Archives June 2013

So after work yesterday I headed over to the local Sears, I wanted to pick up a new set of mower blades.  Sears, a retail juggernaut for many decades  has been taking quite a beating for a long time.  Retailers like Target and Wal-mart have pushed Sears into the background. Sears has tried to reinvent itself, although not all that successfully.  I mean how smart was it to buy K-mart?

Well anyway, the state of Sears seemed pretty apparent when I approached the door to the hardware department and saw one of the handles was being held together by large amounts of duct tape.  It seemed sadly appropriate.

While I was there I also grabbed a tool that is specifically designed to sharpen mower blades.  It should help me extend the life of blades going forward.  Glancing at the instructions surprised me, it said you should only sharpen the outer 3″-4″ of the blade and not touch anything else.  I guess it makes sense when I think about it but up until this point I have tried to restore the edge on the entire beveled edge of the blades.

I also picked up a corded drill, mine had died around a year ago and I never replaced it.  I am going to need the added power to mount some bike racks in cinder block in Ali’s garage this weekend.  When I looked at the instructions for the new drill, a Dewalt, it made me realize that my old drill i threw out , also a Dewalt, was probably not dead.  I did not realize that the brushes in the motor of the Dewalt drills are replaceable and once they wear out the drill will stop working as a safety feature.  Oh well, now I know.

The checkout process at Sears was like a collision between decades.  There was something wrong with the registers online credit card system so the guy actually had to pull out the old CC imprint tool to imprint my CC onto the receipt.  Yet, I also was able to have my receipt emailed to me instead of printed out.  Old tech awkwardly mixed with a new world, much like Sears itself.

Since separating I have changed my routine a bit to cut back on my weekend work.  Most Thursday evenings I will clean Tuki’s cage and do all of the laundry that has accumulated.  Well last night I took the head start further, heading outside to get the weeding done as well.  The overcast skies and cooler temps made it seem like a good time to do it.

I finished up the work a little after 7 and spent the rest of the evening getting current with Falling Skies and working on season 2 of Sopranos.

This weekend has no hallmark events although there will be no lack of things to do.

Yesterday I was very happy that the Supreme Court ruled against the Defense of Marriage Act from a federal level, making the concept of equal marital rights being offered to all gay individuals one step closer to reality.  This doesn’t green light gay marriage nationwide however.  Our wonderfully hated governor already made a point of reiterating that Florida’s 2008 legislation defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman will continue to be in effect, regardless of the Supreme Court ruling.

On Facebook I mentioned my support for the ruling and how I hoped someday the discrimination against gays will look similar to other things in US history like allowing women to vote and abolishing slavery.  My point was throughout history, civilization has evolved.  Many things that people would not lift an eyebrow about 100 years ago seem beyond comprehension today.  Evolution is a good thing.

To me, allowing gay people the same marital rights/benefits as everyone else seems like a total no brainer.  Who exactly does it harm if two people of the same gender decide to marry each other?  I have yet to hear any logical argument against it that makes any sense.  The only argument that is thrown against gay marriage is based on religion, normally that the bible explicitly is against marriage being anything but a man/woman union.

My personal opinions on religion aside, I would instead like to point out the inconsistency of using the bible as the foundation of this belief.  If the you are going to say that what is in the bible is what should be the law of the land in 2013, then I think it is reasonable that ALL things in the bible should be followed as well.

Take a look at these 13 things that are also directives out of the bible, I am pretty certain that anyone reading this has broken many of these tenants, many times.  My point is selectively using the bible as justification for a stance where convenient is hypocritical.  You can’t have your cake and eat it too. More scary bible directives can be found here.

Last night my neighbor called me to ask if I was having phone problems.  Evidently there were a number of lightning hits in our neighborhood yesterday and they lost their phone and a number of other electronic items were messed up.  I was worried my house which is teeming with electronic items would sustain heavy losses.

Unlike my neighbor, I no longer have a hard line phone connected to my house, a common pathway for lightning to get into your place.  As far as I can tell, all of my stuff was unscathed besides having to set the time on a couple digital clocks.

Both my neighbor and I escaped the bad storm much better than a construction worker that was working on a house on our very same street.  He was struck by lightning while getting down from a scaffolding.  It took him out.

Having someone die in such close proximity to the house from the lightning that is so common place in Florida was a bit of a wake up call.  I have had many sessions of working around the house outdoors when storms were on top of me.  In a weird way I always have thought that going down in a flash of white light would not be all that bad of a way to go.

So the eating issues with Nicki were still front and center last night.  When my mom arrived yesterday she put back down Nicki’s untouched breakfast and it remained untouched the entire 4 hours my mom was there.  When I got home the plate was clean but I am sure that was due to Sadie swooping in.

So I figured last night Nicki would be famished.  I put down her food which was a mix of her hyopallergenic stuff and the Merrick she used to get.  She ate all of the Merrick chunks but left the other stuff alone.  Eating roughly half a can of dog food a day (plus treats) just isn’t going to get the job done.

Nicki and her mental hangups about various things can be extremely frustrating to try to untangle.  For months she has been totally fine eating the vet food and now out of the blue she acts like it is poison.  Ali is back today so hopefully Nicki will settle back into normal eating.  She seems to be more out of sorts than normal when Ali isn’t around now.

Last night after work, despite menacing skies I headed out to the bar park for a little work.  First I did another attempt at this month’s BB challenge, then another try at elbow planching on the pull up bar and finally some silly things with one of my big tires.

Last night when I was out with the girls I was stopped in my tracks by just how beautiful the skies looked.  The storm clouds had started to break up and the awesome sunset colors were poking through in such a way that made me just stand there and admire the awesomeness for a good long while.  This morning I was treated an almost equally incredible sunrise.  Although there are a number of disadvantages to the location of the house, being able to enjoy such awesome sights with nothing but the sounds of birds in the background is something I truly appreciate.

I have managed to plow through all of season one of the Sopranos in less than a week.  Season two here I come.

I neglected to mention that this week the majority of my harvest came from the orchard instead of the garden.  The garden right now is entering it’s least productive time, summer.  The soaking rains, brutal heat and relentless attack of insects makes trying to maintain a productive garden quite difficult in SW Florida.  The only thing I am getting out of the garden right now is kale.

The orchard on the other hand produced a full colander of apples, a couple dozen blackberries and has enough myer lemons to make a couple gallons of lemonade.  That being said, the orchard really could use an overhaul.  There are couple trees in there that produce nothing and just look like shit.  I should go through the effort of digging them out and starting over with something new in those spots.

Part of the problem is unlike the garden, which is filled with pristine garden soil in raised beds, the orchard never had it’s sandy soil amended other than whatever it gets from the mulch breaking down.  I compounded the problem by not fertilizing the trees regularly.   I am trying to address this by adding an Outlook calendar reminder that will visually cue me it’s time to get out there and feed the trees.

So the dogs got through yesterday without any excrement collateral damage which I was glad to see/smell.  Nicki however is still not eating as consistently as she should.  Her new thing seems to be not eating well when Ali is away.  When she does eat she doesn’t clean her plate like she used to and sometimes she won’t touch it at all, like this morning.

Part of it probably is the schedule difference between when the dogs are with Ali versus at the house.  I probably am plopping breakfast down three hours earlier than they normally see it.  Whatever the reason, I pulled up Nicki’s food before leaving.  Sadie has started doing sneak attacks on Nicki’s food bowl if noone is watching.  I am hoping when my mom goes out to the house today and puts Nicki’s food back down, she will be more interested in it.

Nicki goes back and forth with her moods a lot.  Last night when I shot this workout video you can see she appeared happy and wanted to play.  Later in the night she goes into sad/mopey mode.  If there was a little word balloon above her head I am pretty sure it would say “Getting old sucks…”

Saturday morning I got up to do the club run.  It was a “bagel run” where the running store provides breakfast items for free after the run like juice, coffee, bagels and more.  Of course the lure of free food resulted in a big crowd, there might have been 75-100 people there.

I only ran 4 miles, I had not run in somewhere between 3-4 weeks so I was not interested in going very far.  When the run first started both of my knees were not feeling very happy with various jolts of pain shooting through each of them.  Luckily as I warmed up my knees felt better. I wound up running a much faster pace than I expected, averaging right around an 8:30 mile.  After the 4 miles I was pretty much soaked from head to toe from the thick, humid air.

When I got home I wasted no time before hitting the to do list.  After weeding I hopped on the tractor.  I officially need to mow every week.  The high temps and ample rain has kick started the yard into it’s normal summer growth rate.  Before starting I took the blades off and tried to sharpen them with a small grinding wheel attached to my dremel.  It’s far from an ideal set up to do so and I’m not really sure if it helped much.  The blades are really beat up at this point and need to be replaced.

After a hot mowing session I moved inside to handle all indoor work until heading back outside once again to wash the SSR which was dirty from last weekends road trip. I was in chore mode until right before 4pm.

Saturday night I saw World War Z, the new Brad Pitt film which puts the zombie craze onto the big screen in a big way.  I have never seen a movie that Brad Pitt was in that I did not find enjoyable and this film is no exception.  It was like Walking Dead on steroids, minus the compelling character development of the tv series.

We saw the 3D version which was effective with zombie action.  A couple times I almost pushed my seat back off it’s mounting studs when a zombie popped off at the screen at me.  Imagine humanity mixed with fire ants, that is World War Z.  A-, make sure you don’t have stuff in your mouth during the scary parts.

On Sunday I rounded off my endurance exercise training with a 12 mile bike ride at an average 18.4 mph pace followed by 1600 yards in the pool. I was thoroughly tired when I was done.

I picked up the dogs on the way home as Ali is out of town for a few days.  Dog watching has additional complexity now because Ali has dropped the full time dog daycare.  Today I am running home at lunch to let them out and then tomorrow my mom is lending me a hand by going out to the house to let them out mid-day.

The rest of my Sunday was pretty low key, including  paying bills and watching Horrible Bosses on dvd, a damn funny comedy which gets an A-.

I am well into my Soprano revival, taking down 7 episodes so far.  Watching the show makes me feel even worse about James Gandolfini passing away.  His portrayal of Tony Soprano is amazing.

I keep forgetting to talk about the article I read the other day,  how the AMA now is officially classifying obesity as a “disease”.  You know, like it’s something you catch like the flu or a common cold, beyond your control.  Here are a few quotes from the article that made me see red and my thoughts about each…

Identifying obesity as a disease may also help in reducing the stigma often associated with being overweight, said Joe Nadglowski, president and CEO of the Obesity Action Coalition.

Reduce the stigma?  More like provide an excuse or a victim mentality.  “I’m obese, I have a disease that needs to be treated by the medical community”.  This to me is utterly ridiculous.  What is the point of providing obese America with yet another crutch to rest their sizable rear ends upon to support the lack of personal responsibility? This flows right into the next quote…

“Obesity has been considered for a long time to be a failure of personal responsibility — a simple problem of eating too much and exercising too little,” he said. “But it’s a complex disease… we’re hoping attitudes will change.”

Complex disease = complex cures that cost huge amounts of money to fix “professionally” instead of people just looking in the mirror and be honest with themselves.  Labeling obesity as an official disease is a cash cow for anyone in the medical/pharmaceutical community.  NEW FLASH – for the overwhelming majority of obese individuals the problem IS simply a failure of personal responsibility!

Nadglowski thinks the AMA’s support is also an important step in helping people gain access to obesity treatment. Most forms of insurance do not cover obesity alone. For instance, an obese patient cannot hire a nutritionist or a trainer and have it covered by his or her plan simply to lose weight”.

So the key to fighting the disease of obesity is having others pay for nutritionists or trainers to “fix” the obese population??  Again, simply moronic from my point of view.

To me this declaration is all about money as most things seem to be nowadays.  Declaring fat people as diseased adds another large chunk (no pun intended) to the pool of humanity that can get treatment under insurance.  Of course eventually this comes back to the rest of the population as higher insurance premiums and medical costs.

How will you feel when Fat Sally down the street just got put on permanent medical disability because she can’t stop stuffing pizza down her throat?  Disabled via pizza, what a world we live in…

Rewarding bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior.

Last night I decided I wanted to try a move that I never did before, elbow planching on a bar.  I wasn’t able to hold it as steady, as straight, or as long as I would like but it was a good start.  Here is the video of my various attempts.  I will talk about it more on Dufisthenics.

Last night I had a brilliant idea, spurred by the death of James Gandolfini.  I was going to finally watch the Sopranos!  I saw maybe one season of it’s 6 year run so there is a ton of tv gold waiting for me to enjoy.  It just so happens through the magic of HBOGO on my Xbox I can access every single episode of the show via streaming.  It looks like a month or so of late bed times are going to be on the schedule…

This weekend will be the first of what is a typical 6 month summer weekend.  I’ll be mowing grass, cleaning and attending to other chores.  On the exercise front, I hope to run with the club on Saturday morning and follow up with a bike/swim brick Sunday.  Finally, for entertainment there will be pizza/Tivo Friday night backed up by catching World War Z Saturday evening.  Nothing spectacular in that list, but a combination that will blend work/exercise/recreation in a way  that works for me.

I had the Tacoma up on the highway this morning doing 70-75 and the vibration was pretty much gone, sweet.

Falling Skies is back and I watched the first two episodes last night.  It isn’t anything as epic as Game of Thrones or Walking Dead but alien invasion shows always will hold my interest.

James Gandolfini, aka. Tony Soprano, dropped dead yesterday at the young age of 51 of an apparent heart attack.  He was a great actor and by all accounts a nice guy.  It’s too bad he didn’t pay much attention to his personal health.   Everyone decides how they want to roll through life.  I prefer to stack the health deck in my favor by putting in the work.  Many more prefer to just keep pulling that trigger day in and day out, hoping the chamber is empty.

I made a half ass attempt to do 5 sets of 10 pull ups with strict 60 second rest periods last night.  I didn’t even get close, bailing after rep 37.  My failure piled onto aggravation when I saw that the backing pad for my triple gym left a big indentation in the drywall above the doorway.

I think the design of the equipment applies more leverage to the anchor points of the pull up bar since the main bar is up and away from the door jamb instead of straddling across it. Evidently when a 180 pound man tries to rep pull ups at a decent pace with this set up it can be hazardous to typical drywall.

I actually have entertained mounting a pull up bar hanging off the high vaulted ceiling in the house.  I won’t though, the last thing I need is to pull down a section of drywall overhead or bend the ceiling studs.  2×4’s with a couple nails in them aren’t all that sturdy.

Last night was the monthly running club meeting.  Afterward we continued the post meeting South Street tradition where I enjoyed beer, pizza, laughs and karaoke.  I was surprised that a number of the karaoke singers were really good and none of them were downright awful.

For a long, long time I was off the texting bandwagon.  I read the stories about teens sending thousands of text messages each and every month and looked at it as pure lunacy.  I also was vocal about idiots that have their face buried in their phone texting while driving.  I remember when I used to get bent out of shape about people simply talking on their cell while driving.  Hell now when I see someone simply talking on the phone they come off as responsible drivers.

For a long time I had a limited texting plan on my smart phone, capped at 200 messages a month and I never ever came close to that cap.  Texting just never appealed to me much, email or IM were my preferred virtual forms of communication.

So anyway, my separation exposed me to the world of texting.  In my dating experiences I quickly found that most women wanted you to text them, many times preferring that over any other form of communication.   I added unlimited texting to my phone plan to accommodate this new reality, who wants overage charges after all?

So I discovered I am a pretty good texter, since it is just another form of written communication which I am far better at than the verbal variety.  Without realizing it I started getting sucked into the texting vortex.  All of a sudden going long periods of time without sending a few words to someone else via the computer in my pocket felt odd.  You start to text people pointless status updates about what you are doing for no good reason at all.

If I was able to talk to the 1995 version of myself and try to explain why I am sending all of these tiny thoughts back and forth between various people all day long, the 95 me would tell the 2013 me to snap out of it.   After all, for the first three decades of my life, connections to others were limited to face to face conversation or picking up a phone wired to the POTS. (plain old telephone system)

When the cell phone craze hit I remember feeling much the same way, that it was stupid that so many people felt the need to talk on the phone so often.  99% of all conversations could wait until you get out from behind a wheel.  Yet as time progressed this practice of always being reachable via a portable phone became as commonplace as breathing.

Well texting has followed the same general course although it is even more dangerous when practiced while driving a car.  Despite the danger, texting/interacting with your smart phone while driving is rampant.  Simply look around you while driving on any moderately busy road.  I can guarantee you that you will see a number of people looking down at a screen instead of at the road. It’s crazy.

Of course I am a hypocrite, I have found myself interacting with my Iphone while driving, especially since getting the 5 with the voice to text translation.  Even with that feature, I still am required to glance down at the phone more than I should be.  I shouldn’t do it at all.

Texting for whatever reason takes on an addictive nature.  We become Pavlov’s dog, responding to the little noise or vibration, indicating some person has sent us some short form of communication.  It becomes a reflex reaction to grab your phone, even when no noise is heard, just to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

I am using this blog post as motivation to discontinue this practice as much as possible personally.  If I am driving, the phone can wait.  I have hands free Bluetooth to address phone calls but if something is life or death, dont send me a text about it.

End the madness.

I already emptied most of what was in my brain about my automotive repair/Seaworld adventures from the last few days.  The rest of Monday was pretty lame.  I went outside briefly and knocked out a BB forum challenge video. 

I was not feeling very chipper last night.  I just sort of chilled out with the dogs.

Speaking of the dogs, I gave them the stuffed Shamu I bought at Seaworld, the only souvenir I spent money on while there.  Of course Sadie immediately claimed the new toy as hers, as she always does.  She carried Shamu around with her most of the time, even setting it out on the chaise lounge she relaxes on.

Nicki was seeming extra gimpy yesterday, when I was in the bedroom folding laundry, I lifted her up and put her on the bed since she can no longer jump up there herself.  She always used to love jumping up in bed with Sadie when I got home from work.

She looked content to be back in the bed so I let her there while I went about doing stuff elsewhere in the house.  As I was sitting at my desk I heard a noise from the bedroom.  It was Nicki crying.  She was at the edge of the bed but was scared to jump down.  I felt a tinge of sadness in my throat as I picked her up and sat her on the floor.  She almost looked guilty for needing my help.  I told her whenever she needs help to just let me know….