ET Phone home, Lil “Bubby”, Worn out, Buy one get two, concrete beats wood
Saturday morning was another race for us to time. This was the annual beach run where you actually run on the beach. Ali and I did this run once and didn’t like it at all. I’d much rather time it. Timing a race on the beach is challenging and messy. Early in the morning the air is thick with moisture. Having this moisture interact with electronics is never a great thing, not to mention sticky sand.
Even with the less than ideal conditions, the timing system performed without flaw once again. We simply rolled the timing mats out on the sand and were ready to go. We got cleaned up incredibly fast. We were on the road back home before 9 am after a race that started at 7:30 am.
Ali was only home for a short while before she was heading back out to some swimming and running with her running buddies. I worked on getting all of the post race duties finished up which took right up until almost lunch time.
Satu4rday afternoon I went to the outlets with Ali. She said she wanted to check out shoes at the Bass Outlet as well as stopping somewhere else. She said something about Bass having a super deal where you buy one pair of shoes and get two for free! Well of course this was way to good to be true. I laughed when I walked in and saw the “regular” price of shoes that started at $109 and went up. Haha. Well I took advantage of the “deal” getting three pairs of shoes. I walked out of there paying about the same for the three pair as I would anywhere else. I buy shoes once every half decade or so.
Saturday night we went out with her running buddies to dinner for Michelle’s birthday. We went to the ultra-vogue Mercato area in north Naples. I fully expected to be waiting at least an hour to get seated. Instead I barely had time to order a beer at the bar before our table was ready. We enjoyed a nice dinner with some of the typical silly conversation that develops when we get together.
After our meal we went to another bar in the area called the Pub. I was there once before with Don. The place is a big hang out spot. Unfortunately by the time we got there I switched to drinking Diet Coke since Ali had drank too much wine to recover. The beehive of human activity at the pub is intriguing at first but gets tough to take if you are not drunk. It’s so loud you can’t hear the person next to you without screaming. We didn’t last too long since Ali and I had both been up since 4 am something with no nap. We left a little after 10:30. Bed was welcomed.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling pretty shitty. It was a combo of things that contributed to my overall feeling of ugh. I had not been getting solid sleep the past few days. The excessive eating with a few Samuel Adams surely didn’t help much. Top it off with a big, bright, full moon in the sky and you have a recipe for a pretty blah sort of day.
When I opened up the front door to pull the screen door across I was startled by a piece of paper that fell out. It was a lost dog poster and guess who was on it, Lil Buddy! I had lukewarm feeling about having a phone number to call about Buddy since I already had written off the owner as irresponsible since the dog got loose and didn’t have an ID chip, collar or tags. Ali had dropped buddy off at the shelter on Friday and we felt sure he would get adopted out quickly after the 5 day wait period.
I had Ali call the number when she got up. She told the guy where the dog was and she was sure to mention how the dog had no tags or ID of any sort. Later we got a call from the guy thanking us for finding the dog. He said the dog now is chipped and has tags. Supposedly they normally leave Buddy out and he never leaves the yard (two blocks up from us). Hopefully that practice will come to an end.
The funniest part of all is when we found out the dog’s real name, Bubby. No wonder he reacted to being called Lil Buddy. Hopefully the owner learned a lesson. He’s very lucky to get his dog back.
The weather on Sunday seemed to match my mood as it was overcast all day long with the skies seeming to be ready to burst at any moment. I decided to tackle a project anyway, despite feeling subpar. I headed to Home Depot and picked up 25 landscape blocks. The project was to replace the extremely rotted landscape timbers that surround the area in front of the pool. I have been adopting a policy of replacing landscape timbered areas with permanent edging that doesn’t need to be replaced every few years. I’ve redone a number of areas using either plastic landscape edging or concrete block. Both substances will probably outlast me.
Ripping up the old border was easy as the wood pretty much crumbled in my hand. We wanted to shrink the size of this bed to eliminate the unused space. I placed the new block in place, and back filled the area with dirt I dug up from the fill pit in the back.
In total I probably spent an hour or two on the project. Both Ali and I were happy with how it turned out. I am most happy that I should never have to touch that border again.
The rest of the day was very busy. It seemed like there was just way too much to do. It makes me feel like I need to make more effort to get certain house chores during the week.
One of the things Ali was working on was going through the various files I recovered to see what was good/needed versus corrupt/unneeded. To say it is a tedious job is an understatement.