Archives March 2006

It seems that Kirby had a lot of bad things going on besides the sexual harrassment charges. I heard stories that he was a perennial wife beater, adulterer and also had sexual assault charges brought against him. Maybe he wasn’t such a nice guy.

The Stern show on Sirius has been great and as a bonus, I started listening to Bubba the Love Sponge in the afternoons, he is funny as hell too. There is an old guy on there named Ned that does some of the funniest phony phone calls I ever heard.

I am glad that American Idol is soon down to the final 12, 3 nights a week is just too much. There are quite a few strong singers this year, should make for a good show.

Ali has been sick as a dog for the last 4 or 5 days. She stayed home from work the past 2 days. The medicine she is on is making it next to impossible for her to sleep. I feel bad for her.

The party van is back in the driveway, the starter was bad as I suspected. 300 bucks and it is back in business.

The weather down here has been absolutely beautiful recently. Blue skies, lower 70’s and low humidity. I commented to Ali that this is exactly the reason I wanted to move here.

I leave for Vegas in a little more than a month. I am going with Keener for like 4 days. It should be an awesome time.

On Sunday I had to chase a snake off the lanai. It was a black racer snake which is non-poisonous but it had quite the temper. It repeatedly struck at the pool brush I was coralling it with. I can’t wait till the pool cage is back up.

Don Knotts, Kirby Puckett and Dana Reeve all have checked out. Don was expected but I was really taken back by Kirby dying and although I knew Dana Reeve had lung cancer, I had no idea she was in bad shape. After taking care of Chris for all those years it certainly seems less than fair to have slapped her with a terminal disease just when she had a shot to rebuild her life. Just another one of those things that challenges someone to explain how it was “God’s plan”.

Kirby was knocked out of baseball early because of a freak eye problem. The Twins host their spring training here so we get more info about them than normal. Kirby was a god, even with the sexual harrassment charges. Damn, the guy was only 44….

This weekend was another race. Last weekend was the first time Ali didn’t lower her time and Friday night she was starting to feel sick so things weren’t looking very promising. Ali started participating in the local run club from an operations standpoint. She introduced me to the key club members before the race. One of the individuals I talked to was the guy that runs the club website. One of the issues is getting race results online quickly. I talked to the guy about how it is being done and talked about some options. It was a normal 5 or 10 minute talk. Afterward I said something to Ali about how she stood me in front of the guy but didn’t introduce us, she said I was a grown man and could have introduced myself, to which I responded “Eh it’s not a big deal..”

I felt good in the run, I was trying to pull Ali along throughout. Once again before the race we were talking to a guy that sized me up and asked if I ran around 20 minute 5k’s. Once again I explained I run with Ali as her pacer and right now we are around 28’s. One of these races I will go all out on my own and see what I pull down. Ali was really struggling to keep up, but she did. We wound up with a 28:02, a few ticks better than our Festival of Light time. She was totally spent. As I was filling out my time card after the race, the web hosting guy came up to me and said something that I couldn’t quite make out. He was all sweaty from the run and panting, but then I heard the word “Asshole..” All of a sudden it kicks in that this guy is pissed off at me. I ask him what the problem is and he tells me he heard what I said, he heard what I said. My mind starts racing, what did I say? This guy was furious. “I heard you say it was no big deal!” WTF? He ranted and ranted saying how I thought what he was doing was no big deal, that I somehow was flippant about what he was doing, that I was somehow dismissing him as an amateur since I host websites myself. I quickly tried to explain to him that he was totally off base and misunderstood what I was talking about. I told him there was no way I would say anything like that and that it made no sense. Towards the end Ali saw what was going on and came over. I told her what was going on and she tried to reinforce my position. The guy said that if we needed something from him we need to go through the club president he didn’t want to deal with me. Well after 2 or 3 apologies by me for HIS misunderstanding I just walked away, feeling like we just staged a Three’s Company episode, It was a loud spectacle that tons of people witnessed, what a nice way to get introduced to the Runner’s club. Later we told the other club officials about what went down. Ironically, they seemed less than surprised, I think this guy has a reputation as a loose cannon. After the fact, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got that he made such an assumption, it was ridiculous. Normally when I am in a confrontational situation like that I replay it, wondering if I should have handled differently. I think I went the right way, trying to stay civil about it. Although there was a good portion of me that felt like I should have instantly fired off on the guy for assuming I was an asshole without finding out the details. Stupid shit.

After the race we went to my Mom’s so I could throw in the part I got for the party van. I ripped apart the steering column and installed a new starter switch. I reassembled it and turned the key with much anxiety, CLICK! Argh…. Ok well I already decided my next step if the part didn’t work was a trip to the shop so I called AAA for a tow to the local garage whom I called. I called at 10:30, they said someone would be there within the hour, they showed at 12:30. The towing guy was a bit unprofessional, he asked me what was wrong, where it was to be towed to and he was off. AAA told me the guy would need my AAA card and a picture ID. He asked for nothing and after we dropped the van off at the garage he just took off, no paperwork , no nuthin. The garage which was open when I called, was now closed so I just left a long detailed note with the keys and threw it in one of the exhaust holes in the garage doors. In a way I am glad to have it looked at by a mechanic to make sure it is fixed once and for all.

World of Warcraft is now creeping into my dreams. Last night I had a dream I was flying around on a gryphon. As I was cruising along I saw an enemy on the ground whom didn’t see me and he had one of his two swords drawn. I dropped down into a power dive from behind and as I buzzed by him I snatched the sword out of his hand and flew away. As I did I turned back and laughed at him. He started chasing me and as he did he pulled out his other sword and in one quick motion threw it at me chinese star style. I see it coming and I dodge it and then as gravity starts pulling the sword towards the water below, I dive again and snag it out of the air. Now I had both of his swords. I turn back towards him, holding both of his swords above my head while laughing and taunting him. I look at the swords and realize they are epic quality. I give the guy the double bird and then fly away. The rest of my dream gets blurry but it is basically me flying to another area of the world to escape retribution for my act of thievery. Yea it’s a bit scary that WoW is now in my sleep pattern, but damn during the dream it was exciting.

When we left yesterday morning I noticed that the wires on our utility pole looked all f’d up. It looked like most of them were down but since we had to get to work I couldn’t do an in depth investigation. However when I got home I looked closer. It looked like all the wires but one were ripped/snapped. I have no clue how this would have happened unless a vehicle hit the pole in the street and stretched the wires. A quick check inside revealed we had no telephone or cable. Oh my we are unplugged! Being unplugged is an uncomfortable feeling when you are so accustomed to going through your email or reading up on the latest news while you are chowing down on dinner. Not to mention that no internet means no WoW, oh the horror of it all. Luckily we have the satellite dish which allowed us to still catch American Idol. It’s good to have a disaster recovery plan. 🙂

This week I tried to get tickets to a Red Sox spring training game. I was unsuccessful in doing so, I could not find 2 seats together. Even though my love of baseball has transformed into a mild like over the years, I was ready to go check out another game. It is funny how your interests change over the years. Baseball used to be my life. It was all I cared about, I knew every player, it was going to be my career. I remember sitting in the 700 level of the Vet with a stopwatch. I timed how long it took for the pitch to leave the pitcher’s hand till it hit the catcher’s glove. I used this information to help gauge my own progress as a pitcher, to see if I could throw as hard as them. I read books on how to get better, I trained in the offseason, I worked with a guy that actually pitched in the majors. I was so into it. It seems like that was a 100 years ago.