Friday night we plowed into some of the stuff we had piled up on the Tivo. Over the weekend we also started catching up on this season of Big Brother. So far, it hasn’t seemed that compelling. The couples aspect of it really hasn’t added anything to the game in my opinion.
Saturday kicked off what was a very busy two days. Once Ali got up we loaded Nicki up in the truck and headed off to Jack & Ann’s Feed and Supply in Immokalee to look at fencing supplies. My neighbor across the street bought his fencing materials from them years ago. So we find the place with little fuss. I intended on leaving Nicki in the truck while we went inside. Ali wasn’t ok with that so she said she would stay in the truck. I didn’t know if it would be a big deal to take a dog inside. After my first few steps inside the door, it was obvious Nicki probably could have taken a shit in the corner inside and no one would have cared.
I find my way back to the area where they deal with fencing. I walk through some old swinging double doors and come upon a counter and a bench to the right of it with two women sitting on it, one of them sporting a kick ass mullet. “You got the corn? You can unload around the back” she says to me? “Huh?” I say, not knowing what she was talking about. “The corn, are you the guy delivering the corn?” I can only assume my ripped up denim shorts, t-shirt and black A’s hat with paint splattered on it made me look like a corn delivery person. I respond “No, I am here to get information about fencing” “Aw shucks, I guess I’m going to have to get up now” she says. Welcome to Jack & Ann’s home of the Florida crackers.
Just as I was starting to explain to her what I was looking for, a guy behind the counter got finished up with what he was doing and she dished me to him, evidently he was the fencing guy. He looked like he was straight out of Deliverance. He was nice enough, he just was as red of a neck as they come. So I tell him that I was looking for pricing on fencing but I wasn’t quite sure what kind so he says he will give me the tour. We head out into the yard, as we did Ali saw us and met up with us along with Nicki.
The guy gave me a crash course on fencing. Field fencing, no climb, welded wire, level 1 or level 3 galvanization, it was a lot of info coming rapid fire. I had to laugh when while explaining how I should build the corners of the fence he starts drawing a small diagram on the palm of his hand. He evidently had used his palm as a notepad earlier as there were other numbers already scrawled out there.
So after seeing all of my options I was more confused than ever as to what the f I wanted to do. We went back inside and he worked up some material costs based on the drawing and measurements Ali provided. As he did Nicki was having a grand old time sniffing everything in site. She never was in a feed store before. So the guy works up the numbers and gives us pricing for several types of fencing. When I saw the numbers it was bittersweet. The sweet part was the total cost for material was only $2000. The bitter part was now that I know just how cheaply I could do this myself, the idea of breaking down and paying someone else 6k to do it is going to be really hard for me to swallow. We thanked the guy for the info. I got the feeling as we left that he thought we were just stroking him and that I wouldn’t be up to the task of fence erection.
All weekend the fence topic came up. I told Ali how I felt like she thought I wouldn’t do a professional looking job and part of me wants to do it myself just to prove her wrong. The other part of me wants to save 4k. Another thing I realized over the weekend was that our original idea of having two 10-12 foots gates along the front of fence to allow access between the yards is not practical either. Gates of that size would need to be installed on the flat land, 40 feet away from the mound the house is built on. Having to walk all the way down there and open a big gate every time I want to go to the front of the house to the back, or vice versa would become a HUGE pain in the ass in no time. So our layout idea changed once again where we could have two smaller gates right by the sides of the house for human beings to travel back and forth and then one big gate in the front and the back to allow access to vehicles. That design change in turn threw a wrench into the idea of using wood poles and field fencing as I’m not sure if I’d be able to do the small gates right by the house using those materials because of the way ending points of field fence sections are supposed to be anchored in the ground.
So then we were back to the idea of chain link since small gates are easily hung off of it. I threw the idea out of chain link across the front and field fencing for the rest. I knew Ali would object because of her phobia about things not “matching” Unlike field fencing, chain link is something I wouldn’t do myself. I still just don’t like the look of chain link, at least the bare non-vinyl coated chain link. It looks like it belongs around a warehouse, not a house.
So anyway, we still haven’t made a decision. The last idea we had was to get a couple more estimates. We have two so far. To be honest, I am sick of thinking about it. I am normally not very indecisive and when I am, it weighs on me. Ali has no problems spending as much as an installer wants to charge for the fence. When it comes to the dog, no expense is too great. I am a bit more grounded financially. If I can give Ali what she wants without breaking the bank it would be a win/win. I imagine myself in the throes of fence installation, complaining about digging hole after hole, wondering why I just didn’t pay someone to do the work. However I also know that the things that you struggle with and eventually overcome are the things you hang your hat on. I don’t ever want to lose sight of that.
So the rest of the weekend was filled with various chores, both manual labor and not so manual labor. The grass was mowed and weed whacked, the pool was cleaned and then I started on another job I wasn’t looking forward to, cleaning out the stinky litter box. Like I have said before, it is one of those automatic litter boxes that you fill with clumping litter. the theory is the cat goes, the litter clumps it up into a solid and then a rake comes through ten minutes later to push the solid into a collection bin. Well the cats take pleasure in finding ways to make the litter box less than automatic for me. Buttons favorite trick is to stand at the very front of the box and pee only in the front edge to avoid tripping the electric eye that triggers raking. As a result over time that spot becomes cement-like and the rake won’t budge it. When this happens I have to get out a litter rake and bust it up as I hold my breath. It sucks.
Well anyway I had a plan. The grocery store started carrying bags of the new silica stuff. My brother-in-law told me about the magic of this new product. It basically absorbs all the moisture and smell almost instantly without clumping. One bag of this stuff lasts at least a month. I was skeptical but being desperate to escape my cat excrement hell, I took the litter box outside and hosed it down to get all the scuzz out of it before trying the new stuff.
So I clean everything out, set the box back up inside and wait for the cats to try it. I was a bit worried that instead of relieving themselves in litter that looked like little plastic beads they would instead choose to do it on the floor. Well finally I heard the rake on the unit go. I check the box and see or smell nothing! The rest of the weekend the magic continued. I haven’t had to touch the box for two days, this stuff WORKS. It is incredible. If you have felines, you need to try this stuff out. You can use it in a plain old litter box as well. I keep pinching myself, the idea of not having to deal with the stench and mess of emptying out the box every morning seems too good to be true.
Late Saturday we spent a lot of time working with the timing system laptops. Next weekend there is a race and we are going to take the complete rig with and set it up although we only have 3 chips available to time with. We are going to give those chips to a few select runners and try to register all of the rest, just like we normally would. It will be a great test to see what sort of issues we run up against.
Ali started feeling sick on Saturday so I decided to head to the track solo Sunday morning. Initially I had set a goal in my head to run 12 laps at a 9 minute mile pace. My internal governor had different ideas. I ran faster (for me) and shorter. My right knee was aching a bit which is why I decided to cut it short at a little more than 2 miles. I clocked in at an 8:14 pace, with my fastest pace being 6:41 which must have came during my acceleration to the finish. I was sucking some major wind. Although 8:14 is far from a blistering pace, it is enough where I am breathing hard enough that conversation would not be welcome. When I am running 10-11 minute pace with Ali I hardly need to breathe through my mouth. My goal is to run a 5k under 25 minutes. To do so I would need to keep that pace or slightly faster for the full 3.1 miles. Today my legs are a bit sore but not enough to stop me from doing today’s 300 installment.
Even though I predicted I would not get around to it, after my run I decided to do the garage cleaning thing. It wasn’t too bad of a project. I pulled most of the junk out, organized it a bit, swept out the copious amounts of spiders and their webs and stuck everything back in. Total time invested, 2 hours.
Last week on consecutive days I got back two Christmas gifts that had failed on me, the ball bearing clock and the sound machine thing from Brookstone. I have been using the sound machine thing before bed, playing the soothing sounds of waves crashing ashore. it’s pretty cool how it works. During the last ten minutes of the timer, the sound gradually fades to help ease you into sleep. Well somehow as a result of my nighttime ocean listening, I got the urge Sunday afternoon to hear the real thing. Somewhere around 2 I mentioned to Ali that I felt like going to the beach for a little bit. She was happy to accommodate my whim and we left the house around 3.
I figured we would spend an hour or two there, nothing big. We headed down to Vanderbilt Beach, the closest public access point to us. Since it was getting late in the afternoon I figured the beach wouldn’t be that full. Boy I was wrong. We pulled into the parking garage and were surprised with how full it was. When we walked down to the beach we were greeted with wall to wall people. I guess in season there is no slow time when it comes to beach access. We found a opening and set up our simple gear, a chair and two towels. Ali and I walked down to the water and stood in it. It was cold by our standards but not bad at all. After a few seconds your feet and ankles became accustomed to it. The water looked like a mess, filled with red algae and about as clear as mud. There were a few people all the way in the water as well as a bunch of kids skimboarding along the water line.
After admiring the view for a few minutes we headed back up to our stuff. We said how awesome it is to be able to be on the beach, in the ocean in late February, something that has become lost on us since it is so accessible. Ali took a minute and called her mom to rub it in but only got the answering machine. I heard PA had a nasty ice storm late last week. So as Ali laid on the towel I sat in my chair and read magazines. It was great just relaxing, taking in the sounds, smells and sights of the beach. We hung out there until a little after 5 and had a great time doing so. Every time we go to the beach we come back happy we went and talking of how crazy it is that we don’t do it more. I don’t know why it is so hard to find the time/motivation to do so.
Sunday night we watched the 2nd Indiana Jones movie, my least favorite of the series. There is just a lot of weird stuff going, all the chanting, voodoo stuff, human sacrifice, enslaving kids and the sort just is not that cool I initially planned to stream it from my PC to my Tivo but was unable to do so. The Tivo flagged it as copyrighted content and refused to stream it. I’m not quite sure how it identified the file as a copyright infringement. I even tried renaming the file to something random, it still would not transfer it. Weird, so I wound up just streaming it through the hacked Xbox instead.
These are Cragar SS wheels and for years they were seen on many the muscle cars. I however always preferred the SST wheels and equipped both my 71 Chevelle and beloved 69 Firebird with them. 
wall to wall chrome. When they were clean I thought they looked just awesome rolling along with the light reflecting off of them. The SST’s had a few problems though. You always wanted to keep them clean so they were looking their best so you wound up washing the car A LOT. Second and more concerning, no matter how much you cleaned them, they rusted, especially around the small bolts on the perimeter. But damn I loved the way they looked. If I ever land that Mustang, there is a good chance it could wind up with another set of SST’s on it. And I’ll finally have a place to put that fancy wood shifter my dad bought for me years and years ago.