Retraction, debate, sliced, worked, tired, lost, pics

Remember that post from Friday that was a forward from my mom that stated that if you split the 85 billion buyout for AIG among the 200 million adults in the United States it would work out to $425,000 per adult.  Well it was later pointed out to me that if you plug these numbers into a calculator you would see the number actually works out to $425 per person, a monumental difference.  I guess it was my bad for trusting that the originator of this email would have done the math correctly.

So I watched the entire debate Friday night and it went pretty much as expected.  To me Obama came off as more educated and in better command of the facts than McCain.  Obama did a masterful job of disarming McCain attacks and delivering a back handed smack across the face with out missing a beat.  McCain was constantly referring to his notes and made efforts to wedge in his keywords wherever possible, even in many situations where it wasn’t relevant.  He had to use “maverick” several times as well as several other catch phrases that served no purpose other than to try paint him in a manner that contrasted to the old, tired man that stood there.

It seemed to me like more often than not when asked a question McCain would not make much of an effort to answer it and instead went back to the cue cards to repeat the same beaten to death, often inaccurate statements that his campaign is relying on to try to make the public afraid of Obama. 

Several times during the debate Obama was courteous enough to offer compliments to McCain on various issues that he agreed with him about.  McCain offered no such courtesy to Obama.  Many times Obama tried to directly engage McCain but McCain would not look at him, instead alternating from stupid looking grins to looking back down to his cue cards.  To me Obama came off as much more presidential.  As the night went on McCain looked more and more like a sleestack. Maybe he should have drank more water.

I was surprised when the commentators afterward said they thought BOTH candidates did well.  However I’m not sure if I ever saw network news say one candidate sucked balls.  I don’t think they are allowed to show any inclination either way. 

I can hardly wait for the VP debate.  If you heard Sarah Palin in the Katie Couric interview you now realize that she is basically a pretty version of Dan Quayle.  She sounded absolutely moronic at times. Joe Biden should eat her up.

Saturday morning I went outside to start on the first chore of my large mental list.  I attended to the garden which was f’ing mess since the storm blew the newspaper all over the place.  After pulling all the wet paper off the fencing I had to weed the area.  I found myself getting very annoyed that the garden has been empty since I spent all that time and effort to expand it.  So just like that a switch flipped and I decided today was the day I was going to go buy some dirt to get the garden going.  I certainly didn’t need another chore to do but I just wanted the garden to become something other than a source of weeds.

So I tell Ali my plans and head off to Home Depot.  I load up the flat bed with 10 bags of mulch and 20 bags of dirt, 10 of which were these 2 cubic foot bags of Miracle Grow garden soil.  They weigh a freaking ton, at least 60-70 pounds if I were to estimate.  It was not fun at all trying to stack those in place. By the time I had everything in the bed of the truck my Tacoma become a low rider with the ass end sitting very low from all of the weight.

Once I got home we ate lunch and then headed outside to get back to work.  Lugging all the bags once again was not much fun at all.  I didn’t have enough to fill the area as much as I want but it was enough to at least cover up all of low areas that I dug out.  After dumping and spreading all of the mulch and dirt I decided I wanted to attach weed block along the bottom of the composite lumber border to prevent grass and weeds from growing up and under the border from outside.  Doing so meant I had to dig out around the entire border and attach the weed block in sections 3 foot long at a time.  By the time I was done I was a mud covered mess.

Although I was already beat there was more to do.  While Ali mowed the grass I did a quickie weed whacking run and then turned my attention to the garage door.  I bought a replacement seal for it.  I replaced the garage door seal a few years ago but over that time the rubber shrunk, allowing gaps of a couple inches on either side that provided easy access for water and various creatures.  So I ripped out the old seal and started sliding in the new one.  If you have ever done this job you know it is tedious.  You basically slide the ends of the rubber seal into the two slots that run across the bottom of the door and start sliding it across.  The first few feet are easy, after that it sucks.  Trying to do it yourself is brutal because you can’t pull on the end AND thread it at the beginning at the same time.  You have to thread a couple inches and then pull a couple inches time and time again. 

Well finally I had enough and decided to wait until Ali was done mowing to help me.  I got it threaded about half way on my own.  Once she parked the tractor I had her come up to the garage.  Her job was to be the threader and I was the puller.  The further across you get with the seal, the tougher it is to pull so I decided to utilize a pliers to assist in the pulling task.  After some initial problems we had a good system going, I was about a foot from the end.  I pulled hard on the pliers, leaning into it with my body weight, as I did all of a sudden the rubber seal rips and my left hand goes flying into the track of the garage door.  I look at my left thumb and see what looks to be a deep slice. I think the bone in my thumb is the only thing that stopped it..  The blood started to flow freely moments later.  Ali didn’t know how bad I cut myself but once she saw it she gave me something to hold on the wound until we got inside.  I knew the cut was deep, deep enough that stitches would probably be in order.  I also knew that going to an emergency room for stitches was the last thing I wanted to do, hell the garage door seal wasn’t even done yet.

So I rinsed the cut off inside and then jammed a paper towel on it while Ali got our first aid supplies.  It was really bleeding a lot, the paper towel got very red, very fast.  We had some steri-strips in there that she used to help hold the cut together.  Then she gooped on Neosporin and several layers of gauze and bandages.  I could see that they were getting pretty bloody as well but it was good enough for me.  I was willing to give it some time to see if it  closes up on it’s own.  We immediately went back outside where I donned a pair of leather work gloves to finish the project.  We managed to get the seal pulled all the way through.  No, I didn’t utilize a pliers to finish the job. The rest of the night I was paranoid about the cut, worrying it would open up if I did the wrong thing.  Luckily it seemed to stay intact.

We tried to get to bed early since we had to get up at 4am to time the race.  I hadn’t bothered to look at the forecast for Sunday until Saturday evening.  I was alarmed when I saw a 50% chance of rain.  Rain greatly complicates timing a race.  Naturally electronic equipment and computers do not take kindly to getting wet. 

I drug myself out of bed at 4 and we were out the door by 4:45.  On the way to the site we went through some light rain which did nothing to make me feel better.  The light rain continued until about an hour before race time.  Luckily, since this was a 20K race I had time until I needed to tape the timing lines to the road.  I did so about 15 minutes before the first runner crossed.  The timing went well.  Timing a 20K is easier than a 5k because the runners finish in a much more spread out manner instead of in huge clusters. 

Out of the 300+ runners we had about 6 that didn’t register a time when they crossed which I was able to quickly enter manually.  I had very few people come up to me with any questions or problems with the posted results which again was very nice.  The downside of timing a 20k is they are long.  The last runner crossed over three hours after the start.  It made for a long morning as we didn’t get to leave the race site until close to 11.  We timed it just right, the rain started in earnest just after the race and continued on steady all day long.  That would have sucked if it happened a couple hours earlier.

The new ties that we got to attach the chips with did their job, we didn’t a lose a single chip.  However I still saw tons of people before the race struggling to figure out how to attach the chip.  I really don’t understand why some people found it so hard to comprehend.

After the race even though Ali and I were both beat from getting up so early and busting ass the day prior, we followed up by going to Ali’s gym.  She had suggested to me that she wanted me to show her a 300 workout.  So even though a 300 was the last thing I felt like doing I wasn’t going to dismiss an opportunity to show Ali the routine.  One thing I quickly found out was that my shit hole gym was much better suited for the work out than this place.  There is limited floor space to do any ad-lib exercises and it almost felt like doing anything outside the lines of conventional exercise would be frowned upon.  The place is just very “sterile”.

So I took Ali through the routine, albeit a shorter, easier version of it.  Ali is in the middle of rehab for a bad knee so she was limited on what and how much she could do.  By the time we wrapped it up I was breathing heavy and sweating while Ali looked like she wasn’t worked much at all.  I told her I felt bad because she couldn’t really get the feel for the routine unless she is able to do weights and reps to the point where she is truly tired.  I told her the 300 is all about intensity.  If you aren’t gasping for air during it, you aren’t trying hard enough to push yourself.  Maybe once her knee is better we can give it another try.

By the time we got home it was almost 1 pm.  I was so f’ing tired.  I was tired enough that after lunch I did something so rare that I can probably count the times I did it in the past 5 years on my hands, I took a nap.  I knew the Eagles were on at 8:15 and knew that there was no way I would be able to stay awake to watch them if I didn’t take at least a small snap, I was just exhausted.

  The nap was short, about 90 minutes or so but it felt like it helped my energy level at least a little bit.  Napping meant I had to get right into doing whatever else was left to do around the house like finishing up the processing of the race results, putting the equipment away and sweeping the house.  I realized how much I dislike timing a race on a Sunday, it just feels like it cuts the weekend off at the knees.

So even with the nap I was unable to stay awake for the entire Eagles game.  I fell asleep towards the end of the third quarter.  The game was back and forth tight but I didn’t have a good feeling when I went to sleep.  It seemed like the Birds were just blowing too many opportunities.  Akers missing field goals, getting no points off of turnovers, dropping punts….  It all just seemed doomed for failure and indeed it was with the Eagles losing to a team they should beat, 24-20.  I mean come on, you lose to Kyle Orton?  Well whatever, once again my Eagle expectations are readjusted downward.  Next week they play the Skins, they really need to win that game.

I got some pictures up.  First are the pictures from the South Beach vball tourney. Then there are some pictures of a bunch of ibis that were hanging out at our place as well as a few pics of my recent projects added on to the office painting project page. 

This is too funny to not share.  The funniest thing is this isn’t that far of a stretch.