Archives June 2013

Friday before leaving for Orlando I replaced the front struts on the Tacoma.  I was successful, however I am still unsure if my tires are balanced properly.  If you want to know all the details of the job, watch this.

The drive up to Orlando went smoothly.  The SSR gobbles up highway miles pretty easily.  However somewhere around the 3 hour mark my body starts to get a bit uncomfortable in the R.  It may look and sound awesome but nothing compares to the party van when it comes to driving comfort for long periods of time.

Cindy and I pulled into the hotel late afternoon and decided to spend Friday evening at Universal City Walk.  When we pulled up to parking toll booth it was about 5:50.  I saw the $15 parking fee and thought it was awful steep to just go walk around.  The attendant told us that if we were Florida residents and we came back 10 minutes later at 6PM the parking is free.  Ok, awesome.  I went to a gas station, filled the truck, and came back 10 minutes and paid nothing after flashing my drivers license, an easy 15 dollar savings.

We had dinner at Bubba Gump, the restaurant chain based on Forrest Gump.  I had a great meal and got obliterated on two blue versions of a Long Island Ice Tea, I think Bubba’s version is called Electric Tea.  Thank goodness I had a long time to let the haze clear.

The main reason City Walk was chosen was to see Man of Steel. We thought it would be cool to catch the film opening weekend at the huge cineplex  on site.  The Imax showing was sold out but I had no problem getting tickets for the normal 3D version.

The theater was quite large with two levels.  The theater Man of Steel was in was quite full by Coconut Point standards but we still had no issue finding a decent seat.  The one thing that was immediately noticeable was the room was cold, really cold.

The move was directed by the same guy that directed 300, Zack Snyder.  I have seen other movies he directed post 300 and to be honest, was disappointed.  I didn’t know what to expect this time around.

For the most part Man of Steel was pretty good.  On Facebook I had seen others describe it as “awesome” and “epic”, I didn’t quite agree.  My Facebook comment on the film was “Man of Steel was like being brought to orgasm so many times it gets to the point of annoying..”  Some were confused by this analogy but basically it meant even a good thing like huge action and fighting in a film can get to be stupid when that is all that there is.  The last third of the film was basically like one big WWE wrestling match.

I really can only give the movie a B+, sorry Zack.  At least it was better than Watchmen.  It didn’t help that my extremities had frostbite by the end of it.

Saturday morning we were up early to head to Seaworld.  The plan was to leave the SSR in the parking lot and instead take advantage of one of the free hotel perks, a free shuttle ride to the park.  Unfortunately we missed the 7:30 shuttle by 4 or 5 minutes with the next one not departing for more than a half hour.  F it, we’ll walk.  After all the map legend said the park is only .4 miles away. Well the way we wound up walking worked out to be more like 1.4 miles but hey, it’s exercise.

So there was another bonus for guests of certain hotels, you were able to get into the park a full hour before the general public.  They gave you a special card that you flashed at the gate that gave you the early access.  We were clued in by the hotel staff that a good use of that early time would be to get on Antarctica, a brand new ride that typically has wait times of one to two hours.  It was one ride that you could not use the Quick Queue card on. (more on this awesome card later)

Antarctica’s premise is it takes you through the southern most part of the world from the viewpoint of a penguin.  Well let me just use one word to describe the ride, lame.  You site in a circular thing and get spun around a few times while looking at a few video screens.  It’s a total letdown.  I could not imagine waiting two hours and be rewarded with that epic fail.  The only cool part of the Antarctic experience is once you get off the ride and get to see real life penguins in a frigid 32 degree habitat.  The penguins were awesome but you are so damn cold that you won’t enjoy them for as long as you would like to.

We rode all of the (adult)rides there and saw most of the show attractions on Saturday.  I enjoyed seeing the various animal exhibits up close like the dolphins, birds and other ocean dwelling species.

The most torturous ride was the Manta, a roller coaster that you ride in the same body orientation as a manta ray, belly parallel to the ground.  The ride instantly transported me to nauseous town when it went into an outside loop, meaning my body was facing the outside of the loop, not allowing me a view of where I was going.  For whatever reason that made me feel really sick.  I survived the ride without projectile vomiting but with little desire to jump on again anytime soon.

The Atlantis flume ride was fun because it had two big splash downs instead of just one.  The sky tower was just as it sounds, a big rotating tower that gave you a 360 birds eye view of the park.  Kraken was another bust you up roller coaster that at least allowed you to sit upright.  It snapped my neck around a good bit.

One thing that made all of the rides better was yet another awesome benefit of staying at a park associated hotel, a complimentary Quick Queue card.  This card allows you to bypass the regular lines at all of the rides (except Antarctica) If you buy the unlimited Quick Queue card at the main gate it costs you something like an extra $30.  However the hotel threw in a one use per ride version for free, which was perfect since hitting a ride once is typically enough for me at this advanced age.

The card was simply awesome.  We would see a line snaking back and forth for miles however it was no concern for us.  We would simply follow the Quick Queue signs that lead right to a different way to get in.  The attendants were quite good about making sure they jumped to help us right away.  If I were to estimate, I have no doubt that over the two days we spent at the park the QQ cards saved us at least 4-5 hours of waiting in line.  I don’t know I would do a park without them now and if you are smart you stay at a hotel that throws them in for free.

The attendants were supposed to punch out or mark your card for whatever rides you used it on.  Some did but most didn’t.  Hell some didn’t even ask to see the QQ card, we just told them we had it.

I am sure the people that were broiling in the sun forever in line absolutely hated us as they saw us suddenly appear and hop on the ride they have been waiting 45 minutes for,  30 seconds later.  I would hate us too if the situation was reversed.  I felt like a pure bred Republican, I have to admit.

Of course there was no avoiding the negative things that annoy yet amuse me at amusement parks, people, endless waves and waves of people.  Now mind you, I didn’t get annoyed by all of them, maybe only 80%.

If amusement parks are a microcosm of society then let me tell you, society is fat, really, really fat.  I saw countless big uns lumbering through out the park, looking miserable while trying to carry their bodyweight in the stifling heat and humidity.

Then you had the clueless people that would walk 25 feet while staring straight down and then act surprised when they collide with someone/thing. The rude people that think you will care less if they jump in front of you in whatever particular line you are waiting in at the moment deserve a titty twister or two.

I really had urges to inflict blunt trauma on the people that use motorized scooters for no other affliction but pure laziness or as an attempt to work the system, since scooter dwellers get preferential treatment park wide.   I would see a woman drive up close to the restroom, get up, walk in without any visible signs of difficulty besides being a fat ass, and then return again to their scooter to go score their next benefit as a “disabled” person.  Argh.  Sure some people legitimately need the use of a motorized set of wheels however I would feel comfortable wagering most that I saw suffered most from a lack of motivation.

Bad parenting was evident everywhere from the obese 6 year olds to the kids that had their faces buried in an Iphone game during an entire animal show while dad allowed it to go on without objection.  You are surrounded by the wonders of the world and you let your kid play Angry Birds instead?  Idiot.

Yes I could have just plopped myself down in a shady spot and done people commentary all day but then I would be no better than the Angry Birds father.  I actually appreciated everything the park had to offer me and wanted to experience it.

Mid afternoon the weather turned nasty, letting loose with heavy rain and lightning.  We took that as our cue to call it a day.  Unfortunately with no rain gear or umbrella we wound up trying to run away unsuccessfully from the rain drops.  By the time we reached the bus shelter we looked like we had been swimming with Shamu ourselves.

Saturday night we returned to City Walk, this time being sure to arrive after the 6PM witching hour.  After a good meal at a place called the Latin Quarter that had a very odd looking man playing live guitar, we walked around a bit.  I came up with a spur of the moment idea to see if we could get into the 9PM Blue Man group show.  We scored one of the last remaining pairs of tickets and score an incredible discount by simply showing we were Florida residents.  Flashing our DL cards saved between $50-$60.

Despite getting in last minute we had really good seats in the 5th row, right behind the splash zone where they hand out plastic ponchos.  I had seen BMG in Vegas and was a bit underwhelmed, I was hoping they would redeem themselves this time around.

They did, somewhat.  The show was entertaining with some repeat of what I saw previously.  There was a very funny segment where they pulled a very old lady out of the audience for a prolonged bit on the stage.  By the end of it she was practically crying and wanted to get the hell off the stage.  It was a bit awkward yet funny as hell.

The show was almost a full 2 hours of non-stop percussion, bright colors and laughs.  I enjoyed it, just again, not as much as hoped I could.  Cindy is a big BMG fan so she loved it.

So on Sunday we headed back into the park to hit somethings we missed on day one.  For some reason, most of the animal related shows/areas are closed until 10am so we had to reshuffle our agenda.  We wound up spending a good amount of time at the seal feeding area. I found the seals to be awesome and cute.  The cutest thing I saw the entire weekend were two seals snuggled up next to each other sunning themselves on a rock.

So we eventually got to knock out the other attractions like the Wild Arctic ride, the seal show, Shark Encounter and a few other items including one more ride down the log flume.  In total we saw something like half a dozen animal shows and I liked each and every one.  They were all very well produced.

We had lunch at the Shark Grill restaurant, an awesome place where you enjoy high end food while seated next to the HUGE shark aquarium.  It was one of the coolest restaurants I ever ate at and the meal I had was equally good, a great way to wrap up our Seaworld experience.

We wound up rolling out about 2:30 and after fueling up with some Dunkin Donuts coffee headed home.

It had been quite a few years since I had visited any Orlando theme park and my first time ever visiting Seaworld.  My experience makes me want to try to get back there more regularly when it is a little bit cooler with Quick Queue passes in hand….

You can see all of my pictures from the trip here…

I spent a good portion of today changing my rear shocks on the Tacoma.  See the associated videos below.

So as I documented my Tacoma tire rotation my internal wheels were already spinning regarding other possible causes for the front end vibration that really hits at highway speeds.  As I described yesterday, the vibration problem existed even before the $1600 of repair expenses and I attributed it solely to old shitty tires.

Well I did a few searches yesterday and found several Tacoma owners complaining of identical behavior, vibration kicking in around 60-70 mph.    In all of these cases the eventual fix was replacing worn out front struts.

Well that certainly seemed like a logical cause since the problem has persisted through the tire change and the truck still has the original shocks/struts on all four corners.  I immediately started checking out some how to videos.  Doing the rear shocks seemed pretty straight forward.  The front struts had complications.

The complication is a strut has a coil spring surrounding it.  This spring is compressed and under very high tension.  In order to separate a strut from the spring requires you to compress the spring further to release tension on the strut.  A garage typically has a piece of equipment specifically designed to do this.  A home mechanic has the option to use another method where you basically attach rods with fingers to either side of the spring and crank them down evenly to compress the spring.

Well every video I watched stressed the potential danger with this process.  If for some reason the spring would pop loose it would release a tremendous amount of force.  Depending on what was in it’s way when it popped, there was a possibility for severe injury.  Despite this warning I watched a couple videos that showed this manual compression method and I was confident I could pull it off without maiming myself.

However once I started researching buying replacement struts I saw there was another option available to me, you can buy the front struts already mounted on a new set of springs.  Sure it costs more than a bare strut but not painfully so.  To me, the time and aggravation savings was worth it.  Plus the springs on the truck are 14 years old, getting new springs along with the struts seems like a wise move anyway.

Replacing the pre-assembled struts/springs should be as easy as 5 bolts.  The most challenging thing might just be breaking the old bolts/nuts free.  I bought my replacement set on Amazon (free Prime shipping) and they should show up tomorrow.  Right now my plan is to get out in the garage early on Friday morning to do the work before I push north to Orlando for a long weekend.  I will replace the rear shocks as well before the month is over I’m sure.

I had the dogs sleep over last night.  Nicki has been not eating well the past week or so, at least when she is with me.  I had them for most of the weekend. Nicki was spotty with her eating then and then last night she only ate a portion of supper.  This morning she wouldn’t even touch breakfast.

Ali said she has been eating fine for her so maybe Nicki is just in mopey mode and missing Ali.  I hope that is all it is.

So I decided last night I wanted to get the Tacoma tire rotation that I had hoped to do over the weekend done, I hate leaving loose ends from the weekend dangling.  I decided I would make this a combination workout challenge and automotive maintenance hybrid video.  The goal was to rotate the tires using hand tools in less than 30 minutes.  Of course any challenge needs to be on video, else it didn’t really happen.

My hope in swapping the tires is to nail down the source of vibration I feel in the truck at higher speeds.  If the vibration is lesser after the swap I would assume the problem is wheel related, perhaps Tuffy did a shitty job balancing the new tires.  If the vibration is the same after rotation there is something else going on that I am more than likely just going to ignore.  I have no interest in spending any more money on Tacoma repairs in the near future.

Once I started loosening the lug nuts I immediately noticed that they didn’t seem they were on very tight at all.  They broke loose with my lug wrench much easier than I am accustomed to.  I would assume that the air wrench a garage uses to put the lugs back on would snug them up tighter.

The other thing I noticed was the lead weights that were used to balance the wheels looked all beat up and rusted.  The garage either reused my old weights or threw some used ones on they had laying around.  It’s a minor thing but it sort of bugged me that the $834 I paid Tuffy for tires did not include new lead wheel weights.

Swapping the tires went fine although there was a minor incident towards the end of the process.  I had the entire back end of the truck up in the air, supported with my smaller 2 1/2 ton floor jack.  I was using my heavy duty/taller 5 ton jack to jack the front end.  When I was dropping the jack from the driver side front position I twisted the handle a little too quickly, causing the truck to drop rapidly.  The rapid descent caused just enough sideways momentum to make the jack under the differential in the back to tip over and crash down.

Both of the back wheels were on the truck when it fell and I also had a jack stand under the driver side so it was fine.  Still, it was a bit unsettling to have the back of the truck come crashing down.

I missed my goal of 30 minutes for the entire job, instead clocking in at just over 37 minutes.  I was a sweaty mess by the end of it.

If you want to see the 16 minute video with lots of sped up footage look below.

If you just want to see the truck falling off the jack look here.

On the drive into work I didn’t go much over 50 so I couldn’t really tell if things feel much different or not.  I am wondering if the problem could be shock/strut related as well since the originals from the factory are still on the truck.  I smell another project in my future… (I’m already watching how to videos)

I watched the Game of Thrones finale last night.  Of course it couldn’t measure up to the incredible previous episode.  Instead the finale basically got you all primed and ready for season 4 which will be uncomfortably far away.

Saturday morning I was up early and over at Ali’s place.  She had bought a roof rack for her Volt (for SUP)  and I told her I would install it for her, it certainly didn’t seem like anything complex.  I opened the box and looked at the instructions.  In there was a repeated reference to a vehicle specific guide that included measurements for various parts of the install.  There was no such guide in the box.  Luckily I was able to hop on Ali’s computer and print them out online.

Putting the parts together was not overly difficult.  The car specific instructions included stuff like what length you should cut plastic guides to that were slid into the rack to ensure proper spacing of the feet.  So I have the parts together and plop them on the roof of the car.  Something didn’t seem right, the feet were way too far away from the drip rail of the Volt, not even close.

I double checked the strip measurement in the guide which said I was supposed to cut right around 5 inches from the strip.  Now that I am playing Monday morning QB, I am wondering if the intention was to cut off the 5 inches and then insert the longer, 14 inch leftover piece into the rack.  However if that was the case, the instructions totally suck because it was not written or illustrated that way at all.

So anyway I knew it was now time to go into Shawn thinking on his feet mode.  I pulled out the now useless plastic guides and had Ali help me with a trial and error fitting.  I loosened both feet and then we slid them out so they were both sitting in the drip rail as they should be.  I then had Ali hold down one side while I awkwardly lifted the other and tightened down the bolt to lock the foot in place.  It took a few tries but eventually we got it where it should be.

Like most projects, it probably took longer than it should have, however if I had to do another one I am pretty sure I could cut the time invested in half.  The rack felt rock solid and ready to hold whatever stand up paddleboard Ali winds up purchasing.  The rack also can double as a bike carrier, negating the need for Ali to buy a small tow hitch for the car to transport her road bike.

Saturday I also finished up reloading the freshly painted hobby room.  Between the paint on the walls and the organization I did, the room feels transformed.  It no longer feels like a cluttered dumping ground for anything in the house I didn’t have a good spot for.  It’s warm and cozy with a real work area and plenty of open floor space.

I could actually throw the blow up mattress in there for a guest and not feel slightly embarrassed at this point. You can see all of the pictures from the project here.

Saturday night I attended my first Tarpons football game in over a month. This season has been pretty much a joke.  Going into it season ticket holders such as myself were supposed to be getting 7 home games.  Instead, because the league is falling apart, we got a total of 3 home games and two of those three games were awful blow outs. (one was 62-0)

Now to their credit, the Tarpon ownership realizes that season ticket holders were royally screwed.  As compensation season ticket holders were given free tickets to Saturday night’s championship game and also promised free season tickets for next year, although I am very skeptical that there will even be a next year.

So anyway, I contacted the team owner ahead of time as I was instructed to, to make sure tickets for Saturdays game were waiting for me at the Will Call window.  So I walk up to the window about a half hour before kick off and there were no tickets there in my name, well that’s annoying.  More annoying was my being told that the tickets they could give me were not my season ticket seats, instead they were a few rows higher, saying my normal seats were “not available”.

I told the woman behind the glass that was kind of dumb.  She gave me some explanation I didn’t really care to hear.  We wound up sitting in the regular seats anyway, nobody cared.

The game had the best attendance of 2013 at least, maybe 25% of the seats had a rear end in them.  The game also was the most competitive of the year with the Tarpons pulling out a one score victory to lock up the league championship.  I drank something like 4 or 5 Shocktops so by the time the game was over my ticket window problems were long forgotten.  I hope the Tarpons do actually come back for the 2014 season, I enjoy attending the games.  I can only hope they come back into a league situation that does not seem so rag tag.

Sunday morning I did another training brick which included a bike ride and swim.  I forgot my swimming goggles which made things sort of suck.  The first 50 meters my eyes were on fire from the chlorine.  After that they stopped burning but it still made swimming more of a pain in the ass than normal.  I wound up cutting my pool time down to just 800 yards.  I emerged from the water with two very red eyes.

Sunday I finally got to see the Hobbit.  I was a bit worried if I would like the film or not just because Lord of the Rings was such an epic trilogy and by all accounts the Hobbit story (I never read it personally) is more mundane.

Well I have no idea how closely the movie follows the book but I do know the movie was great.  It felt right in step with the LOTR films and I enjoyed it from start to end.  I am looking forward to the release of the other two scheduled Hobbit films. Solid A from me.

I didn’t get a chance to rotate the tires on the truck this weekend to see if my vibration is tire related or something else.  Hopefully I get to do it one night this week after work.

I did manage to replace the toilet arm and float in the master bathroom.  The old arm was encrusted in rust, surely contributing to some of staining I get in the bowl.  I am hoping it’s new brass replacement will keep things a bit tidier.

I didn’t really talk about Ali and I filing our divorce agreement on Wednesday,  it was emotional as I expected it to be.  One thing I did not expect was to get annoyed at the process of filing the papers.

When we walked up to the window and told the clerk we wanted to do she immediately started shoving a FAQ paper at us and telling us how she was unable to give us any legal advice.  Evidently she thought we were asking how to file the paperwork.  We slowed her down and told her we had the paperwork in hand and just needed her to process it.

So after a very slow process, made slower by some computer issue the woman was having, she hands us the paperwork which included a final court date in mid-July, a day that Ali is going to be out of town of course.  We told her that date was going to be no good.  The clerk said the only way to change it was to write a letter to the judge to request a date change. WTF??? Several parts of this made no sense to me.

First, when she was processing the paperwork, what would be so difficult to throw out a tentative date to us, asking if it works for us?  Second when we indicated that the date was a problem, why can’t the clerk simply immediately hop right back into the system and change to another date?  It seemed totally stupid.

So the next day we got it rescheduled, however waiting 24 hours translated into a new court date 3 weeks later than the original, I don’t get it.  At this point we just want to get this over with.  That point now will not arrive until summer is firmly on the downside in mid-August.

The hobby room painting is done but the room reassembly that is going to include some major sorting, throwing out and reorganization still needs to be completed.  That process will take up a decent chunk of my weekend.

All week in Naples it has been raining thanks to the tropical storm that is now moving up the coast.  Alison was supposed to be heading to PA this weekend but cancelled because of the shitty weather.  As a result my dog sitting weekend has been cancelled as well, a bit of a bummer.

I am annoyed that I am still feeling wheel vibration in the Tacoma, especially at highway speeds.  I assumed the vibration I have experienced for quite a while was due to the old worn out tires.  Now I’m not sure.

The easy thing is to guess that the new wheels are not balanced properly but I sort of doubt that is the case.  To test the theory I may do a diagonal tire rotation on the wheels/tires to see if the vibration feels any different after changing tire positions.  If it does, the truck will go back to Tuffy to check balance. If that comes up clean, there are more problems lurking in the suspension.

This weekend has a loose framework in place.  I will tighten it up as it comes.

So the final interior room that is still the blah builders white, the hobby room, is getting painted finally.  This room has been the dumping ground for stuff that had no other good spot like race timing gear, RC plane paraphernalia, exercise equipment and other various junk.

I pulled most of the loose items out and split the pile between the guest bedroom and the great room.  As I pulled it out I saw lots of sorting that needed to be done.  There are a lot of Ali items in there as well as stuff that can be thrown out or recycled.

I didn’t bother to put much thought into the color for the room, opting for the same pleasant sandy shell color that is used in the main living space and master bedroom/bathroom.

When the room is put back together I plan to do some major rearranging and optimizing.  It should be a nice facelift.

The only painting that is left on my to do list is painting the walls of the garage.  I always had this dream that it would look sweet in Eagles Midnight Green with silver on the back wall. 🙂

This morning I did my first real world video of my robotoaster in action.  It is simply incredible.  Hold on to your seat.

I forgot to mention some other robot news in my household, my Neato is getting replaced.  I mentioned that I had battery runtime issues a little while back.  I was only getting 10-15 minutes per run and was occasionally getting a “Please press OKAY to restart. Battery Issue (ooo2)” error.

I had a new battery set sent to me which I installed a couple weeks ago.  Well the new battery runtime has been steadily going downhill as well and the battery error has still been popping up randomly as well.  So I called Neato back and they told me they would send me a replacement unit, cool.

It’s too bad, up until the recent battery issue my XV-14 has been absolutely bullet proof. Doing it’s job well while requiring a fraction of the maintenance my Roomba army used to require.  The new bot should show up early next week.

So today one of my Obama hating friends asked me how I felt about Obama since the latest headline about Verizon phone records being collected by the NSA.  Of course my first reaction was to laugh out loud a little bit as I normally do when the “Blame Obama!” crowd attributes everything negative that happens in the government to Obama. They seem to believe he is directly involved in every email, text message, phone conversation and decision that is made within the geographic boundaries of Washington D.C.

Of course I think it is shitty that the government basically scrapes all communication that is made within the country and keeps it for safekeeping.  I read about the new underground mega-datacenter that was recently completed whose main purpose is to store, inspect and catalog mountains of communication, all in the name of keeping us “safe” thanks to those sweethearts at Homeland Security.  Yea that agency that was created by W along with the Patriot Act to protect us from “terror”, what a joke.

Do I think that Obama has stuck to his 2007 election promises that included protecting civil liberties? No, not really, but can you please give me a list of presidents that have delivered on the majority of their election promises?  I think you would be handing me a piece of blank paper.

If he is guilty of anything it is allowing the Homeland Security behemoth to keep rolling forward in it’s privacy smashing practices since it’s 9/11 era inception.  Does he have the power to dismantle the agency?  Theoretically yes, realistically no.

I really don’t understand the outrage or surprise with this story, to me it is old, old news.

So I walk into the gym today and notice that some of Retro Fitness stickers and signage had been taken down and replaced with stuff that said “Royal Fitness”, WTF?  Evidently overnight the gym had morphed, no longer being a Retro Fitness franchise even though every piece of equipment has the logo slapped all over it.

To me this is a path I have seen before at Powerhouse Gym, the old shit hole I was a member of for years.  They had a musical chair front desk staff, then they dumped the Powerhouse franchise and within a year they closed the doors and like a thief in the night pulled all of the equipment out, even though they were selling one and two year memberships right up until the time they closed.

I would not be surprised at all if the same basic scenario plays out here.  I certainly hope not.  Despite the drama and several annoying aspectsabout the gym, overall I am satisfied in what it offers me in equipment and location (close enough for lunch workouts).  If it goes under  I would need to do an overhaul of my gym options since there is no way in hell I would consider going back to the lunk alarm infested Planet Fcking Fitness.

So I heard a lot of buzz about this past Sunday’s Game of Thrones episode which I had not seen yet.  Fortunately my eyes didn’t stumble across what the shocking development was.  Last night I finally sat down to watch the episode with Sadie by my side and Nicki lounging on the floor.

Now of course I won’t give details of what happened but let me tell you, it lived up to the hype.  When it went down I am sure my mouth drop opened.  I had an inkling that something was up but I did not expect anything close to the scale of what actually goes down.  As the credits flashed up silently I sat there on the sofa, still trying to digest what just happened. Wow.  One of the most shocking moments in my tv watching history.

Today Ali and I are supposed to officially file our divorce agreement at the clerk of courts office.  Almost on queue, today’s weather is very gloomy and gray, unusual for Florida.  It’s going to be a sad moment, regardless of both of our hopes that it actually leads to happier times for both of us.  Things aren’t officially official until you get a court date to stand in front of a judge to affirm your intentions and he/she signs the order.

I’m not looking forward to the sadness these final steps are going to contain but at the same time I know it’s part of the storm that we have to navigate to get to better times ahead.

I must be stressed out, last night I was hoarding food big time. I feel like a slob today, need to get things high and tight asap.

One of the issues with living out in such a rural area is there is an abundance of “redneck” behavior that varies from annoying to outright dangerous.   One behavior that falls into the dangerous category are people hauling ass down the road on 4 wheelers.

This has been a long running problem, as captured on video by myself year and years ago.

I don’t really care that they are using the public roadway, even though it is technically illegal to do so.  I do care that they are doing somewhere around double the posted 30 mph speed limit on the things.  There are kids, animals and other traffic on the narrow two lane road, going that fast is moronic and reckless.

Well we now have a new moron that has stepped up the idiotic ante.  He speeds up and down the road on his red 4 wheeler, while holding a wheelie….  No, I am not kidding.  He isn’t just popping a wheelie for a few seconds, he is holding it for several blocks at a time.

I have seen him doing this somewhere around a half dozen separate times but last night he was really going nuts.  I saw him go back and forth in front of the house at least 10 times.  I finally had enough and sent in a “tip” to the sheriff’s office, letting them know of the behavior and when it typically occurs.  I plan to try to capture the guy’s antics on video shortly to add to my “morons on tape” video collection.

I was amazed when yesterday I received a check in the mail from the place that did my ultrasound several weeks ago.  This is an occurrence as rare as Haley’s Comet, getting money BACK from a medical service provider.  Evidently they must have billed me more up front than necessary based on the insurance reimbursement they received.  Kudos to them I suppose for sending me the difference, I would have never known otherwise.

I hear all this buzz about what happened on Game of Thrones this week.  Luckily I have not read exactly what the buzz is about.  Tonight I plan to watch the episode myself while Sadie and Nicki keeps me company.

On Friday night I watched Another Earth, my latest Netflix dvd. ALERT, this will be a spoiler but it may save you from some of the frustration I experienced.  I recalled the previews for this movie, it seemed interesting, a second version of Earth all of a sudden shows up in the sky. Neat.

So the movie starts and the plot is about a young girl and a tragedy that occurs in her life.  Ok that’s nice, why is there a second Earth?  The movie continues,  the girl plot continues, which is fine, but still I am waiting for why there is a second Earth?

They show a live broadcast where a scientist establishes communication with the other Earth.  Not only does she communicate, she communicates with HERSELF, the version that lives on the second Earth! Cool, finally we are going to get into why the fck there is a second Earth!

Here come the movie credits, I still have no idea why there was a second Earth.  It’s like that was just a secondary part of the movie.  Are you kidding me?  Sure the story and plot wasn’t bad but it was 180 degrees from what I went into the movie looking for, which pisses me off.  No it isn’t a bad movie but don’t go into it thinking you are going to find out much about Earth 2.  I can only give it a B because of the bait and switch.

On Saturday I picked up the girls since I had another day of mostly outdoor labor planned.  The fence received the most attention.  First I went around the entire perimeter and hammered in new staples in a few spots where they popped out and tapped in the others to make sure they were snugged up.  Then I put a fresh spool of line on the weed whacker and knocked down the crap around the entire fence line, inside and out.  I also mowed the area OUTSIDE the fence line just for fun, something that gets done very infrequently.

On Saturday night I saw another movie with Earth in the title,  After Earth, the latest father/son effort from Will and Jaden Smith.  The premise seemed mildly interesting despite Jaden Smith being involved.  I still was stinging from watching Jaden in the New Karate Kid a couple years back.  I thought his acting at the time was basically awful.  I thought since he was older now that he surely couldn’t be quite so bad.  I was wrong.

Jaden is fine running around and doing physical things on screen.  However any time he has to actually speak, it is painful.  It is some of the worst acting I have ever seen.  Maybe I am being too tough on the kid but I have seen plenty of movies featuring child actors that are great.  I don’t think Jaden should get a pass because his dad is Will Smith. Jaden sucks as an actor IMO.

Adding to Jaden’s poor acting was a plot that was predictable and ridiculous at times. (spoiler ahead) In a nutshell, Jaden spends the entire movie being a pussy, and then for 3 minutes becomes Superman and then returns to pussytude.  It is just stupid.

It all made sense when the credits started to roll, the movie was directed by M Night Shyamalan. M had a couple big hits early in his directing career but has become more famous for directing one stinker after another for the past half decade or more.  They used to use his name as a promo for the movie, now they don’t bother to even mention it.  Well it was nice to see M Night hasn’t lost his touch.  I’d give the movie a B or maybe even a B-, fine for Netflix, dumb to pay for otherwise.

On Sunday I was up super early, 3:45 am, to head out to the Naples Fitness Challenge, a long running triathlon that I did once in 2011.  I wasn’t participating this year but I was getting there early to help Bill, our GCR equipment guy set up stuff.  Even though this isn’t an official GCR event it utilizes a ton of our stuff.

Setup before the race went fine, we had a lot of hands on deck helping out.  Once the race started I went into spectator mode for awhile, cheering on the participants and snapping some pictures. See my photo album here.

After the race I again jumped in to the clean up process which seemed more grueling due to the hot sun beating down on us along with the escalating humidity levels.

During clean up I managed to gash my big toe pretty well when a piece of fencing fell over.  I had a pool of blood in my flip flop.  Of course if I was smart and wore sneakers instead of flip flops I would have avoided injury.  Thankfully the truck had a med kit.  I slapped a band aid on the bloody/sandy wound to stop the bleeding.

Even though I didn’t actually do the race, I felt sleepy like I did.  Sunday afternoon I had a two hour plus nap instead of doing the ancillary exercise I was thinking about earlier.