Archives 2011

Last night when I was doing my post work min-workout I pushed my pull up set on the Iron Gym out to 18 reps.  I shot it on Justin.tv and sent it to Jeremy.

Later Jeremy outdid me by pulling off 20 pull ups of his own.  I have to admit I was impressed by the definition in Jeremy’s shirtless body.

I received my 3rd shipment of shelter tops from EZUP yesterday.  They messed up the first two attempts, first sending us a set with messed up graphics and then a second set with the wrong color combination.  I am happy to report that they finally got it right.

Somebody found my blog post regarding the impossible task of beating the Vulcan level in Tower Defense – Lost Earth.  He offered me tips, in a nutshell, more lasers.  I followed his game plan and had more success, making it all the way to wave 64 of 66 possible before succumbing to the incredible onslaught.

Ali’s return home will be short lived.  This afternoon she is heading up to Siesta Key to participate on a team for a sprint tri.  Ali is doing the swimming leg.  She’ll be back later Saturday though.

My neighbor has returned from a 3 week plus “vacation”.  Not hearing the chihuahuas during that period of time was fantastic.  Unfortunately it made the return of their screeching bark when I got home yesterday even more aggravating.

The one plus was the weeds in their dog run area were so high that it partially blocked their view. Unfortunately the neighbor was on the mower last night.  I made no effort to welcome her back in the least.  Yea I know it isn’t nice, but she used up all of her nice allocation with me months ago. I don’t believe in deficit nice spending.

I don’t have any spotlight project or event going on this weekend. No worries, I’ll find stuff to do.  Plus I have an 11 foot tall pipe structure to play around on.

So last night was my turn to attend the running club board meeting.  Ali and I try to switch off in attendance although with Ali’s new training schedule I have been the one more often than not that has been attending.  The board meeting was going along as most of them do when a discussion opened up about the July 4th race we put on.

The initial discussion was regarding the very small proceeds the race generated, despite the large, almost 900 registrant participation.  This was the end result of the very low registration fees charged for this race, relatively expensive T-shirt costs and the lack of having more than one sponsor for the event.

George, the race director for the race and someone whom I like and respect was making a point that in terms of effort put out by the club, this race isn’t much different than any other race. I had pretty kept quiet on the subject up to this point.  I had already had several arguments about the philosophy of the fee structure for this race in the past.  I had no real interest in opening it up again.  The only thing I did point out to George that this race is definitely more work intensive on our end.

Even though we have made progress in getting more and more people to sign up early and online, we still had close to 300 people that signed up for the race on paper, about half of that number on the day of the race.  It is a very HECTIC race from a timing perspective.

Out of nowhere George launched an unexpected assault on my statement.  He said that there were additional volunteers available to me on the day of the race to do data entry.  He said that I basically told one of these volunteers to “Get lost” and that I didn’t need their help.  He said these volunteers were specifically picked out to help with data entry and I basically blew them off.  He went further to imply I was a martyr where I complain about the workload of paper entries but then I refuse help.

Well just like that, the safety was removed and I exploded.  In between expletives I told George that it is not practical to try to train someone on the spot to do race data entry.  I told him that it was never communicated to me by himself or anyone else that there were two “special” volunteers assigned to help us.  I also said that I certainly didn’t dismiss this woman in the manner that George described.  When the woman first asked if we needed any help, we didn’t, the crowd hadn’t hit yet.  Then like a switch flipped, the mob descended and Ali and I hardly had time enough to breathe, let alone teach somebody anything.

As George tried to rebuke my statements it just continued to escalate my anger until I was at full scale “Hulk Smash” mode.  I was screaming.   I warned George he better back down on this, I was off the chain with anger.  The rest of the board members were like referees at a hockey fight,  just standing back, letting us go at it until somebody hit the ice.  I am sure it shocked most of them as nobody in that room has ever seen me get angry like that, very few people do.

In total, I would estimate the debacle went on for a good 10-15 minutes.  I was genuinely insulted that with all of the work that Ali and I do in so many areas to make the club as good as it is, George, of all people, would actually throw something like that out there.  The idea of just walking out and saying “Adios, I’ll be dropping the timing equipment off at your door” was very close to being reality.

Finally enough steam blew off that we were able to discuss actual ways to get people trained to help with doing entries on the day of the race.  I said it isn’t something that is best done on the day of a race where time is short and stress is high.  I told the board I have been working on documentation outlining the process which could be used in conjunction with a “class” where I would demonstrate the basic functions.

Everyone agreed on the necessity of this happening and we moved on.  After the blow up I cooled off as did George.  I think we both felt bad for our part in the scene.

The meeting in one fell swoop more or less added three races to our schedule.  It was ironic since in the past there had been many discussions about the need to keep our calendar at it’s current level.  That talk seemed to be ancient history last night.  I didn’t make much stink about it as I view it as Camaro money at this point so as long as I do not have something planned I am ok with timing a race.  However there are a whole truckload of additional human resources that are affected by this decision that may or may not be happy with being called upon even more so than they already are.

Ironically towards the end of the meeting when I covered my subjects the board green lighted my perspective purchase of some used timing equipment that I found on a race director forum.  The equipment will give us the ability to offer a chip start on our larger races as well as serving as a back up for our existing timing system and even potentially time two events on the same day.

I didn’t get out of the meeting till almost 8:30 which is crazy late.  On the way home I called Ali about the blow out.  She was surprised it got to that degree.  She knows what happens when rage overtakes me.

She had gotten back from her conference earlier that afternoon.  I welcomed her home with a hug and a kiss.  Before very long we were retiring to our bed which was once again whole with Ali, Sadie and I sharing bed with Nicki comfortably spread out next to it.

This morning when I took the dogs out around 6 am I was startled by the sound of two rapid fire booms to the southwest.  I felt them in addition to hearing them.  In a few seconds I recalled that the shuttle was supposed to be landing this morning.  Ironically with my 11 years of living in Florida I never have been outside to hear the sonic boom made by the reentry.  It is impressive.

As soon as the noise hit the neighborhood came to life with the sounds of barking dogs.  Our dogs, who were trotting around the back yard came sprinting back to the door.  Both of them were freaked out.

It was ironic to me that my first front row exposure to the shuttle sonic boom would also be the last one I ever heard.

So last night I got the opportunity to do a more extensive test of my newly constructed high bar.  Even though I did a quick pull up test the evening before I wanted to test it out with my rings since that was the primary reason I made it.

Getting the rings attached to the bar wasn’t very difficult, I just threw the buckle end of the strap over the bar and threaded it with the ring attached.  In all of my testing the structure felt just fine.  I discovered that just climbing up to the high bar could be a workout in itself, especially if it is done without leg assistance.  A couple people suggested attaching a climbing rope to the structure as well.

I was happy that my testing went well.  I was worried with the structure being as tall as it is that swaying could be problem.  It seems just fine.

Last night I prepared my most involved dinner since Ali has been away. Two Gorton’s fish pieces and baked beans.  This meal involved me microwaving TWO items instead of just one.  It was quite tasty.

Ali returns home today so hopefully my dinner quality will improve.

So when I got home last night the first thing I did when I let the dogs out was head over to my high bar.  In my work clothes I grabbed onto the vertical section and climbed up to bar to give it a test.  Even though I was only 11 feet in the air it felt much higher since from that vantage point I am able to see much further over the mostly flat terrain.  I did a few pull ups, trying to jerk at the bottom of the movement to put some strain on the structure.  As I glanced over at the screwed in flange I didn’t see any movement or give which was reassuring.

My plan was to change into my gym clothes and come back out with the rings to do some more thorough testing.  Unfortunately just as I was throwing the first strap over the bar a storm blew in that aborted the session.  I am hoping tonight I will be able to do the official groundbreaking of the equipment.

So I was forced to do my mini-workout indoors as the rain came down.  At the end of it I did some more handstand work.  I thought I would capture it with my Justin.tv app on the Iphone.  I have had a problem with the app for several months.  Anytime I tried to shoot video with the dumb thing the session would die right around the 9 second mark.

Well once again last night the problem happened.  I shot another quick video that also got cut off, bitching about how shitty the app is. The app problems in addition to the sites new policy of injecting 30 second ads before you are allowed to view any content had soured me somewhat on it’s value.

Well I did a quick look up and found that since the 4.3 Iphone update there had been an issue with the app.  For some reason it took justin.tv 3 or 4 months to resolve it.  I downloaded the latest version and I was again able to record normally.

I decided to again video my current handstand progression.  The last time I shot video of my handstands on New Years Eve, it was just a series silly looking back flops that hurt.  Although my new video is far from stellar, it at least shows I am now at the training wheel stage.  I can hold the position briefly and if I start to tip over I can exit without a back flop. I at least feel like I know how to do it, now it’s just practice, practice, practice.

Remember months ago when the last round of federal budget panic set in?  Everyone was freaking out and in the end Obama wound up giving in more or less to the Republican wishes as part of the ineffective “olive branch” strategy he was utilizing as a reaction to the election results.

When that stop gap measure was approved it was with Obama indicating a desire to not repeat this circus in a few months when the stop gap expired and instead have everything in place for a long term plan.  Well of course, this hasn’t happened.

Instead for the past few weeks the headlines have been filled with more utter bullshit.  The Republicans have all sorts of cost cutting proposals, proposals that mostly attack programs utilized by American poor and middle class while leaving the coffers of their ultra-rich backers unscathed.  The most noticeable targets are Medicare and Social Security.

When I heard that Obama was actually open to more appeasement of the republicans with these programs I was pretty outraged.  This has got to stop.  From my distant vantage point it seems like these negotiations go like this.

Boner/Cantor – ok we want to balance the budget by cutting all of these social “entitlement” programs.  My rich constituents don’t need any help from the federal government so why should anyone else?

Obama – I want to address the tremendous wealth disparity that exists in this country.  It is crippling the economy.   Companies are posting record profits while middle America flounders in squalor. Unemployment is still sky high, wages are flat.  It’s time to let the Bush tax breaks for the super rich expire.  For cripes sake, in 1980 the highest tax rate was 70%, now the majority of wealth for the uber rich is taxed at the 15% capital gains rate.  This is fuzzy math that makes no sense.  I am sick and tired of you assholes masquerading as budget balancers when in reality all you are doing is preotecting the giant teet you suckle off of.

Boner/Cantor – no new taxes

Obama – ok, fine.

The latest dog and pony show is for the tea party cult in the House to put forth a budget that they know has no chance of passing the Senate or avoiding a presidential veto.   It is all just posturing so they can say to the millions of lightly informed sheep in the country, “Look, we tried to pass a budget but they won’t let us”

I find it amazing that when Boner/Cantor say “we won’t support any budget that raises taxes on the American people!” people can’t see how they are being manipulated.  If they would fully qualify the statement and say something like “We won’t support any budget that takes one penny from the bulging bank accounts of the huge corporations that pay the lobbyists to buy my vote.  Or to keep it simple, I will not vote for a budget that increases taxes on the wealthy”

Don’t get me wrong, I know there is rampant abuse of government entitlement programs. Nothing sickens me more than someone that looks at these programs as their “job”.  There is a huge need to do a better job of filtering out these fraudulent freeloaders that are quite capable of working but choose not to because it is more convenient to sit home, get fat and collect checks.

But I am also infuriated that citizens still actually believe the “trickle down” theory still applies in today’s world.  You know the way that works is if the rich are doing well, the rest of us do well as they drop breadcrumbs to the floor.  Well guess what, the rich are doing GREAT and the floor is crumbless and has been for along time.  It doesn’t work.  The key to long term economic prosperity is a strong middle class.  The policies of the last decade have done everything possible to cut that group of individuals off at the knees.

Yesterday’s post was just one example of that policy with our new dumb governor. Tax state workers to provide corporate tax breaks…

The madness has to end, the cycle has to be broken.  In this showdown, neither side can afford to blink and unfortunately I think the end result of it will just be more “fail”.

Ali was very excited that on Saturday morning she didn’t have to get up early.  It was the first time in quite awhile that she didn’t have to get up early to either work, run or swim.  I let her stay in bed while I started on chores.  Knowing Ali was going to be leaving Saturday afternoon made me want to get as much done as early as I could.  I even treated Ali to breakfast in bed during a break in the action.

Ali did come out later and run the tractor while I weed whacked the property which was nice.  It was one less thing I would have had to do.

Once Ali left my work continued but first I wanted to quickly buzz my hair.  I pulled the rugs and shelf out of the guest bathroom and did the deed in front of the mirror.  Working the clippers in this way was much easier than some of my past efforts trying to do the same thing while looking at the viewfinder of a camcorder.  I did a pretty solid job if I do say so myself.

I then loaded the girls up in the van to go get some more small project supplies.  I needed new brackets for the collapsed garage shelf and some gutter sealer.

The shelf that collapsed was 6 feet long.  It originally only had three supports.  This time I went with the “2 foot rule”, installing a total of 4 brackets to support the shelf.  It now should be able to hold more weight although the pool chemicals were already relocated to a new permanent home on the industrial strength wire shelf unit.

I then pulled out the ladder and headed up onto the roof with my two tubes of gutter sealer.  My plan was to use it to seal up the new super screws that were leaking instead of reinstalling the rusty original screws.  I had plenty of sealer left so I headed around the roofline and gooped up other seams in the gutter that I knew had leaking problems.  I had a close call when I momentarily felt my balance tip towards the ground below when I was getting up from the highly pitched roof angle.  Luckily I was able to reverse my direction before it was too late.

My work on Saturday was pretty relentless, in addition to the projects described I attended to various indoor duties like floor sweeping, counter cleaning, laundry and dishes.  I wanted my Sunday to be pretty clear of “must do’s”

I decided even though Ali was not around it shouldn’t stop me from doing a brick on Sunday.  I drove down to the water park and did a bike/run/swim.  I pulled my best average pace ever for the Livingston Road ride, keeping an average pace of 19 mph even following Randall’s rules of timing where you don’t stop the GPS unless the bike stops moving.

It was hot and humid as hell so I decided to keep my run short, the same 2 miles that I did the week before.  I picked up the pace though, knocking over a minute off the time it took me to run the course last week.  My 1200 meter swim was pretty decent too. I was finished up a little after 11 and wasn’t feeling starved so I decided to forgo the normal pizza/fries lunch and instead just eat a healthier lunch when I got home.

You may recall that last week I had to abandon my high bar project because of high ground water levels.  I had resigned myself that short of a miraculous dry spell, the project was going to be postponed until the fall.  Well believe it or not, we went through the entire week with minimal rain.

I thought I would head out with the post hole digger and dig a new exploratory hole to see how deep I could go. I was pretty pumped when I got three feet deep before the hole started getting wet.  Now with my original 15 foot pipe section three feet would not be deep enough, but I thought that if I shortened the section by a foot or so I should be ok.

So I removed the three foot section of pipe and took the girls with to Lowes to exchange it for hopefully a 2 footer.  Lowes didn’t have any 2 foot sections in stock so I opted for an 18 inch section and a 4 inch section.  It turned out I just needed the 18 incher.  While I was there I also bought the biggest slip joint pliers they had to allow me to really crank the pipe tightly into the couplers.

On the way to Lowes I pass a Chrysler dealer.  Last week when I went there I saw they had a used Inferno Orange Camaro in the front of the lot.  Well I saw the car was still there this week so I parked quickly to take a peek, maybe there was deal to be had?

As I walked towards the Camaro I passed by a SRT Challenger.  I had to stop and admire it, it is a damn good looking car.  They really did a nice job of catching the aura of the original 70’s supercar.  The good looks come at a massive price, this thing stickered at $49k and change.

The Camaro only had 7,000 miles on it but it was missing a couple things that I would want like a 6 speed, the 2SS techno goodies and a top that folds down.  The price seemed a bit high for a 2010 model even with the low mileage, they wanted almost $32k for it.

So when I got home I immediately set to work on completing the high bar project.  I put the 18 inch and 4 inch section on the vertical part of the project and stuck it in the hole to see how close it was in height to the pressure treated mounting pad on the shed.  It was too high.  It looked like if I removed the 4 inch section it would be just about perfect so that is what I did.

I attached the elbow and horizontal section to the bar and again raised it into place.  Trying to manipulate the fully assembled pipe was much more challenging.  I was excited that it lined up almost perfectly right off the bat.

I took out my level and made sure both my vertical and horizontal spans were as close to level as possible.  I had to sink the pipe just a little further.  I did so by grabbing on and using my body weight as an anchor to pull it down into the wet sand just a bit further.

I made several trips up and down the ladder making sure everything was aligned.  I kicked a small amount of sand into the hole to stabilize the pole position a bit before climbing on the ladder again to screw the flange in place.  I drilled pilot holes in the wood to minimize the potential for it splitting later before driving four 3″ wood screws into the flange to secure the high point of the bar.

The skies had been getting progressively more menacing as time was passing.  By the time I was ready to cement in the base of the bar there were dark clouds all around me with rumbling of thunder.  Well despite working on what was essentially an 11 foot tall lightning rod, I was not going to abort the project at this point.

I quickly ripped open an 80 and 50 pound bag of concrete and back filled the hole, alternating between filling the hole with water, pouring some cement, adding more water, etc… until the hole was filled.   As I was finishing up the storm was basically right at our doorstep.  As I was putting the tools away the first few drops of rain started to fall, followed by a downpour.  I thought it was quite ironic that the summer rain waited until just after I finished to let loose.

I am curious how sturdy this new bar will be.  By it’s design it is definitely not meant to be swung back and forth on violently.  However it should be fine for supporting elevated up and down pulling movements.  I will throw my rings up on it this week to see how it holds up.  Compared to my pull up bar station, construction of the high bar was simple.  As a bonus I don’t have to worry about the wood warping which has already started on both the pull up station and the parallel bars.

Finished high bar

For those of you looking for the materials used in this project they are as follows:

(All pipe 1.25″ INNER diameter galvanized)
Two 6 foot sections
One 18 inch section
One 5 foot section (horizontal span)
One threaded flange
Two couplers
One 90 degree elbow
One piece of pressure treated 2″x6″
High quality 3″ deck screws
130 pounds of high strength cement

I will offer up a performance report of the new high bar as soon as I get a chance to hang up there. If you would like to see all of the pictures I took for the project you can see them here.

From High bar construction, posted by Shawn Duffey on 7/11/2011 (10 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher 2

The last thing on my “must do” list for the weekend was to pay the bills, something I NEVER do anymore.

For the first 5 or 6 years of our marriage I was the bill payer.  I brought an organized bill paying / budget system into the marriage that I actually picked up from my ex-mother in law of all people.  At some point I turned this responsibility over to Ali, I believe it was an effort to spread out household duties more evenly.

Ali has fine tuned and tweaked the process since she took over but it still follows the same general format we always did so I didn’t have to much trouble grabbing the financial reins once again.  Doing the bills put a big ugly spotlight on the end result of Rick Scott’s assault on the state employees.

You see this was the first paycheck of mine that reflected the new pension changes.  As a result I now have approximately $200 less coming in each and every month.  When you team this up with my salary being stagnant for three years and counting it is a rather large and bitter pill to follow.

I posted this on the Facebook page for a group that has been reporting on all of the shenanigans.

Well the new pension “reform” just started hit this last pay period. Anyone want to chime in how much less they are now taking home? I am out at least a couple weeks of groceries each month. Thanks Rick, so glad you targeted state workers that have in many cases gone without a raise for half a decade as a logical source to “tax” to fix a pension system that was not broken.

The idea of getting my pay cut to meet his political agenda has always angered me greatly.  Now that the end result of that agenda is actually grabbing dollars from my pocket that anger is amplified.

Ali returns Wednesday afternoon, leaving me to steer the ship alone for a couple more days.  The weekend went well I expect smooth sailing until she returns.

For a long time I have had a small post work routine I do at the house which involves crunches, push ups, pull ups and wall hand stand holds.  I always do the routine inside.  Last night I decided to take the routine outside and do it on/around my outdoor exercise equipment, I need to use it more anyway.

While I was out there I decided to do some extra hand stand practice.  I saw a video of a guy earlier in the day that motivated me to work seriously at it.  Like I said I have been working the wall handstand holds for shoulder endurance but I haven’t been doing much to work on my balance on my hands.

In the past my work on stand alone handstands typically would wind up with a series of painful back flops as I would tip too far forward.  It would only take a few of those crashes to discourage me before I would bag it.

I figured practicing outside on the grass could at least somewhat cushion the impact if I did more inadvertent back flops.  My first few attempts didn’t go too well.  I kept tipping over but I managed to fall sideways instead of on my back at least.  The way it is supposed to work, if you start tipping over you should be able to do a hand pirouette out of the fall to avoid the awkward back flop I am so good at.

Then a light bulb went on.  Even though I knew that finger tip pressure was supposed to be used to resist tipping over I realized I wasn’t doing it.  I tried a few more attempts where as soon as I got upright I forcibly pushed down with my fingertips to resist tipping.

I still found myself tipping but the fingertip pressure allowed me to spin out of it gracefully for the first time ever.  Then finally I actually held a handstand, only for a few seconds, but I held it.  It was pretty cool.

One of my body weight exercise buddies from Australia sent me a nice routine tailored specifically for handstand training.  I am going to really try to focus on it.  I taught myself to juggle, there is no reason I can’t do the same thing with handstands.

Shortly after Ali got home we were in the kitchen talking when we heard a very loud crash sound from the garage.  Oh shit, this can not be good. We both rushed out to see what happened.

I was shocked when I opened the door and saw the shelf on the near wall had collapsed.  On the floor I saw a puddle of bubbling yellow liquid which I quickly realized was the muriatic acid.  This shelf held pool supplies including the acid, chlorine tablets and three full jugs of liquid chlorine.  Evidently I either underestimated the weight of these supplies or overestimated the strength of the shelf I had them on.

Within a fraction of a second of visually identifying what happened I was hit with the fumes from the acid.  It was awful and instantly choked me as I breathed it in.  I told Ali to hit the button to open the garage door and get back inside.  The fumes felt like the variety that would actually kill you if you were unable to escape them.

Once the door was open I pulled the box of tent covers out of the puddle of acid, I had visions of the acid quickly destroying them.  The other stuff  in the bubbling acid was less crucial like the garage broom and some other small items that were on the shelf.  I noticed that one of the chlorine jugs that fell was also leaking from a small crack after the fall.  Liquid chlorine is pretty dangerous on it’s own but it was the least of my concerns.

I ran to pull the hose over while Ali backed the Camry out of the garage that was parked no more than 4 feet away from the shelf.  It is a MIRACLE that the acid did not hit the car, that would have been awful.  I pulled the hose over and started to blast bubbling acid out of the garage.  The fumes were still awful, even trying to breathe through my shirt didn’t help.

The acid had spilled right in the front corner of the garage, again a stroke of luck with it’s location.  It was collecting in that corner and spilling out into the driveway.  I blasted the area with the hose repeatedly until I was sure the acid was washed away.  Even though the acid was now gone, it’s effects were clearly visible.

As the acid flowed out of the garage it came in contact with the outer wall of the house.  It totally stripped the Rhino Shield from the wall, leaving a stripe of the white primer coat exposed.  The floor of the garage was altered forever as well.  In addition to the color difference you see in the picture, the area now is filled with holes and pits where the acid was literally eating the concrete. Man don’t screw around with muriatic acid, it will f you up.

So my new plan is to house all pool chemicals on the ultra-strong industrial wire shelves on the back wall of the garage.  I will make room for the stuff by relocating the gas cans to the small shed.  I really shouldn’t store gas in the main home structure anyway.

When I examined the shelf collapse remnants I found the supports that went wall to shelf were bent badly.  I estimate there was probably close to a 100 pounds on 6 foot shelf.  I will put another shelf in the same spot although I will be utilizing the heavier grade hardware this time.

After the incident Ali and I said repeatedly how lucky we were that it wasn’t worse.  If that acid hit the Camry it would have destroyed whatever paint it touched, possibly even eating into the metal.  I told her to imagine if we had the Camaro already and two cars were in the garage, it would have been ever worse.

Ali asked if the shelves on the other side of the garage were sturdy, fearing a another incident.  I assured her there would be no repeat incident.  They are screwed into cinderblock and I used expensive, heavy grade brackets because I knew the items on those shelves would be perched precariously over the Camaro eventually.

Ali leaves tomorrow for a few days for a dietetic conference.  I will keep myself busy as always.  I have a list of stuff in my head that is more than long enough.  I think it is time for my summer buzz cut.

Maybe I’ll see if the ground water level around my proposed high bar area has receded.

Ali asked me if I could run with her after work at the water park.  Since my 2 mile test run on Sunday went alright I told her I would go.  Ali really hates to run alone.

Today her training plan called for her to run for 40 minutes and part of the run was supposed to be 20 second fast cadence runs on a hill.  There is a bridge outside the park which would make do as her hill.

Of course a July late afternoon in Florida is very warm and humid, far from the best time of day to be out there.  It didn’t take long until I started minding the heat.  We ran the outer 2 mile loop around the park and then headed out onto the road toward the bridge.  Once we got there I stopped and acted as Ali’s timer, calling out 20 second intervals where she would change direction and run/up the hill using short choppy strides. She had a total of 8 intervals to do. After the intervals we ran back to the vehicles, the total run distance was 4 miles.

Again my knee held up fine, even after doing legs at the gym Wednesday that included a DEEP squat routine.  I was a sweaty mess.  Luckily after toweling off I had a dry third t-shirt in my gym bag to put on.

I received my made in China, generic 250 gig hdd for my new Xbox the other day.  I slapped it in and it worked just fine.  It was close to half the price of what I would have paid for the official Microsoft version.

Ali is going to be going out of town for a few days for a conference starting Saturday.  I am already in the planning stages for my various activities.

Having taken an extra two days of vacation to my extend my weekend is a blessing and curse.  Sure it is nice to have the extra time off, unfortunately I have plenty of things in my mental wheelbarrow of things to be addressed.

I started off my weekend Saturday morning with a trip to Home Depot for supplies.  I grabbed some river rock to fill in a few areas in the border around the house, a bag of rubber mulch to put around the pygmy palm in the dog area, a white eggplant, a roll of weed block, a new outdoor ceiling fan and two 10 foot sections of 1 1/4″ galvanized pipe.

The fan was to replace the unit on the lanai that had it’s fan motor die.  Mom requested I fix it before she dog sits for a week.  She has this weird thing where she likes having a fan on outdoors.

The pipe was for an impromptu addition to my outdoor exercise equipment that came into my head a couple days prior, a high bar.  Now you say that I already have an 8 foot high pull bar? Yes but I want a HIGH bar that can be used as a mounting point for my gymnast rings.  Trying to do ring work on an 8 foot bar has some limitations.  The bar I had planned would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 1/2 to 11 feet high.

I planned on utilizing the peak of the large shed as one anchor point for the bar.  I would be attaching the pipe in an upside down L configuration which would then be buried 4 feet into the ground and set in concrete.  It seemed like a solid plan.

Once I got home I started on various items.  Among them was my first lanai door rescreen.  The corner of the bottom panel had a tear in it from Sadie shoving her snout in that area in her anticipation of being let outside.  I put in a fresh piece of super screen that should hold up to future nose pressure.

I also did the ceiling fan swap which took longer than I expected.  I bought the exact same model as I had before.  I noticed on the box that the motor had a lifetime warranty, meaning technically the old fan should be covered.  But of course, who the F is going to take down a 3 year old dirty fan, throw it in a box and ship it back to them?

The most annoying part of the fan is getting all the wires connected.  I have a secondary electrical line tapped into the fan that powers the flood lights outside.  Trying to get all the wires twisted together securely was a PIA.  When I got the fan in place I hit the circuit breaker and was underwhelmed.  The fan worked but now the lights did not! WTF?

After some troubleshooting I discovered that I had the fan wire attached to the white instead of the black wire.  After reversing the wires I was happy to see the fan was now operating properly.  I had to leave all of my installation by product and the old fan laying on the ground because we had to get ready to go to our friend’s house for dinner.

We had not seen Rick and Michael for a long time, hell it may be close to a year.  They live relatively close to us in a beautiful courtyard style home.  The only bad part of it is that the house is in the estates where you are always rolling the dice with what sort of neighbors you will have.

When Rick lived next door to us it was fantastic, it was so nice having a friendly, helpful neighbor that took pristine care of their property.  Now I have had to endure watching the property decay into a ratty looking mess under the new owner’s care.

Rick has a similar problem at his new house where he is next door to people that have way too many animals in too small of a space.  Just by looking at the property I would think they could be related to my trashy neighbor.  In addition to barking dogs they have horses in a tiny little area.  Rick told us some wonderful stories of the horses roaming loose and using his yard as a dumping ground for their massive bowel movements.

Michael is the ultimate host.  He is constantly on the move making sure your drink and plate is full.  We brought our dogs with so they could interact with Zoe, Rick and Michael’s Jack Russell.  Zoe was Nicki’s first ever dog friend when she lived next door.  Zoe is getting up there in years so after our initial greeting she spent much of the evening sleeping in her dog bed.

Sadie had no problem making herself right at home, pulling out Zoe’s toys one by one and playing with them.  Before we left I think I picked up about 7 or 8 of them.

Like I said, their home is beautiful.  It literally looks like a home from a magazine.  Rick made it even better with a new cabinet/counter top addition he installed a few weeks ago.  He has always been very handy.  He did some high quality renovations on his old house next door that impressed me as well.

Ali and I had a nice evening there although we both piled into the van feeling like pigs from all of the alcohol and food.  We were both spent since we both were up since 4:45 in the morning.  Ali at least got a nap in although she did put in a hellaciously long 13 mile training run that morning. Who could blame her?

Sunday morning I was anxious to burn off the excessive social calories from the night before.  We planned to head to the water park.  I told Ali I would bike there and she could meet me at the park.  I planned to do a short run once I got there so she could ride her bike around while I did that.

I really pushed the pace on the ride. I also made sure to pause the GPS as I was coasting to a stop at red lights.  The end result was my best overall pace ever for a ride of measurable distance, 19.6 mph.  I was quite pleased maintaining that for over 15.5 miles.

I then did a short 2 mile run although it felt longer.  I had not run in close to a month due to Rumble related knee pain.  I wanted to keep the run short so I could test out the knee without putting undue stress on it.  I ran the two miles at a high 8 minute mile pace which was good enough for me.  The better news was the knee felt ok during it.

I finished off the brick with 1600 meters in the pool.  Ali has really gotten faster with her swimming since starting her training with the T2 group.  I can barely swim faster than her now where as in the past I could lap her pretty easily.  I guess those 5:30 am swims are paying off.

After eating our traditional pizza and fries water park lunch we headed back home.  Now most Sundays we are pretty pooped from our workout and we are able to relax the rest of the day.  Well my Saturday was very busy but not busy doing normal house chores so there was still a lot to do.

For the most part I left most of the chores to Ali while I started on what became a MASSIVE pressure washing project.  You name it, I pressure washed it.  I pressure washed so much that it actually carried over into a second day of pressure washing.  Over the weekend I pressure washed the bird cage, patio stones, landscape timbers, the inside of the pool cage, the outside of the pool cage, both sheds and parts of my body.  It was brutal.

The only positive I could come up with from all this washing was I was soaked as a result which was actually a good thing since it was so hot and humid.  By the time I finished I was just spent beyond spent.  Pressure  washing  is such a miserable house maintenance chore but very necessary due to the mildew and scuzz that grows on objects from the ultra-damp Florida summer conditions.

On Monday morning after spending a couple hours pressure washing the shed I had a bunch of errands to run.  The first thing I did was return the two 10 foot sections of pipe to Home Depot.  After I bought them on Saturday I realized I was going to have an issue.  I basically needed one of the 10 foot sections cut and threaded so I could connect the pipe together with couplers and an elbow.  Home Depot does not cut or thread pipe anymore.

After doing some investigation regarding the viability of threading pipe yourself (not viable at all), I discovered that Lowes will cut and thread pipe if you buy it there.  Great, I’ll just get the 10 foot pipe at Lowes and have them do cutting and threading.

So after returning the pipe to Home Depot I head into Lowes and quickly find their galvanized pipe section.  I see various sizes and lengths but the longest length was just 6 feet.  Surely the 10 footers had to be hiding somewhere?  I checked all of the surrounding aisles, no 10 foot sections. Damn it.

So now I had to reevaluate.  Like I said, Lowes had a number of different lengths available where as all Home Depot had were 10 footers.  I grabbed two 6 foot sections, a 5 foot section and a 3 footer.  My upside down “L” would have 15 feet of  height ( 4 feet buried and cemented in the ground) and 5 feet of width  that will extend out from the shed peak.

Ideally I would have rather had the 10 foot section for the tall part as it would be one less joint to deal with but this was going to have to do.  The ironic thing was the shorter lengths meant I didn’t have to get any of the pipe cut or threaded.  One more bonus, the pipe at Lowes did not have MADE IN CHINA stamped on it.  Possibly it is domestically made? It was more expensive than what I got at HD so there is a good chance it was made somewhere other than shithole China.

I had a number of other stops that were made along the way.  The girls loved the extended ride in the van.  In total we were out for over two hours.

So when we got back it was getting later in the afternoon but I thought I would start construction of the high bar anyway.  The first thing I did was take a small portion of pressure treated 2″x6″ and mount it to the top of the shed.  This wood is what I would attach the flange to that was to be screwed into the pipe.

I predrilled the holes in the wood to make attachment easier.  I still had issues using the conventional 3.5″ phillip head screws I had brought out.  While standing high on the ladder I was unable to get the necessary pressure on the screw to keep it from stripping out the head.  I wound up using my more expensive but shorter (3″) screws that came with a custom star bit that is very resistant to stripping.

Once I got the wood attached I assembled my pipe sections together to create a very large and heavy L.  I used just grip power to tighten the pipes into the couplers at first and then grabbed my slip joint pliers to try to tighten them further.  The one pliers was a bit small for the job though so it didn’t help all that much.

I then drug the width portion of the L to the center point of the shed so I could determine where I needed to dig my approximately 4 foot deep hole.  After standing back and eyeballing I was centered on the wood, (a plum line would have been better) I started digging with the post hole digger.

When I hit about two feet of depth I started pulling out very wet sand.  When I plopped the sand on the ground it almost looked like I was building a haphazard sand castle.  As I continued the sand turned into pure slop and the hole began filling with water. Damn it.

I hadn’t give any consideration to the difficulty in digging a 4 foot dry hole during Florida wet season.  I quickly realized I was pretty much f’d unless we would get a dry spell of at least a week or so which would allow the ground water level to drop.  The likelihood of this happening before October is not good.

I was very discouraged by my sloppy hole.  Later on Tuesday I took the L apart and stored the pipe in the shed for it’s eventual installation whenever that may be.

On Monday, until the high bar installation cancellation I was feeling pretty good about things.  I had gotten a lot of stuff accomplished. On Tuesday I felt the opposite.

I woke up super early when Ali was getting up to go swim.  I thought I would get some quality WoW time in since scheduled Tuesday maintenance didn’t start until  8 AM.  I was annoyed to see that I picked a Tuesday when Blizzard decided to start their server maintenance at 4AM so no WoW.

I instead turned my attention to the great Iphone game I found last week Tower Defense: Lost Earth.  I am now deep into the maps with only 4 or 5 yet to clear.  I had been stuck on a level called “Vulcan”.  Well after at least 20 attempts I am still stuck on this level.  It is just impossibly hard, even on the default “EASY” level.  There are 66 waves of bad guys.  I think the farthest I made it was wave 62.  The screen is literally just jammed with enemy units.  It seems no matter how many or how powerful my towers are I am unable to survive the onslaught.

Being stuck on this level for so long has revealed one flaw in the game, no intermediate saves.  With levels as big as Vulcan it would be a good thing to be able to save your progress mid-wave so if you die, you don’t have to start back at the very beginning.  Unfortunately no such mechanic exists so each time I failed I had to start back at damn wave 1.  I STILL have not gotten past this level and to be honest I am not quite sure what strategy to use to do so at this point.

Once the sun came up I thought I would do some work on the super screw pool cage replacement project.  I have had my bag of screws sitting around for a couple months unused.  This project immediately lead to frustration.  The bag of screws I bought were 1 inch #10 screws.  Well a pool cage is held together by a number of different size screws.  The screws I bought only fit in a few spots.

So I walked around the cage looking for rusty screw heads that were the same size as what I had.  One of the spots that appeared to have similar screws were the junction points in the pool cage gutter.  These intersections had a number of screws in them, 10-12 per intersection.

Some of the screws were rusty so I decided I would super screw all of them.  As I removed the old screws the hole would immediately start draining water from the gutters.  As I inserted the super screw replacement I noticed that I still was getting some dripping.  I figured it was temporary until I had all the screws replaced.  Well it never stopped.  Now both of these joints have a steady drip of gutter water coming down.  I was annoyed.  I now have plans to reinstall the old rusty screws that don’t leak.

In total I might have replaced 30-35 screws.  Only 500 or so to go. Ugh.

The next item was to finish up the mowing.  Ali had mowed the front of the property and a good portion of the back half of the fenced area.  The rest of the grass was littered with items from the pool deck so she couldn’t do it.  I spent probably close to 90 minutes finishing up the work.  It was good to get the back mowed since once we develop full time standing water the job becomes nearly impossible.

I also installed a new pest guard over the dryer vent.  The piece of plastic grid that was jammed into the vent previously was constantly getting clogged.  The new guard mounts on top of the vent and is much larger.  Hopefully it offers adequate protection while having to be cleaned much less often.

Besides a quick Dunkin Donuts coffee run with the dogs I spent the rest of my last day off at home and spent a good portion of it just screwing around either playing WoW or Tower Defense.

Late in the day I decided to make an attempt at this month’s Bar-barian challenge, a 75 second routine on the parallel bars.  I had put off doing this because I knew I would struggle with it.  Despite building my own parallel bars a few months ago, I am far from adept to doing much of anything on them besides dips and pull ups.  My attempts were comically bad, no one will ever confuse me with Bart Connor.

So I ended my 4 days off feeling like I accomplished some things but that so many other things yet needed to be done, argh.

I received a very annoying email from Netflix last night announcing yet another price increase.  Netflix just increased their prices 8 months ago.  Well this isn’t a price increase, this is bending you over.  In a nutshell they are breaking their DVD and streaming parts of the business apart.  If you want one or the other you pay $8.  If you want both streaming and the option for DVD’s like most Netflix people do, they are going to essentially DOUBLE your rate to $16 a month.  That my friends is f’ing ridiculous.

No, an additional $8 a month isn’t going to break my back but the concept of a company doubling their rate in one fell swoop really pisses me off.  It was classic bait and switch.  Pull in hordes of people by offering a good value and then pull the rug out from under them once they are hooked in.

Now I am not naive, I know what is driving this, streaming rights cost.  A number of Netflix streaming agreements are due to expire in the not so distant future.  Supposedly renewing these deals is going to cost a TON more as there is much more demand for streaming content from multiple providers (Hulu, Amazon, Red Box, etc…)  Evidently Netflix is trying to soften that blow by jacking the rates on their subscribers astronomically.

My preference would be to just do everything streaming.  The issue is Netlfix has limited streaming content, in fact they have been LOSING streaming content from the site, things like Dexter can no longer be streamed.  The only way you can get to see a lot of titles is via old shitty DVD’s.  Netflix knows this of course and is counting on it.

It will be interesting to see if this strategy blows up in their face in the form of a mass exodus of angry customers that don’t enjoy getting f’d.  I know the initial customer reaction to the news has been VERY negative.

I picked up myself a tube of Lotrimin AF today.  I have self diagnosed myself with a case of recurring jock itch that has been coming and going for awhile.  For whatever reason I hadn’t paid much attention to it.  Once in a while I would get itchy down there and then it would go away the next day.

Well last night I saw a defined rash on the top of my inner thigh which motivated the purchase.  It was a bit embarrassing as I pushed the box over the counter at Walgreen’s to the attractive female clerk.  The artwork on the box shows a glowing crotch image on the front to illustrate the area it is used for.  I quickly paid for it without making eye contact.

I read yesterday a fan at a Ranger’s game died when he leaned far over a railing in the outfield reaching for a ball and subsequently fell onto concrete 20 feet below.  Typically a 20 foot fall is not going to kill you unless you happen to land at a very bad angle which he must have.

Today I saw a press conference with Nolan Ryan of all people.  Evidently he is now in management for the Rangers.  Let me quickly say that he looks AWFUL.  He is fat, bald and looks like he is 85 (he is 64).  Anyway the Rangers said they were FULLY INVESTIGATING the incident.

I don’t really understand what there is to investigate.  The guy took a chance by leaning much further than he safely should have in his zest to obtain a baseball, it was dumb.  Unfortunately in this case his poor judgement killed him.  I can only hope this does not cause some overblown reaction where they are going to put up 8 foot plexiglass walls or perhaps nets to catch those with poor balance, you know like they do at the Chinese sweat shops to discourage suicide attempts?

You can’t protect against stupidity.  Stupidity is a natural event that in some cases leads to the death of the individual practicing the stupid behavior.  I feel similar about other laws in place that try to police against stupidity like seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws.  Hey if you take your safety so lightly that you don’t want to wear a seat belt or a helmet that is just fine with me.  Just don’t expect me to have huge remorse when that decision costs you dearly at some future date and time. I am more interested in laws that protect me if your stupid behavior affects others.

I neglected to give a shout out to my bud Jeremy, the inspiration for my world famous Jmo cartoon series, on his official commissioning into the US Naval Reserve.  To be inspired enough to want to serve in the military, even on a part time basis, at this point in his life is worthy of respect and admiration.  Hat’s off to him.

So yesterday the headline hits that in an effort to address the debt ceiling issue that will strike in August, Obama hinted he would be open to talking about cutting things like social security benefits.  This was like blood in the water.  I quickly received emails from Moveon.org and DCCC denouncing the idea.  I quickly added my name to the virtual petition against it.

Ever since the last election where the Republicans regained control of the house through their tireless smear and disinformation efforts Obama has been trying to “compromise” on legislative differences to appease those on the right.  I guess he was trying to show he is willing to attempt to bridge the political chasm between the two parties.  Well I have a simple message for him, knock it the f off.

First Obama caved on letting the Bush tax breaks for the rich expire as scheduled.  It was due to the SCREAMING by Republicans that Obama was RAISING taxes on the American people.  In reality he would have been simply letting what was originally pitched as a short term fix for the post 9/11 downturn expire as they should have. The expiration was restoring the tax rate to the Clinton level era (very prosperous by anyone’s account)  on the American RICH people ($250,000 or more annual income) whom a tax increase would be a small annoyance but far from catastrophic to their bulging pocket books.

Obama caved again during the last budget showdown a couple months ago.  When “compromise” really meant yielding to the Republicans whom threatened to take their ball and go home if Obama/Democrats did not agree to their compromises which focused on cutting infrastructure, education and benefit programs instead of once again targetting the rich whom have enjoyed their lowest taxation rate of the last century for nearly a decade.

So here we are again.  The latest and greatest budget deadline and once again John Boner claiming tax increases on (rich) American people is off the table.  He is sworn to protect that ever growing massive wealth differential that exists in this country no matter what.  Who gives a F if history proves that a strong middle class is the key to economic viability?  As long as Boner and his cronies are getting kickbacks from the lobbyists and the billions they represent, he will do just as he is told.

So the news that Obama is considering another “compromise” this time putting social security benefits on the table as a gambling chip is just another example of caving in.  Obama needs to grow a set and stop being manipulated.

Now I know he is in a difficult position.  He has to roll the dice.  What looks worse, allowing himself to be pushed around by republicans serving their ultra-wealthy backers, or facing the possibility of a government shutdown by saying “Enough is enough, I am not taking this shit anymore”  I would favor the latter, call their bluff.  If Obama actually would allow republicans to gouge benefits for our senior citizens as a tool to “balance” the budget he would severely erode his already fading support. Stop the madness.

Speaking of cracking under pressure, I plan to be applying a lot of pressure this weekend, as in pressure washer.  I have a couple extra vacation days to use.  I am going to use some of them on Monday and Tuesday.  The main project focus for the 4 day period will be pressure washing, lots of pressure washing.  The pool cage/deck and both sheds are in dire need of descuzzifying.

I think running is still off the menu but biking and swimming will be mixed in there I am sure.  Oh yea, the dogs stink and need a bath. They will be so happy when I carry them to the tub, not.