275, False Alarm, 48 hours
I guess my chest twinge I felt on Monday was a false alarm. I was able to do my max bench day without incident today. I loaded up 275 and pressed it out, I think. I have a guy I know from the gym spot me. The only problem is he is the type of spotter that keeps his hands right by the bar throughout the movement. He said he had zero weight but I never quite count a max if there is even a chance that the spotter took an ounce of the weight. The way I like to be spotted is if I say “a little help” help me, otherwise I want to strain and grind it out. However it still is the first time I had 275 on top of me in maybe 8 years so it’s an accomplishment, sort of.
I think the writing is on the wall as far as my gym converting over to a psuedo geriatric wellness center. They have removed all of the protein drinks and now only sell water and Gatorade. It’s a shame, when the new ownership took over, after some initial skepticism, I thought they were doing a nice job with the place. However now they have mutated into almost a condo-cop mentality that makes me sick.
My weekend has a big list of to do’s. Ali said something about how it would be nice to be able to start using the pool, even if we don’t have a cage yet. So earlier in the week I pulled the pool cover off to reveal a nasty green mess underneath filled with twigs, toads and various organic matter. So I started treating it with chemicals and will continue trying to clean it up this weekend. If I have some success it may be swimmable by the following weekend. My 2 new water tractors have been a big success, they do a great job and don’t need to be baby sat as much as my older ones. The new tractors and the fact that we actually got a half hour of rainfall this week should make my watering duties slightly less time consuming.
My Roomba robot floor vac has been getting less and less work lately. Although I love it, there are some realities I have come to accept that have made it more of a novelty and less of a mainstay in our floor upkeep routine. First and most importantly, it just can’t do as good of a job as a regular vacuum. A battery powered device just can not generate even a decent percentage of the amount of suction as a conventional vacuum cleaner. As a result, although the rug looks cleaner from a distance, a closer inspection reveals there is still plenty of dog hair on the surface. Second it requires regular maintenance and cleaning. They recommend you do a thorough cleaning every 5 uses or so. This involves removing all the hair, and fibers that wrap themselves around the brushes, gears and wheels, knocking out the furballs that find their way into every corner of the unit and blowing out the sensors with compressed air. To put it plainly, it’s a pain in the ass. Finally, the battery life goes downhill very quickly. Brand new you can get close to 2 hours of run time out of it. However after 8 months I barely get a half hour out of it. I have had many calls into IRobot tech support for various problems I have had with my Roomba and even got a replacement unit out of them eventually, all for free. But even with the good support I don’t think it is a great investment for someone that has big time pet hair issues like we do.