Archives August 2011

Saturday Ali and I had a lighter than normal chore load.  I was putting off some of the cleaning as well as mowing the grass until Wednesday, the day before we leave so the house is in good shape when mom comes over. (I am only working Mon/Tues this week)  Even with the lighter load we kept busy for the majority of the day, there is never a shortage of things to do, ever.

Saturday afternoon had a brief visit from Randall on his way to a week long vacation in St. Pete.  He cleared out my surplus electronic equipment, picking up two Tivo’s, my repaired 360 and my spare Kinect.  I talked to him a bit but then he mentioned his mom was out in the car waiting which I didn’t realize.  His Explorer was packed to the brim.  Somehow he managed to squeeze the extra equipment in there.  For his part he delivered season 5 of Dexter which I won’t dig into until we get back.  It will give me something to look forward to.

We had plans to do our second dinner/movie combo in as many weeks Saturday night, this time to go see Captain America.  We left early because we had a couple stops.

First we went to Sports Authority.  Ali wanted to go to Sports Authority to try on a couple pair of sneakers.   I have not counted recently but I would estimate she has close to 15 pairs of sneakers. Admittedly, when you are doing a lot of distance running you are going to go through sneakers on a regular schedule but I can assure you, she is ahead of that schedule. 🙂

Anyway, since she has started in with these VERY long training runs, she has been having heel pain.  She has been searching for something make the pain stop.  I made a couple suggestions to her neither of which she liked to hear probably because they were coming from me.

I too have had battles with heel pain, a symptom of planar fascititis, a very common overuse injury for runners.  I would say running 17 miles would be classified as overuse.  I have gotten some relief from heel pain by regularly using a tennis ball and rolling it about on my arch/heel as I am at my desk.  The other prescription is rest which isn’t going to be happening anytime soon for her since the marathon is in October.

Well for some reason rolling a tennis ball on your foot was not received as much of a solution.  Ali really is into buying stuff to support her hobby.  Simple/inexpensive solutions don’t seem to normally be real appealing to her, especially if I am the one to suggest it.

So Ali tried on these two pairs of sneakers while a Sports Authority employee was up her ass.  She was trying to be helpful I guess but she clearly crossed the line over into annoying territory.  Ali said she didn’t feel any major difference in cushioning from the sneakers she already has.  I don’t think anyone runs their first marathon without physical issues as their body becomes acclimated to running for that long.

Our other non-dinner stop involved Ali’s bike conundrum.  Since Ali had her scary bike crash she has been extremely gun shy about training on her tri bike.  Myself and others have encouraged her repeatedly to just get out on the bike and ride.  Unfortunately fear has kept Ali from moving on.

It’s gotten to the point where Ali is actually considering other bike options like maybe opting for a better road bike like I suggested way back early in the bike upgrade discussion.  Of course with all of the discourse that lead up to the tri bike purchase you can imagine my initial reaction when she first mentioned this.  However since then, I have at least been open to the idea, if she is able to trade down without any more cash exchanging hands.

Well Saturday she floated a concept I was NOT agreeable to, buying another bike in addition to the two she already has.  I told her there was no reason to have three bikes, if she bought another bike then one needs to go.  Ali hates when I try to reel her in from plans like this.   She views it as me being not supportive when actually all I am doing is trying to be the voice of reason.

So anyway, we stopped at the Trek store and got some education on their product line.  The guy we spoke to was very knowledgeable and did a nice job of explaining pros and cons of various options.  Ali plans to talk to the owner at the place she bought the bike from to talk about options.  I told her I feel they are partly to blame in this situation since they pushed her hard in the direction of a tri bike despite knowing her riding experience was on the slim side.

For dinner we decided to go to Mel’s Diner in Bonita.  We haven’t been to Mel’s for years and we never had been to the Bonita location. Mel’s is a cool place with a 50’s diner kind of feel.  With us walking in around 5 we were surrounded by almost exclusively old people as expected.

For dinner I opted for “Mel’s Famous Fish Sandwich”, figuring if it is famous it has to be good.  Well out comes this MASSIVE fried filet on a roll that was about half as big as the fish.  Eating the sandwich involved me gnawing off the area that was hanging outside the bread before normal sandwich protocol could be observed.  It didn’t taste bad although eating something that large that was fried did not feel so hot.

By the time we finished up we were starting to get pressed for time so we asked our waiter for our check.  He said he would be back with it.  He did return but he didn’t have a check, instead we got plunged into an awkward exchange.  He asked us what we ordered again and scribbled it down.  Then he said something about if we just paid cash it would be easier.  Huh?

He looked disappointed when we told him we were paying with a credit card.    He said he would be back again.  While he was gone for a considerable time both Ali and I scratched our heads.  Where did or order go?  Why did he want us to pay cash, so he could pocket the money?

So he comes back again, still with no official bill in hand but says he can take my credit card.  Although this seemed even weirder, I handed it to him, we had to get going.  Finally he comes back with the real bill and credit card receipt.  Both Ali and I said we would need to watch the CC statement for anything weird.  The whole transaction seemed shady.

We got to the movie theater with about 5 minutes to spare.  I didn’t make the same mistake as the week before, opting to just get a bottle of water for the movie instead of piling on empty and unneeded calories with overpriced, huge boxes of candy.

I was looking forward to Captain America and for the most part it delivered.  The digital manipulation they did to make Steve Rogers a scrawny runt in the beginning is pretty impressive.  Despite a few silly moments both Ali and I found the film good and made us look forward to Avengers which comes out next summer.  There were less than 10 people in the theater that knew to stay till the very end of the credits to see bonus material.  I meant WTF all the Marvel Avenger stuff has had this bonus material (Ironman, Thor), by this time they should know better, nubs.  We got a full Avengers preview as a reward, it looks great.

Sunday morning Ali and I had separate training plans. Ali was running 10 miles with Michelle.  I planned to run the big 10K loop that surrounds the water park.  Ali was starting her run early, at 6:30 and said she would meet me at the park afterward.

When I pulled into the park,  I was taken back by the huge line of cars that were lined up in the right hand lane.  Evidently a local radio station was running some sort of a promo where they were giving stuff away.  Apparently some of the stuff was decent, I heard some people had been waiting since 3AM.

So I headed out on my run.  I had a goal of running the 10K at a good pace, not sure what that would translate to time wise.  I was utilizing my GPS to make sure my pace stayed in the upper 8 minute mile range.  Well about a mile or mile and a half into the run my Garmin started beeping almost constantly.  I glanced down and saw a message indicating the internal memory was full and I needed to clear space.

Well I certainly couldn’t listen to this constant beeping for another 5 miles or so,  I stopped the timer and went through the menus to clear history.  I chose the option to clear all but the last 3 months and confirmed I was ok with doing it.

Well my watch just sat on the confirmation screen.  Ok, well I guess it might take a few seconds to actually clear so I waited around a minute for the timing screen to come back.  Well it didn’t come back.  After 2 or 3 minutes I said F it, and took off, no longer on the clock.  It annoyed me since I had intentions of pushing PR pace.  I figured I would start the timer in a few minutes when the screen finally cleared.  It never did.  In fact it took at least an hour till the watch once again became functional.  It would be swell if Garmin gave that info before you agree to clear the history on a full watch.

So despite being off the clock I tried to keep what felt like a strong pace.  The heat and humidity was starting to get to me.  Despite my breathing never approaching labored status I was just feeling very uncomfortable, my legs were tired and the heat was just plain annoying.

This route really f’s with my head.  The fact that it broke me so badly a couple months ago where I stopped multiple times compounds the issue. Once you stop, stopping in the future becomes easier.  I found myself right on the verge of stopping several times.  The internal dialogue is an argument of sorts.

There is that urge to just stop, noone will know but yourself.  It’s hot, it’s miserable, why are you running?  Then the dominant task master comes in.  He points out that I already stood around for a couple minutes f’ing around with the GPS.  Stopping again would basically invalidate the entire run.  Stop whining and just complete the run, you know you can.

The taskmaster won out and I kept running although my pace definitely declined as I approached the finish.  Of course I have no idea how much since my Garmin was still clearing times.  By the time I reentered the water park I was pretty damn spent.  My shorts were so wet looked like they just came out of the wash.  I found a fire ant free spot of grass and laid down on it for a minute.

I also had to take a leak pretty badly.  Unfortunately all the radio freebie junkies were still lined up so standing by a bush was not an option, too many eyes.  Instead I walked over to the gym and used the bathroom there.  By the time I walked back to the truck and was getting ready to go out on the bike Ali pulled up.

She told me about her 10 mile run which sounded miserable like mine was.  I asked her if she wanted to ride with me but instead she opted to ride around the park with Christy.  I headed out on a slightly shorter than normal ride alone.  I shortened it because first I didn’t have the GPS which was still clearing old times and second I was f’ing tired from the run.  Even though I had no ambition of pushing it, I felt like I kept a pretty decent pace aided by a lack of major wind in either direction.

After the bike we headed inside where I swam 1200 meters, the first 800 of which I did in one shot.  It was a pretty exhausting brick.

Christy came in and swam with us as well and she also joined us for lunch which was a nice treat.  I opted to skip my normal french fries that I have with the pizza, still feeling a bit gross from the big hunk of fried fish the night before. After eating we took a couple leisurely laps around the lazy river before heading out.

On the way home I grabbed a large iced coffee to help me keep going when we got home.  Ali took a shower and took an almost all afternoon long nap since all the housework was basically done.  I intended to just stay awake and play some WoW.  Well once the coffee wore off I bonked hard, I felt like I HAD to lay down.

I went into the spare bedroom and laid down for about an hour.  I was unable to actually fall asleep though, just laying there with my eyes closed.  It was better than nothing.

Sunday night when Ali was reconciling the credit card statement she noticed a charge from Sirius.  I had just asked her a few days ago if she saw any charges from Sirius since I noticed that the satellite radio that was supposed to be disabled in the Camry was still functional.

Back in April I called Sirius and told them to not renew the subscription when it expired at the end of June.  I followed that up with another call when I received a letter from Sirius, that they told me to disregard, that indicated that 2nd radio was scheduled to be renewed.  They said not to worry, the radio would be cancelled.  Well guess what, it wasn’t.

Now if this was another company other than Sirius or maybe RCI I might be mildly surprised.  However Sirius has done such a fine job of building up a rock solid reputation of customer disservice I was not at all shocked that they did not do as they promised.  It did not prevent me from getting angry though.

Today I called them up and revealed their latest escapade in incompetence.  The woman apologized for the mistake as she confirmed she saw the notes that the radio was indeed supposed to be cancelled.  She asked me if perhaps I reconsidered and would like to keep the 2nd radio active for the super deal of half off the normal rate.  I assured her I was quite interested in cancelling the service without getting into all of the gory details of my years of Sirius complaints.

She cancelled the radio and assured me the credit should show up on my card within 7-10 business days.  Crossing my fingers.

So my replacement inside door handle for the Tacoma showed up yesterday.  I mentioned how surprised I was that I found the part so easily and inexpensively, only $12 including shipping.  The replacement handle is not a perfect color match for the old handle but I supposed 12 years in the Florida sun has bleached the color of any interior plastic.

Replacing the handle was pretty easy involving only one screw and some manipulation of the actuator rod.  In total the job took maybe 5 minutes. It will be nice to not have to McGyver myself out of the truck any longer.

This weekend we will be getting all of our ducks lined up for our upcoming NYC/Ireland adventure.  Randall might be stopping by briefly on Saturday afternoon on his way to St. Pete.  I am hoping we will be doing a bartering deal where he loans me season 5 of Dexter and I give him two Tivos and my spare Xbox 360.  Yea it sounds like he is making out on the swap, oh well.

Certain house chores like cleaning and mowing the grass will be put off until later next week so things are in good shape while mom is tending the homestead.

Happy birthday to my niece, Caroline who turns 7 this weekend.  It’s pretty hard to imagine she has been around seven years already.  The time warp is only accelerating.

So yesterday as promised I filed a claim with American Express regarding the transaction with the Manhattan Club.  I was able to do the entire process online which is nice.  I was quite surprised when late morning the phone rang and it was Maritza from the Manhattan Club.

She called to tell me that they were crediting the full amount of the reservation.  I was very pleasantly surprised and told her I appreciated her efforts in getting the charges credited.

I then had to go remove my “manhattan club sucks” post tags from yesterdays entry to keep that phrase from skyrocketing up Google search results for the place.  I then contacted American Express to tell them that the hotel agreed to credit my card so I could drop the dispute.  They said the credit has not posted yet so the best thing to do was just leave the dispute open.  It will automatically close as soon as the credit is posted anyway. It felt nice getting a win where someone that was less motivated to fight would have been stuck with 4 bills out of their pocket for absolutely nothing.

Although I am generally happy with my gym, Retro Fitness, there are a few things that do bother me.

The place is not cleaned as regularly or as thoroughly as it should be.  Quite often there are dust bunnies roaming around under some machines.  Since I spend a lot of time there on my hands doing body weight exercises, I get a real sense of just how dirty the black floor is. It takes no extra money to have employees go around and clean areas of the gym throughout the day.

There are some simple repairs that need to be done that seem to linger on forever like reattaching cleaning solution holders to walls. Oh and bathrooms have no appreciable hot water to speak of.  When I took a shower there the other week it didn’t have one shred of warmth even with the handle turned to full hot.

I also think it is silly that Retro has a shake bar that sells high calorie shakes to “refuel” after a workout where you wind up consuming twice the amount of calories that you burned.  I never understand why people want to cancel out the benefits of exercise by over indulging afterwards. It’s sort of like the way we address the deficit, half way.  Anyway, I am sure the shake bar is just viewed as another profit center for the gym and has little to do with the overall health benefit of the customers.

Evidently some of the warts I saw were also seen by the corporate management at Retro.  The guy that was running the gym has been told to get out.  I have not seen him in a couple months at this point. Evidently besides my observations there have been issues with missing inventory and complaints of poor treatment of both staff and customers at the place.

I just hope they get the issues sorted out and that it isn’t a warning sign of failure of the gym.  Despite the warts it still is leaps and bounds in front of shitty Planet Fitness and that old dirt hole Powerhouse/Pure Fitness that I used to frequent.

So the 2012 Camaros are now in full production.  I am hoping once I get back from our trip Ali and I can look at possible road maps and time frames to when I can go and place my order.  It seems that we keep having these periodic big expenses (water equipment, tractor) that are making saving money at a good clip difficult. My goal is to have one in my garage or at least ordered before 2011 expires.

I plan to temporarily add an international data roaming plan to my phone for the Ireland trip.  I am going to buy 125 meg of data usage, thinking that should be enough to get us through the week.  My plan is to use this to make internet access available for anyone in my family by utilizing PDANet to create a on the fly wi-fi hotspot they can connect to.  I just need to make sure that people know that they need to abstain from watching YouTube videos or downloading MP3’s while we are overseas.  If I go over the 125 meg the charges ring up fast, $10 for every 10 mb over.

The other day I went to get out of my truck and heard a crack and saw something fly (a spring) as I pulled on the door handle.  The plastic door handle bezel had been cracked for awhile but now the whole assembly went kaput.

To exit the vehicle now requires me to grab the wire and give it an awkward yank.  I was afraid that it may be difficult to get a replacement part however a 5 minute search and $12 had the part ordered and on it’s way to my house.

The Tacoma is now 12+ years old so unfortunately these sort of things are going to start going wrong.  Even with these little nagging issues and paint that is a mess I have no plans on retiring the truck anytime soon.  It still runs like a champ even with 130k on the odometer.

Last night I hit a bodyweight exercise milestone, managing to get 20 full ROM pull ups in one set.  It was my first attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge which is max pull ups. I did the set indoors on my Iron Gym.  It is a bit awkward doing pull ups for me on the IG because of my long arms, my knees just barely miss the floor.  When I got my chin to the bar for a 20th time I was pretty pumped.  It made some other movement goals I have like the muscle up seem much closer.

As expected, I have not heard back from The Manhattan Club regarding their deceptive registration process that makes it far too easy for people to unintentionally commit to nonrefundable reservations. I plan to initiate disputing the charge with American Express.  I have heard from more than one person that more often than not the merchant won’t even bother to dispute the charge back as the process required for them to validate the charge is more trouble than it is worth.

So yesterday I had our credit card bill with me at work.  Ali had pointed out to me when she was doing the bills about some credits that were not there, one from RCI and one from The Manhattan Club, the place I originally reserved a room at but later had to cancel.

I handled the RCI issue first, it was a small amount of money, $27, but I’ll be damned if I am going to let RCI screw me out of one more penny.  This credit was tied into my airfare reservation I placed with them.  When I tried to book the flight online their site continuously crashed.  The credit was to make up for the difference between the higher fee for booking via the phone which for some reason they charge more for.

When it all went down I asked for assurances REPEATEDLY that I could expect the credit to be applied and I was told REPEATEDLY it would be.  Of course this is RCI we are talking about, the credit wasn’t done, surprise, surprise.  So I called up and explained the situation.  The woman I spoke to ASSURED me the credit would now be applied although she couldn’t explain why it wasn’t done initially.  Now I have to babysit my statement further to make sure the credit actually shows up.

Next up was a call to the Manhattan Club.  I originally booked this online for two nights.  When I booked the reservation I had no idea I was dealing with a timeshare, they don’t do a very good job of pointing that out on the web site.  I logged on to the site, picked my dates, picked the lowest rate and was done.  I didn’t realize it was a timeshare until I received the email confirmation that said our stay required us to attend a 90 minute sales presentation.

I called the place after I realized it was a timeshare to get some clarification.  I told the person on the phone that when I booked the room I had no idea it was a timeshare.  The woman said I could cancel the reservation if I wanted and book at the higher standard room rate or just attend the presentation at the lower rate.  She said as long as I met the prequalifications for the presentation, which I did, there isn’t an issue.  So Ali and I resigned ourselves to just sitting through the sales pitch.

Well a few weeks later I realized that when I booked the room for two nights I made a mistake.  I had it in my head that our flight left Saturday when in reality it left Friday evening.  Upon talking to Ali we agreed that I should just cancel the Manhattan Club reservation and book somewhere that didn’t require us to waste a couple hours since we now had less time in NYC than we first thought.

I called MHC again and told them I needed to cancel my reservation.  The woman told me it was easy to do, all I had to do was go back on the web site and enter my original confirmation number.  I followed her instructions, cancelled the reservation and made a one night reservation at a nearby Sheraton instead. Ok problem handled, so I thought.

So yesterday I call up Manhattan Club to handle what I assumed was just another oversight.  Somehow they must have just forgotten to issue the credit for my $435 cancelled reservation.  I wind up being connected with a woman named Stephanie.  I explain to Stephanie that I cancelled my reservation back in June but had not seen a credit on my card yet.  Stephanie told me that was because there won’t be one, the money in  not refundable…

As you can imagine I went from 0-60 in the flip of a switch when I heard this ridiculous sentence.  I asked her what she meant, why would it be nonrefundable, I cancelled the reservation? Stephanie said that the “special promo rate” that I signed up for was a nonrefundable rate and that in order to make the reservation I would have had to agree to those terms.  I told her I have no recollection of that being mentioned anywhere in the booking process.  Stephanie could sense this conversation was just about to get ugly so she said she would transfer me to the person in charge of “online marketing”.

So I began a new conversation with Maritza.  I explained the background of the situation.  I told her much like I had no idea initially I was making a reservation at a timeshare I had zero knowledge that the money I was laying out was nonrefundable.  I told her that this was not made clear on the site in any way.

I also told her that I had phone conversations with MHC staff twice regarding cancelling the reservation and never was there a mention of the the money being nonrefundable.

Maritza repeated Stephanie’s line about my agreeing to the non-refundable rate. She said that I could reuse the credit anytime in the next year.  I told her I was not going to be going to New York again in the next year so that was worthless to me.

I went to the site and looked at the check out screens.  My “agreeing” to the terms meant I clicked a checkbox next to hyperlinked TERMS and CONDITIONS. The only way you saw these terms was if you clicked the link, they are not presented to you directly before handing over your credit card information.  I, like most human beings, don’t typically take the time to read what is normally pages of legalese when performing a transaction like this.

Maritza crowed that whenever she puts in her credit card information on a web site she always makes sure to read all of the terms and conditions.  Yea, sure you do.

So now we were at a clear loggerhead.  Manhattan Club was taking the stance of “too bad, so sad.  We tricked you into agreeing to terms that were not transparent. ”  I of course was now in full bare knuckle fighting mode.

I battered Maritza with various points.  First I asked her how my making and then cancelling a reservation a month and a half in advance costs The Manhattan Club a single penny.  She said there were costs associated with taking reservations on the web site.  I told her I worked in IT and that she was basically full of shit.  Any prorated cost for the miniscule bandwidth that I utilized doing the transaction could be measured in pennies.

Next I asked her why the Manhattan Club thought that $435 was an adequate amount of money to rationalize all of the negative word of mouth that will come out of this.  Again her response was weak, saying it was MHC policy with little else.

We were in full out argument mode for quite awhile.  To be honest I am surprised she didn’t hang up on me.  Then she offers the first chink in the armor, saying that “maybe” she can get one of the two nights credited back to me.  I told her if she can get one night credited, she can get both nights credited.

Maritza did not like that I didn’t accept her halfway offer.  I tried to switch tactics and calmed down a bit.  I asked her to put herself in my shoes for a second.  Obviously from the get go there was a misunderstanding regarding the reservation and all I am asking is for MHC to step around policy in an effort at customer satisfaction.

Maritza calmed down a bit and said she would “see what she could do” and get back to me.  Of course I don’t have a lot of faith of her actually doing anything but I am crossing my fingers that I don’t have to be the one to make the next call.

If MHC ultimately decides that keeping my money is worth it, I will repay them with an onslaught of negative commentary that will surely be picked up on by the Google spiders for all to see.  In addition, since MHC is an RCI affiliated resort, I will be making my feelings known there as well.  Finally I will file a dispute with my credit card company which hopefully will remove the money from their accounts via brute force.

I hope they see the light.

When I first signed up for Hulu Plus I was complaining how a lot of their content when viewed via the native Xbox 360 app was not available, saying it was WEB ONLY.  Web only means the content is only viewable if you browse Hulu from a PC with a web browser.  It’s pretty stupid restriction if you ask me.

Well last night I realized I had a way around this, using playon.tv.  When I use playon, which is running on my home server, it is essentially like sitting at a PC so all of this content is unlocked to me.  Now there are some drawbacks to doing it this way.

Navigating Hulu programming via playon is not nearly as slick.  There is no search ability, you just wind up drilling through tons of menus to get to what you want.  Second the video quality is not nearly as good as when you use the native application.  It’s SD quality at best because of compression.

Even with these warts, I appreciated actually being able to watch some Iron Chef America for the first time since I cut my ties with Comcast.

Late yesterday afternoon Ali called me and asked if I wanted to do a training run with her.  I was a bit surprised since normally if Ali wants a training partner she will ask me in advance so I pack appropriately.

On Monday I wore my green Adidas Firebird retro training pants and had no shorts.  I also had my “normal” sneakers instead of my New Balance running sneakers. Despite this I told Ali I would run with her as I always try to support her running as much as I can.

We did about four and a half miles around Sugden.  Even though the sun was behind clouds the entire run it was still extremely humid.  It didn’t take long until I was unhappy I was wearing long pants for the run.  By the time I was done they were sopping wet.

I was surprised that my gym sneakers felt ok to run in.  They are running sneakers but not anything I tailored to my running needs like I did with my NB 1080’s.

One of my recent favorite YouTube channels is called Gymidiots.  It is basically clip after clip of people doing stupid things while working out.  Since I am in a gym 5 days a week I especially appreciate the humor.  Hell I have pulled a few boners that could have easily made the site.

One time years ago when I didn’t ask for a spot on a heavy bench press I wound up setting the bar on the safety hooks with my hand pinned underneath it.  As calmly and as quietly as I could I stood up and lifted the bar with the other hand to relieve the crushing pain.

Then who could forget the epically stupid L-sit attempt on the squat rack which wound up with me flipping backwards onto my head?  That was an all time gym idiot move. Well as you all know I am an observationist, not only of my own weird situations but of others.  Today I spotted a new gym idiot.

The guy was of very average build with absolutely no sign of any muscle tone on his body.  He wore a black t-shirt that he obviously cut the sleeves off himself. The shirt only had a motivational saying on the back, “it’s you against you!”  The black color helped to hide the small spare tire underneath.  He had on his mp3 player, lifting gloves complete with wrist wraps and the best part of all, an Under Armor skull cap, you know the thing a lot of football players wear under a helmet.

Without seeing just how much of a dumpling this guy was in person, I don’t know if I can describe just how silly the skull cap looked on him. The funniest part was he wore it so it was high above his ears, it sort of looked like an oversized yamica.  Maybe he had a large head or just bought too small of  a skull cap.

Well anyway of course once I spotted this guy I kept tabs on his workout.  Every single thing I saw him do was done wrong.  First he was on the cable machine doing ab crunches, except he wasn’t crunching.  Instead of using his abs he was bouncing his ass up and down on the back of his legs.

Then he moved to a seated bench and did this odd movement where he held a 45 pound plate and rotated it overhead with his arms bent. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a shoulder or arms exercise but it wouldn’t have targetted either in a very effective way.

Finally he wrapped up doing what I think was supposed to be shoulder shrugs. Unfortunately he was bending his elbows close to 45 degrees with each rep instead of actually using the shoulders.

I sincerely hope this new poser continues to visit the gym during my lunch hour.  It will help the time go by faster for sure.

So Obama announced there is a tentative deal for the budget fiasco.  A quick review of the agreement seems that for the most part it was more caving to the Republicans.  The only major concession I saw was purely for political posturing for the election where they won’t have to revisit this mess until after the 2012 elections.

My new political theory idol Robert Reich had some interesting thoughts on the agreement and I also stumbled across some thoughts about the feudal facist direction that America has been careening towards for the last 25 years or more. even though it apparently was written during the Bush meltdown it seems spot on still today.  You have to love political discussion that includes the F word.

In a nutshell the agreement is more dirty politics that leaves the rich, enjoying their lowest taxation rate in 80 years, unscathed as the rest of us are asked to make do with less and less.  The budgetsfocus has only been on one half of the problem, spending,  and the rich will continue to pay extravagantly for tons of political influence to keep the other cheek of their cherished tax breaks firmly turned in the other direction for as long as possible.

On Friday night before bed I let the dogs out and was greeted by the customary shrieking of the neighbor’s chihuahuas.  It was loud, long and persistent.  I thought it would be a good time for me to grab the Iphone and record the barking if I need it for future reference.  I recorded about a minute of the horrible noise.  If you would like to hear why I find it so annoying you can hear it yourself here.  Because of the location of the fenced area the dogs are in, their bark echoes and amplifies as it bounces between the two houses.

I was surprised when I came inside and saw Ali was on her phone.  She said she was texting the neighbor about the noise as Ali could hear it clear as day inside the house.  I had already gone the text message route with the neighbor multiple times in the past where I was promised all sorts of remediation, none of which has happened.

Well there was a long text message exchange where Ali was again given multiple excuses as well as a different core reason for the dogs being forced to live outside the majority of their existence.  Evidently the new husband doesn’t like the dogs being inside.  Before Ali read me the text messages after I took a shower she cautioned me that maybe she shouldn’t since she knew it would aggravate me.  I assured her I wanted to hear it.  I wish I didn’t.

I wound up lying in bed stewing for at least an hour before I could fall asleep if not longer. I was so frustrated that the woman that Ali and I went out of our way to make feel welcome and help when she moved in next door has repaid our efforts with 6 months of apathy towards our complaint.

I confirmed with Ali that her text message exchange qualified as her effort to keep the peace and that I had the green light to let the neighbor know that a nuisance barking complaint with county animal services was next on the agenda.  Luckily for the neighbor, for the most part of the weekend she kept the dogs out of my sight at least while I was outdoors.  I am pretty sure it will only be a temporary effort on her part as all of efforts thus far have proven to be.

The neighbor doesn’t quite understand that the barking is only the symptom of the true problem, keeping the dogs outside. Specifically dogs that absolutely should not be kept there primarily.  Why she thinks that banishing them outside is better than letting them get adopted to a home that is better suited for them is beyond me.  Chihuahuas are HIGH maintenance.

So on Saturday Ali was scheduled to do another hideously long training run of 17 miles.  Ali and I agreed that we needed to get started earlier this time so we decided 6am would be the time.  Christy said she would meet up with us and run the first 10K loop.

We were surprised when we arrived at the waterpark and found it’s gates closed. I’ve never seen those gates closed.  I thought they were always open or at least open very early because of the gym on the property. Ali texted Christy and told her.  We decided to meet up at the Target parking lot instead which is further up on the loop.

Instead of running the 10K loop I decided to stay on the bike for water support reasons.  Running while carrying a water bottle for 6 miles is just a pain in the ass.  Plus I figured I would get my running in on Sunday during our normal brick day.

Starting early helped avoid at least an hour or so of hot sun and humidity.  Ali and Christy did a nice job on the first loop.  When we got back to the car Christy headed out, I headed to the Burger King to take a leak and Ali headed back out on the road for me to catch up to.

The second loop was going to be a very long 11 miles.  I had mounted a second water bottle holder to my bike plus I had a third bottle lying on my aero bars.  I knew Ali would need all of it.

The run was not fun, for either of us.  I was uncomfortable on the bike last week just spending 9 miles in water support duty.  This time I was doubling that.   Although Ali certainly wins in the misery department since she ran that distance, I was not enjoying myself in the least.  I was constantly adjusting my position to relieve pain in multiple pressure points in my ass, feet and hands.  I also had that nagging burning between the shoulder blades for most of the ride.

At one point during the ride I was trying to relieve some of that shoulder pain by grabbing the stem of my handlebars with my left hand.  This hand switch inadvertently threw my balance left which promptly banged me into the guardrail.  I was thrilled when one of the body parts that hit the guardrail was the same shin that I smashed on the parallel bars a few days prior.

Ali was really feeling it the last few miles.  She was stopping for water frequently.  Finally we finished up close to 3 hours after we started.  We were both very glad to be done.

When we got back Ali took a quick ice bath and showered before taking a prolonged nap.  Of course I had stuff to do.

After weeding and tending to the garden I pulled the Cub Cadet back up to the garage.  Although during the week I replaced a pulley and got the tractor mowing again I knew the job was not totally done.  You see I had ordered BOTH pulleys involved in the PTO system but only replaced one of them because the other looked like a pain in the ass to do.

Well after I did the initial repair and watched the deck in action I saw that there was a ton of vibration in that pulley area which would surely cause another failure sooner rather than later.  Since I had decided the Cadet was going to be sold I didn’t want to sell it with something I knew I could fix with some more effort.

As expected, replacing the second pulley was indeed much more of a pain in the ass, especially since the bolt sleeve was somewhat seized, requiring some vigorous beating with the mini-sledge to free up.  However after maybe an hour of labor I had the new pulley in place.  The replacement took care of the nasty vibration I was seeing.  I felt better knowing I would be selling the tractor with no known warts.  We have spent over 300 hours on this tractor in the last 7 years, I was hoping it would continue to serve it’s new owner for a considerable period of time as well.

I then took to trimming the hibiscus bush that is on the left side of the garage.  It had expanded in size to the point where it covered part of the entrance.  When the Camaro shows up this will not be acceptable so I proactively trimmed it back hard with the loppers.

Ali was still asleep so I decided to keep my chore activities outside.  The back section of the property needed to be mowed and I had a new tractor to tackle it with.  The Craftsman mower did a fine job of mowing down the back area, even the very thick and high areas.  With the Cub these areas would require me driving very slowly as well as hitting the spots multiple times in some situations.  With the new tractor I could blow through the areas much faster and in only a few situations have to dust a few spots a second time where the grass was really high.

There was one negative to the job.  The tractor rode like a sherman tank over the very bumpy areas of the yard. I got bounced around like mad. I am pretty sure this issue can be resolved by letting some air out of the tires which are inflated to full pressure right now.

By the time I finished up Ali had woke up and I was able to turn my attention to getting some of the indoor things done although I did not get done as much as I normally would inside on a Saturday.  We had to hurry up since we had plans for the evening to go to dinner and then catch the final Harry Potter movie.

For the movie I used my Fandango discount I bought at Groupon a few weeks back.  If I recall I paid 5 bucks for the code.  The code saved me a total of $24 off the admission which is a very sweet deal.

For dinner we stopped at the Carraba’s in Bonita since it was on the way.  We arrived around 5 and were happy to see there were a lot of empty tables at this early hour.  After the meal I was suffering from my semi-normal post meal runny nose thing so I excused myself to the restroom to blow my nose.

As I was standing at the sink the door flies open and I see bodies fly by me.  At the same time I feel something wet hit the back of my ankle as I see a young boy and I assume his father scurry into the stall followed by the unmistakable sound of projectile vomiting.

Instantly I realize I have been puked on.  I then look to my right and witness more horror with splatters of puke on the other sink along with large amounts on the floor and the door.  Wow.  The smell of vomit started to hit me so I quickly wiped down my ankle with a wet paper towel and exited the bathroom, long stepping over the various piles that lead up to the men’s room.  Man something hit the kid in a majorly bad way.

As I left I went right to the hostess and gave her the unpleasant news that there was a vomit fiesta awaiting someone in the bathroom area.  Later we saw someone with a mop cleaning the floor all the way back to where the kids table was.  He must have snail trailed it all the way to the door, poor kid.

We got to the theater with about 10 minutes to spare.  Despite just having a full meal at Carraba’s both Ali and I opted to each get an oversized box of candy which was a mistake.  It was pure gluttony, I didn’t need to eat M&M’s and felt like an absolute hog for doing so after easily consuming a 1000+ calorie dinner.

In normal Cocunut Point style, the theater was nearly empty.  We opted to watch the 3D version of the film.  You may recall in my review of Part 1 of series I was less than thrilled, I found the movie kind of boring and confusing.  I was much more entertained during the finale.

The action and conflict was pretty epic although I still found myself getting confused by some of what went down.  I suppose this is to be expected since I only read the the first two of the seven book series.  Ali had heard that this movie was the best of them all and also was a big tear jerker.  Neither of us found either of these to be true.

We estimated we would put the ending in the top 3 of the 8 total films and there was not a single tear jerked from my eye.  The ending was somewhat surprising to me.  It was well done and I would recommend checking it out in the theater before it leaves the rotation.  It gets a solid A.  Harry Potter has been a consistent source of cinematic enjoyment for me for the last decade. It’s sort of sad to see it all go away.

I had told Ali late Saturday that I was ok with skipping our normal training brick on Sunday at the water park.  I knew she would appreciate being able to sleep in and that I would survive with not doing it for one weekend. Ali took full advantage of my offer, staying in bed till almost 9:30.  I “slept in” till 7.

I found myself feeling guilty as I sat in front of my computer playing WoW, thinking how I would normally be out on the bike or running at that time.  The negative feeling was compounded by pigging out so much the night before.

We worked on knocking out the remaining indoor chores.  I then asked Ali if she could help me shuck the huge collection of black eyed peas I had harvested the last couple weeks.  It was a huge job and best split between two people.

As we were dumping the dried beans into containers we noticed a couple little worms that I picked out.  Then we noticed that a bunch of the beans had small holes in them, presumably remnants of current or past worm habitation.

Now if it was just me, I wouldn’t sweat it.  I would throw the beans in water and cook them, cooking some worms along with the process.  Ingesting tiny cooked worms isn’t going to harm anyone.  However this idea did not sit well with Ali.

After we shucked all the black eyed peas Ali spread the several thousand of them on a towel.  We then spent close to an hour doing extensive black eyed pea quality control.  We would roll the beans around, carefully looking for any with worms or a worm hole in them and pulled them out.  To say it was tedious would be a huge understatement.   Hopefully the hard work will pay off in the form of some tasty meal involving the beans, sans worms.

Early in the afternoon we made a brief road trip in the party van to pick up some new RO filters as well as a pit stop at Pet Supermarket with the girls to take advantage of a 20% off coupon that was expiring. When we returned we spent some time going over our upcoming trip to NYC and Ireland.  We don’t want to have anything planned out in a regimented way but we collected a number of possible activities and sights that we would like to see.  I think being flexible will be a very good thing during this trip.

Ali spent a good portion of the evening cooking a quiche like dish that had a number of veggies in it including corn from our garden.  It produced massive amounts of dishes.  Ironically we didn’t actually eat the meal.  Instead we worked on our remaining left overs so they would not go to waste.  The huge quiche should provide dinners for us all week long more than likely.

I continued to feel out of sorts most of the day because of missing the morning brick along with having to do more housework than normal deep into the weekend.  I tried to burn off some of that energy by doing some work on the rings along with handstand practice.  Neither activity went particularly well.

Sunday evening I got around to posting a Carigslist ad for the tractor.  Shortly afterward I got my first “offer” via email, a very spartan “Take$375?” To which I responded back even more concisely with “no” (I posted it at $575)

Then around 9 o’clock last night my cell phone rings and it is about the tractor.  Again before any questions about the tractor are asked the financial negotiation begins, the guy on the other end of the phone sounded Haitian.  He offer me $450.  I said since I just listed the tractor a few hours ago I was not willing to discount it that much.  Then he comes back with $480.  I told him the least I would accept at this point was $500.

After he agreed on that price THEN a few specifics about the tractor were asked.  The weird thing was the guy I was talking to was not the actual buyer.  He was translating back and forth for his “uncle”.  I thought great, the guy that actually wants to buy it doesn’t speak English.

At first there was some confusion about when the transaction would take place.  At first they talked about coming right now but then I found out that Rodney, the actual buyer, who did speak English, works night shift and would not have time to come out to my place and back during his “lunch hour”.

He then asked if he could pick it up early this morning, like before 7.  Most people would not be very agreeable to this time of day but it was fine with me.  I told him I typically left around 7 so the earlier the better.  We settled on him arriving sometime between 6:30 and 6:45am.

Ali had overheard my exchange with the potential buyer and was not pleased.  She is not comfortable with strangers coming over to our house and she was even less pleased that I informed the guy that I leave for work at 7.  In her normal overly cautious way, she was concerned this guy was a criminal and I was exposing the household to danger.

I explained to Ali that a tractor was not something that I could meet someone in a parking lot with to exchange.  We also have had several other individuals come over to our house for CL transactions and Ali did not make as much of a fuss.  Although I didn’t agree with Ali’s level of concern I followed the request she left for me via a note on the counter when it came to the transaction.  She wanted me to have the tractor out front in the driveway with the garage closed and to not let the person inside.

So Rodney gave me a call this morning even earlier than I expected around 6:15.  I was in the middle of packing lunches.  He said he was at Randall Blvd and needed a clarification in directions which I gave to him.  I had to start a quick scramble where I threw on shorts and drove the Cub Cadet from the shed to the driveway.  Luckily I had more time than I expected when Rodney gave me a second call as he thought he had missed the turn.

Rodney was not what I expected him to be.  The combination of being identified as someone’s uncle and the sound of his voice made me think he was an older guy.  Instead he looked like he was in his early 30’s at most.  I could instantly tell he was a good guy and Ali had nothing to fear from this encounter.

He told me literally was going to be using the tractor this morning for his side landscaping he does in addition to working 3rd shift at a local Wal-mart.  I gave him a brief rundown of the controls before I started it up.  His inspection of the tractor was surprisingly brief, he basically was taking my word for it’s condition.  I included the original manuals so he has them for reference.

To get the tractor into the bed of his full size Ford pickup truck I had him back up in the grass in front of the house mound and used my loading ramps.  We got the front two wheels on the bed of the truck via me driving the tractor.  To get it all the way in I had to hop off and push the tractor with Rodney as the deck was getting hung up a bit.

I saw nothing else in the bed of the truck.  I asked Rodney how he was going to get the tractor off?  He said he might have to go buy a ramp set for himself.  Ugh, hope he has help.  Rodney handed me a wad of money which I quickly counted out before he hopped in his truck and was on his way.  I thanked him and wished him a safe trip back.

It’s funny how what I thought a transaction was going to turn out to be a pain in the ass instead turned out to be quite pleasant.  I hope my trusty Cub Cadet serves Rodney well.  It made me feel even better about the effort I made to replace that second pulley. It is never a bad thing to make $500 before 7am.

Man the Eagles have been going nuts in player transactions.  On top of the defensive back they traded for Kolb they also signed THE biggest name free agent out there Nnamdai Osumugha (quite the mouthful), an All-Pro d-back from the Raiders.

The didn’t stop there, signing Vince Young as Vick’s back up and also a couple high quality lineman.  I mean just take a look at their recent transaction list.  The player moves certainly have done a good job of spiking my excitement level for the upcoming season, despite the tiresome labor quagmire that preceded it.  On paper the Birds should be lighting it up.  Of course staying healthy is always the biggest obstacle each and every season.  Hopefully the Eagles can navigate the season without any star players getting sidelined in a major way.