Archives 2005

Was right in the meat of a good entry and the computer took a dump…..

I’ll see if I have the motivation and time to piece it back together.

On the drive home we go through an elderly residential area where the speed limit is 25 and they have huge speed bumps every couple hundred yards to keep us young whippersnappers from going fast. Well instead of a conventional curb, the road sort of has a little congrete gulley along it for drainage water. Yesterday on the way home it was raining again, pretty steadily. As I rounded a corner I see a man with a gas blower walking up and down along his part of the curbline. He had the nozzle right by the water and was blowing ithe rain water up into the grass. He just paced back and forth, blowing water into the grass which was instantly replaced by more water from the rainwater flowing down the street. I spent the next 5 minutes or so trying to figure out exactly what the point of this fruitless act would be. Eventually I concluded he just thought it looked cool to see the water get rocketed away by the high winds from the blower, nothing else made much sense at all.

Now for today’s deep thought which I can take no credit for creating:

“You can’t sail a ship on yesterday’s wind…..”

I have used ebay so many times over the years I just assume that when I buy something off there I am saving a considerable amount of money versus paying retail. Last week I decided to finally replace our spot steam cleaner. I knew the model I wanted so I jumped right on ebay and found it. 34.99 +14 bucks shipping, a little steep on the shipping cost but hey I am getting a great deal on the price so that makes up for it. So I happily paid the buy it now price and immediately paid for it with Paypal, good deal.

That evening after work while was wasting time before pickup up Ali, I was at wal-mart picking up a couple things and I happened to walk by the vacuum cleaner section and figured, “Hey I wonder if they have those cleaners, let’s see how much money I saved..” The price, $35.24….. so with tax the total would have been around 37 bucks. Instead with shipping I paid a little less than 50 to wait for it for a week. I was rather perturbed to say the least. I’ll never blindly buy off ebay again without checking conventional pricing first.

I finally got my purchase yesterday. The situation went from bad to worse. The auction had the item listed as NEW. It was in it’s original box but it had obviously been used. The manual was creased and water stained, the brushes had some hair around them, there was dirt on the casing and the liquid compartment had condensation in it. Oh well, I was angry but as long as it worked I was going to let it slide. I flip it on and the brushes spin and there is suction, great. Well then I thought I should put water in it and make sure it all works. I filled it and fired it up. I squeeze the trigger once, twice, 25 times… nothing comes out. Son of a bitch! The damn thing is used, I overpaid for it, had to wait a week and it doesn’t work right! Argh!

So I fire off an angry email to the seller accusing him of falsely representing the product and demanding a refund. His initial response was condescending and smart ass in nature saying I could return it and the would either repair it or send me another one so I quickly replied. This time I went into more detail about all the issues with the product, how I paid for a NEW one so a repaired one would not do, established I indeed knew how to work the unit and that I was not an ebay novice and indirectly hinted that he should simply refund my money or else the negative feedback would be scathing.

His second reply was more amicable and he agreed to refund the purchase price if I sent it back. I’m still out the shipping that I had to pay twice. It was lesson that I won’t forget. I’ll be going to wal-mart after work to buy a brand new unit, like I could have done a week ago and saved myself 30 bucks. Sigh….

It’s weird but since Saturday I have had 3 acts of animal rescue. On Saturday as we were driving down a 3 lane wide road, in the distance I saw something moving across the road, slowly. Oh shit, it’s a turtle. I didn’t want the ill advised turtle to become roadkill so I sped up to it and whipped off to the road shoulder. There were cars coming but far enough away that they would have time to slow when they saw a man running out into the road in front of them. I scooped the turtle up and got to the median. As I was holding him he used his only natural defense and tried to pee on me. Once traffic on the other side cleared I ran across and set him on the far bank and made sure he was continuing on his way.

Yesterday, after I picked up Nicki after work, I was turning left out of the nursing home. As I did I spotted in my mirrors something trying to slide across the road, obviously it was injured. I continued on but then swung around, parked the car to see what was going on. It looked to be a full sized bullfrog. His one front arm looked like it was crushed and he was trying to drag himself across the street by pushing his back legs. I assumed some idiot that wasn’t paying attention hit him but I didn’t know for sure. He was big, as big as my hand. It was so sad. I had an empty cigar container I found discarded by the street that I used to pick him up with. He didn’t really struggle much as I held him. I carried him to the edge of a lake at the golf course across the street. I thought that possibly even though his arm was no good for walking, maybe he could still swim. I sat him by the edge to see if he would go in on his own. He just kinda sat there. So I gave him a little nudge and he went in the water. However once in, all he could do was roll, he was unable to swim. Well I didn’t want him to drown so I scooped him back out. I wound up carrying him over to some bushes nearby and setting him under there, hoping that at the least he could die in peace. I sat him down, petted him and told him to rest as he just looked at me . Poor thing, made me feel like shit.

I told Ali of my attempted frog rescue. As we drove home we ran into some heavy downpours. As we were within a couple of miles of home what do I see but another damn turtle trying to cross the road. I pull off again and hop out into the pouring rain. There was a van with a trailer coming and instead of slowing and trying to avoid the turtle, he kept normal speed and straddled the turtle with his wheels. I yelled at the asshole as I ran out once he passed. Luckily the turtle avoided getting clipped by the axles. I picked him up and ran him across the road and set him on his way. By the time I got back in the car I looked like I jumped in the pool with my clothes on. I was still furious at the jerk that ran over the turtle. People are idiots, the older I get, the less I want to deal with them.

Mexicans may be hard workers but I have found that they also have no ideas about littering. Evidently Mexico is such a shithole that littering is just a fact of life. Our property constantly has empty cans of cerveza, plantain chip bags, and pork rind sacks littering the roadside. It’s annoying.

The rains continued for most of the weekend. We got more than 3 inches more over the 2 days to bring the total rainfall since last Wednesday close to 9 inches. Areas on our property that were dead grass and sand a week ago are now ankle deep in water. It really is an amazing transformation.

The weekend was very enjoyable despite the persistent rain. On Saturday we stopped by the apartments we lived in the first year we lived in Florida. I heard they were selling them as condos now. It was a nice place and I was rolling around ideas in my head about the possibility of maybe buying one and then having my mom live in it. I had called and gotten prices a couple months ago and it seemed like there was an outside shot that we could swing it. The place has over 360 units. They now have 4 left. In 2 months they basically sold out. Not only that but they raised the price 40k in that time frame. The sales pitch was non-existent. It was “here is the price”. When I ran the numbers through a mortgage calculator I quickly realized there was no way we could swing it. It’s disappointing.

On Saturday afternoon we did some rearranging of furniture. We moved the antique corner china cabinet that my mom brought with her, but didnt follow her to her new place, into the corner in the computer room. It looks surprisingly good in there. I also disassembled my 19 inch wide, 42 inch high aluminum computer rack and installed the stuff into a much more visually pleasing wooden cube shelf thing. When I set the aluminum rack up originally, I thought it would be cool to have actual computer room equipment in the office with a rack server, punch down block and rack. I now realize that it was just ugly in a home environment. I’ll shoot some pics of the new set up. I also redid the TV mount out on the lanai. I cleaned up the cables and mounted the remote receiver and IR transmitter in spots where they were much more functional.

Saturday night we watched Sea Biscuit. I heard a long time ago it was a good movie. I really enjoyed it. If you would have told me beforehand that I could feel such emotion about a horse racing movie I would have told you you were crazy. But damn when Sea Biscuit is racing War Admiral down the final stretch and Sea Biscuit turns on the jets and beats the favored horse easily, I felt like I just watched the final homerun scene in The Natural. It was a really, really good movie and like I said, envoked emotions you wouldn’t expect.

On Sunday we did our 4 mile walk to the convenience store and back. It was much tougher than in the past. It was very warm and humid. The wet conditions had brought out the bugs so we spent the first half of the walk constantly swatting at our face. It was pretty miserable. I normally wouldn’t break a serious sweat until well into the walk back. This time half way into the first half my shirt was starting to sweat through. When we got to the store I knew we had to get some bug spray. I didnt have enough cash so I had to pay an extra $2.50 to pull out 20 bucks from the ATM to pay for the stuff. ATM fees are a f’in joke. The walk back was much less buggy thanks to the toxic substance we sprayed on ourselves. However the sun started to peek out, making it even more uncomfortable. By the time we got home I was very ready to be in AC.

It started to rain again, delaying our plans to mow the grass that was not underwater. I spent the downtime playing WoW, something I did quite a bit over the weekend. When it stopped raining and dried up a bit we went out and knocked out the work. One of the things I had to do was relocate a few of the plants we put in the renovated garden. Even though we dumped all that dirt in there, the one end was still a soppy mess. We didn’t want the roots to drown so I hopped in there with a trowel in my flip flops since it was wet. I almost instantly lost both flip flops as they sunk a half foot into the muck and the suction pulled them off my feet. So I decided to just finish the job bare foot. Moving them 5 feet up further up got them out of harms away. It was easy to wash off my muddy sandals and feet by simply stepping into the ankle deep water right outside the garden.

The rest of the day/evening was casual with Ali reading and I spent most of the time trying to level my priest in WoW. I find that everyone in the game loves a priest. They heal you, remove diseases and generally make life in the game much easier. Playing as the priest isn’t the most exciting thing in the world but in certain ways I enjoy playing him as much as anyone else.

On Thursday nights we take out the trash. As I was pulling the bag out of the can in the garage, I was startled by movement I saw out of the corner of my eye. On the top edge of the open garage door was a long black racer snake. He was weaving in and out of the supports having a grand old time. I didn’t know if he had been in the garage for awhile or if he just hopped up there since we got home. Either way he had to be returned to the outdoors. So I looked around for a good snake removal tool and decided to enlist a mop. As I pushed him along he dropped off the garage door onto the hard concrete floor. I felt bad cause I didn’t want to cause any harm to him, just get him out. He seemed ok but he slithered under the shelves in the garage. I kept prodding him forward with the mop which he had taken a dislike to. He coiled and struck at the mop repeatedly. Eventually I got him outside and apologized for any harm I caused him.

Our property has been very very dry. You can tell from this pic how brown the grass was. Even though I try to hit it regularly with the tractor sprinkler, no rain for over a month takes it’s toll. However the past few days we have gotten dumped on. Our property has seen over 6 inches of rain during that time period. So we went from being a sand bowl to a swamp, with some standing water at various spots already. The areas where we brought in fill have held up well and performed as we hoped they would. The plants and grass are very happy with the recent deluge, the only negative is the standing water will probably initiate this years mosquito season. Time to get the propane tank refilled for the mosquito trap.

For me playing sports is all about being able to experience certain moments that make it all worth it. I’ve played many different sports and pretty much all of them have those type of moments, here are some.

In baseball there were 2 moments that I cherished. As a pitcher there was nothing better than throwing it as hard as I can, have the guy swing late and strike him out swinging as the ball makes a resounding crack into the catcher’s glove . As a hitter, of course hitting a homerun was as good as it got. My most memorable one was at some park where instead of a fence they had a creek. I swung and didn’t even feel the ball hit the bat, it just took off and got very wet.

In golf the moment comes when you hit the driver off the tee and the ball comes off low and hard a bit to the right and then the spin on the ball makes it swoop up and left, winding up down the middle of the fairway, far, far away. Once I get to the ball I enjoy looking back at the tee area and being proud of the distance the ball covered.

In tennis the moment occurs when I switch from my normal right hand shot to the left hand to wind up and hit a screaming forehand with downspin that just clears the net and settles down against the back fence before the opponenet ever got a chance to swing at it.

In bowling after I let loose on shot that I give a little extra turn to, that hooks hard into the pocket, makes a whole lot of noise and sends all 10 pins rocketing to the pit behind, the moment has arrived.

In racquetball the moment was when I was serving and hit a serve as hard as I could at a hard angle. The ball would dance around the other player as he tried to catch up to it which he rarely did. If he was lucky, the best he could muster would be a weak shot high onto the wall.

In football there were lots of moments. Juking multiple people out on the way to a score, throwing a long pass that hits the receiver in stride or snatching an interception and running it all the way back all gave you the rush.

In volleyball there are two punctuation marks for me. The first one is when the other team is going up for a hit, swings as hard as they can and my hands are in the proper position to send the ball back down on their side harder than it came at me. The second is when I get a set that is in front of me, in line that I don’t have to adjust to. I get a good approach, a good jump and hit the ball in rhythm, hard. The satisfying thump it makes as it hits the surface on the other side only milliseconds after leaving your hand is the feeling that I search for most on the court.

Maybe moments translate into simple adrenaline rushes, I don’t know. All I know is I yearn for them, I play for them and I remember them.

On Saturday I played golf for the first time in months, it may even have been a year. It was very hot and very humid. It was a scramble format tournament, thank God. If it was conventional golf my score may have approached 120. It would not be an exagerration to say I could count my number of good shots for the entire round on one hand. Our team was 2 men and 2 women. Out of the 18 holes, we wound up using the women’s drive on at least 15 of them. I could hit the ball off the tee with good power and distance, unfortunately the trajectory normally took the ball deep into woods or into the middle of water. To say I was frustrated was a bit of an understatement. If I was around people I knew I would have been swearing my ass off but I kept it somewhat under control. With as bad as the day was, there was one shot that almost made it worth it for me. On a 233 yard par 4 I drove the green with my 4 iron. I use irons exclusively because believe it or not, I am more inaccurate with woods. I get a kick out of hitting irons as far as most hit woods anyway. I was thankful when the round was over and had no desire to pick the clubs back up anytime soon.

After the golf there was lunch in the clubhouse. We had 3 long tables of people. To serve all these people they had exactly one waitress. One 75 year old waitress with organizational and memory issues. She only seemed to want to take one thing at a time. She would take one or two orders at a time and then disappear for awhile. She forgot to take people’s orders all together. It was ridiculous. It was even more ridiculous when the bills came and the gratuity was already added on. The service was terrible yet they bill you ahead of time for it. I threw down my money and left. For everything I bet I dropped over 60 bucks for 5 hours of frustration.

Sunday was work day. We have wanted to redo the garden area for awhile. We needed to raise the level of the one end as it wound up underwater last year once the heavy rains started. We also wanted to redo the fencing around it. We had green plastic garden fence surrounding it that is ripped and stretched and gave a very white trash sort of vibe. So we went to Home Depot and bought about 600 pounds of dirt, compost, peat moss and top soil. By the time we got home and got started it was the hottest part of the day. The sweat and dirt quickly turned my arms black. It was ugly work but we had everything wrapped up in a couple hours. We dumped and tilled the dirt, ripped down the crap fence and put up a much cleaner metal fence. The area looks 100% better. I’ll throw up some pics of it.

On Sunday night we went to see Star Wars. I had heard basically positive reviews about it. I was a bit bummed that the 7:45 show was in one of the small theaters, I was hoping to see it in the big one, big movie, big theater. Disclaimer, this may be a bit of a spoiler for you, so if you didn’t see it yet, read on at your own risk. I enjoyed the movie. If it’s possible, the visuals were even better than the last two. The computer generated graphics blended in with live action almost seemlessly. The battle scenes were nothing short of fantastic. There was not nearly the amount of wooden acting as the last one. However they botched the most important part of the movie. The part where Annikan flips to the dark side. The did a decent job leading up to the moment of showing his torment and conflict about being true to the Jedi way versus the power available from the dark side. However when he turns on the Jedi master, there is 5 seconds where he says “What have I done!….” where he sounds extremely remorseful and then after that he instantly becomes totally evil and jumps right into his job as the head bad guy. Sidious tells him he has to go kill all the Jedi and Annikan has no problem with it. Go kill all the younglings? No problem… That part was bad and it’s a shame because like I said if you factor that out, the rest of the movie is really, really good. You need to see it, it will be joining my dvd collection for sure.

I finally got around to posting the pics from my recent aerial sortie online, you can take a look at them here. All my rc related stuff is here.

On memorial day we did nothing special. We spent a good part of the day relaxing and probably spent the most time ever in the pool. The solar cover had the water temperature up into the low 90’s already. Plus having the TV outside allowed us to catch up on some stuff on the Tivo while happily floating. We made burgers on the grill and had fun, a good day.

Today’s edition of dumb gym-wear is brought to you by some young guy, maybe 21. It’s almost 90 degrees here today and humid yet he is working out with a knit gangsta-style beanie on his head. Then to accent his left bicep, he has a rubber band up high to further define the muscle. My internal laughter continued everytime I saw him.

For the holiday weekend I am playing in a golf tournament tomorrow. I play golf once or twice a year and find that is plenty. I would like to see if we can find some time to go see Star Wars as well as buy a bunch of dirt to elevate and redo the garden. Ali has been sick for the last week so how much we do depends on her well being.

Carrie won although I can’t quite understand it. My ears must be clogged. I thought that Carrie sounded borderline awful on 2 of the 3 songs on Wednesday while Bo was strong throughout. Not that it really matters, they both will get contracts. I think Bo will do better in the long run, he is just a better performer. No I am not gay.

The finale show was more entertaining than years past with various musical talents performing with the kids. The one blonde that got eliminated early on who always was chunky, looked like she gained some more. When she came out for her solo act in low cut jeans and a belly shirt, letting it all hang out I was surprised. What stylist told her that was a good look? Do a few situps and cut down on the twinkies.