20 deep, 2000 long, 10,000 bites

So Saturday morning I skipped the club run.  I didn’t feel like getting up early and both of my knees felt varying degrees of ouch.  I also had a very sore lower back from my 110 back extensions the day before.  Instead I directed my energy towards chores, lot and lots of chores.

I did just a ridiculous amount of things.  For fun I wrote down everything I did, it added up to close to 20 different to do’s.  Most of my effort was outside.  I decided to address a lot of pruning and trimming that needed to be done on various trees and bushes.  We are in the absolute epicenter of horribly humid and hot Florida summertime weather.    I literally felt like I was melting as I toiled in the yard.

The amazing thing is with all of that work, I still felt like I had left stuff on the plate yet to do.  I found all of this work despite having mowed the entire property during the week, which was a good thing since standing water has returned in force thanks to multiple deluges the past few days.

I originally had hopes of spending some f around time on Saturday playing video games or trying to fly my wing but there was just no spare time to be found before heading out to the movies.

We saw the new Wolverine movie.  Despite it being opening weekend, Coconut Pointe once again delivered a sparsely populated theater, even with us walking in right at the 7:30 showtime.  It was the 3D version but to be honest I am having a hard time remembering exactly what was 3D about it.  Perhaps I am just so accustomed to 3D now that my brain hardly even recognizes the difference.

I liked the movie,  I thought it was very solid from start to finish.  Hugh Jackman is REALLY jacked nowadays, he is built like an NFL linebacker.  There were two little odd things I noticed in this Marvel film.  If Stan Lee was in there for his customary little cameo, I totally missed it.  I don’t recall seeing him at all.  Marvel films also are known for putting a little bonus scene at the VERY end of the credits that reveals what is coming next.   There was a short scene about a minute after the movie ended but we stuck it out another 10 minutes till the actual end of the credits.  There was nothing there, damn it.    Anyway, it gets a solid A from me.  The little bonus footage made me anxious to see the next film, it looks like the X-men are reassembling.   🙂

On Sunday my knees still did not feel great so instead of a brick I wimped out and did just a single exercise, swimming.  I figured since I was only swimming I should go longer than I normally do, both in my segments and overall distance.  The water in the lap pool area was really warm, if I were to guess it was easily in the upper 80’s.   Warm water is nice to soak your feet in, it is pretty lousy to try to swim distance in.  I felt like I was lapping in a bath tub.

Despite the warm water I was strangely faster than normal in the pool, averaging a minute per 50 yards, completing each 500 yard segment in right around 10 minutes.   I did a total of 4 segments totaling up to 2000 yards in the water.  I wasn’t quite sure why I was faster, I guessed it might simply be because I did not pre-fatigue myself with running or biking beforehand.

Even with just doing the swimming, I emerged from the pool thoroughly spent.  The faster pace and warm water did a number on me.

Once again Cindy had a run in with a clueless individual.  This time some guy decided he would exit the diving pool area by flailing across the lane Cindy was swimming in, once again causing a near collision.  Cindy stopped abruptly and asked him what he was doing.  His explanation was he thought he could beat her across the lane before she got there.  Unfortunately this behavior is a by product of trying to swim laps at a public pool, the dumb asses are on a very loose and long chain.

The dogs seemed to be having a good weekend with me, despite the property being overrun with mosquitoes which made an outdoor excursion a swat fest.  They both got baths and Nicki has been eating her revamped meals quite eagerly.  The addition of boneless chicken thighs seems to be the trick.

Sunday morning I spent some time remote controlled into mom’s laptop.  She had been complaining of overall poor performance for awhile.  I have done various tweaks over the years trying to extend the usefulness of the 7 or 8 year old laptop but I think we have reached the end of the road.  Today’s internet assumes you are running hardware with a big blob of memory and a fast processor.  512 MB just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

I have a spare PC that I may be able to add enough memory to that I am thinking about giving mom.  If for some reason it doesn’t work out I will just buy mom a new or lightly used pc to replace the old laptop.

Sunday afternoon I still found myself with stuff to do, part of which was replacing the door speakers in Cindy’s Miata to accompany the new headrest speakers that were installed the weekend prior.   I had to do some creative engineering to get them mounted in a way that was more secure than the horribly low effort way the old shitty speakers were thrown in there.  I would really like to meet whichever prior owner that did some of the “upgrades” on the car.  I have a feeling he has a large stockpile of duct tape somewhere.

Sunday evening a good friend of Cindy’s came out to the house to hang out and watch movies with us.  He happens to have Corvette, a less than a year old beast.  I saw an interesting photo op with a real Corvette behind my SSR that sports a 2005 Corvette LS2 motor in it.

I use my Xbox 360 as a dvd player.  A couple weeks ago I made the mistake of agreeing to participate in a beta program with my living room 360.  Basically they are testing new versions of their operating system, presumably as part of the roll out of the new Xbox One this holiday season.

Well as a result I am getting tons of these huge, slow to download updates every time I turn the damn thing on.  Before we could watch a movie last night I had to sit through yet another at least 15 minute download/update.  It’s very annoying.

We watched Idiocracy (again).  I made sure to  have 3 BLP’s in me before watching.  Despite this being my third time watching the movie I still laughed at it, a lot.  We followed it up with The Campaign, yet another Will Ferrel comedy.

A lot of Will’s recent films have been a mild disappointment to me with most of the funny moments shown in the previews with precious little else to make me laugh beyond that.  Well I found The Campaign very funny, possibly assisted by my mild drunkenness. Perhaps it was also the direct smacks in the face of the likes of George W Bush or the slimy Koch brothers. Regardless, I laughed out loud, a lot. I would give it an A-.

So when Alfred left I hopped in the SSR to pull it back in the garage.  It had been sitting in the driveway since I pulled it out to work on the Miata.  As soon as I slid in the seat I knew something was fishy, no interior lights popped on with the door being open.  When I inserted the key my suspicions were confirmed, it was dead as a doornail.  WTF.  How could the truck go from starting a few hours ago to COMPLETELY dead.  Perhaps something was ajar or the ignition switch wasn’t completely off, allowing the radio to still be on?

Well whatever the reason I wanted to get the SSR back in the garage.  The solution seemed simple, jump it.  I pulled the Tacoma next to the SSR and grabbed my jumper cables.  The SSR is a bit of an oddball when it comes to the battery, it is located under the truck, in the rear in a box.  However they try to make jumping the vehicle less of a pain by having remote jump start terminals in the engine bay.

So as I was working in the open air I was getting absolutely mauled by hungry mosquitoes, freshly hatched in the once again abundant standing water.  When I slid back in the SSR to try to start it, the blood suckers followed me, it was pretty maddening.

I was baffled when the interior of the truck still seemed totally dead except a very faint glowing of the check engine light.  I got back out and reattached the cables, this time I got a spark and some life from the interior.  I tried starting it but only got a partial turn followed by clicking.  I told Cindy to bring the RPM’s up on the Tacoma to try to increase the amperage from it’s alternator.  Still, I got a couple turns but not enough for the truck to start.  DAMN IT!

So my next plan of attack was to try to jump directly on the SSR battery.  I crawled under the truck with my stick light and removed the side panel which gave me access to the terminals.  I was getting bit non-stop by mosquitoes but at this point my frustration was masking the repeated pin pricks.

I exposed the battery terminals, reconnected the jumper cables and had the same level of success as under the hood, half turns followed by clicking.  ARGH.  For whatever reason I was not getting a solid enough connection with the cables to support the amp draw to start the SSR , mother f….

Ok well maybe I can at least get my beloved truck in the garage, out of harms way.  It was on the incline part of the driveway leading up to the garage.  For some reason I thought that possibly I would be able to push the 5000 pound vehicle up the hill and into the garage.  That was an epic fail of course, as soon as Cindy released the brake it started rolling backwards, despite my efforts to move it the other direction.

Ok I was officially out of options.  I once again returned under the back of the truck and dropped the battery box as I was getting riddled by mosquito bites, pulling the battery out so I could get a new one today.  I am crossing my fingers it is JUST the battery.  Despite having a number of batteries goes from good to dead since moving to Florida, the symptoms I saw with the SSR make me think something else could be in the mix.  I’ll find out tonight after work.