New Year, new mailbox post, new frost, old Dick, fat is back
Our New Year’s celebration was rather mundane and I was quite fine with it. I made burgers on the grill and we watched the ball drop in NYC on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin eve. I don’t really know why I watch the broadcast for several reasons. First the format of it bothers me, I don’t like that they mix in pre-recorded segments shot from the West Coast. Why can’t they have life performances going on?? The commercials are not only far too numerous but also far too repetitive. Every 2 minutes we were subjected to the same set of commercials, most notably some vaccine that is designed to help prevent some sort of female vagina issue. That one and some commercial with a woman that had way too much forehead pitching some sort of skin cream. In the half hour we watched the show we probably saw these same commercials at least 5 times if not more.
I was hoping that poor old Dick Clark would finally agree to sit in the background and not subject us to another year of him struggling to spit out a coherent sentence. I feel for the guy, I understand he may feel like he is trying to make a point by appearing on camera after having a stroke. Ok fine, you did it two years ago, there is no need to keep doing it. Why would he want to be remembered that way? It was like someone flipped a switch and turned the eternally youthful looking man into an old crypt keeper looking geezer overnight. One thing Dick should do, fix the teeth. I mean he has more money than God, get a set of veneers or dentures. It looked like he has a mouth full of fangs. Maybe before he had the stroke when he talked it did not expose his teeth the way it does now when he struggles mightily to spit out every syllable. Poor Dick, go enjoy retirement.
The show also had live performance by Carrie Underwood and some young kids that remind me of a 2008 version of the Hansons. Carrie wears so much make up her face looks like it was bleached out. You see no contours on her face at all. Even with the extra pounds, I’d rather hear Kelly Clarkson sing.
So Dick does an agonizing countdown from 20 as the ball drops and it’s over, thank goodness. I went back to the bedroom and got a call from Todd wishing me happy new year. He clued me into an event going on on ESPN with a guy jumping a football field with his motorcycle, the long way. Wow that was something, he went 322 feet in the air, twice. After he jumped the first time he wasn’t happy with the distance so he went again. During the first jump it seemed for a second like the bike was nosing down, I was nervous he was gonna eat it. It was quite amazing to see.
So Nicki had no pity on me and woke me up at 7am New Years Day. I crawled out of bed, still very sore from my 5k on Monday. We had no big plans for the day so I let Ali sleep while I played WoW. Once Ali got up she looked out the window and informed me that our mailbox was lying on it’s side. What??? Yep it was totally snapped off. In addition our neighbors to our left had their recycling can slammed and had stuff strewn across the ground and our neighbors to our right also had their mailbox hit. It looks like some f’ing drunk couldn’t drive a straight line after their New Years celebration, how nice.
So we called the neighbors to let them know their can was hit but no one was home. We didn’t want them to not have their recycling picked up so we went out and picked all the shit up just as a light, cold rain started to fall. Next I went down to the neighbors on our right and fixed their mailbox since they live in Michigan. Then I finally started to attend to my mess. They had to really plow our box because I had the post anchored into a 5 gallon bucket filled with concrete. They snapped the 4 x 4 clean off. My plan of action mutated several times during the day.
Initially I thought I would just drive in the metal post box mount I used for the For Sale sign on the one Lehigh lot and then temporarily attach the mailbox to it. I tried driving it in several spots but none of them allowed me to get the post as deep as it needed to be. While I was toiling away my neighbor across the street came out and brought his post hole digger with him (I already had one but didn’t mention it) He said he was glad they didn’t hit his brand new Green Bay Packers helmet mailbox he just put up last week. I told him how I was just trying to rig something temporarily because I had the 5 pound bucket buried underneath. He suggested I just relocate the mailbox a bit to either side. After some thought I agreed and decided to do that.
Initially I thought I would just move it a bit but keep it inside the border I had built around it. However doing so would have made it off center in the border. When I mentioned the idea to Ali I could feel her mentally cringe with the off center suggestion. So instead I decided to knock the border apart and pull the small plants that were planted there and relocate them. Getting the border out was more of a challenge than I expected. I had secured two sections of the box to the ground with rebar, the one section with a massive 4 foot hunk of it. Getting that sucker out was a bitch. I beat it with a sledge to loosen it up for awhile and then just pulled with all I had. It felt like I was moments away from popping something in my back as I pulled. Thankfully it finally started to give. The other section that was attached with rebar was easier. It used a smaller 2 foot piece and I got smart and used the metal mail box post as a pry bar, wedging it under the wood.
So once the border was out, I popped out the plants and assigned Ali the job of replanting them while I got the mailbox back in the ground. Thankfully I had everything I needed to perform the repair. I cut off a leftover piece of landscape timber for the mount and used the neighbors post hole digger to go a two or three feet into the ground. I reattached the mailbox structure with some long screws and washers and then put the pieces of the mailbox back together that broke apart. Luckily it is made of some sort of pliable plastic that gives instead of cracks. When it was all done I actually preferred it without the junky looking border that had been there for years.
During the day we also tackled taking down all the indorr Christmas decorations. We didn’t put much up this year so it wasn’t too bad putting it all away. The only thing left to do is pull down the lights this upcoming weekend. I felt no real remorse putting the decorations away as Christmas didn’t hold much sentiment at all for me this year.
I got done in time to help Ali put most of the plants in the ground. The spot around the pond that we put them was filled with the roots from the palm bushes in the same area so digging was very tough. Eventually we got them all in and they looked better there than they did around the mailbox. Ali and I both were happy that we repaired the box without spending a dime.
Ali did call the police in the morning to report the incident. Not that we thought it would do much good but at least we would have it recorded so if it would happen again we have proof of it. A real cop didn’t come, instead one of the community volunteer cops. They don’t carry a gun but do a get a police radio and get to drive a sheriff owned vehicle. He gave us a card with a case number and said he would drive the rest of the street to see if there was any more damage.
The New Year is going to bring some very cold temperatures that could hover right around the freezing mark tonight. Ali and I are not happy about it. The last time it got that cold we had heavy damage to a bunch of the landscape even though we tried to cover a lot of it. This time instead of covering stuff I am considering running the sprinklers for the hours when it is supposed to be the coldest. First the water from the sprinklers will be much warmer than the air and second the process of freezing water actually emits heat that could possibly help the plants survive better. We just have too much to cover and since it didn’t seem to really help last time we don’t feel like it is worth the effort. The one good thing is it supposed to be rather windy the entire night so that should help stem the formation of frost. I think no matter what we do we are going to get hammered again. Oh well….
They wasted no time getting another season of Biggest Loser cranked up. Only a week or two after the finale of last season they are already launching the next, this time a couples challenge. Instead of two or three teams, they have 10 teams of couples that get weighed and eliminated together. Last night was the first episode where you get introduced to the latest cast of fatties. Once again it is impressive just how far these people have let themselves go. As always the show was filled with sound blurbs of the contestants repeating the same thing over and over again, either “I didn’t realize I was this heavy…” or “I didn’t realize I was in this bad of shape…” It makes me laugh every time I hear that. Either these people don’t have mirrors or just just don’t open their eyes. Yea it’s good they are finally trying to do something about the results of their years of gluttony and laziness. Ali and I wondered if the show actually motivates other fat asses to do something about their weight or if it just entertains them as they dig their hand into the bag of chips like a backhoe? Oh well, it’s good fun to watch . Ali asked me which trainer I would pick between Jillian and Bob. I said they were both good but would probably pick Jillian because I would appreciate her hard ass way of training. Plus it would be hot to be trained by a woman (didn’t mention that part). Of course Ali said she would rather have Bob.
Warning, WoW blurb that will make no sense to non-WoW’ers.
After fixing the mailbox and putting away decorations, I spent the rest of the day mostly playing WoW. I ran out of rested XP for the two characters I have left to level, my shaman and paladin so I decided to go into the Alterac Valley battleground or “AV” for short. I don’t do much player versus player stuff because, well, I generally suck at it. I do like AV though because it pits you on massive 40 players per side team so I can hide amongst the masses a bit and pick off horde selectively. There was a time when AV games could go on for along time as a back and forth struggle. Games of an hour or more were not that uncommon.
Well over time Blizzard changed the rules of AV and now instead of an epic battle between the two sides it is instead a quick race to see how fast you can kill the other teams general. Both sides more or less ignore each other and instead just rush to the other’s town where they have to kill a few super high level computer controlled characters. The games sometimes can be less than 10 minutes long. This strategy has been adopted by players because it is the fastest way to generate “honor” which in turn is used to buy higher level equipment in the game. It may generate faster honor but it has sucked most of the fun out of the AV experience.
Later I lead a group into Dire Maul to help a guild member complete the quest chain to his epic warlock mount, the Dreadsteed. Over a year ago I had an online buddy of mine run me through this quest. He knew where everything was and everything that had to be done to complete it and I just sort of came along for the ride. Well I wished I had paid more attention. We spent over two hours wandering through the place. I was trying to follow outlines of what to do that I found online but the instructions were not precise enough and we wound up wasting at least an hour going wrong ways and engaging in fights we didn’t need to. I was really losing patience with it. However the guy that I was helping, helped me get my paladin Charger mount so I was obligated to see it through to the end. Finally we managed to get through it, he got his fire breathing horse and all was well. It felt good to do a good deed for someone else, virtually….