4 miler, Swing and miss, green thumb, Davinci
This Saturday we had a 4 mile race in Lehigh Acres. Ali hasn’t run a race in a bout a month because of being sick. She still isn’t totally healthy yet and she also had a sore toe from kicking something awhile back. When we got there she was debating if she would be able to run at all because the toe was bothering her that much. She jumped into the registration line with me after deciding to give it a go. It was quite chilly Saturday morning with temperatures in the low 50’s. It is a pain in the ass when it is that chilly because it’s hard to get loose and to keep warm you wear extra clothes. However those extra clothes that feel good in the beginning make you feel very overheated by mid-race.
The race went well, all things considered. Ali struggled but managed to keep a pretty steady pace despite the cold weather, stiff wind in some parts and limited training.. We settled in running around a woman and her young kid, who was probably somewhere in the 10-11 year old range. I felt bad for the kid because his mom kept running ahead of him, trying to make him go faster. The kid was really struggling. But then when the finish line was in sight, the kid turned on the afterburners and sprinted to the finish, it was funny. We crossed the line in 39:24, not a blistering pace by Ali’s standard but it was still almost a full 3 minutes faster than the last 4 mile race we did on Thanksgiving day. I saw the moron that went ballistic on me for hearing something I didn’t say a couple races ago. He ignored me and I did the same. I told Ali I felt like bitch slapping the old geezer but she thought he wasn’t even worth the effort. Even running Ali’s pace I got 4th in my age group (out of 4). You just never know how many bodies are gonna show up.
After we got back I wanted to rip into my to do list so my Sunday would be laid back. The first two projects were failures. After two trips to the Ford dealer in an attempt to find the correct seat belt buckle I discovered it was still wrong. I paid almost 100 bucks for this damn part. The old one is riveted in place and evidently is a custom part that comes with the conversion package. Project two was to take a look at the driveshaft of the Tacoma to see if I would be able to swap it with the one I got from the junkyard myself. I roll underneath and look at the driveshaft. I look at the one I picked up. I compare again. Son of a bitch, it’s the wrong part again. The one I picked up is too short and if I were to guess, I would say it was for a non-extended cab model. So I have 350 dollars worth of wrong parts. So now I have to go through the bullshit process of trying to return them and get the mess straightened out. I can hardly wait.
Another project was replacing the filters on the reverse osmosis system. I pulled out the carbon filters and they didn’t look too bad. But then I decided to replace the main filter, which I think may have been replaced once in the 5 years we were there. It hasn’t been replaced because it was a royal pain in the ass to get out. After f’ing with it for a good half hour I got it out. It was nasty and had to be replaced. So we jumped in the party van with the dog and went to Home Depot. I found a filter but also spotted a deal they had on trees. They had 15 and 7 gallon plum, red plum and taiwan cherry trees. The 7 gallon trees were only 10 bucks and the 15 gallon only 25 bucks! It was a sweet deal and we needed some trees to replace the ones that got wiped out in the frost. So we drove home and picked up the truck and drove right back. We got two 7 gallon plums, one cherry and one red plum. We got them home and spent a couple hours getting it all in the ground. If they take hold, they will make a very nice addition to the landscape as they mature. By the time dinner time came around we were both tired, it was a busy day.
Sunday was very laid back, the day went something like this. Nicki gets me up at 6:30. I get up, take her out, eat breakfast reading email and checking the headlines. Then I settle in and play WoW for 3 hours while Ali sleeps. I take a break and water the landscape, wash the car and truck and then eat lunch. I played Wow for another few hours in the afternoon. We paid the bills. I finally got to watch the Transporter DvD my buddy from work loaned me. That movie started out decent but the just got ridiculous with the lunacy of the fight/chase scenes. Then we watched an episode of the new season of Surreal Life (outstanding) and finally settled down and read more of the Davinci code for a couple hours.
The Davinci code is really fascinating to me. It talks about a theory regarding Christianity/Jesus that I never heard before, yet supposedly has been something that has been spoken about for centuries. The theory undermines everything about the Christian religion and further cements my own personal views on the subject. It seems ironic that something as high and mighty as the christian faith would be based on lies, coverups and death, yet evidently there is ample history of this throughout time. So much hypocrisy it is sickening.