Archives 2007

Man last night was not very restful sleep.  I feel asleep early, before 10 I think.  I got out of bed at like 1:30 to pee.  I am finding I am developing old man pee syndrome.  If I drink anything within an hour or two of going to bed I wake up in the middle of the night to drain the tank.  I guess it is good that at least I wake up to go instead of pissing myself, the next stage of old age.  Then I was awakened during the night when Nicki did one of her weird howling fits in her sleep.  You would swear we have a coyote in the room, it is so bizarre.  The rest of the night I was asleep but I was dreaming for what seemed to be non-stop.  Dream after dream ripped through my head yet I don’t remember any clear details about any of them.  Dragging myself out of bed this morning was not fun at all.

Last night after work I actually made an effort to be productive instead of my normal routine of tending to the dog, eating supper and then me spending the rest of the evening either in front of the computer playing WoW or in front of the tv watching reality programming.  First I went out and watered the big planters in front of the house.  One of the marigolds was already looking wilted so it was good that I decided to water.  Then I decided to investigate a mower problem that Ali had brought up several times since I changed the blades.

Ali said that it wasn’t cutting well.  She said in certain spots it looked like it was ripping the grass instead of cutting it and how there is a line of uncut grass that emerges from the back of the mower.  A week or so ago she had asked me if it was possible that there was something wrong with brand new blades I put on.  I scoffed at the notion and told her no, knowing that I installed them properly.  However after this weekends mowing session, Ali again reiterated that she thought something was wrong.  I considered that maybe one of the securing bolts was loose or something.  So last night I decided to remove the deck and check things out.

I drop the deck, pull it out and flip it over.  As I look at the blades I notice that the paint is worn off the back of the blades but the front cutting surface is unscathed which meant that once again, I had the blades on backwards.  It’s amazing it cut at all since the back of the blade is rounded off.  I guess it just clubbed the grass to death.  I was pissed off.  I installed the blades as I have other cub cadet blades, with the part number stamping facing down towards the ground.  Well evidently since these blades weren’t exactly the right ones for our model of mower, that rule did not apply.  If I put a little thought into the process and realized the direction the blades spin, (clockwise) I would have seen that they were oriented incorrectly.  What a dumb ass.   So I reversed the blades, reinstalled the deck and then took the tractor out for a prolonged test mow.  It worked MUCH better.

One of the other things I did last night was take another picture for my Spartan bio.  The silly one of me with a ribbon in my hair wasn’t nearly mean and “spartan” enough.  So thanks to the miracles of digital camera timers I was able to take a new picture of myself last night, looking insane with anger.  When I showed Ali and she was visually disturbed by it, saying it was “ugly and scary” I knew I hit the mark.  In an effort to protect people from this scary image, I won’t post it online, instead you have to click this link if you want to see just how insane I can make myself look.  You have been warned.

Yesterday Ali and I got into a little mini-argument regarding Nicki being left home and how it is affecting Ali’s work schedule.  Ali is afraid to leave Nicki home alone until she does two number 2’s.  I have told Ali that I think Nicki would be fine if she only does one number 2, that I think she can hold it until I get home.  We don’t know for sure because we have never tried it.  The point of the discussion was that Ali wasn’t getting to work until noon and in turn staying there until 7 or 8 at night.  One of my goals of Ali working a light schedule was not for me to be a bachelor 3 or 4 nights a week.  Between her working late, ballet one night and some times a group aerobic evening class, I could not see Ali before 8pm until Friday night.  I told Ali I was willing to risk one dog dump inside the house in order to see if Nicki is able to go a bit longer between bathroom runs so Ali can get out of the house a bit earlier.  So we will see what happens.  Ali said she likes being able to start her day slow like that.  I’m sure we will come to some compromise.

I got a voicemail on the way home last night from the garage saying the van was done but he wanted to fill me in on the details, whatever that means, I’m sure it isn’t good.  We haven’t talked money at all yet except for the cost of the tires.  I’m braced for yet another big bill.

22 is the amount of pull ups I knocked out today.  Only 3 from my goal of 25.  I hit 50 box jumps, leaving only floor wipers as the only 50 rep goal exercise I have yet to hit.  I skipped push ups and floor wipers.  I actually did the clean and presses but I dropped the weight from 35 pounds down to 25 pounds.  I kept my elbow close to my body and was able to get through the left arm set with little issue.

I am officially in the Spartan Halloween contest.  I am at a bit of disadvantage as I have been doing the program for 3 months and have already shaved about 15 pounds off my frame so if I use a current day picture as my “before” shot there won’t be any huge change.  So I threw up a picture from a few years ago.  I may have Ali help me take some wacky shots to put up there.  I can make some incredibly mean, scary faces if I need to. 🙂

Wow, it was melt your shoes hot this weekend.  It certainly wasn’t a great weekend to have a ton of outside things to tackle like I did.  The thermometer at our place got as high as 97 degrees and that was with humidity levels that were very high. 

The “list” this weekend was a double column version, meaning I would be quite the busy bee.  I pulled all the weeds from the garden and then filled it with cantaloupe plants.  I need to take a picture of it soon so you can compare it to 3 weeks from now when the garden will be a jungle of cantaloupe.  I had gotten a replacement plant for the rusty dog planter we have on the lanai.  The ornamental grass I had in there just wasn’t doing well.  Instead I picked up a no frills cactus.  No leaves, minimal watering, a perfect plant for that spot.  I went on a pruning rampage as well.  I pruned back the trees in the orchard, the topiaries, the hibiscus bush and gave the two ornamental grass in the pots in front of the house a huge haircut. 

On Saturday I also changed the oil on my truck.  It was during the oil change where I got my most painful reminder of the weekend about how f’d up my shoulder is.  Without thinking, I tried to lower myself down on to the creepy crawly with my left arm.  Instantly pain radiated throughout the arm and shoulder and instead of lowering myself onto it, I sort of just flopped down.  I never realized just how many movements your shoulder is involved in.  Pushing movements are near impossible with any force, lifting the arm, even with minimal weight is uncomfortable.  I find myself tucking my elbow in tight to my body involuntarily when I raise the arm.  

I have had left shoulder issues since my late teens when I severely screwed it up pitching.  I never had surgery on it but went through some physical therapy for it that did nothing to help it.  In fact it was the shoulder problem that ended my aspirations to be a pro baseball player.  Over the years it has been off and on problematic.  When I took up volleyball around 23 or 24 it would flare up, especially after heavy usage like a tournament.  It would be very sore afterward but within a few days the pain would subside.  Well I am more than a week out and there has been virtually no improvement.  I am going to give it another full week and if I am in the same boat I may make an appointment to see someone.  It can’t be totally torn or I wouldn’t be able to lift the arm at all, something is f’d up pretty well though.

On Saturday night Ali went to a musical at the dinner theater in Fort Myers.  I was invited as well but politely declined.  I have gone to shows before, however this one held no interest to me and when Ali said it was a musical that was 100% singing, that sealed the deal.  I appreciated the offer but I told Ali it would equate to me inviting the neighbors to a tractor pull, it just wouldn’t be fun. (when Ali got back she said I would have hated it)  So while Ali was away I kept busy.

First I spent the time to take pictures of various items I wanted to get rid of on ebay and then listing them.  The process took awhile but it felt good to finally get them up there.  I am trying to raise funds so I can get a Dirt Dog to be paired up with my Roomba Pet that should arrive this week.  After I got done listing the items I just f’d around playing WoW for a little while.  Because I was so dehydrated from sweating out buckets during the day, I felt ravenous.  Even though I knew I was actually just thirsty, the brain tricks you into thinking you are hungry as well.  So although I had a burger for dinner, I went back to the kitchen two or three times afterward for supplementary nourishment, none of it very healthy.  It is as close to binge eating as I get.

Even though my Saturday was quite busy, I still had more to do Sunday, namely weed whacking and sweeping the inside of the house.  I got started on the weed whacking before Ali got back from spinning class.  I was out there for a good hour and a half.  It took a long time since I didn’t get a chance to weed whack last week.  We are in the part of the year where we could legitimately cut the grass twice a week, it grows that fast.

After I got done whacking and Ali got done on the lawn tractor mowing we got cleaned up via a dip in the pool and headed out to the newest mega-store to open in our area, Super Target.  In general I don’t like these massive stores that try to be all things to all people.  They are so damn big and have so many people mulling around in them, it just never has equated to a pleasurable shopping experience for me.  Yet, I wanted to check it out.  On the plus side, it is the closest big store to open up around us, a scant 12 miles away.  As expected, it was quite full.  Somehow Target has an upscale image compared to Wal-mart.  I prefer it.  The place was massive but I was less shocked due to being in the Super Wal-Mart right down the road.  Ali and I walked around for a bit and scored the few items we had targeted plus a few extra items like 58 bottles of water for 10 bucks and a small watermelon plant that I would be hard pressed to find room for in the garden.  The experience was exceptionally vanilla.  The store was fine, no fireworks.

The plans I had to watch several movies over the weekend never materialized.  I only got to watch one of the movies and it wasn’t until Sunday evening that we did it, we watched the Simpsons.  Although I think the Simpsons tv show is very, very funny.  It never moved me to become a regular viewer, I have not seen all that many episodes.  The movie was basically a long version of the TV show and that isn’t a bad thing.  It was very funny and had us both laughing through out.  If you like the Simpson’s you will like the movie.  I’d give it a B+, it doesn’t get an A just because it is an extension of the TV show.

Yesterday on perezhilton.com they posted a link to this INCREDIBLE fall a skater took at the X-games.  He lost control and literally fell 40 feet on to the flat part of the ramp.  He landed on his ass.  How the kid isn’t dead or paralyzed is beyond me.  He walked away from it, eventually. Here it is, you won’t believe it.     

10 or 12 years or so ago I invested in my first pair of Oakley sunglasses. Oakley was as cool as cool could be when it came to sunglasses.  I got them under the veil of a requirement for volleyball play, to protect the eyes.  I loved the way they looked even if I didn’t love the pricey 100 dollar price tag.  Well after wearing them for not all that long, I noticed something curious, one of the arms broke, right in the middle.  Ah bummer, I guess I am just unlucky.  I buy another pair and even wind up buying a pair for Ali.  Imagine my surprise when both of these pairs also have broken arms after several months!  I was quite pissed.

I did some research and contacted Oakley.  I was happy to find out that I could get the glasses replaced under warranty.  So I wound up getting THREE replacement pairs of eye jackets, surely the pairs they sent me have had this problem corrected.  I was once again an Oakley fan and even went so far as to buy some of the even more expensive M-Frame glasses.  So of course, you know where this is going.  The replacement Eye Jackets also broke AT THE EXACT SAME SPOT.  Pieces of shit. I once again tried to get new pairs to replace the replacements but Oakley would not go for it.  They said the original pairs have passed the coverage point of warranty but they would be happy to sell me new pairs at a slightly reduced price from new. No thanks, jerks.

To top things off, my 150 dollar M-Frames also have broke, again the frame snapped.  I don’t know if it is planned failure so people are forced into buying new glasses or just poor engineering.  It sucks because I LOVE the lenses in the glasses, they are just awesome at blocking the sun while making what you see crystal clear.  The reason this rant came about was I just happened to pull out my 3 broken Eye Jackets that I had stuffed into a box at work.  I am trying to see if some smart company decided to make replacement arms for these problematic sunglasses.  If I could grab some arms for a few bucks, they would be good as new.  For some reason, I never have been able to bring myself to throw these glasses away.  

Even though I am in decent shape already, I may throw my name into this silly site just for fun. For SPARTA!

I gave the 300 workout a good college try today but it was disappointing.  I didn’t even try to do push ups or clean and presses.  I only got to rep 14 of the floor wipers before I had to stop because it was irritating the shoulder.  45 box jumps though and 17 pull ups on the last set although that is entirely because I wasn’t all that tired from skipping a good chunk of the normal routine.  Oh well.

 I just ordered a Roomba Pet model a few minutes ago.  I miss having nicely swept floors when I get home at night.  With my bastardized set up I currently run everything is a manual process.  I have accumulated a decent size pile of stuff that I need to get up on ebay to sell.  I would like to snag a Dirt Dog Roomba to keep the garage/pool deck cleaned up.  Evey week there is ample sand, grass clippings, dead insects, spider webs and more on the garage floor.  I hate when I walk out to the fridge in the garage in bare feet and come back in feeling like I corn dogged the soles of them.

Here I am 6 days after my volleyball tournament and my shoulder is still torched.  As a result I will be doing a gimped version of the 300 today.  Push ups and the overhead clean and presses are definitely out at this time.  Pull ups and the floor wipers could be a challenge as well.  I’ll do what I can.

I have a ton of movies to watch, Shrek 3, The Marine, Oceans 13, Fantastic Four, Simpsons, Die Hard, Hitch and more await my review.  Hopefully I will knock out a few of them this weekend.

My nighttime bedroom Tivo viewing has been a bit different this week.  Instead of watching fighting related shows like most every other night, I have been watching Texas Hold Em on tv.  As I said earlier, it is addicting.  I find that by watching people play I pick up  a decent amount of tips on how to play.  I even have hopped on to bodog.net and pokerstars.net to play a few hands. 

The latest van update has parts on order that could arrive tomorrow or could arrive in a couple days.  I am hoping by this time next week it will be back in our driveway.

The bridge collapse is a pretty scary story. I saw the video of it going down.  It is basically Ali’s worst nightmare come to life.  She is terrified of crossing bridges and heights in general.  I can’t imagine what it was like to be driving across a bridge one second and then be in free fall the next.

I have a lot of small things to knock out this weekend.  The cantaloupe seedlings have grown incredibly fast and have to get in the ground this weekend.  I have so many of them that I expect the entire garden to be nothing but a melon field for awhile.  I am armed with my Thuracide to battle those little green worms that devour anything I place in the garden eventually.

Wow in less than a month we will be on the road, heading west.  I am looking forward to the trip.  I could definitely use something to help break up “the routine”.   I plan to bring my entertainment with me.  DVD’s and Ali’s laptop connected to the internet via my Treo will keep us “plugged in” occasionally.

I don’t feel very chatty, full moon side effect.

Last night while we ate dinner I fired up Sicko, the latest Michael Moore documentary.  Sicko is about the American medical system and how it compares to the government run health programs around the world.  Wow, now I have yet another thing to be disgusted with.  I guess I haven’t given much though to health care over my life since I always have been fortunate enough to have health insurance.  There have been several episodes when I did receive medical care and was floored by the bills that were generated.

I remember when I was 30 and had the vein pulled out of my left leg, the bills were so outrageous that I refused to pay them for a very long time, only relenting just before they were turned over to a collector so I could keep my credit record spiffy.  However my run ins with “the system” were minor compared to the examples shown in the movie.

Once again, the root of this evil is big business, insurance companies whom profit by denying people health care.  Lobbyists are the minions of these companies, buying off any politician they can so they are allowed to continue their legalized rape of the American people.  Just like big oil, the insurance companies throw their money around to squash any attempts to get a national health care system in place.   Insurance companies are obscenely profitable.  The one CEO they showed had compensation worth 1.5 BILLION dollars.

They showed the health care systems in Canada, England, France and Cuba, yes, Cuba.  All of these countries have government run health care.  All of these countries see health care as a basic need/right of their citizens, just like a police force, fire departments and libraries.  For some reason in the US, our people have been brainwashed to think it makes perfect sense that only certain people should qualify for competent medical care.  Insurance and drug companies pay a lot of money to keep us thinking that way.

If you need another reason to get really angry with big business and politicians, watch Sicko.  It made me sick. Oh yea, it gets an A.

I finally got an update on the van.  Evidently the reason the rear brakes were hot was because the emergency brake cable was rusted solid, keeping the brakes applied at all times.  Hmmm that will hurt your gas mileage a bit huh?  We haven’t even gotten to the point of money/fault yet.  I will strongly offer up that this problem was present when they replaced the brakes the first time and they just didn’t catch it, since I have never used the emergency brake on the van since I have owned it. 

They also found several bushings in the front end that were gone which could be contributing to the mystery vibrations.  I talked to the owner awhile and he again said how they have been so busy and they are working the van work in between more urgent jobs.  I will call back today to see if anything more concrete comes up.  I just want the work done.

My scheduled Friday 300 workout may be in jeopardy.   I tried to do chest today and got nowhere with it.  My warm up set of dumbbell chest presses was a no go.  I couldn’t even press them up once before the pain in my shoulder deadened the arm, making it impossible to push.  Knocking out 50 push ups, holding a 135 pound barbell overhead for 2 or 3 minutes and doing 50 presses overhead just will not be possible without a rapid recovery in the next 48 hours. 

The results from the Fort Myers event are up.  The team that took first off our net won the whole thing and we beat them one game so it is a small consolation. 

They seem to have assembled a good cast of characters for Big Brother 8.  There are a few of them that stand out to me.  Evil Dick is quite the character.  He is an in your face, brutally honest, brutally paranoid type of guy.  He is a late 40’s rock band type of dude.  His daughter whom he hadn’t talked to in two years is also in the house.  Evidently their relationship has been rather explosive and they have been attempting to mend things in front of a national audience.  His daughter is very pretty but she is so thin that she looks like a poster model for anorexia.

There is a gay guy in there named Dustin that has an uncanny resemblance to our next door neighbor both in appearance and speaking style.  Then there is this incredibly annoying, incredibly vain girl named Jen.  She walks around constantly wearing shirts with her name incorporated into them with sayings like “Jensa Member”  She thinks that she is extremely beautiful, she isn’t. The black girl Jamica is extremely religious.  She walks around telling people how the result of the show is preordained by God.  When she starts on her sermons the show’s producers drop in a church music bed. Funny.  For me, Amber is the biggest emotional wreck on the show.  The girl cries constantly.  She cries for no reason.  She cries if the sky is blue.  She cries if the wind blows.  I have never seen a person cry as much as she does, it is insanity.

Yea when I lead with reality tv talk you know I don’t have much to say.

It seems poor old Mike Vick’s hole is just getting deeper and deeper.  Now one of the three people indicted has flipped over to a guilty plea in exchange for a lesser sentence.  For sure he also agreed to totally spill the beans on Mikey.  He is so f’d.  I saw on the news a bunch of idiots rallying for Vick.  I also heard the race card being played of course, saying because he is black, he is getting unfair media coverage. Yea, ok.  Just admit you are a piece of shit and enjoy your time in jail.  Talk about pissing your life away…

So I emailed my dad and step mom about the spider/mice/rattlesnake issues.  The story I got back from them was much less severe sounding than my sister relayed to me.  “Overrun with rattlesnakes” in reality was one rattlesnake.  My step mom also sent along a bunch of pictures of the place, all of which look very nice.  I think things will be fine.  One thing my step mom did confirm is there is a hell of a lot of work to do at this place, much more than was at the Gouglersville house they moved from, partly because there was too much to do. 🙂

The van repair so far is a non-story.  I called yesterday around 2 and they got real busy with “emergency” work and didn’t look at it yet.  They knew I wasn’t in a rush to get it back so that was fine with me.  The owner said he wanted to make sure to set aside time to check all the issues out which is what I wanted to hear.

I am still moaning and groaning as I get around.  My left shoulder is still very sore and the muscles in my legs and abs are sore.  The arches of my feet even feel stretched.  It’s funny that my knees actually may have come through this in the best shape they have in a while, no nasty cracking thus far. You can see the additions to my volleyball page here.  I added a couple more volleyball tips, bringing the total up to a whoopping 225! Wow I am almost back to .500 winning percentage, pretty sad…

I was sad to hear Bill Walsh died.  His run as the 49er’s coach was amazing.  He was looking pretty brittle in recent pictures I had seen of him.  He seemed like an older guy when he was coaching.  Hard to believe his 49er heyday was two decades ago… 

I am sore all over.  The soreness is from the volleyball tournament on Saturday.  Randall and his girlfriend came over to our place Friday night.  I picked up pizza for us and we ate pizza and drank.  Later in the night we sat down and watched Idiocracy again, with me proclaiming it as one of the funniest movies we ever saw.  I am not sure if Randall and his girlfriend thought it was as funny as I did, but they did plenty of laughing along the way.  The alcohol made me very tired and since we had to get up early for the tournament we packed it in before 11.

Saturday morning Randall, his girlfriend and I left a little after 7.  Ali was talking about coming later in the day after she did a class at the gym.  We got to the tournament site in about 45 minutes, a joy compared to the 2 hours it typically takes me to get to the east coast tournaments. This was a Zephyr Hills tournament which is fancier than the other tour that runs through the state.  Zephyr Hills has better t-shirts, better free hand outs and all the free water you want.  The other tour gives you a boring, white t-shirt and that is it.  The tourney shirt for this event was Eagles green, I like it a lot.

Randall and I did our typical throw the football around warm up that was implemented a decade ago by Rich and I.  Originally there were supposed to be two nets of 4 teams each.  One team was a no show so our net became a three team net.  In the past in that situation, we normally would wind up playing two games against each team in the pool instead of one game.  However the tournament organizers said we would be playing best two out of three against each team, a format I never did before in 15 years of playing ball.  Instead of being to 21 or 25 points, each game was a shorter 15 points.

We lucked out in our schedule.  We are the only team on the net that didn’t have to play back to back matches.  It was quite warm and staying out on the court for a minimum of 4 straight games with the possibility of 6 straight games, was not something I was interested in.  We played in the first match.  The team we played had one kid I remembered playing a few years back and another younger guy that was very athletic.  The guy I knew was a shot maker.  His play style reminded me of Brian up north.  He would place the ball where you weren’t and if he got a set he could hit the ball hard as well.   His partner was a bit more erratic but made up for it with rabbit quickness and a seemingly endless energy reserve.

Our first game against them was horrid.  We lost something like 15-6.  Randall and I took turns making unforced error after unforced error, mostly shanked passes.  It was not the start we were looking for.  So after only a couple minute break, we had to try to pull things together and play them again.  Game two was a different story.  We made some plays and the serving practice I did before the game was helping.  Although I wasn’t hitting the ball as hard as I would like on the serve, I was hitting it high, with some downspin that would make the ball move as it approached, making it hard to pass accurately.  Randall got his serve working that game as well.  The game was close and we managed to win the game 21-19,  well past the game to 15 format.  You had to win by two and there was no cap.

We felt much better about ourselves after that win.  Game three was tight but we wound up losing that one.  It seemed like most scrambles and lucky breaks went the other team’s way that game.  So our start was 1-2 but the good thing was that we totally controlled our destiny if we took care of the other team in our second match.

During the first match I was having way too may rants and outbursts, swearing loudly and just generally making an ass out of myself.  After the match I saw that there were two or three young kids around watching their dads play, which made me feel like a big dick.  The rest of the day I made a conscious effort to knock off the loud swearing.  I knew if I was there with my kid and heard someone carrying on like I was, I would think I was an asshole.  I managed to keep things more or less under control the rest of the day.

So our second match came up, it was against two guys in college, one named Jose the other named Kiran.  Kiran was from the UK and he is a very a good soccer player.  He only started playing volleyball this year.  You could tell the guy is a great athlete, for just starting to play, he was extremely good.  During a timeout in the match, he put on a little exhibition of his ball juggling abilities where he used his feet and head only.  It was rather amazing.  He used his soccer abilities to make foot saves two or three times, it was amazing.  If he got a good set, he could crush the ball.  As a result, the majority of our serves went to Jose.  We managed to beat them handily both games, wrapping up our playoff spot.  Randall and I played well.  I had some confidence in my hitting and as a result did a decent amount of hitting on two with success.  I even had a hit or two in my favorite spot, hard angle, short.

In between the matches Randall and I went up and took a dip in the hotel pool.  I wasn’t sure if technically I was allowed to but I didn’t much care.  I figured the worst that could happen is someone could tell me no.  The water was very warm, it almost felt like it was body temperature.  Randall joked it was from all of the pee in the pool.  Well it was wet so it served it’s purpose.

So the playoffs got underway.  We played a team with a tall lanky kid like me and a shorter skinny guy.  Again the shorter guy got the majority of the serves and again, aggressive serving worked well for us.  We won the game rather easily and were into the semi-finals.

The semi-final was against the first place team off the other net, another pair of young, athletic guys that could both hit hard.  Randall ran into Steve Sax syndrome during this match and could hardly get a serve in.  However I didn’t give him a ton of shit about it because he was trying to do hard aggressive serves which is what was working for us all day. My bump setting wasn’t as consistent as it should have been but even so, Randall managed to make some nice plays off of bad sets. But in the end we just couldn’t afford that many unforced errors and we wound up losing the semis 25-20. It was mildly disappointing but compared to what transpired at my last outing, it was a 100% improvement.

Ali never did make it to the tournament.  For some reason I thought her class at the gym was at 9:30 but it wasn’t until 10:30.  By the time she would have gotten up there, there was a good chance we would be almost done or done completely so I just told her to not bother.  She felt bad about it but it was just miscommunication.  She used the extra time to mow the grass which was cool since I certainly didn’t feel up to doing it.

We had one more game  to play, the 3/4 playoff to decide who finishes “in the money”.  Third place gets prizes, 4th does not.  We wound up playing Jose and Kiran again and again we handled them rather easily.  I was fine with a third place finish which earned Randall and I a matching set of towels that were actually pretty nice.  I was pretty beat up all over but surprisingly, my knees were not leading the way in the pain department. 

My left shoulder was hurting pretty bad as a result of my harder serving and frequent hitting.  I had a new injury I never had before.  The beefy part of my left palm looked like tenderized meat.  It was all swollen and reddish/purple.  I am not quite sure how I did that.  I am guessing it was either from catching the point of the football during warm ups or from one of the handful of blocks I had, a couple of which went off my hands rather hard.  The rest of my body just felt sort of beat up.

So we packed up our ample amount of equipment and headed home.  I hopped in the pool to get the outer layer of scuz off me.  Randall followed suit.  Then we cleaned up and got ready to go out for dinner.  I did an abbreviated icing session on both my knees as a preventative measure although in all honesty they didn’t feel nearly as bad as I expected them to.  Randall had suggested Carraba’s since he knew it was one of my favorite restaurants. 

Going there on a Saturday night meant a long wait for sure.  The girls were told an hour wait when they grabbed the buzzer.  However Randall spotted an outside table that was available.  His girlfriend and he were fine with sitting outside.  If it was just me, I would have probably opted for waiting it out and sitting inside for no other reason than I just like the atmosphere inside the place.  But Randall and I were both hungry so it wasn’t hard to convince me to skip the hour wait. 

Sitting outside wasn’t bad, the sun was out of sight and we had a noisy ceiling fan right above us keeping a nice breeze on us at all times.  The only time I felt bad about it was later in the meal when I noticed a fly/bug kept bothering Randall’s girlfriend.  The food was excellent as ever and our waiter was very nice.  Randall initially was going to pay for the entire meal which I objected strongly to.  I threw him 40 bucks to  cover our half and threw the bill on his credit card.  Although I never saw the total of the bill, so I am hoping I tossed him enough.

By the time we got back home we were both exhausted.  Nicki, who throughout the weekend would constantly cycle between being afraid of Randall to liking Randall, once again acted like she never saw him before and barked as we came in the door.  We all sacked out around 10 o’clock.

 Sunday morning I crawled out of bed feeling like a 70 year old man.  It was hard to identify any major body parts that didn’t hurt in some manner.  It wasn’t unexpected.  This is normally how I feel if I don’t play volleyball regularly.  If I was playing every other week, the aftermath would be much less severe.  I popped my two advil and started my day. 

The girls made plans to go shopping at the outlets with my mom later in the morning.  During the morning I walked around the house, slowly, doing a few things around the house.  After the girls left, Randall and I sat around like “men” and first watched 300 (although we both have seen it multiple times) followed by watching three straight hours of World Series of Poker.  Watching the poker was strangely addicting.  The interaction between and personalities of the players was very entertaining.  I definitely would like to learn more about the game although I don’t think I would be very good at it at all. 

Sitting still for that amount of time made me feel like a lazy slug, I just don’t ever do it.  Well I don’t ever do it except when I am sitting in front of WoW where my brain and hands are active at least.  The girls shopping trip went long and they didn’t get home until around 5.  Randall and his girlfriend still had to drive back across the state so they packed their stuff up, thanked us for our hospitality and were on their way. 

 Five minutes after their departure we too were on the road, dropping the party van off at the garage for it’s check up.  I am awaiting the call from the garage with anxiety.  I fully expect this to be a big bill.  I typed up a comprehensive list of the issues and stapled it to the prior bill so they could refer to what was done previously and included it with my keys.  I just want the thing to be right, as right as it can be at 14 years old with 119k on the odometer.   

My sister called me on Sunday, asking me about details of the trip out west so we can coordinate getting together.  During the call she gave me some more details about my dad’s place he didn’t mention.  Besides living in the middle of the desert with no AC, the house apparently is infested with spiders and mice/rats.  They also have a bad rattlesnake problem, they are everywhere.  Well my mom heard the same details from my sister and relayed them to Ali.  Now Ali is freaked out about staying there.  The idea of spiders under her pillow is not appealing and she is terrified of the idea of Nicki getting bit by a rattlesnake.  So I have to talk to my dad and see how bad things really are and go from there.  I reassured Ali we would “work it out” She didn’t feel reassured by my assurance. 

No 300 today, I am way too sore.