Archives 2009

So as I indicated last week, the painting of the great room was scheduled to continue this weekend.  I wasn’t quite sure if we would get it all done or not.  At a minimum I wanted to get the left and back wall completed.  The small wall and area where the TV is nestled into was going to require some extra work that made me think that it might not get done.  I also envisioned the project spanning parts of both days of the weekend.  I’m happy to say I was wrong.

 We got started mid-morning Saturday.  Except for a short break for lunch we worked diligently for 5 or 6 hours.  By this time we have done enough painting that we are more efficient at it.  Not only did we get everything done, we got it all done Saturday which I was amazed by.

The most difficult part of the project was doing the area where the tv is.  The first challenge was getting the tv and it’s stand pulled out without having to disconnect everything.  Using the furniture sliders I was able to slide the entire unit out and then just disconnected the various plugs and cords from the wall.  Taping and painting the upper pocket above the tv was quite challenging as well.  If it wasn’t for my long arms and legs I am not sure how we would have managed it.

Ali and I were very pleased with ourselves.  Not only was the most difficult room in the house painted but we did a pretty damn nice job of making it look professional in the process.  We celebrated by having tacos and then geeking out on the computers until way too late, me playing WoW and Ali buried in a marathon Bejeweled session.  By the time we went to sleep it was close to midnight.

Even with the late bedtime I found myself up and about a little after 6am Sunday morning.  Ali’s preferred spinning instructor was not going to be there this week so we decided we would do something we hadn’t done in a long, long time, go for a run at the track.  I have been doing semi-regular running for a few months.  Ali is much less regular with running.  For that reason we decided we would just run at our own pace.  When we ran together in the past I would act as the pacer for Ali, pushing her to keep her pace up.  At this point she doesn’t want that so it’s better that we just run our own race.

All of my semi-regular running of the past few months has been the treadmill variety.  Even though I do my treadmill training at a 1% incline to compensate for the moving belt, it still is not the same as running outside on a track in the Florida elements.  Even though we got our on the track early, before 9am it already felt very warm and humid.  After just doing our two warm up walking laps I could feel the sweat building up on my back.

So we started running, I had the GPS watch on to track my stats.  I wasn’t out to set any world records.  I ran at a pace that was about 30 seconds per mile slower than my last treadmill run.  Running outside more than compensated for the slower pace, I was working plenty hard.  Many times in the past when we would do track running we would be hitting a strong head wind for one portion of the track, there was next to no wind on Sunday at least. In total I ran just over a 5K.  I was drenched with sweat as I hit the stop button on the watch.  I’m not quite sure how far Ali ran but I would estimate it was approximately half of that.

It felt good to get out there and do some “real” running.  I wasn’t sure how my knees would react to running on a hard track versus a somewhat softer treadmill, knock on wood, they feel fine as of now.  After a quick dip in the pool we were outside mowing the grass in the drenching humidity.  After grass maintenance it was lunch time.  After lunch I was so tired from the combination of the late night followed by running a few hours prior.  A nap would have certainly been welcomed but I fought the urge and instead got the rest of my home chores done before we had to pick up mom from the airport.

Mom had been up in PA for a few days visiting my brother and niece.  We decided to surprise her by piling us and the dogs into the party van to pick her up.  The ride up was barely bearable due to the marginal AC, my back was wet by the time we got there.   Mom was very happy to see us.  We advised her to sit up front where it was cooler but she insisted on sitting in the back.  Luckily by that time the AC had caught up enough that it was a few degrees cooler. 

On the ride back to her place we heard all about her trip. My brother threw a surprise party for mom where he invited over a bunch of her friends and former co-workers that she had not seen in at least 5 years.  Mom really enjoyed the party. Kudos to Todd for doing that.

We had a little surprise of our own for mom.  While she was gone I did some digging around in her place.  My mission was to find the account information for a loan she had taken out for some new appliances.  I had wanted to pay that off for her since she lost her job but I know mom would resist my doing so.  I figured this would be the easiest way.  It took some snooping but I found a paper that had her account number on it.  Using that number and some resourceful online digging I was able to create an account for mom for GE financing online and pay it off.  Mom was surprised and grateful that we did that but she also felt bad that we felt the need to do it.  On the positive side we got a call from mom later in the evening saying a former co-worker of hers that works at a different rug place called mom and said they were hiring.  It could be just what mom was looking for.  Hopefully it works out.

On Sunday evening I decided to watch one of the movies I had sitting on the Tivo, Pulp Fiction.  I was pretty sure I saw the movie years ago but I figured it was good enough to watch again.  Well as the film progressed I realized that I mustn’t have ever seen the film in it’s entirety, in fact I think I may have confused it with Get Shorty, which I definitely saw.  I’m sure I missed a bit of the bite from the film since this was the sanitized AMC channel version but I still found it quite entertaining.  Tarantino’s films all seem to be about personalities and Pulp Fiction is filled with them.  I enjoyed it a lot, I wish I knew what was in the briefcase though. A

I forgot to mention that when we went on the airboat ride last weekend the airboat captain said something I found pretty flabbergasting.  He was telling a story about how he is friends with several native americans in the Everglades area.  For some reason he talked about how his friends were basically rich because they were indians.  He said that one of his indian friends gets $8000 a month from the government.  The more kids they have, the more money they make.  This seemed incredulous to me and I wish I would have asked the boat captain for details about it after the ride was over but I forgot.  Evidently it has something to do with reparations for what the white man did 200 years ago. Do a Google search on the subject, you will be surprised at what you find.  Being an american indian nowadays, at least in some tribes seems to be a way to get  rich by simply living off the massive government teet, bizarre.

 If you want to see the pictures of the last leg of the painting project go here.  The last 20 or so are what you want.

I forgot to mention how ADT wasted most of Ali’s Friday. They were scheduled to come out between 8-12.  They even called to confirm the time earlier in the week.  Well I got a call from Ali after 1pm saying that nobody had shown up yet and nobody had called, lovely.  I told her I would call and raise hell.  I talked to someone in their office and asked what the hell was going on?  They apologized and said they would get a hold of the installer and have him call me.  After another half hour passed with no call I called back to the office even more annoyed. 

I told the woman that this was ridiculous.  There was no excuse to not at least receive a call from the installer telling us he would be late, it’s only common courtesy.  I continued ranting to the woman about how ADT has now basically wasted the day, keeping Ali chained to the house waiting for the mystery installer to arrive.  Again they apologized and said something about trying to get someone else there.  By this time it was close to 3pm, I told them we didn’t want to wait around longer, just reschedule the call.  So we rescheduled for a day next week when Ali is going to be home for something else already.  ADT assured me we would be the first call on the list for the day.  If there is a repeat scenario they will be done as far as I’m concerned.

I did some testing of my Sirius unit yesterday.  I hooked it up to the antennae I have in the party van.  You can imagine my surprise when I instantly got signal.  So somehow during my relocation of the antenna on the truck from the roof to the windshield I must have somehow damaged it.  The good news is I can simply move the antenna from the van to the truck, saving me from spending money unnecessarily on a new head unit.  I’m glad I figured out the source of the problem now instead of later.

Last night I tried hooking up one of our laptops to the 73 inch TV.  My hope was to use the TV as a huge monitor to display the remote chat sessions of the various remote fantasy football owners in next week’s draft which is being held at our house.

Last week I bought a VGA to component video cable, hoping I could simply plug into the jacks on the front of the TV.  My attempts using the external vga port on the laptop were a failure, the best I could manage was a distorted, neon colored mess.  Then I noticed the laptop had a S-video out port.  I found an s-video cable in my massive cable connection pretty easily.  I hooked it up to one of the two s-video ports on the back and I had a picture! Nice.  Now granted S-video quality is not great, the laptop display looks rather fuzzy when blown up from 15 inches to 73.  It’s good enough though and will serve it’s purpose.

So Mike Vick got his first playing time last night.  He only made 4 pass attempts but they used him in various formations which should keep defenses guessing this year.  The Birds finally won a pre-season game which is nice.  So far the defense has looked shaky in every game which is a concern. I turned off NFL network so I didn’t get to see the game.

We deemed this weekend as another painting weekend.  I did some prep last night by taking stuff off the walls and moving some furniture around.  It would be awesome if we actually finished the great room.  We’ll have to see how my motivation level holds up. 

I have been enjoying my Fridays at the gym lately.  I celebrate the end of the week by doing bench pressing and legs.  I try to do a one rep max each week.  I have been able to work the number up to 240 pounds. As part of my leg routine I have been doing light squats (only 135 pounds) but using the full range of motion in doing so.  It is a great total body movement that engages pretty much everything between your shoulders and knees.  I just feel good after doing them.  Keeping the weight light makes the exercise bearable for my touchy knees.

Read this…. http://textpattern.kurthanson.com/kurtsblog/740/sheer-unmitigated-chutzpah

On Tuesday afternoon it was pouring down here.  I went out to my truck in the middle of a deluge of rain that left me soaked from the waist down.  I hurriedly threw the wet umbrella and my stuff into the truck.  I listened to a podcast on the way home.  Well Wednesday morning I noticed I was unable to get signal on my Sirius radio.  The radio has a history of being fussy with the antennae connection due to it being disconnected and reconnected a couple times a day.  However if I lost signal all it normally takes is a light nudge and things are working again. 

Well this was different, no matter how I played with the connection I was unable to get a signal at all.  At first I thought that maybe Sirius was having an issue but Homey verified for me that his Sirius unit was working ok.   The problem has persisted since then, I haven’t been able to get a single blip of Stern goodness out of the unit. 

I have two theories. Theory number one is when I jumped in the truck soaking wet I may have inadvertently splashed some water into the unit which could have shorted something out.  The second theory is whatever has been flaky in the antennae connection just finally broke altogether.  Either way I am without satellite radio in the truck.

Now if the Sirius Iphone application wasn’t such a piece of shit that is missing all of the best content available on the service, I would be able to simply use my phone as a Sirius receiver to get the Stern channels.   Since that is not the case I will have to look into a replacement unit.  I certainly don’t want to spend much on it.  There are some used units on Ebay that are the same model as mine, unfortunately they aren’t Buy it Now auctions.  I have little patience for the conventional bidding process nowadays. 

For now I am getting by by listening to Bubba on conventional radio, which is annoying due to the constant long commercial breaks.  At work I can listen to streaming Sirius (non-premium) for a few months until that subscription comes up for renewal.  Maybe I’ll give Craigslist a look. 

I’ve been having a couple exchanges back and forth with Tom after he posted more ultra-negative Obama sputum.  In one rant he described Obama as “America hating”.  I found use of that verbiage to describe any president as ludicrous and said as much.  I think  Tom may have crossed the line where logical discussion is no longer constructive when it comes to his thoughts on the President.  He hates the man, he said so himself.   The Rush syndrome is spreading faster than swine flu.

I saw Ed Kennedy died this morning.  To be honest I am surprised he lasted this long since his brain cancer diagnosis last year.  Maybe I should feel more remorseful to lose one of the most prominent and long standing democrats in the senate.  I don’t though.  From the stories I have heard over the years Ed seemed to be sort of a scum ball in his personal life, no matter what his political persona may have been.  I felt worse when Billy Mays died.

This morning I was at my mom’s place at 5:30 am to take her to the airport.  My brother is flying her up for a few days to visit.  Originally mom planned to pay a transportation service to take her to the airport since it was so early.  I had to explain to her it was dumb to pay for something like that when I could just drop her off myself, especially since mom is in a negative cash flow situation each month now.

Mom indicated that she wanted to be picked up at 5:15,  her flight was not until 7:15.  I knew she would be bent out of shape that I didn’t arrive until close to 5:30 am.  I called her on the way to assure her we had plenty of time.  I laughed to myself as I pulled up to her place and saw mom had her suitcase outside and ready to go to save precious seconds.  On the way there mom tells me how she was up since midnight.  I asked her why? She said for some reason she doesn’t trust that her alarm clock will go off, the same alarm clock she has had for at least 30 years that has never failed.  I then asked what time she had it set for, “3 am” mom says.  WTF, why in the world would you need to get up more than two hours before I was supposed to come get you?  Mom said she needed to shave her legs and hot roller her hair….  Oh geez, well there was no point in trying to rationalize it.  Mom seems to feed on these sort of self constructed hurdles.

So even with my arriving 15 minutes late I had her at the airport  by 6 am. With all of the worry, all of the time staring at the ceiling, all of the two hour prep and my late arrival mom still will wind up sitting in the terminal for a solid hour waiting to take off. I know my personality is closely patterned after my mom in many ways.  I just hope my own mental demons don’t  push me to the point where simple tasks become sources of disproportionate amounts of worry and concern.

I posted a picture of the old looking Pepsi bottle the girls found in our backyard on Facebook. A buddy of mine that I used to work with at Sovereign, Joe, has some experience with identifying old bottles due to his diving experience.  He said it looked like a bottle from the 60’s and that there could be a two digit year stamp on the bottom of it.  It was hard to see but after holding the bottle at the right angle I could make out a “70”.  So the bottle is indeed nearly 40 years old, pretty damn cool.  It will become part of our decor.

Over the weekend I was able to successfully repair the water cleaner that treats our well water.  The unit that gets installed out here isn’t really ideally suited to be outdoors, especially in the brutal Florida conditions.  The faceplate on our unit has been crumbling and as a result the small LCD display stopped working.  I had no way of changing any settings on the unit since I could not see what was going on.  Our old neighbors had the LCD/brains replaced on their unit several times by the well company to the tune of $500-$600 per repair. 

Well of course I turned to the internet to solve my problems.  It took some digging but I found a place that sold replacement parts for the unit.  I was able to get everything I needed for the repair for $216.  Replacing the parts required no tools and no more than 10 minutes of labor. I want to come up with some sort of method to protect the top of the unit to extend the life of my repair.

Last night was the final time we would see Ali’s brother and his family before they headed back to PA this morning.  Mike is a big fan of Tommy Bahama’s so we decided to eat at the location in Naples.  The restaurant was not busy at all.  At dinner I heard stories from the girls of their exciting day at the hotel pool.  Evidently this place has a small water slide that the girls rode almost non-stop for several hours. 

Our waitress was a woman that was probably in her 40’s but had a voice like a little girl, it was weird.  She seemed like a bit of an airhead.  We all had good meals.  When the bill came my brother-in-law grabbed it, he also paid for our dinner the first night they were down.  I always hate this process when company is down when you go out to eat.  Tommy Bahamas is expensive, very expensive by my scale.  We don’t want him paying for us but at the same time if we pick up the tab for everyone we are eating a huge bill, no pun intended.  There are two ways to handle it, either pay your part of the bill in cash or ask for separate checks up front. 

I had not done a cash inventory before we went there and did not have enough to cover what we had.  And of course we didn’t ask for separate checks, we never do and I always feel stupid for not doing so.  It eliminates all of the drama of “who is going to grab the check” at the end of the meal. Otherwise you are constantly keeping tabs in your head about what you spent on meals versus what they spent to try to even it out.

To somewhat compensate we paid for some Florida souvenirs for the girls when we stopped at a beach apparel/souvenir store after dinner. We said goodbye to everyone outside the store.  Ali and I really enjoyed having everyone down, especially the girls.  At their age every moment seems special.  On the way home Ali was upset.  She feels very close to the girls and the idea that she only gets to see them so rarely made her sad.  Ali values that closeness since it was something in short supply during her upbringing. 

Back to normal….

So I left work early on Friday to pick up Spook at this “special” vet that had a pet dental x-ray machine.  Ali had already called me and said that the x-ray found nothing abnormal which is a good thing I guess since the vet said that if they did an extraction our bill could surpass $1000 which is f’ing insanity.  So even though I already knew the bill I was going to receive was going to be outrageously high I still felt my blood pressure climb as the total was read to me, $521.60!

I knew Ali was told up front of the costs so there was no point in my making a stink about it.  It didn’t help me feel any better about it.  As I got out in the truck I was disgusted.  It was a real world example of what is wrong with our health care system, except they just applied the same rules to pet care. Let me break down some highlights.

The actual dental x-ray only costs $62 not so bad huh?  Well somehow that turned into 5 bills plus.

– Anesthesia – one hour costs $120, to hook the cat up to a monitor to make sure her heart doesn’t stop costs extra $40.  There is some second type of anesthesia that costs an additional $60.

– Hospital services – among the most ludicrous charges is the $40 to stick a catheter in the cat

– Consultation services – this one pissed me off the most, $72 for “Initial health exam & consult” WTF?  We were going there specifically for dental x-rays per recommendation of our vet , the cat was not getting evaluated. 

 I actually called and bitched about this but got some monotone talking dipshit that said this was “standard procedure”.  I said so it’s standard procedure to charge the fee even if no evaluation was done?  “Uh yes whenever the doctor has to do anything that is standard procedure” “Great…” I said sarcastically as I banged down the phone.

So in total we probably have dropped a grand on this tooth situation.  Spook has been eating rather voraciously since her return home so hopefully we are permanently out of the woods on this one.  If you would like to see the bill in it’s entirety go here. As I posted on Facebook, Gulfshore Animal Hospital SUCKS. They use people’s love of their pets as a tool to extract as much money as humanly possible from their bank accounts.

We had a very busy weekend with Ali’s brother and his family.  My nieces are at a very cute age, Lauren will be 7 in Januray and Laiken is 5.  They are constantly coming out with questions and statements that just make you smile.  On Friday they were over at our house all day playing in the pool.  When I came home we got pizza and then played some Wii.  My bowling ability has really gone downhill, I lost to both Alison and Lauryn.  It may be time to hang up the balls.

We decided to go to the Everglades air boat rides on Saturday.  We went to Wooten’s once again, the only air boat tour we ever used.  We took two vehicles for the lengthy drive out to the Everglades City area.  We had ideas about all piling into the van but back seat riders would have been uncomfortably warm with the brutally hot and humid conditions. 

The girls were thrilled that while we waited for our boat to load up they were able to see an alligator up close and personal.  They have a big lake by the waiting area that is filled with gators.  They sell what looks to be dog food to feed them.  We had a 10 or 11 footer no more than 6 feet away from us gobbling up whatever he could. You would think little chunks of dry dog food wouldn’t put much of a dent in an alligator’s appetite but he was happy to chow down on them.

Like I mentioned earlier it was hot as hell.  Waiting out in the direct sun made you feel like you were melting.  Once our air boat pulled up we were anxious for the captain to open it up to get the air moving.

Ali and I decided to not wear head phones.  It’s probably not great choice.  When the big block, unmuffled Chevy motor is throttled up it’s deafening.  I could be inches from Ali’s ear yelling and she wouldn’t be able to hear me.

The tour was great, the guide made an effort to make sure we saw as much as possible.  Both of my nieces seemed to really enjoy it as well.  After the ride we headed in to the animal exhibit.  Wootens has number of interesting animals in there including various alligators, crocodiles, panthers and even a tiger couple.  Ali and I both spoke of how we have a different view of the zoo nowadays.  Wooten’s is not a big time, high end zoo.  It’s a small family business in the middle of the Everglades, as a result some the animal accommodations are less than luxurious.  We felt bad for the animals in many cases.  I felt especially bad for an otter that was pacing back and forth frantically in his cage looking for any possible way out as well as a beautiful panther that looked bored out of his mind.  It’s basically like a life sentence in prison for these animals.

We got to see the alligator show where an old woman pulled out several small alligators that we could hold.  Ali was not interested in partaking in the fun but I was fine to hold a decent size gator youngster named “Fred”.  An alligator’s skin, at least a young alligator, doesn’t feel like you would imagine.  Instead of being rough and coarse Fred’s skin was very smooth to the touch.  Fred was obviously used to being handled, he didn’t struggle at all as I posed for the picture and he even allowed me to hand him to another guy with no fuss.  I liked Fred.

The girls got to touch the baby gators as well although Lauryn was scared to go near the head of them, even with it’s mouth securely closed.

Our trip to Wootens was a success, both of the girls had a lot of fun.  Afterwards we headed back to our house where re relaxed the rest of the day by the pool.  I later made some steaks for dinner which was a cool.

Both of my nieces really were loving the dogs, especially Sadie since Sadie was open to any and all attempts of affection.  Laiken was especially fond of Sadie, many times she would juts pet her lovingly while saying “You are SOOOO cute…”  Sadie also loved that everybody was in the pool.  She ran around the outside excitedly begging for someone to splash her.  She even fell in a couple times when she misstepped.  She simply swam to the steps, shook off and the fun resumed.

On Sunday we originally thought about going to the water park.  However the plan changed and we wound up driving up to the beach in Sanibel that is dog friendly.  Ali and I took the van this time because of the dogs.  The Ac system in the van was barely sufficient to keep us somewhat cool.  I may try to charge the system with some coolant to see if it gets a kick in the rear.  The beach up in Sanibel is nice but it takes forever to get there.  From our house it can easily take 75 minutes or more.  Finally we arrived and we lugged our stuff down to the beach.  Lugging the various equipment necessary for a beach excursion is usually a pain in the ass.  It’s really a pain in the ass if you are trying to keep two dogs in tow as well during the process.

We set up the umbrella and the rarely used Coolaroo shelter as well as a couple chairs.  The girls instantly went down in the water and we followed with the dogs.  Sadie of course was happy to get wet, she was belly deep in water in no time, happily getting smacked by the small waves.  Nicki was more cautious of course but she waded in far enough to get her belly wet as well. 

Before we left I was happy that both dogs took a dump at the house so we shouldn’t have crap issues at the beach.  Well I should have known better when it comes to Nicki.  I identified her typical pre-dump pacing routine in time for Ali to have a bag in hand when Nicki let loose a nice pile of wet mush right above the water line.  Ali scrambled to contain it the best she could with the bag, grabbing more sand than crap.  I saw a few feces remnants wash out in the tide but what can you do, it’s the ocean, much worse is dumped into it.

When we got back to the umbrella I took my now normal position under the umbrella.  Going to the beach for me has definitely lost some of it’s lustre.  Since I have had 5 spots of skin cancer cut off my body in the last few years I have to try to protect myself at the beach.  Not only did I hit myself with 30 SPF sunblock, I kept my t-shirt and hat on at all times. 

Regardless of skin problems, hitting a south Florida beach in August is pretty rough.  It was so damn hot, even under the umbrella.  The gulf water was ridiculously warm, 90 degrees plus.  It wasn’t the least bit refreshing when you waded into it.  The dogs of course were an instant mess as well.  The salty warm water and sand stuck to them everywhere.  Nicki was very anxious to stay in the shade with me because of the heat.  Sadie was more carefree about it, choosing to broil out in the sun much of the time.

My in-laws were really into the abundance of shells at Sanibel.  Where they normally vacation in Bethany Beach shells are hard to come by.  At Sanibel there are millions of shells everywhere.  They accumulated a huge collection of neat specimens.  We went on a couple walks up the beach with my nieces and the dogs.  The girls wanted to help walk the dogs so they held the leashes along with us.  It was very cute.

After a couple hours of baking and sweating we packed the gear up and headed back to the vehicles.  The sweat was pouring off all of us as we loaded up.  The marginal AC in the van was not welcomed in these conditions.  On the positive side, wet sandy bodies are not a concern when driving the van.

Once again we decided to stay at our place Sunday evening.  One of the first things I did was carry both dogs into the pool to rinse the beach off of them.  Nicki of course was not thrilled by the process but once she realized I was holding her up in the water she didn’t struggle too much.  The pool did a nice job of cleaning up both the dogs and ourselves.

This time I made burgers on the grill for everyone.  After we ate the girls and I went out to look for more “alligator tracks” in the back yard, something we did several times during their visits. On Friday they did a hunt with Ali and actually found something really cool, a very old Pepsi glass bottle.  From the markings on it I am guessing it is at least 40 years old if not older.  I want to post of a picture of it, perhaps someone could timestamp it for me.

During our latest hunt we didn’t turn up any alligators but we did work on a “garden” that Laiken had started.  The garden had a few flowers the girls had picked, some transplanted grass and other plants.  We created a border of wood and river rock.  The girls had fun making it and we called everyone else out when it was complete to admire.  While we were working on the garden Laiken uttered the funniest line of the weekend.  She saw a big log that either Sadie or Nicki deposited earlier.  She  observed it and said to me “Maybe the dogs are trying to plant a poop tree!” I told her that maybe she was right as I laughed.

Everyone was wiped out from the busy weekend.  They headed out a bit before 9 for the hotel.  Ali is heading over to spend the day with them at the hotel pool today.  I plan to join them for dinner after work before they head back to PA tomorrow.   It seemed like everyone really has had a good time.  Ali and I are hoping that her brother will bring the kids down more often after seeing how much fun they had with us.  Laiken said yesterday “this is the best vacation EVER” Prior to this visit, the last time the entire gang was down was probably three to four years ago.

Needless to say I slept soundly all weekend long.

Right after I got home from work we had to hustle right back out to meet Ali’s brother and his family for dinner.   Our nieces came running up to see us which was very cool.  There are such little girls now, both very cute.  I hadn’t seen them since last summer.  The hotel where they are staying had a definite South Beach motif in the lobby area.  It was odd when we went up to see their room that the motif did not follow.  Instead the floor had a traditional, stuffy hotel decor.

We ate dinner at the hotel.  The food, which took a very long time to come out based on the sparse amount of customers there, was ok but probably not worth the money that was paid for it.  We laid out some ideas for what do over their visit.  They will be coming out to our place all day today for fun at the pool.  The rest of the weekend could involve going to the waterpark and maybe an airboat ride.

The Spook drama has been continuing.  Our vet called us yesterday and said that she found two vets that have DENTAL x-ray equipment and it wasn’t the one that Ali just dropped the cat off at.  It turns out the place Spook was at had a regular x-ray machine.  Our vet indicated that such an x-ray could possibly not give enough detail to see what the problem was.  Well we didn’t want to pay for an x-ray twice so Ali had to call up the new place and explain that we were going to take the cat to a place with a dental x-ray machine.  It’s been tons of fun.  As an added bonus this will burn a nice hole in our pocket.  It sounds like the place we are taking the cat to has no problems bending it’s clients over and ramming it home dry.  Needless to say, my mood is not good, at all…..

While I was putting in my 3 miles on the treadmill at the gym yesterday I had the misfortune of having Fox News on the tv in front of me.  I felt like throwing up when they had a long segment with no other than Karl Lying Piece of Shit Rove.  They thought it would be relevant to get his take on the health care debate. Please, Karl Rove is one of the most corrupt political figures in recent American history.  Hell he would give Dick Cheyney a run for his money.  Broadcasting his opinion on anything is ludicrous, hell you may as well throw Rush up there.

I also found myself annoyed with Fox’s typical 24 hour news fear mongering.  They were doing a story about Hurricane Bill, talking about how it was strengthening into a powerful storm.  Although they did quickly mention that it was forecast to come nowhere close to US mainland they instead chose to focus on the “cone of uncertainty” and reminded viewers that Katrina did not go where she was originally forecast to land.  Gotta inject that element of fear into any story possible, ridiculous.

Sure all 24 hours news channels employ similar tactics, I just found this segment particularly aggravating, especially while I was in the middle of running at a brisk 7mph pace.

So I had my 6 month dentist appointment yesterday.  My past few visits I have had a new woman cleaning my teeth.  Although my teeth have been fine she has been bringing up the excessive “sloughing” on the inside of my mouth.  Sloughing basically means skin is sort of peeling from inside your cheeks.  Now part of the issue is I will sometimes bite on the inside of my cheeks, often without even being conscious of doing it.  However the woman thinks that it is tied into the various products I use to maintain my dental hygiene like a pre-brush rinse, toothpaste that has plaque/tartar fighting as well as whitening and a post brushing Listerine treatment. 

Her advice to me is to just brush with regular old toothpaste with nothing added to it, which is very hard to find nowadays.  She also wants me to abandon using the various rinses.  Although I acted like I was going to follow her advice, I don’t have any plans to. 

When I was younger I had tons of teeth issues as proved by the multitude of silver you will see if you look in my mouth.  Back then I did little else than brush my teeth and put very little emphasis on dental hygiene.  One day I finally got sick of being tortured in the dental chair and started being diligent about it.  As a result in the past 10-15 years I have had very few cavity problems.  I’m not willing to go back to a cavity filled world.  I’ll deal with the sloughing.

Now even though I had no cavities I will be making a return visit to the dentist for some drilling.  She wants to replace one of my old silver filings.  It is showing signs of going bad so she will remove it and replace it with a composite filling that never wears out.   I’m not looking forward to it but novocaine is a wonderful thing.

Today Ali’s brother and his family arrive.  Although they decided to stay in a hotel, we will be seeing them often over the next few days.  I’m looking forward to having fun with my nieces, they are both very cool.

Ali found a vet that does feline x-rays. Spook goes in today.  It seems that as long as we keep the cat hopped up on pain meds she is able to eat.  Hopefully this procedure will be able to identify what is wrong in her mouth.