Archives July 2012

Years ago when I was at Charlie’s place we we sat down in front of his sofa which had a coffee table in front of it.  We had some sandwiches to eat.  All of a sudden he lifts lightly on the table top and it smoothly elevates upward and towards us, putting it in a very good position to eat off of.  Well I thought this was super cool and filed it away mentally as a “someday” thing.  Well yesterday was “someday”.

Since the split I have been randomly checking Craigslist to see if I could score a nice deal on a used lift top table.  Well I found such a deal yesterday.  The listing was actually a couple weeks old so I was skeptical if it would be available, it was.

After doing the mandatory CL discount I was quite pleased to score the table I dreamed of for not much cash at all.

I headed over to the sellers place on my way home.  It was an older couple that were quite nice.  The husband especially had a fantastic, open, engaging, friendly persona, something I always desired I had more of.  He is the type of guy that you can’t help but like.

Anyway after verifying the table was in good shape, the husband helped me carry it out to the Tacoma and load it up.  He said he could try to find something for me to cover it with since the skies looked menacing but I told him I would roll the dice.  Well of course you can already guess, I rolled craps.

I drove through varying intensities of rain on the way home.  Luckily for most of it I was moving at highway speeds which provided a substantial wind barrier on top of the table.  The top of the table had some drops on it but nothing severe by the time I got into the driveway.

Getting the table off the truck and inside by myself was a bit awkward and ripe with potential for back injury.  The table wasn’t all that heavy but it was sizeable.  To carry it inside I basically put the table into a psuedo bear hug and squeezed through the doorways.  The dogs were quite interested in the new addition, assuming of course it was somehow intended for them.

The table fits the space pretty well.  The wood grain matches my 50’s style end table, kind of.  But who cares, what matters is it is cool.

I put the table in place and gave it a gentle touch on the top.  It raised up into a great position, useful for eating, holding my beer or sticking my laptop on.  It also is on wheels so it’s very easy to move around if I am kicking back on one of the recliners as well.

I tried out the table during the evening, plopping my laptop on there for some Diablo play time.  It worked out quite well .  Needless to say I am pleased with my latest and greatest Craigslist score.

So yesterday I received a letter from my credit union whom hold my mortgage.  The letter indicated that I was now required to buy flood insurance based on the new FEMA flood maps.  I sort of knew this was coming as my neighbor received a similar letter from Bank of America a couple weeks ago.  I also knew this was utter bullshit.

Depending on your length of readership here and how much attention you pay to my rambling, you may recall that during the tail end of 2011 I attended a workshop regarding the new flood zones.  Basically you went in, gave your address and they told you if you were in a flood zone with the new maps.

When I was there it was explained to me that the initial remapping of our area by FEMA had put our area in zone AH, which would require flood insurance.  However there was additional, more detailed elevation imagery submitted that actually took into account the three to four foot tall mounds of dirt that houses in our area are built upon, which make flooding of the dwelling basically impossible short of an end of days scenario. I was told this enhanced imagery was what the final FEMA determination was being based upon and that showed my house is in zone X, which does not require flood insurance.

My place is where the dot is.  The orange color is zone AH, the yellow is zone X.

I told my neighbors that they should not require flood insurance either but they opted to pay $150 to get an official elevation survey which told them the exact same thing, they don’t need flood insurance.

Well I am not willing to eat an unnecessary $150 expense so I will be making some phone calls today.  I am not quite sure why the banks are working off of old data but I will do whatever I can to “enlighten” them.

My Google AdSense/YouTube “business” is taking off.  After taking considerable time to monetize the majority of my YouTube library I am seeing my earnings this month skyrocket.  Last month I hauled in $18 and change in advertising dollars.  Today, the last day of the month I am right at 31 bucks and expect to finish the month close to $35, I made over $4 yesterday alone.

Yes I know in bottom line dollars we are talking about chump change but if we look at earning curves I am looking at coming damn close to DOUBLING the prior month’s total.  If that curve continues it doesn’t take a mathematician to see where it could be headed.

So when I got home Friday I was worried that Nicki once again shit in the house.  However I didn’t want to create more stress for her.  So I let the dogs out front and then took them into the back yard so I could search the house without them watching me.

My hopes were high, I started at the front of the house and worked my way back, no piles to be seen anywhere.  Then I look in the final room, the master bathroom, bingo, a small pile stared back at me. Great.

So I go about cleaning up the mess before letting the dogs back in the house.  I made sure to not indicate anything negative to Nicki as she came back in.  I could tell she expected me to scold her for her dirty deed.  Instead I acted like everything was wonderful and Nicki seemed to respond positively.  She ate her supper Friday night right away which was cool.

However she again shit in the house Saturday night while I was out.  Again I cleaned it up out of her view.  Obviously this behavior has to be stress related but I don’t quite understand why it is so bad all of a sudden.  I have had the girls out at the house for extended periods of time several times since the split and it was totally fine.

I saw the Olympic opening ceremonies Friday night.  To be honest, I thought they were stupid, a feeling I saw echoed among a number of my friends. Specifically the Queen tie in with James Bond and the Mr Bean/Chariots of Fire thing were just horrible.  I didn’t think the ceremonies were anywhere close to as good as what we saw in Beijing four years ago.  I did see a few people that more than likely have more evolved taste than I do say they liked the show.

Saturday morning I headed into the office early to do a server migration.  I thought it would be fun to bring the dogs with, it was.  Both of them were very excited to explore the office.  I opened up areas I didn’t even need to get into just so they could explore.  They seemed to love it. At one point they even decided to wrestle while in my office, it was cute.

I had to run into the bathroom and take a leak.  While I did I left the dogs out in the main hallway.  When I cam back out I looked at the far end where the automatic double doors are.  I assumed the doors were locked off business hours.

Well I see Sadie standing outside on the other side of them.  Evidently she triggered the doors and she walked out.  I hurried down there and called her back in.  She came in with a big dog smile, almost proud of what she managed to accomplish.

There was another funny moment when I was in the server room.  The door for the room remains locked but there is a motion sensor inside that will unlock the door when you approach.  When the door unlocks it makes a noise.  Well Sadie would trip the sensor and then be amazed by the noise.  Time and again she would walk through the sensor field and then be surprised by the noise.  It was cute.

Eventually they settled down and just hung out while I worked.  I was in the office until close to lunch time before I finished up.  Before I left I let the girls do one more exploration run.  It was so funny to see how excited they were.

On the drive home both of the dogs seemed pretty pooped.  However before Sadie laid down she assumed a position she never has before.  Her body was wedged all the way under the bed with her head popped out.  The expression on her face made me laugh out loud.

Once I got home I busted my ass getting the grass handled, both via the tractor and weed whacker.  It was a sweat fest.  The reason I hurried was because I was going out to see Dark Knight. I was seeing the movie with someone else and had to pick her up beforehand.

I thought the movie was really good albeit a bit drawn out at parts. I really liked the way they tied things together and the ending was really well done.  I’d give it an A and you might be able to talk me into an A+.  I think I still enjoyed Avengers more though. I was surprised when I looked at my watch to see the movie was well over two and a half hours long.

Sunday morning I got up super early to go do training bricks with Tom, he has a tri coming up this weekend and wanted to do speed intervals.  The plan was to do a 20 minute ride at near race pace and then immediately do a roughly 10 minute run, again at near race pace.  That doesn’t sound too bad, right?  Well Tom wanted to do this 6 times.

I was already not well prepped for the effort.  I didn’t carb up like I should have the night before and I got very little sleep.  I figured I could still hang, which I did, for awhile.

Tom does a ton more biking than I do. He has been riding over 100 miles a week, I ride 12.  He also has a tri bike.  But he is also 62 years old so I figured that evened things out.  I kept up with him for the first 4 riding segments, although it was hard work, and the running part of the bricks was no problem for me.  However during the 5 th ride my legs simply died.  Both my hamstrings and calves felt like they were on the verge of cramping.  I told Tom to go ahead and I cut the loop short.

I had to get out of there anyway because I had another thing to do late morning.  I was totally gassed and extremely tired.

I decided this weekend that the online dating world is now offline for me for the foreseeable future.  It seems like until either more time passes or my marital status changes officially I am going to be running into unwanted problems.  If something comes to be in a “conventional” manner great, but I am not going to be placing my face on an online billboard, it just hasn’t been worth it.

So I left work an hour early yesterday so I could get home to let the dogs out.  My boss is nice enough to let me do that whenever I have solo custody of the dogs.  As I walk in the house from the garage there is a nice big pile of dog shit on the area rug.  I could tell it was the work of Sadie.

Sadie, momentarily oblivious to the atrocity she planted at my feet came running out, thrilled to see me.  I brought her back to reality when I pointed to the pile of excrement, pointed at her and said in my stern voice, NAUGHTY.  Instantly, her ears drop, her head lowers and she slinks away.

I hold my breath and pick up the area rug to carry it into the front yard where I flung the shit off.  I left the rug piled up on the floor of the garage as I knew I would have to wash it.  I go inside and notice Nicki isn’t anywhere to be seen.  That’s weird.  I call for her as I look around the house, nothing.  Finally I realize she is out on the pool deck.  I find it hard to believe she didn’t hear me.  I called her inside.

Well then I realized why she was hesitant to come inside.  I glance over at the guest bathroom and see that Nicki has left a matching pile of shit on one of the area rugs in there! Geezus..  I again point and use my stern voice which sends both Nicki and Sadie into the bedroom.  What a wonderful way to start my evening.

So again I carry the bathroom rug out front and eject the poop into the yard.  If there is any “good” part of the double deuce dropping it is both dogs did it in a location that was easy to clean.  I threw both rugs in the washing machine as I sighed.  This was not the way to start off a week of dog sitting.

So as I went back to the bedroom and changed I didn’t say anything to the girls, they both looked guilty enough.  After I was done changing I patted them both and said it was ok.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, neither of them would take a dump in the morning before I left for work.  I had them out for a ridiculously long 20 minutes so they would have every opportunity to do so.  In the past there have been similar situations where they wouldn’t go in the morning but still were ok during the day, they just didn’t have to go.  Well I think they now have adjusted to Ali’s schedule where the day starts significantly later.  Ali said sometimes the dogs will not even try to get her out of bed until after 9 am. I guess my up at 5:30 routine has them out of whack.

Well the rest of the night from that point on went downhill.  I made the dogs supper but neither of them went after it initially.   This is normal for Sadie, but not for Nicki.  So I took them outside, thinking that after playing in the back yard they both would be ready to eat.

So after spending 15-20 minutes outside with them I walked back towards the house.  Sadie followed me in but Nicki instead plopped her self on the small hill by the pool cage and laid down there.  Ok fine, she looked quite content to sit out there by herself so I let her be.

Well she sat out there for almost 90 minutes.  I stuck my head out the slider a few times and asked her if she wanted to come in and she didn’t budge.  After the 90 minutes I went out to her and told her to come in, which she did, slowly.

I figured she would be starving by the time she came in.  But instead of going over to her food dish and getting busy she came to the edge of the kitchen and laid down on the carpet.  WTF.

I reminded Nicki her supper was there and she should eat.  She knows what that means.  Still, I got no response.  I then try to entice her by grabbing a piece of lunch meat, ripping it up, and placing it on top of her dinner.  She STILL will not come out to her food stand.  It was almost like she was scared to come to that spot.

I again tell Nicki she should eat her supper in a more deliberate tone.  She got up and did her fast trot back to the bedroom like she was in trouble.  I was really getting frustrated.

Nicki can be rather neurotic.  She develops fears of things very easily.  She is still the only dog I know that is afraid of cats.  When you try to correct her fearful reaction she often responds by just acting even more freaked out.

So I was trying to figure out what her latest hang up is.  The only thing I could think of is she knew about Sadie’s pile of shit in the laundry room.  Maybe she thought it was still there and if I saw it I was going to get mad, I really don’t know.

So I go back to the bedroom and Nicki is on her bed, moping and looking miserable.  Even though I know she doesn’t understand me, I try to reason with Nicki, telling her it is ok, I’m not mad and she should go eat her supper.  She just lays there.

I go back out to the kitchen and catch Sadie eating Nicki’s supper!  This was like bizarro world.  Sadie knows Nicki’s food is off limits and the biggest problem we had in the past was Nicki moving in on Sadie’s food.   I yell at Sadie and tell her to get lost.  She left but then as soon as I left the kitchen she would head back in there, defying me.  Now I was really pissed, I shooed Sadie out to the pool deck and told her to stay there.

So I then probably made a mistake, I went back and carried Nicki out of the bedroom and closed the door.  I am sure once again Nicki sensed my anger even though it wasn’t at her.  When I sat her down she immediately went looking for another place to hide and heads into the guest bathroom, wtf….

I get her out of the bathroom and she then scurries up to the office and hides there.  It was so frustrating but I realized the more frustration I showed the more Nicki was going to act weird.  I sat down on the floor and petted her, trying to reassure her.  I didn’t try to encourage her to eat the rest of the night and she didn’t eat a morsel.  She even ignored a treat I sat right between her paws.

I’m not really sure if her flakiness is a reaction to her shitting in the house, missing Ali or a combo of both.  This morning the only part of her “breakfast” she would eat was the lunch meat and I had to put the plate on carpet by the kitchen, she still wouldn’t come to her food stand.  She did eat a couple treats before I left.

I can hardly wait to see what gems await me tonight although at least Nicki did her business this morning before I left.

This weekend I have to do some work for the office, I haven’t decided if I want to try to do it all remotely or go in there Saturday to get it done.  If I go in I would bring the dogs with to let them hang out.

I have my normal load of indoor and outdoor chores lined up of course.

On the way home from work I picked up the dogs from Ali’s place.  Even though Ali doesn’t leave until today she thought it would be easier for me to take them last night so she could pack without Nicki getting upset, she knows what a suitcase means.

I loaded up the dogs and two boxes of supplies to get them through their week long stay at the house.  The truck was kind of full.

Last night as I was outside in the yard, my neighbors from Michigan came over to the fence, they are down for a few days.  They told me their AC died and wanted to pick my brain about the system I had put in.  I told them how we went pretty high end with our system and it has been money well spent, the Trane has been working like a champ.  Not only is the house much cooler, my energy costs have dropped dramatically.

I explained to my neighbor that we spent a lot of money but part of that was all the labor utilized to rip out the majority of my duct work and to rebuild the mounting spot for the air handler so it wasn’t leaning to the left.  We also benefited from several incentive plans at the time which knocked a couple grand off the cost. Unfortunately those incentives are no longer in place.

It sounded like my neighbors were considering going a cheaper route, putting in a less efficient 16 seer or maybe even a 13 seer unit. (mine is 18.5 seer)  In the short term they are thinking since they are only in the house maybe one month out of the year it is hard to justify spending a ton on the AC.  However their master plan is to retire in a couple years and move down here permanently.  In that scenario they could wind up kicking themselves in the head for not going with a more efficient model.

I asked them how hot it was inside their house right now.  They said somewhere around 85 degrees, ouch.  I told them they could borrow my window unit AC which saved our ass the last time we had an extended power outage.  It works just fine for cooling off a bedroom.  I know what it is like to sleep in a house down here in the summer with no AC, it is pretty miserable.

They wisely took me up on my offer.

Just a quick aside to my front seat view to a bank robbery at the gym yesterday.  Like I mentioned, when I arrived at the gym the bank was surrounded by cops with guns drawn.  At one point I saw 6 or 7 deputies march in the front door locked and loaded.  As I bystander I assumed this was because the bank robber was still inside.

Well after reading the news story I found out this was not the case.  The robber was already out of the building by the time police arrived.  I have no idea why there was this big dramatic ordeal when someone from inside the bank could have simply told the cops the guy already got away. Weird.

So today, I am on the floor doing slow controlled push ups.  About 10 feet away from me is a woman I talk to on a regular basis doing work on the adjustable ab bench.  All of a sudden I heard the loud and unmistakable sound of a “woops” fart come from her direction.  Obviously the ab exercises she was doing caused the accident.

I made a snap decision to not pause, not look at her, not give any indication that I heard the flatulence, although I would have had to be nearly deaf to not hear it.  I figured it was the gentlemanly thing to do.  To draw attention to it would have embarrassed her I am sure.

I continued my push up set without flinching.  When I was finished I avoided what could have been embarrassing eye contact (for her) and walked to another section of the gym.  When I walked by her as I left I said goodbye,  making sure it was very quick and without a hint of a smirk on my lips.

Last night as I was getting ready to take a shower for some reason my mind drifted towards recollection.  I paused and looked at the bedroom, recalling what the room looked like for the last 11 years versus how it looks now.  (sparse)

I realized how surprising it is that I have not done more of this since Ali and I split.  You have to figure out of the two of us I have had a potentially more difficult path to navigate when it comes day to day existence.  The reason being is every day I am surrounded by the visual reminders of what we built together for more than a decade.  I could easily look in any corner of the house and think about some sort of related back story. The same situation occurs outside where years and years of our sweat equity is on display.

In an instant I can recall the anticipation/excitement from various past projects, the struggle associated with their completion and the pride in the final outcome.  Of course I can also quickly feel the sorrow that in a way, much of it now feels hollow, since these things came from the efforts of two people working as a team.  The dissolution of that team changes the way I look at all of those things.

Of course having the dogs not under the roof has been rather brutal as well but it would only be worse for Ali so that is just a weight I have to bear.

On my computer at home I have set up a rotating desktop of imagery.  Almost all of my images are from the various road trips Ali, the dogs and I have taken over the past 6 or 7 years.  As many fond memories as I have of those experiences, each time a new image flips up it has the potential to deliver a little pinch of sorrow.

All of these things make me sad, but they don’t make me regret the split, as we both hope that decision leads to us both being happier in the long run.

As I said in the beginning of this post, as miserable as this all sounds, for the most part I have been able to successfully steer my mind away from dwelling on these things.  If that was not the case I would probably be pushing to sell the house and rid myself of all of these visual reminders of what was.  For whatever reason, last night, I just lost control of the steering wheel for a bit.

I have been going to various gyms for a long time, somewhere close to 25 years I guess.  During that quarter century I have seen lots of bizarre things occur in and around them.  Well today was a new first, I arrived at the gym in the middle of a bank robbery.

There is a Bank of America right in front of my gym.  As I pulled in a couple cop cars were there with more streaming in.  As I exited the truck and walked towards the gym door I saw a cop with a shotgun crouch down and sprint between cars, trying to maintain cover.  Evidently this was the real deal, everyone had guns drawn.

I would say 95% of the people at the gym had stopped their workouts and were watching the ordeal from either the sidewalk or along the front glass wall inside.  I was part of the 5%.

Sure as I was doing my 5 minute cardio session to warm up I was keeping tabs on what was going on outside.  I saw no less than 15 people with their phones out, trying to record the events, a testament to just how media starved the world is, it is close to impossible to not having someone shooting video if you do anything as minor as stub your toe. Smart phones make everyone Big Brother.

So anyway I have an atypical reaction in these situations, I’m not a rubber necker.  If things are under control or someone else is handling it I don’t feel the need to stand there and gawk, in fact it bothers me to do so.

If some sort of situation came up where my help was actually needed, then absolutely, I am there, but I am not going to just leech onto a situation just to say I was part of it.  If there weren’t a dozen other people already shooting video yes maybe I would have felt it could possibly be important to do so. As is, after my cardio I went back in the nearly empty free weight area and did my thing.

I realize that my attitude towards car wreck mentality is outside the norm.  It’s always been that way, not sure why.

So last night I pulled a late night, 24 marathon to finish up season 4.  As with the previous three seasons I have seen, season 4 was filled with incredible action, suspense and a total disbelief that any human being could possibly endure everything that happens to Jack in 24 hours.  As unbelievable as the situations are it doesn’t stop me from finding the show very entertaining.  Hell I was so intrigued how they were going to continue the plot line I actually stayed up for the first episode of season 5!  I have no idea what time it actually was when I feel asleep but I know it was technically Tuesday.

Last night I did the juice/wrap dinner thing.  I came up with a really stupid idea in the process.  I thought instead of stirring hemp protein powder into the juice, I would just cut out the middleman and shove a heaping teaspoon of it in my mouth. Well it was pretty awful.

The mouth full of dry, green powder had no redeeming qualities besides the protein it contains.  I quickly grabbed a drink of water to wash it down.

I think the avocado I used in my wrap was on the verge of being bad, despite just buying it Friday.  It was very soft and did not look quite right.  I downed it anyway although I felt a little sick to my stomach afterward.

I decided to skip the club run Saturday morning, instead deciding I would roll some running into my Sunday brick.  I wanted to get an early start on the house chores.

As I was out front weeding I heard the gate of Thina’s house open followed a few seconds later by seeing something moving towards me out of my peripheral vision.  I glance up and see Thina sprinting towards me, almost like it was a jailbreak, which unfortunately for her, it probably was.

She runs to my side and immediately flops down, wanting me to rub her belly which of course I do.  I hear her dumb ass owner calling for her which of course she ignores.  I petted her for a few moments and told her she was a good girl.  I then scooped her up and carried her over to Jose (or whatever his name is).  I felt awful handing her over. Evidently they were going somewhere and they actually took Thina with, putting her in the back of the SUV.

So after I got my first round of chores done I went to go pick up the girls since Ali was going to be working.

This past week Ali has obtained pet insurance for both of the dogs.  I agreed to help split the cost of the insurance with her, it isn’t cheap.  The thought process is with Nicki getting older and us wanting to do everything possible to make sure she is with us as long as possible, surprise vet bills could be more and more frequent. Anyone that has pets knows that animal health care can be nearly as expensive as their human counterparts.

This insurance will allow Ali to budget in a set amount for the dogs health care each and every month.  The policy is a zero deductible plan.  Originally Ali had obtained a 200 dollar deductible policy but I convinced her that the extra monthly cost for zero deductible would probably work out better in the long run.

One of our fears is with Nicki and joint problems.  I have noticed in the past month or so that she has seemed increasingly gimpy.  I said to Ali that I suspect the two flights of stairs at her place could be contributing to the issue.  Labs are very prone to joint/hip problems.

When Nicki walks lately it is a very slow pace and she will not engage in anything beyond a few steps of jogging, even when Sadie wants to play.  I said something to Ali about trying to carry Nicki up and down her steps but it would be too dangerous for Ali to do so.  The last thing I need is for both of them to take a fall down the stairs.

It actually seems like one of the more painful things for Nicki is simply getting up.  She didn’t even want to stand up in the front seat of the van when I put the window down, something she normally will never pass up.  When we got to the house I actually lifted her out of the passenger seat down to the ground to make it easier for her.

I am going to have the dogs for almost an entire week when Ali leaves for PA later this week.  I will be curious to see if a week without steps improves Nicki’s condition.

I still had to mow the grass.  It was the first time mowing with the new blades.  There was a definite difference, the cut was much more even and efficient.  When you put new blades on the tractor you want to keep them pristine as possible for as long as you can.  Well that time period was very short as I inadvertently chopped up a piece of loose cement that was by the driveway.

So I finished up just as it looked like it was going to start raining.  I go inside and smell the unmistakable stench of dog shit, oh no…..  I knew it was somewhere in the house, I just had to track it down.  My search ended in the doorway of the guest bedroom.  From observation and dog reaction, I am 90% sure it was Nicki’s doing.

It made no sense to me, why would she shit in the house?  They both went for Ali earlier in the day and I had them outside a couple times at the house before I started mowing.  Nicki may have been in the house for 90 minutes.  I scolded Nicki, well actually I just talked to her in my disappointed voice as she laid in her dog bed giving me sad eyes.  I don’t get what that was about.  Hopefully we aren’t starting a new trend for their stay at the house later this week.

By later in the afternoon Saturday I basically had everything done that was going to get done around the house.  I had the rest of the weekend to myself, a feeling I always like, not that I had any exciting plans for that time.

One of the things I did was finally finish normal mode of Diablo 3.  I had stopped playing the game, and any games for that matter, for a couple weeks but a few days ago I picked it back up.  The A/V experience in Diablo 3 is some of the best I have ever experienced in gaming.  Unfortunately despite that, it is hard to ignore the repetitiveness of the actual game experience.

When you “beat” the game, your reward is to do it all over again at a harder difficulty level.   I don’t think I’ll do that but I might try to get a couple other classes to the end of normal mode.

Sunday morning I was out the door early to do a full brick of riding, running and swimming.  I threw my bike and other gear in the back of the SSR and took off.  My hope was after the training I could just hang out at the water park for awhile and relax.

On the last leg of my ride I saw Christy and Ali outside Christy’s apartment complex so I stopped, I knew Christy was supposed to run part of Ali’s 14 mile training run with her.  I found out Christy was done with her part but Ali still had almost 7 miles to go yet.  Ali asked if I wanted to do the running segment of my brick with her.  I said that was fine, I had about 10 minutes to go on the ride, she could meet me at the park.

We took off for what was about 5 miles for me.  The run was just not fun, by this time of day it felt oppressively warm and humid, even at 9 am.  My skin was pouring sweat by the gallon.  The run was an out and back.  On the way back right before a water stop Ali tripped and fell.  Luckily I think her slippery, sweaty skin helped her avoid major road/sidewalk rash although she did have marks on her left knee, hand and shoulder.

By this point she was exhausted and said she had to rest for a few minutes.  She told me I should just go.  At first I hung around for a bit but after Ali assured me she was fine I headed off solo for the last mile and a half.  I was glad to be done, it was so damn warm.

I then hopped in the pool for 1200 yards of swimming.  I hurt my left shoulder late last week at the gym.  The injury made swimming a bit difficult but I managed to get the laps in, albeit slower than I normally would.

My idea of just hanging out at the water park afterward was short lived.  I only hung around for maybe an hour before the skies looked like they were ready to open up.  It wasn’t all that fun to just sit there by myself anyway.  I think the water park is one of those things best experienced with somebody else, unless you are just swimming laps.

On the drive home the rain started and continued for the majority of the afternoon.  It felt like the weather absolutely sucked any motivation out of me.  Beyond putting chlorine in the pool, I did absolutely no chores on Sunday.  Instead I went into total lazy mode, buzzing through some shows on my Tivo as well as getting caught up with Falling Skies and working towards the end of season four of 24.  Despite completing my informal triathlon that morning, the afternoon and evening of laziness made me feel like I accomplished little for the day overall.

For obvious reasons I don’t detail any of my post split dating experiences here.  I certainly would like to at times.  Not because it is filled with any sort of tremendous success, just the opposite really.  It would make for some interesting/funny reading for sure.  At this point I just throw it all into the rather large and growing “learning experience” barrel.

Last night after I got done making a hard mode attempt at the BB challenge I stepped into the garden to harvest kale for the first time ever.  Kale is something that they don’t sell down here in the local home improvement store vegetable displays.  My kale was started from some seeds I bought out of a catalog.

My kale appears to be doing pretty well although I did notice that it was starting to get munched on by the f’ing bugs that make growing stuff in the summer so miserable.  I need to start spraying the garden again with some insecticidal soap to see if I can keep the bugs from destroying my crop. Kale is a great food, one of the healthiest greens you can consume.

I clipped off 6 or 7 pieces of it and brought it inside for supper.  I threw most of it into the juicer and then used the last two pieces in my spinach wrap. I didn’t eat a piece by itself so I couldn’t really tell you if it tastes good or bad.  I just know it does a body good.

Why the f is George Zimmerman doing tv interviews prior to his trial?  Did he not see see the Jerry Sandusky/Bob Costas interview?  I can not believe his attorney would endorse a tv appearance by his client. Regardless of my viewpoint on the case, which is, Zimmerman acted inappropriately and initiated the conflict, going on tv at this point was a moronic move. “All part of God’s plan?” Yea, that was a brilliant statement…

So the news this morning is exploding with the news of the shooting at a Dark Knight premiere in Colorado.  The description of the events sounds almost surreal, literally like the 24 year old gunman was trying to reenact the role of Bain, the villain of the movie, throwing tear gas into the theater and then using the fleeing patrons as a real life shooting gallery.

The last numbers I heard were so far 15 people have died and another 50 were injured during the attack.  Of course the first focus is the incredible tragedy with the loss of life, as it should be.  Eventually the focus of the story will spin off into various angles including what the hell makes a person totally go off the hook and decide to randomly fire into a crowd of strangers in a theater?

At least in “going postal” cases, there is a clear motive behind a shooting rampage.  Someone got fed up with something, snaps and decides to inflict the ultimate revenge upon specific targets.

In something like this, the pure randomness and scope of the shooting is beyond what most sane people can comprehend.