Ali offered up my services to watch Michelle’s two little boys while the girls went for a run. Of course she asked me after she mentioned the possibility to Michelle. I was fine with it, my only issue with babysitting would be diaper parameters. One of the boys is still in diaper age, having never changed a diaper in my life, I would much prefer if I had a guide if that situation presented itself. Michelle said that he should be fine and if for some reason there was a “deposit” made in the diaper bank he would be fine until they returned, they weren’t planning on running a huge distance.
I’m not sure if I have done solo babysitting ever, if I did I don’t remember it. I figured how hard could it be to babysit two little boys, they like to play, I like to play, easy enough. Parker already had an agenda ready for me, we were going to make a “fort” and play the Memory Card game inside of it. Our fort was comprised of various cushions from the couches and several blankets.
It was my job to construct the fort. It took some trial and error until I came up with a system to keep the flimsy “walls” and ceiling in place. Once the fort was up Parker and Spencer crawled in. Spencer (the youngest) enjoyed just crawling into the fort and climbing out the back door on top of the sofa. Parker lugged his memory game into the fort and dumped it on the floor. He encouraged me to join him in the fort and start the game. Now of course I didn’t fit but I managed to get my upper body in the one opening. With the aid of a small flashlight we started the game.
The object of the game is simple, you lay out all the cards face down and then flip over two at a time, the object is to find matching pairs by remembering where pairs are located. We played a modified version of the game where I flipped over the cards and when I found matches I gave them to Parker. He preferred this version.
As we played both kids would have their attention drift to the cartoons playing on Nickelodeon. A few times Spencer would be saying stuff that I had to have Parker translate for me. I managed to figure out he wanted some animal crackers.
As we were playing the fort kept getting damaged from all of the climbing around. Each time a wall or ceiling came down I rebuilt it. Then the game started to mutate. I started setting up “traps” to prevent the kids from escaping out the back of the fort. The traps consisted of extra pillows or blankets the kids had to break through. Once they broke through they would run around a table, into the front of the fort and try to escape again.
They found this incredibly fun. Each time Parker would escape one of my traps he would proclaim he “ruined” it! It was very funny. The boys just kept circling and circling, getting trapped and then ruining it. This continued all the way till the girls returned from their run. They came home to find two sweaty little boys with cheeks flushed red from all of the running around.
Michelle was glad to hear that the boys had fun and that no major disasters occurred. I told her it was no problem, we had fun. Of course on the way home Ali asked if playing with the boys made me feel more like having my own. Without hesitation I said, “nope”. I’m sure that was an underlying motivation for offering up my babysitting services. Ali and I still have not had that sit down kid discussion in case you can’t tell.
As I mentioned last week, I was receiving pressure from Randall and Jeremy to complete a 300 workout before I went back under the knife on Monday. I had just bought the Olympic bar and weights earlier in the week so I had all the stuff to do one. Of course I would have much preferred to video tape a 300 only after I did some serious training. If I had the six weeks of time they did to train hard for it as they did (and didn’t) it would most certainly have improved what I could do significantly. On top of my lack of training the weather was rather shitty with temps in the 50’s with tons of wind.
Regardless, my people pleasing instincts took over as I drug out the camcorder and weights. I set the Olympic bar up in an area where I would not be easily seen from the neighbors on either side. I didn’t want them to know just how odd I am. I tried to get everything in position so I would be able move from exercise to exercise with minimal delay for equipment set up.
I set the camcorder up knowing that the howling wind would make hearing next to impossible. I offered up a brief video introduction of the event and then got started.
I have been doing 300 work outs for a couple years however due to limitations with equipment at the gyms I did them at, I never was able to do what would technically be considered a regulation 300. Sure I’ve done many, many 300 rep sessions, actually I have done 10’s of thousands of reps. The workouts made a huge difference in my fitness level regardless of the limitations.
The limitations were basically in two areas, pull ups and box jumps. At Powerhouse they only had enough steps to reach 20.5 inches of total height for my box jumps, 3 1/2 inches shy of regulation height. Those few inches make a big difference when doing 50 repetitions.
The pull up bar wasn’t a bar at all, instead it was a split handle that was part of an assisted pull up/dip station. The station had a two foot high step to allow people to use the equipment. As a result I had a narrow little channel where my body would hang to pull up. If I swung back and forth at all my legs would have been hitting those steps. To minimize that swing I did quicker, shorter pull ups that did not generate as much back and forth momentum. I had no “bar” to put my chin over so instead I used the mirror in front of me, my rule was if I got my upper arms to do at least a 90 degree angle to my body it was “good”. I also did not drop all the way down as i would have hit my feet on the ground, I didn’t have room to even bend my legs much. By strict pull up definition my reps were not close to what they should be, admittedly, a by product of the equipment.
Well I had no such limitations with my home 300 layout. I had a regulation pull up bar I constructed with my own two hands as well the full 24 inch jumping station. This would be my first ever attempt doing a 300 with those big changes, again with no real 300 training for months except my expanded pull up routine.
After starting the camera for the single take shot I started the stop watch and started the routine. Doing the pull ups with full range of motion obviously makes the exercise much more difficult. Instead of being able to do the first set of 25 in one quick rapid fire set I had to break it down into a set of 15 followed by two quick 5 rep sets. It took me 2:29 to complete.
The next exercise was dead lifts. Although 135 pounds is not a ton of weight to lift once, it is 50 times. I can’t quite remember if I broke the reps into 30,20 or 30,10,10. Because of my extremely long arms when I DL it’s all arms and hips.
After dead lifts I was definitely breathing hard but I didn’t wait very long until starting the next exercise, push ups. There is one disadvantage to doing push ups, it’s hard to see your form unless you are in a spot that has mirrors to the floor (or you are video taping yourself). I knocked out the 50 push ups in rapid succession. As I was doing them my chest and nose were at ground level on the down stroke and it felt like elbows were close to straight on the up. However when reviewing the video it was obvious that I didn’t go up as far as I should have. I even pointed it out on the video with a caption.
I was still feeling pretty good after the push ups and was on pace to do the circuit in less than 30 minutes. The next exercise was box jumps. Not only was this the first time I did a 300 with full height box jumps, it also was the first time I did them with full extension at the end of each jump as Jeremy requested. The combination of the two ratcheted up the difficulty level enough that my first set stopped at 25. I was finally getting warm enough that I could lose the sweatshirt, my body was putting out enough heat of it’s own.
By the time I completed my 50th jump I was getting quite tired and my least favorite exercise of the bunch was coming up, the floor wipers. Floor wipers are a pain in the ass for me, again because of the length of my appendages. Giraffe legs with big feet on the end of them requires a lot of leverage to lift. I knocked out the wipers in 4 chunks of 20,10,10 and 10 reps. There have been times when I did the exercise in only two sets of 35 and 15 reps. Saturday was not one of those days.
I was now tired, my breaks were getting longer. Not nearly as long as the breaks Jeremy took but long enough that I knew that breaking the 30 minute mark was now a fading reality. Next up was the 35 pound c&p. This exercise requires a 35 pound weight to go from the ground to overhead. After doing the first set of 25 I started feeling sick in the stomach, after switching sides and doing the other 25 a headache also started to make itself known, surely a sign of the extreme exertion that my body was not accustomed to at this point.
Even though I was still sweating I actually started to feel cold. Cold enough that I put my sweatshirt back on before starting on the last set of pull ups. I dreaded this last set. My energy meter was hovering near zero. I broke the last 25 reps into sets of 10,5,5 and 5, each with rest periods that were progressively longer, I was just spent.
Finally the last pull up was completed. I barely had the energy to walk over and announce the final time which was 40:41. Approximately 18 minutes faster than Randall and close to half the time it took Jeremy. After stopping the camera I was not feeling well. I laid down on the mat with the barbell still overhead and closed my eyes. I laid there for at least a solid 10 minutes until the nausea settled down. The blue rubber yoga mat felt warm and comforting as it absorbed the heat from the sun.
I wasted no time getting the video roughly edited and up on youtube. If you would like to see my efforts here is a link to the full video and a shortened version where rest periods are trimmed out. I apologize in advance for the wind noise.
Sunday morning we had a race to time. I gave Ali an early Valentine’s Day present and told her I would time this one myself. It was supposed to be very cold Sunday morning (low 40’s) and this race was small enough that I should be able to handle all the timing duties myself. Ali would have been miserable sitting out in that cold regardless of what she wore.
It was indeed miserable. Last year we had all sorts of problems with this race, it was disorganized and riddled with poor communication. The race day was a nightmare of screw ups that culminated with us having to line up all of the runners after the race and reenter their information after we discovered we were fed an entry file with inaccurate information.
This year it was better but far from perfect. I had requested that a rope be run between two of the support beams in the registration area so I could hang signs to direct runners to the proper area. I asked that the string was hung somewhere around 7-8 feet high. Well the string was hung but it was hung at the back of the structure where it wasn’t needed and it was hung about 20 feet high, unreachable and unusable. I just had to laugh when I saw it.
We had another snafu. When runners sign in they are given a bib and 4 safety pins to attach the bib to their shirt. I was going to drive to the running store on Saturday to pick up the pins but I was told that another club member who was going to be stopping by the store anyway would be given the pins and take them to the race. I had a bit of uneasiness not handling this myself as I knew that was the only way I could be SURE I have them. Well you guessed it, he forgot them.
He had his wife grab them and bring them to the race site. In the meantime we had to tell runners to come back later for their pins. Luckily since it was a small race it wasn’t that huge of a deal. The registration area was hectic once again. I became the default source for answers, even if I didn’t know what the answers were. I had to hurriedly assign various volunteers to handle certain duties while I got the computer set up to take entries.
I was fricking freezing. I had on jeans, a t-shirt, a long sleeve t-shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and a zip up insulated hooded sweatshirt, thin work gloves and my Eagles beanie and I was still cold. I soon discovered that you can’t work a touchpad on a laptop with gloves on.
Once the race started I headed right up to the finish area which I hadn’t even touched yet. Luckily it was a 10 mile race so I had plenty of time to get the timing equipment up and running. The first runner crossed in 55 minutes and change, a smoking pace. The timing went smoothly once again. Even once the sun got higher in the sky I still felt chilled to the bone, I didn’t really warm up until I baked in the heat of the truck on the way home.
When I got home I told Ali she should be glad she wasn’t out there. While she got to skip the cold she was keeping herself busy at home, knocking out the chores I would have had to do otherwise which I appreciated very much.
It was hard to remember it was Valentine’s Day since I started my day at 4am in the cold. When I got back I asked Ali if she wanted to open her gift I got her from Red Envelope, a silver necklace with a silver heart with a blue topaz pendant (her birthstone). She appeared to like the gift which I was happy to see. It’s hard to come up with gifts after this many years. She didn’t explicitly buy me anything but I had proclaimed that my purchase of my weight set was my gift earlier in the week which I was more than happy with.
I asked Ali repeatedly if she wanted to go out to dinner that night but after telling me for the third or forth time she actually would prefer to just hang out at home I relented. So hang out we did, it was fine with me.
Monday I got to enjoy getting my left upper arm sliced into for the second time in a month. The procedure was very similar to the first time except I had two trips into the office. The first time they cut me open and take out some tissue deeper in my arm. They then test the tissue on the spot to verify they got all the cancerous cells. If they did they can sew you back up, if they didn’t they cut out more. Luckily for me they got it all the first time in. The only negative was I had to wait 2 hours until they sewed me back up completely as they had other appointments in between.
I knew how it went so I brought some reading material with me, Deception Point, one of the Dan Brown books I had not read yet. (more on that later). The incision this time is in the same spot although it was slightly longer in length. There also are significantly more stitches holding it together.
I spent the rest of my Monday relaxing. I played some WoW and spent a lot of time getting deeper into the book. I love Dan Brown books but I always am hesitant to read one. Why? Because once I start I am compelled to read it endlessly until I am done because I get sucked into the story. This book was no different, I found the story line very interesting although very similar to all of his other books which are filled with mysterious premises that are riddled with twists and head fakes that keeps the reader guessing.
The very first few pages disturbed me deeply. It described a geologist who was abducted with his team of sled dogs by military agents. They were taken up thousands of feet in a cargo plane. Brown described a horrific scene where the sled was pushed out of the plane with the dogs still attached. It created a terrible image in my head which stuck with me much more than the description of when the geologist met the same fate.
I am in the home stretch of the book that I just started on Monday, I should wrap it up tonight before bed.
On Tuesday I planned to work some more on the water system since I had success with improving the water quality the prior weekend. This time I hoped to fix the problem with holding tank losing pressure which was causing the pump to keep cycling on and off every few seconds to maintain pressure.
I had tried to address this weeks ago by caulking around the lip where I found air leaking. The caulk didn’t hold. It looked like there was rust around the lip. Well I thought I would strip the caulk away, drain the tank and hit it with super glue instead. However before I broke the seal on the tube of glue I reconsidered, knowing that once I did that, trying to remove the top of the tank would be nearly impossible.
I decided to just bite the bullet and call the well company. I asked if they had anyone available to come out today since I was off from work. They said they could have somewhere there by the afternoon. They did even better than that, their van pulled up at 11:45, less than two hours after I called.
I instantly recognized the guy, he was the same guy that installed the system after Wilma in 2005. I knew he was cool, he was the guy that came up with the line that “every year after 50 is like a dog year”
I took him over to the equipment and showed him the leak. The fix for the problem was rather simple and one I could have done myself if I had a bigger slip joint pliers. He drained the tank and then used his huge pliers to loosen and remove the big gray fitting under which the air was escaping. I had tried to do that previously but didn’t have the torque to get it done. After removing the fitting he found some surface rust that he simply ground away with a flat file. He also cleaned up the surface of the gray fitting. After the clean up he sprayed both surfaces with a silicone gasket material, reattached the fitting and cranked it tight. He re-pressurized the tank and the pressure gauge remained rock solid, awesome.
Like I said, I could have easily done the same thing with better tools but it only cost $94 to have him come out. Now I know what to do in the future. While he was there I also asked him about whole house RO. They sold the systems and they cost $6500. He had an RO system at his place and he loved it. He also gave me some details that made installation sound less troublesome than some of the reports I got from my neighbor who had a system installed a couple years ago.
I had heard a few negatives like to make 1 gallon of RO water there was 12 or 13 gallons of waste water required. That is a TON of waste water that would have to go somewhere. The repairman said the newer systems are not as wasteful, typically using 3-4 gallons of waste to make 1-2 gallons of good stuff.
I also had heard the filters had to be swapped out every couple of months. Supposedly there are new larger filters that can go much longer in between changes. He said they have been using a new filter for 6 months so far and it still is ok.
Finally I heard that the equipment pretty much HAS to be inside or under cover. The installer said his RO system was installed outside and although it is preferable to have it sheltered as it will last longer, it isn’t a requirement.
I thanked him for the info, paid the bill and he was on his way. I guess the next step is to see if the water quality remains good. If it does, we may try to squeeze another year out of it. The true test is to fill a tub with water and see how it looks which I haven’t done yet.
It was nice to be able to sit outside and read my book without hearing the water pump cycling every 20 seconds.
The rest of my Tuesday was very relaxed. I enjoyed the chocolate cake Ali very thoughtfully made for me as a get well offering, read dozens of chapters of the book and played WoW.
Back to the grind today but a three day week isn’t too hard to hack.
