Beaching, Optimus Rambo

So on Friday night the girls and I had a good night, I watched some Survivor while eating half of my $5 Papa John’s pizza. Hey $5 for 2 meals is hard to beat.  I also tried to get a jump on the weekend by going outside and getting the weeding done. I harvested a bunch from the garden including onions, leeks, tomatoes, and tons of broccoli.

On Saturday morning I told mom I wanted to bring the girls with to drop off the veggie surplus to her.  She was happy to both see the girls and relieve me of some of the excess harvest.

When I was mentally laying out the weekend I had planned on taking the girls to the dog beach sometime Saturday afternoon.  However I realized that mom’s place was over halfway there, it would be stupid and expensive gas-wise to drive all the way back home only to repeat the trip later on in the day.  The only problem was I hadn’t brought anything with me. I asked mom if I could borrow a couple towels and a bowl for water, that should cover it.

I made arrangements with mom to do an early Mother’s Day celebration this upcoming Friday.  I told her I would pick her up after work in the SSR, take her to dinner and then go to Trader Joe’s since she hasn’t been there yet.  She seemed to be into it.

So after a brief stay we pulled back out, destination, dog beach.

I hadn’t been to the dog beach in quite a long time.  We arrived around 9AM.  I had looked at the tide tables which showed high tide would hit around 11:30.  When high tide hits Lover’s Key there is basically no dry land left.

The dogs were instantly very excited when they saw the other dogs coming and leaving.  As soon as we hit the off leash area they were off and exploring, happily splashing in the water.  Even though both dogs absolutely want no part of swimming in the pool, they both seem to love wading into the gulf at the beach.  I set my flip flops and the dog leashes by a bush near the beach and headed up towards the other dogs.

Despite the relatively early time of day, there were a bunch of people there with their furry family members.  I bet there were at least 25 dogs there.  As we walked up the beach Nicki and Sadie interacted briefly with a number of dogs, exchanging quick sniff down sessions.

We headed up towards the north end of the beach since it was the least crowded.  There was a couple up at that end with their Golden Retriever named Rookie.  I talked to them off and on as I waded out into the water with the girls.

Like I mentioned earlier, I hadn’t originally planned to go to the dog beach at this time so I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit.  I did what I could to keep my cargo shorts dry at first but I soon realized it was a waste of time.

Since the tide was coming in there was quite a current in certain areas.  If I waded out into them the dogs would almost swim in place.  I tried to not stay in the deeper water too long so the girls wouldn’t get really tired from the swimming, something they certainly are not accustomed to.

The dogs were having a great time, it’s so cute how Nicki and Sadie for the most part stayed side by side as they swam around.  Sadie has a lower swimming profile than Nicki, just barely keeping her nose out of the water.  Nicki tries to lift her head up as she paddles around.

At one point Rob and Rookie tried to swim out towards an island that was maybe 50 yards away.  I was surprised that Sadie swam off to follow them with Nicki behind her.  Well the current was just too strong for Rob and Rookie so they turned around.  I called Sadie and Nicki back.  I was worried for a moment that I would have to wade out and assist them because of the current but both of them managed to get back to me intact.

I was at the beach for over an hour and I could have probably stayed another hour if it was up to the dogs.  I didn’t want to overdo it, I knew as is they were going to be exhausted.  Actually I was lucky to leave when I did.  By the time I got back to the spot where my flip flops and dog leashes were they were in the water.  If I waited much longer I would have been going home barefoot.

I toweled off the girls a bit but I didn’t worry about it much since I had the van.  I knew I would have to clean the bedding and vacuum it out regardless after the trip. As expected on the ride home the dogs were both passed out cold in the bed.  When we got back to the house neither of them were in any hurry to get out of the van.

If you want to see all the pictures I took at the dog beach, you can see them here.  There are some real cute ones in there.

Saturday afternoon my major chore was to get the grass mowed.  Typically this time of year mowing is not happening as we are in the midst of the longest and driest part of the year. However the past few weeks we have seen more rain than normal, necessitating the tractor time.

I decided to skip a number of my cleaning chores like vacuuming and Scoobaing the tile since I had the dogs.  I figured it would make more sense to worry about that stuff after they left.

Later on Saturday afternoon I headed down to the running store to pick up the paper entries that were received for Sunday’s race.  I decided to hop in the SSR with a laptop in the passenger seat and go down about an hour before the store closed.  I figured I could set up my laptop next door in the outdoor seating area of Friday’s and put the entries in on the spot while drinking a beer.

That was exactly what I did.  It made data entry enjoyable as I downed a couple Miller Lite’s.  There were less than 25 paper entries so it didn’t take me very long.  It was a beautiful day to drive the SSR around.  As I tooled around with my Linkin Park Pandora channel blaring on the stereo it made me forget the huge wad of cash I spent on the truck a couple weeks ago.  I was just glad to be back out on the road with it.  It’s just so much damn fun to drive.

Sunday morning I timed the race.  Thankfully the same guy that helped me at the last race helped me again since Ali was out of town, filling in on data entry duty.  I have tried to show a couple people some of the aspects of timing a race but none of them were all that suited for it.  This guy, since he already times cross country events has the aptitude needed for the job.  It is a real help having him around.

I had some strange issues with timing for this race.  First I had a bizarre issue where the chip start times appeared to be incomplete.  All the times I had appeared to from before the actual start of the race. After the race I connected to the timing box in a different manner and was able to retrieve the start times which were correct.

Then late in the race there was a 5 minute block of times that went MIA.  I recovered them by doing a manual import of the times from a file export.  I am not quite sure what caused either issue but hopefully it was a one time thing.

I got out of there early, a little after 9am.  I wanted to get home to let the girls out.

Early in the afternoon I headed outside to try hard mode of this month’s Bar-barian challenge.  I came out of it with a number a little less than I hoped for and a ripped up right hand to boot.  Pull ups will be curtailed for awhile I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qv39bg_32E

If any of you don’t like spoliers, you may consider this a spolier, although I think the movie pretty much spoils itself.

On Sunday I decided to get around to watching Transformers 3 which has been sitting in a Netflix envelope for a week or two.  I saw the first two movies and was lukewarm about both however I decided to check out the third installment.  Well let me cover what I DID like about the movie.

The girl they got to replace Megan Fox is hot.  Lots of things blow up. I like the cars.  That’s about it.

To me, over all, this is one of the silliest movies I ever saw.

It was just filled with so much stupidity.  The dialogue was very odd.  Right in the middle of  high action/psuedo serious scenes they would be injecting one liners which felt totally log jammed in.  I laughed not because the lines were funny as much as they were just stupidly placed.

If I would actually try to write out a summary of the plot it would probably generate more laughs.

The funniest part of all to me was how they decided to turn Optimus Prime into a cross between Dirty Harry and Rambo.  All of a sudden the head good guy robot was no longer the, violence is the last resort, respected leader of the Autobots.  He was now the eye for an eye, “we will kill them all” bloodthirsty, tractor trailer from hell, bad ass.

When he ripped the head and spine out of Megatron, Predator style, near the end of the movie I almost choked on my water laughing.  I mean it was just so silly.  It was almost as silly as Megan Fox’s replacement goading Megatron into saving Optimus by name calling,  telling Megatron he was Sentinel Prime’s bitch.

The movie was just filled with ridiculous moment after ridiculous moment.  Thankfully, I think this may be the last of the series since Megatron is now dead.  I can only imagine how much money they spent to produce this turd.  It actually made more than a billion dollars worldwide somehow. I’ll give it a C based on impressive special effects alone.

My Monday was quite busy at work since I was at a remote branch most of the day squashing bugs after their computers were upgraded over the weekend.

Last night I picked up Ali at the airport with the dogs in the party van after her trip to PA to celebrate her Dad’s birthday.  She gave me a brief rundown of the trip on the way home. Somehow I totally forgot to ask her the details of her picture doing the yoga warrior pose across the seats of the cockpit of her plane.

I suggested she call ahead for a pizza that we could pick up for dinner since neither of us ate.

We had the pizza while watching the finale of Biggest Loser.  The winner lost an amazing 199 pounds.  I didn’t get home until close to 9.

As always I feel a bit sad when I say goodbye to the girls.  I was extra sad when I got home and saw Sadie left her squeaky bunny on the bed for me.