Archives 2007

America has transformed into the land of the fat asses and nowhere was it more apparent than American Idol.  You have these big fat women (and men) coming on with double or triple chins and huge guts wanting to be a pop music star.  It’s laughable.  People are so damn lazy when it comes to personal health discipline, it really sickens me.  The ironic thing is nowadays calling out a fat ass as a fat ass is almost akin to a racial slur.  Some perverse element in society wants us all to believe that being shaped like the michelin man is just fine.  It’s the person INSIDE that matters.  I love that mentality, enabling your fatness by hiding behind idealisms.

Well American Idol has returned to the airwaves with two monster long two hour shows, a bit too much Idol for me.  The shows were more depressing than entertaining.  They were filled with broken dreams and tears as the news was given to the contestants that they weren’t good enough in various cruel ways.  A lot of these people were just brutally bad. So bad that I would cover my own eyes in embarrassment for them.  Throughout the 4 hours of shows there were a very small percentage of people that were any good. 

Another thing that was very disturbing was Paula Abdul.  She was obviously chemically altered for the majority of the auditions.  How in the world she is allowed to be on the show in that state is beyond me.  It’s embarrassing for the show.  All you had to do was look at her face and you could tell she was wasted.  It’s a shame.

Our christmas tree is still hanging on although you can tell it is starting to slide downhill.  Some brown is visible and when I water it each night it drops considerable needles from the intrusion of my arm. It still is taking water though and still smells good.  I am hoping it makes it another couple weekends yet, we’ll see.  The cats still spend most of their time hanging under it.

Yesterday at the gym I was looking for something to do as a chest exercise.  I was looking around the gym and my eyes landed on the squat rack.  I decided I would do an incline one handed push up, a poor man’s version of what Rocky used to do..  So I grab the safety bar and have to adjust my body around to find an angle that worked.  So I awkwardly did 8 reps and then switched to the other arm.  I am not so sure how beneficial it was to my chest as opposed to the rest of my core.  To keep myself straight I had to strain like hell all the way down to my knees.  Well when I was in the middle of trying my second go round I felt something twinge in my hip so I bagged it.  Luckily it doesn’t hurt today.

The expansion pack to World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade hit the streets yesterday.  Although I crowed about not being willing to wait out at a store to snag a copy, I had a copy sitting neatly on my desk Tuesday morning.  My co-worker was crazy enough to get his at the stroke of midnight and he grabbed a second copy for me since he uses one of my accounts to store materials in bank characters.  So since I had it, of course I installed it.  The expansion opens up a whole new universe of things to see, explore, defeat and kill.  This game may entertain me well into my 40’s.  The new area I have seen sort of reminds you of what hell would look like, it’s barren and filled with 50 foot tall demons that would love nothing better then to mess you up. 

Hell I haven’t blogged in forever.  We had a branch open and most of my time the last three or four working days have been dedicated to that. How am I supposed to remember back that long?  Well here is what I can recall.

Last Thursday after work I went over to Sugden Park to run solo.  I didn’t have our fancy GPS watch that I have become so accustomed to.  It is awesome to know exactly how fast you are running and exactly how far you have run.  So I roughed it and used the stopwatch function on my new manly G-shock watch and the distance markers that are along the running trail.  The official measured trail is supposedly 1.25 miles so what I did was walk to the end the trail and started there.  I ran to the beginning, turned around and ran back to the end so it gave me approximately a two and a half mile run.

Running by myself is tough, much tougher than when I run with Ali.  The reason is without Ali there as my built in speed governor, I am at the mercy of my mind which tells me to push it, it’s even worse if I run a race solo.  I covered the distance at about an 8:20 somethin pace, pretty fast for me and much faster than the 10 minute miles I log with Ali.  Originally in my head I set a goal of 20 minutes to cover the run, instead I did it in a bit under 21:30.  So in my mind, I missed my goal.  Running that pace had some repercussions.  For the next two or three days I had beyond what I would call normal discomfort in my left (good) knee.  It was bad enough that I scrubbed plans to run a 5k race on Saturday.  My knees feel better now but I have to be careful, the last thing I need is a relapse.  Oh yea, I am playing in a volleyball tournament this Saturday. 🙂

The weekend had a decent amount of chores to be done.  On Saturday we planted a couple plants we got from Ali’s mom in pots and the three remaining live christmas trees got relocated.  Two of them went to two of the few remaining, open, somewhat high spots on our property and the other one got planted in a large pot and put on our lanai.  The potted one I have hopes of sometime being our Xmas tree one year.

I did some preliminary work for my sprinkler project, namely figuring out the flow rate on my well pump which clocked in at roughly 18 gallons per minute.  Depending on the type of sprinkler heads I use I can probably put 6 or 7 on each “circuit”  Right now in my head I am figuring I need no more than 4 circuits.  I only want to water the immediate mound the house is on and the associated landscaping including the orchard and garden areas.  I need to do much more planning before I do any purchasing though.

Saturday night was the big Eagles game.  It was disappointing that they lost.  However I can’t really say I felt they should have won.  Their defense was dominated by the Saints who ran the ball at will.  Even with that being the case, the Birds had a shot at the end thanks to a Reggie Bush fumble.  Then after an awesome drive extending 4th & 10 conversion by the Eagles, it was erased by a false start by some scrub offensive lineman.  Instead of going for it on 4th & 15, fat Andy decided to punt the ball away and rely on the same defense that had been pushed around all game.  Wouldn’t you know it, they were pushed around once again and were unable to stop the Saints, game over.  Of course I was angry at the end, victory was attainable even with as poorly as the D played.  However I got over it fast, reminding myself as I said before, this all has been a bonus.  The playoffs were a pipe dream 6 weeks ago. 

They have some real needs to fill next year.  On offense they need to resign Stallworth, he is a bonafide number one receiver and if he can stay healthy, a great addition to the team.  McNabb has to stay healthy but if he doesn’t keeping Garcia around would be a great safety net.  On D the needs are large.  Andy keeps drafting defensive lineman that to be honest, suck.  Well wait, Trent Cole is good but for the most part, we have gotten next to nothing out of the draft with d-lineman.  They need big strong lineman that dont get blown off the line, allowing teams to run over them at will.  They also need to address linebacker.  They just don’t make many plays, Trotter included.  And finally I don’t know if Consadine is any better than Michael Lewis, he just sucks in different areas.  We need a better safety back there and while you are at, some higher quality backups in the secondary than Assholio Hanson and Roderick Go Back to the Hood.  With the Birds out of the playoffs I am pulling for either Indy or Chicago to win it all.

On Sunday we decided to tackle our cleanup job for January since the rest of the month was going to be hella-busy, cleaning out the shed.  The shed had never been completely cleaned out since we got it four years ago or so.  It was a mess.  I brought over our big trash bin AND the neighbors who don’t live here trash bin as well as our recycle bin and pretty much filled em all.  Plus I drug a bunch of unwanted shit out to the street for the vultures to snap up.  I’d say the entire process took about 3 hours.  We gutted it, swept it out and then carefully put stuff back in, organizing along the way.  It looks way better.

Late Sunday afternoon we went towards town.  First we made a pitstop at the office so we could print out a bunch of race forms for the race Ali is organizing. While they printed we went to Olive Garden for dinner.  We had a gift card AND a three dollars off coupon, yahoo.  When we were at the bar waiting, I looked down at a blond at the far end.  She struck me as familiar but I couldn’t immediately place it.  Then I realized it was the girl whom we bowled with , along with her fiance/husband who wasn’t there (don’t remember if they were married).

  We bowled on a team with them during our first year of living in Florida. We did the bowling thing because we thought it would be a good way to meet people.  We actually got along pretty well with him/her.  They even invited us out to their family’s place for a Christmas visit.  After the league was done we invited them out to our place to watch some playoff football.  They wound up showing up over two hours late and never called to say what was up.  When they did arrive they said nothing about the tardiness and there was a weird vibe in the air like they had been fighting or something.  Anyway pretty much the entire time they were there, there was an awkward, uncomfortable feeling going on.  They left and we never talked to them again.

Well anyway, she glanced at me but I don’t think she put it together, it’s been a long time.  Well I didn’t say anything to Ali then because I know her first move would be to make an oh so obvious turn and stare.  So once we sat down I told her about it.  She did her obvious turn and stare as the woman was at a table maybe 30 feet away.  I rolled around in my head if it would be a good idea to say “Hi”.  Eh I didn’t.  The idea of crafting small talk just wasn’t what I was looking to do.  She was eating with a table full of women, wonder if her relationship status is still the same?  Guess I will never know.

After a good dinner we headed back to the office to pick up what printed and then went home.  We got home early enough to sit down and watch the second Pirates of the Carribean movie. It was a good flick.  I dunno if it was worthy of the huge box office numbers it drew but it was good.  It had a lot of “hey how did they do that” special effects and Johnny Depp is great in the role.  One thing Ali and I both noticed was there were a lot of the dialogue that we just couldn’t make out.  I’m not sure if it was the heavy accents many characters spoke with, poor dvd rip audio quality or a combo of the two.  There were many moments where we turned to each other and said “What did they say??”  It gets a solid B, I will definitely watch the third one.  It was no Rocky Balboa though. 🙂

Monday Ali was gone for a good chunk of the day leaving me at home to play Warcraft and do chores.  Early in the weekend I said something about us using this extra day off for me to do something like go to the beach or possibly walk Corkscrew sanctuary, it never materialized.  So anyway, I spent copious amounts of time leveling my paladin as well as spot choring during the breaks.  It was the sort of day that makes me feel worthless. 

 The big upgrade for WoW was released last night at midnight.  I read stories of people by the hundreds lined up to get the game, unreal.  That is one thermometer I use to gauge what is left of my sanity.  The thought of waiting in line at midnight with a ton of other WoW geeks just to have the expansion pack the minute it was available never crossed my mind.  My copy will arrive in the mail on Saturday, much more convenient. 🙂

Back to the grind, a busy few weeks are on the docket.

I have had an odd issue for the past year or so.  I have a hard time parking my vehicle straight in a parking space. Time after time, I pull in, think I have perfectly aligned myself parallel with the space stripes only to get out and see I am crooked.  I don’t recall having this issue before.  It is really odd, I bet I only get it straight 25% of the time.  It must be a precursor to total alzheimer’s.

For two years I have have had this watch on my Amazon wish list but noone got it for me.  So I used the Amazon gift cert that my bro got me to buy it for myself.  My main watch for the last 10 years or so has been a Swiss Army watch that Ali got for me early in our relationship.  The Swiss Army is nice but sort of bland for my taste and all it does is, well, tell time.  My new watch is a Casio G-Shock.  It is an awesome piece of timekeeping tech.  First, it looks substantial, it looks and feels “manly”, something I was looking for.  On top of the good looks it is chock full of tech.  It is solar powered so in theory, you will be changing batteries far less often as long as the watch sees a decent amount of light.  It sets the time automagically from the radio signal in Fort Collins.  No more setting the time.  It even has an auto backlight feature.  If the watch senses it is dark and it senses you tilt it towards your face at more than a 40 degree angle, it knows you want to read it so it will flip on the backlight for a couple seconds.  How cool is that? 🙂 

For the last couple years I have taken up the practice of applying skin cream on my face each morning before work in a futile attempt to slow the effects of time on my appearance.  I’ve used stuff from Gilette and Nivea that was specifically designed for men.  Well I was almost out so when I was at the grocery store I needed to pick up more.  I looked and looked but could not find any of the just for men stuff.  So I just grabbed something else that sounded good.  The new cream felt and looked like the other stuff I was using.  The only difference is instead of the manly, slight cologne smell of the other face cream I had, now I smell like a fresh faced young girl.  Oh well, if it slows down the wrinkles I will live with it.

I had a very detailed and realistic dream last night.  I had a new job and it was my first day.  I was in a big office building and I was meeting with whom I assume who was my boss.  This guy looked like a character out of Office Space.  He was extremely nerdy looking and had next to no forehead.  His hairline was practically sitting on top of his eyebrows.  His hair was tight curls that had a straw-like texture.  I was asking him details about the job and remember asking about how many were in the IT department.  “Just you” he said.  I looked at him in astonishment.  The company had this huge office building and I was the only one supporting it??  “We only have 63 computers” he followed.  I wondered how this company ran it’s business if only a small percentage of it’s employees had computers.

Later in the dream I was back in a cubicle area and my nerdy boss was on the phone with a bunch of employees gathered around.  He was making a phony phone call using bad impressions and ridiculous singing.  I sat there and rolled my eyes and as I did I caught the glance of a cute girl that was smirking at the boss’s stupid entertainment.  I remember thinking how the hell did I get here?  What happened to my nice, laid back, secure job at the Tax Collector?  I was confused.  I dreaded the thought of having to start over but eventually told myself that if you aren’t moving forward you just stand still.  I woke up to the alarm just then.  I was relieved when I realized it was a dream, although the feeling of being a situation new and foreign actually had some distant appeal.

After work last night I went to Home Depot to pick up a couple things.  One of those things was a new air filter for the AC system.  You would think that after replacing this filter for more than 5 years, every 3 months, I would remember the size of it.  Nope I got a 20×24 filter and needed an 18×24.  F’in stupid.  I looked more at the sprinkler equipment aisle.  I snagged a little how to brochure put out by rain bird.  My next steps are to determine the flow rate of our well pump and call the electric company to ask how deep they bury their electric cable and if it is encased in pipe or not.  The way I am going to route the pipe will go right across the buried electrical, telephone and tv cable.

The state inspectors showed up at Ali’s work yesterday, which meant I was stranded there until she got done with her meetings.  I wasted the time entertaining Nicki and surfing on Ali’s work computer.  We didn’t leave there until like 7, a pain in the ass.  Today we drove separate.

I watched the new Apprentice last night.  Even though they shot this season over a year ago, it’s new to me.  They made a bunch of changes to freshen up the show.  This season is shot out in LA, a big change from NYC.  The winning team each week gets to stay in a luxurious mansion, the losers have to stay in the backyard in a TENT.  The winning project manager each week remains the project manager each week until they lose. Also, the winning project manager gets to sit on the other side of the table and help pepper the losing team with questions in the boardroom and offer Trump their opinions.  There is no more Caroline, instead she is replaced with Trumps daughter.  I think most of the moves are good ones and add to the show.  Yanking Caroline for Ivanca Trump is a bad move.  Noone takes Ivanca seriously, Caroline was much more of an authority figure and had a presence about her that demanded respect.  The show should be decent this year.

Wow the Gators beat Ohio State, who woulda thunk it?  I didn’t watch one second of the game.  Unless Penn State is involved, I just don’t get into college football at all.  I think it is because it is a pain in the ass for me to follow since college rosters roll over so much year to year.  It’s just annoying for me to follow.

Pretty much every Rocky movie featured some sort of bizarre or grueling training exercise all the way back to Rocky I with the raw egg drinking, meat punching and chicken chasing. I remember most of them like tying his left arm to his side, doing situps while some skinny little black guy was smacking the shit out of his stomach, wind sprints on the beach with Apollo Creed, lumberjack training in Siberia where he chopped wood, pressed horse carts, outran KGB cars in the snow, did pull downs with a net full of rocks and did a bizarre ab exercise where his body was totally straight but the only thing on the ground were his shoulder blades.  Sadly, Rocky V had nothing along these lines because Rocky wasn’t an active fighter in that flick. Just another reason it sucked.

Well Rocky VI got back to the tradition.  In this movie he did a lot of heavy lifting.  In one scene they show him pressing 315 above his head shortly after he squatted a ton more than that.  But my favorite training regimen from this one was where he took what looked like an empty beer keg and picked it up over his head and slammed the shit out of it into the ground.  It just looked and sounded cool.  Oh yea he punched meat again in this one. 

 Rich sent me this pic, pretty cool. Dawkins is nuts.

Wow only a two day weekend, how lame.  As predicted it was pretty busy but enjoyable all the same.  On Friday night after work I stopped at Home Depot to pick up some filters for our reverse osmosis system.  The water in the big jug I take to work everyday was stinky last week so I figured the filters were ready to be changed.  While I was there I meandered over to the lawn sprinkler system to check things out.  It was filled with all sorts of sprinklers, drippers, valves, connectors and tools used in installing a sprinkler system.  I was doing some very loose adding in my head and I figure I should be able to install a system from between 500-1000 bucks, closer to 500.  I really am excited about the prospect of getting one set up but hesitant to put the shovel in the ground.  It’s going to be a big job and will require a decent amount of planning to make sure it works.  Planning isn’t my forte.  Normally if I can’t draw the thing up and execute the plan from my brain I don’t do that well with it. Well I am pretty determined to make a go of this.

We had the neighbors dog Zoe all weekend and actually will be dogsitting her until Tuesday.  As usual, she was entertaining yet very needy as always.  She snuggled under the covers every night except last night for some reason.

Saturday we pulled down the decorations, mostly.  I pulled down all of the outside lights while Ali worked on the inside.  I commented to her how it seemed like such a shame to take down the Christmas tree, it’s still nice and greeen and still smells good.  Ali offered up a novel idea, don’t take it down.   Hmmm there is an idea.  So although we stripped all the ornaments and lights off of it, the xmas tree is still standing in our dining room.    I know the cats are quite happy we left it up, they love to lay around/under it. We will see how long it holds up, we are at about a month and counting.

Saturday night we finally got to see Rocky Balboa.  We didn’t even think about the lunacy of trying to go to the movies on a saturday night during season.  Wow what a mess.  The line for each ticket booth was at least 25 deep.  We had a thrifty night in store as we had a coupon from the entertainment  book that allowed us to get two tickets for 6 bucks each instead of the normal 9.50 and we brought our Regalator cup that lets us get a large drink that normally costs four or five bucks for one clam instead.  The long wait at the ticket booth meant a short wait inside the the theater waiting for the show to start.  We were lucky to snag the last empty pair of seats in the top row.

Wow did I love this movie.  It was what Rocky V should have been.  Rocky V was a very disappointing way to end the series, it was the worst film of the bunch by far.  However Rocky Balboa made up for it.  It is a throwback to the original movies where it was more about the story of Rocky and where he has been and how it got him to where he was now.  It was filled with great Rocky one liners along with simple truths that made you take pause.  I knew how it ended so it wasn’t a big deal to me and to my surprise, it was appropriate and a perfect fit.  Stallone did a good job of shaping up for the flick.  He was much more physically impressive than Antonio Tarver whom they got to play the role of the current champ.  Tarver was soft and doughy.  That was my ONLY complaint, they should have gotten a better champion for Rocky to redeem himself against.  They brought back Pauly and the black guy that was originally Apollo Creed’s trainer for this flick.  Pauly had some great lines in the movie.  The one line that made me laugh the most was when Rocky said something about preparing a nice italian meal for someone at the restaurant he own’s.  Pauly said “Rock, there ain’t anything that special about italian food made by a bunch of mexicans…”  Anyway, the movie was GREAT and it gets an A+.  Rocky rules and for all the abuse Stallone has taken over the years for some of the flicks he has done, he got it right with this one, which he wrote and directed.  Go see it.

Late Saturday night I got another treat when I got to witness the Cowboys go down in flames.  It was a weird game with all sorts of improbable plays and calls that were examined by replay.  Ali was seconds from sleep when Romo had the game winning field goal slip out of his hands.  All of a sudden she springs out from bed and leans towards the tv, amazed at what happened.  She was thrilled to see the Cowboys lose but felt bad for Romo, imagining how terrible he had to feel.  I’m sure he felt bad but tough shit.  He got way too much credit way too fast.  The fact that he is in the Pro Bowl is ridiculous.  Good ole TO hauled in all of two passes for twenty some yards.  I love it.

Sunday morning Ali and I did a two mile run.  We have not been enjoying typical beautiful Florida winter weather.  Instead it has been extra warm with temps brushing up against 85 degrees and humid.  To be honest, it is annoying, I am ready for some cooler weather but instead it has felt almost summerlike.  Well it made for a tough run.  Ali struggled through out but finished.  There is a 5k this Saturday that I would like to do, we’ll see if Ali is up for it.

We had friends of ours over to watch the Patriots/Jets game and part of the Eagles game.  They just had a baby boy 6 months ago.  Ali typically goes over to their place on Fridays to walk with the baby and mom.  Zoe was all about being right next to the baby.  She thought the baby toys were dog toys so we had to keep calling her away. 

I came into this Eagles playoff game with a different disposition than years past.  When the Birds were in their string of NFC championship failure runs, I expected them to get there, I expected them to perform and when they didn’t it was a severe let down.  This year, I wrote the season off after Donovan went down.  That loss to the Colts was so amazingly bad I had zero hope for a turn around.  So what has happened has been a complete surprise and a total bonus to me.  So even if they would have lost to the Giants, I would have been disappointed but not crushed as I had no thoughts of them even sniffing the playoffs a month ago.

 The game was a tight back and forth battle but you always had the impression that the Eagles were in control, well until they allowed the Giants to get a first down late in the game after being at 2nd and 30.  When they converted that first down after Sean Consadine whiffed on what should have been a sure tackle I was screaming.  The D just choked.  I was worried that it was setting up for defeat.  Even though I went into the game with a lax attitude, after investing emotionally in this game and knowing the Birds should win it, I was not ok with a loss at that point.  Luckily the Eagles methodically drove down the field and nailed a field goal in wet muddy conditions to end the Giants season.  I guess it pays off to have a sure handed kick holder huh?  It was a win that showed some character.  I think they have a good shot against the Saints.  When they played them earlier in the year, they had that game wrapped up but collapsed right at the end.  Hopefully they learned something and have a bit of a chip on their shoulder and play angry. 

When I was at the grocery store I saw they had Starbucks ground coffee.  Well I was almost out of my normal Dunkin Donuts grind.  I knew I liked Starbucks Cafe Mocha drinks so why not try some Starbucks coffee?  Well I like French Vanilla DD coffee.  Starbucks had a bag just  named “french” so I figured it was something similar.  Well when I cracked the bad this morning and took a whiff I knew it wasn’t french vanilla.  It didn’t smell good at all.  Well I held out hope it would taste better than it smelled, no such luck.  It tasted horrible.  I choked down a cup but already made a mental note to go to DD after work to get a bag.  The starbucks stuff is just horrid.  After drinking it I felt like a had breath that could melt paint, gross.

I just happened to punch c-1024 into ebay over the weekend and was thrilled to see it come up as one being for sale!  This little device would allow me to fully control everything with my new logitech remote.  The bad news is there are four days to go on the auction and there are three bids on it already.  From perusing message boards I know there are others that have been desperately seeking this discontinued product for their setup as well.  I have a feeling this little device is going to go for big money.  I am willing to pay handsomely for it, it is just a question of who blinks first.  I have a bid sniper order set up to come in with my bid with 5 seconds to go in the auction, I am just worried that the number won’t be high enough.  I will have to keep my eye on it. 

It’s amazing I get so much blog material from the gym.  At the gym there is an older, sorta stubby guy with thinning hair up top and facial hair to compensate.  He is nice guy and normally when I am in there he is always talking to someone.  One time I made the mistake of talking to him.  Don’t get me wrong, the guy is interesting to talk to and engaging but he is like a tractor beam once you speak to him.  He locks on and will not let go.  That one day I missed half my workout because of my inability to remove myself from conversation with the man.

Well today when I got in, the guy was there at the station right next to me.  Luckily he already ensnared someone else, a tall younger, almost Canadian lookin guy.  He had his ear for the ENTIRE 45 minutes I was there.  They did nothing besides mouth exercise the entire time.  As I walked out the door I looked back just to make sure, yep, still blabbing away.  I mean how does the guy get anything done with his life if he talks that much?

One of the annoying things about going to my little shithole gym is the shopping center I have to drive through to get to it.  I have to inch through a good 1/4 mile or more of stupid pedestrians performing repeated acts of daring/stupidity.  Today on my way back there was a woman that crossed in front of me.  She was a chubby hispanic woman with one kid on her hip and two more in tow.  The kid was on her right hip and I was approaching from her right. The kid on her hip blocked her view to the right.  She NEVER bothered to look my direction at all she just sauntered right across the road. It is one thing to be a stupid person and endanger your own life, but to endanger your kids lives by being too f’in lazy to turn your head 90 degrees is another level of idiocy.  Every single day I growl during that part of my tip.

My mother and father-in-law are pulling out this morning headed back to PA.  This week we didn’t see much of them as they were doing their own thing.  The one day they took a day trip to Key West and didn’t enjoy it.  Then Wednesday they went to the Edison Ford Estate in Fort Myers and loved it.  We met up with them for dinner after work.

We went to a newly opened Carraba’s.  I wanted to check it out.  We got there early, like 5:15.  We were a bit flabbergasted to see a big crowd of gray haired prunes already waiting outside.   Damn snowbirds have flocked back already.  I couldn’t believe it was that full on a Thursday at 5:15.  When we got inside it was snowbirds wall to wall.  Well even with the crowd they said it would be like a 35-40 minute wait, not horrible. 

Instead of giving out the standard pager thing to let you know when your table is ready, they hand you a little piece of paper with a number on it.  They have a few electronic boards spread around the place that flash the numbers up.  I thought that was a bit stupid.  You had to be constantly checking the number board to see if you are up, if you happen to miss it you could be sitting there forever.  This Carrabba’s was bigger than my favorite one and the layout was much more an open space.  It was nice but not as nice as the older location.

We passed the time indulging in the two for one happy hour.  Ali’s parents seemed to be the happiest we had seen them the entire trip.  They said how they really enjoyed their time down here and in fact may have been the best time they had in decades.  I was glad to hear they enjoyed things.  We had a good meal.  I picked up the check since Ali’s parents paid for nearly everything we did together.  I threw a 10 dollar tip on the 72 dollar meal.  After doing so I thought it may have been a bit light, a little under 15%, but our server was polite but not spectacular and I figured compared to the tips he gets from most of the snowbirds, I still would appear generous.

We went back to Ali’s work to pick up Nicki and said our goodbyes to Ali’s parents.  It could be awhile until we see them again.  If a year passed I would not be surprised.  All in all it worked out ok.

This weekend is gonna be busy for me.  I have to come in to a new branch to check up on a state install, take down the christmas decorations and various other to do’s.  The big Eagles game is late Sunday, I can’t wait.  Ali said yesterday she wanted to get to the beach but she may have to just settle for pool time instead until this branch install is done in a couple of weeks. I am starting to investigate the logistics with installing a lawn sprinkler setup. Oh we plan to go see the new Rocky movie this weekend too.