Archives 2009

I forgot to mention that last week when I was home sick on Wednesday I watched The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tome.  Ali deemed the movie as unwatchable by her since there are a couple scenes where you see Marissa Tome’s boobs.  Too bad for Ali, she missed a great movie. 

The movie tells the story of a wrestler that was popular during the hey day of wrestling in the mid to late 80’s and his struggles to continue earning a living doing the same thing with a 25 years older, broken down body.  The plot was compelling although very sad.    The story could apply to many situations where someone acheives great fame doing what they do for a short period of time and then they chase that feeling for the rest of their lives, trying to recapture it. It’s a great flick, A.

Sadie was left alone for two or three hours yesterday and managed to not destroy anything.  Maybe her dog brain is starting to get it.  Today will be a much bigger and longer test.

I am SLOWLY getting better.  At this point I have some coughing issues in the morning but I am sleeping fine. My energy level is still low, maybe 3/4 of what it normally is.  It’s been almost two full weeks of illness now.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to go time another race.  We decided to leave the dogs home this time since it was a small race and we would be home before 10 am.  The race had around 200 runners.  As usual we had a few chips that did not register as they crossed the timing lines.  Out of those only one was confirmed as being dead.  Other than that the operation went rather smooth.  I am familiar enough with the process that most things are starting to feel more or less routine.  We were all packed up and ready to leave by 9am.

When we got home we opened the door and were greeted by an immediate mess.  Sadie has continued her destructive behavior that started last week.  Not only has she continued it, she seems to be trying to set the bar higher on the destructo-meter each time she does it. First she somehow managed to get into the pantry where she pulled out a number of items from the recycling bin.  In the middle of the living room was a ripped up pack of UNO cards that she stole from the game basket in the dining room.  In the dining room she not only stole the cards but chewed on the basket that the games sit in.  Then for the grand finale she chewed on the legs of one of the dining room chairs. 

Of course we were PISSED.  We scolded her loudly and repeatedly.  The problem is that in a dogs mind she doesn’t know what she is being scolded for since the bad behavior occurred when we weren’t there.  They say that if you don’t correct the dog when they are in the act of the bad behavior they don’t really know what they did.  So I took the dogs out while Ali picked up the mess.  Ali had already started removing things of value from low areas around the house based on Sadie’s antics earlier in the week.  If it continues we  will have to further restrict her access to the house when we are gone.  Unfortunately doing that also means restricting Nicki’s access which is not fair.  If the bullshit doesn’t stop we may be forced to crate Sadie when we are gone.  I’m not going to allow her to destroy the house.

I kept busy for a good portion of Saturday doing various things around the house like hanging another solar light on the back of the shed and flushing out the water equipment and treating it with pool chlorine.  Ali took a nap in the afternoon for a little while to compensate for the early wake up call. We spent a lot of time over the weekend catching up on  a backlog of Tivo programming.

Sunday morning Ali went to spinning while I started on more chore work.   Later in the afternoon I thought we would do a “fun” thing.  I thought we would pile the dogs in the van and go for a drive.  The party van has been problematic again lately.  I think the starter which I had replaced two or three years ago is going bad again.  When you turn the key sometimes you just get a CLICK.  You turn it the next time and you may get another click or it may start normally.  I think I could handle replacing the starter on the party van myself.  There should be plenty of room to work under the big beast.  Well it only took two tries to get it started so we loaded up and took off for a short 20 minute drive.  Nicki went right back to the bed in the back and stayed there the entire time.  Sadie started back in the bed with Nicki but soon decided to join us up front.  She hopped up in Ali’s lap and hung out there for the rest of the drive.  She looked quite content just laying there looking out over the dash.

 The van was low on gas so we stopped to grab some on the way home.  Ali was paranoid that the party van would not start up again after I turned it off.  After dumping 20 bucks worth of gas in it I hopped back in and held my breath as I turned the key.  VRoom, it started right up, first time, good boy party van, good boy!

Sunday night I got an unexpected call from my brother-in-law in Arizona.  He asked if I wanted to hop on the Wii and play some Super Smash Brothers online.  We both bought the game a few months ago with the intention of playing online but we never have been able to coordinate anything.  My sister is just about ready to pop out their second kid in a few days and Damon has been under a ton of stress.  I got the feeling he just wanted to escape from it for a bit.  I told him I would call him back after dinner and we could hook it up. 

I called him back and we set ourselves up in the game as friends.  We kept our cell phone on as we played to act as our poor man’s voice ventrillo server.  Super Smash Brothers is a frantic fighting game that I absolutely suck at.  Damon was consistently kicking my ass round after round.  I was trying different characters each time to see if I had better luck.  Finally I found one that seemed to lend itself to people that basically didn’t know how to play the game.  I won a couple fights towards the end even though I think Damon was taking it easy on me.  After about 45 minutes of head bashing we called it a game.  It was a fun little break.

I was talking with Randall about maybe participating in a 150 mile ride down in the Keys to benefit MS.  However in order to do it I needed a road bike.  The only bike I own is a 20 year old Huffy mountain bike that is on it’s last legs.  I realized this weekend that I couldn’t do the event because I have to time a race that weekend.  However I still wanted to get an entry level road bike.

When I was a kid I loved to ride my bike.  I rode it everywhere.  As an adult I have drifted away from much bike riding for some reason.  Riding bike is much more agreeable with cranky knees than running is.  I have visions in my head of actually riding to and from work once in awhile just to say that I did it. (a nearly 50 mile round trip) So anyway I pulled the trigger and bought this bike off Ebay from a dealer that has a perfect feedback score.  It has good reviews and for the money it’s hard to beat.  I am looking forward to getting out on the road.  Yes I will even buy a nerdy helmet and bike pants.

Not much has been able to bring a smile to my face during my past week or so of illness.  However when I saw the Cowboys cut TO the other day a large grin formed immediately .  I LOVE it!

TO has managed to follow the same general script for all three teams he played for.  He starts out as a good citizen then in short order he starts complaining about not getting thrown to enough.  This then turns into taking shots at the team QB. It winds up with TO pissing off pretty much everyone on the team and becoming nothing but a cancer in the locker room. 

The guy is so talented yet such an asshole at the same time.  I wonder what team he will poison next?  My guess would be the Raiders. 

The only bad thing about piece of shit, me first, alligator armed, showboating, manic depressive, egomanical, press conference crying Terrell Owens getting cut is it gives me less of a reason to hate the Cowboys.

This weekend we have a race to time on Saturday.  I have plenty to keep me busy the rest of the weekend as well.  Again I slept pretty well last night.  My energy level is still way low though. 

The one thing good about being sick is it has given both my knees and tendonitis in my forearm lots of time to rest and heal.  Both things feel pretty good right now.

My symptoms amplified on Tuesday.  By Tuesday night I felt the worst I had during the past week.  I decided to go to my real doctor on Wednesday instead of the on site health care clinic.  I made an appointment for 10:15.

The place I go to recently moved to a huge fancy building that is much larger than what they had before.  Unfortunately the fancier accommodations didn’t mean more timely service.  I arrived for my appointment 5 or 10 minutes early.  The waiting room was not very full at all.  I sat there until 10:45.  I was rather annoyed, especially after seeing some guy that walked in the door after me get taken back ahead of me.

Once they took my vitals I was sitting in the room for at least another 15 minutes.  Thank goodness the Iphone is a great time waster.  I got a good session of Field Runners in.  The woman that came in I dealt with before, she is nice.  I explained my symptoms and how it had been going on for a week.  They stuck a swab up my nose to test for the flu virus.  That test came back negative which surprised me.  She felt and listened to various things.  She said she thinks I have some sort of bacterial infection.  She gave me prescriptions of antibiotics, decongestant and cough medicine. 

Ali picked up the prescriptions for me after work.  So far so good.  I was able to basically sleep through the night for the first time in 3 days and I am back at work today.  I certainly am far from 100% but at least I don’t feel like an invalid.

I haven’t been to the gym in over a week which of course bothers me.  However I have noticed that coughing 1000 times a day and being dehydrated really brings out your ab muscles.

Sadie made her first confirmed poop on Tuesday. Ali was very relieved.  She is a little devil though.  When I went to the doctor I left our bedroom door open.  When I came home there was a chewed up pen on the bed, tissues pulled out of the trash can, a half chewed up plastic grocery bag and another pen that looked like it was in the beginning stages of being eaten.  It was my fault for not closing the bedroom door and leaving the pantry doors partially open. 

 Later in the day I was making myself a piece of toast. I was in the office while it was heating up.  I heard the sound of a plate moving.  I come out to the kitchen and there is Sadie on her back legs with her front paws trying to pull the plate off the counter.  I scolded her loudly.  Hopefully she got the point.  As a precaution Ali and I really need to make sure there is nothing on the edges of counters within paws reach.

 Spook made my morning extra special.  I went into the utility room and saw a beautiful little snail trail of brown leading up to two turds in the middle of the floor.  If I were to guess I’d say they were stuck to her rear end and she drug it across the tile until she managed to grind them off.  It was like finding a pot of gold at the end of a feces rainbow.  I love cats.

I was up for about half the night coughing my lungs out.  Yesterday I went to the government complex health clinic.  They said that I may have had a flu like thing at the start but it seemed to be bronchitis now.  They gave me a prescription for some cough suppressant stuff that didn’t seem to help one bit.  I’m going to try good old Nyquil tonight. I feel exhausted.

Another crapless day for Sadie yesterday.

I had heard from a co-worker that Planet Fitness (aka. the gym that invented the Lunk Alarm) had changed their ways.  She said they pulled out the lunk alarm and all of the bullshit rules that they had come up with are no longer enforced.  She also said they added a bunch of new equipment.

Well I have been dealing with the filth, poor upkeep and general apathy that exists at  Powerhouse Gym, now known as Pure Fitness to save him franchise fees.  I went back to Powerhouse after the infamous lunk alarm was installed and they decided to pull out all weights heavier than 50 pounds.  Pure Fitness is a Pure Shithole.  Before doing any set with the dumbbells it is necessary to drop them on the floor and spin the weights to tighten them up, else they could fall right off.  Same deal with the benches, I often begin a set by reaching underneath the bench and tightening the screws the best I can by hand so the bench isn’t wobbling back and forth.  Seats and grips on the various exercise machines are ripped up, there are spider webs and dirt in every corner, the water fountain looks like someone threw up on it and the bathrooms are disgusting.  Oh and the owner does whatever he can to keep cooling charges down.  He keeps the thermostat at 80 degrees (very hot for a gym) and loves to open the doors instead of using the AC to save more money.  The gym crowd at Pure Fitness is 95% men and any women that do show up there are typically 65 years old or older. 

Planet Fitness on the other hand is very clean and has much newer and much better equipment.  I checked in at lunch to see if the Lunk Alarm was indeed gone.  It was gone from it’s original home.  However it was simply moved to a wall in the back where the free weights are now located.   I was assigned to tour with a guy named Jeremy.  I told him I was an original member there. He looked me up and my name was still in the computer.  I told him the reason I left was because of all the bullshit rules that were put in place.  I mentioned how a friend of mine told me the lunk alarm was gone and the long list of rules was no longer being enforced.  He told me about the lunk alarm simply being moved although he said it currently wasn’t working. He also said they still enforce the bullshit rules.

Surprisingly Jeremy was right on board with my opinion that all of the rules in place there were bullshit.  They annoyed him as well and he said the lunk alarm was the stupidest thing he ever saw in a gym.  He said that they did bring some heavier weights back in, now they cap at 75 pounds instead of 50 pounds.  They did not bring back any squat racks since those are only needed by “power lifters” which is ludicrous.  As I talked to Jeremy out on the gym floor you would have never guessed he was an employee, he hated the childish rules as much if not more than I did.  He told me how the corporate office will send plants into the gym to make sure that the staff is following the “rules”  If they are found to not be they are at risk for losing the franchise.  It is crazy.

I told Jeremy I had been at Powerhouse since leaving Planet Fitness.  He winced as he already knew that place was a dump.  He actually recommended the old Gold’s Gym that is under new ownership.  Unfortunately it is too far away to be useful for lunch time workouts.   I looked around some more before leaving.  The equipment except for the missing squat rack looked great.  There was a much more balanced crowd there gender-wise as well.  I told Jeremy I would think about my options.

It’s a tough decision.   Do I break my vow to never go back to a gym that has the lunk alarm, even a broken one?  Planet Fitness has no room to do a 300 workout.  In fact I am sure it would be frowned upon and discouraged  since it can get noisy.  I could get by with the 75 pound weight ceiling.  I don’t need to push anything much heavier than that nowadays.  The equipment is nice, the place is clean, and well maintained. The crowd in there has a much younger median age. 

Pure Fitness is the cesspool of gyms.  The owner has no interest in maintaining the place and cuts corners at every opportunity.  The equipment is ancient and falling apart in some cases. It’s incredibly dirty.  It’s hot. It smells.  On the plus side they have no problems with me doing a 300 workout there and have the space needed to do it.  Of course they probably wouldn’t notice or care if someone took a shit in the middle of the floor either.  Really the biggest drawback I have to leaving Pure Fitness is the core of 7 or 8 guys that I talk to on a regular basis.  I have some good relationships going there and I’d be reluctant to toss them aside.  Some of the guys came with me from Plant Fitness, perhaps they would follow me back.

Look at this article and video clip about Planet Fitness and their incredibly stupid “Lunk  Alarm”.

Ali talked to the vet.  She said that a couple days is not anything to get alarmed about.  If a couple more should pass without anything “passing” then we need to take Sadie back.  So that’s what we will do.

So Tuesday evening I started feeling off.  I was getting that weird feeling in my throat as well as feeling abnormally tired.  When I woke up Wednesday morning my throat hurt even worse and I was feeling achy.  I typically don’t take a lot of sick days so I didn’t feel bad about calling in.  If push came to shove I probably could have sat behind my desk at work, it’s not like I load trucks for a living.  Eh, I figured I would rest on Wednesday and be good as new for Thursday. It didn’t work out that way.

Instead of getting better I woke up on Thursday feeling worse.  My throat was more sore and the aches were more intense.  Friday it was no better so I stayed home once again.  During my time home I did some napping, some TV watching and a lot of WoW playing.   We also had some dog drama developing.  Sadie developed diarrhea, bad diarrhea.  On Thursday I went outside to let them out and saw that Sadie let loose with a huge pancake of runny shit on the pool deck.  With my physical condition hosing down shit was not high on my want to do list.  After the pool deck incident Sadie was a diarrhea machine.  Every time we went outside she was squatting multiple times and eventually was pushing out nothing but a watery mess.

Of course we were concerned.  Ali was so so concerned that she spent the better part of two nights out on the sofa bed with Sadie so she could let her out during the night as well as not wake me up in the process.  On Friday she took Sadie to the vet.  The vet said she had some sort of bacteria in her stool and that there was a lot of undigested food in it.  She gave us some medicine as well as advising us to give her a bland diet consisting of boiled chicken and rice till it clears up.

Friday night Sadie got through without having to go to the bathroom.  Ali and I were both happy the diarrhea seemed to be behind her.  Now we have a new problem.  She is not pooping at all.  Over the weekend she only made one tiny poop the entire time.  All Sunday we were on poop patrol anxiously awaiting a normal bowel movement.  It never came.  So now Sadie goes back to the vet.  Ali is worried that she has some sort of obstruction in her digestive system.  Last week she did devour half of a compressed raw hide bone in one sitting.  Ali has heard of that possibly causing blockages.  I’m hoping the vet can give us some solid answers today.

On Saturday the aches and pains subsided pretty much and my energy level felt high enough that I tried to tackle the household chores.  The aches were replaced with a very sore throat and a dry hacking cough that came and went.  We went out and got a bunch of stuff with some of our various gift cards to help light up the back yard.  I grabbed a couple solar floodlights as well as a wireless thing that supposedly allows you to turn regular floods into motion activated devices.  I got most of it installed and working.  The one solar spotlight was too small and I will be returning it.  We need the extra lighting since the dogs like to run around in the yard during both day and night time.  Without lighting it is very tough to see them.

I also grabbed a couple shepard hooks to hang our bird feeders off of.  Our old ones were all bent up and shitty looking.  When I grabbed the hooks at Home Depot I noticed they had a “Made in China” sticker on them.  I put them back and grabbed another one to see if I could find an American made model.  I looked at every single variation they had at the store.  Every single one was made in China.  We have been invaded and don’t even realize it, sad.

The rest of the weekend was understandably low key.  Between my not feeling well and the Sadie issues it added up to not a whole lot of fun. 

I watched an Oprah with Ali that had Eric from the Biggest Loser on it.  Eric was the winner 3 years ago.  He started out at 407 pounds and by the finale he got down to an AMAZING 197 pounds.  He lost something like 214 pounds total.  Well when I saw him on Oprah I audibly gasped.  After all of that work, all of that dedication, all of that praise and adulation for his accomplishment, the guy has let himself go.  He is back up to 315 pounds and looks like shit.

I give him credit for coming on Oprah and at least admitting his failure.  You could see the shame written all over his face.  He should be ashamed.  He basically won the lotto,  he got his life back, he was finally healthy and he pissed it away.  He said that seeing Oprah talk about how she has whaled out once again inspired him to come on the show. 

Oprah was very annoying during the interview.  She kept making Eric’s problem about her.  She kept repeating HER problems, HER issues and HER advice for beating it.  First of all Oprah is not qualified to give healthy living advice to anyone.  If anything she has set a terrible example of how to manage her weight.  With all the money she has that allows her to buy the best trainers, the best cooks, the best exercise equipment she still was unable to control what she shoved in her mouth.  In the field of healthy living she is the ultimate hypocrite. Shut the f up, lose weight and keep it off. Stop giving advice you don’t take yourself.

Anyway it was very disappointing for me to see that Eric fell off the wagon.  Unfortunately there are quite a few Biggest Loser contestants that made huge strides during the show only to fall right back into their dark hole of gluttony and inactivity afterwards.  The season 1 winner now weighs as much if not more than when he started the show as well.

We watched one movie during my illness, The Day the Earth Stood Still.  I had heard ahead of time it had bad reviews.  But hey it is sci-fi and has Keanu Reeves, how bad could it be?  It was bad.  The overall message was admirable, stop trashing the planet or someone will come along and trash the human race but the film was filled with just dumb moments that made little to no sense.  The ending was very anti-climactic and nonsensical to me as well. C+ at best.

Home sick today. I started feeling it last night while watching the state of the union. Maybe watching all of the close ups of the various old farts in the audience brought it on. I thought Obama did a good job though on conveying his message. Only time will tell how effective it is.

Yes this post delves deeply into the crazy world of WoW.  Bail if you like or read on if you want a better understanding of it all.

So like I mentioned awhile ago, I hooked back up with some guys I started out playing WoW with.  The goal was to get all of us to 80, the new level cap so we could start running “heroic” instances.  An instance is a dungeon that a group of players goes into.  The group can be anywhere from 5 to 25 players big.  Inside of the instance there are various “bosses”.  Bosses are bad guys that are typically very hard to kill.  To do so requires teamwork from all players involved.  If one person screws up you can screw everyone else as well.  The rewards for your effort is typically good items that drop from the boss.  Well a HEROIC instance is a much harder version of this concept. Every enemy inside a heroic instance is much tougher than in a normal instance.  The rewards for completing these instances is better of course.

Through out all the years I have been playing WoW I have pretty much steered clear of raiding and instances.  There are several reasons.  Players that consistently do instances are many times the type of WoW players that I don’t particularly enjoy hanging with.  They are the hard core players, they are the ones that take great pride in their virtual achievements, the players that get a rise in the shorts if they get a piece of gear that adds 3% to their “crit”.  I never felt comfortable around these folks.

So anyway, my paladin was my first guy to reach 80 over the weekend.  I retrained him to be a healing specialist to go into heroic dungeons.  Sunday night I went into my first heroic and failed miserably.  My gear wasn’t up to snuff and as a result I was unable to heal well enough to keep the group alive. 

There are two KEY people in any raid group, the “tank” which is normally a heavily armored played.  The tank’s job is to keep the focus of the bad guys on him and off of the other players.  It can be a very demanding job.  The healer is the one that keeps everyone alive.  Healing can be equally stressful.  All I do is watch player’s health bars and throw healing spells on them in a non-stop barrage.  I also have the ability to cure them of disease as well.  If players die the blame almost always falls on the healer if it is justified or not.

So although I did a rotten job of keeping people alive in my first try, the players in my group were all cool about it.  They understood I was green behind the ears in this aspect of the game.  After the entire group dying 6 times they even agreed to drop back to regular mode so we could go through the instance without all of the pressure so I could learn the fights.

So last night I was at it again.  We went into a different heroic instance.  Earlier I was able to upgrade my gear a bit so that I wouldn’t have as many problems.  For the most part it worked.  We were able to clear the entire instance but the group still died 3 or 4 times along the way.  Our group had a very good tank in it, however he also is one of those guys that is way into WoW.

He was getting on my nerves several times.  Before one fight he started attacking as I was doing something else.  As a result I was late getting heals onto him and he died.  After he died he is like “What happened there??!!” followed by him reviewing his combat log.  He reads off the multiple hits he took before he received his first heal to make a point of my mistake.  I said that I was late getting the first heal off plain and simple.  Throughout the experience there were multiple little smart ass remarks that rubbed me the wrong way.

So after spending maybe an hour and a half to two hours we killed the final boss, barely.  I was doing a miserable job of managing the chaos in the final fight.  Everybody needed healing, everybody needed cleansing including myself.  The players all were dead including me. However I had a “soul stone” on me, meaning I was able to magically instantly revive from the dead. I resurrected and luckily the dragon only had a sliver of health left.  I hit it once and it dropped.

For my efforts I received one piece of gear that was a slight upgrade to what I have.  The tank that was giving me a hard time said I did a good job with all things considered. I didn’t believe him.  I logged out of the game somewhat sweaty and stressed out.  I didn’t feel good about it at all.  I don’t need to get stressed out by WoW, I have plenty of real life things that can do that for me.   

Things might get better as time goes on since shortly Charlie will be joining us.  Charlie is as easy going as they come.

I got a call from Ali during the day Friday saying there was an “incident” at home.  Of course I knew this related to something more than likely Sadie related, I could only imagine what it was.  Evidently at some point Sadie decided that digging into the wall under the front window would be a good idea.  Ali and I theorized that she saw something outside and in her dog brain she was going to dig through the wall to get it.  Ali said she scolded Sadie strongly about it.  When I got home and saw the damage I wasn’t all that freaked out.  It was maybe the size of half a softball and nothing that couldn’t be patched and painted pretty easily.

Saturday during the day was quite busy.  Ali and I knocked out a bunch of our normal stuff.  In addition the grass was looking a bit unkempt so we mowed and weed whacked the property.  That wasn’t enough work so after lunch we pulled stuff out of the garage and cleaned it. (our scheduled February cleaning project)  There were tons of spiders, webs and dead frog and lizard carcasses to be sucked up.

We had to leave early for the race I was running that evening, the Festival of Lights.  The FOL is a HUGE parade in Fort Myers that typically has somewhere around 200,000 spectators.  Right before the parade they have a HUGE 5k run as well.  The race didn’t start until 5:45 but we left the house at 3pm due to issues with finding parking before they start shutting down streets. 

We piled the two dogs into the back of the Camry.  For the most part they shared the back seat.  However at some point Nicki decided she would have more room laying on the floor in the back.  This would be my third time running the race, the first time running by myself since Ali is not in running shape yet.  Hell I wasn’t in running shape either.  Since Thanksgiving this would be only my third time running since I had some knee flare ups after the Turkey Trot.

We got into Fort Myers a little after 4 and began looking for a suitable parking spot.  We knew we had to park far away if we wanted to be able to get out of town after the race.  Otherwise we would be pinned in until after the parade ends around 9 pm. So we found a lot that was posted as 7 bucks to park.  When I pulled in I told the guys that we needed to be able to get out after the run, we couldn’t be parked in.  He said it was no problem, if we parked in the front row we had direct access to a small street in front of the parking area that we could get out on. Ok, sounds good.  We paid our seven bucks and started the long walk.

The streets were already lined with chairs and in many cases people were already planted in those chairs even with the parade not scheduled to start for a good three hours.  Areas of the sidewalk that did not have chairs were covered in duct tape with people’s names written on them, I guess that equated to a reservation.  I find it hard to believe that some assholes didn’t just rip the tape up if they felt like it.

Sadie and Nicki got lots of “how cute” and “look at the doggies” as we carefully maneuvered our way through the people and seating arrangements.  Finally we got to the closed off areas of the street so we could walk out in the open.  As I went inside a big tent to check in I checked out the registration set up since we time races as well.  They had a good system going with plenty of people manning the registration area that knew exactly what they were supposed to do, something we are sometimes lacking.  I thought to myself if our club would be able to handle a race of this magnitude ourselves (over 1500 runners)  Not in our current state, it would take a lot of retooling of procedures, standards and thought processes.

Once I got my chip, shirt and packet we all just sort of hung out for awhile outside the registration tent.  Ali found a nice spot in the shade that worked out well for the dogs.  We just sort of hung out and took in the bee hive of activity.  Quite a few people came up to us and wanted to interact with the dogs.  With Sadie it is a totally different situation than Nicki. Nicki is automatically scared of new people and TERRIFIED of children.  Sadie loves anyone. Without fail she happily greeted anyone that came up to her including kids.  A couple of the youngsters were even greeted with licks to the face.

Race time was finally approaching.  Ali said she thought it would be best to just stay put with the dogs and I could easily find them after the race.  Controlling both dogs with one set of hands is a tough.  The start line was 3 blocks away so I made my way in that direction.  Along the way I made a port-a-potty stop.  I was hoping to avoid it after my “upper decker” experience at the YMCA run but I had to go.  Luckily there was no such intruder in the urinal this time.

I got to the starting line with 5 minutes or so to spare.  There was the usual HUGE mass of runners all chomping at the bit to go.  Like last year there was a single wheelchair participant whom they left go a few minutes early.  There were so many people that I couldn’t even hear the starter on the PA system.  All we got was the gun and the mass of humanity slowly starting to move forward. 

The first quarter to half mile or so of this run is a major pain in the ass.  You have too many people jammed into too small of an area.  Being inches from hundreds of moving body parts is tough to navigate.  It also can dramatically slow down your official race time if you start in the back half of the pack as I did.  You are just trying to not fall down.

So finally we get out onto a wide street and things spread out a bit.  The temps were good for running, in the low 70’s. The first mile or so is normally the toughest until I get loose.  Well the whole race was tough.  I never felt all that comfortable and I was struggling to maintain an 8 minute mile pace.  I picked out some visual targets during the race that I HAD to pass like the chubby woman with two knee braces or the lady that looked old enough to be my mother.  The race route was lined with thousands of cheering spectators.  However I wasn’t really able to enjoy any of their cheers, I was looking straight ahead, focused on just getting through it.  It sucks, I would like to be able to catch some looks to the crowd now and then.

So the final turn into a looong straightaway finally arrives.  I picked up my pace the best I could and “sprinted” towards the finish.  My official race time was 26:09.  My GPS time which accounted for the delay at the start was 25:45.  It was close to an eight minute mile pace which was ok considering the circumstances.  My time stuck just on of the north side of the middle of my age group.  I was 34th out of 69 men in the 40-44 bracket, yahoo.

Ali decided to come up to the finish line to cheer me on.  She said she was yelling for me but between my tunnel vision at the moment and the loud crowd noise I couldn’t hear or see her.  They had no water right by the finish line.  Luckily Ali saved a bottle for me. I needed it.  The dogs and her were very happy to see me.  After stretching a bit I made my way into the same tent we went in for registration, this time for refreshments.  As I went in they handed me 3 tickets. Each ticket was good for either a soda, a beer or a slice of pizza.  You entered this huge tent on the left.  The line went down the left, around the back and up to the right where the pizza, beer and soda awaited, a pain in the ass.  Things really got annoying when after waiting in line for awhile I finally got to the right side.  They make an announcement that the pizza was not here yet!  WTF???  They had the EXACT same issue last year!  Hundreds of people waiting for pizza  that was promised post-race!! Jesus Christ.  Well I stayed in the line thinking I would at least get a soda after waiting for so long.  I was about to bail out of waiting completely as my patience was expiring when guys started coming into the tent with garbage bags full of pizza boxes.  Yay, I used two tickets and got two slices, one for Ali and one for me.

After eating we didn’t stick around and started the long trek back to the car.  The trip back was tougher because the sidewalks were now packed in some cases 10 deep with people waiting for the parade.  Trying to navigate that with two dogs in tow was not fun.  Finally we decided to just walk out in the street, the parade had not actually started yet so it was the fastest way to go.  I heard dozens of dog admiring comments along the way.

Finally we got up to the cross street we had to head down to get to our parked car. Just then the fireworks signifying the start of the parade started.  Regular blog readers will remember what happened at the Pottstown Rumble when Nicki was first exposed to fireworks, she is TERRIFIED by them.  I quickly knelt down and grabbed her.  As soon as the noise started she was frantically trying to run.  I was strong enough to hold her in place but she was freaking out.  We were right in front of parade watchers as this spectacle was taking place.  We had to get her out of there but she was too scared to be able to go about it without running over people.  I scooped her up like a big 65 pound furry baby and carried her.  Being held by me seemed to calm her down somewhat.  Once we got out of sight of the explosions I put her down.  She made a beeline towards the car.

As we approached the car a new problem was staring us in the face.  Remember that front row spot that was supposed to allow us to get out when we needed to?  Well it would work as long as someone else didn’t park in front of you.  After the drama of the fireworks neither Ali or I had any patience for this situation.  If we didn’t get that car moved we would be stuck at the parade until the owner decided to come back.  I marched right over to the guys that were running the lot.  I reminded them I was the guy that needed to get out.  I pointed to how we were now parked in.  The guy looked and came over.  “No one was supposed to park there” he said.  “well, I guess nobody told this guy..” I remarked as we walked over.  The attendant surveyed the situation.  There was no way to squeeze past.  As we walked around the car we noticed that the passenger side window was wide open.  Ali mentioned that maybe we could throw it in neutral and push it out of the way.

I told her that I didn’t think you could put it in neutral without the key.  Furthermore the steering column would lock in place once you started to turn the wheel. The attendant agreed but said maybe we would get lucky.  So I reach in the open window, pop the lock and open the door. The alarm starts blaring, lights start flashing and all hell breaks loose.  As soon as the alarm starts going the attendant heads towards the parade saying he was going to try to find the owner, I have no idea how he planned to do that. 

Well 50 yards down the little street there is a cop that has traffic blocked off.  He’s a younger guy, probably not much past 30.  “You guys aren’t trying to steal that car are you?” he says.  We laugh and say no of course not, we explained we were supposed to be able to get out of the parking lot but got parked in.   We hoped we could get the vehicle in neutral to move it out of the way.  Well initially the cop seemed to be good natured about it but then he starts in a more serious tone.  “You know what you did could technically be a felony.  You can get 5-15 years for it.”  My pissed off meter immediately jumped off the charts.  This guy was going to try to throw his authority around.  “So you are saying they would convict us of a felony for trying to move a car that parked us in”, I say in the best controlled tone I could muster. I was REALLY pissed and felt like calling the cop a f’ing asshole for even throwing that bullshit out there. “Well you wouldn’t want someone opening your door would you?” the cop says.  “If I parked someone in I would understand, yes….”  It was right on the verge of getting real ugly.

I backed up and explained what happened in depth.  I said we ran in the race and made sure to get parking arrangements that would allow us to get out after the race.  We were just freaking out a bit.  After that the cops attitude dissipated a bit.  Amazingly the parking lot guy just then was walking back towards us with the car owners in tow.  I have no idea how he found him but didn’t care.  The car owner was very nice and apologized for parking us in, he wasn’t aware he was blocking us in.  He moved the car and we were on our way. What a night.

My Sunday was laid back again.  I knocked out what needed to be knocked out in a couple hours.  After that the rest of my Sunday was much like the prior Sunday, I caught up on Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, played with the dogs and played WoW.  It was nice.

During the weekend I had to break up a big dogfight.  Sadie has this thing where she can’t stand if Nicki has a toy or anything else in her mouth, she tries to steal it.  Most of the time Nicki will just let her take whatever Sadie wants to take.  Well when I was outside with them I threw a part of a palm tree to Nicki and she was chewing on it.  Sadie comes over and tried to grab it.  Instead of letting Sadie have her way Nicki clenched down tight on the wood and pulled.  She outweighs Sadie by 20 pounds so she is definitely stronger. 

Well when Sadie refused to back down Nicki lost her patience and turned into the Tasmanian devil and went after Sadie with intent to maim.  Sadie returned the favor and had her teeth fully exposed.  They were trying to hurt each other at that point.  I yelled at both of them and pinned them both down.  As soon as I did they both fell right into line and calmed down. After all I am THE leader of the pack when push comes to shove.  After the incident they acted like it never happened.

It’s very funny watching Nicki chase Sadie around the yard.  Sadie is extremely fast and extremely elusive.  In a straight line Nicki can accelerate pretty well and almost keep up with Sadie.  But Sadie can change directions on a dime and when she does big, burly Nicki goes shooting right by her.  I think Nicki enjoys having someone to burn off energy with.  We just need to tweak their interactions a bit more.

So far knock on wood both of my knees don’t feel bad at all after running the race.  I am cautiously optimistic because I felt pretty much felt the same way initially after running the Gobble Gobble.  I am not running this week as a precaution.