just got a new job that sounds much better where she is part salary/ part commission instead of all commission. So anyway, we went there to look at china cabinets. Ali has wanted one for a long time and my thinking was since my mom was only going to be selling furniture for another week, we should see if we can buy from her, something we never did in all of her years in the furniture business. So we dropped in unannounced and had my mom show us what they had. After a bit of back and forth action we landed on a cabinet we liked. However the original idea of just buying a cabinet had mutated into buying a cabinet, a matching dining room table with 6 chairs, and a mini-curio cabinet. This approach would give us a second room in the house with matching furniture (bedroom was first) that we didn’t put together from a box. It will look great when it comes I’m sure. It’s a decent chunk of change but it felt good to finally buy something from mom.

I used to watch America Funniest Home Videos faithfully during it’s first run in the late 80’s-early 90’s when Bob Sagat was the host. Around that same time period I bought my first camcorder and used it all the time to tape events. One of these events I caught on tape was what I thought was a potential 10,000 dollar winner. I was rolling at a party at my ex-inlaws house. My ex-wife’s 2 uncles were in the shot and her cousin, a cute little girl. The one uncle was holding a pinata and Becky was blindfolded. Brian was holding the pinata a little high and got wailed point blank in the jewels. It was funny as hell. I immediately dubbed the tape and sent it off, waiting for a call to come out to Hollywood that never came. Well Sunday night Ali was cutting my hair and I had the TV on. I flipped to live TV, something I almost never do anymore. The latest version of AFHV was on with the Hollywood Squares guy as host. I’m watching funny clip after clip, enjoying the show. They came to a segment where they showed a rapid fire sequence of people and pinatas. One of the clips struck me as odd. Thanks to Tivo, I was able to back up the live broadcast and look again. I’ll be damned! They were showing my clip! They were showing my clip that I sent in at least a dozen years earlier! I was dumbfounded, that first, they were showing the tape after all these years and second, that I just happened to be watching the show which I normally NEVER see anymore. The irony of it is one of those things just make you scratch your head. I plan on ripping off the clip and saving it on my web site. It really is amazing that I saw this. I may even contact my ex-inlaws to clue them in.

On Labor day we had no holiday plans but then our neighbors asked us Monday afternoon if we wanted to come over for a short notice cookout. At first I was not agreeable to going cause I had a few things I wanted to do, one of them was playing Warcraft. But then I went over and had a good time. I found out that my neighbor likes play tennis, golf and bowl, all things I enjoy as well so we agreed to get some matches going. We are trying to get Nicki more comfortable with them so they could pet sit for us when we go to Palm Springs.
It would be awesome to be able to do that instead of kenneling her.

Today we set yet another record for commute time. It’s ironic that it came the day after my letter to the editor hit the presses on Labor Day. To reach the first intersection, 2 miles from our house took 43 minutes. This was leaving at 6:38 am. I continued my email barrage of county officials, again sending in the times from today’s drive and again asking that they reverse the unfortunate decision to allow dump trucks into traffic earlier. I hope to get some sort of action soon. It is miserable.

Speaking of miserable but in terms far more serious, the New Orleans situation is going to get dramatic if the predictions of thousands of confirmed deaths come true as they pump water out of the city. W is taking a big beating on this, however, as much as I can’t stand the man I realize that the logistics of mobilizing all that equipment, manpower and supplies is something that can not happen instantly. Perhaps the biggest fault was not anticipating the doom sooner and have stuff starting to mobilize before the hurricane even struck. It is going to be a miserable news week as more and more stories and images of the destruction in the region come to light.

Todays quote from George Orwell

?Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise?

It is incredible how quickly New Orleans has unwound into a lawless society. The stories coming out of there are despicable. It’s amazing how people can quickly turn into animals given the opportunity. I don’t recall any reports of looting and lawlessness after the tsunami wiped out 200,000 plus yet here, in supposedly the most civilized of countries in the world we have people running wild in an urban area. Sad.

Katrina’s impact started spreading throughout the country in force yesterday. Gas panic drove lemmings to the pumps. People driving down the road see the gas station overrun and suddenly think they need to jump in the line as well for fear of being gasless. Prices here jumped to around 3 bucks a gallon yesterday. This entire situation put a huge glaring spotlight on how fragile our gas supply lines are. Isn’t it reassuring to know that a storm can send the nation into a gas starved panic? Of course the scarcity is a a carefully engineered product of oil companies. I read there have been no new refineries built in the US in the last 20 years even though the demand has increased steadily over that time period due to population explosion. Now they are walking such a fine line that the smallest ripple causes a huge wave to the consumer in gas prices. Of course the oil companies have pulled in record setting profits in the last year so Bush is happy, his family’s huge investment in oil must be paying off like the lottery. Never mind the impact on the country, expensive gas affects almost every aspect of the economy. The situation is total bullshit. I am just disgusted with it all.

My email rant must have been read because the delay at the first light was halved from 41 minutes to 20 minutes today. On our way home last night, after hitting backed up traffic after 7pm in the evening and after ranting about the lemmings at the gas pumps, I was ranting to Ali about the incompetence of the county traffic control department, the road construction workers and just about anything else to do with getting from point A to point B.

For labor day weekend we aren’t going anywhere. I want to stay at my house, away from people.

There is a convenience store in our area that basically has a monopoly. They tried to use this monopoly to price gouge it’s customers this week. Everyone predicts that gas prices are going to go up in the next week or so because of the impact from Katrina. However this gas station thought they would begin profiting from the disaster immediately. On Monday the cost of unleaded was $2.64, on Tuesday these bastards raised the price 25 cents to $2.89 a gallon. Obviously their cost didn’t go up overnight yet they raised their prices 10% overnight to pad their pockets. I went ballistic when I saw it. When I got to work I immediately went to the attorney general web site and reported the price gouging. On the way home from work, even though I needed gas, I bypassed the store and instead dumped gas into the car from a 5 gallon gas container I had in the garage for the generator. This morning on the way to work the price had magically dropped back to $2.67. F those jerks, I will avoid buying gas there like the plague if possible.

Speaking of the drive into work, today was again record setting. It took me 41 minutes to reach the first traffic light, a distance of 2 miles. The entire commute took 98 minutes. This was with us leaving our driveway at 6:29 AM!! The dump trucks are a big part of it but I also realized that the traffic light timing at that intersection was overwhelmingly biased towards the traffic turning ONTO the backlogged road instead of the traffic already sitting in the backlog. So I sent want is becoming my daily email to transportation officials about the stupid light timing and demanding that the dump truck start times are pushed back to what they were. I will continue complaining louder and louder until something is done, I can’t use an adjective to describe how annoying it is to be greeted by this mess every morning.

The Katrina aftermath instead of getting better each day seems to be worsening. New Orleans seems to be unraveling into a state of lawlessness and the flooding is horrific. I was talking to Ali about in the long run whom is better off in terms of recovery. I think in some ways the people that had their homes totally destroyed will be better off than the ones whose homes will be sitting in flood waters for days or weeks. Imagine trying to repair all the water damage that will be there, the house will have to be gutted and redone basically and even then you could have lingering problems. At least the homes that got smashed will be starting fresh. Plus homes that are knocked down are covered under hurricane policies, houses sitting in flood waters are not covered by hurricane policies and unless the homeowner had separate flood insurance they are SOL. Anyway you look at it, it is going to go down in history and be a storm that is talked about when I am old and gray.