Archives 2010

I got turned on to an old sci-fi series called Firefly by Scott Johnson from The Instance podcast. He said it is one of his favorite shows ever.  I saw they had the series available for streaming on Netflix so I checked it out.  So far I like Scott’s taste in shows.

The show aired back in 2002, I had never heard of it.  There are some familiar faces in it though.  Ron Glass of Barney Miller fame is in the show, he plays a preacher.  That is the only actor I know by name however there is also the guy that appeared in many X-Files episodes, the chick that played the terminator in Sarah Connor Chronicles and the chick that plays the head V bad woman in the current iteration of V.

If you are looking for something good on Netflix and like shows like V, BSG, etc give Firefly a shot.  I think you will like it.

Blizzard just released a huge patch this week.  It is the pre-cursor to the next big WoW expansion named Cataclysm which is due out in early December.  Well this patch contains many of the sweeping changes that are being implemented in the expansion.  These changes mean that I have to set up and relearn how to play my various characters again.  In addition to the class specific changes there are a ton of changes on how things work in general.  There will be a long adjustment period made even longer by the the reduced amount of time I spend in the game nowadays.

If you would have told me a year ago that Alison would be waking up at 4:45 am on a weekday so she could go meet up with a group from the club to do a 6am training run I would have called you crazy.  Well that is exactly what she did this morning.  Actually it is the second time she has pulled herself out of bed before the crack of dawn to go run.

If that isn’t weird enough, Ali just bought a wet suit so she can swim in COLD WATER.  This from the girl that considered any pool temps under 85 degrees as unswimmable.  I may be witness to a real life alien abduction.

To say she has dove head first into this triathlon thing would be a big understatement.

I feel like I should have something special or inspiring to say about the rescue of the Chilean miners but I just don’t. Sorry.

I forgot to mention in blog space the latest physical challenge Jeremy has presented to me.  It has been covered exclusively in FB space up until now.

Jeremy has a weird aspect to his personality where he has a difficult time staying motivated to exercise consistently just because it is the right thing to do.  He has found he performs best when he has some sort of tangible goal in front of him to provide supplementary motivation.

The other week he was asking me to provide him with some motivation since he had basically done nothing all summer long.  I told him that I am not able to inject him with motivation, that is a something that has to be cultivated inside.

Well a day or two later Jeremy and I were chatting on instant messenger as we often do.  He came up with a challenge.  He wanted to compete against me to see who could do the most pull ups while weighted down with an additional 50 pounds.

I have been relating stories for weeks of my various elbow issues that have eliminated pull ups from my routine for quite awhile.  I have no doubt it entered into his decision process on what challenge to throw out there.

Even with my injuries I didn’t hesitate to accept the challenge since it won’t take place until the end of January, plenty of time for me to rehab and get back into pull up shape. Almost immediately Jeremy started to question the wisdom of his challenge offer.  Within seconds he was shooting out stipulations and handicaps that he thought he should be entitled to.  We also had some back and forth discussion about what punishment/humiliation the loser of the contest should endure.

Whenever Jeremy asks for handicaps in physical challenges I always remind him that I am already spotting him a 12 year handicap in age.  If I challenged a 54 year old to a physical challenge I certainly wouldn’t be looking for any additional advantages. However this is Jeremy and Jeremy always is looking for an angle to exploit.

So after listening to his whining about how unfair this challenge was that HE suggested we agreed to a pro-rated system for the amount of weight that we each would wear.  I would wear the full 50 pound vest and Jeremy would wear less based on the percentage of difference in our body weight on the day of the competition.

For the punishment we agreed to the milk challenge.  The loser has one hour to drink one gallon of whole milk.  This has been proven to be almost impossible physically.  The human body will involuntarily expel whole milk when consumed in that quantity, which we are counting on. (although Jeremy thinks he can do this as well)

So Jeremy now has the motivation he was seeking to jump start his fitness plan and I will have some gold footage to post up on YouTube.  It’s a win/win.

I had Ali grab me an Itunes gift card at the grocery store since my account had 9 cents left on it. During the weekend I tried to scratch off the gray crap that covers the activation number.  Evidently these cards are a little sensitive as far as how much pressure you can apply.  Without even trying I had scraped too hard, making some of the code illegible.

I was pissed. I was pissed at myself for failing at something as simple as scratching a lottery ticket but I was also pissed at Apple for selling cards that easily allowed this to happen.  I couldn’t help but think this was by design, counting on a small percentage of dummies to simply say “oh well, my bad” and throw the card away.

Well a quick Google search revealed I was far from alone in my situation.  Evidently tons of people have the same issue with these shitty cards.  From reading the various complaint threads I found out that my only course of action was to contact Apple support which I did.  I provided the preprinted number on the card as well as the part of the activation code I could read.

A day later I got a nice email back that gave me the activation code to use.  I immediately hopped on Itunes and tried the code, thankful it got resolved quickly.  Three times I tried the code, twice by copying and pasting and a third time by typing it in.  All three attempts were failures.  Damn it!

So I had to contact support yet again, telling them the code they sent me was a fail.  I got another email back with no explanation why the first code didn’t work.  Instead I got further instructions to send them images of both the card and the store receipt.  What a pain in the ass.

Ali and I never do much for Halloween.  In fact if I didn’t do it this year, I doubt we would have put anything out for it. Ali has too much else going on to be concerned.  When I was at the pool store this weekend I saw a cheap, big blow up pumpkin.  For whatever reason I liked it and it’s silly face, even if it was made in China.  I blew it up, threw some weights inside and placed it out front for all to admire.

I like him although I question just how long he will last in the hot Florida sun before the first leak pops up.

No time for talk so just bask in the glow of tea party mentality at it’s finest.  I suggest you read this article as well to explain this odd behavior.

Saturday morning I once again buzzed around the house both to clear out Sunday and even part of Saturday afternoon since we had a neighborhood get together to attend.  Luckily the cooler temps and lack of rain in the past week stunted the grass growth so I could skip that large chore.

Ali spent a large portion of Saturday watching the broadcast of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.  She has really dove head first into the triathlon scene and she was really into watching the world’s best compete.  I caught bits and pieces of the broadcast.  It is truly amazing what the human body is capable of doing.

About 6 months ago I started a community email list in our area.  I posted a sign toward the front of the street with a bunch of flyers in a tube with information on how to join it.  It took awhile but now we have almost 30 families on the list.

The list has opened up communication lines were none existed before and has been helpful on various occasions. One of the people on the list suggested that we have a small get together so people could put faces with names.  The get together was held at her house.

On the way there I told Ali I was thinking that name tags would have been a good thing since both of us have a real tough time with names.  The turn out for the party was pretty good with around 20 people there.  It was cool to see the people behind the email addresses.

I found out there were a couple computer people in the group.  The host is a graphic artist and there is another woman that has her own pc repair business.  Everybody there seemed to get along relatively well.  There was a lot of exchanging of information.

The party was a quick hitter, only scheduled to be a couple hours long.  Ali and I were one of the last ones to leave a half hour after the posted finish time.  We talked about having a holiday get together as well as plans for an area garage sale in mid-November.  It was nice to get to know some of the neighbors.

When we got home we worked on some other stuff around the house before digging into the mountain of Tivo material that is backing up.  We could literally spend an entire day doing nothing but watching Tivo.  Our schedule right now just does not allow for time to digest it all.

Sunday was our wedding anniversary.  We got married back in 98.  Evidently we will be sharing our anniversary with a lot of other folks since getting married on 10/10/10 was very popular this year.  We had a day that most people wouldn’t think of as enjoyable for their anniversary.

We talked about going to the water park to do a bike ride and swim which has become a staple of our weekends the past month or two.  Sunday morning I threw out the option of riding our bike TO the water park.  I wasn’t sure if Ali would immediately reject it or not.  She actually wasn’t against it after punching the route into Google to see the distance involved.  The route we wanted to take would be almost 16 miles one way. The longest distance Ali has gone on her road bike has been the 17.25 mile Publix ride.  This ride would be 30+, a huge jump.  Well Ali said she would do it.

We had to both don back packs to carry stuff for the waterpark.  We also made sure to load up on liquids for what would be the longest road bike trek either of us have done.  Ali had been complaining on recent rides that her seat was bothering her.  I swapped her seat with the upgraded Bontrager seat I had on my Dawes bike.  It is a gel seat with the center cut out for comfort.   Ali said the seat felt much better.

One thing we had going for us was the cooler temps and lower humidity that has been in our area for the last week or so.  When we pulled out a little after 9 the temps might have just crossed 70 degrees.  At first Ali was in front on the ride.  After a little while when we started hitting some wind and I asked her if she wanted me to go in front to break some wind. She said she didn’t care.

Ali really impressed me during the ride to the park.  I maintained 17-18 mph for most of the ride and she stuck right with me.  By far it was the best I had ever seen her do on her bike.  We covered the distance to the water park in less than an hour.

Ali and I “rested” at the water park by swimming more than a mile in the pool.  The distance was a personal best for me.  I broke it into 400 segments with a minute or two break in between.   My next progression is to make the segments longer, 600’s, 800’s or more.  I managed to keep my total swim time under 36 minutes for the 1600 distance.

After the swim we recuperated with some lunch and relaxing on lounge chairs.  The park was practically a ghost town.  I guess going to the water park is not on people’s minds on a mid-October Sunday afternoon.  There were almost as many staff as guests.  It was actually almost a perfect day for the park.

As we laid there both of us started dozing off.  I didn’t want to lay around too long knowing we had to pedal back home as well. A little after 1 we changed back into our bike gear and mounted up.

By this time the temperatures had risen considerably into the mid 80’s.  We decided to take the shorter but more hazardous route home, directly up Immokalee Road.  The first section of the ride was done mostly on the sidewalk.  There was no bike lane or shoulder to speak of, the sidewalk was the safest option by far.  Bouncing over all of the joints in the sidewalk is not exactly enjoyable however.

Eventually we got to a portion of the road where traffic was less dense and we were able to get back out on the road even though there was still no real bike lane.  The ride back was considerably shorter, almost 3 miles less.  It was a much tougher ride though.  I again was in front being the windbreaker.  The higher temps had kicked up more wind.  I was working hard to maintain 16-17 mph most of the way.

I was pretty sure that Ali would be dropping back during the ride since she normally struggles mightily with headwind on a bike.  To my surprise she was with me almost the entire way.  She was close enough to get some benefit from my wind breaking.  We pulled into our driveway as sweaty messes.  It was a tough ride. The most painful part of my body was not my legs but my ass from being on a hard bike seat for 30 miles.  It really gets uncomfortable after awhile.

We wanted to go out for an anniversary dinner.  I suggested to Ali we go to Iguana Mia.  It is a mexican place that is anything but fancy but Ali has always liked it and we hadn’t been there for awhile.  Just like the water park, the restaurant was pretty dead, maybe a 1/4 of the tables had people sitting in them. It didn’t matter to us, we got faster service.

Ali got a fishbowl size margarita.  I got something different, crab and shrimp taquitos. Ali enjoyed her bean burrito as well.  Ali’s favorite part of the meal however were the chips and salsa.  Having a big basket of them in front of her is like crack to a coke head. She loves them.

After the big meal we headed right back home, we had two big Philly sports event going on.  Unfortunately the Eagles game and the Phillies playoff game were scheduled for basically the same time. We had about an hour and half before the games were scheduled to start.  I suggested we lay down and take a nap.  We were both wiped from the combo of extreme exertion followed up by a big mexican meal.

I didn’t get much of a nap in.  As I laid there my face started itching.  Just a spot here and there.  However as time passed the itching got worse and worse, everything on my head itched.  As the night went on the itchiness continued.  I was scratching various parts of my head almost non-stop.  I theorized that possibly I had some kind of allergic reaction to what I ate although it would be odd to have it isolated to just above the neck.  I took benadryl later and it seemed to calm down.

So once we got up I flipped on the game.  Throughout the game I was constantly flipping back and forth between the games.  There was such a contrast between the two Philly teams.  The Phillies have been consistently good.   The Eagles are consistently inconsistent.  The swing back and forth wildly, causing their fans all sorts of headaches along the way.

Cole Hamels closed out the Reds with a masterful complete game shut out.  The Phillies pitching staff is the best in the playoffs without doubt.  I also learned that Hamels is another one on Ali’s top secret hot list.  She was constantly commenting on him all night.  Hamels joins Don Henley and Gordon Ramsey on her the list.

The Eagles game was very frustrating to watch, even though they won in the end.  On the good side Kevin Kolb had a strong game.  It was a nice FU to the stupid fans that wrote him off as a failure after a half game as a starter.  He made throws short and long and for the most part looked in command. leSean McCoy had a great game except for the stupid fall down late in the game short of making a first down that would have cemented the game.

On the bad side is the defense and special teams.  It may sound odd to criticize a defense that had 5 takeaways.    The takeaways were indeed a big positive but for me it doesn’t erase yet another defensive collapse down the stretch.  Much like the Detroit game, the defense allowed the 49ers to score quickly late in the game with very little resistance to make what should have been an easy win a nail biter instead.  No lead ever feels safe with this team.

The special teams are basically a joke.  The kick coverage last night was awful, just as it has been most of the season.  Time after time, the 49ers special teams, who are pretty awful themselves, gashed the Eagles for huge run backs.

But hey, a win is a win.  I’ll take it.  This season is still all about rebuilding for me.  I just have to remind myself of that while I watch some of the crap that goes on.

Oh the cherry on top was the stinking Cowboys losing yet again to give them a shiny 1-3 record. Haha.

I left work early yesterday to get to the race site.  This race had almost a 50% increase in participation over the previous year, a HUGE increase.   Except for some hiccups in the day of registration process everything went pretty well.  Even though the race was at 6:15 I was pulling back in our driveway by 8:10 By the time I was doing all my post race duties it was after 10.

At the race I noticed as I saw familiar faces come across the finish line that their times were significantly shorter than I was used to seeing.  Later I found out that the course was not actually a full 5k long, it is almost a 1/4 mile short.  I think initially the thought when this race was created was an accurate distance course wasn’t a big deal since it is more of a social event than a serious running event.  However I heard many runners initially talk about being excited about setting a new PR (personal record) for a 5K time.  Imagine their disappointment when they found out the course was short?  Hopefully next year the course will be regulation distance.

This weekend Ali and I have our 12 year wedding anniversary.  Ali already has her anniversary present in hand, her shiny new Ipad.  In addition I am sure we will go out to dinner on Sunday.  It seems nearly impossible that we have been married for a dozen years already.  The passage of time at this point in my life truly is a blur.  Youngsters, enjoy youth while you can.

Sunday Kevin Kolb get’s his first bonafide opportunity to be the Eagles starting QB.  Even during game one before he got knocked out he was being shuffled in and out of the line up constantly for trick plays with Vick.  I am excited to see how he does without the threat of Vick hanging over his head.  I am pulling for the guy.  The 49ers are a very dangerous 0-4 team.

So when I got home I flipped on the Phillies game.  It was their first division series game against the Reds and their ace Roy Halladay was pitching.  I had a bunch more race entries to put in so I turned the volume up loud on the TV and listened while I was in the office.  By the time I had flipped it on it was already 4-0 and I heard Halladay was mowing down the Reds, not allowing a single hit through 5 innings.

As I listened each inning Halladay would retire the hitters in order easily and quickly.  I was tempted to go sit down and watch but I had a lot of work to do AND I didn’t want to somehow jinx the no hitter as stupid as that sounds.

Finally the top of the 9th inning came around, I had to go watch.  Halladay simply has great stuff.  Every single pitch he throws seems to have downward motion on it, even his fastball.  I couldn’t believe how calm, cool and collected he was as he stood there on the cusp of baseball immortality.  The last time someone pitched a no hitter in the playoffs was something like 55 years ago!

Halladay got the first two outs routinely.  Finally it was crunch time.  After getting two strikes on the batter, the guy swung and hit a dribbler right in front of the catcher.  The ball was just far enough away that it was a problem.  Ruiz had to scramble and actually made the throw from his knees.  There was a brief moment of panic until I saw the throw beat the runner by a half a step.  Holy shit, I just witnessed a piece of baseball history.

I had my Iphone recording the last out.  It was funny, the dogs reacted to the phrase “No hitter” and started barking like they were cheering for Halladay too.  You can see the short clip here.  Even after the game Halladay was extremely composed and calm.  Since I grew up pitching I could really appreciate just how incredible this was.

Sure there are a lot of physically gifted guys out there can throw hard but being a good pitcher is also very mental.  To not be nervous and be able to deliver pitches accurately in a high pressure situation is truly special.  I am just glad I got to see it.

Wow I was surprised the Patriots traded Randy Moss yesterday to his old stomping grounds, the Vikings.  A mid-season trade like this is very rare in the NFL.  Trading a big name like Moss is even rarer. To be honest with you I don’t get it.

Yea I knew Moss was bitching because he was in the last year of his contract and hadn’t been offered extension.  No player or coach for that matter wants to be a lame duck.  Evidently Belichick had enough of Moss’s bitching and sent him packing for a third round draft pick.

To me it is kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Moss is a big play WR and the Patriots are 3-1 so far, hardly floundering.  Now I am not familiar with their remaining WR’S so maybe Bill has a player he feels can step right into Moss’s shoes.  Regardless it will be interesting to see how it shakes out for both teams in the trade.

I beat the final boss in adventure mode of P v Z.  He was quite the challenge.  Completing that mode unlocks a slew of quick play options that are equally fun.  It is just a fantastic game.

My web host, IXWebhosting got hammered by a DOS attack that lasted a good portion of the morning.  Every part of my online content was unavailable.  I felt naked.  Thankfully they seem to have been able to block the source of the attacks which evidently was emanating from good old China.

Tonight after work I get to time my one and only evening race of the year, the Corporate Run.  It is a unique format where businesses compete as teams against each other.  It should be a fun event.  Too bad it required Ali and myself to enter 500+ pieces of paper.

But damn, if you are able to pull back the curtain on this, which admittedly is hard to do, it’s pretty obvious we all were fed lines of bullshit. Dig around the related videos as well.

Remember I said I have an appointment to have my elbow looked at finally? Well I am canceling it. Why in the world would I do that might you ask?

This week I decided to throw caution to the wind at the gym since I was going to the doctor anyway.  I started doing some of the stuff that has aggravated the elbow like bicep work and even pull ups.  The elbow actually didn’t feel too bad.  However that isn’t the reason.

I have been on a rollercoaster with forearm/elbow pain for at least a couple years.  My treatment for the problem has consistently been rest/ice/ultrasound.  I have had minimal success doing this but as I said, the problem inevitably returns.

Last night I was on the Bar-barian forums and was reading a thread about some other people with elbow issues.  In the messages were a few links to YouTube videos describing some simple stretching/strengthening exercises you can do to help alleviate chronic “tennis elbow”.

Then it hit me, I never did anything to strengthen my forearms to help prevent the injury.  I was sort of dumbfounded that I never really looked into doing any sort of physical therapy to address the problem.  I already knew very well the benefit of having strong muscles supporting your joints from my experience with knee problems.  For whatever reason I didn’t apply that same logic to my elbow pain.

So anyway I have some simple routines that I plan to do three or 4 times a week.  I plan to do this consistently for a month or so and see how much progress I make. More than likely PT would be all the doc would prescribe anyway.

I spent a lot of time yesterday wrapped up in Plants vs Zombies.  I now think I can declare it as the best game I have ever played on the Iphone.  I have played a lot of great Iphone games so that statement carries some weight.  If you have an Iphone/Ipad you need this game.

I told my buddy Scott about the game yesterday.  I strongly encouraged him to grab it since I knew he liked tower defense style games. He grabbed the Ipad specific version which looks even better of course.  He was instantly hooked.  Despite having things to do he wound up spending most of his day trying to clear “just one more level”.  You can thank me later Homey.

Last night was a Tivo double feature.  I got to watch two of my favorite shows, The Event and Caprica.  The Event is really shaping up nicely, I am really enjoying it so far.  Caprica is the prequel to Battlestar Galactica.  It is so well done, I just love the show.  It was a long 6 months since the last episode.

Last night after work I met up with Ali at Best Buy so she could pick out what sort of cover she wanted for her iPad.  We looked at a number of options, none of which were cheap.  We wound up going with the standard Apple cover, it was a good mix of protection versus convenience.  It looks like a glorified book cover.

We also got a screen protector.  I have put screen protectors on every smart phone we have owned so of course getting one for the iPad was a no brainer. Again, it was ridiculously overpriced, $30.  Attaching the clear film on the iPad was quite a challenge.

Obviously an Ipad is much larger than a smart phone.  Attaching the protector used a similar process to what window tinters use where you spray down the film with a liquid before attaching it.  It was a pain in the ass trying to lay down the film while minimizing bubbles.  It turned into a two person process where Ali manned the squeegee while I laid down the film.  I spent a lot of time working small bubbles out of the film.  Even with all of my work it still doesn’t look quite as good as I would like but Ali said it was fine.

Remember when the iPad came out I was decidedly negative about it, calling it little more than an oversized Iphone without the phone.  That is still valid, it is basically just a bigger Iphone.  What I didn’t realize just how much that increased amount of screen real estate affects the usability of the device.  It really makes a big difference.

Web browsing which works but is a scroll fest on an Iphone is a pleasure on the iPad.  You can fully interact with a web page in a manner that isn’t limiting at all.  The device is very snappy, way faster than my old 3G Iphone and about the same as my Iphone 4.

Of course anything visual looks great on the iPad. I fired up Netflix and had a movie streaming in a few moments.  Pictures look fantastic as well.

Ali’s original intent for the Ipad was to use it for ebooks since you can access titles on Amazon, Borders and Barnes and Noble.  In addition to that you can get electronic magazines that look identical to what you get in the mail, without the paper.  The idea of eliminating the 18 inch pile of magazines by the bed is very appealing to Ali.

The extra room also benefits apps like mail, calendar and more.  Everything is just much easier to work with.  We did find one thing that was mysteriously missing from the iPad, a calculator.  The iPhone has one but for some odd reason Apple omitted it from the iPad.  That problem was fixed with a free app from the App Store.

As I was surfing around for iPad info I got turned on to yet another awesome Iphone game, Plants vs Zombies.  I was up until after 11 last night playing the game.  It is a pretty simple game but also very fun and addicting.  It’s a hell of a lot of fun for $3. I am a sucker for tower defense style games.

Yesterday I made the mistake of venturing on to the Eagles message board.  The board was filled with ranting, much of it was the brainless variety.

My point of view on the Kevin Kolb situation that was contrary to most of what I was reading.  A lot of these idiots were writing Kolb off as a total failure after playing 2 quarters in the Green Bay game and another two + quarters in relief on Sunday.

I decided to start a thread. The main point was the Michael Vick hysteria was a quick fix.  Here is my original post. it was titled, Kolb’s confidence casualty of Vick situation

Hey I was annoyed as anyone else at the dink and dunk passing yesterday by Kolb. It was pretty obvious his primary goal was to not make a mistake, but hey can you blame him?

Even with all of the short passing, Kolb’s numbers were decent and if Avant didn’t have hands of stone on that last play we would have had a big comeback win, under the direction of Kevin Kolb.

My post actually generated some back and forth discussion, a full three pages worth.  If there is one thing I am pretty good at it is message board sparring.  The thread was filled with some thoughtful comments both pro and con along with one liners from the brainless lemmings that dominate that space.

By the time I was done participating in the thread I felt like I had exhausted my negativity tank for the day.

480 is the amount of paper entries that Ali and I have entered so far for the race that is coming up.  Out of those 480 I would estimate at least 75% of them were new people that we didn’t have in the database.  New entries take much longer to enter into the system.  In between Ali and I, I would estimate that we spent a total of 7 or 8 man hours on the project.

Ali was out of town in Orlando for a conference Friday and Saturday.  It was probably not a bad thing after the hair color caper and the associated fireworks. I filled almost of that time exclusively with work.

Friday night I spent a couple hours plugging in more paper entries.  Then Saturday morning I woke up at 5:45 am on my own and within 20 minutes I was back to more data entry. Once the sun came out I headed outside to start the physical labor.

In addition to weeding the garden I also ripped out the now mostly dead corn plants.  I felt a twinge of sadness as I pulled them out, broke them over my knee and stuffed them into the compost bin. In reality we are just getting ready to enter into prime growing season in our area so I shouldn’t feel down about it.

I then got out the weed whacker and trimmed the property, something I hadn’t done in at least three weeks due to time and water logged land issues. It took me quite awhile to chop through the weeds which were quite dense in certain spots.

When I was done I got a message from my neighbors that they were on the way home from their cruise.  They picked up Zoe and then I was right back outside to mow the property. Again it was slow going due to high spots that weren’t mowed for awhile because they were underwater.

About halfway into the job the blades stopped turning, great.  I pulled over to the shade and crawled onto the ground to take a look. The good news is it was nothing major, the tension spring on the idler pulley broke.  The bad news is I just had bought that spring a couple months ago.  It’s odd the first spring would last 7 years and the second one would last 7 weeks.

Well since I had this happen once before I knew I could McGyver the broken spring into something usable with my needle nose pliers.  After 5 minutes of work I was back up and mowing. It was nice to have the property totally groomed for the first time in awhile.

Mowing wrapped up the outside work, it was about 2 o’clock. Now I had a list of indoor things I wanted to get done. That list included cleaning the counters, washing all of the bedding, sweeping the house, scoobatizing the kitchen/laundry room and then finally running the steam cleaner in the house. Zoe sheds more than our dogs so I wanted to give everything a once over. FINALLY between 5 and 6 my day full of labor was over.

One of my reasons for busting my ass on Saturday was I wanted to once again free up my Sunday.  This is something I have been doing for a few weeks.  I enjoy having one full day to do whatever I want even if it means I have to bust my ass on Saturday to do so.

Ali got up early to go run with her girlfriends.  After she was done I met her at the water park to do a bike/swim.  During the first part of my ride I was getting frustrated because Alison wasn’t making much of an effort to keep up with me even though I was doing less than 16 mph for most of it.

Around the halfway point I said something to her.  I said that the entire purpose of doing tandem bike training is to do it together. She was 50 yards behind me most of the time.  I encouraged her to stay close to me and draft to both push her pace and allow her to work a little easier since she just ran.  On the ride back she stayed with me most of the way.

On the last half mile segment I told Ali I was going to do a sprint since I had gas in the tank.  I managed to maintain 27-28 mph for that brief distance.  I was sucking major wind once I got to the light to go back into the park.

After the ride we headed into the park.  Ali wasn’t feeling like doing major lap swimming.  I however was almost looking forward to swimming.  It’s odd how in the span of a couple months I went from dreading the act of swimming to almost enjoying it.  I did three 400 meter sessions for a total of 1200 meters, the farthest I have ever swam.  I also was very consistent with my pace, each 400 was a little under 9 minutes long.

After the swim we ate lunch and just hung out under an oversized umbrella.  Ali was exhausted and actually was sound asleep when I woke her up around 1:30 to head home.  I told Ali I wanted to stop at Sam’s club to grab dehydrated chicken dog treats.  She said she would head home awhile.

While I was in Sam’s I had an idea pop into my head.  Ali and my anniversary is coming up in less than a week.  I thought I would surprise her with an Ipad.  I thought maybe Sam’s would sell them since they sold Ipods and Ipod Touches.  Sam’s did not sell them so I decided to add a Best Buy stop to my route home.

I had heard that Best Buy was selling Ipads although I didn’t know what their stock was like.  I went in there and was pleased to see they had plenty of them.  I snagged the $499, 16gb, non-3G model which would be more than sufficient for what Ali will use it for.

When I got home I covertly brought the box inside and put it on the counter under a towel.  I asked Ali, who was in the office, what the box was on the counter.  She said she didn’t know there was a box.  She came out lifted the towel and was very surprised.

I told her it was her anniversary gift.  Typically we don’t spend that kind of money on anniversaries. I knew she wanted one and I thought it would be nice to give her a surprise. In a few minutes it was unboxed and connected to Itunes.  The set up routine was slick, it automatically grabbed all of the music and apps that are already on her Iphone.

Ali spent a lot of time playing with the device.  The screen is really high quality, everything on it looks good.  Having substantially more screen real estate makes a huge difference.  Web browsing is a much more pleasurable experience on the Ipad since constant scrolling is not necessary.  Ali so far gives the device two thumbs up for sure.

The one thing that we need to get yet for it is some sort of case/protection.  There were several options available at Best Buy but I wanted Ali to be the one to decide what she would prefer.  I am sure she will grab something this week.

Wow was that Eagles game ugly on so many levels.  They start the game giving up a quick 14 points after allowing a big punt return and then a big pass after the Eagles blew a defensive assignment.   Things went from bad to worse when Vick was in the middle of a Malachi Crunch (Happy Days fans will know what I mean).  They said he had a rib/chest injury but the way he was hit and what he was holding makes me think he broke his collarbone. Vick’s injury left Kevin Colb in charge.

The rest of the game was filled with ineptitude on both sides of the ball.  This game was big since it was Donovan’s return to Philly.  I was happy to see the fans gave him a warm pre-game welcome.  After that he got the boo’s many expected.

Donovan was decidedly unspectacular in his return. Other then the one long pass he had a miserable day with a QB rating in the 60’s.  I have to admit it felt nice being on the other side of his overthrows and worm burners, I didn’t miss those at all.

We had our own problems at QB.  If you look at Kolb’s numbers they are solid.  What the stats don’t show is just how tentative he was.  Almost all of his passes were very short.  I don’t know if Morningweg was calling all of these dump offs or if Kolb was just opting for the safe throw because he is now paranoid to make a mistake. I think the side effect of the Michael Vick rebirth was a thorough trashing of Kevin Kolb’s confidence.

Mike Vick is able to hide some of the warts of this team.  His elusiveness makes a shitty offensive line less of a problem.  It also buys him time to find receivers down field.  Kolb is not elusive and at times he looked very indecisive.

The Eagles have leaks all over the place.  Their defense once again reverted to sucking.  Any decent team would have put up many more points against the Eagles yesterday.  The Redskins who were ranked nearly last in the league in rushing ran with authority.  The special teams hurt the Eagles once again giving up the huge return to set up a Redskin touchdown.

The Eagles did dominate in one area, penalties.  For several years the team has been consistently one of the most penalized in the league.  I don’t really know where else you can point the finger other than the coaching staff.  Andy evidently preaches discipline on the field as much as he does at the dinner table.

The coaching issues hurt the team again in the bizarre series of events at the end of the half where the Eagles blew an opportunity for a TD and instead had to settle for a field goal.  There was some sort of confusion over the spot and somehow the Eagles managed to get a delay of game penalty after a timeout, pretty hard to do. Don’t get me wrong, I think the officials were part of the problem, in fact I think the crew yesterday sucked, especially the head umpire who spent 15 reviewing each instant replay call.

So 12 was the magic number of points the team scored.  It was almost 19.  Miraculously as poorly as the team played they actually had an opportunity to still win on the last play of the game.  Kolb threw the ball into the end zone.  Jason Avant was able to outleap everyone else and get both hands cleanly on the ball.  Unfortunately the ball also bounced cleanly off his rock-like mitts and into the hands of  a Redskin to end the game.

It was an awful game to watch.  If Vick’s injury proves to be as serious as I think it may be we have a bunch of ugly football to watch the next few months.

This morning the thermometer dropped down into the 60’s for the first time in many months.  The unmistakable coolness felt great and is a preview of the nice weather to come.  It’s so nice being able to look forward to winter.

I went to the doctor on Friday and was told I have an ear infection.  I was given a script for some antibiotic ear drops.  I think we got it before it got too bad.  It feels pretty decent right now.

I also finally made an appointment to see someone about my elbow.  I am seeing the same guy that did one of knee surgeries.  If nothing else it will be nice to get a professional evaluation on it.