Archives 2007

So enjoy a  funny picture, ho, ho, ho

Ever since Monday I have felt like I was on the cusp of getting sick.  I have been taking Airborne twice a day since Monday to try to combat the onset of illness.  Airborne is this stuff you drop in water that dissolves sort of like Alka-Seltzer, that you drink.  It doesn’t look good and it doesn’t taste good but so far I have been able to keep myself feeling the same instead of worse.  I may be playing vball this weekend with Randall and being sick would put the kabosh on that.

For a good chunk of the past two days I have been battling some incredibly dug in spyware/adware shit that has infected an office computer that a co-worker was using at home.  It is incredibly frustrating.  I have run the system through so many virus and spyware sweeps I have lost count.  Time and again it appears that I have removed the shit only to have it reinstall itself after restarting normally.  The system has multiple things on it, the two worst being something that acts like the Sasser virus as well as the Virtumonde adware.  Late yesterday I said enough was enough, I reimaged it.  It will take me less time to get back to square one that way than it would have dicking around with removal any further.  To hell with it.  The people that write this stuff should go to jail, seriously.

I got a call from the Sheriff’s office today regarding my case.  I was hopeful that it was to tell me that they are progressing on the case and are closing in on nailing the bastard that tried to steal my identity.  The guy that called just wanted to make sure I had my charges reversed and that the card was cancelled, all stuff I had already told the original deputy I had done.  He said that he doubted there was much that was going to happen since it was out of their jurisdiction.  I told him some of the legwork I did that would help track down the person that did this.  He said that even if they obtained the customer information that corresponded to using that IP address at that time, they have to PROVE that person was sitting behind the computer at that time.  Yea, that would be tough to prove. So the bottom line is this guy is going to go unpunished for what he did. It’s bullshit.

I just got a call from the pool cage company that came out to fix the shoddy screening the week of Thanksgiving.  It was the owner’s wife.  She told me she had an invoice for the screen repair.  Of course I immediately got angry.  I told her the screen install was defective and there should be no charge.  She said her husband said that the screen spline was in place and the cut was on the inside of the cage.  I attacked immediately saying that first of all the section of screening was on the far side of the cage where there is no activity and that I was sure the screening was defective from the start, I just never noticed it because unless you push on that section of screening you wouldn’t notice.  I mean WTF, it is a clean cut down the entire length of panel, do they think I took a utility knife and slashed it?

She could tell she stepped into a hornet’s nest and said she would have her husband call me.  Good, you do that.  I will rip into this guy if he tries to pursue charging me for their defective workmanship.  My line will go something like this.  “So you are telling me you want to charge me to “repair” an installation problem with my pool cage that cost me $17,000 dollars to build and 9 months to wait for?  The repair that you came to do a week later than you said you would that required me to call you three times to follow up on?  Yea, you send that invoice and we’ll see how that goes.” What a f’in dickhead.

My good buddy and volleyball partner Charlie had his mom recently pass away.  I only met his mom a few times but everytime I saw her she was always nothing but smiles.  Charlie evidently inherited her happy personality.  I feel terrible for his loss and wish him and his family all the best.

So the second season of Heroes wrapped up last night.  Much like last season’s finale there were some strange things that happened that didn’t quite make sense.  Two heroes bit the dust in the finale, Nathan Petrelli and the bi-polar on steroids chick, Nicki.  The Nicki character never did much for me, losing her off the show doesn’t break my heart at all.

  Nathan dying at the end didn’t make much sense.  He gets shot because he is going to reveal his secrets, however the other two heroes at the podium, his brother Peter and Parkman the chubby mind reading cop are just fine.  Would killing Nathan somehow magically super glue shut the lips of the other two??  Plus it was established that Nathan got a blood transfusion from Adam which allowed him to heal the horrible burns he got from trying to save Peter in last season’s finale.  Adam has the power of self regeneration, you basically can’t kill him.    I thought it had sort of been established that once you get this super blood in you you maintain the ability to self heal.  If this was the case, Nathan should have been able to burp out the bullets and be just fine. Well whatever.  Syler now has his powers back, watch out.

In general I enjoyed this season quite a bit, probably not quite as much as season 1.  They need to trim down the story lines a bit.  Trying to maintain all those plots in a one hour show filled with way too many commercials just is too confusing.  They need to kill off a few more heroes.  Parkman could go as well as the little kid that talks to electronics and the black girl that has photographic muscle memory. 

Somehow I neglected to put in a cat update.  The first couple days after her episode, Buttons was a wreck.  She literally didn’t move for the first day, she just laid in the same spot in the utility room.  By the second day she would try to move but was unable to take more than a step or two until she had to sit down and rest.  When she attempted to walk it almost looked like everything in her back half was rusted.  Yesterday was the first day that she seemed to be getting back to somewhat normal.  She was actually able to walk all the way back to her normal hang out spot in our bedroom.  This morning she actually made her way over to the guest bathroom to get her normal morning “drippies” after I washed my hair.  We are no longer putting down dry food at all.  I put down a can of Fancy Feast in the morning and in the evening.  Yesterday I started giving her insulin again although only half her normal dose.  I will slowly increase it as I see further improvement from her. As much as I have complained about her, I definitely took pity on the cat and have been treating her with kid gloves since the siezure.

So Saturday afternoon we were ready to work on another list item, Christmas Decorations.  The prep started outside.  In the past I have put a lot of work into my outside light set up,  normally stringing lights along the entire roof line, around all the palm trees out front, around Nicki’s fenced area and sometimes even some of the trees in the orchard.  I just didn’t have any interest in going all out for Christmas.  Instead we simply put some lights around the front windows, the door, the topiaries, the fence around Nicki’s area and the two oak trees close to the house. 

It took very little time for me to get aggravated.  When I put the lights away last year they were all working.  Somehow, sitting in a box for a year manged to kill a bunch of the strands.  It seemed every set I plugged in had half the lights out.  Ali talked me down a bit and we used several half working strands to make one good one.  Even with the abbreviated outside decorations it took awhile to get them up.  They don’t look half bad.

So instead of getting a live tree this year, I told Ali I was content with just putting up Pop Pop’s small four foot tall, 30 year old artificial tree.  We took it out of it’s bag and removed all the old lights and ornaments that were still attached.  the funniest ornament was the one Ali made as a kid.  It was balled up Hershey Kiss wrappers, attached to a paper clip.   I had gotten some funky LED Christmas lights at Sam’s Club that we put on the tree.  Ali wasn’t crazy about how they looked.  I thought it was kinda cool, the contrast between an old Christmas tree adorned with modern LED lights.  We placed the tree on a small table and put it in front of the window.

We then went through the 7 or 8 big tubs of Christmas decorations and selectively pulled out things.  The idea that we were going to be gone 5 days leading up to Christmas just made me feel like there wasn’t much point in going all out.  I bet we only put out a third of what we have.  No train, no every flat surface occupied by a Christmas decoration, no lights strung around my computer desk.  It just isn’t in me.  Ali was disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm for the Christmas season.  You can see the pictures of our sparse decorations here. Yea they are mostly blurry but you get the gist.

So earlier in the day I did something dishonest.  Saturday morning I dropped Ali off at the gym while I went to Sam’s to get a few things.  I told her I would pick her up in about an hour.  So I get my Sam’s shopping done and then go to Dunkin Donuts to get Ali her large ice tea that she likes after a workout.  I still had about 10 minutes left so I thought I would be productive and quickly get the Camry washed since it was a bit cruddy.

So I drive up the road a mile or so and see a Shell that has a car wash.  I had no desire to go inside and pay for a car wash so even though the Camry had around a half tank of gas I figured I would fill it up and then pay for the car wash at the pump.  I pull up to a pump and then realize that it had the yellow OUT OF ORDER things over the pumps. F, that’s annoying, so I start to back out and immediately get greeted by a horn of a SUV that whipped in behind me.  Three or four of the pumps were out of order for some reason.  All of the working pumps had vehicles at them so I pulled behind a van with a Hispanic guy that looked like he was ready to leave.  Uncharacteristically for me, I picked the right pump, he indeed pulled out less than a minute after I got behind him.

So I get out, swipe my card and get greeted with “Card not Processed….”  and then it displayed “Please remove nozzle and select grade”  Puzzled, I swiped the card again, same thing.  Ok I pulled out a different credit card and swiped it, same thing.  So I was frustrated as hell since I knew I was rapidly approaching the time I set with Ali to pick her back up.  So the screen was still telling me to remove the nozzle and select grade, so I did.  I was surprised when it started to pump!  It showed on the screen “$20 prepaid”  WTF?  I didn’t prepay.  I had no idea how I managed to get a free 20 dollar ride.  So I pumped the 20 bucks got my receipt and then swiped my card again so I could get the car wash.  I pumped another 5 bucks worth of gas which topped the car off, got my receipt that had the car wash code and sat back in the car observing the receipt.  I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to bother to go inside to try to straighten out what happened.  It was their f up and I was in a rush.

So just as I am getting ready to pull out to go into the car wash, a female clerk comes running out of the store.  “Sir, sir!!”  she yells as she approached.  I knew why she was coming out but I acted like I didn’t.  I rolled down the window and she asked me to see my receipt which I gave to her.  She asked if I only pumped 5 dollars in gas.  I said no that there was something screwy going on and it pumped 20 before it would take my card.  She said that the Hispanic guy that pulled out of the pump prepaid 20.  I told her that I saw him pull out so I figured he was done.  So I had to go inside and pay the 20 bucks so the van guy could get his gas.  When I was in there the clerks were mumbling how “it” screwed up again.  I felt like a creep as I signed the credit slip.  even though it was their screw up and I was rushed, the bottom line is it was dishonest.  I felt bad about it.  I got my car wash and wound up picking up Ali ten minutes late.

We watched the new Shrek Christmas special.  It seems that any Christmas Special made in the last 20 years basically sucks and I expected this one to suck as well.  I was pleasantly surprised.  It was actually entertaining and funny.

I finally got to watch the rest of Loose Change Final Cut.  It was far less shocking to me than the second edition, largely because much of it covered the same things as I was flabbergasted by in Loose Change 2nd Edition.  These were the new things I took away from this film.

The fact that $100,000 was wired to Atta by the head of the Pakistan intelligence agency whom had very close ties to the US government is very shady.  And yes, he was in Washington on 9/11.

  In the four years after 9/11, the Bush administration had managed to borrow more money from foreign governments than ALL previous administrations COMBINED.  Yes, going back to George Washington.  Good ole W managed to borrow $1.05 trillion from foreign sources in 4 years, everyone else, dating back to 1776, $1.03 trillion.  Think about that, the reality of it is STAGGERING.

  They show clips of several news broadcasts that reported the fall of WTC building 7 BEFORE it fell.  In fact during the one clip, the female reporter is reporting the collapse of WTC 7 as it is standing in the back ground behind her. They show a video of WTC 7 going down that seems to offer indisputable proof that something fishy was going on.  Unlike the twin towers that at least started their collapse at the top, WTC 7 CLEARLY collapses from the bottom up.  It makes zero sense.

 The documentary further paints a disturbing picture of coincidences that are just too numerous to be coincidences.  I know I have said it repeatedly but please, take a couple hours out of your life and take a look.

So, the Eagles lost again, not all that surprising.  However the way they lost was very disturbing.  AJ Feeley basically shit the bed.  I was surprised when I saw that Donovan didn’t start.  he looked pretty miserable on the sidelines.  I’m sure he was smiling inside by the end of the game.  AJ just threw some HORRIBLE interceptions, interceptions that would get a pee wee league QB yanked.  He managed to throw three pics to the same player.  It appeared as though AJ got tunnel vision on a receiver and wasn’t surveying the field around him.  Even with Feeley repeatedly killing the team with interceptions, the Eagles actually had a great shot to win after Brian Westbrook had a thrilling long punt return to get the Eagles within 15 yards of scoring the game winning TD.  Then after two unproductive plays, Feeley drops back and somehow, once again, manages to hit that linebacker right between the numbers, killing the drive, killing the chance to win, killing any hope the Eagles had of making the playoffs and effectively killing any thought that AJ could be a legitimate heir apparent to Donovan or a starting QB on any NFL team.  To be honest I didn’t get all that bent out of shape about the loss.  I don’t really care.  To me it was almost equally concerning that some of the coaches were wearing those horrible, Michelin Tire man meets gansta, white overstuffed ski jackets.  They looked insanely stupid.

This morning on the Stern Show I heard a song written by Billy Joel and performed by Cass Dillon.  It is about the war in Iraq.  It’s called, Christmas in Fallujah.  It’s very powerful.  Take a look.

So I get home last night after work and Nicki gives me her normal ” I haven’t seen you in 10 years” excited greeting.  I take her out to do her bathroom run and come back in and give her a treat.  I walk back into the bedroom and immediately smell something.  I see two small pieces of shit in the bathroom, one on the rug and one on the tile floor.  It didn’t make sense to me why Nicki would drop little pieces like this but I immediately spun around and told her she was naughty!  The tone in my voice instantly dropped her ears and she went and laid down on her dog bed of shame.  I hadn’t even taken notice of Buttons who was sitting by the doorway to the bathroom.  I glance down and give her the normal, “Hi Buds…” greeting and then do a double take.  Buttons has her mouth wide open, tongue hanging out and is panting like mad.  There is a long disgusting string of mucus hanging from her jaw.  Soon I realized that it was cat shit that I just picked up.  Yep Buttons was once again in the midst of insulin shock. 

Before I left for work that morning, Buttons threw up in the living room.  It was a big pile.  She literally has about 3 teeth left in her mouth.  As a result she basically swallows her dry food whole.  This lends itself to vomiting apparently.  This was a BIG pile of vomit considering it was from a cat.  You could see the intact pieces of food very clearly.  Well I gave her her insulin shot in the morning just as I always do, giving no thought to it.  I assumed she would go back and eat during the day.  Well for whatever reason, she mustn’t have remembered to eat.  As a result when the insulin kicked in it sucked her blood sugar way down which turns her into a blind, drooling mess that can’t even walk.

Since I had seen insulin shock several times before (I think this is her 4th or 5th episode)  I was not panicked.  In fact I was more annoyed than anything, knowing what the night was going to hold for me.  I got changed, went to the bathroom and looked at the mail before I addressed the Buttons situation.  I scooped her up and put her in the bathtub.  She smelled like roadkill, it was disgusting.  I called Ali whom was still at work and told her the news.  Ali asked me what I wanted do.  I replied “Well I would like to hit her over the head with a shovel…”  which instantly horrified Ali, no I didn’t mean it.  Ali said she would leave work asap.

So I take the emergency container of honey that we keep on hand for these situations.  Along with the panting and drooling, Buttons was meowing loudly, she was obviously scared and being temporarily blind is certainly no fun.  I grab her head and shove the nozzle of the honey container in her mouth and start squeezing.  The cat winds up wearing most of the honey but she took some as well.  I also had the bright idea of wetting her down to hopefully disperse some of the smell.  All that did was scare her more and make her a smelly wet cat.  I brought in a towel to wrap around her.  While Ali was in transit I gave Buttons several more doses of honey.  Her condition wasn’t improving, she was still panting uncontrollably and drooling like a mental patient.  I would take a break and do some things in between honey shots.  I knew from past experience you just have to ride it out and wait for the sugar in her system to come back up.

So Ali gets home and takes over the care.  She mixes up some sugar water to give the cat out of a syringe.  that would get absorbed even faster than the honey.  Ali got upset as she watched Buttons struggling to stand up.  She had no control over her muscles and was still blind.  Ali said she couldn’t believe I said I wanted to hit her with a shovel.  I reiterated that I didn’t mean it.  Again and again we would give the cat sugar via water or honey form.  It was around 8pm and there was still not a major improvement.

I told Ali that we just need to give her some time.  I told her that Buttons at least seemed slightly better than when I got home.  We sat down and watched Survivor with a few small breaks to check on her.  By the time the show was over the cat seemed to be turning the corner.  The constant panting had stopped and she seemed more alert.  She still had little motor skills and was probably exhausted from the ordeal that could have lasted many hours. (who knows when it started)  The cat actually responded to Ali rubbing her with purring.

So Ali asked what I wanted to do now.  I said we should give her a quick bath to get the stench off.  Buttons wasn’t thrilled with getting showered down but she at least wasn’t crying out like she was earlier whenever you touched her.  I toweled her off and then carried her over to the utility room where Ali had made a makeshift recovery bed by folding up a bunch of towels on the floor.  We sat a bowl of water near her and set up a nightlight.   I was exhausted and took a shower and went to bed.  Ali evidently stayed up later as I saw there was a note on the counter that Buttons ate about a third of  a can of a food last night.  When I opened the utility room door I wasn’t quite sure what I would see.  Would the cat be there stiff as a board with her legs up in the air or would she be back to normal begging me for food?  Well it was sort of in between.  She was sitting on the mat in front of her food and water bowl, facing me.  When I opened the door she simply looked at me and meowed.  She looked ok although obviously she still was unable to get around much on her own.  This too we have seen before.  Normally after these episodes she takes some time until she is able to move normally.

So once again at least so far, Buttons continues to carry on.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say that there was a part of me that wished it all would have ended last night.  Although at the same time I feel bad for the cat, it’s impossible not to.  We’ll see where it leads from here.   

This weekend will be Christmas decoration time.  I am not going to go overboard with the lights this year.  The fact that we are going to be gone 5 days leading up to Christmas makes me feel that it is sort of a waste to decorate as much as normal. 

Last night Ali asked me to not post specifics regarding our trip to Vegas because someone out there reading my blog could seize it as an opportunity to come out to our house and rob us while we are gone. Um ok, whatever. So we are going to Vegas sometime….

We also had a discussion regarding Ali’s latest trip to a financial advisor.  Ali and I are quite different in several regards and one of those are our general approach to the future.  Ali is very conservative and tends to worry about worst case scenario far more than I do.  She met with a financial guy that pitched her a “complete” financial analysis of our life and in conjunction a number of additional insurances and investment strategy suggestions.

Well having someone pitch me this sort of stuff is going to go over as well as trying to convert me to catholicism.  Ali gave examples of if I died that it could leave her in dire straits.  I did some quick addition of my life insurance policies that I have personally and through work as well my pension and other investment accounts  and came up with a number that would pay off the house and still give her six figures to play with.  To me that isn’t too shabby. 

Then Ali throws out the scenario of if her or I suffered some sort of catastrophic illness or injury and how the expenses related to that could ruin us.  That indeed is a possibility however remote.  I told Ali how I don’t think it is feasible to try to account for every possible scenario that could happen to an individual during his or her lifetime.  Ali pressed on.  It got to the point where no matter what Ali was saying, what I heard is “You aren’t doing a good job of taking care of me.” which starts a slow burn.

So the discussion ended shortly after that, it only would have been unproductive anyway.  I brought in the financial profile that was “specially prepared” for us to read through at work.  Even though I am sure the guy is a nice guy, in general I view people in his business as snake oil salesmen.  There is a reason that insurance companies are among the richest in the world.  They sell fear and cash in on it. 

So last night was the Dancing with the Stars finale.  I have only been loosely following the show this season while Ali has been glued to the tv set for each show.  Most weeks I didn’t see it all and would just ask Ali who got kicked off.  I did sit down and watch the final with Ali however.  Ali made a miscalculation and started watching the show at 9:15.  She thought the show started at 8, it really only started at 9.  Only giving it a 15 minute head start meant we soon caught up to the live broadcast on Tivo and had to sit through commercials!  It’s funny how used to commercial free tv you get.

Anyway I dozed off through parts of the show but woke up enough to see the final result after two hours of them dragging it out.  I’m glad Helio won.  He represented what the show should have been about, a non-dancer learning to dance.  Having the Cheetah and Spice girl on the show was a joke.  Yes they were fantastic but they are already professional dancers.  Helio has an incredibly positive, uplifting personality which is hard to believe.  The guy seems like he shits sunshine.  His partner, Julie Ann, whom also won last year is just as cute as a button and surely is a big part of why he won.  Oh well, it’s over.

Ali started our xmas shopping yesterday, working off a number of items that we came up with from catalogs.  This year we are trying a different approach when it comes to buying for our brothers and sisters that have kids.  Instead of buying presents for everyone we are just sending a check for the kids savings account.  The kids will certainly get plenty of toys and “stuff” from other people and Santa.  Our siblings are certainly old enough that they no longer need us to buy things for them either.  Likewise we don’t need  tons of stuff bought for us.  I told Ali last night that I wanted to cap what we bought for each other to three things each since we were going to Vegas the week before Christmas and surely will be spending tons of money there.  I have always loved the Christmas season (although in recent years it has rung a bit hollow).  Sitting down in front of a beautiful Christmas tree loaded down with presents is one of my favorite images, but I have to realize that I am an “adult” now and being more practical regarding Christmas is the adult thing to do.  Heck we aren’t even going to have a real tree since we are going away.  We are going to put up Pop Pop’s old artificial tree instead.  It’s going to be a different feeling sort of Christmas morning.

So even though the Spartan Halloween contest is nearly a month past, I have still been following some of the changes I made in preparation for it.  My weight is still the same and I still have been substituting my egg beaters, a piece of toast and a small glass of orange juice for the bowl of cereal I used to have.  I am only doing my 300 work out once a week instead of twice.  Instead of a second 300, I use that day to do some more unconventional exercise like explosive push ups on a bosu, handstand push ups, combo overhead press/squats and any other weird exercise that comes to mind.  For being less than a month away from my 40th birthday, I am in good shape, if I do say so myself.  I may not be the strongest I have ever been but I think I am definitely as fit as I can ever recall.  As I take a look around at my fellow forty year olds, I am holding up better than most.

I can only hope my generally good health continues.  When it comes my time to go I really hope it is via a quick hitting, unexpected manner.  Blow me up,  kill me in a car wreck or something along those lines.  The idea of fading away in a torturously slow manner as my mind turns into mush and my body disintegrates is my own personal idea of what hell is.

Mattel Electronic Football!

There was such a transformation throughout the house during the past four days it makes the time period seem longer.  The house went from being a warm, family atmosphere filled with the sights and sounds of a Thanksgiving day to a scene of chaos as rooms were ripped apart to prepare for painting and then late yesterday things were back in order with two rooms with entirely different feeling personalities to boot.  But let me start at the beginning.

Wednesday evening after work I went with Ali to the runners club meeting to do my presentation about the various timing systems.  Evidently there is some bad blood circulating between people on the board and it played out in the discussion regarding the timing system.  To me the one system was a clear slam dunk but the infighting resulted in no final decision being made.  It’s no skin off my back but the delay will make the implementation of the system just take longer.  It’s unfortunate.

After the meeting we picked up mom and brought her back to our place.  Although mom was already tired, she stayed up once we got to our place and watched part 2 of the Oprah show about the hoarding fat lady.  I was interested on mom’s take on the woman whom I so harshly criticized.  Part 2 had the big reveal after Oprah’s crew cleaned the place out, gutted it and totally redid the house inside.  The hoarders were basically rewarded for their years of disgusting, pathetic display of unabated, gluttonous consumerism with a brand new house.  Yay.  The woman talked about how she is a changed person and just loves how neat and organized things now are.  Of course she has only been in the house for a week or two since it was redone.  This is one show where I would definitely want to see the “where are they now…” follow up.  I can almost guarantee this woman will fall right back into her empty abyss of junk piles.    When the episode was done I asked my mom her opinion of the situation.  She agreed with me that the woman was indeed pathetic but offered little else.

I woke up early on Thanksgiving thanks to the alarm.  Ali had to drag herself out of bed at 5:15 to go work the race.  I got up with her and simply played WoW until mom got up a little after 7.  Once mom got up I hung out with her even though she assured me I could go back to diddling on my computer.  It was a beautiful, crisp morning, the type of morning that I used to be in awe of when we first moved to Florida but now has become accepted reality.

I flipped on the tv early out on the lanai in anticipation of the parade starting.    I have seen the Macy’s parade every year for as far back as I can recall however this year was the very first time I remember seeing the very beginning of the event where they cut the ribbon.  The weather in New York was too nice.  I like the parades were it is like 20 degrees and you get to watch the parade performers try to act like they are enjoying freezing their asses off.

Once the parade started I actually saw very, very little of it.  We had it on as background noise mostly but by mid-morning mom was in the pool which I had been heating for the past couple days.  We also started on the round of phone calls with me calling my brother, my sister and my dad.  I was on the phone with dad the longest by far.  He was ranting about a few topics. 

Once Ali got back the food prep began in earnest.  This year we totally skipped the turkey and went just with Tofurkey. In fact our entire meal was vegetarian and to be honest I didn’t mind at all.  We had tons of food, way more than was needed for 3 people.  Right before we ate I broke down and called my grandmother, despite my mom’s desire to the contrary.  Grandma picked up the phone and after a brief delay where it almost sounded like she was getting instructions on what to do, she answered with a grumbly “Hello…”  “Hi Grandma, it’s Shawn”  “WHO??”  Me, louder, “It’s SHAWN your grandson!”  “I can’t hear you..” she says.  I repeat again that it I am her grandson.  She acknowledges it with a simple “Oh ok…” like she had no clue still who I was.  So I ask her the standard questions, how are you feeling, how is the weather and if the facilities cat still came to visit her, all of which got one word answers.  I was really sad about the mental state grandma was in and was in the process of saying my goodbye’s without even handing the phone to mom.  However mom motioned that she would talk to her.  Surprisingly mom said grandma seemed more with it when she was on the phone with her.  Maybe mom’s voice is more recognizable to her.  Mom talked to her for a couple minutes and then hung up.  Wow that was indeed painful.  I tried to put the call out of mind as we sat down to eat our Thanksgiving feast.

Instead of eating in the dining room, we had all the food lined up buffet style on the kitchen island.  We loaded up our plates and then headed out to the table on the lanai to eat.  Again, the novelty of eating outside in late November is somewhat lost on people that have done it for a number of years but I took a second to be thankful for it.  90% of the population probably aren’t swimming or eating outdoors on Thanksgiving.  We are lucky.

The food was great and we all enjoyed our meal.  Clean up with three people involved didn’t take long at all and shortly after clean up mom was ready to get back home.  I brought Nicki with on the trip back to mom’s place.  When we got there, mom asked me to take a look at a plastic cover that had fallen off her third brake light.  It was funny, as I had the rear door open and was working on it, Nicki jumped up into the back of the Rav 4 and just sat there calmly looking around.  She just seemed very content with the world.  It was cute.  Mom thanked me for the good time and that was that. 

So the rest of the day we could have relaxed I suppose but knowing that we had a big painting project looming ahead of us made sitting around feel like wasting time. So late afternoon, early evening we started on ripping down the guest bathroom.  We removed as much as possible, pulling down the towel bar, toilet paper holder and even the medicine cabinet.  This process really shined a light on how shoddy some of the work on our house had been.  The idiots that did the detail painting were so lazy that they didn’t remove anything when they did the final painting.  There was white paint on the towel bar, the outlet covers, the toilet paper holder and the coup de grace the little silver disk that is around the shower pipe.  In order to avoid painting on that disk, the painter would have had to take 1 second to pull it away from the wall before painting around it and simply slide it back when done.  Nope, too lazy to even do that.  I would not recommend our builder to anyone, there are lots of places around the house where shoddy workmanship has reared it’s ugly head.

So anyway, after everything was out/off the walls the taping and patching could begin.  Having never taped up a room like this before it was a learning process.  At first I tried to use one long continuous piece of tape to do each edge.  It was next to impossible to get the tape from bunching up and folding while attempting to precisely place it.  So I changed my technique to ripping off manageable sections of tape and overlapping. Ali handled most of the patching duties.  We reached a stopping point where after a bit of sanding, we should be able to start painting on Friday. 

Friday morning Ali and I went on a frustrating whirlwind tour of errands.  I was quite anxious about venturing out into the world on Black Friday.  We stopped at two banks and then hit Lowe’s and Bed Bath & Beyond before making our final stop at the grocery store.  We picked out all new matching accessories for the bathroom.  The mostly black iron and wicker stuff along with the cheap, painted on bars and holders that adorned the bathroom was now history, replaced by much nicer, matching pieces.  I bet all in all we spent 3 to 4 hours out on the road, yuck.  Traffic was bad but manageable.

By the time we got back home and got things put away and unpacked it was a little after 3pm.  Well I was ready to get down to business and start painting.  It was a bit unnerving putting the first blob of paint on the wall.  Our walls that have been generic white for so long were about to get a rude awakening.  Ali manned the brush while I handled the big manly roller.  The process went rather well, the biggest trouble spot was doing the line at the ceiling.  Mom had directed me towards using this edge painter thing that has two wheels on the top and a brush pad on the back.  The theory is you get paint on the brush and then the wheels keep it right below ceiling level to give you a nice even clean edge.  Mom warned me about the possibility of putting too much paint on the pad which in turn could get on the wheels, causing a mess on the ceiling.  Well I had issues using the tool.  At first I wasn’t getting paint close enough to the edge and the paint that was getting on the wall was streaky.  So I got more aggressive with applying paint to the tool.  At first it was working better but then I went overboard and had paint spill onto one of the wheels.  Damn it.  It was a learning curve.  Eventually I learned a few things like you can’t use the tool to get all the way into the corner.  I also learned that the best way to use it was to start down on the wall a bit below the ceiling line and then push the tool up to the edge, ensuring that excess paint is moving downward, once up at the edge, the thing seemed to work better if I went left to right.  Ali hand painted the ceiling line at the corners.  The end result was not perfect but good enough.  As the paint dried it went through several color variations.  Since it is a small room, it didn’t take that long to paint.  I had the second coat on and drying in a total of maybe 2 hours.  When we started pulling the tape we saw several spots where we didn’t have a good seal, resulting in some shaky looking paint lines.  Ali’s steady hand once again came to the rescue as she delicately redid these spots with a tiny brush.  The color really looked good, it transformed the feel of the room.

  After allowing the second coat to dry it was getting kind of late but I was motivated to complete the transformation.  First I told Ali I just wanted to get the new toilet paper holder on the wall.  However that started an unstoppable snowball as one thing lead to another.  By the time I was done, everything was mounted and leveled.  Each piece we added made the room look better and better.  By the time we got it all together we were both incredibly pleased.  The bathroom now felt like it belonged in a Tommy Bahamas instead of our humble abode.  The glass shelf and glass table we added was a nice touch and the shitty, too low towel bar was relocated and replaced with a cool double bar that our guests will find much more workable.  We didn’t stop working until between 10 and 11pm.  Ali was extremely tired.  I was tired as well but the excitement of completing the transformation carried me through.  However, the prospect of starting the process all over on a much bigger room the next day was very daunting to me.  In fact, I considered at that point postponing doing that room until a later time. Luckily, depending on your point of view, when I woke up the next morning my motivation had returned.

Ali had some things to go out and do in the morning so it left me alone to perform room dis assembly.  It was bust ass work.  I pulled out all the light furniture including the king size bed, took down curtains, blinds, the shelf on the wall and the shelves in the closet.  I removed armies of stuffed animals as well as my collection of “old stuff I like” that I keep in that room.  By the time I was done, the great room was a disaster area of “stuff”.  With a casual glance, you wouldn’t have thought the guest bedroom had so much in it.

As I cleared stuff out I pulled a few things aside and put them on the kitchen counter to accompany me to work, namely my two handheld Mattel Electronic Football games.  These were the very first electronic game I ever remember having.  I recall mom getting it for me from Two Guys back in the 70’s.  It was a the biggest thing going.  Imagine the fun of moving a red blip around a tiny little screen avoiding all the other little fainter red blips.  It sounds ridiculous nowadays but damn I loved that game.  I would play for hours on end until the tendons in my thumbs were screaming in pain.  I also have the newer version of the game where they had fancy things like “passing”.  I always have preferred the original. 

Also set aside was the Furby.  I bought Ali this early on the year that they were insanely popular.  I remember being all proud of myself for securing one for her even though I paid a ridiculous 150 bucks for it.  Ali tried to act like she really liked it but it soon came out that she thought it was dumb.  Furby has spent a rather boring life, stuck on a shelf with boring, non-robotic stuffed animals.  When I picked Furby up I was surprised when he sprung to life with his normal “Cockle doodle doo!!”  I couldn’t believe the batteries had any oomph in them after years of non-use.  Evidently they were just a click above dead as after he came to life Furby almost immediately went back to sleep.  I felt bad for Furby.  He now lives in my office where he at least can be a conversation piece.  I gave him a new set of batteries.  You can see him right now asleep on the web cam, poor little guy.

So anyway, by the time Ali got back I had just started doing some of the taping. Ali jumped right in and started to help.  It took awhile due to the vastly larger surface area we had to prepare.  The color we picked out for this room was supposed to be a grayish purple.  By the time we got around to painting it was a little after 2.  With a day of painting under our belt, things went pretty smooth.  However one thing become apparent, the single gallon of paint we bought was not going to be enough.  In fact I just barely had enough to do the first coat.  As the paint went on, Ali and I both commented how it looked a whole lot more purple than gray.  So we took a mini-break to run back out to Lowe’s to get more paint.  All I had to do was write down the codes on the old paint in order for them to make me another can of the paint.  The new can looked identical as the first.  Ali and I wished we had the codes for the paint that was used originally on the house, it would make touch ups a reality instead of a guessing game.

So back home we went and after a small supper break where we watched a bit of next Loose Change flick, I was back into the room rolling away.  I asked Ali if she could work on getting some of the mess out in the great room addressed as it was making me a bit nuts. (that and the full moon)  In addition to all the junk I drug out of the guest room, the kitchen island also had plants, packages and other junk strewn about. 

While we were painting there was a weird thing that occurred.  The paint we used in the bedroom definitely had a stronger smell in it than the stuff we used in the bathroom.  Evidently the fumes had a weird side effect.  Whenever I left the room, the rest of the house smelled like piss to me.  When I first noticed it I marched around the house looking for the source.  Every room smelled that way to me, even the spare bedroom that had the door closed.  The only thing I could come up with was it was coming from the AC.  great, just what I need.  However later I realized that once I was out of the bedroom we were painting for awhile, I wouldn’t smell the piss smell in the house.  But if I went back in for a bit, came out, the smell returned.  For some reason the paint fumes were short circuiting my sense of smell.

So once again we worked late into the night.  Rolling the walls in the bedroom was tougher than the bathroom because they were textured.  I had to really lean on the roller to make sure I got decent coverage.  Finally we finished up and confirmed that yep, the room is definitely purple.  it didn’t look bad, just different than we both expected.  The all white furniture from my bachelor pad days contrasted nicely with it.  Again, the color really put a new spin on the room.  We were pleased with this change as well, just not as pleased as with the bathroom transformation.  Saturday night we left the room with the tape off the trim but all of the junk still out in the great room.

Sunday morning was clean up time.  I put stuff back together and then after Ali got up she was in charge of deciding what went back into the room.  We didn’t want it to be as cluttered.  I made a concession and told Ali I would put my “old stuff” collection into one of the empty drawers.  She also conceded to remove the majority of stuffed animals that were littering the room, only returning a few that had true sentimental value to her.  Through steady, deliberate work, Ali and I had most everything cleaned up and put away before lunchtime.  It seemed very weird to have what felt like two new rooms in the house.  The new color in the guest room makes me not want to keep the door permanently closed anymore.  In the past we decided to do this so the cats would not use this room as a warm little vomiting area.  I may have to revisit that decision.

We got done just in time for Ali to get ready to go out with a friend of hers to go see the Nutcracker.  Ironically we discovered when mom was over that she too was going to the exact same show with her friends from work.  Ali and mom decided to have everyone get together after the show to go out to dinner.  That left me home to tie up some loose ends.

It was funny, at the beginning of the day I felt like the house was a HUGE mess and there was just so much shit to do.  In the span of four hours that all changed.  Things felt in order again.  While Ali was gone I Roombafied and Scoobatized the house (words I invented) as well as shooting another round of bleach into the water system, doing some laundry, hanging out with Nicki in her play area and just unwinding.  Several times during the afternoon I would go over and look at the two rooms we painted, admiring the transformation.  I went and laid down on the bed in the guestroom and imagined I was the guest.  I determined I would be quite content staying there.  The color is different but not in an unpleasant way.

  I thought about the prospect of painting the rest of the house, which we eventually want to do.   The job seems extremely overwhelming, especially considering the effort to just paint two rooms.  However now I know that the effort should be worth the end result.  That project will be back burner-ed for a while though.  We want to first get our new counters in place before painting.  You can see all the before and after pictures I took here.

So even though I knew the Eagles were going to get trounced, I tuned in for the game.  I was surprised to see that AJ was starting.  I was too busy to check to see McNabb’s playing status.  The game starts, AJ immediately throws a pick that is run back for a TD and I laugh out loud while thinking how the slaughter has begun with little delay.  But then things started happening.  Instead of crawling into a hole after making a mistake, AJ and the rest of the team came out aggressively and drove the ball right down the Patriots throat scoring a game tying touchdown after a long, impressive drive.

The Patriots offense finally got the ball and marched right down the field and scored.  However during the drive Brady got HAMMERED from his blindside.  The defense at least was making the Patriots pay for their yardage.  JR Reed laid out a few Patriots himself with crushing hits, I liked what I was seeing.  The decision making/play calling was equally aggressive with a successful fourth down conversion followed by a TD and then an awesome onside kick recovery on the next kickoff.  The Eagles were finally coming to play, maybe being an embarrassing three touchdown underdog finally lit a fire under their ass.

The game was quite exciting with the two team trading shots back and forth.  Even though the Eagles D had a hard time keeping the Patriots from moving the ball, they kept after them non-stop.  AJ Feely was borderline brilliant during this stretch.  He showed accuracy on throws that I am not accustomed to seeing.  He was calm in the face of pressure, beating blitzes with quick throws to open targets.  It was awesome.

Finally at the end of the game the wheels came off.  The Eagles were driving for a game tying or leading score when AJ made an ill-advised throw to a well covered receiver.  The Patriot defender snagged it in the end zone and that was pretty much the ball game.  The Eagles had one last shot with 30 seconds to go but again AJ got picked off throwing into a very densely populated Patriot zone, game over.  The 21 point predicted blowout instead turned into a 3 point barn burner. 

So what was different about this game?  Why did the team seam to come alive against the best team in the NFL and give them all they could handle on their own home turf?  Well the most obvious change is at the QB position.  Just like last year, the team seems to play it’s most determined, gritty agressive ball when Donovan is not at the controls.  Why is this?  Do you think that they are all waiting around waiting for Donovan to make a play?  Maybe 4 years ago they could do that and obviously for a long time, that formula worked as the team did make it at least to the conference championship game 4 straight years.  But the past two seasons have been differnet.  To me, the team has played the best ball when Donovan is not in the equation.  Feeley is similar to Garcia in that he gives the feeling that he lives and dies on the field.  When things go well he is genuinely excited, when things go poorly it feels like the dagger goes deeper into his heart than even the fans.  The team seems to respond to that sort of passion from the QB position.

  Donovan, for whatever reason doesn’t exude that quality.  In recent years his proclivity for pulling out the race card whenever he receives criticism has also soured the fans view of him.  Philly fans are tough but it isn’t because of the color of your skin.  They want a winner above all else and if you do lose we want you to feel as bad about it as we do.  When you throw a boneheaded interception or one hop a pass to a reciever for the fourth time in a game don’t come off the field all grinning and joking “My bad, haha…”  That shit doesn’t fly with Eagle fans.

I’m really ready to turn the page on Donovan as the Eagle QB.  You get the feeling he is laying the groundwork for his exit anyway.  The other big positive I saw from the game was JR Reed.  I remember when he came up as a rookie, he was exciting as hell.  Then he hurt himself badly in a non-football related injury and was all but written of for good.  Well he busted ass and due to injuries was in the line up last night as one of the starting safeties.  I loved what I saw.  He made Dawkins look like a pansy.  JR was laying the wood, hitting players with authority.  That is what I want to see out of a safety, unabashed anger and violence.  I think Dawkins still wants to play like that but due to age and/or injuries he just doesn’t seem to hit people all that often anymore.  He always seems a step slow.

Anyway I am grateful for the years of play Donovan has given us and I certainly remember the rotating door of QB’s we had before him.  Names like Bobby Hoying and Doug Pederson still give me the shakes.  However what I want from our QB above all is passion and leadership.  I want him to motivate the players around him.  It doesn’t matter if the guy can throw a ball 70 yards, if the other players don’t get motivated by him it just isn’t going to work. 

Unfortunately Donovan will probably play next week.  If the team drops right back into it’s recent pattern of listless, uninspired play, you can bet the chants of AJ, AJ , AJ will come booming down from the Linc in no time at all.

So I never did get to watch all of Loose change Final Cut, I am only a half hour or so into it.  So far it has been rather dry excpet for one new thing I never knew.  Shortly before 9/11 Mohammed Atta was wired a sum of $100,000 dollars from the head of the Pakistan intelligence agency.  This transfer is indisputable yet it was covered up by the US government.  In yet another coincidence, guess who was in Washington during 9/11?  Yep, the same guy.  After 9/11 he “resigned”.   Yes this is from Pakistan, the same country that supposedly was an ally of ours in the fight against terror, more smoke and mirrors.  I can’t wait to see the rest of it.