Archives April 2009

All weekend long we enjoyed our new kitchen counter tops.  They make everything look better on them.  Washing dishes is more enjoyable, food being prepared on them looks better, even stuff piled on top of them looks more organized.  Another by product of the dark varied pattern is they absolutely hide dirt from the naked eye.  You can’t really tell if they are dirty or not.  With the old white counters EVERYTHING was visible. 

Saturday we busted ass to get everything done before picking up mom after she finished work at 5.  I was a whirlwind of activity both inside and outside.  We piled both dogs and Ali into the party van to pick up mom.  About halfway on the trip back home the blower fan on the van mysteriously died.  It was rather warm outside so we put the windows down and relied on wind power to keep things comfortable.   I kept trying the fan multiple times hoping it would magically start working again.  Unless it is something as simple as a popped fuse it is going to probably require a mechanics intervention.  Trying to replace the blower motor is just a mess in a van since 2/3 of the engine compartment is tucked back under the console.

Mom thought the counters looked even better in person than they did in the pictures.  She thought the sink and faucet set up was extremely cool as well.  I agree.

I made steaks on the grill for dinner.  The weather was perfect so we ate out on the lanai.  Later mom agreed to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  We didn’t start watching until 8, the movie was 2:45 long so mom predicted from the get go that she would not be awake by the end, she was right.  The movie was good.  It was a bit long, the middle section seemed to drag on for awhile but I guess when you are trying to document a persons entire lifetime it is going to take awhile.  The premise of being born with an old body and dying with the body of an infant held a lot of interest for me, especially with my dark obsession with the aging process.  Brad Pitt did a great job in the film. Of course I can’t ever remember a film that he was in where I didn’t think he did a great job.  He is really a good actor IMO.  The movie had a lot of strong emotional moments in it, especially towards the end. Ali was in all out crying mode by the time it finished.  There were a couple things in there I didn’t quite connect the dots but it wasn’t bad enough to make me feel bad about the plot. I liked the movie, just make sure you allocate a three hour block to watch it, I’d give it an A-.    Mom went to bed a little over half way into it.

We had another fantastic day weather-wise on Easter.  I started off my morning in an enjoyable manner for me, I ran a couple miles on the treadmill.  After the run I was pretty overheated so I decided to go jump in the pool even though the air temp was not quite 70 degrees yet and the water was only 75 degrees.  Wow the first few moments after diving in were quite stimulating.  My entire body felt like it was zapped with electricity.  However I swam around a bit to get the blood moving.  It didn’t take long till the water felt refreshing instead of cold.  Sadie was thrilled I was in the water and instantly began running around the pool edge waiting for me to splash her.  I was happy to oblige.

Our Easter morning was nice and relaxing.  All three of us and the two dogs spent the majority of the morning just hanging out on the pool deck relaxing.  A lot of times when mom is over I get the feeling that she thinks she is burdening us with her presence, especially if I am off doing other things around the house while she is there.  I hoped that since we were all out there with her that she would feel less of a need to head out early.

I got my  family phone calls in during the morning as well, talking to my dad, brother and sister. I got to hear about my dad’s possible relocation from out west back to PA, my brother’s ongoing divorce drama and my sister’s crazy life as a mother of two.  I almost felt guilty as I relaxed out on the pool deck in 80 degree weather talking to them.

One of the things we talked about with mom was her attempt to stop smoking using a drug called Chantix.  Supposedly it makes you not desire a cigarette somehow.  Mom’s initial reason she gave for quitting was financial instead of for health reasons which I think is not a good basis for change.  She thought Chantix was cool because you are allowed to keep smoking while taking it.  The drug is supposed to wean you off cigarettes until you are the point where you are not smoking at all.  Well mom has been smoking less after a month but she is still smoking.  I don’t really see the point of such a program.  I expressed my feelings to mom about it.  I said that you can’t take the drug indefinitely, 12 weeks max, continuing to smoke while on it makes no sense to me.  It’s like saying a cocaine addict can take a quick snort once in a awhile.  I can only hope that mom sees the light and stops for good, for the right reasons.

For Easter “dinner” mom prepared a homemade eggplant parmigiana, instead of us doing a dual meal thing to account for Ali’s vegetarianism. (is that a word?)  Mom complained that the eggplant was too bitter.  Ali and I thought it tasted fine.  As a result mom didn’t take any of it home with her and instead left all the left overs for us.  Mom did agree however to take a few of our monstrous beets home, she loves beets. 

After lunch both mom and I went in the pool for a bit.  I assured mom that the water felt fine after 30 seconds.  Mom didn’t have the same experience I did, she bailed after a couple minutes in the water.  After drying off we packed up mom’s stuff and I took her home around 3pm.  It was a relaxing, enjoyable Easter experience although it hardly felt like an Easter from up north.  No Easter baskets were hidden and found, the only eggs to be seen were safely stored in a carton in the fridge and the only bunny ears around were from the shit factories hidden under our shed. Eh, times change.

Although we did most of the housework on Saturday we found the rest of our Easter rather busy.  Ali had to do her Nicki food production where she creates a months worth of food at a time.  It creates quite the mess as you can imagine.  I tried to help with the clean up process as much as I could.  I also was involved in folding laundry, making the bed and a few other chores that kept us busy until around 7.

Over the weekend I also spent a considerable amount of time messing around with the new timing system.  So far everything I have seen has been all positive.  The biggest “ohhh and ahh” came when I tested the read height of the new chips.  I was astonished when I was getting confirmation beeps with the chips between three and four feet high.  If I get a foot of read height with the DAG system I am lucky.  I also spent some time messing around with the included software.  It will take a lot of relearning how to do certain procedures but in the long run the new software could expedite the result creation process.  So far, so good.

The granite is in!  As I mentioned yesterday I had anxiety about whether things would go smoothly or not.  I always expect something to go wrong.  Well luckily in this case I was wrong.  The entire process went perfectly.  Ali was home with the installers and the plumber and she said that everyone was very nice. 

I left work a bit early so I could check out the work in progress.  By the time I got home the counter tops were completely done.  Basically in the span of a morning the plumbing was disconnected, the old counters were removed, the granite was installed and the holes for the faucet, RO and soap dispenser were drilled.  In fact all that was left was for the plumbing to get reinstalled.

Like I said the plumber was a very nice guy.  In addition to hooking up the new sink, we also had him hook up the new reverse osmosis system.  It cost us $500 to have the plumber do everything but in retrospect it was money well spent.  It was done right, it was done neatly and the guy was great.  After the plumber left Ali and I spent a lot of time just admiring our new counters.  Everything looked great. 

The new sink and faucet combination will make cleaning big items so much easier.  The sink is a massive and deep granite composite material that is supposed to be impervious to almost anything.  The new RO system is a big upgrade as well.  Replacing the filters is a breeze compared to what I have had to deal with.  It also makes a TON more  clean water than the old system did.  When we emptied the 1st tank of water to flush it out we got at least 3 gallons of water out of it.  With the old system we were lucky to get a gallon out before it started dying.

So needless to say we are extremely pleased with our granite investment.  We added up everything we spent and even with adding an RO system which we didn’t plan for with the $6000 estimate from Home Depot, we wound up saving around $1500 bucks.  You can see  all of the pictures from the project here.

Yesterday I also received the new timing hardware that the running club bought.  I am looking forward to digging into it so I can familiarize myself with the new system.  So far I really like the look of the hardware.  It seems very rugged and professional.  Hopefully it will make our race timing much less stressful once we implement it.

We are picking up mom Saturday to sleep over for Easter Sunday.  Originally we planned on going to her place but the surprise early granite installation merited a change of venue.  I look forward to showing off the new counters to mom.

 Did you know that I can get a 4.85% discount on a new GM vehicle through our credit union? Might come in handy down the road.

I decided to revisit the 300 workout for the first time in two months yesterday.  I have felt low energy and weak so why not do a 300 to burn up the cobwebs?  Whew it kicked my ass.  For the first time since last November I actually did some of each exercise for a total of 270 reps.  I cut back on the pull ups and a little bit on the c & p’s but otherwise I did the the full 50 reps on everything else.  It felt good to do it at the time.  My back is aching pretty bad today from the dead lifts.

Last night I got a call from Ali as she was leaving work asking if “we” should work on cleaning out the cabinets and drawers ahead of the counter top install today.  Well she wasn’t leaving work until a little before 8 or so.  Well of course I wasn’t going to wait till she rolled in at 8:30 to get started so I did it. By the time she got home I had just finished pulling the last pot and pan out.  Yes, I was annoyed.

When Ali came in she saw that I already had done the work.  She said that the intention of her call was not for me to do all of it.  Well Ali may very well have not been thinking it consciously but if she knows me at all, which she certainly does after this long, she would know that I would not want to be waiting for her to arrive home hella late to do something like that, especially on a  week night.   It would be like telling Nicki to sit in front of a plate of cat food for an extended period of time. So anyway there was a bit of a sniping session back and forth as a result.  I had a very chaotic day at work as well, it didn’t help things.

So anyway today our kitchen will be transformed.  It is exciting but I am a bit anxious as well about everything going as planned.  I took some before shots last night, hopefully I have some spectacular after shots to post tomorrow.

Subject: Help me hold Wall St. CEOs accountable

Hi,

Last week the Obama administration took tough, decisive action with the auto industry, forcing the resignation of the CEO of General Motors.

It’s time to do the same for the banks. And the best way to start is by firing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. He’s the worst of the worst.

I just signed a petition to ask Treasury Secretary Geithner to replace the leadership at bailed-out banks, starting with Ken Lewis. Can you join me at the link below?
http://lewis/?r_by=15895-6800852-3iKKGZx&rc=paste

Thanks!

We got a surprise call yesterday from the counter top place.  They said our sink that was ordered came in and they would like to install the counter tops TOMORROW.  Wow that was a big surprise, I didn’t expect anything to happen for another week or two.  So Ali confirmed the appointment this morning so we should be good to go.  I am crossing my fingers the process goes without a hitch.  I will be sure to take some before and after pics for comparison.

Once again last night I felt tired and retired to bed quite early.  If I think back I have been tired since Saturday night when I relied on coffee to keep me alert during dinner.  I just noticed last night that the moon was once again full.  Maybe this is just a new full moon funk symptom.  Getting tired so early makes me feel old.  It seems that although I have been getting more sleep than normal the past couple nights the sleep has been very dream filled.  I recall having very long, complex dreams but can not remember much about them at all.

I was thinking about running in a race on Saturday morning up in Ft Myers.  I ran 3 miles last week on the treadmill and thought I had no side effects initially.  However a couple days afterward I had a few sharp spikes of pain in the right knee if I stepped on it in a way that applied sideways torque on it.  I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry so I am going to skip the race and not run again until those spikes are no longer present.

I noticed yesterday at the gym that  I felt somewhat weak and low energy.  On the way home last night I could hardly keep my eyes open.  I was asleep in bed by 9:15.  I was hoping that an extended night’s sleep would shake whatever cobwebs there were.  I woke up today feeling pretty much the same.  Hopefully it clears up shortly, whatever it is.  I had scenarios in my head that it is some sort of bizarre side effect from getting weed and feed in my eye.

I finally got around to removing the Bush countdown timer.  I guess after nearly 80 days it’s safe to assume he won’t be coming back.

I have had a nightmare at work over the past few days.  I noticed that there were a lot of updates on our WSUS server that were not being approved for install on our workstations.  I green flagged all of them.  The end result was an avalanche of updates coming across the network.  Some of these updates had the side effect of breaking things like report printing off of our SQL report server and taking our Sharepoint server offline.  Getting the various issues fixed was quite a headache.  Yea it’s good to keep your network secure with the latest security fixes from MSFT.  Unfortunately they sometimes have unintended results that can be a royal PIA to figure out.

I forgot to mention that Ali took a picture of our latest harvest from our now productive garden.  Front and center are the HUGE beets.  Beets have been the all-star of our garden thus far along with the tons of lettuce we produced.  If you look close you will see there are also some beans, carrots and our first ever edible strawberries.  There is something about growing your own stuff in the garden that connects with me. 

Speaking of connecting.  I spent more time than normal this weekend just sort of “being”  Both on Saturday and Sunday I took time to just do nothing but sit out on the lanai and enjoy the sights and sounds of our property.  We really are quite lucky in many ways.  I just don’t slow down often enough to think about it all that much.

So we got a call from the bank asking that we schedule our appraisal for the refinance.  I asked Ali on Friday to call and schedule it so it could be fit into one of her days off.  I was surprised when she called me later in the day to let me know that the appraiser was going to be showing up at 10 am Saturday morning.  She thought it would be good if we were both there.

Friday night Ali was saying how she was looking forward to sleeping in Saturday.  Saturday morning she wasn’t very happy when she saw me putting on my work outside clothes at 8am.  She asked what I was doing,  I told her I had to go outside and get the grass mowed, it looked like hell.  For whatever reason it hadn’t clicked in Ali’s head that when you get your house appraised you want it looking NICE.  The yard had tons of weeds shooting up and the inside of the house was a bit of a mess too from the Sadie tornado.  Ali acted annoyed that I thought the house needed look good.  I didn’t have time to explain it to her so I just went outside and started mowing.

Ali unhappily got up and picked up the inside and then finished off the mowing while I weed whacked.  The guy showed up a little early while I was still weed whacking.  So I came around to the front all covered in grass clippings and let him in.  He was a talker, he talked my ear off for quite awhile.  I was as receptive and engaging as I could stomach since I knew the number this guy produces has a lot to do with the success of the refinancing. He quickly said that the house looked fine, he just had to take some pictures and some measurements.  He mentioned how busy they have been between refinancing and foreclosures.

After the guy left I went back outside to try to finish up any outside duties.  After we ate lunch Ali went back to try to take a nap while I decided to wash the Tacoma and Camry.  Unfortunately Ali was woken up by the phone a few times.  She wasn’t happy.

We went out to dinner Saturday evening with our former neighbor and his partner.  We hadn’t seen them in quite awhile.  I was feeling super tired on my way there so I drove through a Dunkin Donuts to pick up a medium coffee.  By the time we got to the restaurant I only had drank maybe a 10th of it.  Instead of wasting a perfectly good cup of coffee, I told Ali I would just take it inside with me.  Ali said that was rude but after some back and forth chatter she said “whatever” .  So into the restaurant I went with my DD cup in tow.  The waitress saw my cup and thought it was odd but I explained I simply was trying to wake up a bit.  I drank it quickly and left the empty cup on the table.

Everyone else at the table was drinking alcohol, I just drank caffeine.  I followed up my DD coffee with diet coke and then finished off with another cup of coffee with desert.  It was a nice meal and it was good to catch up with our ex-neighbor.  If things go as planned we will be getting back together sooner rather than later.

Before we went to bed Saturday night I stopped in horror in the kitchen when I saw a small brown object on the tile.  Yep it was cat shit.  Evidently Spook had a hanger that didn’t decide to drop off until she made it to the kitchen.  What a pleasant way to end our day.

Just when I was singing the praises of Sadie being good she had another relapse.  She was digging/chewing at the wall under the front window again.  Again I brought her out to the area, pointed to the damage as I used my stern NO voice.  She cowered and slinked away.

Sunday morning I was up early outside with the spreader.  I bought some weed and feed that is specifically supposed to control the dollar weed that is infesting certain areas of our yard.  The instructions said to spread it early in the morning when the grass is still wet so the stuff can stick to the leaves of the weed.  When I went into the shed to get the spreader I saw that I had a partial bag of some other weed and feed that I used before.  It had a weird pink color now for some reason but I figured I could just mix it in with the new stuff.  

I poured the old stuff in and then poured the new stuff on top of it.  I started pushing and hardly anything was coming out.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that the old stuff was causing the problem.  It was somewhat sticky and was clogging the opening where the stuff is supposed to fall out of.  So I had to dump the contents of the spreader into a bucket.  At first I tried to just mix it up by hand and put it right back in.  I had the same problem.   So I dumped the spreader again and refilled it with just the new weed and feed.  The new stuff spread just fine but it didn’t take me long to empty the spreader.  Well I didn’t want to waste half of the 50 pound bag so I put the mixture of old and new back in.

I discovered that the only way I could get the sticky mixture to drop was to adjust the opening nearly all the way open.  I hurried around the yard spreading the remains as well as I could.  They recommend you wear long pants, boots, eye protection and a mask when spreading the stuff, it’s not exactly good for you.  Well I was doing it in shorts and crocs.  I had the stuff on my hands, in my crocs and stuck to my feet.  When I was done there was a little bit of the mixture in the spreader.  I turned the spreader over to dump the remains.  When I did it left a pile of weed and feed on the ground.  Well that’s no good, I thought to myself, so I stuck my hand down and tried to flatten out the pile by swiping it back and forth.  Smart, I wound up throwing some weed and feed up into my left eye.

My eye started to burn a bit.  I tried to rub the shit out of my eye with the back of my hand.  I was thoroughly annoyed.  Eventually when I got back inside I washed it with a wet paper towel and later rinsed it with eye drops.  I still can see so I guess I did no permanent damage.

I kept myself busy while Ali was at spin class.  I had to do some work on a server at work which took quite awhile.  Once Ali got back I took my new road bike out for a quick trip to E’s to pick up the Sunday paper.  Mom had called and told me there were a lot of good coupons in it.  The ride went ok.  I didn’t try to push it like I did the first time speed-wise.  I had to go out onto to the main road, Immokalee Road to get there. 

 Immokalee has a bike lane on both sides which is nice.  Unfortunately you are still at the mercy of asshole drivers.  Some idiot driving a tractor trailer got the 1 fingered salute from me when he passed me with his wheels right on the white line, a foot or two away from me.  I kept that finger out there for a good long time, hoping he would see it and stop so I could really lay into him.  The bike rode well although it feels like it could still use some adjustment in the gear train.  I also need to get real pedals.  I’m not ready to dive into the bike shoes that lock onto the pedals yet.  The toe cage pedals that came with the bike are very uncomfortable. 

After my ride I was pretty warm so I decided to jump into the pool.  The water temp was up to 78-79 degrees, much too cold for Ali but fine for a normal human being.  After the first 30 seconds the water felt just fine.  As soon as I hit the water Sadie was right there ready to play her pool splash game. The game is simple.  I swim from one side of the pool to the other.  Sadie races to meet me there.  If I stick my hands up on pool deck she tries to nip at them.  So instead I slam my hands into the water which soaks her with water.  She finds the game incredibly fun for some reason.  By the time we were done she needed a towel as much as I did.

We caught up on a lot of Tivo over the weekend.  One of the things we watched was the series finale of ER.  It’s hard to believe that ER has been on for 15 years.  It was one of the few non-reality based shows that we both have watched for a long time.  ER has been a fantastic show filled to the brim with interesting characters and compelling story telling.  The show probably has made my eyes moist more than any other show in my lifetime.  I think my favorite characters of all are Dr Greene and Dr Carter.  They were quiet, inspirational leaders.  The type of people I would hope to be.  It was sad to realize it was all at an end.  The final episode was a good show as you would expect.  They put a nice little ribbon on what has been a gift of tv excellence for a decade and a half.  So long ER.

My 99 Tacoma will soon cross the 100,000 mile mark.  I bought the truck used in 2001 with around 30,000 miles on it.  The truck has been more or less bulletproof since I have owned it.  Sure there have been some annoyances but they all had to do with the prior owner not disclosing that his son had an accident with the truck.  The accident was the cause of the maddening random squeal I would hear from the drive shaft.  A poor quality repaint of certain areas from the repair also has resulted in the clear coat peeling off on some top areas hit hardest from the sun.  The only thing I have had to do that was outside of normal maintenance was have the starter replaced in 8 years of ownership. 

When I purchased the truck I decided to grab an extended warranty from the credit union for it.  I never used the coverage once.  The starter conveniently failed a few months after the coverage expired.  It’s been a great truck for me that has been a crucial part of so many home improvement projects that I’ve lost count.  I have no plans of getting rid of it anytime soon.  Hopefully if the refinance goes through I can stop procrastinating about a couple maintenance items that need to be addressed.  It’s been a GREAT truck.

Yesterday a guy came out to template our counters.  The way Ali described it, he basically built a thin wood template of our existing counters.  That template will be used to cut out our new granite counter tops.  It’s pretty exciting that things are actually happening.  After work last night I used the last of my Xmas gift cards at Home Depot to buy a new GE reverse osmosis system to get installed at the same time as the new counter tops.  They had two GE systems there, one was roughly $100 more than the other.  I opted for the more expensive system for a few reasons. 

If any of you have an older under the sink RO system and have ever attempted to change the filters in them, especially the DE filter, you know how much of a pain in the ass it is.  Well the system I got has super simple screw on, screw off filters (that sounds funny).  It also is a space saving design that attaches to the wall of cabinet instead of taking up floor space.  Yea the filters are more expensive to replace.  I’ll pay the extra dollars to avoid what is typically a very wet and curse word filled filter changing experience that has been the norm for the last 7 years.

We are supposed to go to our former neighbor’s new place Saturday night for dinner.  We need to mow the grass this weekend.  Another thing I grabbed at HD was a bag of weed and feed specifically a type to control dollar weed (or as we call it, Creeping Charlie).  The area of our yard around the pond/orchard is INFESTED with dollar weed.  Dollar weed is an extremely invasive, vine-like weed that spreads like mad.  It will overtake an area in no time, choking out anything else.  Ali hates it as she is constantly pulling out of landscaped areas.  Well enough is enough.  I am hoping this stuff will get rid of this shit once and for all. 

The rest of the weekend will hopefully be enjoyable.  I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.  I’m hoping to put in 3 miles plus on the treadmill over lunch.

I’m sure everyone enjoyed my April Fool’s joke.

Our back yard is overrun with rabbits.  The only thing is you hardly ever see them.  The rabbits apparently are very nocturnal.  During the day we think they hang out in a rabbit hole under our shed. You would think that having rabbits wouldn’t be a big deal.  Well it looks like we have hundreds of rabbits roaming the back yard at night based on the amount of rabbit shit that covers our yard.  It is insane.  You literally can not take a single step without seeing round rabbit turds on the ground. 

Still you wouldn’t thing it is that big of a deal I guess, free fertilizer for the yard right?   I guess except that sometimes dogs think that rabbit shit is instead little nuggets of dog food dropped from heaven.  In the past we have caught Nicki eating rabbit shit and we think that Sadie has picked up on the disgusting habit as well.  Ali and I would be much happier if the rabbits found another home. We are hoping during wet season when that area gets flooded they will have to relocate.  When they do I can try to put some sort of small wire fencing under the shed to keep them out. 

The dogs do their part to try to keep our yard rabbit free. Every night when we take the dogs out they are desperately looking for any motion that could be a rabbit.  If they see the slightest twitch they are off like rockets trying to flush it out.  The rabbits are way too fast, even too fast for Sadie and always get away.  They are able to get through the fencing as well.  We had hoped the small openings in the fence would have kept the rabbits out.

This morning before work I thought the dogs had flushed another rabbit.  They were carrying on by the fence line.  I walked over and saw something that looked to be about the size of a large rabbit but it wasn’t moving very fast at all.   I was worried the dogs were going to try to hurt it so I ran over and called them off.  As I got closer I realized it wasn’t a rabbit but instead a full size armadillo.

The armadillo was scurrying up and down the fence line desperately trying to escape the two barking dogs.  A couple times he jumped into the fence looking for a hole.  As he tried to escape he was making a menacing hissing sound.  The dogs chased it under a palmetto bush where the armadillo started to dig in to protect itself.  All you saw was clumps of sand flying out as he tried to burrow in deeper.

I called Ali out to see our latest visitor.  I had her take the dogs in so I could try to get him out of the yard.  I came over with a shovel and net.  I tried to get the shovel under him so he would back out.  Instead he dug in deeper and hammered the shovel with his back feet violently.  I certainly wasn’t dressed for an extensive extraction procedure and I was running late so I had to leave him be.  Luckily Ali said she saw the armadillo get out under the front gate a little later.