Archives 2009

You know Joe Lieberman is a grade A, yard gnome looking, shit eating grinning, idiot.  Why should one flip flopping, smug asshole have final say on health care reform in this country?  It’s ridiculous.  In general this entire health care reform agenda has become one huge cluster f.  Now the entire focus seems to be it HAS to be done by Christmas, regardless of what mutated creation comes out of the process.  The bill is surely so jammed full of bullshit by this point it’s actual value has to be questioned.

The entire process has been really disappointing.  The pledged openness when it comes to the legislative process has evaporated.  Instead the bill is being worked on secretly in locked chambers where all sorts of secret handshakes are certainly taking place.  Lieberman who originally claimed the public insurance option was a deal breaker had backed the idea of extending Medicaid benefits downward to cover people 50 and up which would have been a decent compromise.  Well someone must have written Joe another check because now that as well was pulled off the table. 

The funny thing is even after the Senate craps out their version of the bill, a whole new round of bullshit must ensue as the House and Senate try to come up with a compromise between their proposed legislation’s.  God our government processes are such an incurable mess.  Joe Lieberman is the poster child for this cluster f.   

It’s funny since I am still a registered Republican but also have donated to the democratic party I have been deluged by emails from both sides of the fence.  Last night I got an email asking for donations to help make sure Lieberman doesn’t get reelected as well as one from the GOP asking for cash to help fight the health care plan!  The funny thing is the democrats asked for $5, the Republicans started at $50.   

World of Warcraft is a game.  However it is a game that involves millions of people around the globe.  As a result many of the real life tendencies of human beings are carried over to their virtual existence as well.  Last night was a perfect example.

Yesterday the game turned on their Christmas content.  As part of this content there were a number of quests to complete, one of which was to get the ingredients to make some ginger bread cookies.  The two ingredients needed were milk and eggs.  A lot of 5 milk can be bought from a vendor 20 feet from the quest giver for 1 silver 50 copper (think of this as $1.50)  The eggs are an item that drop from killing low level birds.  You could get the amount of eggs you need in less than 10 minutes if you went there and killed the birds yourself.  So in total you could get these quest items for $1.50 in virtual money and 10 minutes of time.

Well just like in real life, most people in WoW are generally lazy.  In the game there is an auction house where players list items to sell to the highest bidder.  Well it is also where the workers make huge profit off of the lazy people.

The first thing I did was more of an experiment than anything else. I went and bought a few milks from the vendor and then listed them on the AH.  I listed the milk that cost me $1.50 for 5 on the auction house at 5 gold each. (or the equivalent of $500)  I wanted to see if anyone was stupid enough to pay me that much money for something they could have bought for pennies at the vendor right down the sidewalk.

I laughed out loud when I saw this message pop up.  I sold about 4 or 5 milks in the span of an hour, unreal.  people were too lazy to even bother to figure out where to buy the milk.  They preferred to overpay tremendously in exchange for the convenience of  having the item in the auction house where they pay and have the item instantly show up in their mailbox.

When I got that message I was busy farming eggs like mad.  In total I collected about 200 of them.  Once again I listed them on the auction house for a HUGE mark up from their normal selling price and once again the minions didn’t disappoint.  I sold a ton of eggs, making myself a nice chunk of change in the process.  Lesson learned, make something easy for people and they will overpay for it.

Later I was in another area that had quest items for an Xmas quest.  I was on my horde rogue and was feeling ornery.  I spotted an enemy warrior riding around not bothering anyone collecting quest items.  I could tell he had much better equipment than me so a one on one confrontation would have been pointless.  However that didn’t stop me from being a royal pain in his ass.

Instead of fighting him I would “sap” him, a skill rogues have that basically incapacitates the other player for 10-15 seconds.  I would do this repeatedly and follow up with various / commands that would shower him with annoying insults. 

It didn’t take long until the warrior was furious.  He was circling the area constantly, trying to flush me out from my stealth mode, unsuccessfully.  After tormenting the guy another horde rogue showed up in the area.  I told him we needed to kill this warrior which we did.  To add insult to injury, after the warrior dropped I used another undead ability and cannibalized his corpse.  The other rogue piled on the embarrassment by impaling the warriors corpse with a banner,  just to rub it in.  I spent over an hour just screwing with this guy.  Ali can testify  how hard I was laughing a few times at just how annoyed I made this guy.  It was great fun.

Getting back to the people are lazy thing.  I actually participated in my own theory last night.  I had to make cookies for the office xmas party last night.  Instead of making them from scratch I told Ali to simply buy the break apart, premade mix which eliminates 80% of the work.  Now of course if you compare what we paid for the premade stuff to the cost of raw ingredients there would be a HUGE difference.  Yep, I’m one of them I guess.

Hey I’m 42 today, yay.

Last night after work I stopped out at my Mom’s place to hook up her new DSL service.  The process went fine although a bit slow.  As part of the activation process, CenturyLink (formerly Embarq, formerly Sprint) downloads some shit to the pc which takes awhile to load up.   I then hooked up a spare wireless router I already had and viola, mom was officially online. 

It will be nice for her to have reliable, fast internet at all times without having to roam the condo looking for signal.  Of course I turned on security on the connection so nobody can freeload the connection like we have been doing for the last 6 months.

Mom had food packed up for me to take along for dinner.  I told her that Ali was already going to be eating dinner so I could just eat there with mom.  At first I could tell mom’s initial reaction was one of discomfort since that was not the scenario she had planned out ahead of time.  However as I was working on the DSL she seemed to be ok with doing something crazy like having spur of the moment dinner with her son.

We had a nice little meal out on her lanai.  Mom told me how she has been going a bit nuts being in the condo day in and day out. (imagine that) She has this routine where she now does the newspaper crossword puzzle everyday, the same thing my great grandmother used to do.  I think mom has a picture in her mind of being much older and less capable than she really is.  I need to do more to drag her into situations where she can realize that there is plenty of things she could be doing.

Randall is taking his Fitness Challenge beat down pretty hard.  Hopefully the next time we go at it Jeremy can be involved so Randall has someone to beat.

Wow what a weekend.

Randall came over Friday evening and actually beat me home by a few minutes.  We had to do prep for the Shark Shootout 5K the next morning.  The race had turned into the most successful first year race our club has ever put on.  We wound up with almost 460 people registered for the event.  We took some time to relax and eat pizza but other than that we had a lot of data entry to do.  Randall actually sat at Ali’s computer and helped me do the entry while Ali was doing some baking for the party Saturday night.  Since Randall does accounting by trade, data entry is second nature for him. We tried to get to bed at a reasonable hour due to a 4am wake up call.

We drug ourselves out of bed and headed to the beautiful grounds of Tiburon where the event was being held.  This was the first race that I was the main contact from our club.  As a result I was more or less in charge of making sure people from the running club and things got where they needed to go.  I had to balance those responsibilities with making sure the timing system was set up and ready to go.

The layout that the staff of the Shootout put up for the race was great.  Everything was organized, well marked and lighted.  We were concerned that the off site parking arrangements could be an issue for the runners but the coach buses did a nice job of shuttling everyone to the start area.  Luckily this race did not have a TON of walk up entries, only 50 or so which made things easier on me.  Randall jumped in and help Ali with putting entries in and he finished up while Ali got loose to run the race.

As the race time approached the mass of runners moved towards the start.  At the last minute we decided to shift the start line out onto the main road instead of using the entrance to the development.  There were wire covers in that area that would have been a pain in the ass to have 400 people safely navigate.  The only downside was shifting the start line actually made the course short of a full 5K, oh well.

Greg Norman showed up a minute before the race started.  The plan was for him to say a few words and then actually start the race.  For some reason I just assumed that Greg would be talking for awhile.  I figured a guy that owns a half dozen companies has to be used to giving speeches.  Instead he basically said “Thanks for coming, go!”  It took everyone by surprise, luckily I had my finger on the stop watch.  Greg walked at the back of the pack for a bit but didn’t complete the course.

All that was left was for the runners to come streaming in.  The winner of the race was actually from Ohio.  He completed the course in just over 15 minutes, a blistering pace.  The timing system worked well once again.  I did have a few reports of people with no times after the race but I had no way to verify how their chip was mounted except for one runner who admitted to having his chip pinned to his bib number instead of his “sneakers” because he wears these weird looking things.  When I double checked the problem runners chips later they all tested out a-ok.

Randall and I were actually hanging out after everyone else had left.  Ali was supposed to run 8 miles on Saturday so after running the 5k she went out with her running buddies and did another 5 miles.  By the time she got back the spectators for the golf event had started to stream in.  All in all the event went quite well.  I was proud of the role Ali and I served in making it all happen and the Shootout was very happy to surpass their initial goal of 300 runners by more than 50%.

Once we got home and after I had stuff put away and the web site updated, all three of us laid down to take naps.  With the first annual Duffey xmas party scheduled for that evening even I, the adamant anti-napper, realized I needed one if I wanted to be functional.  I allowed myself roughly two hours of shut eye, setting the alarm for 2:20.  Ali got up a little while after I did.  Randall must have been super sleepy, he slept until almost 5.

Once I got up I dug into the final party prep, picking stuff up, running the vacuum and getting food and alcohol stations set up.  Ali was in charge of all the hot food prep which kept her hopping for quite awhile.  She did a good job of keeping it all flowing.  We had set up both an indoor and outdoor area.  I expected the majority of the action to occur indoors with people just hanging outside briefly to grab a beer.  I fired up the outside tv that hasn’t been used in a couple years, fully expecting it to not work.  I was surprised to see I was wrong and outside of some flaky behavior from the volume controls, it still seemed to be fine.

So the 6pm start time came and went and of course nobody was there.  It’s normal to not show up right at the gun.  As the clock was approaching 6:30 and still nobody but Randall, Ali, the dogs and I were under the roof, I wondered if the party was going to be a big flop.  Then our first guest finally arrived, one of our fellow running club members.  After he arrived we had a pretty consistent stream of party goers coming in.  Except for a couple people, almost everyone that said they were going to come showed up.

I quickly noticed that the outside pool area was being utilized much more heavily than the indoors.  It was nice out there with mild temperatures, the tv, and dim lighting provided by some citronella candles, the fire bowl (first time I used it in 4 years) and the pool light.  As one of the hosts I tried my best to flow throughout the festivities, trying to participate in many conversations but not get locked into just one.  You want to try to make everyone feel welcome.  Luckily for me I didn’t feel like I was in those funks were every other word out of my mouth is a garbled mess.  The light beer I was drinking definitely helped me manage the situation as well.

I had the pool heater running for a couple days to get the water temp up in the off chance that someone wanted to go for a late night swim.  Well nobody took me up on the offer so eventually I had to just do it myself.  I put on my swim suit and jumped in.  Sadie was thrilled I was in the pool and immediately started running around the perimeter excitedly, waiting for me to splash her.  By the time I went into the pool it was probably after 10 and a few of the guests had already hit the door. The people that remained made up for fewer bodies by turning up the fun meter.

The later we went, the  more alcohol was consumed which opened up some very interesting topics of conversation.  There was a lot of laughter going on which is the best gauge of how well a party is going.  We had a good mix of personalities present that seemed to feed off each other.  A little after 11 most of the rest of the crew headed out with my co-worker Mike being the last to leave after we loaded him up with left overs.

Once the last guest had left Randall and I decided to start up an impromptu pool physical challenge session while Ali started doing some of the clean up.  As evidenced by the prior week’s tailgate jumping challenge, we like to compete in almost anything.  Well after Jeremy had steered me towards the video of BJ Penn jumping out of the shallow end of a pool, we had it in our heads that the pool opened up a whole new realm of possible competitions.

We had various jumping events,  jumping out of the water, jumping off the pool deck and finally jumping on to the pool steps.  Ali actual came out and shot the last part of the event with her Iphone. (it was very dark)  The video is actually funnier if you know the back story.  We were trying to jump from the floor of the pool on to the second step ( jumping on to the pool deck was already tried and we failed miserably).  After a few misses, Randall was able to successfully jump on to the step.  I however was not quite so lucky.  I could get on the step but not stand up, I would instead fall backwards.

  I could not stand that Randall was able to do something I couldn’t so I tried again and again and again.  I tried so many times that my feet were getting sore from the textured pool surface.  When Ali came out to film I literally had to be my 15th or 16th attempt.  The fact that I actually was able to finally make the jump when she was shooting the video is what caused the drunken, loud celebration.  By the time we finally ended the pool olympics it was damn close to 1 am.  I fell asleep happy that the two major events of the day, the race and the party went better than planned.

I woke up Sunday morning with some sore legs after the endless pool jumps from the night before.  However I had to pop two Advil and suck it up.  Randall and I discussed the night before that we would continue our physical challenges outdoors at the local middle school.

We had a rough idea of the some of the events we would do and brought the equipment to do so, most importantly the video camera.  Jeremy repeatedly has told us that “unless there is video, it didn’t happen.”, so we wanted to make sure that all events were documented.

Once we arrived we got our first event out of the way, Tacoma tailgate jumping.  After successfully jumping on Randall’s Dodge Ram’s 36 inch high tailgate the week before we knew clearing the Tacoma’s 31.5 inch platform would be no problem. Both Randall and I made the jump with room to spare.  Since we both completed the challenge we both were awarded a point, the score was 1-1.

The next event was the Basketball Rim challenge.  The object of the event originally was first to see who could touch the rim, if we both touched the rim then we would move on to trying to dunk objects of increasing size starting with a cloth baseball and moving up eventually to a volleyball.  We never got past the baseball.

When I was younger one of my focuses was dunking.  I never was great at it but I have cleanly dunked a basketball a few times and I could jam a tennis or volleyball pretty consistently.  Of course I knew had a big advantage in this competition since Randall is only 5’10” in his high heels at best.  He also is carrying some extra heft that gravity would have fun with.  I won the competition easily although I could just reach the 10’1″ rim.  Randall only could make it up to mid-net.  After failing miserably on the baseball dunking we decided there was no point moving on to larger objects.  Despite winning I was disappointed in my efforts in the event.  Score was now me 2, Randall 1.

The next event was the broad jump.  The tape measure once again came in handy.  We laid it down along the court lines and then used a yoga block to mark our distance.  This was a best jump out of three competition.  I think Randall actually thought he had a chance in this one.  He utilized his typical trash talking regimen to try to affect my performance but in the end I out jumped him by 6 inches, hitting the 8 foot mark.  Score – Shawn 3, Randall 1

We spotted a small set of three stairs which wound up being event number four, appropriately called Stair Jumping.  The steps were about two and a half feet high and to the top we would have to jump forward slightly more than 5 feet.  Randall made both his practice and official jump.  On my first attempt I actually over jumped to the point where my feet were way ahead of my body.  I had to grab the railing to keep from falling over backwards.  Undaunted I immediately made a second attempt and landed it cleanly.  Score was now Shawn 4, Randall 2

Next up was a Nerf Football throwing challenge.  We had noticed earlier that we appeared to be under surveillance.  There is deputy station on the grounds of the middle school.  There was a police car that pulled up along the track and was just sitting there.  There was nothing else he could have been observing but us.  He was there for quite awhile, I assume he wanted to make sure we weren’t up to anything shady.  The cop’s presence actually scuttled another potential event, foul pole climbing.

So anyway, once again it would have been a miracle if Randall would have beaten me in this competition.  I’ve seen Randall throw football many times, he had no shot.  Randall went first and although his distance was average at best, he did have a pretty amazing second throw.  I had marked his first 45 yard or so throw with a yoga block.  On his second attempt he reared back, threw the ball and managed to hit the block perfectly.  Now of course this wasn’t his intention but it still made for some pretty impressive video.

When it was my turn it only took me one throw to best Randall’s efforts by at least 10 yards.  My second attempt was my best, Randall walked it off as approximately a 62 yard throw.  The challenge was turning into a lopsided run away, the score now stood at 5 for me, 2 for Randall.

Randall then suggested we do a goal post to goal post sprint on the soccer/football field.  I wasn’t thrilled with the event, I had images of me tearing a ham string or ripping a groin since sprinting is something I never do.  However Randall was losing badly so I wanted to throw him a bone although I was pretty confident I would win this event as well.  I set up the camera at the finish line and pointed it back towards us 100 yards away.

Randall started us on a 1,2, 3 count and we were off.  He jumped out to an early lead and held it the entire way.  I probably didn’t utilize my stride like I could have since I was more concerned with hurting myself than maximizing my velocity.  Of course Randall celebrated his first outright event victory wildly however I delivered the best one liner of the entire event at the end. The score was now 5-3, me.

We had ideas of maybe doing a pull up competition but after seeing Randall in action we decided it wouldn’t be worth it.  He isn’t in pull up form currently.  Just to make a point I did 10 slow, full range of motion pull ups on the cross bar.

Randall suggested the next event , a soccer penalty kick competition.  Once again I knew Randall thought he had an edge in this one but I was willing to play along.  This event was an utter failure on both sides.  Both Randall and I failed to make a goal, in fact I only had two kicks that were even on the net, Randall only had one.  The event wound up in a ho-hum 0-0 tie so we both got a point.  It was now 6-4.

I came up with the final event of the day, a 400 meter run, one lap around the track.  Despite losing decidedly in the 100 meter dash I was pretty confident that Randall would gas in a run of longer duration.  Again we set up the camera facing the finish line.  I passed Randall before the middle of the first turn and pulled away consistently from there.  I knew I had a lead but I wasn’t sure how big it was since I could still hear Randall’s feet behind me.  When I entered the final straight away I looked back and saw Randall walking.  At first I thought maybe he pulled something but it turns out he just stopped once he realized he couldn’t catch me.  I did my best to serve up Randall a big dish of trash talk as the final 7-4 score established that at least that day I was clearly the winner.  We were both pretty damn tired, despite it being mid-December, the temps were in the mid 80’s.

After telling Ali of our athletic adventures which she rolled her eyes at we sat down to watch A Christmas Story while we ate lunch.  Incredibly, Randall had never seen the Christmas classic, he said in fact he never even heard of it which amazed me.  Well I figured this would be a real treat for him since it is one of the staples of my favorite Xmas movie collection.

At the end of it I asked him what he thought and he said he didn’t like it!  Blasphemy!  Not like A Christmas Story???  I was dumbfounded by Randall’s thoughts on the film.  He must just have different tastes in movies than I do.  Hell he didn’t think Idiocracy was that funny and I almost broke a rib laughing at that one.

The rest of the afternoon we relaxed mostly.  We spent some time in the 95 degree pool.  Randall was having a blast playing with Sadie by the pool.  He always enjoys the company of our dogs.  I also spent some time working on editing the video I shot in to something presentable. After playing back the footage I knew I had some gold moments in there.  Sure the entire thing is silly, that is what makes it funny.  In many cases the audio of the verbal sparring back and forth is the funniest part.

Late afternoon Randall packed up and headed out.  We loaded him up with some left over alcohol as well as some of our cat equipment that we no longer would have any use for, including our automatic litter box.  We thanked him for coming and his help with the race.  We all had a good time.

Sunday night the Eagles were on.  I only saw about a half.  The weekend of non-stop activities couple with limited sleep had really caught up to me.  I almost felt like I could fall asleep standing up.  As soon as I went back to the bedroom to watch the second half I was out like a light a few minutes after putting my head on the pillow.  I was very happy to see the Birds pulled off a win in a high scoring shoot out this morning.  They are now in sole possession of first place.  It seems they are once again establishing a pattern of playing better as the season winds down, just like last year.

You know it was a great weekend when you wake up Monday morning depressed that it is over.

The other night I watched the two hour Battlestar Galactica “movie” called The Plan.  Basically the movie is a recap of the entire series from a Cylon point of view.  I had heard a few negative comments about it but I wanted to watch it and make my own judgement.  It wasn’t very good.

Basically they reused a bunch of footage from throughout the series and sprinkled in some new scenes to help explain the story from a Cylon viewpoint.  First, trying to summarize a series as epic as BG in less than two hours is a joke.  They had no choice but to just skim through things at a rapid pace which would make little to no sense to a non-fan of the show.  I found it funny that they chose to throw some gratuitous nudity into the thing, like that would somehow make up for showing most of us content we already seen before. 

It all added up to a pretty uneventful two hours where the moral of the story was basically the Cylons realizing “Ooops, our bad…”  If you can watch it for free go ahead but don’t feel bad if you never see it because in reality you already have.  B –

I have been bugging my mom to get DSL for the longest time.  At her last job she really became comfortable with using the internet and since she lost her job the internet has been one of her major sources of information, research, entertainment and communication.  There was one problem, she didn’t have internet service.

I set the laptop up to hook on to any open wireless connections, which there were a few of in her area.  The problem is they aren’t strong or consistent.  As a result mom would walk around her condo with the laptop looking for any usable signal.  Many times there would be none to be found so she was out of luck.

I have bugged her about getting basic DSL service for awhile and mom has always resisted saying she didn’t mind having spotty internet.  Well most conversations I had with mom the topic of her spotty internet would come up so obviously she did mind.

So yesterday I called up Century Link and got info about their DSL plans.  It appeared that we could get a bundle for mom that would include her phone and basic DSL service for only a few dollars more than what she was paying now.  I called up mom and told her what I found.  Surprisingly she seemed receptive this time to doing it.  I gave her all the info, the number to call and within a few minutes she called me back and said it was done.

I told mom we would pay for the activation and shipping fee for the DSL as part of her Christmas presents.  The modem is actually supposed to show up tomorrow already.  I hope to get out there sometime soon to set up the modem and a wireless router so she can set up the laptop wherever she wants to use it.

This Xmas party we are having Saturday is swelling by the day.  Right now we are looking at around 20 bodies with a few maybes that could push that total 5 or 6 higher.  Of course the main concern is having adequate food and drink for your guests so we will have to make sure we are well stocked.  I already have three cases of beer but am thinking another two would not be a bad idea.  I think it will be a fun time for all.

What better way to counteract a couple days of being down in the dumps than to post pictures of tailgate jumping?  We hope to petition to make this an Olympic sport in 2016.

Click here to see the various still shots from the event.

Click here and here to see the video from the competition, it’s compelling.

Who ever proposed that CONGRESS needs to be involved in this should be fired and/or shot.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091209/ap_on_go_co/us_bcs_congress

So obviously any regular readers of my stuff realize that we finally went through with putting Spook down yesterday.  The appointment wasn’t until 1:30 so I had a good chunk of the day to try to not dwell on what was to come.  Yesterday morning I made sure to give Spook her favorite food of all, tuna for her last meal even though she didn’t know it was.  I also dumped all of the Pounce treats I had left on the plate.  Might as well let her enjoy herself.  It felt very weird as a series of “lasts” were taking place, the last time I would have to clean the litter box, last time I would hear Spook meowing in the kitchen, the last time I would do anything related to Spook.

So I met Ali at the vet and we went into “the room”.  It’s the same room they stuck us in for Buttons.  I let Spook out of the carrier and started petting/supporting her to make sure she didn’t lose her balance and fall off the table.  All day I was trying to prepare myself for what was going down, trying to keep myself together but it wasn’t long until I got emotional.  I was petting and rubbing Spook constantly, even allowing her to rub her slimy, puss emitting, horrible smelling left ear on me.  I mentioned something to Ali that I didn’t think Spook was able to purr at this point.  Almost on cue, she started to purr.

The vet came in and I had her take a look to see just how bad things had become.  As the vet opened Spooks mouth to take a look the cat whined in protest.  The vet looked at the mess on the left side of Spook’s face, even she looked a bit surprised.  I asked her if she ever saw anything quite like that and she said no. I felt a bit better about the decision when I asked her if this was her cat, would she be putting her to sleep?  Without hesitation she said “Oh yes…”   

Since Spook had the reputation of being somewhat ornery at the vets office she said they would sedate her first.  An assistant came in and held Spook by the scruff of her neck while they administered the shot.  Again Spook acted like the firm grip hurt which made me feel worse.  After the shot the vet stepped out for a bit while it took affect.  Because of her lack of balance I was supporting/petting Spook as the sedative slowly took hold. It was sort of weird, Spook went from standing to slowly melting into my hands as I felt her weight become increasingly supported by my hands.  I laid her down on her side and pulled her legs out from under her.  As she was laying there on her side it was almost like she was already on her way.  I just stood there petting her side as tears streamed down my face.  The realization that these were the last few moments of Spooks life and I was the one creating that end was just a tough realization.

The vet came back in to see if Spook was out which she obviously was.  She shaved an area and administered the final shot.  I didn’t watch any of the actual injection process.  Instead I just looked at the posters on the wall as I continued to pet her. I wanted Spook to know we were right there with her till the very end.  After going through this with Buttons I knew the process was very fast.  Within a minute of the shot being administered she was gone.

The vet left us alone with the cat after she verified Spook’s heart had stopped.  The emotions intensified from there although I don’t think my break down was quite as severe as with Buttons since I basically knew what was going down.  I knew we did the right thing in the big picture but at that moment the intensity of the grief was all that existed.  Even after she passed Ali and I kept petting her.  It was pretty much impossible for me to talk for a short while.  I took the blanket Spook was laying on and wrapped it around her before we left the room after somewhat composing ourselves. Ali paid the bill and that was that.

I surprisingly was able to keep composure and almost totally insulate myself from what went down afterwards.  I had to go from the vet to the dermatologist to have a my skin screened.  I already knew I was going to have to have an area cut out that was was burned and scraped once before but came back.  So I get to go back in January to have that cut out.

I was ok last night as we went about the task of De-Spookifying the house.  The utility room where her litter box and food resided now seems much bigger.  We pulled out our desks in the office where Spook liked to hide and cleaned them thoroughly.  The area behind my desk was particularly gross after being subjected to the various subtances that were leaking out of Spook the last few months.  I pulled the Christmas tree totally out of the window so I could once again hit the area with the cleaner to eliminate any lingering odors. I even pulled down Spook’s cat shelf where she spent many happy years looking out the office window while she enjoyed the sunshine.

Spook was pretty much the last thing that was tied back to my first marriage, I had her since my mid 20’s.  She always had a bit of a stand offish, mean side.  She would let you pet her but it was always on her terms.  We were looking at some cute pictures of Ali snuggling with Spook shortly after we met.  Seeing what she looked like then compared to the beat up, run down, deformed condition she wound up in was pretty shocking.  I’m glad it’s over, I’m glad Spook doesn’t have to suffer anymore but I still can’t evade the guilt that comes with such action.

She was a good girl.

Spook and Buds are together again….

So Saturday was my second appearance on a volleyball court in 2009.  Our first effort way back in April did not go well at all. I was hoping for better results this time around.  I originally was concerned about the weather.  The forecast I saw showed temps in the 50’s in the morning.  I came prepared with a full set of sweats in tow.  I didn’t need them at all, by the time I got to Lauderdale it was relatively warm.  The weather was actually close to perfect for volleyball, overcast skies, mild temps and minimal wind. 

There was a light turnout for the event, so light that they wound up merging the A and BB pools.  Of course doing so put a big dent in any hopes of advancing very far but at the time I didn’t really care.  I just wanted to play half decent.  There were three pools of four.  We caught another break being the number three team on the net.  We were the only team that did not have to play a back to back game on the net.  Things were falling into place for what could be a strong showing.  All that was left to do was to take care of business on the court.  We failed miserably.

We established very early on how the day was going to go.  We were going to commit tons of unforced errors and the other team would just keep the ball in play until we did so.  Ball after ball sailed out of bounds, it was almost like we never played before.  All facets of our game were bad, serving, setting and hitting, we were equal opportunity suck.  At first I let the bad play roll off my back, eventually it really got under my skin.  After Randall would hit a ball out I would pray the serve came to me so I would have a chance to drill a ball to turn the momentum.  The problem was when those serves did come to me I couldn’t do shit with them.  I am still 0 for 2009 as far as delivering what I would call a clean hit.  It was just incredibly frustrating.

So after losing our last game to a hispanic guy wearing a marijuana hat and some young 16 year old that did nothing but poke the ball our day of volleyball futility was done.  Sometimes in the past when Randall and I have played poorly we would discuss the specific areas where we had problems.  In this case the problems were so massive there was no discussion, there was no point. 

Jeremy had talked about coming down to watch us play.  By the time he called us it was getting close to noon. We had already been eliminated so we decided to instead meet up with him for lunch.  I was quite anxious to forget the atrocity on the vball court.  When we got to the Ale House Jeremy, his wife and their little boy were there.  I never met Connor in person but had seen plenty of pictures of him.  He’s a cute little kid.

Hoping to drown my sorrows I dug into the buckets of Bud Lights.  Jeremy’s wife and little boy left before we ordered food so it was just the three of us left to act stupid.  Jeremy pulled out his expensive camera with it’s massive zoom lens to show us.  He planned to use it on us at the beach.  Well since that obviously didn’t happen he instead started pointing it around the restaurant at people/objects.  I’m sure people were like WTF??

After we finished our second bucket of beers we somehow got back on to the subject of physical challenges.  Jeremy once again brought up our 300 face off and once again started whining about the terms of it.  Well somehow that discussion morphed into us being in the parking lot standing behind Randall’s Dodge Ram with the tail gate down.

The challenge was to see if we could jump up on to the tailgate of the truck which was probably a good 3 + feet high.  We decided to let Randall go first, especially since he confessed his rather large current fighting weight.  Both Jeremy and I had severe doubts that Randall would be able to propel his fullback size body upward.  On his first attempt Jeremy and I looked like prophets as Randall came up short, banging his shin violently in the process. All of this went down while Jeremy was shooting video of the event with his camera.

Undaunted, Randall was ready to try again.  He jumped and got his feet up on the edge but was unable to stand on the tailgate, instead bouncing right back to the ground.  Jeremy and I both said this still was not an “official” jump although we knew Randall was extremely close to pulling off the stunt.  On his third try Randall finally sealed the deal, winding up on top of the tail gate cleanly, standing upright as he triumphantly shot us both the finger while shouting obscenities, his normal celebration antics.

So now the gauntlet had been thrown, Jeremy and I HAD to do it as well.  Jeremy went first.  Jeremy was concerned about slipping on the plastic covered tailgate so he opted to cover it with a towel.  He did some in place jumps to gauge if he had the height necessary to get on the gate.  It didn’t look like he did.  After some funny looking warm up moves Jeremy launched himself upward and got on the tailgate but put his hand down en route, disqualifying the jump.  He returned to the ground, reset and tried again, this time he made it.  He waved his hands around in an emo manner that Randall and I immediately chastised.  But hey, he did it.

That only left me to complete the stunt.  To be honest I was quite skeptical if I would be able to pull it off, especially after playing three games of sand volleyball, poorly.  Like Jeremy I did some in place jumps as a test to see if I had the height and like Jeremy, it didn’t look or feel like I was high enough.  Oh well I had enough alcohol in me to throw caution to the wind, I was ready to go.  I swing my arms, bend my knees and find myself standing on the tail gate moments later!  I made it on my first attempt!

My celebration was immediately cut short by shouts from the crowd saying I stepped into the jump!  I could have sworn I took no steps but the judges insisted I took a baby step with my left foot before I jumped.  Ok, ok fine, I’ll do it again.  I get down, wind up and again jump successfully on to the tail gate.  Again I am accused of cheat stepping and again I swear I’m not doing it.  Ok fine, I hop down and get ready again.  I move slightly closer to the tailgate this time, jump and finally no foot fault is called, the jump was clean!

I can only imagine what restaurant patrons were thinking as they saw us three numbskulls jumping on and off the back of Randall’s truck as we filmed every moment.  It had to look ridiculous.  Things got even crazier when Jeremy encouraged me to do a another jump shirtless, followed by a ridiculous impromptu posing session afterward.  Yes there are pictures of all of this. 

Well the competition was just what I needed to to forget the volleyball nightmare of a few hours prior.  After dropping off Jeremy at his in-laws Randall took me back to pick up my truck.  I’ll be seeing him in a few days as he is coming over next weekend.

So for some reason I gave no thought of my gas gauge before starting the trip back, I always fill up on the east coast before driving back across the state.  Well it didn’t enter my mind until the gas light came on just as I turned on to Oil Well Road.  I had planned to stop at the Publix grocery store in Ave Maria to get a few items Ali asked me to get.  My thoughts were I could get gas there as well.  As I drove on the light was getting brighter and brighter and the gauge was dropping quickly.  I have never run out of gas.

As I pulled into Ave Maria I was looking around for a gas station.  None were to be seen anywhere.  I was listening to the Stern show on Sirius as I drove along.  I almost felt dirty for doing so.  I turned down the volume so the show wouldn’t be broadcast out the open windows to offend a town christian.

 I headed into the Publix.  Ave Maria opened a few years ago right as the building boom had started going bust.  As a result the town surrounding the brand new catholic university is damn near abandoned.  The last time I heard they had sold about 10% of the housing.  Well this was very evident when I went into the store.  Every row was perfectly faced, stocked to the brim with products.  There were literally more employees than customers, many more.  It was very weird walking the aisles, feeling like I was shopping in my own personal store.

When I checked out I asked the clerk if Ave Maria had any gas stations.  As I feared the answer was no.  I had no choice but to hope I could get to the gas station some 10 miles away at the corner of Immokalee Rd and Oil Well.  I went in to extreme gas conservation mode.  The AC was off, the windows which were all the way down went almost fully closed to reduce air drag, all gas pedal movements were slow and steady.  I applied the minimal pressure to maintain 50 mph.  At this point the fuel gauge was far lower than I had ever seen it before.  The warning light was going from yellow to orange.  I had nightmares running through my head of having to call Ali to come bring me some gas.

Finally I saw the lights of the intersection in the distance.  I continued to baby the truck, watching the tachometer, hoping I wouldn’t see it suddenly drop to zero.  I breathed a big sigh of relief as I turned into the station, I made it barely.  I put 16.5 gallons into the truck, a full gallon and a half more than I have ever used previously.  It had to be running on just about fumes.

So I got home and walked into Ali in the middle of a cookie baking frenzy.  She had been baking cookies for the majority of the day.  Pretty much as soon as I was done unpacking from the tournament I jumped into dish clean up duty.  I was not in a great mood after stinking up the court in volleyball and almost running out of gas on the way home.  I also had ideas in my head about all of the shit I had to cram into the following day, it didn’t make me happy.   

So I woke up Sunday around 6:30 even though my body could have certainly used some more rest.  I began my normal pet maintenance routine which starts off with emptying the bin in the automatic litter box.  I pull back the cover and see there is nothing in there.  Instantly I knew this wasn’t good.  Spook has still been eating and drinking regularly and the box always has something in it each day.  Well when I walked to the front of the house I was whacked in the face with the smell of ammonia. After using my nose to follow the trail it took me to a spot next to the Christmas tree which also had several nice pieces of cat shit as confirmation.

Ok well that pretty much sealed the deal.  As I began the wonderful process of cleaning up the area I knew that this was it.  I was ok with dealing with the other symptoms of Spooks declining health but using the rest of the house as a toilet is a game breaker.  When Ali woke up I told her of the incident and she already knew what I was thinking.  Before Ali left for her run I had pulled the tree to the side and soaked the area with the carpet cleaner to try to get the stink up.  The cat could have very well gone other places in the area as well, who knows.  I formed a barricade of chairs, a child gate and some storage cubes to prevent Spook from reentering the area to relieve herself.

As soon as I saw the shit a wave of sadness hit me.  I knew it was time to have her put to sleep yet the anxiety over the actual event weighed a ton on my mind.  The rest of the day it clouded my mood.

Ali had a big 8 mile training run Sunday morning so I got busy on the things I wanted to do.  Staying busy was the best way I could think of to not dwell on the cat situation.  One of the things I wanted to do was get gas in the motorcycle.  Sure I could have just filled up a 5 gallon container at the gas station and used it to fill the bike at home but what fun would that be?  I backed the bike down out of the shed and fired it up.  I had not driven a motorcycle for over a decade so I decided to take a few laps around the back yard.  The first thing I noticed was I didn’t fit on this bike very well.

Dad had a different seat put on the bike.  My long legs felt very cramped and my knees wanted to naturally rest on the cylinder heads instead of the gas tank, not a good thing.  The awkward leg position also put my feet in a less than ideal angle to work the shift and rear braking levers.  I did some slow loops around the yard as Sadie chased behind me excitedly.  Nicki watched at a distance safely on the hill by the pool.  After several laps I felt acclimated enough to hit the road.

Now yea I know I don’t have a motorcycle license yet.  But I figured it was a short 2 mile ride to to get gas, my risk level was low enough in my mind, it wasn’t like I was going to be popping wheelies along the way.  I strapped on my helmet and off I went.  It was cool outside so the jeans and sweatshirt I had on was definitely proper attire for the conditions.  Other than a brief burst of speed to accelerate to the 45 speed limit, the ride was totally mundane.  I did have some issues shifting with my foot position.  A couple times when I thought I was hitting third gear I instead popped it into neutral.  It was nice to only spend $7 to fill the tank though.  I returned home in one piece.  Yes I fessed up to Ali that I took the bike out.

I also worked on getting some stuff out of the garage and into the new shed.  Doing so really opened up some space in the garage which will hopefully sometime be utilized housing a new Camaro. 

The Eagles put a beating on the Falcons.  Both Ali and I fell asleep for a good portion of the game though.  The Falcons seem like a shell of the team they were last year, of course having Ryan and Turner out hurts them a lot.  Michael Vick had his best day as an Eagle by far, running for one TD and throwing for another in his first return to the Georgia Dome since he was thrown in jail.  He was visibly thrilled to perform well in front of the fans that supported him for years.  I heard him breaking up in a post game press conference when he tried to describe his feelings.  Yea Vick has been pretty much a bust as far as the Eagles offense goes but I really do think he is a changed person which is good to see.

Coupled with the Cowboys going down to the Giants, the Eagles now share first place in the NFC East.  I guess I need to hold on for the roller coaster that is sure to be the last few games of the season.

Wow I would hate to be a Redskins fan.  I saw the last part of their game with the Saints where they basically went from having the game wrapped up to instead losing in overtime.  I hope they had a suicide watch on the Redskins kicker.  To blow a chip shot field goal like that which would have sealed the game has to be devastating.  If he isn’t on the waiver wire this week I’ll be amazed.

Like I mentioned before the entire day sort of had a shadow cast over it because of the Spook deal.  Just thinking about the putting to sleep process was enough to make me emotional and it hadn’t even happened yet.  It is in some ways worse because I now know what to expect since we went through it with Buttons last year.  We are supposed to meet at the vet today at 1:30 for it to go down.  I don’t know if “dread” is a strong enough word to describe what I am feeling right now.

I do realize that once it is over with I will be relieved in more ways than one. It’s just the mountains of sadness you have to go through first to get to that point.

[podcast]https://blog.duf.net/podcast/dec4th.mp3[/podcast]

This Tiger Woods thing has been pretty surprising to me.  It’s almost as shocking as if Peyton Manning would be exposed as a man whore.

The truth is out there.