Archives 2012

I always enjoy spotting oddities at the gym.  Yesterday was one of those days.  In the free weight area was a  guy that looked like he was trying to cut weight.  He had on sweat pants, a sweat shirt and a knit beanie.  When I walked in I thought it was odd that his “exercise” seemed to be laying on the bench press with his Iphone above him, pressed against the barbell, texting.  He was laying on the bench for a long time doing this, lasting beyond my normal pre-workout stretching session.

Eventually he got up, walked over to the squat rack, did about 8 squats and then immediately returned to the bench and texting on his back. He continued this cycle of laying on the bench for 5-6 minutes combined with 25 seconds of exercise multiple times.  His ratio of exercise to rest/texting seemed totally out of whack.  Luckily I didn’t need the squat rack yesterday.

Yesterday Ali took Sadie into the vet to get her teeth cleaned.  Sadie has an issue with her teeth getting nasty.  We had her teeth cleaned once before a couple years ago.  Luckily Nicki doesn’t seem to have the same dental misfortune.

Cleaning a dog’s teeth is a bit of a pain in the ass and somewhat risky.  The vet has to totally knock the dog out to do it.  There are always dangers with anesthesia.  Once the cleaning is over it takes a couple hours until the dog is awake enough to take home.

When we had this done before Ali was quite upset because Sadie literally looked like she was dead when she first came out, which is a normal anesthesia look, but disturbing none the less.

After the gym I went over to the vet’s office for about 45 minutes to help Sadie wake up.  It’s funny how disoriented she was at first.  By the time I left she was close to being ready to go.  Ali snapped this cute picture of Nicki looking over Sadie shortly after she came out.  They are such good buddies.

Oh man the political rhetoric is getting insane, made worse by the party conventions being in prime time.  I had my first FB friend casualty as a result, I just couldn’t take the ranting and hypocrisy any longer.  It’s been a long time since I did some FB housecleaning anyway, I have a feeling the 2012 election will give me ample motivation to do more of it.

Last night I was quite busy, stopping at Trader Joe’s and Sam’s on the way home from work to stock up on a few items.  Once home I tried to lessen the weekend load by cleaning Tuki’s cage, doing laundry and watering all of the indoor plants.

Tomorrow I will be timing a large cross country meet.  Timing these events is significantly more involved than timing a normal 5K.  Instead of one race, it is 4 races. Each race starts 40 minutes apart so I need to be quick with processing the results of each event as well.  It’s a challenge, but I’m always looking for those anyway.

On Sunday I might be driving over to pick up some stuff from Jeremy.

Next week will be an oddball.  I am training from home all week long.  Later next week Ali heads back up north so I will be the full time dog sitter for a few days as well.  It’s always good to break up the normal monotony of my work week although sometimes sitting in a “classroom” environment for 5 days straight can get old pretty quick.

Regardless of my class experience it will definitely be nice to “work” from home for a week.

I have been very equitable in my treatment of the DNC convention in comparison to the RNC convention.  I haven’t watched a second of it, either.  I read last night Bill gave a kick ass speech.  That’s all well and good.  However at least personally, I have no need to watch a glorified rah rah session from either party to help me make up my mind on anything.

Last night I skipped yoga and instead decided to get the yard mowed.  No, I didn’t feel nearly as refreshed afterward but I did enjoy a similar sense of accomplishment.

Did you ever think, I mean really think, about how ridiculous it is the marijuana is illegal, or, almost any other drug for that matter?  One of the things the Obama administration has done that I am not happy about is a stupid crack down on marijuana use.  It is a HUGE waste of resources.

When I was on the mower last night my mind was wandering, as it often does.  I was analyzing why alcohol, which has the potential to cause the exact same problems as illegal drugs, is legal and everything else is not.  Well it is the same reason that many things in the world are, that’s just what we were told and told and told again.  Alcohol is ok, all other drugs, bad.

Well if you are able to pull yourself out of that haze you realize how stupid this policy is.  Our prisons are stuffed with people arrested on drug related charges.  You and I pay a fortune to facilitate their incarceration.  There is a huge, violent underground dedicated to the production and distribution of these drugs simply because they are illegal.  The question is simply, why?

Why is it acceptable for someone to drink a half a case of beer but they can’t smoke a joint or pop a pill?  The end result is the same.  The individual becomes chemically altered.  Why can’t we simply apply the same rules for alcohol to all drugs? Basically, as long as your behavior on these substances does not negatively affect other individuals, go nuts.  Kill yourself if you want to.  If you start f’ing with other people while in this state THEN we have a problem.

Just think of the positives that could come from such a policy change.  No more illegal drug trafficking.  Huge dollars could be both saved and earned.  No more BILLIONS of dollars spent policing, prosecuting and imprisoning drug users.  Then add in HUGE dollars from taxing the legal sale of these substances.  It would be a huge win/win.

To me green lighting alcohol sales and nothing else is pure hypocrisy. It’s like saying you can only buy Honda’s.

You would think from this rant I was a closet marijuana smoker or pill popper.  Nope, never touched the stuff. Although I think if you chose to align your life around any drug use, including alcohol, you are heading down a path with a brick wall at the end, I fully endorse your right to do so as long as you don’t throw up on my shoes.

This issue, like so many things in life that our society accepts blindly, is revealed as ludicrous once a bit of logic is applied.

Last night I finally got back to some cleaner eating after 4 days of consuming fantasy football draft party leftovers.  I had a salad containing baby kale, spinach, tomato, carrots, almonds, pecans and sunflower seeds.  I followed up with a wrap that included hummus, carrot, tomato, more salad greens and a slice of low fat swiss cheese.  Desert was celery with peanut butter.  My beverage was water.

It felt good to eat better, my body literally felt ill from the pizza overload combined with an overdose of sweets I put down at work the last few days.

I was very busy last night.  After doing a little bit of silly body weight work, I was on the computer most of the night.  I had to do some network upgrades at work remotely and also do the legwork for the cross country meet I am timing on Saturday. The meet is shaping up to be quite large, with over 600 kids signed up.

Yesterday I set a a new one day record in Adsense dollars, raking in a MASSIVE $9.40.  I now try to keep the camera rolling as much as possible.  If I am lucky it will catch that magical moment when I face plant doing something stupid which could translate into YouTube gold, just like this kid did.

I got so many things done this weekend I literally can’t remember it all, so I will touch on what I DO remember.

Saturday morning I had my first race to time in a couple months.  The race had a huge swell in registration in the last three days, over half of the people signed up in that compressed time period.  We wound up with right around 550 people signed up.

Before the race we had some lighting problems.  The club has several high power halogen light sets.  They throw a nice amount of light.  The problem is they also pull huge amounts of power.  Over the years we have had issues with the lights popping circuit breakers.

Well Saturday the lights kept popping my power strip that we were also using for the laptops so it was a major pain in the ass. One of the things I have wanted to look into is getting some fluorescent lights to replace them to eliminate this problem.

It was so humid Saturday morning.  Even before the sun popped it’s head out my shirt was thoroughly soaked from the massive moisture in the air.  Race timing went ok, any issues I had were human error related and easily corrected.  I was out of there around 9:15 or so.

Ali was scheduled to do a long run for her marathon training so she asked if I could pick up the dogs on the way home so she didn’t have to worry about bathroom breaks.  The girls were quite surprised to see me pull up in the party van to take them out to the house.

After getting all of my post race processing completed I started on my long list of to do’s.  Later in the afternoon I turned my attention to the two ripped pool screen sections.  It seemed like almost on queue, as soon as I started working on hanging the first replacement section, the wind started kicking up.

The wind was blowing towards the house.  A section of loose screen catches wind like a sail.  I went inside and got some of my paint masking tape.  My hope was I could use it to temporarily hold the screen in place until I could get some spline in.  I used a bunch of tape and it worked, briefly, until a strong gust would break the screen loose again.  After repeating this process 5 or 6 times I was getting pissed, yelling at the wind like it had a set of ears.

Finally I had enough, I texted Ali and asked her if she wanted to be a screen holder.  She said she didn’t mind coming out.  While she was in transit I wasted no time, super setting in cleaning the master bathroom.  Like I said, I had a monumental list of things to get done.

Once Ali arrived we got to work on the screens, her role being keeping the screen taut I as I sunk in the spline.  Her job was not exactly fun as these sections were right in front of rose bushes with sharp and abundant thorns.  I got both screens replaced in about an hour with Ali’s assistance.  I was quite glad she was able to help.

We had talked about taking a few items to Ali’s place so I suggested we get that taken care of as well.  Among those items were one of the two desks in the hobby room, some rolling storage things and a spare shelf from the shed.  We loaded all the stuff in both the Camry and the Tacoma and headed back to Ali’s place along with the girls.

The shelf will be put to good use in the storage area in Ali’s garage and we lugged the desk upstairs to her spare bedroom/office to be used to hold her sewing machine and various other items.  I had brought my cordless drill and drill bits to hang some stuff for Ali.  Unfortunately the thing she wanted me to hang didn’t come with drywall anchors and I didn’t bring any along.  I told her I would hang it in the next day or two.

Ali heated up some of the leftover fantasy football pizza I gave her for us to eat for dinner.  By the time I left I was a zombie.  I had been literally on the go all day long since 4:15 AM.  I was done.

Sunday morning I was up and busy by 7:30 am, continuing on various things I wanted to get done.  My goal was to have my Labor Day completely free of labor, so I could do whatever I wanted to do.

Mid-morning I shot back over to Ali’s to hang up the stuff I couldn’t the night before.  I also picked up the girls again to hang with me since Ali was going to work.

I actually got the time to finally give the SSR a bath.  I had not gotten a chance to do so since I took the truck across the state to visit Randall and Tracy.  Before I started washing the truck I threw it up on my ramps.

I wanted to crawl underneath to see if I could spot any obvious cause of the P0420 error (catalytic converter issue) I was reading.  All the wires looked intact but I did see something else.

Since I had all that work done on the truck (Vette clutch installed, both cats replaced), I noticed I heard a new vibrating type of noise under hard acceleration.  Well as I was under the truck I noticed the heat shield right above the rear weld on the new passenger side cat had been burnt and split, an obvious by product of the rushed replacement of the cats, the installer was in a severe time crunch.

Anyway the slice created a flap of heat shield that could very obviously rattle against the pipe, so I simply bent it upward.  In my subsequent test drive I no longer heard the noise.  I also used my code reader to clear the CEL code, curious to see if it would immediately reappear.  It didn’t, so I guess I am on a wait and see pattern with that issue.

The truck looked great after it’s bath.  I even took the time to clean the tail pipe extensions.  When all the work was done I also had bigger, stainless steel exhaust tips put on the SSR.  However they were already covered in black soot/carbon, totally negating the coolness factor.

I read on SSRFantatics that the best way to clean them up is using plain old oven cleaner.  I sprayed some on, let it set for a few minutes and then scrubbed it out with a brush.  It worked like a charm.  My tips were back to being an eye catcher instead of an eye sore.

Mid-afternoon Sunday I headed over to my mom’s place with the girl’s in tow.  She had asked if I could run the steam cleaner in her two bedrooms as well as help her flip over her mattress.  She hadn’t had the carpets cleaned since she moved in.  I told her it was no problem.  She was worried about my having time to get it done before she had to leave to meet some friends for dinner.

Well compared to the time I spend when I clean the carpet at the house, mom’s condo was a piece of cake.  I don’t think it even took me a half hour to finish both rooms.  She was surprised.  I told her whenever she wants it done to let me know since it is so easy to do.

When I got back home I finished up whatever chore related items needed to be done.  Finally, I was done.  So what did I do next? Relax?  Of course not.  Instead I headed outside to shoot some work out videos.

I actually produced a total of 5 videos out of the footage.  3 of them were BB forum related, depicting what is and isn’t considered good form for the monthly challenges.  It seems every month there is a question on what is good form.  I am hoping instead of typing it out time and again I can simply link these videos.  The two other videos were my attempting to do muscle ups with my legs tied together with yoga bands and another funny one where the dogs get involved as I do dragon flags.

Ali came and picked up the dogs Sunday night after she was done working.  It was odd having both her and the dogs out at the house two consecutive days.

So Labor Day arrives, the day I was busting my ass for so I could have a a day free of must do’s.  I woke up on my own around 6:30 and was out the door before 8 am to go do a bike/swim training brick.  I have done very little endurance training over the last month or so because of blowback knee issues after playing in the KOB volleyball tourney.  My knee is still not 100% well but I deemed it good enough to at least do some non-impact work.

My trusty Forerunner 201 seems to have finally bitten the dust.  It stopped working a couple weeks ago so I was without a GPS.  I improvised by firing up MapMyRide on my Iphone a storing it in my seat bag.  I did a long ride, for me, approximately 24 miles.  My average pace was about 17 mph but that was with a number of lengthy stops at traffic lights.  My actual riding pace felt much stronger than that.  I was pooped when I pulled back into the parking lot.

It was then into the water park for the swim portion of my brick.  I was not pleased when I jumped into the lap pool and it felt like a hot tub.  I bet the temperature was just under 90 degrees, a terrible temperature to swim distance in.  I scaled back by original goal of 1600 yards to 1200 solely because of the high temps.

I want pleased to see that the water park was only going to be open for weekends until the end of September.  I thought last year it stayed open until sometime in October although I could be mistaken.  The swimming weather easily could extend into November but I guess this is purely a monetary decision.  Bums me out none the less, swimming definitely helps my aching shoulders.

When I got home I was starving so I slammed down lunch.  Early in the afternoon for some reason, despite already getting in a significant amount of exercise in the AM, I decided I wanted to go out and do a Ray’s Way circuit.  In layman’s terms this is doing 5 sets of dips, pull ups and push ups within certain time constraints.  It’s tough.

I actually failed to complete the sets successfully.  The combination of my morning exertion, outdoor hot and humid conditions and a less than positive mental disposition all contributed to my failure.  It was still a good workout.

I didn’t really get off the treadmill until late Monday afternoon when I sat down to play some WoW.  There is a new expansion coming out in 3 weeks which may finally get me back into the game that I basically had stepped away from for 4 or 5 months.

I have yet another busy week laid out in front of me.  Some night this week I need to get the grass mowed.  Next Saturday I will be timing a large invitational cross country meet and then Sunday I may be heading back to the east coast to pick up a desk and queen size mattress that Jeremy and Mandy are graciously donating to me.  I plan to trade them my old pressure washer in exchange.

Did I mention how badly I feel for Clint Eastwood?  He made himself out to be basically a stumbling loon in his RNC speech.  I actually heard some people say that the thought he “killed it”.  Yes I agree he did kill it, but in the literal sense.  I like the guy too much to see him turned into a laughing stock, it’s a shame.

Yesterday was a busy day so I didn’t have time to post.

Wednesday after work I did my second yoga class.  We had a young guy teach the class this time.  Well not that I was looking for more torture but this class was even tougher than the week prior.  For the most part I was able to hang but there are certain moves/holds I simply can not approach doing.

Part of the problem is my bad right knee.  After two arthroscopic surgeries I simply can not bend the joint back all that far before pain starts burning through it.  I am sure there are various hunks of scar tissue in there that are the culprit.  I also have very tight hips.  I can’t sit indian style, the hips and the right knee again are roadblocks to that position.

Once again I looked like I stepped out of a pool by the end of the class.  My mat felt like an ice rink from all the sweat.  Despite all the sweat and difficulty in not looking like a stiff, I am finding I enjoy the challenge of yoga and recognize the long term benefit if I stick with it.

So Thursday morning was my dermatologist appointment.  When I described the stinging sensation on my back when taking a shower he immediately zeroed in on a small area on my upper back that is red and scaly, one of the various ways basal cell skin cancer can appear.

He took a small sample to get biopsied to verify the diagnosis.  If it comes back positive then I head back in there to get the area “scraped and burned” , I can hardly wait.

Last night was my fantasy football draft party.  My boss, whom is as nice as they come, let me leave early so I could get home to do party prep which there was a lot of.

After moving a shitload of furniture around I tended to the numerous other small items that contribute to a well run party.  I ran out and picked up 5 pizzas, arriving back at the house right about 6, the time that I expected some people to start showing up, since the draft was supposed to start at 6:30.

Well no one showed up until about 10 till 7, and basically it was everyone at the same time.  They came bearing gifts of food and drink.  In no time my kitchen area was jammed with stuff.

Once again I used Skype to connect remote owners to the draft and once again I had some issues.  The ideal would be to get all 5 remote owners connected in via video feed.  However we wound up with only having two owners with video and the rest come in via an audio only connection due to bandwidth problems on their end.  It still worked out ok for the most part.

For whatever reason, the NFFL draft seems to consistently be my worst day of the year when it comes to absolute gluttony.  I ate so much food, none of it containing any significant nutritional value.  Pizza, chips, spanikopita, cookies, brownies, you name it, I shoved it down my mouth in large quantities.

Part of this behavior I know is triggered by alcohol.  I am convinced if I was a regular drinker I would be a huge fat ass.  For whatever reason if I drink, it turns off whatever part of my brain controls my normal eating meters.  It seems like I never feel full and I don’t give any thought to what type or how much food I am eating.  The day after this goes down I always feel awful and today is no exception.

As far as my draft goes, I think I have a decent team but, I always think I have a decent team.  I was excited to get LeSean McCoy as my  first pick.  As always, injuries and luck will play the biggest roles in my success this year, much more than skill as I put all of 30 seconds into my draft prep.

There was so much food/beer left after the draft and the guys basically left all of it for me.  I have two and a half pizzas and other smaller food items as well as at least two cases of various beer.  I have no idea how long it will take to go through all of it.  This morning I dropped off one of the pizzas and some other non-meat items to Ali to cut down on the pile.

After the draft was over I tried to get the lionshare of the clean up done, leaving only a few large dishes to clean tonight.  Unfortunately that meant I didn’t collapse into bed until almost midnight.

Instead of sleeping solidly through the night I woke up in the wee hours of the morning from a disturbing dream.  I was somewhere outside with Tommy, the cool guy that hooks me up with Eagles memorabilia.

Well he was by his vehicle, but there was also a large bear by his vehicle.  Tommy decided to reach out to the bear and try to pet it like you would a dog.  Well the bear did not find the action pleasing.  It stood up on it’s back legs,  making it taller than Tommy.

At first it looked like the bear was play wrestling, pulling at the sleeve of Tommy’s long sleeve shirt.  I yelled to Tommy to move away from the bear.  He just laughed and assured me the bear was just playing.

Well the bear was getting more and more aggressive, ripping the sleeve of the shirt clear off.  I knew this was not going to end well.

Tommy then did finally try to move away from the bear but he couldn’t, the bear was now basically attacking him.  As I started seeing blood appear on Tommy’s arm I grabbed a Lousiville Slugger that happened to be close by.  The dream ended as I was wailing on the bear and I woke up.  However for a long period of time every time I closed my eyes I was right back in the middle of the mauling, despite my attempts to mentally change the channel.  Moral of the story, don’t pet bears.

Unfortunately I get no break from my lack of sleep anytime soon.  Tomorrow morning I will be out of bed at 4:15 am to time a race.  The race also will retard my start to whatever I need to do this weekend.  On top of normal chores I need to attend to the two screen sections in the pool cage that were finished off by Isaac.

I am going to be running to my mom’s place sometime during the holiday weekend to do a few things for her as well.  I would like to get some cardio work in , maybe a bike/swim combo.  After eating like a pig last night I feel like a fat ass.

I don’t have any official Labor Day celebration plans and honestly that is fine.

Well I would have been quite thrilled to simply double my Google AdSense dollars from the prior month.  Doing so is an amazing bump.  Well I smashed through doubling July’s revenue of almost $33.  I am now getting in the range of TRIPLING that total, right now I am sitting at $82 in ad dollars for August with a day to go.

It really is amazing.  One thing I did notice looking at the numbers is evidently a lot of you are actually nice enough to click the harmless banner ad at the end of each post.  These clicks actually pay out at a higher rate than YouTube embedded ads so I thank anyone who has done this.

Every time I think I have seen it all at the gym someone proves me wrong.  Today there was a new individual there.  If I was to guess he was probably in his mid to late 50’s.  He had a very short and stocky build.  Based on his arms I would estimate that despite his age he was still quite strong and probably a beast in his heyday which was probably in the 80’s.

Well it seemed like he had managed to keep his 80’s wardrobe intact some 30 years later.

The guy was wearing jeans that looked like a denim version of Zubaz, they were that big and baggy.  He held up the pants via a black and white belt with a zebra stripe pattern on it.

His upper body was adorned by a bright orange t-shirt with a tie dye looking stripe down the side.

He had those big long elastic wraps that you see power lifters use on their elbows and knees.  He had them on his arms while doing light reps on the Cybex tricep machine.

But the crowning achievement to this look was his backwards baseball cap, half of which was adorned in gold sequins.  It was really something to see.  I tried to not stare.

Hey above all, I give the kudos to the guy for still putting in the time at the gym at his age. I admire that sort of determination to not go down looking at strike 3 as old age is bearing down on you. But damn, that was some funny looking shit…

So when I was in the middle of flood insurance fiasco, communicating with a rep from Firserv-Lereta, I told him that if he managed to get the flood insurance requirement dropped I would be happy to send him a case of beer.  I was somewhat surprised when he actually seemed interested in my offer.

Well he got my flood insurance requirement dropped so I had to follow through on my end.  I bought three 6 packs of made in Florida beer and will be shipping them out to him today.  Did I mention how ridiculous UPS ground rates are at this point? Holy shit….

So my neighbors dropped off their two live trap cages to assist me in capturing the armadillo(s) that are turning our yards into a crater filled mess.   After backfilling the latest series of tunnels the bastard dug out I went about setting up the cages.  It took me a little while to figure out how to set each trap, each one was different.

I didn’t have any rancid meat, fruit or sardines handy so I baited the traps with slightly soggy celery, hoping I might get lucky.

So this morning I checked the traps and saw no wildlife inside them, both traps were still armed, meaning nothing even ventured inside.  However, like a big fat FU to me, the armadillo had dug a fresh hole about a foot from one of the traps.

That little shit.

So this week at the grocery store I plan to buy a pack of sardines and try baiting the traps with those instead since it seems armadillos have an appetite for anything disgusting.

This is shaping up to be a long and epic battle.  I will prevail however.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.  In the morning I have my routine dermatologist appointment, something necessary based on the five or six spots of basal cell skin cancer I have had removed in the last several years.

I don’t have any suspicious spots that I am aware of although I do have a weird thing that happens now and then.  I develop these little red spots one my back/chest that are sensitive.  When taking a shower if one of the water streams hits a spot it feels like I am getting poked with a needle.  Obviously this isn’t normal but like I said, these spots come and go.  I will mention it to the doc and see what he says.

Then tomorrow evening I am hosting the draft for our fantasy football league.  I will be rearranging the furniture, preparing food and playing the role of party host for the third or fourth year in a row.  Team owners don’t seem to mind the long drive out to my place because of the accommodations and the tech I utilize, connecting remote owners via Skype and displaying them on my 73 incher.

The first year I went crazy in the food prep, preparing a ton of items, requiring a ton of work.  Each year I have been trying to trim back on my food commitment.  This year I will be just heating up a pan of spanikopita and buying some pizzas, relying on other owners to provide some food items.

I actually have a favorable draft position this year, getting the second pick.  The past two years I was either the last or second to last to pick.

Last night the main objective was to de-hurricane the property, putting everything back that was put away.  Ironically it was actually quite windy last night, possibly the most wind I have seen from Isaac.  My trash bins blew over a couple times.

I noticed the storm did a nice job of finishing off the sections of pool screen that had tears on the spline, they are now ripped to the point where I HAVE to replace them in the near future, yay.

The process was straight forward although certain items that were put away wound up staying in the shed, such as the three plant stands that have sat on the pool deck, plantless, for a couple years, only seeing use as a pool barrier when I have the Dirt Dog out there.  I also tossed some old footwear of Ali’s, after getting her permission to do so, that had been sitting on the table out there. The act of tossing them out pulled on some emotional strings briefly.

The emotion shifted however as I walked up towards the fence and saw the fcking armadillo has been busy putting more craters and tunnels in the yard.  They can be VERY destructive.  My neighbor across the street has had the same armadillo(s) wreaking havoc on his property.  He said he actually saw one of them early one morning and it was HUGE.  The size he illustrated with his hands looked big enough to be a small pig.

I need to get these bastards off my property.  My neighbor has a more violent plan than I do, hoping to spot one in his backyard where he can use his rifle to end the problem.  I am hoping to catch the pest in a live trap cage and then release it far, far away.

My neighbor actually has a live trap cage that I am going to try first, although he is skeptical if it is big enough to hold these monster armadillos.  Also, apparently it is difficult to tempt an armadillo to even go into a live cage.  I looked on the net for what to bait the trap with and came back with disgusting menu items like, meal worms, maggots, spoiled meat, sardines, overripe fruit and fish.  Evidently armadillos like nasty smelling items.

If the neighbor’s cage proves to be too small I will have to invest in a bigger one.

When I had the armadillo problem a few years back they just sort of went away eventually.  However back then they just made a shit load of small holes.  This time there is some major tunneling taking place.  I am not looking for my yard to become an armadillo apartment.

Friday night I dressed up my unhealthy Digiorno frozen pizza with some healthy kale from the garden.  Somehow it makes me feel slightly better about stuffing my face with an otherwise totally unhealthy food.

Friday night I tried to take a bite out of my weekend work by doing all of the weeding.  Since it hadn’t been done in two weeks it was a rather lengthy session.

Saturday morning I picked up the girls early so they could hang out with me for the day.  Ali was working and was worried about the dogs recent unreliable bathroom habits.

I spent a large portion of Saturday giving the grounds a complete manicure, mowing everything inside the fence line and weed whacking.  In total I bet I spent around 5 hours out there.  My thought was I better do it then since Isaac was predicted to drop between 5 and 10 inches of rain in our area which would turn my property into an insta-swamp.

I also put a big dent into the various other things I wanted to get done including getting my tech in order for this week’s fantasy football draft, working on various race timing items, and a few other things.

Both Nicki and Sadie seemed to be feeling better.  Nicki definitely had more spring in her step and was playing with Sadie quite a bit in the yard, even running around a bit, slowly.  It was good to see her acting more normal.

I did some hurricane prep on Saturday  including moving a few things out of harms way.  I decided to go fill up the tank on my Tacoma and fill one extra 5 gallon container with potential generator gas.  By that time the hurricane panic was fully in place as the only gas left was the ridiculously priced premium grade.

I still hadn’t cleared out the items on the pool deck.  Ali actually offered to stop out Sunday morning with the dogs to help me move stuff which was nice of her.

By the time Sunday morning rolled around the effects of Isaac were starting to be felt with gusty winds and wind swept light rains.  Ali was out a little before 10.  With her help it didn’t take long at all to get stuff put away/moved around.  I also moved the stuff at the neighbors house (they live in Michigan) so it would be protected from the storm.

After we were done Ali went through the house a bit to grab a few more things.  There are still a lot of things at the house that are awaiting Ali’s decision if she wants it or not.  The process has been a slow one.  Ali and I talked about how awful it will be come the holidays, trying to split Christmas ornaments. Talk about depressing…

As far as I am concerned, I’d just as soon give it all to her.  I can’t imagine any scenario where I will be doing any official celebration of Christmas this year.

So as Sunday progressed the forecast path for Isaac continued to track further and further west.  The weather outside never really crossed over the “mildly unpleasant” threshold.  Yea it was windy and rained all day but we have plenty of days like that as is.

I slept through the night, not once being awakened by roaring wind or pounding rain.  When I walked outside to the truck this morning I was amazed just how little the property was affected.  Hell it wasn’t even raining and I didn’t have any standing water.

A lot of places jumped the gun with the storm.  All local schools are closed as are a couple pieces of local county government.  It looks pretty silly at this point.

It’s an odd thing that happens with storm false alarms.  There is this huge build up and panic amongst the people, so much so that when the storm doesn’t pack the punch that was predicted there is a perverse sense of disappointment that is just under the surface.  I remember the same scenario taking place up north when winter storms are predicted but do not come to fruition.

I think deep down people kind of like being part of a “disaster” as long as it isn’t too personally disastrous.

So I have had a couple weeks with my Neato so I have a broader scope of experience to rate it.  The Neato is still quite “neat” in my book although there are a few things that are less than perfect.

As I mentioned before, scheduling the Neato is very easy. However after having the Neato miss a scheduled cleaning session I discovered the robot somehow had it’s internal clock reset.  After setting the time again it was back to work.

The Neato is not quite as adept as the Roomba is when it comes to backing out of tight spots.  More than once I had to rescue the Neato from the legs of my bar stools.  It would get under the stools and then be unable to get back out, getting wedged in between the legs.  It also was getting wedged under the back of the sofa.  I also had the Neato stop inexplicably in the middle of the bedroom, indicating it’s path was blocked, a quick push of the start button set it back on it’s way.

The Neato comes with a strip of magnetic material which is used to create a virtual wall to keep the Neato out of whatever area you choose.  Unfortunately I used my entire strip to cover the sofa.  I may need a little more to rope off the bar stools.

So despite these small warts, overall I still really like my Neato.  It’s increased suction has really reduced the amount of crud the Roombas are left to pick up.  The systematic way it maps a room and avoids most obstacles (except bar stools) is really quite amazing.  The design of the the robot also seems to virtually eliminate all of the pain in the ass cleaning maintenance that is necessary with a Roomba.  I have now let it do 4 or 5 full house cleanings and have not had one issue with stuff getting wrapped around the brush.  So far all I had to do is empty the dust bin and tap the filter out.

This week looks to be a busy one.

I had hoped to get the grass mowed last night.  Unfortunately some strong storms washed those plans away.  I was inside working on other chores when Ali called, she was clearly very upset.  Evidently she came home to a dog shit fiesta last night.  She asked if I could come over and pick up some chicken breast on the way to make the typical dog diarrhea dinner of boiled chicken and white rice.  I said I would be over shortly.

I was surprised when I went to the meat counter, somewhere I never visit, and saw the prices.  Wow meat is really expensive.  The boneless chick tenderloins were $5.99 a pound, holy shit.  I grabbed 4 packs, figuring it was enough to get the dogs through a couple days.

When I got to Ali’s place she had the door to the deck wide open to help air out the place from the stench.  Luckily for me most of it had dissipated by this point.

Ali explained to me how she was only at work for something like 6 hours and still came home to 3 piles of shit.  The odd thing is Ali suspects both dogs are shitting.  Either they have a similar ailment or Sadie is doing a sympathy shit so Nicki doesn’t feel alone.  It’s weird.

If there is any “good news” regarding them using the condo as a toilet it is the geography of the deposits.  All of them have been on things that could be thrown in the washing machine, Nicki’s bed, and the rugs in a bathroom and kitchen.

Of course I could tell Ali was stressed to the max about the problem.  She is supposed to receive back results from the extensive testing that was done at the vet earlier in the week today which will hopefully shed some light on what is wrong.  Ali was talking about doing stuff like putting the girls in doggie day care so they could be let out more often, a VERY expensive option.

I assured Ali that I didn’t think this was a behavioral issue but instead a health issue.  Once she hears back from the vet we should hopefully have a clearer picture.  So for now she said she would close off the doors to both bedrooms so if a mess happens it will be on the tile surface which is easy to handle. Maybe if, until this gets sorted out, Ali gives herself a lunch hour on days she works where she can shoot home to let them out mid-day it would also help avoid the piles problem.

I brought along some pilenta frozen meal from Trader Joe’s that I heated up for us for dinner as Ali made the dogs bland meal.  It was quite good, we both agreed.  After both the dogs and we ate I offered to walk the dogs with Ali.  Of course Nicki didn’t have to do much since she emptied her tank on the floor during the day.

Ali thanked me for coming over, she was really rattled when I got there and seemed better by the time I left.  Despite my various flaws, one thing I am relatively good at is being a rock when need be.

This weekend I have a TON of things to do.  Thankfully it looks like one of those things won’t be having to hurricane prep the property since Issac seems to keep tracking further and further west.  That would have sucked trying to batten down the hatches myself on top of everything else I want to do.

On top of the big list of to do’s is I need to get the prep done for the fantasy football draft that is once again happening at my place next Thursday night.  We are now starting to ramp up for the teeth of the race/timing season as well.  I have a number of things to address there as well.  Of course the extra dollars that brings in will be very welcomed in my current financial situation.

Speaking of finances, I have made more than 53 bucks in advertising dollars on my YT videos this month.  There is a good chance I will wind up doubling my total from July.  Business is booming!