Archives June 2012

So yesterday the big news was that the Supreme Court upheld the majority of the health care law that was passed in 2010.  Evidently the most shocking aspect was the conservative judge that wound up backing the law wasn’t the one most people thought would.  Now this guy is being cremated by the health care haters.

Ok although I have covered this topic many times in my blogsphere, let me quickly recap my thoughts on this.

I think the healthcare mandate that was passed was far from ideal, it was manipulated and mangled by the infinite dollars in the pockets of insurance company lobbyists. However I think it is a step in the right direction.  Prior to the law insurance companies had the deck ridiculously stacked in their favor.  They got fat insuring low risk customers and if an actual health problem arose they would find a way to dump them. Once a person was dumped they were literally f’d since no company would touch someone with the dreaded “pre-existing conditions”.

This plan has been incredibly successful for insurers.  Despite the sky rocketing medical expenses of the last couple decades, insurance behemoths have consistently posted immense profits.

The healthcare law attempts to level that playing field by doing stuff like removing lifetime caps and the pre-existing condition black hole. Now as a compromise to insurance companies, the stipulation that people MUST carry health insurance was added.  The theory behind that is by enforcing this requirement, the cost of insurance gets spread among a significantly larger pool of individuals.

I have a very simple question for people that rail against this theory.  I ask if they think that owners of automobiles should be required to carry auto insurance?  You are required to carry insurance because you could potentially impact others as a result of your driving.

If I extend this to health insurance, if you are 350 pound fat ass with no insurance that finds themselves in the hospital treating your various obesity related health issues (heart attacks, diabetes, strokes, etc…) then you are impacting me as well.  Your lack of insurance means the health provider is absorbing all of that expense which directly affects the cost of health care for people actually footing the bill.

The health care law has some other good things in it like requiring no co-pay for preventative type procedures, check ups.  Honestly I wish it did even more to reward people that take personal responsibility for their health.

From a historical perspective, it is important to know that both social security and medicare were initially greeted with similar amounts of resistance with similar predictions of doom and gloom.  However today, if you took a poll regarding if these programs should exist or not there would only be a tiny fraction against them.  Our elderly population relies on them.

It seems like there is a lot of focus on the slimy part of the population that make a career out of not doing shit.  Instead they muddle through life doing as little as possible while collecting government benefits as a reward.  Hey, I HATE that mentality as much as anyone.  But the difference is I don’t let my dislike of those type of people blind me to the fact that there is a much larger percentage of people that are in genuine need of help.  They aren’t working the system, they are doing the best they can but still are drowning.

I also think that people that feel strongly about either side of the healthcare issue are huge hypocrites if they are not doing the right things to take care of their own health.  I mean the biggest part of this entire health care cluster f is looking at back at us in the mirror, we are the problem.

Our country as a whole is disgustingly unhealthy.  The massive health care costs we see today are a direct result of our own gluttony and laziness.  It’s only getting worse as the fat ass curve is moving farther and farther down the age range.  Childhood obesity is accelerating at frightening levels.

So to summarize, I’m glad the court did not cut the legs off legislation that is at least a start in the right direction but until our country stops shoving shit down their throats at breakneck speeds we are ultimately f’d in the end.

I used a couple vaca days to give me a 5 day weekend next week after 4th of July.  I am looking forward to it and plan to utilize that time to do some painting.  I want to at least get the master bathroom painted and if I am feeling crazy ambitious, the bedroom as well.

I have been debating what I want to do color wise.  I am leaning towards sticking with the color used in the main living area for the bedroom and maybe the bathroom as well.  It’s not a daring color but pleasing to my eyes.  I was considering painting the bathroom the same green that we used in the spare bathroom and office, I like that color too.

I guess I will firm up my color choices this weekend.

So yesterday I get an envelope from the Festiva group, the outfit that bought out our timeshare.  The same place I got the long, aggravating sales call from a week or so ago.  You may recall that during that call I was told that if I don’t convert over from RCI to the new Festiva points plan for the low, low bargain price of $5500 I will wind up getting hammered with considerably higher maintenance fees.  The guy on the phone told me this was absolutely going to happen and I told him if it did I would absolutely bail on the timeshare altogether.

So anyway, I opened this letter, fully expecting my blood pressure to start edging up, assuming the letter was the written confirmation of what the sales guy told me was coming.

I read through the letter.  It outlined some further improvements that they have done to the property as well as announcing they are changing the name of the resort from Celebration World Resort to Fesitiva Orlando Resort.  So I reach the end of the letter and there is no mention of changes to the ownership plan or migration to the Festiva points plan.  I looked in the envelope to make sure there wasn’t another piece of paper in there, nothing.

Hmmm so now I wonder if the sales dude was using a “sky is falling” technique to try to bamboozle me into dropping $5500 that I don’t need to.  So for now, status quo will be the plan.

I was glad to see the replacement Tacoma interior door handle showed up last night so I can stop pulling a McGyver to get out of the vehicle.  Yea the interior of my truck is brown and the replacement handle is gray, who cares?  At least it works.

Last night I wanted to get the grass mowing out of the way.  Before I started I went to the orchard to grab some apples, I knew I had a few that should be close to ripe.   I was bummed when the largest apple I ever recall coming off the tree was already starting to go bad.  It’s always a fine line on how long I can actually leave the fruit on the tree before the fcking bugs/birds destroy it.

The grass was very shaggy after 10 days of not mowing backed up by 4 days of off and on rain.  After the tractor part of the work was complete I pulled out the weed whacker.

Shortly after I started whacking I was joined by my across the street canine friend, Thina. (theena)  I later found out that is her actual name.

I turned off the whacker so she could approach.  She came right over belly crawl style and assumed the now familiar rub my belly position.  I looked over at her place and saw the front gate was closed.  I wondered how she got out.  Well by this time light was getting hard to come by.  After giving her a dog bone and some water I fired the whacker back up and continued, figuring she could just hang out till I was done and then I would take her back over.

Well that is exactly what she did.  She would wander around a bit and then come back to me and follow me around.  She appeared to think the weed whacker was a toy,  several times I had to stop her from jumping in at it while it was running.

By the time I got finished it was literally pitch dark.  I walked back across the street with Thina by my side and opened up their gate.  I called Thina over to me, rubbed her belly and then told her to stay as I closed the gate, which she did.

So as I am wrapping the chain back around the gate I don’t see the dog.  All of a sudden I see her by my side again with a big dog smile on her face.  Great, evidently she has discovered that there are alternative exit points in the shrub border that surrounds the house.

I looked at the shrubs and saw one hole that appeared to be already blocked by an old rusty bicycle.  I saw another hole next to it.  I found an old board and wedged it across the hole, hoping that would be enough to block her.

I opened the gate back up, put Thina inside and closed it.  Once again Thina quickly escaped through yet another hole.  Argh.

Ok so now I once again open the gate, walk up to the door and ring the doorbell.  The man comes to the door looking confused as I was knelt down petting Thina.  I told him she got out again and that she got out through the shrubs.  He says “ok” but I don’t think he really understood me.

When he came out Thina started walking around the yard.  Obviously she didn’t want to get put in her garage dog house. A couple of the kids came out to try to help corral her, one of which actually spoke good english.  He was the one that told me the dogs name was actually Thina and not Nina.  I told him as well about the holes in the shrubs that the dog now uses to escape.  He said he was the one who put the bike in the first hole.  Well at least I know I can talk to the kid the next time when I say, “if this keeps happening I am going to have to call animal services.” Poor dog.

I have had multiple people on FB say I should just keep the dog like it is a simple solution.  Well first off, I am not looking to add a dog to my life at this moment, second, it isn’t like the dog is some stray.  I think her owners might notice when Thina is playing in the backyard across the street.

I just want the dog to be safe.  I really hate the dog is in a home where she isn’t valued.

Last night I headed outside for some work on my bars.  I didn’t have one piece of equipment with me that I normally do, my Flip cam.  I sort of decided that it isn’t necessary for me to film every time I go out there.  In a way I believe it is counter productive to do so.  I need to spend more time getting sets and reps in and less time doing video production work.  I’ll talk about this more in Dufisthenics, later.

I was clued in on a sci-fi series called Falling Skies on TNT.  The premise sounded kind of V like and I liked V.  In a nutshell, once again the Earth is invaded by hostile aliens with bad intentions.  The aliens are eons ahead of us technologically and the story revolves around a small group of people trying to fight on with mostly small munitions.

Right now I am in the middle of the two part series premiere.  I like the show but thus far it hasn’t grabbed me by the neck yet as a must watch thing.  I was a little discouraged when Jeremy told me he started watching the show last year but bailed after three or four episodes.  We’ll see if I have the same reaction.

A weird thing has happened with the flickering battery charge light problem on the Tacoma, it went away.  It seems like ever since the 4 days of rainy weather hit I haven’t seen the light come on once.  I did crawl under the truck during the weekend and verify the connection from the battery to the terminal on the starter was secure.  If the light returns once the rainy weather departs I am not quite sure what that will tell me.

My verbosity is a little thin today, my bad.

Ali and I continued our new found, post separation interest in Tarpons arena football.  After work I changed and picked up Ali to head to the Southern Conference Championship game.  Yes it was odd that they had the game on a Monday night but I suppose that was when the arena was available.  It was obvious as soon as I entered the parking area that the Monday night timing of the event was going to hurt attendance, there were not a lot of vehicles there at all.

There was no one handing out free tickets this time.  I opted to buy tickets in one of the end zones this time around, thinking it might be fun to catch one of the many footballs that get booted into the stands.

Before we found our seats we once again stopped to grab our food.  We once again were handed less than stellar slices of pizza but I managed to keep my slice off the arena floor this time thankfully.  Our seats were top row, almost directly between the uprights, a good spot to catch balls from. I did become annoyed though that the area around us filled up pretty thoroughly.  It seemed ridiculous considering the rest of the arena was almost empty.

Pre-game during the national anthem Ali was annoyed.  There were several young boys in front of us, if I had to guess, somewhere around the 13-15 range.  Almost all of them were wearing hats.  Once the anthem started all of them knew enough to take their hats off except one hispanic kid, wearing a backwards “Obey Propoganda” baseball hat.  I was thinking about telling him to take off his fckin hat but didn’t, a mistake in retrospect.  I couldn’t help but wonder if his parents were in the country he was disrespecting legally or not.  Well Ali was thinking the same thoughts I was but she bit her tongue as well.

The Tarpons are the clear class of the league, mowing through their schedule to a perfect 11-0 regular season record.  The two games we went to previously were both huge blow outs.  We wondered if since this was a playoff game that we might see a more competitive game.

Well for the first quarter we actually did.  The quarter was uncharacteristically low scoring for arena football with it ending with the Tarpon actually BEHIND, 9-7.  I didn’t have any balls come close to me during kicking attempts.  It’s too bad.  I told the guy that was next to me with his family, which included a little boy, that we needed to work together, if I caught the ball I was going to give it to his son.

In the second quarter the Tarpons mashed the gas pedal to the floor and quickly jumped out to a big lead that they never gave up.

There is some interesting people watching to be done at Tarpon games.  There was this one huge person that Ali and first both thought was a man whom later turned out to be a woman.  She seemed very interested in buying her way into being the number one Tarpon fan.  She was wearing an XXL Tarpons championship game t-shirt, had bought a UIFL arena football and won a raffle for a Tarpons helmet signed by the entire team.  It almost seemed to me like she had never been to a Tarpons game in her life but she wanted to look the part.

Then there was this older couple in the row in front of us and to the right.  The man was wearing a sweater and a brand new Tarpons baseball cap.  The guy although he looked quite old, appeared to be a spring chicken compared to his wife.  She just sat there and stared at the field through her bifocals.

The old guy had also invested in one of those power bands that they were selling in the concourse, you know those things that you put around your wrist that are supposed to fix any ailment under the sun ranging from sore knees to erectile dysfunction.  He was very interested in his band, I saw him touching it repeatedly on his wrist, maybe hoping to accelerate it’s therapeutic effects.

The old guy had a VERY disturbing way of drinking water. He would begin each sip on his bottle by extending his tongue first out of his mouth far further than is necessary.  It was like he was making love to his bottle of Dasani.

I did not see the couple speak once or even acknowledge the other.  Ali thought it was cute that at least they were there together.  That wasn’t the adjective I would have used.

So anyway the Tarpons completed their steamroll of the Lakeland Raiders, winning 60-29.  Ali and I decided to stick around to the very end.  The said that the fans could come on the field after the game which sounded cool.

I was interested how hard the playing surface was, it felt like it had some decent give to it, far softer than the granite like surface of the Vet I walked on (and played flag football on) years and years ago.

The players were interacting with the fans and were extremely friendly doing so.  They seem genuinely appreciative of the few fans that came out to support them, a distinct 180 from the image most athletes portray nowadays. In general, the Tarpons do a real good job of making the fans feel appreciated.  Ali and I both find we seem to enjoy going to Tarpons games more than the Firecat arena football games we went to in the early/mid 2000’s.

Ali and I congratulated a few players but we had wanted to get a picture of Ali with Timmy the Tarpon, the team mascot.  It took awhile till we got the chance to snap the pic but Ali was happy when we got it done.

It was a fun night.  Next week is the UIFL Ultimate Bowl, again unfortunately on a Monday night.  I feel like I HAVE to be there at this point.

We had a rare, all gray weekend here in Naples thanks to tropical storm Debby.  I started my chore work in earnest Friday night and continued it bright and early Saturday.  Saturday morning it was overcast but not raining yet so it at least made the outside part of my work a little more tolerable.

The big shed had two sides of it that were looking very green and nasty, the western and northern sections, since they see the least amount of sun.  Cleaning the sheds was on my new to do list.

I had bought some fancy siding cleaning solution at Home Depot awhile ago, hoping it would make cleaning the sheds a lot easier.  According to the bottle you basically spray the stuff on, wait 5 minutes and spray it off.  Well I lost the mixture bottle attachment for my pressure washer years ago.  I saw a cheap hose end wand thing that had a little detergent attachment, it is primarily intended I suppose for stuff like washing cars.  Well I thought it would also work for my shed spraying.  I was wrong.

The container for the detergent was very small, I don’t think it even was 8 ounces.  I filled it with the stuff and started spraying.  There was no real control to meter the amount of detergent being applied.  As I sprayed I noticed the solution container was getting more and more clear but not emptying out. WTF?

I turned off the wand and removed the container.  I then turned the water back on.  I saw two streams of water spraying down into the container.  So all this shitty thing does is dilute whatever you put in there.  Great.

Well I knew this was worthless so I just pulled out the pressure washer.  I didn’t do the entire shed, instead opting to just address the two sides that were a mess, a bit of a half ass approach but it saved some time.  I then pulled the pressure washer around that side of the yard and cleaned a number of other things including the black fence posts, the two pressure treated stands and the borders around the orchard and pond.  It’s amazing how much better these things look when you blast the layer of black mildew off of them.

As I was in the middle of pressure washing I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  I look over and see Nina, the friendly German Shepard walking around in my backyard, afraid to get close because of the noise of the washer.  I shut it off and called her over.  She did her cute submissive belly crawl over to me.  I realized I forgot to close the one front gate.

Well I was glad to at least have her in the backyard where she will at least be safe.  I grabbed her some treats and a bowl of water and then went back to washing.  She hung out in the yard with me for awhile before wandering back home.

The other day I had spotted what looked like a crazy deal on a Scooba on Craigs List, selling a functional unit for $75.  It got even better when I offered the seller $60 and she said that was fine, wow.  It included a new brush module, front wheel, charger and 3 invisible walls too.  My thought process was two fold.  The Scooba could serve as a back up for my 380 and if it did work 100% I could let Ali use it to maintain the mountains of tile in her place.  For $60 it’s hard to go wrong.

The only downside was the seller was in Cape Coral, a decent haul of close to an hour for me, oh well.

So I punched the GPS address in and was on my way.  I scratched my head when the address I pulled up in front of looked like an office building?  I assumed I was going to someone’s house.  I walk inside and see a dimly lit office with empty cubicles.  There is one woman in a back office with a confused look on her face, wondering who I was.

I gave her the name I was supposed to ask for, telling her I was there to pick up something via CL.  The woman took me to a side door that lead to a big warehouse area, filled with all sorts of items.  I have no idea what business this was affiliated with but I assume the Scooba was part of the stuff that was collected.  I don’t think this woman ever “owned” the robot, I think it was taken in as part of whatever business this was and she was simply trying to make a buck, explaining the low cost.

Well the woman brought over the box.  I quickly inspected it to make sure all of the stuff in the picture was in the box which it was.  I handed over the three $20 bills and was out of there.

Later when I got home I was pleased to discover the Scooba does indeed work just fine, the only thing it will need is a new battery to replace the original factory battery which only wants to run for 10-15 minutes.  This $60 Scooba actually appears to do a better job of sucking up the dirty water than my $400 unit.

I had hopes on Sunday morning of doing a training brick however I woke up to torrential rain, it was a mess.  Well I told Ali I would be picking up the dogs for a visit, despite the shitty weather.  They always enjoy time at the house.

My Sunday overall was pretty mundane.  I cleared up whatever chores were left to do.  Later I fired up the treadmill for the first time in eons to at least get some cardio time in.  I have the treadmill against the far wall of the office.  Before I started running I considered moving it more in front of the window in the office so I could see better.  I decided not to, thinking I would be able to see enough looking out at an angle.

Well that was a mistake.  I wound up spending a half hour looking at the Ron Jaworski picture on the wall in front of me.  The angle I had out the window was blocked by the pygmy palm so I couldn’t see anything.

I analyzed every aspect of the picture during the run, it was driving me mad.  I was glad when my three mile jaunt was over.  Next time I won’t be lazy , I’ll move the damn treadmill.

Later in the afternoon I felt quite tired so I laid down to take a nap.  The dogs were happy to nap alongside me. Imagine my surprise when I was awakened at 6:30 by Ali’s call saying she was on her way home from work.  I was out for at least a couple hours if not more.

I loaded up the dogs and took them back to Ali’s place.  Ali offered to make a healthy dinner of a salad and wrap, both of which we enjoyed while catching an episode of Master Chef on demand.

I have yet another automotive thing to fix, albeit a minor one.  Over the weekend I heard an unwelcome SNAP sound when I pulled on the interior door handle of the Tacoma.  This was the same door handle I had replaced once before, last year I think.  Well evidently aftermarket interior door handles aren’t very durable, the damn thing broke already.  I have a new $5 replacement on the way, hopefully it will last the rest of the year before the world ends.

Try to bear with me while I try to explain this dream I had last night.

I took my Tacoma to some garage to have the battery charging light problem looked at.  They looked at the truck for less than an hour and told me they didn’t know what the problem was.  When they handed me the bill for the hour of diagnostics it was an outrageous $640.

Not only was the bill outrageous, nobody could find my truck.  I went inside bitching about the bill and not being able to find my truck.  I went outside and saw some guy that worked there and asked him if he could find my truck.  He gave me an annoyed look and said he was busy looking for another vehicle, he would look for mine after he finds the first one.  What the F???

All of a sudden the dream fast forwards, I am now in some huge fancy office building in a big city.  I am accompanied by the guy that was looking for my truck, I have no idea what I am doing there.  I am escorted into this office that has two old men sitting in it.  I look back at the truck looker guy and ask him who these men were and why I was there?  He told me he brought me there so I could complain directly to the owner about the outrageous bill.  He pointed to the owner who was sitting with his head down.

The other old guy spoke first, he had an ancient sounding voice with what sounded like a German accent.  He pointed to the other guy and said he was the owner of three garages and that he would hear my complaint now.

All of a sudden the owner stands up, revealing his face, he literally looked like a zombie, complete with a small trail of blood running out the corner of his mouth.  He asked me what garage of his I went to.

I was totally unnerved by the appearance of this old man, I stammered that I forgot the name of the garage but I tried to politely explain how they ripped me off.  The old man nodded his head but then collapsed back down into his chair.  He started grasping at his chest and breathing rapidly.  He whispered with his last breath to the other men “Get him(me) out of here……”  He then died as I stood there in disbelief.  End of dream.

So the battery/charging light on the Tacoma is still coming off and on.  It seems to be coming on more and more.  I noticed yesterday that when the light came on the fan speed on the truck accelerated noticeably.   The quick analysis would point to the alternator.  If I didn’t just replace the starter a couple weeks ago I would just go buy an alternator, but I can’t help but think that the starter replacement is connected to the problem.

So this weekend I want to get back under the truck and take a close look at the electrical connection to the starter as well as the cables coming off the battery.  If everything is tight and intact I guess I will pull the trigger on an alternator although I will wait until my credit card cycle flips in a day or two.

This weekend it feels like I have a very long list of things to do around the house.  This week I didn’t get a head start on any of it during the week.  I’ll bust on the chores hard and fast starting tonight.  When I go into “let’s get this shit done” mode, things start getting knocked off the list pretty quickly.

Maybe I will do a brick this weekend, maybe not,  I am feeling like I am at a pretty significant sleep deficit at this point.

So before the running club board meeting I drove over to the nearby Autozone to have them check my truck charging system.  I told the guy how my battery light was flashing on and off erratically as I was driving.

So he hooked up the diagnostic stuff to my battery and started the test.  He initially had a hard time getting a good connection on the positive terminal of the battery.  Eventually he got a solid connection and started the test.  According to what he saw, my battery, alternator and starter are all working just fine.  Hmmmm.

Well this was good and bad news. He said that perhaps the initial trouble he had getting a solid connection meant some of the black slimy stuff that is on the positive battery terminal was causing a momentary loss of connection.  Well I liked that simple prognosis.  I went back inside with him and spent $4 on a new battery install kit which included pads you put over the posts to prevent corrosion as well as a gel you apply to the terminals.

This morning I went outside, already dressed for work and quickly redid the terminals, cleaning them up well, applying the new pads and gel and making sure the connection was tight.  Imagine my joy when I saw the battery light flicker on for the first time a few miles into my drive to work. Damn it.

So my next idea is that perhaps the positive battery lead to the new starter is not as secure as I thought it was.  Maybe it is jostling around, causing the flashes although the truck never runs like it is having it’s electrical connections f’d with.  If that is nice and tight then I am out of ideas until I dig around on the internet.  Since at least so far, it appears to be more of an annoyance than anything I am not pushing the panic button.

So after the running club board meeting I once again headed over to South Street with a few of the board members.  They drink and eat dinner, I just drink, since I grabbed Subway before the meeting.  These guys make me laugh, hard.  Some of the stories I heard literally had me laughing to the point of tears.  I always learn something new.

I stayed way later than I originally intended, not getting home till damn close to midnight.  I had like 4 or 5 beers so I had to give myself adequate time to clear the fuzzies.  I supplemented the process with three cups of coffee before I left.

Last night after work I stopped by a local pizza establishment for dinner, something I would normally never do on a Tuesday night.  The reason I stopped was a young girls running group that Ali helps organize was holding a fundraiser there, 20% of your bill was donated to the organization.

When I arrived Ali was already stationed out in front of the place with a small table that had handouts about the organization.  She was basically letting anyone know whom went inside that if they mentioned the name of the group that it would benefit Girls on the Run.  Everyone seemed quite happy to oblige.

Although I certainly didn’t need a whole pizza, I bought one to contribute more to the cause.  I stood out front with Ali and ate a couple slices while standing around, it was good pizza.

As I munched away I managed to drop some pizza on my shirt which subsequently bounced off the the front of the tablecloth.  I have an uncanny ability to wear food.

As I hung out Ali mentioned something about the dogs, how she hoped they could hold it.  Evidently they were last  left out around 8 or 8:30 AM.  It was now after 6 and Ali was going to be there for awhile yet.  I told her I would stop at her place and walk them so I headed out.

Of course the dogs were surprised and excited to see me. They both were whimpering as I tried to get their collars and leashes attached.  We walked in a different direction than Ali normally takes them, out of the complex and down the street in front.  I had the pleasure of picking up 3 piles of doody during the walk. At one point I had synchronized dog shitting going on.

Both of the dogs just seem so damn excited to go on these walks.  Maybe it is because they no longer have free reign to the outside pool deck like they do at the house. They seem to be just thrilled the entire time we are strolling around.  We took a small detour during the walk to head down to the edge of a canal so the girls could check it out.  They seemed to find it quite interesting.

On my way to work this morning I saw a red light flicker on my dashboard of my Tacoma, the battery/electric system trouble  indicator.  It came on and went off several times.  My first thought was that maybe the belt that drives the alternator broke although if that was the case the light would stay on full time.

Instead the light went off and on several times during the commute, exactly what I don’t need.  When I got to work I popped the hood looking for any visual clues to what the problem is but found none.  I am thinking my next move will be go to either an Autozone or Advance Auto and let them throw their tester on the truck.  They can test the starter, alternator and battery in a few minutes.

Last night after making an attempt at Bar-baric mode of this month’s challenge I decided to do another juiced meal.  Last night’s juice included carrots from the garden and an apple from the orchard.  I mixed in some organic spinach, tomatoes and beets for good measure.  It wasn’t bad at all.

My Tivo was getting a bit backlogged so I burned through an episode of AGT and American Ninja Warrior.  The episode of ANW I watched had a 51 year old guy competing which was awesome and inspirational.

I have resumed my quest to watch 24.  I am currently in season 4 or 5.  The good news is I like the show, the bad news is it makes me stay up late, wanting to see what happens next.  You just have to love the creativity Jack Bauer possesses.

For example last night he had to find a way to delay a terrorist so satellites could be repositioned to track the bad guys location.  So in a pure stroke of genius, Jack decides to stage a fake hold up of a convenience store that the terrorist stopped at.  Jack never runs out of good ideas.

Tonight on the way home I am going to make up for my healthy dinner on Monday by stopping by a pizza place for dinner.  A girls running group that Ali is involved in is doing a fundraiser there, I figured I would stop by briefly to support it.

Originally I had ideas of trying to run with the group on Saturday morning but my legs still felt like shit from my leg work on Wednesday.  Plus I was tired, still catching up on the sleep deficit from my late Thursday night Prometheus showing. Instead on Saturday morning I picked up the dogs early and brought them back to the house, Ali was going into to work. I had stuff to do around the house so I figured the dogs would rather hang out with me while I was doing stuff than be at home alone.

I finally got around to creating a new to do list, something I have wanted to do for quite awhile.  For years I had a list pinned to the fridge of both short term and long term projects, Ali hated it.  However for me, it serves an important purpose.  I find having these items in front of me day and in and day out makes me much more likely to complete them sooner rather than later.  Having a “hey I should do this” item pop into your head and then just hope you remember to do it later does not have a high success rate.

This time I split the list into three categories, home improvement projects, home repair/maintenance, and automotive related items.  I am looking forward to starting to cross off some of those items.  I really need to knock some of those painting projects off the list.  Painting indoors is the perfect Florida summer project.  Anything involving being in the AC is an ideal summer project here.

I had another visit from the German Shep over the weekend.  Again she was cute as could be.  Well once again I walked her back over to her place which once again had the front gate wide open.  I walked her all the way up to the front door of the tiny house and rang the doorbell.

First the woman, whom I think doesn’t speak much english came to the door followed shortly by whom I assume is the husband, flanked by several of their multiple children.  I told them their dog, whom I confirmed is named Nina, was over at my place again.  I asked them if they wanted me to close the gate as I left.  He said no, he will put her in the garage, lovely.

So evidently Nina is either thrown outside or locked up in the garage, poor dog.  Later in the weekend I saw her walking in front of one of my windows, looking for her new friend (me).  By the time I got outside she had gone back to her side of the street.

After I got done with my house chores I took aim at flushing the coolant on the SSR, something I should have done shortly after I bought the truck.  There is a good chance the original coolant was still in the SSR and if that was the case, it is two years past the maximum recommend change interval of 5 years.

I followed the general procedure I found on SSRFanatics, draining the system and then flushing it with distilled water multiple times.  It took awhile to go through the fill, let engine run for awhile and drain cycles but it certainly wasn’t difficult.

I decided to document the process to add to my growing library of automotive maintenance videos, some of my more popular YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcEmach_hVw

During the afternoon I saw a number that caller id’d to Orlando.  Normally if I don’t know the number the caller will get a big fat serving of voice mail.  However for some reason I decided to pick it up.  On the other line was some young guy from the Festiva group.  I recognized the name, that was the company that took over ownership of our timeshare, another one of our poor investments,  several months ago.

I forgot the guys name but boy was he a talker, he immediately started rambling, I only interjected a sentence or two, for the better part of 10 minutes he did all the talking.  This was the crux of what he said.

As part of their grand take over plan, Festiva is offering to convert current owners off of their current deeded arrangement as well as the tie in to RCI, a company that I have already discussed here many times negatively.  RCI sucks plain and simple.  Well the idea of dumping RCI sounds good, keep blabbering away sales guy.

Festiva supposedly has their own exchange program that supposedly has very minimal fees compared to what RCI charges, ok that is nice as well. Who doesn’t like lower fees?  However I knew there was another shoe to drop, and drop it did, a big muddy work boot no less.

Switching over to the Festiva plan would be easy, easy as long as you were willing to drop ANOTHER $5500. When I heard that I may have literally said “what the fck” under my breath.  What a joke.  The joke got better.

The guy tells me that approximately 70% of the current owners have opted to switch over to Festiva (I am sure that is an OMGWTF lie), meaning that there is a much smaller collection of deeded owners remaining to spread those lovely maintenance fees across. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if my yearly maintenance fees double.  Ok, well now I was pissed.

I told blabber mouth that this is how it appears to me.  Festiva came in, sends out a letter that their new ownership is a great thing, they were already doing some repairs/improvements to the property and it didn’t talk of any other signficant changes for owners as far as costs were concerned.

The reality is they are using a Mitt-like Bain Capital approach to the timeshare.  Come in, gut the principals that the current owners bought under and give them one $5500 option to get out, else face higher maintenance fees, directly caused by their actions.  It was utter bullshit.

So when fast talker took a breath I stopped him.  I told him this was the bottom line.  If anything he is proposing involves me laying out another large sum of money to chase the other large sums of money we already flushed down the toilet with this timeshare he can forget it.  I told him I am now separated and there was not a chance in hell that I would be taking his offer.

I told him that if the maintenance fee armageddon he was referring to comes to pass I would simply dump the timeshare and walk away from it.  In my financial situation turning my back on the thousands of dollars we threw at this pig is a better option than dropping another $5500 to put lipstick on it.  F that.

Despite leaving absolutely no doubt that I was not going to do anything this guy continued trying to pitch me it’s merits.  He was determined, I’ll give him that.  For whatever reason I didn’t just hang up on him. Despite his annoying persistence, pitching something that is intended to do nothing but screw me over, he seemed like a nice guy.  Finally I convinced him I was not interested.  I thanked him for the info. Regardless of how I feel about it, it was important for me to know it was coming so I can act accordingly.

I let Ali know about it as well since her name is on the deed.  She is going to call RCI and see what they say about it.

So Ali texted me late in the afternoon she was leaving work.  I asked her if she wanted to grab dinner at Sweet Tomatoes after I dropped the dogs off, a place neither of us has patronized since we separated.  It’s a weird dynamic I find myself in with Ali, I know that I I need to put more effort into establishing a new social circle yet I find myself doing most stuff with her.

I guess part of the reason for that is our split was so amicable.  In marriages that split with a screaming, frying pan throwing, you f’d who hell storm, you typically won’t see the estranged spouses having much contact at all.  We have always been and continue to be good friends.

Anyway dinner at Sweet T’s was good, there wasn’t a big crowd like we saw during season.  Of course we ate later than the old people normally chow down, I don’t think we got there until after 6.

We made Father Day plans for her to bring the dogs out so we could do a swamp walk, something else that I hadn’t done in awhile.

Sunday morning I drug myself out of bed to do a block (bike/run/swim).  Ali talked about maybe joining me for the swimming portion but she decided to stay home.  It was a tough session.  After biking more than 12 miles, running 4 and swimming a mile I was pooped to say the least.

After the swim I drove over to Ali’s.  She had a Father’s Day card for me from the animals which was cute.  I had the SSR so she loaded the dogs up in the Camry and followed me out to the house where we ate lunch before heading over to the swamp.

We knew it was going to be very hot for the dogs so we packed a lot of water and planned to cut the walk short.

The swamp is actually not very swampy at all, it was almost totally dried up.  15 foot deep basins that used to be filled to the brim with water now had nothing in them at all, it was pretty weird.

The dogs were obviously laboring in the heat.  We stopped much more than we normally would, both so they could drink and just lay in the shade.  It was funny watching the dogs veer side to side in the path, making sure to hit every shady spot they could.

We saw a couple gators nestled in the muddy shallow puddles that remained in a few spots.  We did manage to have one new swamp wildlife sighting, a doe and her baby fawn right out on the path behind us.  It was cute.

The dogs were quite glad to get back into the van, the Florida heat and sun is very tough when you are black and furry.

When we got back to the house I jumped in the pool so I could splash Sadie a bit to help cool her down.  You could tell how tired she was.  Instead of her normal sprint around the pool perimeter it was a just basically a fast walk.

As I was drying off I said to Ali how ice cream, specifically a milkshake, would taste good.  She mentioned how she still had a Cold Stone gift card with a partial balance on it as well as a coupon.  Ok , so it was decided, now we were going for ice cream.

I followed her to her place in the SSR to drop off the dogs.  We then headed over to Cold Stone or at least where Cold Stone used to be.  We discovered that location had closed so we went to another that was a couple miles away.

I requested an extra thin chocolate shake, something that can be hard to come by.  I hate when places basically dump soft serve in a cup and call that a milkshake.  I want to be able to drink it with a straw, not use a spoon.  They did a good job of meeting my request. The shake was quite good.

As we were sitting outside enjoying our respective treats, somehow the subject came up about online dating, specifically Ali asked me if I would consider doing it.  Well I was surprised she would wonder if I would consider it based on my tendency to favor electronic communication over all other types.  I told her that I actually had Match.com account already although it is the free variety where you basically can browse and have very restricted communication with other site members.

She seemed pretty surprised by that.  I told her that so far it seems like a weird scene, telling her that it seems I am of most interest to older women, an age range that typically is not going to interest me much.  I guess it was weird to even be discussing that at all with Ali, it just seemed to be part of the conversation.

So on the way back to Ali’s place we made one more stop at the grocery store so she could grab supplies to make the dog’s veggie meal supplement.

It was a fun Father’s Day albeit in a new set of circumstances.

Last night I finally finished watching The Immortals which took me a total of 3 sleepy nights to complete.  The reason I had it my Netflix queue was because it was from the same guys that produced 300, one of my favorite movies ever.

Well these guys had let me down before with that awful super hero themed flick that had the guy with a massive blue penis.  I was hoping that was a fluke and Immortals would be their redemption.  Well it wasn’t, instead it’s strike two.

The movie tried so hard to be epic.  It leaned hard on 300 style cinematography with many, many slow-mo, blood spewing, skull exploding fight scenes.  I just didn’t get into it, at all.  It was a chore to get to the end of it.  Mickey Rourke was the head bad guy.  His random and totally pointless acts of violence got so ridiculous I was laughing out loud eventually.

I don’t know if you could make a film that felt any more unoriginal than Immortals.  Don’t bother, C-.