Archives 2009

Nicki and Ali were on the local Fox morning show and did an OUTSTANDING job of promoting and talking about the race.  I’m proud of them.  Ali is a much better speaker than I could ever hope to be. I can’t embed it for some reason so here is the link.

So we headed over for the Eagles concert on Monday night.  We made good time by going the “back way” which involves going out Oil Well Road onto Route 29.  Taking this route shaves at least 20 miles off the trip.

We got there in plenty of time for the 8 o’clock show.  We were at the front doors by 7:15.  Out front they had one of those Smart Cars they were giving away.  Ali and I signed up for it.  Once we got inside we grabbed a big diet soda and soft pretzel.  Neither of us had a drop of alcohol.  My reason was very practical, drinking makes me tired.  I didn’t need to be more tired for the drive back across the alley.

I had ideas that maybe since the concert was on a Monday night it might not be that full.  I was wrong, it was packed.  Looking around it was also obvious we weren’t there for a Britney Spears concert.  The crowd was primarily baby boomers.  I was surprised at the amount of older women there that were holding it together pretty well.  They definitely for the most part did not represent the typical American physically for their age group. You could have had a great time just people watching.  The outfits that some people chose to wear were very interesting. 

We found our seats and talked to the couple behind and to our right, they both seemed nice.  Even though I bought my seats the first day they were available we still were pretty far away.  Thank goodness they had two giant screens on either side of the stage that allowed you to see close ups of the band.  The show started a little late, maybe 8:15 or 8:20.  The band sounded great.  They sounded just like they have for the past 30 years.

It didn’t take long for Ali and I to notice another couple behind us.  The man was chubby with a buzzed head and a bald spot, his wife/ girlfriend was a chunky blonde.  This guy was just plain annoying. 

We noticed him because we kept hearing what sounded like a train whistle behind us “WOO! WOO! WOO!”  He would repeatedly make this sound, typically during quieter parts of songs, perhaps in an effort for the band to hear his screams of pleasure from the second deck.  After a few of the WOO’S, I turned around to see what the hell was going on back there.  It was just insane.

Not only was the guy yelling, he was CONSTANTLY in and out of his seat.  When he stood up he started gyrating his arms almost like he was trying to conduct the band.  The funny thing was the guy looked like Steve Martin in The Jerk.  He had no rhythm.  Instead it looked like he was having seizures.  Like I said he was no small man so each time he flopped back down onto his seat he was bumping into the woman of the nice couple we talked to before the show.  We felt bad for her.  The guy had to be seen to be believed.  During the intermission the crazy guy went down for refreshments.  The woman behind us joked “We’ll give you $50 to switch seats….”  Yea the guy was that annoying. 

All of the performances were good.  They played both Eagles songs and various songs that were produced solo by Glenn Fry, Don Henley and Joe Walsh.  I never really knew just how huge their song library is as well as the diversity of it.  Some songs sounded country, others pop/disco and others that were pure rock.  I found that I enjoyed the performances that featured Joe Walsh the most.  He is just a bizarre guy that looks equally strange while singing.  The crowd seemed to agree with me, they went nuts for Joe.

The band did the silly move where they act like they are done, leave the stage, the crowd yells and they come back.  I never understood that.  The evening was wrapped up with Don Henley singing a great rendition of Desperado.  There was no mistaking when the band left for good, they jumped into an SUV and drove out one of the access ramps.

Getting out of the event wasn’t too bad.  The drive back was a bit brutal though.  About half way into it I was really struggling to stay awake.  Ali helped by smacking my leg and pinching my arm.  We pulled into home about 1:15 am.  It was a great show, we both had a lot of fun.

I took yesterday off because I knew I would be wiped.  I still had to get up though to take my mom into work.  When I got back I was able to quickly wash the Camry before Ali went to work, it was coated with bug remains from the drive across the alley the night before.  For the rest of the day yesterday I did a few things around the house and relaxed. it was nice.

This morning Ali and Nicki had their TV appearance.  Ali said it went well.  I can’t wait to see it on the Tivo.  The race is blowing up, there are over 400 people registered already, at this point having 500-600 runners seems to be a sure thing.

To perfection, click to lightbox the image in all of it’s greatness.  Thank God I burned all of my perm pics.

I am having a hard time remembering much about the weekend except the last part of it.  I guess that’s because there wasn’t anything all that exciting going on.  On Saturday we got to do a full survey of the damage from the frost.  It was more extensive than we first thought. 

Initially Ali thought just the Noni tree in the orchard and the one poinsettia took a beating.  Some of the stuff did not immediately wilt from the frost.  However a couple days later it was obvious that more plants were damaged.  The banana trees all were destroyed.  I cut them down to the ground.  They will grow back but the next time it gets cold they will simply die again.  Other landscape items that took damage were the areca palms, crown of thorns, elephant ear, and most of the plants in the butterfly garden.  In the garden the corn got wrecked, as well as the pepper plant with some damage also taken by the squash and tomatoes.  Hell the frost even instantly killed a bunch of the grass. Cold weather in South Florida just is never a good thing.

I spent a lot of the weekend just f’ing off between playing WoW and Field Runner, the addictive game for the IPhone.  Ali said that for some reason she is much more annoyed by me playing the Iphone game than WoW.  My WoW resurgence has to do with a bunch of the guys I used to play with getting back into the game now that the expansion came out.  It’s been great being back among familiar names.  It makes the game much more social than it has been for a long time.

Sunday afternoon my mom came over.  She was nice enough to watch Nicki for us while we go to the Eagles concert on the east coast tonight.  Shortly after she got there a guy we know from the running club came over.  He is going to help us out with data entry at the race next Saturday and we needed to give him some hands on training before the event.  His name just happens to be Sean as well.  Sean is a real nice laid back guy who is close to my age.   Not only do we share a name (in sound at least), we also share some other similarities as we both have been divorced once and neither of us have kids. 

Sean brought over his big lovable dog named Tundra.  Tundra made his mark on the house right away as I watched him go over and take a leak on the storage box by the pool.  Of course this instantly caused me panic when Tundra moved inside the house and disappeared around the corner.  I had visions of him systematically “marking” each and every room of the house.  I went inside and tried to calmly bring him back out to the pool deck with us where I could monitor his activities.  I don’t think he did anything inside. 

Surprisingly Nicki had very few issues with Tundra being there.  In fact she almost immediately tried to engage him in play.  Having my dad’s dogs around must have opened her up a bit.  Tundra wasn’t all that into running around since he is 11+ years old and has hip dysplasia but he engaged her a bit.  It was cute. 

Sean joined Ali, my Mom and I for dinner as well. Sean is the type of person I typically get a long well with, a good talker.  Since I am typically such a rotten conversationalist, someone that loves to talk takes a lot of stress off of me.   We got to learn a lot about him.  During our long dinner conversation mom finished up and got up from the table.  I think she felt somewhat like a third wheel since a lot of the conversation had to do with various people in the running club.  When I got up from the table I saw that she had already went back to bed.  I was worried that her feelings were hurt or something.  I poked my head in twice to see if she was awake but she apparently crashed.

After dinner and desert brownies, Sean took me on in a bit of Wii Sports.  He has a Wii at home himself.  I handled him in tennis although some of the matches were real close.  We wrapped it up with a best two out of three boxing match.  We split the first two games and then in the third match he dominated me, finishing off the fight in spectacular fashion with a crushing over head right that smashed me to the ground.   He headed out around 10.  We had a good time with him and Tundra.  Hopefully we get together more often.

So tonight we head over to the east coast for an Eagles concert, Ali’s big xmas gift. Ali loves the Eagles.  This will be my third concert I have attended in my life. The first one was White Snake in my early 20’s and then Don Henley with Ali maybe 5 or 6 years ago down here.  The concert starts at 8, ends somewhere around 10.   I took tomorrow off in anticipation of getting home hella-late.  I was up till after 11 last night, probably not a great idea with the long day ahead of me.

I forgot to mention that I did later see Obama’s speech at his inauguration.  As expected it was powerful, thoughtful and well executed.  The time for talk is over.  So far he appears to be digging right in and making stuff happen, I love it.

As historic as that day was, it was almost overshadowed by Aretha Franklin and her God-awful hat.  I didn’t hear her sing but I heard the performance was not very strong.  She later blamed the cold temperatures.  Maybe the weight of the hat was making her head tip to one side, constricting her vocal chords.

I heard she paid $500 for that hideous thing.  I also heard that the manufacturer is making it available to the general public as well at the super discounted price of $175

I love this picture.  You would think that it was some professionally done shot.  Nope, my step mom shot it during their travels out west.  It is currently the background on my desktop at work.  Click it to “lightbox” the image.

Ali and Nicki are soon to be tv personalities.  To help promote Ali’s upcoming race, Nicki and her are going to be appearing on the local Fox morning show.  It’s a really cool thing.  The race has been getting more press this year.  As a result it appears that participation this year is going to smash last years number.  She already has almost 300 runners pre-registered for the run.  I’m going to tape their segment on the Tivo, I’ll get it ripped for public viewing.

I don’t feel like doing a weekend preview, I’ll tell you about Monday.

Well we just had our once a year deep freeze. This morning the weather station read a ridiculous 27 degrees.  The weather sensor attached to the outside of the house read 36 degrees.  I figure the actual temp was somewhere in the middle.  The truck showed 32 when I stepped in this morning.  There was frost on the windshields, roof and the grass. Regardless of the number it felt frigid. 8 years in Florida has made my resistance to cold next to nothing.

I am hoping that our crop in the garden will have survived the freeze.  Most of the plants I covered with empty pots.  The rest was covered with a combination of weed fabric, burlap, grill covers and whatever else I could find. And no, I did NOT wear a coat to work.  I refuse to.

Ali isn’t happy with my latest Facebook Friend, Sal from the Stern Show.  Sal is very funny although at times he does it in ways that Ali finds rather disgusting and offensive. I  also added Jason Kaplan yesterday who is one of the producers.  I heard them talking about their Facebook accounts on the show so I figured I would see if they would accept my friend invites.  I was sort of surprised they did.  Sal uses it to promote his comedy stuff he does on the side.  He has nearly 2000 “friends”.  Jason has a more conservative 500 people on his friend list.

I don’t think Ali has to worry. I doubt Sal and I will be sharing a beer anytime soon.

Yep, it finally is at zero, the end of 8 years of lunacy.  No I didn’t get to see Obama’s inauguration but I’ll catch it on youtube or someplace like that tonight.

On the way home from work on Friday I stopped at Sam’s for some of our bulk items, just like I do every other week.  Typically my shopping trips at Sam’s end in similar way, I am checked out by an individual that has as much personality and energy as a storm drain.  This time was different.  My clerk was a thin lanky Hispanic guy.  He seemed incredibly upbeat, energetic and happy.  He was the type of guy that you couldn’t help but want to engage in conversation. 

After he happily greeted me I noticed that he had a bandage in front of his one ear.  I wondered if he just had it pierced or something.  I asked him what the deal was. “I had a cyst removed, I had the same thing on the other side too.”  He continues “at first I was bummed out about it but now I have a matching set! You can’t let stuff get ya down, ya know?”   I just smiled and shook my head in agreement. I was a bit stupefied that the kid was just so upbeat.  I wondered how in the world someone with such a positive, infectious attitude was working at Sam’s Club.  If he could jam some of positive attitude and energy into a pill I would be first in line to buy it.  What a cool kid.

Saturday morning I knocked out most of the stuff I wanted to get done for the weekend.  My massage was scheduled at 1 pm.  I arrived a couple minutes late.  I was a bit mad cause I didn’t want to waste one minute of being rubbed down.  The last massage I had was with the same woman a year or two ago.  Since I was a return client she didn’t have to go through the awkward “you can leave underwear on or take it off” discussion.  I took it off like last time.

She asked me if I had any trouble areas I wanted her to work on.  I mentioned the tendonitis in my right arm as well as the normal stuff most people complain of, a tight back and shoulders.  I started face down and she went to work.  It is truly a head to toe massage.  It’s a bit awkward for me having a woman other than Ali rubbing my rear end and upper thighs so I tried to break up some of that with minimal conversation.  However the majority of the time was quiet other than the serene music playing in the background.  It felt great, it was all over too soon.  I tipped her 20 bucks.  No Randall, I didn’t ask for a happy ending. 🙂

By the time I got back home I only had an hour or two before I had to head right back out to Ali’s recital.  She was doing the same performance I saw at the end of November but this time it was in the new building the dance school just opened up.  I was sort of rushing to get Nicki’s supper prepared before heading out the door.  I gave no thought to any sort of prep I needed to do to attend a dance recital.

Well once I got there and walked up to the building where other people were waiting to get in I realized I was under-dressed.  I was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.  I also had nothing in my hand other than a camcorder.  I was surrounded by men in sport coats and women equally dressed up.  There were a handful of low brow, casually dressed people like me but we were severely outnumbered.  I mentioned my empty hand because many of the people were carrying flowers to give to the performers after the show, doh!  I had no idea that this was proper dance recital protocol

I felt like a bit of a dope as I paced around waiting for them to open the doors. I wasted the time by posting to my Facebook page about my situation vai the Iphone.  Finally the doors opened up about 15 minutes later than I expected them to at 6pm.  I saw Ali as I came in and I mentioned to her I felt dumb for not dressing up more.  I’m sure she didn’t care, she was glad I was there to watch her.

I found an open seat on a bench.  On my right was a younger guy that spent more time on his Blackberry than watching the performance.  On my left was a guy whose wife was performing with Ali’s group along with their two children, a young boy and a younger little girl.  The girl was a bit rammy, anxious to see her mommy go on. 

So the director of the school, a Russian guy with a VERY thick accent comes out to start the show.  The amplification and echo from the PA system made it nearly impossible to make out a single sentence.  Finally the show begins.  I sat through several performances by the kids.  They ranged from the very young that can’t follow a move but look very cute trying to do so, to girls in their teens, some of which were pretty good.  Ali’s group came out towards the end of the first set.  Her adult ballet class ranges in age from 20’s to 60’s with all sorts of body types in the mix.  I shot the performance on the camcorder again.  However when you are shooting an event you find yourself concentrating more on keeping the shot in frame as opposed to taking in the performance.  After watching the video back I confirmed that Ali once again did a great job.

Unfortunately, unlike the younger girls, some of which perform in 6 or 7 different acts, Ali’s group only did the one performance.  That meant I had to sit through more than half of the remaining show.  Part of the remaining show was performances by two professionals from the Orlando area, a man and a woman.  Their dance performance was good but the adjective I would most likely use for the performance would be “disturbing”.  The male dancer had on white tights.  I just don’t get it.  The tights leave nothing to the imagination, as I told Ali, if he had a pimple on his ass we would have seen it.  Then of course you have the package in the front that looks like it is neatly stuffed into a ballet version of a jock strap. 

It was just visually disturbing.  As I looked at the crowd I saw many people, both women and men looking away as I was.  At one point the little girl next to me said to her daddy, “I can see his privates….”  Like I said, the couple were great dancers but I know for me personally I never need to see another male ballet performance for the rest of my life unless he is wearing sweat pants.

The show wound up and I greeted Ali.  I told her she did great.  I apologized for not having flowers, again blaming my lack of dance recital experience.  They had a spread of food they set up as part of the grand opening.  However most of it was meat based so Ali wouldn’t have eaten it.  Instead I told her I would pick up Carraba’s to go on the way home.  She headed home in the Camry while grabbed the food, gas for the truck and some roses at the local Publix to atone for my oversight.  She appreciated my belated offering.

Sunday morning I had to get up hella early to go work at the half marathon. Although I wasn’t timing the race, I was was there to assist with the timing and do whatever else was needed.  It was chilly but not raw like it was last year.  I decided to dress for the temps this time so being cold was not an issue.  The winner of the race was an Ethiopian that covered the 13 + miles in 1:03:45.  The finish of the race was actually a two man sprint to the finish, something that is rare.  The second place guy was only a second or two behind.  It’s incredible just how fast these guys can run distance.  They run their 13th mile tons faster than I could ever run a single mile. 

I was at the race site late until after 11 doing disassembly of various parts of the race.  I didn’t expect to be there quite so long.  The last people crossed the finish more than four hours after the start.  On the way home I grabbed lunch as well as stopping to pick up Super Smash Bros for the Wii.  My brother-in-law has been wanting to get some online gaming going with me and this looked like as good of a title as any to try out.

I was quite tired by the time I got home.  It was nice to see that Ali had been quite busy while I was at the race, knocking out almost everything that was left to do around the house.  I greatly appreciated her efforts.  It meant I had a clean slate until the Eagles game at 3.

I think I jinxed the team.  I have been very careful to not speak of the possibility of the team going to the Super Bowl.  I didn’t want to overlook the Cardinals although it was hard to not overlook a team that you stomped by four or five touchdowns on Thanksgiving.  I was running scenarios through my head about what we would do if the Eagles made it to the Bowl, maybe go up to Tampa and try to score tickets or at least tail gate outside the stadium with other Eagles fans.  I thought these things but did not say them out loud.  Well before the game I mentioned these ideas to Ali.  It must have been the kiss of death.

The game was an emotional roller coaster.  The first half the Eagles defense was just plain bad.  When they blitzed Warner beat them every time.  The Cardinals also were able to run the ball effectively, something most teams haven’t been very good at against the Eagles this year.  The Philly offense moved the ball but again fell into the pattern of not being able to cash in with TD’s at the end of drives, instead settling for field goals.  After allowing a ridiculous drive at the end of the first half giving the Cardinals another 3 points, the Birds were down 18, ugh.

I of course was pretty upset with the way the Eagles were playing.  They allowed Larry Fitzgerald to just run wild, even with mentioning before the game how stopping him would be such a focus.  I saw any Super Bowl plans going out the window.  Well during the second half the Eagles did something they don’t normally do well, make adjustments.  They came out and controlled the ball on offense and defensively stuffed Arizona.  By the time mid fourth quarter rolled around the Eagles had erased the 18 point deficit and were leading 25-24.  The odd total was a result of David Akers having a shitty day with a missed field goal and missed extra point. (along with a kick off out of bounds)

All of a sudden a Super Bowl berth was once again a real possibility.  All the Eagles had to do was have their defense stop the Cardinals like they had been doing all second half, get the ball back and run out the clock.  It didn’t happen.  Instead of delivering in the clutch, the Eagles defense fell on their face allowing the Cardinals to march down the field while eating up tons of clock, culminating in a touchdown and two point conversion that gave the Cardinals a full touchdown advantage with a little more than two minutes remaining.  The D really, REALLY choked hard on that series.

So now the Eagles had their back against the wall in a situation Donovan is typically pretty terrible at, the two minute drill.  The Eagles have never been good at running a hurry up offense.  They also have a bad habit of burning timeouts early, leaving them short handed when they need them the most.  I knew the Eagles were in trouble.  To my surprise they actually moved the ball and made it across the 50 into Cardinals territory.  Then the drive stalled and the Birds found themselves in a do or die 4th & 10.

Donovan threw to Curtis who appeared to be more or less dragged down by the falling Cardinal defender.  Curtis couldn’t make the catch as he fell to his knees.  The gutless official kept the flag in his pocket on what appeared to be pretty blatant pass interference, game over.  My instant emotion was anger.  I was pissed off at the official, I was pissed off at the Eagles defense  and the team in general for once again ripping my heart out.  I really tried to temper my disappointment, reminding myself that a month ago the idea that the team would even be in the conference championship game seemed like total lunacy. 

Now that a couple days have passed I am better.  The team went on an incredible run and also benefited from some incredible luck along the way to get there.  The team provided lots of excitement for me over the past month.  It just would have been nice to see the fairytale played all the way out to a joyous, miraculous conclusion. Oh well.

There was plenty of blame to be passed around for the loss.  It is hard to point a big fat finger at the defense that was primarily responsible for getting them as far as they have.  There is no way to deny that they came up small this time around and totally whiffed when it mattered the most during that last crushing Cardinal drive.  Like I mentioned before, David Akers dumped 4 points in the shitter and kicked out of bounds allowing the Cardinals great starting field position. Quintin Demps, wtf were you thinking on that late hit?  It was so blatant it was ridiculous.  Ditto for the lineman who almost caused a disastrous turn over trying to field a short kick off sailing out of bounds.  He had no business being anywhere near that ball.

As Troy Aikamn repeatedly pointed out, McNabb’s accuracy was once again put on center stage or lack there of.  His inability to lead receivers on his passes turned potential game breaking plays into short gains instead.  However this has always been Donovan’s MO, he will never be a pinpoint passer, especially on crossing routes, he is dreadful on those.  Of course his receivers dropped very catchable balls on several occasions so the fault does not sit only in his corner.  Brian Westbrook came up very small in this game as well.  However he has basically been injured the entire season, what can you do?

Oh well, I’m over it.  Another near miss season, we have had a whole bunch of them during Andy Reid’s tenure, I’m used to it by now.

Our Monday was very low key.  I wanted to accomplish one project, cleaning out the inside of the storage shed which we knocked out in a couple hours during the afternoon.  Outside of that project I played games on the computer, Wii and Iphone (damn you Homey for telling me about Fieldrunners) and watched tv including episode 1 of the new Battlestar Galactica season (fantastic)  As usual, a day of not doing much of anything productive left me feeling a bit glum.

Last night I finished Too Fat to Fish.  I would say overall I am disappointed in the book, I expected more.  Yes it is filled with some very graphic details of just how bad Artie’s substance abuse problem is.  However the book has huge gaps in the timeline that are annoying.  The book certainly can’t be termed a biography in my opinion, far too much is left out.  For some reason I expected Artie’s writing style to a bit more polished than his speaking style.  I know even though he is not college educated, he is an intelligent guy with a borderline incredible memory.  For some reason I expected his writing style to a be a bit better for some reason.  It’s a quick read so at least I didn’t have to invest tons of time into it.  Many of the stories I had already heard recanted on the Stern show in slightly less detail.  That maybe contributed to my lack of enthusiasm about it. Artie will surely be dead within the next few years if he doesn’t wake up.