Prep, Bourne again, Fantasy, the rest
As predicted the weekend was pretty busy trying to get stuff in order for our two week departure from the Duffey estate. By the time I got around to working on pulling the seat from the van it was early afternoon and hot as hell. As I laid in the van trying to work a wrench under the seat, sweat was pouring off me like I was in a sauna. After some fiddling around I got the seat out and then pulled out the shop vac to vacuum the area exposed by the now missing seat. It should clear up some sizeable room for us to pile up our sizeable traveling luggage/equipment. In addition to our big bag that will have our clothes in it we will have at least one crate filled with dog supplies as well as various electronics, including Ali’s laptop which I will use to keep myself pseudo-plugged in as we travel the along the southern part of the United States.
In order to keep the computer computing and the cell phones charged I am bringing my DC to AC inverter that I bought during the 2005 hurricane season. It was used the one night to power a floor fan to blow on us to help us keep our sanity during one of the sweltering, powerless nights. After pulling the seat I attended to washing the party van. It’s funny, from 3 sides, the party van doesn’t look bad at all except for some rusted area on the drip well along the roof. However the passenger side is a freaking mess. The prior owner evidently had a run in with a pole or something that he scraped up against. That side has cracks, dents, bent things and some missing paint. This is also the side that had the big rust stain running down the back corner which I cleaned up a bit. The inside of the van is in relatively good shape as well. After clean up the van looked pretty presentable.
Ali was gone most of the day Saturday at work so that left me home to attend to my various chores. I kept busy for most of the afternoon, trying to keep in mind that things would not be tended to for an extended period of time. So I cleaned the water equipment and loaded the pool chlorinator to the top with tablets.
On Saturday night Ali and I watched Bourne Ultimatum. I enjoyed the first two Bourne movies so I assumed I would enjoy the third. I did enjoy it. It was filled with pretty non-stop action and suspense. My only gripe is the final resolution of the main storyline of the series, how Jason Bourne became Jason Bourne, wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. Well it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. But even with that bump in the road, it was a good flick. B+
Sunday morning while Ali was at the gym, I discovered a brown smelly surprise tucked away in the corner of the dining room. Yep Nicki snuck away during the night and shit in the house again! It wasn’t a big pile, in fact I at first was hoping it was just throw up. However a quick pass of the excrement by my nose confirmed it was indeed from the wrong end of the dog. Unlike some mornings when Nicki has done this, she didn’t give any prior indication of foul play like slinking around and hiding. However once I found it I scolded her loudly. Instantly the ears drop, the face goes sad and she scoots back to the bedroom to hide. I don’t know why at 4 years old we are reliving house breaking routines. My assumption is she still has something going on intestinally. She has been doing way too many number two’s, sometimes 5 a day and many times they are very small. Unfortunately with us leaving a few days and Ali being stuck working most of the week, we don’t really have the time to get her to the vet for more testing. Ali thinks it could possibly be a side effect of her coming off two antibiotic routines, which at least in humans, can cause diarrhea.
Well whatever the cause, I was not happy with the result. When Ali came out to talk to me after she got back from the gym I gave her the number two news. Ali then started quizzing me on if Nicki did a number two right before bed, saying she HAS to do one after she eats. I was already annoyed enough, Ali’s edict about Nicki ‘s crapping schedule was not well timed. I shot back that if Ali wants to make sure Nicki craps before bed she can walk around with her late at night in circles. When I took her out the night prior, she pee’d and walked herself right back to the door, showing no interest in anything further. For the past 3 and a half years this was never an issue, now it was. I punctuated my little outburst by pulling on the starter for the weedwhacker and buzzing away in anger.
I had started weedwhacking between 9 and 10. Even though it was relatively early in the morning, it already felt hot as hell. The sun warmed the very humid air quickly, making sweat form within 5 minutes of being out in the weather. During my weed whacking duties I found myself getting extremely annoyed. I was already annoyed enough with Nicki dumping in the house, the weedwhacking just added to it. The weed whacker was giving me issues with the cord feeding correctly so I had to go into the shed and pull the cord out and respool it. As I am in the shed with sweat rolling down my face little f’ing gnats are bombing at my ears, annoying me further. Then as I go back out to continue weed whacking I kept getting other organic material wrapped into the head of the trimmer, jamming it and pissing me off more. By the time I was all done I was in the foulest of moods. I stripped down, put on my bathing suit to cool off, both literally and figuratively. Nicki came out and expected me to play the splash game with her, a game where I splash around like a madman in the pool and she runs around and barks while she gets a little wet. I refused to entertain her, still angry about her bathroom behavior.
Mid afternoon I travelled to a guy’s house for our fantasy football draft. This year we had it at an owner’s house as opposed to in the conference room of an office as we had the two prior years. Our draft goes too damn long. It took three and half hours to plow through 14 rounds of picks. Our league turned into a keeper league this season. However the only guy I deemed worthy of keeping off my roster last year was Carson Palmer. But to keep him I would have had to sacrifice my first pick in the draft (number 5 spot) so that would have not been smart. As a result I wound up keeping no one.
My draft went well, I think, I didn’t make any outrageous picks based on position, generally picking the highest available player based pre-season rankings for whatever position I needed. I have yet to live down picking Julius Jones with my number one pick two season ago. Since then my picks have been much more by the book. Hey, I thought he was going to really bust out that year. Anyway, here is my roster as it stands.
Bulger, Marc QB STL
Favre, Brett QB GB
Barber, Marion RB DAL
Dunn, Warrick RB ATL
Parker, Willie RB PIT
Williams, Cadillac RB TB
Brown, Reggie WR PHI
Horn, Joe WR ATL
Mason, Derrick WR BAL
Wayne, Reggie WR IND
Cooley, Chris TE WAS
Witten, Jason TE DAL
Kaeding, Nate K SD
Eagles, DST DST PHI
A lot of the players I have had on my roster before including Nate Kaeding, Reggie Wayne, Cadillac Williams, Brett Farve, Marion Barber and the Eagles defense. I feel pretty good about my mix of players but you always feel good about your players before the season starts. Willie Parker was my number one pick. I am hoping he can do much more for me than last years number one pick, Edgerrain James, who sucked for me pretty much all year.
Our trip out west is going to interfere with me setting my lineups for the first two weeks, I am going to have to doing wirelessly from who knows where. The trip also is going to mean we will probably not be able to see the first two Eagles games, another very rare phenomena.
Over the weekend I was watching a show about Randy Couture, the current UFC heavyweight champion. The guy has been in the business forever, in fact he is 44 years old. A few months ago he came out of retirement to take the belt and I read he successfully defended the belt this weekend against a younger, bigger opponent. While we watched the show that outlined Randy’s grueling training regimen that allows him to compete with guys 15-20 years younger than him Ali said a simple but powerful statement to me. “Do you think he complains about his age?” That hit a chord because I know the answer was “no”. To Randy age is simply a number and that number doesn’t affect how hard you work. That number doesn’t mean you have to automatically check out of certain activities and certainly doesn’t mean you have to act “old”. I need to think more like Randy Couture.
I got to see my first live Eagles action Sunday night since the game was nationally televised on NBC. I wish I could be more upbeat about what I saw. On the positive, Donovan looked decent. He definitely looks significantly trimmed down. In years past he came into camp looking like he was pumped up with air, counter productive to the QB position if you ask me. The defense looked decent early on but not very good after that. They wound up losing unimpressively, 27-13. I kept reminding myself that the Eagles never look great in the pre-season under Andy, ever. I guess the biggest positive was no one came out of the game injured.
My Monday morning got off to a bad start. After staggering into the bathroom to relieve myself, still groggy as I am standing in front of the toilet, I notice an unnatural change in direction of the stream. I instantly know what has happened as it has happened before. My pajama pants inadvertently got in the way causing a deflection. I caught the issue almost immediately but of course could not avoid the end result, wet pants. I don’t remember this happening to me before the last two or three years. The spot was small enough that I just let it be until I changed for work when they went into the wash. I need to be observant that proper clearance is present before letting loose in the morning.
I am mixing up my 300 schedule since it is a short week. I am going to do one Thursday, my last gym day in who knows how long. I figured it would be a good send off.