Shown the door, shitty shake

So yesterday at the gym I saw the announcement that Joe Paterno  would retire at the end of this season.  I assumed this was something he agreed upon with the board of trustees of the university.  Well evidently that was not the case as this morning I saw the headline that Paterno was blown out last night and will never coach another PSU football game.

I am sorry to say I have to agree with the decision that was made.  Joe’s failure to escalate the situation in 2002 allowed Sandusky to go on for nearly another decade as a child molester.  As I mentioned yesterday there is a good chance that Joe knew of the situation prior to 2002.  It is also very likely that the actual number of young boys that were molested by Sandusky far exceeds the 8 or 9 that are listed in the grand jury indictment.

If I am theorizing on why Joe would not have gone further in making sure Sandusky was stopped I would imagine it was because he was afraid of how it would reflect back on him.  Of course in retrospect, some embarrassment back then would have been a far better trade off than the utter humiliation he now faces being blown out of the school he has been the figurehead for the last 50 years.

I saw the students are going nuts over the firing.  I can understand they are upset but maybe because they are too close to the situation.  If you step back and look at the circumstances there is no way you can justify Joe’s lack of action.

I applaud PSU for not being afraid to dole out punishment for this obscenity without hesitation, firing at least a half dozen high ranking university officials, including the president of the university himself.  Today there seems to be a lot of wrist slapping instead of ass kicking when it comes to paying the consequences for your actions.  Kudos to Penn State for knocking heads.

I had talked to Ali about working some smoothies into our diet.  Often Ali has been making us cut up fruit deserts that have blueberries, strawberries and greek yogurt.  With a smoothie I figured I could dump a couple scoops of protein in as well.  With Ali’s vegetarian diet her protein intake is not all that strong. Ali said she had hemp protein powder already in the pantry so I figured I could just use that.

So I pulled out our cheap blender that is probably around 15 years old.  I dumped in some ice, some frozen berries, and about 4 tablespoons of the hemp protein powder.  If you have never seen hemp protein powder it is not very appealing.  It doesn’t smell or look very appealing with it’s dark green color.

So I put the lid on the blender and hit the blend button.  After a second or so of hearing the ice cubes get moved around I then just heard the motor whizzing along but no blending going on.  I banged on the jar to try to get the process going repeatedly but had no luck.

I pulled the lid off and saw just a disgusting mess of hemp powder covered ice cubes.  I realized that this blender just was not designed to grind ice, the bottom of the blender is just too small and the cubes just get wedged above the blade.

So I dumped the mess in the blender and decided to try again, dumping in yogurt, some soy milk, some more berries and more hemp powder.  I was able to blend this concoction.  It still looked gross since there was still some green paste on the inside of the blender from the first attempt.

So after thorough blending I poured some of the mixture into a small glass and tasted it.  It wasn’t very good but I could deal with it.  Ali originally thought the smoothie could be her meal replacement but since she only got down a little more than half a small glass it wasn’t very filling.  I told her the key was to drink the smoothie like you would a shot, hard and fast.

I guess we will need to do some more planning for future smoothies.  One thing is for sure, it won’t include hemp powder.

I have off tomorrow for Veteran’s Day.  I already have my project for the day planned out, the dreaded tree trimming chore.  I normally will do this once a year, methodically circling the yard and trimming the overgrown cabbage palms.  Each year this gets more challenging as the trees get bigger and taller.

I like to do it this time of year for a couple reasons.  The cooler temps make the job a little more tolerable.  Plus doing it in November gets the trees in nice shape for whatever Christmas lights I decided to put out this year.

For a couple years I was trying to do the trimming almost exclusively with a long pole saw. Doing it this way worked but it was very frustrating trying to cut branches 20 feet overhead.  It burned my shoulders to a crisp. However last year I bought a long extension ladder and a better loppers so I could get right up in the canopy and cut with reckless abandon.

After the cut-a-thon it becomes a branch clean up marathon as I fill the back of the Tacoma 5 feet high with branches and dump them in the pit out back.  I figure the chore will take a good portion of the day.

I can’t expend all of my energy however because Ali and I are signed up to do a 5K Friday evening.  It will be my first 5K race (or any kind of race for that matter) since the sprint triathlon I did in June.

On Sunday I also have a 20k race to time.  I guess the Eagles play at some point, I think they play the Cardinals.  I am really down on the team after the Bears game.

I’m sure the SSR will get some attention as well.  Maybe I will try to install my modified air cleaner.

I saw Facebook is no longer going to offer the feature to import blogs into FB as I have done for at least 5 years.  I’m not sure why they would remove functionality but whatever.  Those of you that like seeing the blog via FB format instead are going to have to deal with just clicking the link that is posted via my Twitter feed.